THEMES

 Dance both mirrors and inform society

 Relationship between what happens onstage on how choreographers organizing the
dancers and how they are living in and communicating with the particular audience that
they're choreographing for
 Technique vs Expression (come and go and flow throughout this history in in lots of
interesting ways)
 From Noble body to the everyday body
 not every choreographer is interested in a narrative or character-- The body moving is
information enough and the body carries its own meaning and movement has its own
vitality its own purpose beyond narrative beyond text etc --relying on the body and the
pure movement technique
 historians notice first, what is there is, in and of itself: and that our interpretation of that
our evaluation of that is something that's made later on down the line
 as historians we are meaning making ---we look for a meaning and we jump immediately

Lecture 1-- Renaissance & Baroque Era

Early Dance
 Rituals, circles, sympathetic magic, displaying ones skills, rights of passage
 The labyrinth is a metaphor for the transformational process infused in many early dance
practices

Renaissance
 Vertical
 contained
 costumes are contained
 very parallel
 our movement and vocabulary reflects this front and back plane world
 Combines miracle plays, church pageantry, military displays, military games and fairs
 Dance in spectacles were performed by nobles in order to promote nobles

Baroque
 it opens up the body
 more rotation
 more fluidity
 math—Pythagoras
 building vocabulary and movement based on the idea of these universal like principles
(math) that seem to be in nature and how the stars move around the galaxies, how waves
move --- bring that all in and use it on the body and on the stage
 Expressed harmony and grace with symmetrical floor patterns, dancers elegant precise
foot work, integrated postures, gestures and physical prowess, and with a precise
interpretation of the music
 All symbolically referencing patterns in the galaxy and nature
Dancing in one World
 People come together in community to acknowledge special events, seasons, rights of
passage
 Each group organizes their bodies to reflect a person’s purpose and place in the
community, in the environment, and in the universe, to understand the world they are
living in

Early Dance
 Danced rituals were performed to remind communities of their connection to the
unknown, to nature, gods, or to the universe
 Dance was used to mark special events; births, weddings, coming of spring and to
prepare for migration, for hunting or for war etc.
 Dance, Music, Narrative were performed together as one expression—all came
together
 Lots of people don’t make distinction between art forms, and introduces it as one

Sympathetic Magic
 James George Frazer coined this term
 Refers to the idea that like produces like
 Similarity: that what one imitates affects what is imitated
 Contagion: contact produces as a connection that can be acted upon
 Suggests that something produces something else similar to it (ex: light produces
light)

Early Bronze-age
 Early rituals were organized in circles because everything is equally positioned in a
circle, and the image of a circle mirror an ever-expanding universe
 Although each culture constructs masks uniquely, masks share general characteristics
 Masks are not disguising the wearer, but are conduits that allow the wearer an
alternative awareness of other beings, gods, animals, or knowledges
 Masks offer the wearer the means to transcend their personal body and enter an
alternate state of consciousness, in order for gods to dance with the community, to be
in relationship with nature, to look through the eyes of an animal

Greek Chorus
 Considered to first example of dance as a theatrical statement represent the community
viewing the play
 Chorus sang and moved together
 Symbolized the community
 Chorus witnessed plays events and collectively commended
 Exchanged between the chorus and the characters (gods, kinds, heroes, and heroines) are
now considered an early lesson in DEMOCRACY

Middle Ages/Dark Ages

 Build on rituals, processions and story telling
  Miracle/Morality/Mystery Plays: (wagons pulled like a parade) Narratives of miracles,
good vs bad, mostly bible stories
 Church Pageantry: Music, singing, costumes, processions, income, ritual (if you were
poor and walked into church you would be impressed)
 Military Displays and Parades: Marching processions, display of horses, armor &
weapons
 Military Games: jousting sword fights, archery
 Fairs: Magicians, games, food, dancing (may-pole)
 Performers started to emerge and travel
 Usually, part of a family
 Scenes would take place in wagons
 Wagons displayed themes of mystery
 Distinction btw Catholics and everyone else
 If they did not do this, they would be punished

Renaissance
 Rebirth
 Age of merchants and Artist
 10th century to mid/late 16th century
 Defined as a move from explaining the world through superstition and magic to
embracing reason, logic and science in order to understand the universe and ones
place in the universe
 Renaissance was a shift from the use of magical thinking
 Based more on logic and reason

Spectacles or Magnifique’s
 Originated in Italy
 Political power-plays for one court to impress and awe other courts or competitors
 Themes lifted from Greek mythology
 Nobles and friends of the court, performed as gods and heroes in masks
 In order to celebrate their power, they would put on festivals to impress everybody
 Showing off what they have
 Elaborate designed floats, that drifted by the spectators in a parade-like fashion
 Each float presented a scene from Greek mythology
 The narratives were understood as allegorical expressions of the court’s connection to the
laws that governs the universe, and god
 Organization of bodies and choreography was informed by Pythagoras and other Greek
thinkers
 Often ended with firework displays
 If you saw the king dancing, you would assume that he had a connection to the gods and
the universe

Choreography in spectacles
 Dance was included at different intervals through the spectacles
  The choreographers where elaborate and expensive displays of etiquette, fashion, and
wealth
 All centred around the idea of harmony as danced by the noble bodies displaying their
divine right to rule
 Expensive showings of etiquette fashion and wealth
 Etiquette was v important (very specific)
 Etiquette Was being invented in this era
 Would be shunned from court if you did no
 In order to participate in a spectacle, and advance at court, one had to learn to dance
 Dancing master became a viable and lucrative profession

Fabitio Caroso and Thoinot Arbeau

 Both published books and created choreographies
 How you enter space, bow, kiss one’s hand, etc.
 Printing was expensive (thus must be rich to by books)
 Use books to know how to get ahead at court
 Arbeau had an orchesography that explained how to dance and how to behave at court
(etiquette)
 They codified certain gestures, postures and behaviours to distinguish noble bodies from
those of merchants and peasants
 Once you put something on you would not take it off for months, thus have lice on
clothing

First Formal Dance Notations

 Each dance master’s manual notated several choreographies and the music that
accompanies the choreography
 Notations focused primary on steps and floor patterns in space
 Gestures, postures, attitude, etc. were described in other parts of the book
 When people started to own property and banks formed
 Saying one part of the body (or movement) has more value than the other
 Limit who you come in contact with
 Dance mirrors and informs society

Noble Bodies and Capitalism

 Roots of capitalism commodified property and introduces an exchange of credit through
the use of paper money
 Both dance manuals and the new economy promoted the centralization of power in the
noble body, while allowing for the expansion of wealth across Europe
 Like Feuillet’s symbol (dance notation) that could be combined and recombined in
innumerable ways, paper money generated whole new systems for creating wealth in the
form of credit and debt
 The principles of movement indicated in the symbol, lol eth land quickly transforming
into property, secured the value of movement
 Like the implementation of paper money, the notating of dancers could evem assist on
the colonial expanding from Europe to England into the rest of the world
Catherine De Medici
 Her great grandfather (Lorenzo De Medici) was responsible for the Golden Age of
Florence
 Her uncle was Pope L Cement V11, raised her after her parents death when she was an
enfant
 At 14 she married the king henry 11 of France
 is married to family who invented banking system
 She brought dance to France and used it a political to promote her family and stature of
France
 Had a lot of money

Paradis D’Amour
 After performance tension grew, Catherine de Medici feared her family and called out the
guards
 Lots of people killed (St Batholomew’s Day Massacre)
 Dancing informed and changed society
 This is an extreme example of the impact that ballet/dance has on society as argued in
Sally Bane’s article, Power and the Dancing Body: Dancing Bodies Change the World
 All march together into heaven--- Haganants found it insulting-----Riot started
 Second ballet that Catherine created
 Not about character or telling narrative but rather showing harmony of all provinces of
France (16)

Ballet Comique De la Reyne

 Considered to be the first ballet because of its integration of dance music verse and
design
 Performed once, five and a half hours long
 Italian dance master hired to work for the king of France, published the first ballet libretto
 Guttenberg press made this libretto possible
 Outcomes: French dancing masters replaced Italian dance masters, French fashion
became signature of refinement, the French language became the language of the ballet
 She organized her daughters wedding
 This ballet was important bc they wrote a lobretto about it
 Lobretto: Choreography, music, and costumes were documented
 Sent out to all courts across Europe
 Inside of it were imaged of fashions

Entry of Four Cardinal Virtues

 From libretto for Dominque de la Reyne
 This is why ballet is in French!
 No longer Italian
 Only men dancing masters (woman were not allowed)
 Catherine tried to bring peace to France but was not successful
Baroque
 Means oddly shaped pearl
 Aesthetic that sought to over awe with grandeur
 Catherine was successful in the baroque era tho
 Keeping people occupied with spectacles

Louis the 14th

 King of France
 Court at Versailles the centre of all things baroque
 Ballet de la nuit- -ends at sunrise
 His parents died when he was child (crowned king at 5)
 Person who took care of him (name?????) noticed his talent in dance
 Fencing was a form of display
 Men would study fencing, dance, and ride horse everyday
 Dancing was a way to keep nobbles in line
 To stop uprising and war by keeping them busy with dancing
 People would judge you on your dance
 Dancing was primary
 3-4 balls a week every week
 Nobles knew about twelve social dances
 Minuet was the most popular social dance
 Social dances were often performed on stage
 Women danced socially but never on stage
 Masks were always worn on stage as a conduit for the god being dances
 Everyone worse masks at all times in order to maintain their association with the gods
they danced and wanted to be associated with at court
 This was how they organized their politics
 Pierre Beachamp—choreographer
 Jean-Baptiste Lully—composer
 Académie royal de danse and Académie royal de musique merged to become the Paris
opera (opened by Louis)

Proscenium stage
 Where louis performed his ballets
 audience is set in straight rectangle cube (similar to church)
 Beginning of proscenium stage
 Was not expected to be quite unless king on stage
 Chatter happening within audience as well as with the performers
 Judgmental space

Pierre Beachamp
 Codified early ballet terminology
 Similar to fencing and horseback riding
 Helps to move thru space faster
Harmony
 Could be seen and found in all things
 Dance was the primary means for demonstrating one’s place in the universe
 Harmony—was expressed in choreography through symmetrical floor patterns, through
the dances elegant precise foot work, with integrated postures, precise coordination’s and
through an exact interpretation of the music

Baroque Performance
 Grace and harmony performed with:
 Complaisance: cooling of the emotions, elegance and “cool”
 Suprezzatura: the art of “hiding art and its efforts” nonchalance, avoid effect
 Very vulgar to cry onstage
 Self-indulging thing to do
 Could make audience cry or laugh tho
 Pretend it is easy
 Similar to voguing
 People can tell if you’re faking it

Reading-Kealiinohomoku, Joann. An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic

Dance.
 Dance is a transient mode of expression, performed in a given form and style by the human body
moving in space. Dance occurs through purposefully selected and controlled rhythmic
movements; the resulting phenomenon is recognized as dance both by the performer and the
observing members of a given group
 “the ballet is not an ethnic dance because it is the product of the social customs and artistic
reflections of several widely-differing national cultures.
 It is perfectly legitimate to use “ethnic” and “ethnologic” as long as we don’t let those terms
become connotative of the very things which caused us to abandon the other terms. We should
indeed speak of ethnic dance forms, and we should not believe that this term is derisive when it
includes ballet since ballet reflects the cultural traditions from which it developed.
 The foundation of the choreography was the turned-in position. And bent. A questioning. And
fists—not strong, not showing strength, just not opened yet.... That’s what he called “kuluchiki
 In simpler cultures than ours we find a mass of art actually treated and practiced by the
people as a whole.
 ethnology,” and “ethnology” deals with the comparative and analytical study of cultures
 “culture,” in a simplified anthropological sense, includes all of the learned behavior and
customs of any given group of people, there is no such thing as a cultureless people.
Therefore, “ethnologic dances” should refer to a variety of dance cultures subject to
comparison and analysis. Ethnic dance should mean a dance form of a given group of
people who share common genetic, linguistic, and cultural ties, as mentioned before. In
the most precise usage it is a redundancy to speak of “an ethnic dance,” since any dance
could fit that description. The term is most valid when used in a collective and contrastive
way.
 It is perfectly legitimate to use “ethnic” and “ethnologic” as long as we don’t let those
terms become connotative of the very things which caused us to abandon the other terms.
We should indeed speak of ethnic dance forms, and we should not believe that this term
 is derisive when it includes ballet since ballet reflects the cultural traditions from which it
developed.

Lecture 2—Professionalizing Dance

Professionalization
 expression starts to become emphasized
 a little bit more internal
 Choreography should develop a logical narrative
 All movement music, lights, and props should advance the same dramatic point of view
(ballet d’Action)
 Removed masks to emphasize the sincerity of the dancers gestures

Romantic Ballet
 a reaction to the French Revolution- industrialization
 people really feeling that their humanity was being taken away and this idea of dreaming
for him longing for something that is beyond you
 Narratives emphasis feeling over reason; love is tragic
 Locations were foreign/ exotic lands; like Scotland
 Setting expressed the contradiction between the logic of civilization (act one indoors),
and the instincts that propel action (act two outdoors/ the wilderness)
 There is always the supernatural, and a conflict between good and evil

Classical Ballet
 really interested in shape and informing her technique
 a formula
 there's going to be 3 or 4X, a grande divertissements at the end, be hierarchies on the
stage
 lots of symmetry
 everything is put together to show off the dancers
 A series of conventions or excuses to dance (thin plot lines)
 Big patterns in space (3-5 acts) clarity, harmony, symmetry
 Hierarchy- principal dancer to crops de ballet
 Grand divertissement
 Grand pat de deux (adagio, solo variation, final coda)

Inventing the Noble Body

 For Artistole, the golden mean was the sliding scale that determined virtuous behaviour
 The reflections, or performance of harmony (nature) was determined by the golden mean
or ratio
 Sometimes referred to as the divine proportions, this math was used to help invent the
noble body, and justify the king as God’s preordained representative on earth
 Divine right to rule
3 Types of ballets in Baroque Era
 Ballet a Entrée: a selection of dances performed each with a different theme (dances that
happen during an event)
 Comedic Ballet: this ballet mixes words and music: often comical, dances performed
between acts of play
 Opera Ballet: a series of choreographic scenes performed to song, often focused on a
single narrative or theme

Professionalization
 Dancing continues to be an important activity at the court of Versailles, but louis 14th
ages he removed himself from ballets, and dancing at balls
 Choreographies demanded greater and greater levels of virtuosity: which nobles found
overwhelming
 Thus professional dancers were invited to perform in the courts ballets
 This happened when dance turned professional--- when louis 14 grew older
 People used tricks and gimmicks to get ahead in court
 Nobbles could not keep up so hired professionals
Opera Ballet Ballet d’Action
 State run theatres  Boulevard theatres
 Combined song & dance  Character/narrative
 Harmony  Tableaus
 Ordered Floor Patterns  Asymmetry
 Hierarchy  Individualism
 TECHNIQUE  EXPRESSION
 Both were merging together

Triomphe de L’Amour
 Moved to Paris with professional dancers
 Performed at Versailles with Nobles
 Then brought to Paris with professional dancers
 Premiere at Paris opera (music composed by jean Baptiste, choreography by Pierre
Beauchamp)

Mademoiselle de la Fontaine
 First woman to perform live on stage in Le Triomphe de L’Amour
 Prior to her performance, only men danced on stage
 Everyone loved it
 After mademoiselle, women moved onto the stage and soon dominated as dancers
 Because men paid to attend the theatre and wanted to view female body
 Because dancing professionally was one of the very few ways a woman could earn a
living wage (although the wages for dancing kept the women in poverty)
 Wife daughter or nun
 If neither you could not get around -prostitution
  By 1900 only women were playing in dancers
 Women were playing men’s roles too bc men’s bodies were then known as ugly
Marie Anne Cupis de Camarago Marie Sallé
 Technique  Expression
 Athleticism  Character
 Skill  Emotion
 First female dancer to successfully  First woman to choreography ballet,
perform—entrechat quatre which she performed
 Was one of the first ballerinas to  Wanted her costumes to reflect the
shorten her skirt so people could see character she danced
her footwork (and ankles!!!!)  EXPRESSION
 TECHNIQUE

1700 Three Genre of Dancers

 Dance Noble: heroes, gods, kings, queens, nobles/ballet technique emphasizing harmony,
grace
 Demi-Caractére: supporting characters, may have characteristics of a national style/ ballet
technique
 Comique or Grotesque: baffons (commedica dell’arte)/ highly athletic

Jean Georges Noverre

 Dancer
 Ballet master
 Choreographer
 Writer
 Famous because he wrote about dance
 Critiqued Paris opera for creating ballet interludes superfluous to the opera’s dramatic
plot
 He left to Paris opera and formed his own company
 Credited (questionably) for fully realizing the Ballet d’Action: focussing on the
expression of character through the dancers body and faces (he began to remove the
mask)—bc though it did not serve a purpose

Letters on dance and Ballet

 The dancers training should emphasize Beauchamps correctness with sensitivity to the
individual dancer’s anatomy
 The dancer’s personality and style determine their artistic development
 Within the dramatic framework of the ballet the sincerity of the dancers gestures is
primary
 Displaying honesty in gesture
 Not just showing off technique
 Ballet should develop logically with narratives and movement should advance the
narratives
 Unnecessary solos etc. should be cut
  Music should reflect the dramatic style of the ballet
 Costumes, lighting, and props should reflect the plots dramatic point of view and shifts
 Removed masks and instead used makeup

Jason Et Médée
 Jean Georges Nouverre most successfully choreography
 Music composed by jean joseph Rodolphe
 Plot: Jason’s relationship with the sorceress Medea, whom he betrays, and she takes
revenge
 When the furies entered the stage audience members fainted or fled the theatre - bc
choreography seemed odd and abusing
 Was scandalous to see ankles back then

Romantic Ballet
 Longing for an ideal
 Europe changing from agriculturally society into an industrial society
 Industrial revolution/ French revolution 1789
 Reaction to political and social events of the day
 Romanticism: longing for what one can not obtain, and the melancholy associated with
the fate of that longing
 The sublime surrender that comes with a pure love
 In artistic matters it (romanticism) is exactly difficult to define, as it represents a state of
mind or a set of attitudes rather than a particular style
 Introduction of romantic ballet took advantage of advancement in theatre technology/
stage machinery new theatrical lighting gas lighting with reflectors turning off house
lights, trap doors, smoke machines, and machines that could fly dancers

Pointe Shoe
 Fueled by a fascination for the ethereal
 Chorus dancers began to dance on metatarsals to be noticed
 Charles Didelot invented a flying machine to lift dancers
 Marie Tagloni use of the pointe shoe in Les Sylpbide was a sensation, she wore a leather
sole with binding on sides and toes to help keep shape
 Some historians consider the introduction of pointe to be the most important technical
development in ballet history
Fanny Elssler Marie Taglioni
 Ability to perform complex steps with  Original sylph in her fathers
precision production of la sylphe ide
 Famous for dancing the cachucha (a  Famous for her ethereal performances,
Spanish national dance, performed she was the first to successfully dance
with castanets) expressively on pointe
 TECHNIQUE  EXPRESSION
Opera: Robert le Diable—the dance of the dead nuns

La Sylphide
  Considered the first romantic ballet
 Choreographer: Fillippo Taglioni, Music: Jean Schneitzhoeffer
 Done for his daughter (Marie Taglioni)

Romantic Themes
1. Yearing for the unattainable
2. The moment one grasps and processes what one longs for , it is lost
3. By definition, romantic ideals are something that are always beyond ones grasp (Ex: la
sophie, and Giselle)
4. Feeling over reason- actions of the heroes James/Albrecht
5. Love is tragic—James loses Effie & Syloh/ Albrcht loses Giselle
6. The exotic – Scotland, moonlit glade/ German Dark Forest
7. Setting Contradition—act one indoors (civilization), act two outdoors (wilderness)
8. Supernatural—Syphs and the witch / The Willies
9. Good vs Evil—Syph vs the witch / Giselle vs the Queen of Willies

 Romantic imagery of these ballets goes quite deep, and whether spectators of the day
realized it or not, the dark and mysterious currents within the plots, the edge of morbidity,
the hallucinatory visions drew them to the ballet as much as did the acrobatic feats of
dancers and their personal charm
 Fascination with melancholy and spirituality (what happens when we die) 
 Goth movement

Giselle (1842)
 Most popular romantic ballet
 Choreographed by jean coralli & Jules Perrot ( re choreographed by Marius Petipa)

Ballet/ Russia
 Peter the Great wanted Russians to incorporate European tastes and fashions
 Demanding French be spoken at court and that all his dukes and nobles wear French
fashion, which expanded the separation between the upper class and the lower class
(basically no middle class, either very wealthy or verry poor) —changed immediately
 After Peter the Great’s death, his niece, empress Anna continued his initiative and found
the first Russian ballet school, under the direction of French Dance Master Jean-Baptiste
Landé
 Imperial Russian ballet was formed in 1740 and completely supported by the Tzar/
Empress
 The school accepted talent under the categories: under thirteen, over thirteen , very
talented, stage craft, etc.)
 Just there to entertain the emperors and their court
 Hire and train professional dancers
 Either go to army or audition for ballet
 If did ballet did not have to go to army
 Once accepted, you had a career and whole family would be supported with your salary
for whole life
Imperial Russian Ballet
 Created evenings of ballet to entertain the Tzar and the court
 French, Italian, and danish ballet initiatives came together to devise a style of ballet
specific to Russian
 Important teachers= Enrico Cecchetti- Italian, Christian Johannson- Danish,
 As Russian ballet matured, ballet in Paris was in decline
 Dancing is considered more masculine in Russia moreso than anywhere else

Marius Petipa
 Appointed choreographer
 Father or Classical Ballet
 Created more than 60 full evening length ballets as well as many shorter ones
 Developed the classical baller formula that is used today
 Developed the movement vocabulary (pointe vocabulary)

Classical Ballet Formula

 A series of conventions or excuses to dance (thin plot lines)
 Big patterns in space
 3-5 acts (3 hours)
 Highlighting clarity, harmony, order, symmetry

Classical Ballet Conventions

 There is a hierarchy for what each dancer dances, and when; principal, principal
character, first soloist, second soloist, first artist, corps de ballet
 Used mime to help tell story
 Use of different styles of movement to present character
 Ballet ended with a grand Divertissemt (a fabulous finale) usually near the end of the
third act
 Always included the grand pas de deux

Grand pas de Deux

 Invented by Petipa
1. Adagio, for both dancers emphasizing lyrical and sustained movement (a dance of love)
2. Solo variations
3. A final coda in which the stars unite with quick flashy steps
 This formula is now viewed as kind of dance Haiku and most every ballet choreographer
needs to succeed at bringing originality and clarity to this blueprint in order to be taken
seriously

Sleeping Beauty
 Chorographed by Petipa, music by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
 People always go back to petipas staging/choreography
 Remains in the repertory of the Mariinsky Ballet
 Petia did advanced pointe work
Romantic and Classical Ballet
 Often defined as opposites
 Romantic is interested in expression
 Classical is interested in technique
 Both are combined in Petipas Swan Lake: a romantic narrative choreographed with the
classical formula
 Swan lake has all the romantics themes
 And yet its designed and organized like a classical ballet

Reading-- Forward to Petipa- Deborah Jowitt

 No fat on the dancers, no fat on the steps
 Dissonance
 Serge Diaghilev last ballet master was Balanchine
 Jazzy hip thrusts and one knee turned in reappeared in ?balanchines? work
 Said Fred Astaire was the most interesting
 American spirit is Cold, luminous, hard as light
 Lack of indulgence, concentration on dancing and music are basic equipment of
balanchines dancers
 Dancers who came from other companies to Balanchine began to adjust themselves to an
image of what they sensed he needed
 He wanted speed, flexibility, long lines, and no star manners
 He wanted big girls with long legs (not small girls with big heads)
 Balanchine’s appreciation for bigness, he made adjustments that violated the strict
academic principles that Petipa honoured
 Balanchine has been attacked from feminists for having women being manipulated and
men in command in his ballets
 To be contended at the new York city ballet you must share Balanchine’s views (firm-
handed)
 Balanchines vision pervaded the American ballet scene
 Influenced many companies
 Lean, racy, long legged = American
 We are all equal, we are all royal (residue of petipa’s decorum that clings to balancines
ballets
 A clear complex blending of human anatomy, solid geometry and acrobatics, offered as a
symbolic demonstration of manners

Lecture 3- Modern and Neo-classical Ballet

modern ballet
 has to have meaning
 have residence in stories in the narrative's
 Fokine: came up with all those principles those five principles, Said no to individual
dancers, and that he choreographed them in a way that like the that crowd had their own
expression their own purpose their own movement vocabulary and their own moments.
neo classical ballet
 which balanchine had his really known as the father--worked for diaghilev
 how balanchine took many of those classical ideas that petipa put into his classical ballets
the formula and challenge them and reorganized them on the stage so instead of looking
for symmetry he looked for asymmetry instead of looking for the spectacle of the
costumes he stripped it down and put them in black and white and just said look at the
body --he explored movement vocabulary from lots of different sources and the ballet
vocabulary really started to change again indifferently

Modernism
 Reaction to the challenges of urbanization, industrialization, civil unrest and World War
1
 A break from the hypocrisies of hierarchies that controlled lives and told people what to
believe and how to behave
 Modernists:
o Explored new ways of seeing and understanding the world
o Experimented with how information was organized
o Experimented with how materials could be utilized differently
o Wanted to invent new meanings/ values/ ideas/ beliefs in order to make visible the
construct of society/ culture
o Wanted to show that people can make choices
 Science was discovering the universe building blocks
 Darwin had successfully argued for evolution
 Einstein was revealing dynamic connections between the logic of atoms and the
movement of galaxies (informed, in part, by Pythagoras)
 Freud and Jung were discovering the psychologies that determined our actions and
experiences
 These insights verified that people need not be subject to a god, to a king, or to the fate of
his/her birth
 Modern artists wanted to make visible the foundations that shaped how we interpret the
world , and how we behave in that world
 Nature vs nurture started to take place
 We are not subject to god
 Different perspectives started to arise
 Dance was apart of this
 Choreography turned away from ballet and wanted to find new traditions

Modernism and Dance

 Choreographers joined the modern movement by attempting to find a “new dance”: a
dance that embraced progress and expressed mankind’s full potential
 Les ballet russes—embraced modernity

Les Ballet Russes

  Introduced the world to modern ballet by producing elaborate collaborations with design ,
music, and dance
 Inciting the publics passion for “the new”
 Les ballet russes was able to modernizer ballet
 Very popular
 Influenced fashions and how people decorated their homes
 Created “stars” and a celebrity culture for dance
 Sold magazines/ newspapers
 Influenced which countries people wanted to read about and visit; fueling a fascination
for “the other” – “orientalism”
 Edward Said wrote the book that outlines post colonials and focused on how the images
of middle east were brought to the west

Orientalism
 A term made famous by Edward Said in his book orientalism
 Western societies view non-western societies as different worlds, and interpret the
differences through a Eurocentric lens as exotic

Serge Diaghilev
 Impresario and Artistic Director
 Dance historians agree he is the most influential ballet impresario in history
 Produced his first Paris season (opera and ballet) in 1909 and in every way it was a
tremendous success
 Brought some of greatest talents the era to collaborate and create original ballets
 Composers: Igor Stravinsky, Claude DeBussey, Erik Satie, Richard Strauss
 Visual Artists: Picasso, Nicholas Roerich, Salvador Dali, leon Bakst
 Dancers: Ann Pavlova, Vaslov Nijinsky
 Choreographers: Michel Fokine, Vaslov Nijinsky, Bronislava Nijinska, Gorge
Balanchine

Michel Fokine
 After petipa, he is the next major choreographer
 Graduate of the imperial Russian ballet school
 Worked to reform Petipa’s Classical formula although he had a great deal of respect for
petipa
 Had many successes with les ballet Russes but his relationship with Diaghilev was
difficult and he eventually parted ways to choreograph for other companies
 Known as the father of modern ballet
 Responsible for sucess of les ballet russe
 Choreographed for other companies
 But he never had the success of diaghalev
 Choreographed 80 ballets ( the dying swan- for Anna pavlova)
 Among his most popular for les ballets russes:
o Les Sylphides
 o Schéhérazade
o The fire bird
o Le Spectre de la rose
o Petrushka
 Fokine’s 5 Principals
1. Each dance scenario must have its own movement expression
2. Dance and mime must serve the dramatic expression of the ballet
3. Use conventional gestures only when requires and in all other cases movement
must be of the whole body
4. The group is as expressive as the individual
5. Ballet refuses to be the slave of either music or the scenery. Ballet is an equal
 He did not give up on Petipa stuff- he built on it
 Danced classical ballet formula for very long time
 Re interpreted the narrative and how it was produced
 Fokine wanted meaning for movement vocab (not just do tricks to do tricks) must show
dramatic expression
 Mime started to play a bigger role in classical ballets
 Dancers had different costumes and own identity
 Audience did not know where to look (unlike classical ballet where there is a soloist)
 More organic, more places to look
 Not submissive to music
 Had own expression does not rely on scenery

Vaslav Nijinsky
 Trained at Russia’s imperial school of ballet
 Les ballet Russes main STAR
 Brought back an interest in male dancers
 Was the complete dancer- technical virtuosity and very expressive (he seemingly
disappear into his roles)
 He made dance popular for men again
 Before women danced male roles
 Becomes interesting to have men again
 Bc women had money to go to theatre so they wanted to see men
 Famous for his floating jumps
 Had a gift for characterization
 People cold hardly recognize him because he embodied these characters
 Choreographed 3 times for diagalev--- when Fokine left
 Audience thought his ballets for les ballet russe were too explicit and shocking
o L’aprés midi d’un faune—two dimensional
o Jeux—pedestrian
o Le Sacre du printemps/ Rite of Spring—no sentimentality, modern music
 Germany was county of industrialization
 Jobs were being taken away -- Impersonal
 Wanted to see what they knew in theatre
  Pounding music
 Dancing was turned in
 Gestures close to body
 Looked very different
 Women dancer to her death
 No sympathy for women who died
 This was too much for people
 No interpretation in narrative

Bronslava Nijinska
 Trained at Russia’s Imperial School of Ballet
 Nijinskys sister, helped him stage his ballets
 Les ballet Russes (Les noches, les biches)
 Only woman who worked as a choreographer
 Not common
 Where contemporary started

Georges Balanchine
 Trained at Russia’s imperial school of ballet
 Left Russia
 Diaghilev hired him in 1924 and he stayed with les ballet Russes until 1929
 Move to New York city and worked with Lincoln Kirstein in 1933
 Started school of American Baller 1934
 New York City Ballet, 1948
 Worked everywhere -- including Hollywood
 In American choreographed for Broadway (Zigfeld follies of 1936, including
Josephine baker and on your toes known for slaughter on tenth avenue and Cabin in
the sky with Katherine SUnham)
 Choreographed circus polka: for a young elephant, with music by Igor for the ringling
bors and barnum baily circus
 Was inspired by:
o New York city
o jazz music
o African American dance
o Indigenous America cultures (married to mario Tallchif)
o His dancers
 Believed women’s bodies were the embodiment of true pure beauty
 First to hire an African American dancer
 His choreography is known for having a sophisticated relationship with music
 Ballets are considered “all American”—even tho he is Russian
 Black man partner with white woman-- could not perform in a couple states
 Father of neoclassical ballet (new classism): references Petipa with a modern use of
space, design and time
 Used a lot of space
  Stripped ballets down to their essence
 Wanted big movement performed without interpretation (bigger, faster, more, now)
 Ballet for ballets sake
 Wanted dancer to be purely physical without imposing idea
 No narrative

Jeremo Robbins
 Joined New York city ballet, and choreographed, but his most famous work was on
Broadway
 The king and I, Gypsy, west side story, fiddler on the roof

Arthur Mitchell
 New York City Ballet 1955
 Founded dance theatre of Harlem in 1969 in response to the assignation of martin Luther
king jr

Contemporary
 William Forsyth
 Laban:: Started to find movement in titonic shapes
 Language changes (nice started to mean different things, from ignorant, to fake)
 Mathew Bourne (reinventing classical ballet narratives, Changed all the swans to men,
Introduced a gay theme, Still sees same scenes in swan lake)
 Crystal Pite (her company kidd Pivot is based in Vancouver

Francis, Elizabeth. From Event to Monument: Modernism, Feminism and Isadora Duncan

 She was an event not only in art, but in the history of life
 Changed woman’s place in artistic process
 Died at 50
 Took off corsets and other things that signify constraints on female body
 Promoting a universal image of women
 Costumes--Timeless image
 Stage design was always simple in her performances
 Transgressed aesthetic boundaries
 Using her body as her medium
 Found central spring of her movements (central radiating outwards)
 Civilization repressed the consciousness of body
 Body must not be civilized, but the body is the source of civilization
 Liberating the body
 She was calm and self-possessed
 Inner harmony was her way from breaking from constraints of social world
 Magnetic centre to convey the emotional expression of the orchestra--- not dancer
 Make audience aware of itself as a collective
 Wanted her body to contain multitudes
 Self/world
  Image of woman in performances (acted as a mirror for others)
 Projected an image outside of history--- her own image
 Women’s emancipation was the basis for a new civilization, not a civilizing influence
 Opposed marriage, encouraged open sexual expression
 Believed in free motherhood
 Firmly rejected sexuality as a mode of expression
 Stop erotizing female performers
 " The Dance of the Future" ---- her lecture
 Female body is source of civilization
 No sex appeal in Isadora's dancing
 She claimed to the possibility of self-fulfilment and a creative and imaginative space in
the machine age by evoking a dialect between the self and the world
 She meant to play upon the individual’s harmony but also to make the audience aware of
itself as a collective presence reflected in the movements on stage
 Her career was constructed around fanning the flame of “desire in the world”
 Duncan fanned the flame particularly through her challenge to the categories and
conventions of gender
 She evoked wholeness and unity as a woman at one with her body
 “woman is a mirror” and I have only reflected and reacted to the people and forces that
have seized me
 As Duncan suggests “the process of mirroring was rooted in the belief that she was
capable of turning the mirror out upon the audience and projecting an image outside of
history by emphasizing her own differences
 2 In attacking popular dances as primitive, not civilized, her rhetoric re-associated dance
with race and sexuality
 Isadora was . . . severe on Negro dancing and its imitations and derivations. She had no
real appreciation of primitive folk dancing, either from an esthetic or an ethnic point of
view
 the Black Bottom - replaced the image of woman as the universal figures in Duncan's
rhetoric, but her allusions were highly negative
 herself was attacked during her performances and in the press for her own mode of
displaying the body and her lifestyle

Lecture 4—Early Modern Dance Pioneers On Vaudville

contemporary ballet
 William Forsythe-informing it with a lot of lebet Rudolph laban's ideas (does the centre
of the body really have to be here?)
 reinventing the vocabulary again and keeping it alive keeping it current

Vaudeville
 had a lot of different information in it had the beginning of tap dancing
 George Walker and had isadora Duncan
 Denishawn
All history is a history of the body
 State run theatres (Harmony, ordered floor patterns, hierarchy, opera ballet)
 Opera houses (concert halls)
 Boulevard theatres ( tableaus. Asymmetry, individualism, ballet d’Action)
 Vaudeville (burlesque, cinema)

Vaudeville
 Mid 1800 extensive circuit of theatres in every major and many minor cities across north
America supported this entertainment industry
 Popular theatrical variety shows, made up of touring comedy act, singers, animal acts,
acrobatics, dramatic scenes, poetry readings, magicians, celebrities, dancing and more
 If you could “entertain” you could be on Vaudeville
 Was the mainstay of entertainment for most people, and is affiliated with music halls,
dance joints and eventually Burlesque
 Many black entertainers performed on the vaudeville circuit, but dealt with
discrimination
 At the turn of the century, black performers started organizing entertainment venues for
black audiences, and formed the Chitln Ciruit, which continues till 1960s

Chitlin’ Circuit
 A circuit od venues located in eastern, southern and upper mid west USA from early 19th
century to 1960s
 Provided venues for black performers to perform for black audiences, and make a bit
more money
 Censorship codes were not as strictly enforces
 Became very popular after hour venues for everyone
 1739—cato’s uprising (stone rebellion)
 1940--- legislation made it illegal fer slaves to assemble in groups, dance, sing, play
music, raise food, earn money, or learn to read in English

Plantation Dances
 As a result, slaves began to imitate the European dances they saw plantation owners
performing at balls and socials (origin, Louis 14th balls)
 Denied drums, slaves used their bodies, their feet and the voices (origin of tap dancing)
 Drawing on their own dance values, including improvisation they were able to maintain
elements of traditional dances while imitating the social dances of the plantation owners
 When freedom was earned (particularly after the civil war 1861-1865) dancing &
entertaining was one of the few ways black men and women were able to make a living
 Eventually these entertainers formed minstrel troops, and joined the vaudeville circuit
 When it was clear how successful the black entertainers were on the vaudeville, their
performances were imitated, in part, by putting on black face
 It has been argued that blackface goes back as far as the renaissance: in plays such as
Shakespeare’s Othello
 While vaudeville performers used burnt cork, greasepaint or shoe polish to blacken their
skin and exaggerate facial features in order to impersonate successful black performers
Minstrel Shows
 Hard to maintain a career unless you were a superstar-- very few
 Blackface minstrel shows, became the mainstay of vaudeville
 Minstrel shows always included music, singing, comedy, and dance
 Competition on Vaudeville was INTENSE and eventually black performers put on black
face to imitate the white performers who were putting on black fact to imitate black
performers
 Golden age of vaudeville 1880-1930

Bert Willians
 A comedian who helped popularize the CAKE WALK

Florenz Ziefeld
 Impresario
 Extraordinare

Vaudeville and Modern Dance Pioneers

 Loie Fuller
 Ruth ST Senis
 Ted Shawn Isadora Duncan
 Josephine Baker
 Maud Allan

Louis Fuller
 Manipulated light silky material and illuminated it with various lighting affects
 Electric lights were new
 Marketed her as a novelty act on vaudeville, but audiences interpreted what she did as
dance
 Impressionist (art nouveau) artist looked on her as a fellow artist
 Introduced the idea of dance as a form of self-expression

Denishawn School of Dance

 Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn

Ruth st Denis
 Began as a Vaudeville “table dancer”
 Found fame created dances based on foreign themes—as she saw/ approportion /
orientalism
 1911 meet ted Shawn and they married

Denishawn
 1915 opened DENISHAWN Hollywood
 Taught modern dance founders Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham, and Jazz dancer
Jake Cole
  Separated early 1930s

Ted Shawn
 Company (Ted Shawn and his male dancers)
 Jacobs Pillow
 Wanted to build all male company to show that men could dance--- not very successful
 Jacobs pillow was successful

Isadora Duncan
 First danced to the waves of the ocean
 Performed in salons
 Moved to England in 1999 where she hopes to find respect for her art
 Was inspired by, and longed to return to the natural body she saw on Greek vases
 First big success was in Budapest 1903
 She became one of the most famous personalities in the world
 Women were expected to be mothers and wives
 They would go to salons ---where poet would talk to them about poetry, people would
come and explain their experiences (woman educated themselves here)
 Moved to London
 Was first to dance in Greek tunics
 Was the first to dance in bare feet
 Was the first to dance to classical music scores
 She was exposing woman’s bodies
 First to dance to classical music (not used to see people move to classical music)
 First to dance in bare feet
 She had her own style
 We cannot fully understand its depth
 She developed a Theory--- finding a body that is in harmony with the world around you
 Did not include African Americans
 Sexuality has to be removed to see pure movement
 She reacted in a racist way

Duncan’s Dance Theory

 Beauty is first gained from the human body
 The source of dance is nature
 Dancing should be the natural language of the soul
 The will of the individual is expressed through the dancers use of gravity
 Movement should correspond to the form of the mover
 Dancing must be successive, consisting of constantly evolving movement
 Dancing must express human kinds most moral, beautiful and helpless ideas

Josephine Baker
 Found great fame and notoriety in France
 Headlines Folies Begére
  Known for her humor, singing, dancing the Charleston and her famous banana dance
skirt
 Worked with George Balanchine for the Ziegfeld Follies—not a big hit
 Gave her American Citizenship and worked with the French resistance during ww2
 She did not want to deal with racism in America so moved to France
 People came to Paris to see her and louis fuller
 Banana dance skirt
 Was never happy in US (bc or racism)
 Worked with George Balanchine
 Became a French citizen

Maude Allan
 Born in Toronto
 Her choreography and performance are Vison of Salomé was a sensation
 Canadian
 Had a way of serverting sexuality that frightened Isadora Duncan
 Censorship-- she could get away with it by basing it in a bible story

Vaudeville
 Plantation Dances
 Minstrel Troops
 Ziegfels Follies
 Early Modern Dance Pioneers
 Sexuality in dance is still present in our society
 Ex: Competition dance

Hill, Constance, Trickster Gods and Rapparees

 Tap dance is American percussive, interplay of rhythms and amplification of sound by
the feet (English, Irish, African musical and dance traditions
 Afro Irish fusions shaped and “rhymetized” tap dance --- established key features
 Tap dance challenge- motivated by dare, strict attention to opponent
 Jiggling competitions an plantations—white masters for their slaves
 Exchange between dancers and musicians
 Tap dance is low art (unworthy of concert stage)
 Absence of women in competitions—they were “weak”—they are notorious not
competitors
 Aristocracy of sex
 Tap symbolized male tap virtuous finish to a routine
 Tap was a Mans game, and a woman’s mission
 Tap community has never been divided
 Favoured flat footed gliding steps
 Jiggling was recognized as a black style
 Any negro style dance was called a “breakdown”
  Irish men were occasionally employed when it did not make sense to risk the life of a
slave—they lived among African Americans
 Tap dance is an oral language

Lecture 5- American Jazz and Tap

Tap Timeline
 1600s-1700s—the interactions of African Americans and Irish American laborers in the
southern United States
 1740-After Cato uprising— legislation prohibited the beating of drums for fear of another
uprising. But the legislation fueled creative substitutes (emphasizing the percussive use of
the body)
 1800s— African American freeman interacting with Irish American performers in
Northern urban cities. These interaction expanded after the Civil War ended in 1865, and
became very competitive
 1900s— introduction of ragtime, jazz music, and Hollywood
 A history infused with continuous patterns of imitation, assimilation, transformation
and the necessity of invention

Tap Dance Genres

 The Irish Jig— 6/8 meter, held upper body, focused percussion below the knees
 The African Shuffle and Gioube — circular dance with shuffling of feed and percussive
use of hands and body
 The African American Juba— derived from the African shuffle
 European Clog dancing— clog dancing of the Appalachians
 The African American Jig — stronger use of weight, free upper body
 Sean-nos (old style) Irish Stepping — flat footed shuffling style
 The buck-and-wing — flat footed dance with lateral side brushing action
 The “Sailor’s hornpipe-Old Style — mixing ballet and African American

Savion Glover
 Played at Roy Thompson Hall
 Now has a school in NYC

Jack Cole
 Father for Theatrical Jazz Dance
 Father of Modern Jazz Dance
 Father of Jazz Dance
 Studied ballet as a child
 Bbig fan of the vaudeville dance celebrities (Ruth st Denis and Ted Shawn)
 Trained for 6 months as Denishawn, then joined the company and performed on the
Vaudeville circuit
 Fascinated by Denishawn’s danced images of other cultures (orientalism similar to Les
Ballet Russe)
  Trained with Bharata Natyam dancer Uday Shankar
 Developed his own technique made up of these genres: (Denishawn, vaudeville, ballet,
modern , Baharata Natyam, Afro-Caribbean, Harlem, Spanish)
 After Denishawn closed in 1928, cole danced for Humphrey -weidman group (doris
Humphrey & Charles Weidman) and then Ted Shawn and his Men Dancers
 Helped Ted Shawn build Jacob’s Pillow
 About 1940 he started to choreograph nightclub acts and eventually choreographed for
Broadway and Hollywood
 1944-1948 he managed a dance company for Columbia Picture
 His choreography is categorized as “popular entertainment” which is way it is only now
being taken seriously by dance scholars
 He is talked a lot about recently
 he has been influence by a lot of people
 A prime target
 Shaped Jazz training
 Constance Valis Hill’s (one of his works)
 Huge contribution in jazz and theatrical dancing
 Danced for: Ruth st denis, Ted Shawn, Doris Humphrey, Charles Wiedman
 Trained/mentored: Jerome Robbins, Michael Kidd, Alvin Ailey, Carol haney, Michael
Bennet, Tommy Tune, Bob Fosse
 Choreographed for: Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera, Marilyn Monroe, Rite Hayward, Mitzi
Gaynor, Ann Miller

Uday Shankar
 1900-1977
 Fused Bharata Natyam with European dance styles and theatrical techniques

Tap Dance History

 Filled with rhytm and electricity
 Dancer but also a musician
 Tap dance on pointe- the broadway melody
 Need stamina
 Fred Estaire- made dance be about something other than just spectacle- he gave a story,
you should not feel the effort
 Elanor Powell
 Ann Miller- introduced sexy sexual charge in tap
 Nicholas brothers—classical tap
 Jean Kelly—more relatable than Estaire
 Black male dancers were only represented as butlers etc
 Origins of tap were rooted in African ameican traditions—body percussion
 Clogs (clog dancing) emerged in 19th century, raised you up above puddles, you cannot
walk quietly with clogs on—became a popular act od dancing on stage
o From boston and new york
 Irish dancing
  Jazz came from tap

Lecture 6- Modern Dance in America

Modern Dance in America
 Graham's choreography is still very much performed and presented around the world
 Doris Humphrey not so much some summit still happening
 Catherine Dunham is coming into Vogue she is being rediscovered again in her work is
starting to be re mounted
 these three did was they really gave us techniques for training the body that are still very
relevant and still being used in lots of different locations
 looking for the dance of America
 bringing forward culture of the African culture that was dominant in America
 Marie vigman
 pina Bausch
 Laban used this idea of crystal formations too to investigate how bodies move in space
and orientate themselves but also to the space outside them and how the body wants to
express itself as it moves into these different locations these different places in space and
around them in the in the elements that inform
 Derrick Rose and she was very much known for being the woman the first person to
really put a womans body on the stage and off have it be idealized not to have it pretend
to be a cell for something other than what it was want to look at it is necessarily beautiful
or any of that trope that we applied to women's bodies but to really look at the working
woman at the real woman and to bring that body to the stage
 Peter Belgium built on all of that an postmodernism and modern dance

Modernity
 Science was discovering the universe’s building blocks
 Darwin had successfully argued for evolution
 Einstein was revealing dynamic connections between the logic of atoms and the
movement of galaxies (informed, in part, by Pythagoras)
 Freud and Jung were discovering the psychologies that determined our actions and
experiences
 These insights verified that people need not be subject to a God, to a King or to the fate
of his/her birth
 Modern artists wanted to make visible the foundations that shaped how we interpret the
world, and how we behave in that world

Turn of the Century (1800-1955)

 1890 indigwnous American dances were banned until 1950
 The Russian revolution (1917)/ the Russian civil war
 First world war
 For the first time, the middle class had luxury time and money to spend
 Inventions of moving pictures; early Hollywood
 Department stores, which introduces a new market; women (particularly mothers)
  Vaudeville was popular and burlesque was on the rise
 In 1900 the waltz was the most popular social dacne and the cake dance was popular on
vaudeville
 In 1900 classical ballet dominated in Russia
 Les ballet russes/ modern ballet

Modern America
 1918 women were given the vote in Canada
 The great market crash
 The great depression
 The golden age, studio era Hollywood, and early Hollywood musicals
 Second world war
 Atomic bomb hiroshima
 Korean war
 African americans given the right to vote in USA 1965

First Half of Twentieth Century

 Canadian women first voted in 1918
 Womans roles were determined by their fathers, husbands, the state or by the church
 Womans abilities to earn a living was limited
 Hiher education was ot welcoming to women
 In 1900 respectable women wore about 16 layers of clothing
 In 1900 dancing professionally was considered a slightly better than prostitution (ballet,
vaudeville, burlesque, early hollywood)

Denishawn
 Opened in 1915: los Angeles California
 Ted Shawn Taight } Ruth st Denis inspired
 3 hour morning class, danced in bare feet, included ballet, ballroom, various “folk”
dances and some improvisation
 The philosophy was, you learned to perform by performing. There were many school
perfomances and talented students joined the compnat
 A prestigious school to send daughters; similar to finishing school
 Closed 1931
 Trained Martha graham, Doris Humphrey and towards the end, jack cole

Modern Dance
 “The function of technique in modern dance is as Graham has described in, to free the
socialized body and clea it of any impediment which might obscure the capacity of ‘true
speech” – Elizabeth Dempster

Modern Dance Pioneers

 Lole Fuller
 Isadora Duncan
  Ruth st denis
 Ted Shawn
 Maud Allan

Modern Dance
 Doris Humphrey
 Jose Limon
 Katherine DUnhan
 Martha Graham

Doris Humphrey
 Danishawn
 Humphrey-weidman company
 Limon company
 Jose limon born in Mexico
 Humphrey was his mentor and the first Artistic directo of his comoany in 1946
 “The dancer believes that his art has seomthing to say which cannot be expressed in
words or in any other way than by dancing… there are times when the simple dignity of
movement can fulfil the function of a colume of words . There are movements which
impinge upon the nerves with a strength that is incomparable, for movement has power to
stir the senses asn emotons, unique in itself, this is the dancer’s justification for being,
and his reason for searching further for deeper aspects of his art” – Doris Humprey
Technique:
 Interested in how body moved naturally and focused on: weight, breath support,
balance and unbalance, fall and recovery
 Humphrey has more clain to the technique then limon
 How does body react to gravity
 Balance and unbalance
 Importance in motional charge (fall and recovery)
 “the arc between two deaths
 The motionlessness of perfect balance
 The destructive implication in completely yielding to the pull of gravity
 Giving into gravity (death, no movement, lying on the floor
 No movement in perfect balance either
 Life happens between the relationship of these two ^^^

The Art of Making Dances

Choreographic Principles:
 Monotony is fatal, look for contrast
 Symmetry is lifeless
 Two-dimensional design is lifeless
 Movement looks slower and weaker on stage
 A good ending is 40% of the dance
 All dances as too long
Katherine Dunham
 Born in Chicago, her father was descendants of slaves and her mother was French
Canadian native American
 Still in high school, she opened a dance school for black children
 Was an anthropologist , educator, social activist, and choreographer
 Researched dance in Caribbean, worked with geoge Balanchine, had her own touring
company, choreographed for Broadway and Hollywood
Technique:
 Infused African and Carribbean dance with Eurocentric styles
 Rolyrhythmic
 Bod isolations (including the torso)
 For her company she created choreography based on cultural rituals and
navigated the terrain between cultural dissemination and education
o Caribbean dance
o African dance
o south americna dance
o rituals
o america’s popular culture
o drumming
o jazz music
o civil rights movement

Martha Graham
 If you studied with them, only them and no one else
 Commited to one style/genre
 Joined Denishawn school in 1916
 Ted Shawn trained her
 Became principle dancer
 Met Louis Horst: Denishawn’s musical director and they formed a collabpration that
lasted years
 1923 left Denishawn and moved to New York
 Danced in Greenwich village follies
 Taught at Eastman School of Music
 1927 first show
 18 dances, 3 dancers
 After first show she began to train dancers in earnest
 Louis Horst, accompanist, composer, mentor and confidant
 Did not want to be a tree, a flower or a wave. In a dancer’s body, we as audience must
see ourselves not the imitated behaviours of everyday actions, not the phenomenon of
nature, not exotic creatures from another planted, but something of the miracle that is a
human being
Technique:
o Movement never lies
 o Developed a technique for training dancers that focused on exposing the inner
landscape of the soul
o Based on breath
o A concept of ‘centre”
o Contraction and release
o Spiral
o Flexed feet and hands
o Floor work
o Synamic movement
o Relationship with gravity
o Believed it took 9 years to train a dancer
o Did not want dancers to improvise until they were trained properly
Influences:
 Modern art
 American frontier
 Religious ceremonies of native americans
 Greek mythology
 Kabuki Theatre, and Noh Theatre
 Film
 Jungian Psychology

Alvin Ailey
 1931-1989
 Second generation American modern dance
 Trained with lester Horton, Katherine Dunham, Stella Adler, Jack col, Martha gRaham,
and others
 1958: The Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre -- hugely popular, multi race modern dacne
company
 First American dance company invited to soviet union
 1969: founded Alivin Ailey American Dance Centre (training 3500 students a year)

Dancing: Tradition and the Individual

 Twyla tharp-
 Isadora Duncan showed dance as an aet from rather than being compared to prostitutes
and strippers, she made the firsm modern dance language of movment. Natural motions
of walking and running became foundation of her choreography. Barefoot. Performed for
imperial ballet in Russia—brought freedom.

Alvin Ailey's Revelations

 Contunuing tradition in black culture( Blood memories)
 Revelations was a personal work
 Ailey trained with Katherine Dunham, Martha Graham, Jack Cole and Jose
Limon. Revelations is arguably his most famous choreography, and as you watch you
 will see that Dunham, Graham, Cole and Limon are informing his movement vocabulary,
and infused with his personal history
 Social statement
 Political statement
 Churches

Lecture 7- Expressionism
Expressionism/Chance
 merce Cunningham who had danced with Martha Graham and we talked about his
process of removing narrative removing storyline removing the music and even the
importance of costumes etc
 looking at the dance the bodies dancer the body of the dancer purely
 take away some of his ego
 used chance he would just throw dice

Physical culture
 Physical culture communities were popular among the bourgeoisie in Europe; the first
generation to enjoy the financial freedom to question their identity as modern men and
women
 At the beginning of the 1900s, laban established his own laboratory-like community of
dancers
 Became part of zeitgeist of similar communities questioning the impact of modernity on
the body

Isms: (trending in germnay)

 Cubism
 Surrealism
 Impressionism
 Contructivism
 Dadaism
 Futurism
 Realism
 Etc…

The Bauhaus
 Also trending in Germany
 School
 Interested in architecture, design and fine art
 Bauhause & Butoh (Technik)
 Informed by german expressionism (movements of nature follow inner laws that express
themselves as abstract patterns)
 by Russian constructivism (mechanical objects are informed by the abstract
 closed by the nazis due to its subversive un-German designs
  “together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will
embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity, and which will one day rise
towards heaven form the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith

Schlemmer
 Drawing: laws of cubical space of the performer and the stage

Expressionism
 Rooted in Germany near the start of the 1900s
 Interested in presenting pure, subjective views of the world
 Exaggerated emotions in the hope of finding meaning in their inner life, and not in the
physical world
 The scream (Edward Munch)
 A reaction to the de-humanization of citizens due to modernity/ industrialization
(physical culture)
 Emphasized the functional , not decorative (Bauhaus)
 Building on artistic movements, such as Romanticism that longed for a past ideal that
never was
 Interest in what the body feels; internal experiences
 A call to return to the essential spiritual “feelings” that make human beings- human
 The expressionist dancer exaggerated feelings in order to externalize their internal
experiences and to express their relationship to the world they lived in
 Sometimes called AUSDRUCKDTANZ: German for inner necessity

Rudolf con Laban

 Born in Hungary, rejected the military to study architechture
 Interested in moving human bodies relationships to the space or environment they inhabit
 Study dance as part of a zeitgeist of alternative movement communities (physical culture)
set up in response to industrialization
 Known as the father of expressionist dance
 :crystal as a spatial symbol embodied how nature is universally governed by laws; the
dancers movements, which compared with those of the law- governed universe, are
“free” and nonetheless conceptualized as being subject to the same physical laws
 He was inspired by Ernst Haeckel’s research and book “crystal souls”
 Believed the crystal was one of nature’s basic forms; a living image embodying the
developmental principles of nature itself
 Heackel’s research concerning “crystal souls” in his book of the same name was
extremely important for laban’s philosophy of dance—that nature possesses a
“subconscious biological memory” carrying out formation and regeneration according
to fixed laws
 “the crystal was the ideal symbolic form for the expressionists, since as both an
organically concrete and geometrically universal image of nature it appears to bridge the
gap between tangible nature and theoretical geometry. Expressionists artists exploited the
apparent contradictions between organic and abstract, natural and artificial, and rational
and irrational offered by the image of the crystal”-- Dörr
Laban Choreographic Choir
 Existence is a movement, action is a movement, existence is defined by the rhythm of
forced in natural balance, it is our appreciation for dance that allows us to see clearly the
rhythms of nature and to take natural rhythm to a plane of well-organized art and culture

Mary Wigman
 Studied with the two most important teachers of the era :Rudolf Laban (movement
analysis), and Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (physical training for musicians)
 Complicated relationship with the Nazis
 Although her schools were forced to close, she stayed and continued to work in Germany
 Like laban, she was interested in men’s relationship to the universe
 Interested in dance that speaks for its time
 She believed in the “total theatre experience”
 Her performance were infused with the germen term, Ausdruckdtanz ( inner neceddity to
move)
 One of wigman’s many contributions was to represent real female bodies when she
danced
 Not an idealization, or an objectification of the female body
 Representation of woman as woman is considered one of her primary contributions to
feminism

Kurt Jooss
 Danced for Laban, then organized his own company
 Was hired to head the Folkwang school which became international recognized and is
today known as TANZETHEATRE WUPPERTAL
 Combined ballet, expressionist movement vocabulary and theatre to create
TANZTHEATRE
 Disliked pure dance ballets
 Wanted his choreography to address the moral issues of his day

The Green Table

 Choreographed between the two great wars by Kurt Jooss
 Narrative focused on how destructive tendencies are unleashed in society
 In the end ‘death’ takes everyone
 Today it is considered his master piece

Pina Bausch
 Incorporated ballet, jurt jooss, mary wigman, American modern dance, post-modern
dance and Brechtian theatre ti creare some of the most provocative and influential
choreographies at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st
 At 15 was accepted in Kurt Jooss school folkwagshule
 She studied at the Julliard school in NYC
 She danced for choreographers like Anthony Tudor, Jose limon, and paul taylor
 Joined Kurt Jooss FOlkwang-ba;;et and became his assistant
 Succeeded Jooss as the companys artistic director
  Choreographed Orpheus and Eurydike and the rite of spring
 Created a seamless interconnection between theatre, dance, music, and design; complete
theatre
 Uses elements for Bertolt brecht ‘epic theatre’ that audiences should attend and interact
with theatre as if they are at a sporting event
 Bausch is often critiqued for her depiction of women as victims and for her presentation
of hetero-normative relationships as violent (in conflict)
 “I only knew the time In which we live, the time with all its anxieties is very much withb
me. This is the source of my pieces”
 Chorographies: Vollomond, Der Fensterputzer, masurca fogo, Palermo Palermo, nelken,
viktor,

Surrealism:
 a cultural movement which developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I
 visual artworks and writings
 by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations
 activate the unconscious mind through the imagery
 emphasis on positive expression
 influenced by dadaism
 methodological research and experimentation, stressing the work of art as a means for
prompting personal psychic investigation and revelation
 dream-like, unexpected, bizzare
 escape external structures to peer into unconscious interiors

Lecture 8- Chance and Postmodern Dance

Post modern dance
 don't come out of a pure dance tradition but sort of come out of a tradition of music in
which music is structured in specific ways out of this integrationist idea where they were
formed by film editing, visual arts etc
 Sally banes argues merz Cunningham was not a postmodern dancer he was a modernist
 he was a very formal
 there's no beginning and end to a dance the stage looking out at the stage centre stage
what if this was centre stage instead etc
 challenged sort of all the preconceptions that that Martha Graham had put so firmly into
place
 John cage -- instigated the first dance workshops through Robert Dunn
 Yvonne Rainer -- wrote the known manifesto, she's really doing her best to give every
bought part of the body have any hierarchy in her body, every movement is exactly as
exactly the same value as the movement that came before
 make dancing more accessible you don't necessarily have to have the trained body in
order to do this etc

American Lineage
Vaudeville Circuit:
  Loie Fuller
 Isadora Duncan
 Ruth St Denis/ Ted Shawn
 Maud Allan
American Modern Dance:
 Doris Humphrey/ Jose Limon
 Katherine Dunham
 Martha Graham--- Merce Cunningham
John Café—Post Modern Dance

Modernist
 Unders the modernist dispense, each art form is beholden to its constitutive medium
 It is the project of each art form to explore, foreground, and acknowledge its own nature

Merce Cunningham
 1939-1945 danced for martha Graham
 1944 first solo concert with composer John Cage
 1953: founded Merce Cunningham Dance Company
 “I am not expressing anything. I am presenting people moving”

Chance
 Created movement phrases by using the I Ching, card games, dice, etc to decide what
body part moved in what direction and for how long, to decide if the next section was a
solo, trio or group etc etc
 Choreographer created 20 min choreography
 Composer created 20 min score
 Costume/set designers worked independently
 Lighting designers designed the stage
 Everything comes to gether by chance on opening night
 Example: early process

Cunningham Technique
 Emphasizes strength, clarity, and precision
 Makes physical demands on dancer but also demands a rigorous mental resilience
 Maximum use od the spine and torso are key
 Increased leg extension to seven directions (from the traditional three)
 Be prepared for quick changes of direction at any time
 Articulation of torso simultaneously with any weight change (travelling, jumping, adagio)
 What you discover is that the movement vocabulary we utilize daily and access
choreography is limited to what we think is possible, or nature
 What you discover is that there are many more movement choices that when accessed,
become possible and natural

Cunningham Choreography
  Concepts of space and time exist in a relative framework, one that many differ for each
choreography, or from dancer to dancer in the same choreography
 Movement for movements sake
 Eliminated all theatrical and musical themes from his choreography
 Challenged the idea of centre stage
 Challenges the idea that choreography had to have a beginning and an end
 “dance is an art all its own and should be seen as it is, for what it is
 MODERNIST

Post-Modern Dance
 After modernity
 Reappraises the assumption of modernity and asserts
 Nothing is new/ history is myth
 Proliferation is kitsch
 Consumerism dominates
 Postmodern Critique: Everything is Relative (is it?)

Integratist
 Whereas the modernist advocates that art be about itself-that art is a practice that is
separate from other social enterprises- the integrationist avantgarde agitates fro blurring
the boundary between art and life (sally banes)

John Cage
 Pursued ZEN the I CHING NATURE etc, in the hipe of freeing the mind form likes and
dislikes (from the ego)
 Developed a non- judgmental view of music/sound/art
 “I cant understand why people are frightened of new idea. I am frightened by old ones
 If something is boring after two minutes ,try it for four. If still boring then eight. Then
sixteen. Then thirty two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all” – John Cage

Robert Dunn
 Friend of john cage and composer who played for Cunningham’s technique classes
 Agreed to facilitate choreographic workshops at Cunningham studio, 1960
 Improvisation was the key element
 Influences by 60’s values (zen feminism, civil rights, community)
 Influenced by other art forms (film, visual)
 Focused on structure (musical, math, and tasks)

Judson Church Group

 Memorial church
 A concert of dance #1 1962

Yvonne Rainer
 San Francisco, 1934
 Ordinary body
  Deconstruction
 Trio A: the mind is a muscle
 Wrote: Post-Modern Manifesto
 Danced in silence
 Lots of gestures

Post-modern Manifesto
 No to spectacle
 No to virtuosity
 No to transformations and magic and make believe
 No to the glamours and transcendence of the star image
 No to the heroic
 No to the anti-heroic
 Not to trash imagery
 No to involvement of the performer or spectator by the wiles of the performer
 No to eccentricity
 No to moving or being moved

Steve Paxton
 Danced for merce Cunningham and limon before joining Robert duns first composition
classes
 Original member of Judson dance theatre
 Founded contact improvisation, by building on elements from martial arts, social dance,
sports, and child’s play
 “contact improvisation is an evolving system of movments initiated in 1972 by American
choreographer Steve Paxton. The improvised dance form is based on the communication
between two moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship
to the physical laws that govern their motion-gravirt, momentum, inertia.”

Beach birds for Camera

o Merce cunningham choreography
o White unitards with black arms
o Starts off very slow

Lecture 9- Breaking/Hip-Hop Dance Theatre

Serouj Aprahamian
 (better known by his dance name "Midus") has been active in the breaking world since
1997, gaining notoriety internationally for his unique, abstract style. In 2001, together
with three other dancers, he produced an influential experimental dance video called
Detours. Originally from Los Angeles, Aprahamian currently lives in Toronto, Canada,
where he is pursuing a PhD in Dance Studies at York University. He also holds a
Master’s in International Relations from American University, Washington, DC, and is
currently conducting research on the early roots and global expansion of hip-hop dance. 
 Hip hip vs rap
 The “break”
  Social context
 Cultural roots
 Deying expectations
 Global ohenomenon
 In the decade since, breaking has become hugely popular across the world, with an
estimated one million participants, according to a 2019 olympic programme Commission
report

Aprahamian, Serouj. “There Were Females That Danced Too”: Uncovering the Role of
Women in Breaking History

 In Aprahamian’s paper, he discusses the lack of women’s perspectives within the first
decade of breaking’s development. Generally, there has been a widespread assumption
that breaking was founded as an exclusively masculine community, however, Serouj
argues that women had a significant impact on the dance form and participated in its
formation, especially when it came to battling. Challenging others to dance battles
became a critical element in the breaking scene, as it set the competitive tone that hip hop
is known for.

 Not only were women active in the establishment of the dance form, but they also took a
big part in introducing it as an innovative form of African American expression. Serouj
states that due to cultural stereotypes and society’s standards of expression,
misconceptions of gender roles in many dance forms are inaccurately formed. By calling
attention to female breakers such as Saundra Deucy, Yellow Banana, and Sister Boo, this
paper gives insight into the misinterpretations of breaking’s exclusively male past and
helps us understand how society’s perception of breaking’s history influences its current
practice.

Freshest Kids: history of the B Boy

 B boys came from the bronx
 breaking: do something above normal
 "breaking point"
 B-boys = break boys
 B boying originally didn’t start on the floor
 Moves/Steps: Russian
 Jerky / spiratic moves
 Godfather of hip hop: Afrika Bambbaataa
 Came to the street-- more nationalities came into it (ex; hispanics)
 Puprtericnas put b. boys on their backs (dancing on their backs)
 Spy = man with a thousand moves,
 Everything in locking has a name
 Poping = locking + robot
 Strutting= continuous movment is same direction
 Hitting ?? gangster
 Boogaloo= loose, can be done at the same time as another move?
  People tried to stop breakdancing/ b boying (died down for a bit)
 Designed to spread love, not comercialism
 A lot of the best breakers went to jail
 Rap music catapulted into the media
 B boying opened doors for rap music
 B boying went mainstream and started callling it break dancing (dancers wounldnt
correct them)
 b boying was the original name for breakdancing
 Rock steady became image of all breakers
 Don’t deserve to be called a b boy if you cant handle yourself in a battle
 Became a worldwide community (not just latinos and blacks) --japan, germany, england,
hungary etc
 Bbackspins in commercial = windmills
 Feeling expression-- style and finesse, charisma
 Debbie allen allowed breakdancing to be taught seperatley at her dance studio
 James brown- inspired by tap dacing (had b boy style to it)
 Lindhy hopig?
 Kung fu infuence
 Kapauera ended up in breaking
 Breakdance = fight dance
 "Becoming one with the earth"
 Ur not rappinog if you don’t have b boys-- using hip hop culture (no booty dancing
instead)

Lecture 10- Dancing in Canada

“a colony lacks the spiritual energy to rise above routine, and … it lacks this energy because it
does not adequately believe in itself. It applies to what it has standards which are imported, and
therefore artificial and distorting. It sets the great good place not in its present, not in its past nor
in its future, but somewhere outside its borders, somewhere beyond its own possibilities.”

Early Social Dance in Canada

 The history of Emily montague Frances Brook is set in Quebec City in the 1760s , writes
that the Minutet was a popular dance, and suggests that dancing was an important part of
the social life of early settlers
 In a political and historical account of lower Canada Pierre de sales latierriere wrote
“never have I known a nation wich so loves to dance as do the Canadians; they still dance
the minuet, spelling it off with English dances

Minuets of the Canadians: ROM

 Few paintings exist that recors entertainments in this country from such an early date.
The artists took an interest in costume, local customs, and social context. A windowless
interior is lighted by a single, rather smoky oil-wick chandelier… etc

Canada and Theatrical Dance

  Vaudeville theatres were locating in major cities and many smaller communities across
Canada
 Diaghilev’s Les Ballet Russes performed in Canada once
 Nikinsky was managing the company and he performed
 The company presented CLEOPATRA choreographed by Muchael Fokine

Companies that Regularly Toured Canada

 Basil Ballet Russes (Michel Fokine- bravado, glamous and elegance)
 Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company (London England, precession and refinement
 Anna Pavlova (toured with her own company, grace ans expression)

Anna Pavlova
 Most admired ballerina of her time and perhaps the century
 Toured with her own company
 Danced Fokine’s solo “the dying swan” in most performances
 After seeing her perform, young Canadians left their families to study dance in Europe:
hoping to join a company. After they trained and/or toured with a company, they returned
home and opened studio to teach dance

Boris Volkoff
 Defected from Russia
 Opened Toronto School in 1931
 Claims to have invented the Ice Ballet
 Earliest example of choreography wih Canadian Themes
 Represented Canada at International Tranzwettspiel (dance competition) in 1936: part of
Hitler’s Olympics
 His choreographies won Honorable Mention
o Male: eskimo deign
o Mon-Ka-Ta: west coast
o Indian Design

Gweneth Lloyd
 1901-1993
 Visited Winnipeg and never left
 Opened dance school with betty farrally
 Co-created and organized performances for the Winnipeg ballet club
 Performed for king George VI and Queen Elizabeth (game changer)
o Grain- the wheat cycle
o Kiliwatt magic- hydro coning to prairies

Royal Winnipeg Ballet

 First royal company in the commonwealth
 artistic director: Gweneth Lloyd
 the title made the company marketable, and started touring extensively
  remains on of the most traveled ballet companies in the world
 recived its official name in 1953 from Queen Elizabeth II
 performance: ‘Shadow on the prairie’ gweneth Lloyd choreograpy, music by Robert
fleming

The Ballet Festivals

 first 1947
o four companies presented choreography
o rutgh sorels(montreal), the Vancouver ballet society, the Winnipeg ballet club,
and Boris Volkoff
 second 1949
o ten companies and 200 dancers attended
o includes exerpts of “visages” by gweneth Lloyd and “red ear of corn” by Boris
VOlkoff
Celia Franca
 born 1920
 danced for ballet rambert
 joined Sadler Wells company
 was invited to visit Canada and start a company in Toronto
 toured across the Canada and auditioned dacners
National Ballet of Canada
 1951- first performance (not well received)
 1964- Romeo and Juliet with music by Sergei Prokofiev (critically acclaimed)
 1971 Rudolf Nureyev’s choregraphed The sleeping beauty (after Petipa) and gave the
company international respectability

Ludimilla Chiriaeff
 1924-1996
 When ballet basil ballets russes was in Michel Fokine stay family
 1952 moved to montreal and opened a school
 Her school was conflict with the catholic church held a lot of power at that time in
Quebec
o Danced in forbidden within church walls
o Modern Dance not authorized in any place under church jurisdiction
o Folk dance evenings allowed if approved by a committee
o A preist must be presented for all dance events
 Her company appeared more than 300 times on CBC TV
o One day to prepare (an hour dance)
o One dress rehearsal, and then live on TV
 Les grands Ballet Canadiens—officially incorporated in 1957
 All Threee of Canada’s original ballet companies have schools and train dacners
internationally
1. Royal Winnipeg Ballet School (Gweneth Lloyd and Betty Farally
 2. Les Grands Ballet Canadien’s. Ecole Supérieure de Ballet du Quebec,
formed from Ludimilla Chiriaeff school
3. The School of Nation Ballet of Canada. Celia Franca invited Betty
Oliphant to organize a 6 week summer course. 1963 a year long academy
of dance was incorporated. This is the tradition from which Grant Strate
originated the Department of Dance at York University

Quebec Dance
 Les Ballet Jazz de Montreal
 Compagnie Danse Nyata Nyata (1988) Zabbb Maboungou
 Compagnie Marie Chouinard (1978)
 Theatre Danse Paul Andre FORTIER
 Le Groupe de la Place Royal// La Group Dance Lab
 O Vertigo Danse
 La La La Human steps
 No dance agents in toronto
 Dance agents exist in Quebec

Canada’s first Modern Companies

 Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers—Rachel Brown
 Toronto Dance Theatre— Patricia Beatty, David Earl, Peter Randazzo
 Anna Wyman Dancers Vancouver
 Dancemakers—York University Alumni
 Danny Grossman Dance Company – Initia;;u affiliated with York university
 Toronto Independent Dance Enterprises – York University Alumni

LA LA LA HUMAN STEPS
 Very exciting
 Louise was the star
 Huge impact
 Choreography: LA LA LA HUMAN SEX, choreographer: Edouard Lock

Canada Coucil for the Arts

 Established 1957
 “Main object in recommending the establishment of the Canada Council is to provide
some assistance to universities, to the arts, humanities and social sciences as well as to
students in those fields without attempting in any way to control their activities or to
tamper with their freedom. Governments should support the cultural development of the
nation but not attempt to control it” – Louis St Laurent
 Dancers should go into politics to add dancers voice

Indigenous dance in canada: A lot of question, People are still working on it

Dance Rebels: A story of Modern Dance

 Isadora Duncan
 o broke free from rules of classical ballet, awkward style
o Loose clothes and bare feet
o Reinvented as a language for expression
o She was a feminist
 Rite of Spring: made movements that were shocking to audience (violent inversion of
ballet)
 Les Noces de Royal Ballet: Nijinska, reflection of her political views,
 Laban
o invented modern dance notation
o Father was a general
o Topic of struggle would be represented in his dances
o Established school in Munich
o Explored relationship with dance and music (take music away)
o Was not allowed to earn money teaching
Mary Wigman
 Wearing a mask
 Dances in silence
 Musician is following her
Green table
o Negotiate with gestures, gentlemen in black characters are out to get one another
o Green table returns at the end
o Story of ballet is that it will go on and on
o Hitler came one year after green table
o Joss and jewish company members feld Germany
o Nazis put laban as head of dance
Martha Graham
o Contraction was shown as a greif in the body (emotional movement)
o Her technique is Very passionate and womanly
o Her performances were a theatricalized class
Merce Cunningham
o Pure Movement without meaning
o John Cage (musician and partner) inspired him
o Chance –dancer did not hear music until on stage
o Rehearsed in silence
Judson
o Trisha brown and others
o Minimalist ideas
o No to….
o Refuse what is expected of dance, then something else will be revealed
o Awkward, no musical flow, slow and boring
o Ordinary people doing ordinary movement
o Non hierarchical
o No meaning
o Repressive
Karole Armitage and Michael Clark
o Rebel against her mentors
o Combined Poetry of ballet with energy of punk
Trisha Brown
o Repeating gestures while lying on floor
o Femininity (touching hair and showing bra strap)
Pina Bausch
o Changed landscape of dance by bringing it closer to theatre
o Human behaviour
o Performed in green table
o Gets dancer to respond do feelings, dreams, feelings etc
o Drew on her own personal experiences in choreography of hiding under table
William Forsyth
o Explores language of ballet
o Power of dancers body
o No decocor, just body
o Geometric shapes of body
o Create other centres where lines cam emerge
o Ex: step text performed by royal ballet
Lea Anderson: Smithereens
o Dance of off images
o Usues imagery of other dances
o Statuesque
Wayne McGregor
o Uses technology
o No flow

Lecture 11- Current Ideas: Dancing Today

Crystal Pite
 Founder of Kid pivot
 Vancouver BC
 1988 Ballet BC (John Alleyne; a graduate of the School of National Ballet of Canada)
 1996 Ballet Frankfurt (AD William Forsythe; who is considered Balanchine)
 “You are dancers, all of you, life moves you;life dances you. To dance is to investigate
and celebrate the experience of being alive. Like life, a dance creates and destroys itself
in every moment”
 “BUTOH”-- dance of the dark soul, the costume is like throwing the cosmos onto one’s
shoulders. And for Butoh, while the costume covers the body, it is the body that is the
costume of the soul.

Early Butoh Influences:

 After Peral Harbour, the Bombing of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki; japan surrendered and
ended WW2
  With surrender came overwhelming feelings of humiliation and shame, horror and fear;
the sense that there was no clear path to an established norm for Japan
 Masahde Komaki founded the Tokyso Ballet Company , which fostered an interest in
ballet, and by extension America
 Japan Signed a Mutual Defense traty with Maerica; which exacerbated feelings of
outraged
 Tatsumi Hijikata: first Butoh Artist
 Wanted to find dance that expressed rge people of Japan. That was no informed by the
artificial, commercial values he thought dominated Western dance practices
 1959- hijikata’s “forbidden colors”, Hijikata and followers thrown out of Japan’s dance
community
 1968- “Revolt of the flesh”: toured America, shocked and changed how dance was
perceived

Butoh Characteristics:
 Mirrors the body people living in the mountains and streets of Japan
o The curved backs and hips of farmers
o The bandy legs and clumsy hands of old people
o The white eyes of the blind
o The carriage and shrunken limbs of the mountain people
 Often dancers perform nude, and just as often they use elaborate costumes
 Shaved bodies
 White body makeup (silver, red gold, or black)
 The face is often exaggerated and stretched (mask-like)
 “No matter hoe much we search for it from the outside there is no way we can find it
without delving into ourselves. Even your own arms, deep inside your body feel foreign
to you, feel that then do no belong to you. Here lies an important secret. Butoh;s radical
essence is hidden here.”- Tatsumi Hijikata

Contemporary
 Term is often used to frame the art of today
 Contemporary choreography is tremendously difficult to define because it is current, in
progress, changing , in development and evolving
 Contemporary: existing, occurring, or living at the same time; belonging to the same
time, of the present time

Verbatim Theatre
 Devised from the words and actions of the people immediately involved in the events and
discourses being investigated by the artist
 Devised word for word from interviews, speeches, newspaper articles, televised debates
etc

Inclusive: Candoco Dance Company

 Founded in 1991 by Celeste Danderker-arnold and Adam Benjamin
  Formed after celeste Dandeker-Arnold was dropped when dancing and became a
quadriplegic
 One of the first company to tour the world with both disabled and able bodies dancers

Urban Bush Women

 Founded in 1984 by choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
 Seeks to being the untold and undertold stories to light through dance
 Concert company
 Choreographic centre
 Boat foundation: builders organizers and leaders of dance
 Community; dance for every body

Women’s Work: An African American Dance Company

 Women’s Work, a documentary film produced by Marianne Henderson, follows the
Urban Bush Women as they participate in a weeklong workshop with the Richmond
community. This dance and theatre company, led by artistic director Jawole Wila Jo
Zollar, is famously known for using historic approaches to celebrating African American
heritage through movement and music. Through the lens of the female dancers in the
company, the film discusses the explorations of cultural identity of black women, their
process of celebrating common humanity, as well as the impact that they had on the
Richmond community.
 The film considers ideas such as the diverse perspectives of the viewers, depending on
their prior knowledge of art and performance, and argues that what is abstract to one
individual, may not be considered abstract to another. Excerpts of their performances
such as ‘Batty Moves’ and ‘Shelter’ were also shown, where through the means of poetry
and dance, they tackle controversial topics within the black community such as
homelessness and honoring the size of black women’s hips. Ultimately, the public
response was overwhelmingly positive as meaningful relationships were created and
diversity was presented to a broad community in a meaningful way.