Today I spent most of my day admiring movement.
Living in a world where I can dance all day long as my career, how lucky am I?
I had Paul's class today. We didn't spend as much time warming up. We started class with a quote from Hokusai, a famous Japanese artist:
At seventy-three I learned a little about the real structure of animals, plants, birds, fishes and insects. Consequently when I am eighty I'll have made more progress. At ninety I'll have penetrated the mystery of things. At a hundred I shall have reached something marvellous, but when I am a hundred and ten everything I do, the smallest dot, will be alive. (Katsushika Hokusai)
This really resonated with me. It made me believe that a masterpiece only comes from progression and from working hard every single day of my life. We spent some time with our walking meditation. I have been thinking a lot about my life, and after Paul talked about having a daily practice, the more I want to implement some sort of daily practice in my life. I am a very impulsive and random person sometimes, but I don't think it would hurt to add some sort of daily routine to my life. Some sort of constant.
Anyways, we worked on combining three of the combinations we have learned in class together. Stringing them together has been harder than I thought it would be. I need to think about how I can change the dynamics and energy between each individual phrase that's connected to connect all three together to make it a cohesive phrase instead of a chopped off block of random dynamic qualities thrown together. Also, Paul adjusted the speed of the phrase, so now it is on hyper speed. A lot of people in our class cannot count the beats also- so they are always off the beat, which can at times become frustrating, but hey what can you do?
Then we moved into African. I am trying SO hard to be successful in African, and it is just getting increasingly harder. I am not used to the different rhythms being produced by the 6-10 drummers present drumming for us. They are all amazing musicians, but with a ll those drums, it can become quite intimidating as well as confusing when there are so many different sounds in the room. One point that Sherone made, was to make sure that we give as much energy in our dancing as the drummers to do their drums. Like dancers, drummers face the same types of hand injuries/callouses/soreness/pain, etc. So to not take advantage of them. Then we began to learn parts of a new dance today. We are currently learning the "Kassa", which is a dance originating from Guinea which is about hunting/gathering.
Then afterwards, I had a meeting for Dorm Counselors which was long and not necessary to write about in the blog. But I walked over to the Arts Warehouse with my Rep Partner, Rachel. We got there and spent most of our time working on our trio phrase. We had Ming look over it to see if he had any suggestions on how to make the transitions smoother. We have been working a lot of finding ways to partner one another without creating stress in each other. Ming is such a partnering genius. You give him any challenge and he's got it. He knows exactly how to handle it and what to do. He gives great suggestions without changing your ideas and thoughts about how you want the dance to be portrayed.
After Repertory, Emma and I got ready form Kyle Abraham's show, which was indeed incredible. The show was called, The Radio Show. Kyle wanted to highlight how the Radio Show was a huge childhood memory and the fact that Pittsburgh got rid of his childhood radio station affected him, along with memories of his Grandfather suffering from Altzheimer's disease as well as a general note on how people listen to tragedies happen over the radio and never really understand the context of the situation. His work is so pungnent. It is first of all filled with exceptional dancers with such beautiful technique, but also with such great performing ability. There was not one moment during the show where I was bored or waiting for it to end. I loved the movement choices Kyle made as well as the audience interaction. Not only did Kyle have a "Pre-Show" where he picked out people in the audience to dance with him briefly, but he also had someone walk around in the audience with a telephone in the middle of the performance and asked fellow audience members questions a radio station would ask. It was a really engaging performance. Even eliminating the audience interaction, I think Kyle has a talent of attracting to the audience that doesn't understand dance as well as to the group fo dance artists who understand and appreciate it more than anyone.
After we returned, Emma and I were bad and ordered Domino's and watched the Domino's tracker the entire time. It was crazy. We had a Parot/island theme, hahha.
Anyways, that was all for today. Deucessss
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