Unknown Speaker 00:05 This tendency to centralize human experience and events can also be found in the third type of dance performed by the dance for gay what are called the lyrical dramatics, so these dances entitled restitution, or give me water or resolution for Africa represented people tivity itself. They depicted the poor and outbreak frustration, fear, color and generosity as responses to Imaginary Forces existing elements, as well as in the dancers own psyche. In each piece began to seem to lash out, fall back, make another attempt, she yearns to spin, but what there was to say seemed inexpressible. She was dancing because there was no other response so Carmel authentic to social injustice as witnesses to her expressive Act. The audience nuclear community with the Pelican presents an unmitigated but what was accomplished by the sculptural outpouring with a dancer saying that resolution in Africa will consist of carious, balancing a man's head antagonistic forces achieved after many unsuccessful attempts, that we can never know the terror and anguish experienced by the victim victims of Hiroshima, that we as women have the emotional competence to empathize with such experience. I would contend that because these dances own replicated cliches, they reaffirmed the hierarchy of social values that we refer to at the beginning of our talk this afternoon, that both equate and then discriminate against women dance and the body. In other words, these dances tend to relegate women and dance to the realm of the purely emotional, intuitive and inarticulate, and they show a body harnessed and jump service to express itself. Now is one of three very different types of dances presented by the dance brigade, these solos contributed to the diversity of styles presented by the group. Together with the other dances, they served to establish a complex image of women as a student social critics, as serious campaigners against social injustice, and as extra sensitive human beings capable of empathizing with the points of others. Each of these roles for women with its corresponding vocabulary or physical skills, complimented me or commented upon the others. And it was this reflexivity in the form of the concert that seemed to contain the Jasper good, strongest message. I think that message is that women are all these things. On their own, however, or in conjunction with people's about specific political events, the lyrical solos would have the effect of reducing political circumstances to an all too common denominator, that of struggle or pain or pressure, and they will tend to reduce women's experiences to a woman's experience and fortunately, kicks decimated. A great argument about why that's not a good strategy to take at this point. Unknown Speaker 03:32 Let me turn to Johanna voice now, New York based Cornell for his work over the past few years has increasingly dealt with feminist issues. She makes use of several methods for deconstructing the narrative sequence in order to ensure a more complex representation of subjects. Unlike the dance per day, spoken text to identify a specific topic, which has been depicted in the movement, voice treats movements and texts as independent discourses that occasionally intersect voices subjects, far more personal than those chosen by the dance per day, develop their feminist orientation out of particulars of the dancers laws, where the dance per day uses poems already abstracted versions of human experience, voice adapts the autobiographical uses of the dancers, but these reminiscences do not tell the story so much as delineate a toe pose. It individual statements are fragmented, rehearsed and ordered and interpolated with statements by another dancer, while at the same time, phrases of movement, cleaning and using the same organizing procedures. Echo emphasis can amplify and contrast the verbal statements. To show you an excerpt from a voice work called tries that bind you And I think what I'm just going to show you like a couple of minutes of this, what you'll notice is that sometimes the movement illustrates the spoken text. Or sometimes it evokes a complimentary image in spoken text, or sometimes it diverges entirely in quality and subject matter from the spoken text. Now do. Unknown Speaker 05:38 My name is Sydney born my father and my mother was working in secretarial support. I am Admiral Manafort in Philadelphia, the city of Bremerton my father was an ankle engineer and my mother was a mother she had an old woman through my picture three years old four years older, much to about 21 Now that she was born the cotton market at the hospital my mother left college to go into isolation with her for six weeks I think I spend a lot of time with my father would love to take my mornings and he takes it to the head I'd be wearing clothes and still be freezing cold was really scared Unknown Speaker 07:33 I wish I mean, I'm gonna make it listen to me instead. Even in pieces without spoken text voice has found ways to create scenarios that support multiple interpretations. Coming of a man for example, a group of male dancers perform complicated sequences of simple steps, hawks, gallops and turns that create various patterns in space. The dancers move in and out lines, they form diagonals or circles they disperse and reconvene all while maintaining the constant rhythm and momentum of a fast paced footwork. After several minutes, boys enters an obvious female body but dress like a man with shirts and pants, ties tennis shoes, she executes the same steps and fits gracefully into the spatial patterns created by the group. Gradually, however, each man steps taken in a different direction onstage, so eventually voices left dancing alone. This simple disposition of dancers suggests many different meanings. It is a dance that alludes to discrimination against women, and also to women trying to look and act like men, and that both of these interpretations contain additional complexities. For us, for example, does not look uncomfortable doing an opening for it is the epitome of an androgynous vocabulary privileging neither male associated capacities for strength and endurance or female associated capacities for orientation and lyricism. Thus, although it suggests that the dance does not enact the stereotype of the woman leaving behind all feminine virtues in order to enter the man's world Furthermore, the men acting as a paternal unit becomes an aggregate of independent individuals whose movements happen to interconnect seem at the end of the piece to have wandered off in pursuit of their own interests. They are just doing their own thing. And it just happens to break out shortly after a woman enters. Because there was no confrontation, no obvious reaction to boys on the part of the man and the accusation of discrimination is circumstantial. This is I think, this is the kind of dance Foucault would like. Like so much of the sexual and racial discrimination that occurs in our society today. There is no obvious bad guy A power rather than being wielded by some individual is located in the cultural system of behaviors that are danced out by all of us. When becoming an ad, as in many voices dances can use an ordinary pedestrian movement vocabulary contributes to the multiple meanings contained in a piece, where the dance brigade create traditional narrative structures using diverse and different vocabularies. Voices uses a mundane vocabulary to draw attention to possible relationships between choreographic structure and meaning, but your focus is less on specific moods and more on the formal manipulation of those years. As a result, the audience is encouraged to watch the narrative being made. Because becoming involved in the process of meaning production, I think you can get a sense of that just from that brief look at the video. This is all well and good if the audience is willing to get good at what they are watching things. Because the dancers look like ordinary people who have worked hard to attain specific skills required for the performance, years major lights in the accessibility of horses dances, and the idea that they to get enough practice could perform such a case. On the other hand, they could dismiss as unprofessional, the untrained dancers and the simple movement skills. Now I'm voicing this possible objection to voice his work. In order to return to my opening anecdote about the wallflower order. I don't think that I was all right, and they were all wrong for studying ballet. I do think that because they have now within their repertory of set of skills that can impress an audience that their work is more suitable for presentation in a variety of contact contexts. I see water parks, or Symphony space with equal grace and effectiveness. Boise's work, in contrast, it seems to me is best seen up close and framed by theatrical space that empowers it to be viewed as high art. Unknown Speaker 12:08 It will be dismissed in the walk situation. type of vibe and another dance is like voices see a more specialized vocabulary, one that seems to grow directly out of the pedestrian repertoire, but the takes a decidedly feminine turn. In these dances flow is emphasized over shape, the body's life adaptable and organic courses through space ever sensitive to the motions surrounding it, always capable of accommodating and interacting with other bodies. Often movement will erupt in an unpredictable part of the body with the rest of the body following sequentially, the body rapidly gathers momentum tumbling, circulating and unfolding gradually decelerating only to begin the process again. Where the body does pause taking on shape. It does not mold itself to conform to a set of abstract lines as in the ballet, but instead arrests itself with sequence to create organic dynamic configurations. This sequence reality of body parts and phrasing the movement suggests an intuitive spontaneous frame of mind, any part of the body can sync up or movement. The head normally in charge of overseeing performance or providing special information about the feelings of the dancers simply goes along for the ride. The entire body responds quickly to any body part, blending an unpredictable continuity that is reminiscent of direct apprehension, rather than studied reason. So that what I'm saying here is that, like the dance brigades, lyrical solos, these dancers seem to celebrate the virtues of woman as other. Both sets of dances portrayed women has sensitive, feeling ill instinctive, impulsive and inspired. The vocabulary used by the dance brigade, however, involves a set of physical skills that require a self to command the body. Voices vocabulary, while just this contrived, nonetheless features the body's own logic, it's actually wait. It's one of the most sleekness and agility, the Self does not control the body so much as merge with it. That's the lyrical vocabulary of the dance brigade solos chose a more traditional image of woman as a self that uses a body as the most appropriate vehicle for expressing its concerns. Whereas boys as choreography depicts a version of the liberated woman as athletic as well as sensitive who rebels in her own intuitive abilities. Both sets of dances however, you run the risk of celebrating woman by ensuring your place and I would argue that that's the place that contemporary society is only too willing to accommodate, and one that does not effectively resist the oppression of women. Voice usually retreats first already quite similar in one of several ways. Either the dancers talk while moving as you just saw, or they engage in complex rhythmic and spatial patterns and belie the craft involved in creating the seemingly spontaneous dance. Or like the dance per day, they suddenly shift characters all together and begin a dance that pokes fun at both feminine and feminist stereotypes. Nursing daughters have to move one of voices pieces, a chorus of well intentioned but clumsy dancers dressed as gaudy versions of Las Vegas showgirls, create a story of traction now one of their comrades, who is a more expert, bearded woman jugglers. Together, they valiantly toss balls wiggling their shoulders and hips with inept sexiness to the Latin puzzle music, occasionally allowing the principal juggler to show off a virtual author of the PSN voices party on which I saw this climax. In a final mischievous image. The juggler winks at the audience as she cradles to the orbs in her hand, clearly juicy and a half mankind by the balls. At the same time, voices dancers are mocking themselves. Their own unhappiness softens as it satirizes the aggressive challenge to them in the choreography. This reflexivity found also in the dance brigade, diverse vocabulary, and voices treatment of spoken dance casts. Unknown Speaker 16:33 And in both groups, wonderful sense of humor creates the opportunity for dancers and viewers alike to contemplate their own cultural specificity. By getting us laughing as Dempsey did this morning, or by engaging us in the process of sorting through multiple interpretations, these dances overpower our tendency and their own to essential knowledge experience. They remind us of the particulars of our circumstances. They also remind us that women's experiences like women's bodies are protein and changeable, as are our strategies for resistance. She looks over the last few minutes to talk. Georgia I'd like to Unknown Speaker 17:43 talk a little bit about the idea that the technique used by the body either at the waist or in the wall, or seems like they're requested columns in proper order, taking the ballet technique to appeal to a large group of people, for one thing is taking on the construction that we're used to in the body, because it's a patriarchal system, which is going to go up against the like, as you said, the message that they were trying to portray, just take a trophy. And that's another message, take the message that that's assuming the body has no cultural construction, just to match that we can take this idea, the lift in the body, the further extension the vertical, and not have the meanings or associations that we normally launch with baggage. And then assuming I think taking the assumption that the voice work is, is less logical is accepting that the very dichotomy that the valet is a more logical system. Just because it's a new technique, or it's a new construction, rather than something that's closer and more intuitive Unknown Speaker 19:08 I think we're all doing the same thing. You know, that's both techniques signify different things that the wallflower order at least from this intermediary period, when I saw them and they were over there, they're brand new ballet technique, really a significantly undermine themselves. I don't think that they do so so much anymore, at least in this recent concert, because someone must have told them that their Aikido was really hot stuff, because they they put a lot of that back in their concerts and love other kinds of movement as well so that we don't see them as the National Ballet of China. Dancing the Red Guard revolution in ballet, you don't see them doing Unknown Speaker 19:57 that. I think I get a little bit more confused when you get to the voice example, to say that that's a less logical, more intuitive use of the body. Whereas it seems to me if we're maybe that's in contrast to finding valets to find the logical use, or use know, what Unknown Speaker 20:20 I'm saying is that it signifies an intuitive frame of mind. Okay? What this kind of movement makes us think is that these people are just making it up right now or just responding okay to their environments. But that's a big part of what it tends to signify for us. And me like saying is that that undermines her feminist message. Unknown Speaker 20:48 Well, but didn't you also wonder how to get away from that? Because it seems that in some ways, any system that doesn't use the predominant logical definition of logically for the Bible is going to be seen signified in context, Unknown Speaker 21:04 intuitive? Oh, well, I think she gets away from it by having your dancers talk at the same time, or by presenting on neural structures that are very open ended, so that you have all these different possible interpretations of them. Unknown Speaker 21:22 I guess it really depends on the reception of the procedure. Because I don't see it as the right word. Yeah. I mean, it's more conscious than logical, because intuitive in our bodies, I think is naturally more logical for ourselves. You know, and for, as far as being harmful to employees wearing grandiose illusions, which don't seem logical at all, in terms of I guess, I may not believe that there's an intuitive use. Oh, I don't either. Unknown Speaker 22:05 I think I think that that, that works in quaint frontiers are certain socially or culturally accepted meanings for certain uses of the body. And I think that that actually, this was birth to the same kind of contrast that I see between ballet and contacting polarization. So that that, that that free flow and that inward focus are associated with intuitive movement. And it does come as part from the actual practice, but it also then just takes on a symbolic meaning, so that Unknown Speaker 22:41 someone could get up and do Unknown Speaker 22:42 a choreographed raise that, you know, had been absolutely set and worked out beforehand, that had the sort of free flow and internal focus and, and the audience says only intuition. I mean, not not in so many words, but it didn't have that kind of communication to us. And, and Unknown Speaker 23:02 Duncan to focus is what read as intuitive way to alter the Unknown Speaker 23:11 conversation. So your particular step and someone will say, might criticize you by saying that wasn't the logical progression from the last thing you need to do, somehow, to sit you stepped out of something, instead of letting it follow its, quote unquote, natural organic horse would be against the logic of that, Unknown Speaker 23:30 yes, they wouldn't ever use the word logic, but yes, they would use the word follow through the physical momentum that is actually short for conduct and validation followed with a lot of choices where the concept of gravity and natural laws of physics assumes that kind of primacy as being something that is natural. Even though I think you can argue that it is as constructed as other uses of the body to it as an ideology is a construction Yes, and it does take a long time Unknown Speaker 24:06 and natural as far back and Unknown Speaker 24:09 that was married as as a natural Unknown Speaker 24:12 natural and therefore it somehow found the Kinect Unknown Speaker 24:19 alone on stage or just during responding to to reminder, art states that strength, strength, Unknown Speaker 24:41 control, not so much that as it does reinforce a stereotype about woman against anyone. Yes. But then if you put limited together during the interactions All women can be as strong Unknown Speaker 25:01 as man that works like Yeah. Unknown Speaker 25:06 I think what we tried that we can find is the fact that there's so much so many aspects of our lives are defined in terms of the male female dichotomy. And very important for us to move out of that dichotomy, to either do things that are imitative of a stereotype for the opposite sex, or fall into the stereotype of our own sex, and to move with something new. It's something that takes a lot of imagination. And I think a lot of pursuing different threads is, as Susan pointed out, and this will take a long time to create new forms. Unknown Speaker 25:44 Not just the creation of employment during the contract, is likely to say oh, these are two people supporting each other and help each other choose a way to be creatures, company, sisters. And a movement Unknown Speaker 26:07 quality that Unknown Speaker 26:10 we have set. The point being Unknown Speaker 26:23 that no particular technique or image or form, your has any set universal meaning and meaning, all accessible through Unknown Speaker 26:33 education Unknown Speaker 26:34 typically depends on the context to begin to feel free floating read in one way in one context, and in another. Unknown Speaker 26:47 Context, constructing new images Well, let me try to answer that and maybe relate it to the other two talks as well. I think that a contact improvisation by the 1980s really had a social base taken away from us, so that the communal living situations that a lot of people were immersed in, in the 70s, and in terms of the condition no longer existed, so that it comes in a form. And as the question is, how long can it formerly be imbued with the same power that it had earlier? The the movement itself, then can just become a medical facility, something by which you explore kind of athletic virtuosity, which is interesting, but it does not have the same meaning as inherent. There's also this whole question of the destruction of the body, it seems to me that the American body is, is highly sexually charged, and has been just almost always think of the body as a central social entity. And that when I look at other cultures, I see that that's not necessarily true. And I think it's just very hard in all of the descriptions of dance for different periods of time. Today, all these Americans get passports, cognizance of sexuality, and conflicted sexuality. He was talking about the stereotypes, his sexuality, is talking about contact improvisation in a certain transcendence of sexual worlds, because there is no gender differentiation. But in order to not have the body interpreted as being sexual, when in fact, you're lying on top of another person or roaming around the body just because COVID de sexualized into social implications can easily be removed. Now, anyone watching it, of course, you put those interpretations into it. And I find that when contact improvisation which is well done, I can see many kinds of meanings and implications and no, it's very, it's a very rich art form, that it's very easily reduced, is purely physical display candidate. Something that is just the body is asexual. It's, it's not necessarily the thinking body, even the concept of providing 60 of that, but it becomes to buy as something that performs this fantastic athletic feats, and fits it becomes co opted into an image in the 80s your body as this wonderful instrument that runs and gets itself in shape, and execute skills and keep the lines higher, we jump higher and dancers have never been effectively proficient as they've been in contact and even falling to that even though it's good provincial conception of the opposite of that is very opposite. Unknown Speaker 30:05 It's interesting to get to an image of gender equality. In that case, it seems that we've had to erase difference and erase sexuality. Unknown Speaker 30:18 Yeah, they making binaries equal means makes both kinds of these athletically effective instruments. I mean, what kind of equality is that? Basic totally? Unknown Speaker 30:35 Well, it is it is totally improvised within this very narrow structure, that the two people are supposed to maintain physical content and derive their movement sequences from the movement in space generated by human taking place. So, no, but you would certainly recognize it as contact consolidation, because it would be evolved this very particular style. So, there, there's something I should have mentioned that, for those who are just starting to look at dance, you always need to remember that is dancers, like most people usually have one said, you say, when they describe what they do, and they tell you their ideals and beliefs, and that they actually do is often something different. So contacting advisors will tell you that, that they're just improvising. And it's completely open. Of course, it has a very clear structure to it. That's just not something that was that we acknowledge very often. Well, on a regular right now, the people who do it on a regular basis already people who meet socially, in different cities around the country and engage in what they call these jams, and they're really dances people just come in and anybody can come to them. Not anymore in the 70s A lot of people performed contact improvisation and simply took what they did in a jam and didn't try to have an audience. But that that kind of demonstration performance is something that has become harder and harder to do for various reasons. I'm sure you can get some of them now Unknown Speaker 32:30 and they're also a class of class Unknown Speaker 32:31 people studying into Yes, occasionally this protected compensation performance and you would compensate advertising the Village Voice nine times, because it wouldn't be big enough to take care conditional. Compensation revisited yeah, there's a definite relationship and you're right and perceiving the similarities. More. Which is, which? Yeah, Unknown Speaker 33:23 we should say that will stick around for a while. But we would just like to thank you all. Unknown Speaker 33:32 And also, there's been a kind of interesting series this year at Columbia, sponsored by the Center for American culture studies called anti American culture curated. I'm speaking next weekend, Cynthia and a couple of weeks spending with their fliers. You can kind of see what that's about.