I know It's been a while so lets see if I can get you up to speed.
Over spring break we saw Akram Kahn at City Center, well a few of us at least. We went with the people at Visual TRaC. We had mixed opinions about the piece but that only fueled our discussions further. At some point in the past month we tried to tackle the question "What is dance?" We compared all the dance forms we saw this spring. Streb's Action Mechanics, Grupo Corpo, Jonah's motion capture, and most recently Akram Khan's dance theater piece. Can walking, sports or Streb be considered dance? what are their qualified features?
Safe to say we exhausted the subject but could not come up with a definitive answer, and it seemed that, that was a better solution than a strict definition.
Following on the philosophical trend on May 6th we saw Nora Chipaumire at DTW which featured our very own B-Mac as the post-show moderator. The following friday we were scheduled to have Nora come and talk to us but due to scheduling mix-ups it was just us, that didn't prove for much of a problem. We then tackled the process of how dancers gain exposure, how they get shows and who has the power to choose what will be presented to the public. This led us to this week's discussion of how we decide what is "good" or not? Is it based on our opinion of the piece, do we use other people's opinions to influence our decisions or do we base it on what we know and have been exposed to previously? Also do we have to like something to think it's "Good" how does that influence our reviews and opinions. This was a heated conversation at times and at others we had so many questions to ask that most went unanswered.
I think this just goes to show how many different opinions there are and that there is never one right answer, especially when critiquing something. We all have different view points and writing styles and that just makes what we write and say more important and unique. Let's face it who would want to live in a world where everyone agrees and has one view point.
Next Week we are at DTW as usual, no more shows :( , but we have guest scholar Charmaine Warren.
See You Then
P.S. Hopefully we can get out a news letter listing upcoming dance performances that we can possibly all go to together.
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