The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, now located on West 55th Street and 9th Avenue in New York City, traces its roots to a choreographer who interwove modern dance, jazz, and African rhythms in creations such as Revelations. A spectacular work that audiences have been worshiping for almost fifty…
Prairie Band Potawatomie 2017 Pow Wow Dance is an expressive language that often goes beyond most expectations of non-verbal communication. No less can be said of the Prairie Band Potawatomie 2017 Pow…
“Training as the medium through which”, chapter 3, written by Melanie Bales is a chapter that is written on the theme of self-discovery and how as dancers we could apply the ideas to ourselves. Melanie Bales is a professor at Ohio State where she graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy. Bales also studied at the Joffrey School and was a Harkness Ballet Trainee. Throughout this article, I experienced different things for myself when going through and reading each section. A lot of references that were stated in the book allowed me to see dance through a whole new perspective.…
On Wednesday, October 5, 2016 at 8:00 pm, I have attended a performance by Joy Harjo and her friends Mitch Taylor who played the guitar, Dave Copenhaver who played the bass guitar, and Smiling’ Vic Gutierrez who played the drums and vocals. I had specifically chose this performance to do my report on because I wanted to feel what actual Native American music would be like in concert as opposed to what we naturally think of when it comes to Native American music. For me, that would include heavy drumming and dancing, which are usually even-pulsed with a variety of vocables. Not to my disappointment, the music was unique in its own way and had spoke directly to me.…
Cassi Maddox is an actress, writer and director born in Atlanta, Ga. She began performing at the age of five with a local dance troupe. After taking on the challenges of dance, she began to develop an interest in other creative outlets: singing, acting, writing and drawing. Throughout her childhood and public school education; she was involved in activities such as the African Dance Ensemble, chorus and her high school's theatre company.…
As the show progressed, more and more people danced to the front of the concert hall or even went on stage to dance with the band. The Williamsburg Salsa Orchestra was not an exclusive group, but they invited others to enjoy the music with them, which allowed the performers to become closer and more connected with the audience. This reflects the ideology of music in African cultures because the separation between the performers and the audience is nonexistent. The orchestra certainly allowed the opportunity for a bridge to be built to the audience. Another similarity between the performance of the orchestra and African music performance was the performer’s dance.…
This involves courage and the development of self. To truly belong means being able to be ourselves. Within the Ballroom Dancing community, there is a clear indication that there are people who do not belong. These people may try to belong, although they seek to break free of the conformity to the strict rules and regulations and fulfil their own individual dance style. Or characters may choose not to belong in an attempt to hide away, and although being part of the Ballroom Dancing world, they also have their own individual world…
The 1920’s also known as the roaring twenties was a remarkable decade where many different dances, music and art flourished. New dances and music were fast paced and lively. The most popular dances of the decade were the foxtrot, waltz, American tango, Charleston and many more. This era was mainly for the younger generation where they used their creativity and own original ideas of ways of dancing and use of music. E.g younger people toddled to the foxtrot.…
Ragtime, like the blues, was extremely popular around 100 years ago and was only disliked by people of high society, due to its mixed background. To put it simply, the rhythm of ragtime was “black or African, the harmony and melody was white or European, and the ending result was American [2].” Also, rag was heavily in whorehouses, saloons, and eventually concert halls; the very definition of the word rag was slang for “dance” [2].” Therefore, ragtime and blues came from very different cultural backgrounds with dissimilar purposes. People played and listened to ragtime for entertainment.…
However, there is a significant amount of musical analysis in relation to the games as embodied musical performances and styles. Using her training as a musical scholar, the author decontextualizes the songs and chants from their social and cultural milieu to cross-reference and relate the interdependences that black popular music have on game-songs created by black girls. Additionally, her experiences as a vocalist and music creator helped to evaluate the similarities in musical forms and construction by relating the game-songs to multiple styles of black popular music including Hip Hop, R&B and soul music that employ heavily syncopated beats, music sampling and rhythmic timbral patterns in tandem. Throughout the text, the author also reveals her own personal relationship as a self-appointed fan and consumer of black popular music that legitimized her role as an ethnographer specifically when she conducted participant observation as a double dutch rope jumper. Her familiarity with the music being played as she jumped rope alongside other African American women allowed the author to cross into an insider position to objectively observe while intuitively interpreting her own experiences simultaneously during the music space time of musical engagement and…
Being able to choreograph and perform in dance concert is a very unique and amazing experience. Creating ideas with everyone around you and transforming those ideas into a masterpiece is a process like no other. With everyone’s opinions out in thin air, you can put all of your ideas into one to create something so beautiful. In Modern especially it was really intriguing to watch the whole process of how the dance was created. Since we did originally have a combo to go off of, it was different watching all the different groups create a combo over the steps but just in a different format.…
Growing up, I was surrounded by many superstitious and unfounded behaviors that many of my friends and family members believed in and practiced. As it turns out, there are many superstitions and ritualistic behaviors that Poles believe in and that are incorporated into daily lives as well as in the many rich customs and traditions. One example of a superstitious routine intertwined with many ritualistic behaviors is the Christmas Eve in Poland. Although many different practices are performed on this very special evening of the year, the whole sequence of behaviors and actions can be classified as one broad and complex ritual that many Polish families follow until this day. It is not a surprise then that my family and I also developed a traditional…
Soul Train became “a cultural touchstone for the [young] African American artistic community” and provided this subculture with a platform where they could fully express themselves, often in forms of dance (Schnakenberg 632-633). Robert Schnakenberg highlights Todd Boyd’s, who is an assistant professor of critical studies at USC’s School of Cinema-Televison, quote: “Soul Train showed a generation what it meant to be cool” (632-633). And Soul Train truly did help in developing the growth of both funk and dance among the black youth that viewed the program regularly. In his article on Pitchfork, Stephen Deusner questions whether the music or the moves were more important in the success of Soul Train. Deusner goes on to assert that, “The well-known [funk artists]... were very often upstaged by the flamboyantly dressed dancers gyrating for the camera.”…
The formation of dance has lived on this world for many generations as we continue to pass through history. When I went to the wonderful performance at Pierce College I experienced a whole new perspective on dancing. The concert had many types of students performing mixed dance projects of all types like solos and duets. There was an average size of one to eight dancers per project which made it the ideal size for the concert. I really enjoyed the creativity and effort put into this performance.…
One of the most incredible video that I watched to complete a Dance Observation assignment for Dance class is the video of: “Wade in the Water from “Revelations” by Alvin Ailey Company. This video was published on YouTube on November 25, 2007 and performed at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. This video is very beautiful and impressive at the first time I saw it. Then I keep watching it again to really focus on the detail of very movement and sections. The dancers presented a movement of an African American slavery era being empowered by drowned in the water but keep standing strong tightly.…