You really should read this priceless essay. Granted, we aren't specifically working on comedy, but the ideas hold quite true. Taflinger is seen as something of a genius in this area, and widely respected for his views on comedy. Sounds funny, doesn't it: making an academic study of comedy?
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~taflinge/theory.html
The link is buggy. Try copying it into your browser.
JB
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
Rehearsal vs. Exploration
One of the interesting things we are facing is the inevitable push to finalize things, rehearse them until they are performed well. The temptation to clean things up, turn them into a performance could be counterproductive. We want to make sure we continue exploring and not worry too much about 'performance' right now.
I'm blown away by how beautiful some of these past couple of sessions have been. If you haven't looked at the photos, go to our YahooGroups site, and click on the photo link at the top of the page to see Alyson's photos. The 'cell-phone ballet' is especially beautiful. It's going to be fun to project these images on the screen and play with them.
I'm feeling a very pleasant sort of settling in in this process and really look forward to our work sessions.
JB
Music Selections
The piece that sounded like a swarm of insects was called "Erin," and it was written and performed by Joan La Barbara.The piano piece was Partita #2 in C minor, BWV 826, by J. S. Bach.The piece with the soprano was the last movement of Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schoenberg.The piece with the male vocalist was the Air, "Flow My Tears," by John Dowland.The Fish song was by Mr. Scruff off a compilation called Funkungfusion. The tango and the other folksy guitar stuff and the accordian music (the waltz) were stuff I wrote.
Sara
Sara
Repeat a class to tape it
Monday (I think) 1/23/08 was the first time we used 219 and had instruments and a spectacular dance routine, but we did not tape it. It would probably be a great session to repeat with the three camera setup. Ideally Tanya could add some choreography to a setup wherein the dance routine could be recaptured dancing through the middle of musicians who would be center stage in the rear instead of on the sidelines.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Interesting Observations
What has been cool about this process so far has been the absolute riches of ideas that we have had to play with. In a strange way, I think that was one of the problems we began to face on 1/28. With so many video choices so easily available, there is a tendency to want to work through each of those effects, when what we really need to do is to stay with one video effect, for example, and really work through its possibilities.
With that understood, putting audio with our project was a lot of fun, though I think we've barely begun to scratch the surface of that medium.
Mostly, there were the absolutely eye popping, hypnotic and provocative images of the 'Hand Ballet', the cell phone video being captured by the camera, and the wonderful tango/romance performances. There was a piece of music that Sara brought that sounded like a swarm of insects and then veered off into all these interesting progressions and developments - it was my favorite piece of the session, although the tang was a close second.
We were using the Tango, of course, in a very playful manner, but in the context of telecommunication, alienation, humor, and trying to connect with people, it takes on a darker, maybe even sadder meaning.
I also love the sort of whip-sawing from one musical style to another.
Can't wait to see photos!
With that understood, putting audio with our project was a lot of fun, though I think we've barely begun to scratch the surface of that medium.
Mostly, there were the absolutely eye popping, hypnotic and provocative images of the 'Hand Ballet', the cell phone video being captured by the camera, and the wonderful tango/romance performances. There was a piece of music that Sara brought that sounded like a swarm of insects and then veered off into all these interesting progressions and developments - it was my favorite piece of the session, although the tang was a close second.
We were using the Tango, of course, in a very playful manner, but in the context of telecommunication, alienation, humor, and trying to connect with people, it takes on a darker, maybe even sadder meaning.
I also love the sort of whip-sawing from one musical style to another.
Can't wait to see photos!
Monday, January 21, 2008
Wednesday's Exercise
I'm really self-centered and narcissistic. When I stole away Jonathan, Alyson and Paul to play with some video for our piece, we left most of the class downstairs in MUS115 working on drumming, under Sara's guidance - working with a percussion teacher from the Music Department (Sara, could you please enter his name here!).
The idea was supposed to be that after Jonathan, Alyson, and Paul got the hang of working with the video, we would go down and recruit the rest of the students to come up and play with the technology. It hadn't even occurred to me that I could be interrupting Sara's work with the rest of the students. So when I got to MUS115 and signaled that we were ready for most of the class to come up to MUS 219 to play with the technology, Sara, almost timidly, asked if we should bring up the percussion instruments and put the music together with the technology.
I said to myself "Oops. I've been pretty presumptuous here." Of course, yes, absolutely, we HAVE to have the percussion there.
Wow. That was a good lesson, because bringing the percussion work Sara was doing to the video work Jonathan, Alyson, and Paul were doing was spectacular. It seemed to me that this session was a great example of what we are looking to investigate. The mixture of the percussion and it's driving, reassuring structure made the movement really natural. Then on top of that, the video images we produced were eye-popping. This was really cool.
The idea was supposed to be that after Jonathan, Alyson, and Paul got the hang of working with the video, we would go down and recruit the rest of the students to come up and play with the technology. It hadn't even occurred to me that I could be interrupting Sara's work with the rest of the students. So when I got to MUS115 and signaled that we were ready for most of the class to come up to MUS 219 to play with the technology, Sara, almost timidly, asked if we should bring up the percussion instruments and put the music together with the technology.
I said to myself "Oops. I've been pretty presumptuous here." Of course, yes, absolutely, we HAVE to have the percussion there.
Wow. That was a good lesson, because bringing the percussion work Sara was doing to the video work Jonathan, Alyson, and Paul were doing was spectacular. It seemed to me that this session was a great example of what we are looking to investigate. The mixture of the percussion and it's driving, reassuring structure made the movement really natural. Then on top of that, the video images we produced were eye-popping. This was really cool.
Movement and Meaning
As I observe our performers moving through their exercises, I am struck by the profound relationship between movement and meaning.
In older, more traditional forms, the meaning behind the movement is probably more specifically and formally defined - gestures for sadness, elation, love, inspiration, etc. As movement and dance have become more 'modernized' and 'post-modernized' the relationship between specific meanings of movement has become more sophisticated and complex.
I think particularly of the work of the German choreographer Pina Bausch and New York based Trisha Brown, both of whom have at various times been described as 'post-modernist' choreographers. They are, of course, not the only pioneers in this direction, but perhaps the best known on the world scene. Like non-narrative musical composition and other abstract forms, these choreographers often construct compositions based purely on their aesthetic sensibility, with no specific meaning behind them. With both Bausch and Brown, the results are often tantalizing, teasing, and strangely moving. But if there is a meaning drawn from their works, it is not necessarily a meaning specifically intended by the choreographer, but rather a meaning supplied by the viewer.
This is not to say that there isn't some over-arching idea or meaning, but rather an approach to that meaning that is considerably more sophisticated and subtle than simply proposing that 'a' signifies 'b'. Instead, the relationship between movement and meaning can bypass the 'either/or' bifurcation, and can instead be 'either/and' or 'neither'. But because we are 'playing' in a certain intellectual territory, there IS indeed some meaning we should consider.
As I watch Tanya work with our performers, I love the way she sort of brushes aside any specific meaning or message as she plays. The movement of bodies through space is in itself a lovely, engaging process. I don't suppose she has any specific philosophy behind her technique (or maybe she does), but rather just sets out on playing with her performers and seeing where it goes.
Or rather, it seems to me that the relationship between specific meaning and specific movement for Tanya is a very playful one - sometimes strong and specific, sometimes a bit more coquettish, sometimes teasing, sometimes simply for the joy of the movement itself.
There is an interesting side note here too: this free-form method of play never seems to dissolve into anarchy; there always seems to be an evolving structure. Also - just an observation - the wide range of movements and physical gestures suddenly morph into a formal structure the moment the gesture is repeated, especially once they achieve a second repetition of an original movement. In other words, the first time a gesture or movement is performed, it has to succeed or fail on its own. Then when that gesture or movement is repeated, once, then twice, it becomes a part of the physical 'vocabulary' of the exercise.
In older, more traditional forms, the meaning behind the movement is probably more specifically and formally defined - gestures for sadness, elation, love, inspiration, etc. As movement and dance have become more 'modernized' and 'post-modernized' the relationship between specific meanings of movement has become more sophisticated and complex.
I think particularly of the work of the German choreographer Pina Bausch and New York based Trisha Brown, both of whom have at various times been described as 'post-modernist' choreographers. They are, of course, not the only pioneers in this direction, but perhaps the best known on the world scene. Like non-narrative musical composition and other abstract forms, these choreographers often construct compositions based purely on their aesthetic sensibility, with no specific meaning behind them. With both Bausch and Brown, the results are often tantalizing, teasing, and strangely moving. But if there is a meaning drawn from their works, it is not necessarily a meaning specifically intended by the choreographer, but rather a meaning supplied by the viewer.
This is not to say that there isn't some over-arching idea or meaning, but rather an approach to that meaning that is considerably more sophisticated and subtle than simply proposing that 'a' signifies 'b'. Instead, the relationship between movement and meaning can bypass the 'either/or' bifurcation, and can instead be 'either/and' or 'neither'. But because we are 'playing' in a certain intellectual territory, there IS indeed some meaning we should consider.
As I watch Tanya work with our performers, I love the way she sort of brushes aside any specific meaning or message as she plays. The movement of bodies through space is in itself a lovely, engaging process. I don't suppose she has any specific philosophy behind her technique (or maybe she does), but rather just sets out on playing with her performers and seeing where it goes.
Or rather, it seems to me that the relationship between specific meaning and specific movement for Tanya is a very playful one - sometimes strong and specific, sometimes a bit more coquettish, sometimes teasing, sometimes simply for the joy of the movement itself.
There is an interesting side note here too: this free-form method of play never seems to dissolve into anarchy; there always seems to be an evolving structure. Also - just an observation - the wide range of movements and physical gestures suddenly morph into a formal structure the moment the gesture is repeated, especially once they achieve a second repetition of an original movement. In other words, the first time a gesture or movement is performed, it has to succeed or fail on its own. Then when that gesture or movement is repeated, once, then twice, it becomes a part of the physical 'vocabulary' of the exercise.
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