modern dance monday with velocity dance center seattle

     Since moving to Seattle, Under The Root and myself, the main course of action is to return to the modern dance, body movement, and the art of dance.  The Spring classes begin today and so this journal entry is to focus on the place of my new classes, Velocity Dance Center.  Seattle is swarming with many concepts of dance, dance cinema, dance festivals, and body movement workshops.
   
     “It’ll be cool to see what these dancers . . . accomplish in the coming year under the guidance and protection of Velocity, an organization that is less a dance company and more like a hotbed of creativity that nurtures and supports dancers as they explore performing art to sometimes extraordinary limits.”
— Melody Datz, The Stranger Slog
      “How did [Velocity] and its support of local dancers contribute to your career?
In every way possible.”
— Corrie Befort of Salt Horse, Seattle Dance Examiner
      “Again and again, Velocity proves itself as both supporter and tastemaker for dance in Seattle. . .”
— SeattleDances

      "Mayor’s Arts Award and Genius Award winner Velocity Dance Center is Seattle’s premier art center dedicated to contemporary dance and performance.  A recognized leader as an artist-driven, community-centered dance incubator, Velocity fosters the creative explorations of artists and adventurous audiences through an invested commitment to education, creation, performance, inquiry, community participation, and inter/national exchange.  Velocity fulfills an unduplicated role as the epicenter for contemporary dance in the Pacific Northwest operating three studios, a dance resource room, an online journal and the only theater in the region especially developed for dance performances.  The primary art center supporting contemporary dance in Seattle since 1996, Velocity is instrumental in making Seattle a destination city with one of the most active dance communities in the nation.  In 2012 alone, Velocity served nearly 18,000 individuals; offered 2,000+ dance classes; provided low cost space to over 450 artists; activated a growing audience of thousands of dance enthusiasts; commissioned and developed 27 new works, and introduced more than 89 works of performance, film, installation and hybrid forms into the local and national dance ecology."

     

A core mission and value to the art of our bodies.  From hosting Next Fest NW to daily classes, workshops to performance venues and speakeasy.  There is a universe open enough to share.

Green Chair Dance Group image Adam Sekuler

Fire and Ice image Michelle Smith-Lewis

The Pendleton House image Tim Summers

Alana O Rogers image Tim Summers

Paige Barnes image Laurent Ziegler

modern dance monday with feldenkrais

The slow, gentle, and graceful movements comprise the Feldenkrais Method.  Moshe Feldenkrais’ ties to dance date back to the 1940s in Israel when modern dancer and movement notator Noah Eshkol took an interest in his work.  Eshkol recorded Feldenkrais’ innovative Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons using Eshkol Wachman notation.  You can read more on his full biography here.

Awareness Through Movement is a component of the Feldenkrais Method, which is a mode of somatic education.  During each class, students engage in structured movement explorations that involve thinking, sensing, moving, and imagining.  Many lessons are based on developmental movements and ordinary functional activities.  Some are based on more abstract explorations of joint, muscle, and postural relationships.  The lessons consist of comfortable, easy movements that gradually evolve into movements of greater range and complexity.  Lessons attempt to make one aware of one's habitual neuromuscular patterns and rigidities and to expand options for new ways of moving.

“What I’m after isn’t flexible bodies, but flexible brains.  What I’m after is to restore each person to their human dignity. ”

“I believe that the unity of mind and body is an objective reality.  They are not just parts somehow related to each other, but an inseparable whole while functioning.  A brain without a body could not think.”

“Find your true weakness and surrender to it.  Therein lies the path to genius.  Most people spend their lives using their strengths to overcome or cover up their weaknesses.  Those few who use their strengths to incorporate their weaknesses, who don’t divide themselves, those people are very rare.  In any generation there are a few and they lead their generation. ”


“The aim [of the Feldenkrais Method] is a person that is organized to move with minimum effort and maximum efficiency, not through muscular strength, but through increased consciousness of how movement works.”

“No matter how closely we look, it is difficult to find a mental act that can take place without the support of some physical function."

“Movement is life.  Life is a process.  Improve the quality of the process and you improve the quality of life itself.”
 
-Moshe Feldenkrais

mary wigman is more than a witch

Lake Maggiore 1913

Lake Maggiore 1913

Traumgestalt 1927

Edmund Kesting 1935

Mary Wigman
Interested in the relationship between human being and 
cosmic forces, she describes her creative experience as the 
transformation into movement of the invisible forces 
that give her life.  The dancer is a medium for her; 
dance functions as a trance, accomplishing its cathartic 
function recognized by archaic societies; dance is first of all 
an expression of ecstasy (or emotional impulses) that creates 
forms of movement as a consequence.

Following these ideas, Mary Wigman gives the first steps 
and opens the doors of a trend that influences many generations 
of choreographic artists in the search for new expressive means. 
Her way of dancing is given the name of Ausdruckstanz 
(dance of expression or expressionist dance), and states that no 
movement is considered as ‘bad’ or ‘ugly’ as far as it is executed 
from a true feeling or is evocative.
In consequence, Wigman aesthetics are made up of very 
different elements compared to ballet.  She dances without music, 
uses non attractive costumes, works over subjects like death, 
desperation, the war or social riots, and experiments with masks, 
among other things.  She also opposes to the notion of 
‘representing’ something while dancing, in a search for a truthful 
experience: dance should not represent; dance should be. 
“We don’t dance histories, we dance feelings”, she says.

A great example of this is a document that consists of more than 
70 pages of labanotation scores of exercises of her method. 
The title of the text is Die Frankfurter Seminarreihe in 
Wigman-Technique mit Prof. Gundel Eplinius (Frankfurt, 1990) 
by notator Anja Hirvikallio.
M. Hirvikallio explains that M. Eplinius divides Wigman’s 
technique in five main groups, like this:
- Striding and sliding
- Springs, vibrations and bouncing
- Momentums and oscillations
- Falling and dropping (floor technique)
- Tensions: relaxed, sustained and motor tensions

 excerpt taken from www.contemporary-dance.org

TanzMarchen 1926

Mary Wigman Troupe

Mary Wigman Troupe

Laban and Mary Wigman

Mary Wigman Troupe

dance, dance, otherwise we are lost

Clara Bow

Isadora Duncan

Zoe/Juniper

Lar Lubovitch

Pina Bausch

TickTock Dance

Vanessa Justice Flatland

Vietnamese Dance

modern dance hits the heights

Chunky Move is an Australian based dance company which began in some of the earliest 1990's with Gideon Obarzaneks at the front of intermedia discovery.  While Gideon has moved on, the company remains.  I am in awe of the entire process, fundamental liberation, and whole being.. gentle, warm, tears of respect.

body movement tuesday :: denishawn school of dance

Denishawn School of Dance
The Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded in 1915 by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn in Los Angeles, California, helped many perfect their dancing talents.  Some of the school's more notable pupils include Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman and silent film star Louise Brooks.  The school was especially renowned for its influence on ballet and experimental modern dance.  In time, Denishawn teachings reached another school location, as well, Studio 61 at the Carnegie Hall Studios. Because St. Denis and Shawn believed that all dance techniques were valid and instructive, the school offered classes in Oriental, Spanish, and primitive dance; the fundamentals of ballet; their own innovative techniques; and, later, the modern dance techniques that had been developed in Europe by Rudolf Laban.

"The art of dance is too big to be encompassed by any one system.  On the contrary, the dance includes all systems or schools of dance.  Every way that any human being of any race or nationality, at any period of human history, has moved rhythmically to express himself, belongs to the dance. We endeavor to recognize and use all contributions of the past to the dance and will continue to use all new contributions in the future"

body movement tuesday :: gearshifting performance works

Gearshifting Performance Works
Jolene Bailie is the Artistic Director
Gearshifting Performance Works is a not for profit Arts Organization dedicated to the advancement of the art form of modern dance. Committed to promoting modern dance, raising public awareness of the form and enriching the community, the Company has three main activities; these include the advancement of education, creation and presentation of modern dance.
The endeavors to create accessible and artistically daring works. The body of work encompasses a broad range of new creation and respected traditional works.  The subject matter often stems from psychological reactions to environment and reflections upon trends in Canadian lifestyle.  The presentations strive to be rewarding to both the audience and the creators as well as suitable for a broad range of audiences and performance venues.

body movements tuesday :: performance research

FROST



loopdiver 2009



Atelic


Performance Research
Contemporary Body Movement, Sound Aesthetics, and Other Performance Research
compiled by Robert Alexander

body movement :: dancebloggers.com

Cloud Gate


Wayne McGregor


JVC Yesterday


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