The Art and Fundamentals of Choreography - Lesson 1 - 2012

The Art and Fundamentals of Choreography - Lesson 1 - 2012

5:00 – 8:00 DANC3013 – Art & Fundamentals of Choreography
DR. J. MOREJON
BLACK BOX Fall 2013

Arts and Fundamentals of Choreography
• Students Introductions
• Course Introduction:

The original idea of the course is to explain or get to understand how one puts all the elements involved in a production together to create the dances, including other elements such as music masks, costumes and lighting. My philosophy is always to start with that which is familiar and then move gradually to what is less familiar but equally important in terms of acquisition of knowledge in our field.

• Brainstorming

Exercise: Let’s come up with ideas or the possible definition about choreography(possible answers):

1. The sequence of steps and movements in dance or figure skating, esp. in a ballet or other staged dance.
2. The art or practice of designing such sequences.

*Here I have used the dictionary, but it is expected that the students will contribute to create their own. (Dictionary.com - Answers.com - Merriam-Webster)


Choreography from the Global Perspective of the Spectacle.

• New Hollywood violence - Page 218

Steven Jay Schneider - 2004 - 331 pages - Preview

For example, the choreography of action/spectacle films such as The Matrix," and of girl bands such as the Spice Girls, both owe much to Hong Kong cinema, the former to the work of directors like John Woo and the latter to the success ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfoVFXjIukY Matrix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PArTdhNda7k Spice Girls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mnpy4F77zcM John Woo

• Social choreography: ideology as performance in dance and everyday ... - Page 29

Andrew Hewitt - 2005 - 254 pages – Preview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3d3KigPQM T – Mobile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQLCZOG202k Antwerp Station
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z1HERAKjkY Dancing Policeman

Dance understood that they were intended to be seen—that they were a spectacle for all but the ''gifted few'' who performed them. The social choreography was exemplary, so to speak.

• Fluid City: Transforming Melbourne's Urban Waterfront - Page 75

Kim Dovey - 2004 - 304 pages - Preview

Poor urban design seems to have a certain value in over-determined landscapes because it produces a certain 'looseness' and in the context of the 'tight' choreography of the spectacle new forms of urban life become possible. ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGUPSqi7spo Urban Widgets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qxn5chXaReM&playnext=1&list=PL3627CB04CDCAE3E8&feature=results_main Fatale

• Dance, spectacle, and the body politick, 1250-1750 - Page 161

Jennifer Nevile - 2008 - 375 pages - Preview

About the choreographic elements, are certain steps associated with any particular repeated melodic material? ... This matching of the choreography and the music, however, does not imply that there always had to be an identical structure ...

• The Archaeology of Colonialism: Intimate Encounters and Sexual Effects - Page 296

Barbara L. Voss, Eleanor Conlin Casella - 2011 - 374 pages - Preview

To the choreography of the spectacle – the dancing figures, the children playing , the groups of men and women – is added a new element, a figure with a camera, weaving among the Bushmen, clicking away. Showing, Telling, Looking.

• The Unofficial Guide to Las Vegas 2012 - Page 193

Bob Sehlinger, Menasha Ridge, Deke Castleman - 2011 - 512 pages - Preview

Costing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to produce, the shows feature elaborate choreography and great spectacle. Sometimes playing twice a night, six or seven days a week, production shows often run for years. ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQFK730OnX8 Jubilee

• Hejduk's chronotope - Page T-33

K. Michael Hays, Centre canadien d'architecture - 1996 - 143 pages - Preview

Further, the choreography of the spectacle, which involves patient watching and "aesthetic sensibility,'' is simultaneously voyeutistic, scientific, and regulatory (these things are not, of course, mutually exclusive)…

• A woman of substance: the memoirs of Begum Khurshid Mirza, 1918-1989 - Page 224

Begum Khurshid Mirza, Lubna Kazim - 2005 - 245 pages - Preview

... and anyone who has seen the grand spectacle of lovely young girls carrying beautifully decorated ghara (clay pots) and thaal (trays) on their shoulders in a mehndi procession cannot deny the detailed choreography of the spectacle.

• Female spectacle: the theatrical roots of modern feminism - Page 176

Susan Anita Glenn - 2000 - 294 pages - Preview

E x a m C o p y the inouence of choreographers like John Tiller, Ned Wayburn, and Gertrude Hoffmann, and powerfully ... 106 This kind of choreography grew out of an exuberant faith in the potentials of technology and human engineering...

Other Ideas that may challenge the conventions of choreography
1. Seventeenth-Century Ballet a Multi-Art Spectacle - Page 20
books.google.comBarbara Grammeniati - 2011 - 132 pages - Preview

Apart from Cavalieri's O che nuovo miracolo, we have the Ballo de venti (1608), an equestrian ballet for thirty-two animals and riders choreographed by Sanseverino in Florence for an outdoor spectacle and, finally, the four theatre ...

2. Sophocles' Philoctetes and the Great Soul Robbery - Page 72
books.google.comNorman Austin - 2011 - 282 pages - Preview

We think of the playwright as the composer of a text, but in Athens the emphasis was on his role as teacher since he was both the composer and the choreographer of the spectacle set forth in the theater. Ancient tragedy was a musical ...

3. Speaking the unspeakable: a poetics of obscenity - Page 267
books.google.comPeter Michelson - 1993 - 312 pages - Preview

Oshima molds this archetypal dynamic into an allegory of erotic power and dialectical complexity. Oshima's choreography of the spectacle of both sex and violence is carefully calculated to draw in rather than assault the viewer ...

4. Capter L'essence Du Spectacle / Capturing the Essence of ... - Page 59
books.google.comNicole Leclercq, Laurent Rossion - 2010 - 538 pages - Preview

Having access to company records of how Davies works in rehearsal provides an enormously valuable insight into a choreographer's method. These records are quite different from the previously more widely available broadcast ...

5. The Cambridge companion to the musical - Page 35
books.google.comWilliam A. Everett, Paul R. Laird - 2002 - 310 pages - Preview

... Tension.6 They are no longer just vocal numbers in triple metre labelled 'a la valse' - these waltzes are meant to be danced as well as sung, thus raising the choreography above mere spectacle and integrating dance into the book. ...

6. The Arts of Black Africa - Page 181
books.google.comJean Laude - 1973 - 290 pages - Preview

Both the wooden mask hiding the face and the helmet entirely covering the dancer's head are only parts of a costume, the costume in turn being part of a dynamic ensemble of choreography and religious spectacle. On the other hand, ...

7. Riefenstahl screened: an anthology of new criticism - Page 76
books.google.comNeil Christian Pages, Mary Rhiel, Ingeborg Majer O'Sickey - 2008 - 276 pages

Indeed, it was precisely Riefenstahl's mastery of figurative dramatization—the choreography of natural spectacle and her sense of narrative rhythms as a feature filmmaker—that drew them to her in the first place. ...

8. Transfigurations: violence, death and masculinity in American cinema - Page 199
books.google.comAsbjørn Grønstad - 2008 - 274 pages - Full view

Both deaths were elaborately staged as aesthetic “events,” and in the latter case the choreography of the spectacle is highly reminiscent of the murder of the Turner character in Cammell's own Performance (co- directed by Nicolas Roeg ...

9. The winter's tale - Page 246
books.google.comWilliam Shakespeare, Susan Snyder, Deborah T. Curren-Aquino - 2007 - 279 pages - Preview

But as Snyder perceived, Knight's reading fits the assertive voice of a character who controls the choreography of the spectacle. 96 unlawful business ie occult activities, sorcery. 'Parliament made conjuring evil spirits a secular ...

Basic Choreographic Elements and Tools: according to Jane Bass, Professor of Dance and Academic Advisor in the Department of Dance at Western Michigan University, there are basic choreographic tools.

BASIC CHOREOGRAPHIC ELEMENTS AND TOOLS

1. Space
• Size/range of movement
• Levels: low, medium, high, aerial
• Dimension: Depth/Width/Height
• Body design: curved, angular, symmetrical, asymmetrical
• Pathway
2. Direction
• Facing
• Proximity
• Focus
• Location in the space/on the stage
3. Time
• Speed (Tempo): quick, moderate, slow, stillness
• Meter and subdivisions: Pulse, Rhythm, Traditional Time Signature (3/4, 4/4, 6/8, etc.) Mixed Meter
• Phrasing
4. Duration
• Accelerating/Decelerating
• Non-metered/Personal Time/Breath phrasing
• Attitude about time (wanting to accelerate, or speed up time, or wanting to decelerate, or slow time down--Laban,etc,
called it Effort).
5. Dynamics/Energy
• Force: Dynamic range
• Quality: Sudden, Sustained, Delicate, Strong, Free/Bound Flow, Contrast, Swinging, Vibrating, Suspending
6. Form and Structure
• Motif
• Repetition
• Theme and Variation (A, A1, A2, A3, etc.)
• Simple Contrast (ABA)
• Rondo (A.B.A.C.A.D.A, etc.)
• Narrative (tells a story with a clear beginning, development or change, and ending)
• Tradition dramatic form: introduction, development, conflict, climax, resolution.
• Chance

Introduction to Carnival Choreography

It seems to me that Carnival continues to be a popular and artistic expression that, besides representing Trinidad and Tobago’s most genuine form of art, groups all the elements needed to create a production where the choreography is not just the movement of a chorus of bodies in some form of coordination with each other, but the orchestration of all the theatrical elements needed to make it a successful enterprise or spectacle. So less refer to the choreography of all the elements involved as Capital C Choreography and the choreography of the dance and lower case c choreography.

Peter Minshall

Peter Minshall, Trinidad’s most prolific and well known chorographer, creator of the Callaloo Company, a studio that specializes in creating the costumes indigenous to Trinidad’s Carnival, sums it all up by quoting, in his own words “the great poet/playwright Federico Garcia Lorca,” who said:

The poem, the song, the picture,
are only water drawn from the well of the people
And it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty
So that they can drink
and in drinking understand themselves

Then he adds, “as with the poem, the song and the picture, so would the mask.”

Minshall also quotes the great choreographer Balanchine to explain the basis of his creative work. Balanchine said:

“See the music and hear the dance”
To conclude, “in mask that is exactly the purpose.”

Why is it important? Why is mask and the movement of it, its interpreter actor/dancer important?
According to Minshall, “when it the mask works, it crosses the chasm that separates the elite from the ordinary people. When mask works, everybody understands it.”

The origin of mask is the French masquerade. Minshall has his genealogy too. Born in Guyana and raised in Port of Spain. His mentor was George Bailey. In 1963, a Costume, Beauty and Perpetuity by the Bailey band, inspired him. In 1966 he graduated from London Central School of Art and Design. Then. He created sets and costumes for a Ballet Theatre Company in Bristol. In 1973 he became involved with the Notting Hill Carnival in London.

He then taught drama at Dartmouth in the United States. In 1982, the Guggenheim foundation awarded Minshall a fellowship for his carnival designs and costumes. However is back in Trinidad where his dream of becoming a mass man leading a mass band came to full fruition. In 1973, from the Land of the Hummingbird, a prize winning appearance in a costume danced by his foster sister Cheery Ann Gay 1974 Children’s Carnival. He had put a body in a costume, made it dance, and call the creation sculpture. The performer had given it the power of communication and the costume had become an art form of its own. His next creation was Milton’s Paradise Lost, 1976. Followed by Dance Macabre and Papillon, satires about the absurdity of life was expressed and there was not a clear definition between mask and costume.

“Color can be ugly as it can be pretty” Minshell

He explains his choreographic work within the context of a mass band is the closest to the abstractness of symphonic music.

It is a progressive experience from the viewer’s point of view.

There is a beginning a middle and an end.

There is also if you happily positioned, the advantage of seeing the mass approaching

In that total whole there are many parts: Within that many parts there are even more parts: There are characters that lead sections, and then there are sections leaders, then the floor members, there is the balancing off that one does with music (so balancing here translates to dancing).

There is the balancing off with this arrangement, colors, shapes, tone and form with that arrangement.

There is a totality where the very first person coming to view is connected up by all the thousands in between with the very last person, the furthest from view.

In visual terms “there is an extraordinary cinematic … great beauty that is live, an enormous rush of live energy at the retina and the emotions” (carnaval.com).

There is so much one can say in a carnival band. There is so much that goes around mounting on the choreographer that as part of the presentation he/she must work a folk table. For instance, the golden callabage, a source of power. It is an indiscrimate thought, whoever drinks from the callabage is immediately empowered, whether it is good or evil. The entire presentation is called the golden callabage.

The princess darkness led by the Lord of darkness
The princess of light led by the lord of light
These two bands are coming out on the road
To compete with their masks, and how …
to compete with the judges and the people
To see who will live

The people who play with the masks simply respond to the message that the actual mask has in it.
Thus, the work involves understanding the mask and going out to play it.
The choreography: masks, music, and costumes respond to narrative that has meaning and conveys a universal message, good versus evil.

Carnival is art as theatre and dance. Anthropologist Meryl James- Bryan remarks on the use of Carnival protest, as rebellion. James-Bryan finds encouraging and inspiring the fact that Peter Minshall’s work uses indigenous folk culture. James-Bryan feels “we have unfortunately gotten away from our indigenous folk culture, in the first independence series, for a number of reasons,” but largely because of “the bombardment with foreign values and foreign heroes” (carnaval.com).
Jack Alexis, Minshall’s masquerader explains how Caribbean people have being looking for their own philosophy or ideology since the era of independence. Minshall has presented to the society that opportunity to identify with a touch of life that is both there to the masquerader and the person who wants to feel he wants to stay on the side and look at Minshall’s performance. For Alexis, Carnival is an indefinable expression of democracy.

Bibliography

PETER MINSHALL: NATIVE TRINIDADIAN, CARNIVAL SPOKESMAN AND 21st CENTURY ARTS PIONEER.
Video.
Baas, Jean. DANC 1800 THE CREATIVE CHOREOGRAPHER. BASIC CHOREOGRAPHIC ELEMENTS AND TOOLS. 26 Jan. 2011.
Bremser, Martha and Lorna Sanders. Fifty Contemporary Choreographers. Taylor and Francis, 1999.

Garth Fagan: Biography. 26 Jan. 2012.