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studio-concreto-blog · 5 years

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Un dancing per ballare 18.05.19 - 07.09.19 studioconcreto

Un dancing per ballare raccoglie una selezione di opere che mettono al centro delle loro ricerche il quotidiano come spazio politico in cui le relazioni sociali e i riti collettivi si riproducono. Le esperienze che andremo ad analizzare incarnano la relazione primaria tra corpo, movimento, suono, spazio architettonico e naturale, manifestando la centralità dell’approccio interdisciplinare nel processo di creazione, spesso basato su un modello laboratoriale di condivisione e prossimità, come elemento chiave per la produzione di conoscenza. Tra i principali riferimenti di questa indagine troviamo le sperimentazioni fatte a cavallo tra gli anni ‘50 e ‘70 da Elaine Summers (Perth, Australia, 1925 – New York, 2014 ), coreografa, regista sperimentale e pioniera dell’arte intermediale, tra i membri fondatori del gruppo Judson Dance Theater e di Experimental Intermedia Foundation, che contribuì significativamente all'espansione della danza in altre discipline correlate, come l'arte visiva, il cinema e il teatro.Ulteriore punto focale sarà dato dalla ricerca della danzatrice e coreografa Anna Halprin (Winnetka, Illinois, 1920), danzatrice e coreografa che ha sviluppato una pratica sul movimento tale da influenzare non solo lo sviluppo della danza contemporanea ma anche quello della performance, delle arti visive e della musica sperimentale. Dall’archivio Spigolizzi, il progetto utopico Wonderhouse concepito con Hendricus Theodorus Wijdeveld (L’Aia, 1885 – Nimega, 1987), visionario della architettura olandese, e lo spartito home-made di Alvin Curran (Providence, 1938), ci permetteranno di aprire la riflessione su come lo spazio domestico sia un terreno fertile per le sperimentazioni artistiche, specialmente in aree segnate dall'assenza di istituzioni formali.

Il public program della mostra ospiterà i contributi di Jimmie Durham & Maria Thereza Alves, Casa a Mare, Francesca Mariano, Sergio Solombrino, Alvin Curran, Thomas Körtvelyessy. Un dancing per ballare è realizzato grazie a Artistic Estate of Elaine Summers, facilitato da Kinetic Awareness® Center, Inc. con un ringraziamento speciale a Jerome Robbins Dance Division at New York City Public Library for the Performing Arts; Archivio Anna Halprin; Archivio Rudy Perez; Archivio Spigolizzi.

Un dancing per ballare, installation view, studioconcreto, Lecce, 2019

Anna Halprin, Apartment 6, photo documentation by Warner Jepson, 1965

Elaine Summers, Judson Fragments, 16mm film trasferred to video, color and black-and- white, sound, 16 min, 1964. Courtesy of the Artistic Estate of Elaine Summers, facilitated by Kinetic Awareness® Center, Inc. with thanks to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at New York City Public Library for the Performing Arts

Un dancing per ballare, installation view, studioconcreto, Lecce, 2019

Alvin Curran, home-made, score book, 1965

public program

15 giugno | Video screening | Jimmie Durham & Maria Thereza Alves, The Man Who Had a Beautiful House (1994); Casa a Mare, Dwelling Art (2015) 22 luglio - 2 agosto | Workshop | Prima materia con Francesca Mariano 29 luglio | Talk | I tre filosofi dell’abitare a cura di Sergio Solombrino 7 Settembre | Live performance | Alvin Curran, Live in Spigolizzi per info e prenotazioni [email protected]

reviews

Nuovo Quotidiano di Puglia, Marinilde Giannadrea, Natura e Quotidiano nel ballo dell’arte, Lecce, 2 luglio 2019

Quisalento, Lara Gigante, L’immagine dell’abitare, Lecce, 15 giugno 2019

press release download

(en) Un dancing per ballare May, 18th – September, 7th studioconcreto Un dancing per ballare (A dance floor to dance) presents a selection of works that explore daily life as a political space where social relations and collective rituals occur. We will highlight experiences that epitomize the primal relationship among body, movement, sound, architectural and natural space. They reveal the centrality of an interdisciplinary approach – often based on a workshop-style methodology, grounded on sharing and proximity – as key element for knowledge production throughout the creation process. Core references for this investigation include the 50s-70s experimentations by choreographer, experimental filmmaker and pioneer of intermedial art Elaine Summers (Perth, Australia, 1925 – New York, 2014) – a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater and of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation – who contributed significantly to the spread of dance to other related disciplines, such as visual arts, cinema and theater; dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin (Winnetka, Illinois, 1920), whose practice about movement influenced the development not only of contemporary dance, but also of artistic performances, visual arts and experimental music. From the Spigolizzi archive, the utopian project Wonderhouse by Hendricus Theodorus Wijdeveld (The Hague, 1885 – Nijmegen, 1987) – a visionary in the field of Dutch architecture – and the home-made music sheet by Alvin Curran (Providence, 1938), will facilitate a reflection on domestic space as a fertile soil for artistic experimentations, especially in those areas characterized by a lack of formal institutions. The exhibition public program will host the contributions by Jimmie Durham & Maria Thereza Alves, Casa a Mare, Francesca Mariano, Sergio Solombrino, Alvin Curran, Thomas Körtvélyessy. Un dancing per ballare is realized thanks to the collaboration of the Artistic Estate of Elaine Summers, facilitated by Kinetic Awareness® Center, Inc. with thanks to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at New York City Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Anna Halprin Archive, Rudy Perez Archive and Spigolizzi Archive. public program June, 15th | Video screening | Jimmie Durham & Maria Thereza Alves, The Man Who Had a Beautiful House (1994); Casa a Mare, Dwelling Art (2015) July, 22th - August, 2th | Workshop | Prima materia con Francesca Mariano July, 29th | Talk | I tre filosofi dell’abitare a cura di Sergio Solombrino September, 7th | Live performance | Alvin Curran, Live in Spigolizzi info and reservations at [email protected]

#undancingperballare #exhibition

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recommendedlisten · 6 years

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The silver lining to not being involved in SXSW week is that it arrives just in time to give an independent music site like this a brief reprieve after a few fully loaded weeks of obligatory coverage. While the industry was down in Austin playing hard and partying harder, it wasn’t like these last several days passed by without a sound, however, and they were heavy ones at that. Baroness fought through the borderlines of oblivion to make a triumphant return, gothic folk slayer Marissa Nadler announced that she’s collaborated with metalcore O.G. Stephen Brodsky of Cave In with their first offering to the sun droning in darkness, rising gloom and doom post-punks Russian Baths maximized their SXSW buzz with the infectious first listen off their forthcoming debut, and Japanese math rockers tricot dizzied us with illusion. In other ways, pop futurism and indie rock in retrograde is sounding pretty interesting, too.

Here’s the best of the rest from the week of March 10th, 2019…

Carly Rae Jepson - “Now That I Found You” [604 / Interscope / School Boy Records]

It was just two weeks ago that pop Carly Rae Jepsen released two new singles, possibly from her forthcoming new album, with one being the slow-hitting seduction of “No Drug Like Me” and the other listen of “Now That I Found You” doing that special thing in cutting to the instant gratification feeling of a new kind of euphoria that a CRJ pop anthem can do. Combine the latter with her superpower of putting those emotions into concept with a very on-brand and unpredictable rom-com storytelling, and you get another video that pulls you into Jepsen’s world where cuteness prevails. Carlos Lopez Estrada and Nelson de Castro helmed the watch, finding Jepsen discovering an abandoned cat in the pouring rain which she adopts and pampers to the fullest. After vaping a little too much catnip, she ends up losing the fuzzy feline, but in the end, the reunion discovers something else she didn’t know she was looking for all along.

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Holly Herndon - “Eternal” [4AD]

There’s so much talk these days of robots replacing and disposing every aspect of humanity at some point in time, yet experimental electronic composer Holly Herndon seems to be one of the few who continues working toward a path where each coexist harmoniously, at least through her music. The San Francisco-based artist will unveil her six studio effort in doing just that when she releases PROTO on May 10th. To record the album, Herndon collaborated with a collective of vocalists and developers alongside the AI computer known as Spawn, which was taught by its human instruments how to identify and interpret the many versions of voices a physical being can create. “Eternal” is our first listen into what they built when all of these parts merged into one performance plane, and it’s an anomaly of an aural experience where Herndon and her ensemble are nearly indistinguishable from one another in its digital chaos. echoing chants over seismic pulses. What’s transparent, however, is its pursuit for deeper connection. “Physical love / Are you right in front of my eyes? / Love, love, love / How is it possible? / I'm feeling the way now,” she sings. Its video is equally searching, drawing from footage of an intelligent machine attempting to pinpoint a face that matches its emotion.

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Jenny Lewis - “Wasted Youth” [Warner Bros. Records]

On the Line, the fourth studio effort from Jenny Lewis, arrives next week, and what we’ve learned thus far from the album’s previews in the Laurel Canyon pastiche of “Redbull & Hennessy” and the smoke-filled symphonies of “Heads Gonna Roll” is that the hero of L.A.’s glammed out, bohemian version of an indie scene is giving listeners nothing short of a clinic in consistent songcraft. The LP’s final preview “Wasted Youth” stays on course with this shimmer of AM gold rockisms through vintage instruments by way of Heartbreaker keyboardist Benmont Tench and producer extraordinaire Don Was feeding organs an bass lines through sun-dialed guitars. As with many of Lewis’ best moments, “Wasted Youth” plays out a balancing act between California chic and it’s ugly, plastic facade of pleasure-seeking, “Why you lyin’? / The bourbon’s gone / Mercury hasn’t been in retrograde for that long,” her voice pours over smoothly. As if a bad astrology reading could rue her day...

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Shura - “BRKLYNLDN” [Secretly Canadian]

It’s been a few since we caught up with Shura, the liquid synth-pop moniker of songwriter and producer Alexandra Denton. After a promising string of early singles (one of which was named one of the best here on +RL in 2014,) she followed it up with a promising debut album Nothing’s Real in 2016. Since then, the Moscow-born artist has lived all over the globe, from London to South America and now, as documented on “BRKLYNLDN”, her first single since signing with Secretly Canadian, transplanting herself to the NYC burrows to remedy the desires of a long distance relationship. Its palette is intimately cool, mixing slick 808s, a vapor table of synths, and the smooth elixir within her voice to break down any geographic or communicative barried to tempt the body closer. In its accompanying video, directed by Woman’s Hour frontwoman Fiona Jane Burgess, we watch as two blue-hued figures entangle in its rhythm.

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#the best of the rest #carly rae jepsen #holly herndon #jenny lewis #shura #Songs #new music & videos

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todayclassical · 7 years

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March 24 in Music History

1654 Death of German composer Samuel Scheidt in Halle.

1714 Birth of composer Carlo Giovanni Testori.

1721 Bach finishes his six Brandenburg concertos dedicated to Margrave Ludwig of Brandenburg.

1732 Birth of composer Gian Francesco de Majo.

1739 Birth of composer Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart

1740 Birth of American Moravian composer and instrument maker John Antes. 1749 Birth of composer Bernard Jumentier.

1762 Birth of composer Marcos Antonio da Fonseca in Portugal.

1762 Birth of Beethoven patron Count Ferdinand Waldstein. 1808 Birth of Spanish mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran in Paris.

1815 Founding in Boston of the Handel and Haydn Society.

1815 Birth of soprano Sophie Löwe.

1817 Birth of French opera composer Aimé Louis Maillart in Montpellier.

1820 Birth of American hymn composer Francis Jane Fanny Crosby.

1820 FP of Rossini's Messa di Gloria at Church of San Ferdinando in Naples.

1821 Birth of German mezzo-soprano Mathilde Marchesi de Castrone in Frankfurt.

1842 Birth of Austrian soprano Marie Gabrielle Krauss in Vienna. 1856 FP of Arditi's La Spia in New York City.

1857 Birth of Polish violinist Timothee Adamowski in Warsaw. 1860 FP of Joseph Joachim's Violin Concerto No.2 Op.11 in Hannover.

1867 Birth of Croatian-American composer Vincent Frank Safranek.

1868 Birth of American mezzo-soprano Frieda Langendorff.

1881 FP of version two of Verdi's opera Simon Boccanegra libretto revised by Boito at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

1884 Birth of composer Gino Marinuzzi.

1900 Birth of Russian-Ukranian tenor Ivan Kozlovsky. 1910 Birth of composer Jacques Chailley.

1911 Birth of Spanish conductor Enrique Jorda in San Sebastian. 1916 Death of Spanish composer Enrique Granados and his wife from German torpedoing of the 'Sussex' in the English Channel on return from NYC. 1921 Death of French composer Deódat de Sévérac at age 48, in Céret.

1924 FP of Sibelius' Seventh Symphony, composer conducting in Stockholm. 1927 Birth of composer Janos Decsenyi.

1928 Birth of American pianist Byron Janis, in McKeesport, PA.

1930 Birth of composer Cristobal Halffter. 1930 Birth of American composer Warner Jepson in Sioux City, Iowa.

1932 Birth of French soprano Christiane Eda-Pierre.

1932 FP of Randall Thompson's Symphony No. 2, in, Rochester, NY.

1933 Birth of composer David Harries. Although of Welsh parents David Harries was born in Portsmouth, England.

1935 FP of Samuel Barber's Music for a Scene from Shelly.

1936 Birth of French soprano Luisa Bosabalian in Marseille.

1936 Birth of American composer Fredrick Kaufman.

1937 Birth of English baritone Benjamin Luxon in Redruth, England.

1941 FP of D. Shostakovich's incidental music for Shakespeare's King Lear at the Gorky Bolshoi Dramatic Theater, in Leningrad.

1944 Death of Italian mezzo-soprano Irene Minghini Cattaneo in air raid.

1946 Birth of French musicologist and conductor Jacques Chailley in Paris. 1949 FP of Andrzej Panufnik's Tragic Overture in NYC.

1954 Debut of American mezzo-soprano Risë Stevens at La Scala.

1978 Birth of English-American composer Martin Kennedy.

1982 Death of Russian-American baritone Igor Gorin in Tucson AZ.

1984 FP of Philip Glass' opera Akhnaten at the Wurttemberg State Theater, with Dennis Russell Davies conducting, in Stuttgart.

2001 FP of Giuseppe Chihara's Songs of Love and Loss with Geraldine Walther, [Principal Violist of the San Francisco Symphony since the 1976-77 season] and the San Francisco Chamber Singers, directed by Robert Geary, at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Berkeley, CA.

2002 Death of American soprano Beverly Bower.

#classicalmusic #musichistory #todayclassical #today in music history #onthisday

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magnifyingculture · 8 years

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Movement as Metaphor

I grew up dancing. In fact, in the 30 years I’ve been alive the amount of years I devoted to dancing is longer than the amount of years I haven’t so it’s still difficult for me not to identify a huge part of myself as such. And even though I no longer get paid to be on stage, I will forever be a dancer.

But what does it mean to be a “dancer”? Is it when one performs for an audience that the work, and subsequently the dancer, become actualized?

When a longtime dancer takes his/her first leap in deciding against their professional career path (”quitting”) there is a period of time where they go through withdrawal from performance, withdrawal from being watched, withdrawal from being “seen”, withdrawal from expression. A huge part of a dancers identity feels shattered and caged and it is this “unseeing” that easily removes them from the title of “dancer”. One of the most fulfilling moments a dancer can experience is the fleeting moment of vitality and bliss that they encounter on stage...when the blazing lights beats upon their glistening sweat, when the audience is pitch black and their body becomes an antenna. The dancer communicates with their fellow dancers and the audience. They feed off of their counterparts on-stage and they feel the presence of hundreds of people watching. The power of the collective becomes larger than life.

“Dance is communication” - Martha Graham

In order for a dancer to communicate, they must be completely precise in their movement and incredibly in-tune with their body. The studio is a place where a dancer finds precision within themselves. It’s a space for self-exploration and in a sense, a space where a dancer is in total competition with themselves. “They are striving to be the dancer that they ultimately want to become”, as Graham states in the video below. The studio space is for refinement, constant, exhausting repetition for the sole purpose of achieving perfection. “Perfection” in this case is for the body to achieve precise clarification and for the body to communicate in it’s fullest capacity ultimately, for its audience. But, it’s in this achievement of clarity (technique) where freedom is found in control.

The studio has an intrinsic personal value to the dancer. It is a place where they can safely explore, open-up and be vulnerable without anyone in sight, and in this way, this is a sacred ritual for a dancer. In 1957, Martha Graham made a short film titled “A Dancers World”, which happened to be filmed in an isolated space of the studio. In it, she describes what it means to be a dancer in practice, study, and performance alongside experts of her company dancing different pieces from their repertoire that further illustrate her philosophy.

*Side note: It’s also really entertaining to watch because you get to see just how eccentric Graham really was.

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“Performance” specifically for the dancer on the other hand, is a different realm of possibility and responsibility (responsibility in the sense that the dancer(s) must communicate with ultimate precision to its audience in order for it to be effective, emotionally resonant, and culturally relevant). It’s interesting to point out the metaphor here for the modern world today: the “dancer” doesn’t exist without performance (but only when they’ve polished or finely curated their method of communication), so their identity as “dancer” doesn’t exist unless they’re seen by others. It’s safe to say we feel this way in our own notion of the “self”. We perform our identity to others in order to understand it for ourselves, for self-validation. (See term definition: “Performativity” here and Judith Butler describe “gender is performative” here). Today we all live in a world where everyone is performing in public, constantly putting themselves on display, commodifying themselves through their self(ies) while simultaneously being surveilled (Perform or Else, McKenzie, 2001; Singularities; Dance In the Age of Performance, Andre Lepecki, 2016).

The idea of “performance” is a hefty topic these days and there is something to be said about comparing both the dancer’s world to that of modern day existence. It should be less about the aesthetic beauty of the dancer (or the person who uploads their most interesting photo) and more about the collective meaning that dancers exude to their audience. It’s within that relation where freedom and a sense of catharses for all participants can be found.

To insist on the social function of the theatre as a social gathering space, and to acknowledge that the dancer’s labor is inseparable from the conditions of the world ... dancers and audience all produce, and are produced by a shared bio and necropolitical nervous system.

Singularities; Dance In the Age of Performance, Andre Lepecki, 2016

Dance's ephemerality suggests the possibility of an escape from the regimes of commodification and fetishization in the arts. Its corporeality can embody critiques of representation inscribed in bodies and subjects. Its precariousness underlines the fragility of contemporary states of being.

Dance (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art), Andre Lepecki, 2012

For the dancer though, performance of movement is so much of how a dancer receives their ultimate high, their validation of existence, their heightened experience of life through their intense relation with the audience. In a way, dance could not exist without its audience. Many would argue that art itself can not be considered art without its audience:

Sartre’s existential aesthetics is concerned mainly with how the artist exercises his/her own freedom and how the artist offers the audience an opportunity to exercise their freedom. What separates existential aesthetics from a theory of beauty that is concerned with the creative freedom of the individual is that existential aesthetics wants to do something with both the artist’s and audience’s freedom in the sense that what a work of art should aim to do is inspire a certain free action on the part of the spectator. Therefore the artwork involves a freedom that is not just that of the artist, but also that of the audience.

Elijah Alexander Guerra, Sartre Existentialism and Aesthetics, pg. 14

But some dancers venimenytly disagree, and with opposition comes counter-culture. Being Watched is a book the captures Yvonne Rainer’s famous rebellion against dancing for the audience’s sake, a rebellion that nicely coincides with the revolution of the 60′s and 70′s. Rainer is significant not only as a choreographer but as a symbol of questioning spectatorship.

The image above is part of a series photographed by Warner Jepson. In the cover image above, the dancer turns away from the camera, raising an arm slightly behind her. Her hand is out-turned and blurry quite literally suggesting: stop looking at me, I am not meant for you! This notion of course, not only holds meaning for the dancer, but for the dancer as female.

In her dance and performances of the 1960s, Yvonne Rainer famously transformed the performing body -- stripped it of special techniques and star status, traded its costumes and leotards for T-shirts and sneakers, asked it to haul mattresses or recite texts rather than leap or spin.

Being Watched, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, 1999

Additionally, women are still the symbols of ballet in the popular imagination, and those who create the work (choreographers) are dominated by men, thus many famous classical ballets are pure examples of the male gaze.

But if women are still the symbols of ballet in the popular imagination, chances are it is as ballerinas performing dazzling, demanding steps that were devised for them by men. When it comes to choreography, at least at most major companies, ballet remains overwhelmingly a man’s world. Breaking the Glass Slipper: Where Are the Female Choreographers?, NYTimes

The dance realms of 19th-century ballet were harems (sometimes literally, as in one all-female scene of “Le Corsaire,” where odalisques and concubines dance on point with flowers in happy captivity). From the Romantic ballet, initiated by “La Sylphide” in 1836 to the classical creations of Marius Petipa in late-19th-century St. Petersburg (“The Sleeping Beauty”), feminine loveliness was the climate amid which a man looked, traveled and found love. Of Women, Men and Ballet in the 21st Century, NYtimes

See also: Dance Magazine, Does NYCB Have A Gambling Problem?

So, is the art of dance not “dance” unless someone is watching? What does it mean if a dancer must be validated by someone else’s eye? Is it a coincidence that dance has been historically dominated by white men, while constantly seeking their validation as an expert? If I dance in a studio alone, without another body in sight and feel the tension and release of my muscles, the sensitively my skin feels against it’s bones, the suspension of time when I jump in the air, the pure expression of movement against the notes of music, where does the definition of “dance” then lie?

Dance, in its essence, lies in the sensitivity of the body and in its pure movement, where the body becomes the antenna, transmitting signals to their surroundings. But if we think of dance purely as “movement”, then all humans are dancers. Movement is one of the many ways we identity each other, the way one walks, sits, stands, and even the way one listens is very telling if you’re paying enough attention. And so, I leave this post with a final quote from the famed choreographer, Ohad Naharin, describing his revolutionary modern technique known as the GaGa technique. What I adore so much about this explanation is not only its post-modern approach in thinking about dance, but that it focuses on the paradoxical notion of movement and thus, the paradoxical experience the dancer is constantly going through. He leaves out the notion of an audience completely, it is only about the way in which one chooses to be present in their movement and in this way, they are most present in life. This isn’t just an explanation of dance, this is a metaphor for existence.

"Gaga challenges multi-layer tasks. We are aware of the connection between effort and pleasure, we are aware of the distance between our body parts, we are aware of the friction between flesh and bones, we sense the weight of our body parts, yet our form is not shaped by gravity... we are aware of where we hold unnecessary tension, we let go only to bring life and efficient movement to where we let go . . . We are turning on the volume of listening to our body, we appreciate small gestures, we are measuring and playing with the texture of our flesh and skin, we might be silly, we can laugh at ourselves. We connect to the sense of "plenty of time”, especially when we move fast. We learn to love our sweat, we discover our passion to move and connect it to effort; We discover both the animal that we are and the power of our imagination. We are "body builders with soft spines". We learn to appreciate understatement and exaggeration, we become more delicate and we recognize the importance of the flow of energy and information through our body in all directions. We learn to apply our force in an efficient way and we learn to use "other" forces.

We discover the advantage of soft flesh and sensitive hands, we learn to connect to groove even when there is no music. We are aware of people in the room and we realize that we are not at the center of it all. We become more aware of our form since we never look at ourselves in a mirror; there are no mirrors. We connect to the sense of the endlessness of possibilities.

Yielding is constant while we are ready to snap...

We explore multi-dimensional movement, we enjoy the burning sensation in our muscles, we are aware of our explosive power and sometimes we use it. We change our movement habits by finding new ones, we can be calm and alert at once. We become available . . ." - Ohad Naharin

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#dance #movement #gaga #ohad naharin

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