a sign of the Times...

looks like the New York Times is finally looking into all the online action that's been building around the dance community - here's the link for the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/29/arts/dance/29danc.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

Christmas Class

The last class of the semester will be held in Titsworth Studio starting at 2:00.

Worksheet info...

courtesy of cavin,
here are the readings for this semester -
let us know if we missed anything!

• The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society by Norbert Wiener
• The Human Touch: Towards a Historical Anthropology and Dream Analysis of Self-Acting Instruments by Allen Feldman
• Critical Moves by Randy Martin
• Interactive Motion Generation from Examples by Okan Arikan and D.A. Forsyth
• Choreography As a Cenotaph: The Memory of Movement by Gabriele Brandstetter
• Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Part 3) by Michel Foucault

Dance Tech!

She's a Dancing Machine

Next friday Julie Cruse will be joining us. Julie comes from Ohio State University's Experimental Media and Movement Arts Lab and is the architect of VICKI, Virtual Improvisational Choreographer / Kinetic Instructor. VICKI, or Choreobot, is a dance machine that uses verbal commands to guide its subject through a structured improvisation.



VICKI says:

“Choreobot is designed to challenge a dancer’s movement skills, and asks the dancer to draw upon advanced improvisational interpretation. I am programmed to make dances using theme and variation as prescribed by my creator. I use textbook dance methods, but - I am unpredictable. The dancer will demonstrate as I begin my next new dance.”

Among other things, Matt Gough says "there is a wealth of research waiting to be uncovered in this work" and we will get to be be a part of that.

As I mentioned in class, Julie Cruse has very strong desires about how she would like to progress the field. Currently she sees stagnation in the research. When asked "What is dance technology?" she replied:

When I hear dance and tech, I think - it better not be ANOTHER interactive audio/video environment.

It better not be ANOTHER...

dance contextualized by projected videos
dancer controlled by robotics or sensors
improvisation in real time that composes the score
motion capture in real time translated to animated projections
wearable technologies that do something with sound or video
animated avatars in second life
real time "telematic" improvising

SLC Map

Jerome Robbins in high tech...

Hey all,
i thought you might find this interesting - it looks like a really interesting project in terms of how they're shooting it and then publicizing it online. Also, issues of ownership over choreography/artistic ideals? "Modernizing" our past? What do you think?

http://www.opusjazz.com/Watch/Documentary.html

The Reality of the Virtual

Today everybodys talking about virtual reality but I think frankly virtual reality is a rather miserable idea. It simply means let's reproduce in an artificial digital medium our experience of reality. I think that a much more interesting notion, crucial to understand what goes on today, is the opposite, not virtual reality but the reality of the virtual.
Slavoj Žižek

Rosencrantz

We are programming automata in secret code.

The Society of Spectacle

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation mediated by images.
Guy Debord

text
film

Masters and Slaves

Another performance technology class blog.
http://mastersandslaves.blogspot.com/

phantom dancers.

I was really struck by the initial images of Forsythe’s work that were described in the reading. The use of shadow helps to distort the audience’s perception. Only parts of each dancer’s body can be seen. They are never whole. To me it almost seems as if the dancers are not really there at all and the audience is just creating this piece from their own memories. They are assembling flashes of body parts. They are not really certain about this memory which is why they cannot picture the dancer as a whole. They are trying hard to recall but cannot.
Why we are so interested in distorting the images that we see? I think that this ability that we have is incredible; the ability to change people’s perceptions. Easily, we get bored or in some way dissatisfied with the reality that we are given or with the way things are presented. So, what do we do? We mess around with it.

aka interactive tools

Masayuki Akamatsu of IAMAS has made these interface tools for Max freely available.

Items I am looking forward to using.

• aka.appleremote ... handles the data of Apple Remote by deactivating Front Row.
• aka.bookmotion ... retrieves the SMS (Sudden Motion Sensor) data.
• aka.listen ... recognizes human spoken words through microphone input.
• aka.speech ... reads aloud text.
• aka.wiiremote ... handles Nintendo Wii Remote.
• aka.iphone ... send/receive messages using iphone touchscreen interface

I need a wii controller and an iphone.

Blogs about blogs about blogs

Doug Fox of greatdance.com writes
How Can Dance-Tech Community Embrace the Internet?
on the dance-tech listserve
asking why we are the only dance tech class in the blogosphere

A map of the blogosphere

Graph Dance 1.0 to 2.0

Above is a video artifact from last year's version of the dance-grapher. Below is a written artifact to elaborate some of the ideas at work. Now that we are building the better/stronger/faster version of this machine it might be worth while to make sure you have wrapped your head around the project.

You should be able to

• imagine state-space
  
• understand still poses represent points in state-space
• understand movement represents paths in state-space
• understand a vocabulary of possible movement represents a surface in state-space
• sketch a movement graph and "walk" all of its paths
  

Dance is a space craft and space is complex. Physics gives us powerful abstract representations of space that can be useful in this navigation. The trick is to exploit dimensionality.

Consider the simple one dimensional system, a bead on a wire. We can use one number to track its position. In a three bead system we would need 3 numbers. The state of this system could be represented by a single point in a 3-D space where the x,y and z coordinates correspond to the position of each bead. By extension the state of a 10 bead system could be represented as a single point in a 10-D space.

Many articulated systems are modeled this way, including proteins, robotic assemblies, and the human body. A human skeleton’s position, orientation and articulation is reasonably approximated by a single point in a 90 dimensional space.

Here is a graph representing the articulation of the leg in a cyclic motion. The 3-D state space is constructed using coordinate axes to mark hip, leg and foot angles.

Idea 1:
At any instant, the physical state of a body can be represented by a point in a high dimensional abstract space. This is a state space.

Muscular, gravitational, structural, environmental and inertial forces accelerate the body through different states. In dancing, the body freely navigates the continuum of states, and over time, carves an extrusion of them. Back in state space, this extrusion maps to a line of connected state points. This line points forward in time; it is directed. This line has no breaks, says Zeno, since moving from one state/point to another means passing through all the states/points in between.

Idea 2:
The changing of a body’s state carves a directed path in state space. Here dancing is a form of path making, a line of flight in space.

We use maps to navigate this space. The study of dance is a kind abstract cartography. Places in space are identified and named. Standing upright is a place and the name of that place is first position. Whenever I come to first position, or move through first position, I use it as a landmark to get my bearings. I know many paths that come to that place and many paths that leave from it. It is well mapped and has many crossings.

Idea 3:
Learning to move is a form of cartography. Identifying places in state space gives us the capacity to know where we are and where we can go. We drop breadcrumbs as we dance, and like Hansel and Gretel, hope to find these crumbs again so that we might make our way through the forest.

We all dance in the same abstract space and collaborate in its mapping. Since no one person can inhabit all parts of this space we expand our understanding of it by reading the maps of others. Dance is a space craft and we navigate it collectively.

Algorithm: Tony Schultz
Dancers: Hadar Ahuvia, Ashley Byler, I’Nasha Crockett, Jessica Long, Erin Reck, Sarah Richison, Sarah Rosner and Lily Susskind.
Music: “Diss Location” by High Alert Status

What's your artifact and why is it an antique?

In looking at the pictures that sue posted (in particular the body as locus of memory) i was struck by the extents people have gone to find ways to memorize and retain information.

In Emily's improv class we've been working from the organ systems and their corresponding meridians. Again and again I am impressed and surprised by how often the path of a meridian or acupressure points are points or lines that multiple of us have been accessing and massaging nearly all of our lives to deal with very specific issues, all without a direct knowledge of what we were doing. It's amazing!

Compare that (and all these memory retaining techniques) to this idea that one of the greatest steps is human evolution was when we as humans began to write things down so we wouldn't have to remember them so we could in turn think more...and where does it take us? To me, it seems like it provides us with the benefit of having a colossal base of knowledge potentially available to us, with the drawback of a) becoming apathetic to the knowledge that isn't immediately presented to us and, b) becoming somewhat dependent on the ability to store everything we create (ideas, languages, paintings, dances) somewhere else.

So in my mind, that brings us to the present - where we are in some way, thinking too much and creating too much to be contained, and have a need hardwired into our system to put it somewhere else. Making dances with huge amounts of knowledge, material, process - whatever you want to call it (at this point i'm referring to the movement of a piece as the viscera, and any meaning/process/ideas/etc. as subviscera or "subvisc") is a complex process to say the least. However, our ways of containing and preserving dances have not evolved
at the rate that our hardwiring has...which brings us back to this problem of how to truthfully capture dance - what are our artifacts? antiques? notation systems? preservation modules? re-teaching methods? And more importantly, are they 100% exactly what we want them to be for us? Of course not. Let's get started, we have so much work to do!

артефакта, lost in transcription?

riffing off Rosner
and Tony
Matt Gough writes
http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/post/18339238

about:

• preservation
• artifact
• cartography
• writing
• choreography
  

Loci

Body as Memory LocusLanguage Architecture
Ramon Lull's Combinatoral Decoder Ring as a Mneumonic Device
Architectural/Mechanical/Linguistic Technology as Memory Device

Memory Space

Johannes Romberch's Memory LocusLeonardo's Vitruvian Man

Vitruvius' Roman Theatre

Reading Highlights

Choreography As a Cenotaph: The Memory of Movement by Gabriele Brandstetter


In dissecting a text, or a dance, sometimes it helps to start simply by recalling your favorite fragments. Since blue is my favorite color I will quote using it.

Forsythe's Limb's Theorem is described as "a theatre of the memory of movement"
pg 104

re: Rosner's interest in supplemental material
"The programme booklet is part of this choreographic theorem"
describing the booklet's graphs/graphics/geometries/incisions
"Choreography - as a sketching of paths, as cartography -is 'folded' into these pages."
pg 106

"As well as meaning 'extremity', the word 'limb' (deriving from the Latin limbus = 'hem' or 'edge') also designates the form of the circle and arc in instruments used for measuring and drafting angles."
Cartography - Notation and Memory of Movement
Palace of Knossos, Ariadne, labyrinth, thread, Daedalus, Minotaur
"All memory is spatial."
pg 108

Henri Bergson on image/movement
Domenico de Piacenza on image/movement (memoria and fantasma)
pg 110

mnemonotechnics
quoting Forsythe program "your kinesphere functions as a memory"
pg116

$entence
"The 'transhuman' re-embodiment of the moving body in cyberspace perhaps marks a further station in the instumentalisation process of cultural history, in the development of technologies which Michel de Certeau termed 'the apparatuses of incarnation'."
pg118

"As an everyday activity, walking becomes a patern of choreography as cartography: an act of describing paths of motion and their crossings; nothing less than a mapping"
pg120


Themes
choreography as graph making, map making, cartography
memory is spatial
body as locus for memory
memory involves the image/movement binary
dance and choreography in the mneumonotecnical matrix

Artifacts of Dance

Hey guys,
In doing the reading, i got especially interested in the discussion of making artifacts of dance.
Since i'm doing a thesis that focuses largely on that, it was (of course) extremly on my mind, but i found the way that it was discussed different from a lot of other things that i'd read.

Specifically, the idea that writing about a dance (or any other kind of translation/preservation) is a second type of "choreography" struck me as interesting, if not a little problematic. For me, it brought up issues of ballance between the original work and the preserving element. Should the element be invisible? Another work of art in it's own right? What is more helpful and "truthful" to the dance that's being preserved. And then, what's the best way to preserve dance? writing? video? motion capture? everything is problematic and there is clearly no right answer.

Anyways, that's just what jumped out at me.
How do all of you go about preserving your work? What seems most truthful to you?

food for thought

If we've been initiated into self-surveillance, can we ever really get out of that system/"the panopticon" . . . ?? What other behaviors do we automatically participate in once we are trained to practice self-surveillance? (the surveillance of others? comparisions of self to others or others to others? obedience to authority?)

Another question:

We talked about groups such as myspace and facebook and the illusion of being in the surveillance tower of one's own panopticon - that illusion of control, in a sense. Or that real control?

Well, those particular online communities have certain steps that you can take to ensure that only people you allow to look at you can see you and surveille your activity. What if someone is watching your online activity without your permission? How is this different from hidden cameras, phone taps, or someone following you around? How is it the same?

Thanks!

Constant Surveillance?

After our discussion last class I was left wondering if we are ever not being watched.
Are we under constant surveillance? I don’t mean to sound paranoid but I think there is always some sort of surveillance going on, whether it be from an outside source or internal. With this constant surveillance then comes constant judgment; from others but mostly from ourselves. The harshest judgments often come from within. So then in regards to the structure of the “panopticon” if we are watching ourselves would the tower be located within the cell itself? Or is the cell in the tower? We are simultaneously in the tower and in the cell? I think that it is difficult to make a distinction between the watcher and the one being watched. It is difficult to assign one role because we are constantly functioning under both. We cannot escape being watched because we are in the end watching ourselves, probably more than any one else is watching us to begin with.

Kunst und Wunderkammer

1655 Museum Wormianum

cabinet of curiosities
aka
art (kunst) and (und) wonder (wonder) cabinet (kammer)

Anatomy Theatre

Leiden Anatomy Theatre circa 1610

The City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella

It is divided into seven rings... the higher and lower walls of the city to be adorned with the finest pictures, and to have all the sciences painted upon them in an admirable manner.
1602 The City of the Sun

Memory Theatre of Guillo Camillo

They say that this man has constructed a certain amphitheatre, a work of wonderful skill, into which whoever is admitted as a spectator will be able to discourse on any subject no less fluently than Cicero...The work is of wood,marked with many images, and full of little boxes; there are various orders and grades in it. He gives a place to each individual figure and ornament.
1532 letter from Vigilus to Erasmus

Insect-icon

Hi there, everyone. So I saw this exhibit by Huang Yong Ping when I was living in Vancouver, BC last year. His work deals a lot with power & dynamics, within people, society, cultures etc... It just struck me that this particular work is quite the representation of the panopticon, primarily in structure, but also because it contains live insects that are aware they are being observed, but not of the meaning/consequences/idea of the observation... because, you know, they're insects! There was a huge controversy over this showing - the Humane Society was concerned re. its ethical validity, if correct care being taken of the insects, etc. These images should give an idea of what it looked like:



Image:
Huang Yong Ping, Theater of the World, from Theater of the World--Bridge Is Theater of the World an insect zoo? A test site where various species of the natural world devour one another? A space for observing the activity of “insects”? An architectural form as a closed system? A cross between a panopticon and the shamanistic practice of keeping insects? A metaphor for the conflicts among different peoples and cultures? Or, rather, a modern representation of the ancient Chinese character gu¹? —HYP

1. Composed of three insects superimposed upon a plate, the character gu means vicious things or evil spells.

Also: Huang’s Theater of the World (1993) takes one of its clear references from Bentham’s panopticon, its radial arrangement of cells strikingly resembling Bentham’s description. (See also BESTIARY, GU, and XUANWU.) There is, however, no central observation tower. The main space [where the observer stands], in fact, more closely resembles that of a coliseum or an amphitheater. The activation of the work—living animals and insects left to a gladiatorial relationship of slay or die—indeed resembles the theater of spectacle of a Roman or Neoclassical kind rather than the disciplinary institutions of modern society. One possible closer representation may be Coup d’oeil du Théâtre de Besançon by French Neoclassical architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1804). Thus, Huang’s own panopticon may very well be an inverse of Foucault’s contention of the modernity of our social experience: “We are much less Greeks than we believe. We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism...Huang sees the expansive, simultaneously modern and antimodern potential of this metaphor when he reads his own work as “a cross between a panopticon and the shamanistic practice of keeping insects.” ” (See http://visualarts.walkerart.org/oracles/details.wac?id=2229&title=Lexicon for further references to Panopticon, Foucault, etc).

The power (and pitfalls) of watching/mirrors...

Hey guys,
Rose Anne passed this on to me, but i thought you might find it interesting.

http://www.charactermotion.com/gallery/index.html

It's a motion-capture based form of choreography technology (similar to the "Life Forms" program that Merce uses) but really designed from a ballet standpoint.

If you go to the website, you can download a 20-day free trial of it, which is pretty cool. As i was playing around with it, it struck me as a really interesting extension of part of the reading for this week.

Randy Martin spoke to the dancers relationship with the mirror a great deal, noting that "the culture of the mirror" (162) dictates a progressive evolution through the class, where the dancers at first is very dependent on the mirror and wedded to the process of self-correcting via mimesis. However, as Martin notes, through the class the dancer must separate themselves more and more from the mirror if they truly want to move, or as he says, "when [movement is] generalized from the mirror to appear anywhere, what allows dancers to 'attack' the movement, in the sense of moving as if they already had the authority or approval of correctness that they sought." (162)

This idea of having to progress from the visual to the visceral to find the authority over the movement struck me again when playing with my demo of the dance forms program. To me (and this is of course me as a dancer who is more used to classes without mirrors than with, and doesn't use the mirror at all to choreograph) it felt that the attempt to set movement visually on a form (form especially - because the program doesn't ascribe to the reality of what bodies can and can't do, it lacks humanness) was somehow missing the point. For a ballet, fine. To play around with, fine. But for making modern choreography? My modern choreography?
The word that I kept coming up with was lie. While i can see the value of a program like this, especially for aging choreographers such as Merce, it just felt so wrong for my body and my mind.

Again, that returned me to Randy Martin's analysis of the mirror-based class structure, and left me wanting his analysis on non-mirror classes. Personally, I feel that class devoid of mirrors allows the mind to accept that all of the class is "the dancing part" and continually reminds me to disassemble the hierarchies of what is "dance" and what is "technique", but I would love to get an outside view on it.

We talked a lot in class today about panoptic structures, but we only touched on how these affect performer and viewer.

As a performer, I know I am being watched (or at least there is that potential.) Usually, I can only see a few audience members, if any, but I know they are there watching. In that sense, it must be like being in a cell in the panopticon, albeit with a difference of intention. I am performing because I choose to, the prisoner or patient or pupil does not have a choice.

I think for the most part, the audience is happy when they are invisible; it is comfortable to observe without being noticed. I equate this to the popular past time of people-watching. I feel perfectly at ease staring at interesting people until they stare back. As an audience member, my invisibility has been a comfort; I could yawn, roll my eyes, fall asleep, smile, laugh, cry and keep these actions more or less to myself. Even when I have been asked to participate in the performance by reading, waving, or closing my eyes, I do not feel highly visible because of the structure of the stage.

Panopticism

Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon is pictured here. The plan consists of a ring of cells built around a central tower from which all the cells can be seen. Foucault writes, "They are like so many small cages, so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible." Visibility, as Meghan noted in class, makes one take responsibility for their own subjection.

He who is subjected to the field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play simultaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection. Discipline and Punish 202

This assembly is a dance technology. On April 28th and 29th 2007 Martha Williams directed and performed in a dance installation entitled Stacked, converting an out of business clothing store into a surveillance menagerie. Each dancer took residence in one of a dozen changing rooms which they themed and designed the interiors of. In the main room camera feeds from each room were composed and projected so that all of the dances could be seen at once.

The geometry of the panoptic (one seeing many) inverts that of spectacle (many seeing one). For example, compare the structure of the Panopticon to that of the Globe Theater.
Lets investigate how architectures of performance and surveillance resonate against each other.

In each system:

1. what travels/flows from the center to the periphery?
2. what travels/flows from the periphery to the center?
3. how does visibilty/invisibility effect each of these flows?

In general:

1. identify a contemporary structure or phenomenon with panoptic features
   
2. find another way to structurally or functionally invert the panopticon
3. find another way to structurally or functionally invert the theater/arena

Remember to be thoughtful in your response. You never know who is watching our blog.

Motion Active Recording

Here is a clean version of the patch we worked on together. This machine records when their is motion and stops when there is no movement. It captures only the changes. This is an effective surveillance technology. In the comments section you will find the code.

Copy the code into the computer's "Clipboard" like you were going to copy and paste the text.

Open up MMJ and goto File:New_from_Clipboard

There's your patch. Press "esc" for full screen. Play with it.

Record a dance.

Use jit.submatrix or jit.scissors or jit.split just upstream of "motion_detector" in order to make only part of the screen motion sensitive.

Record a dance with your mutated system.

The Slip

Locating dance within Foucault's framework of docility is both difficult and provocative. In attempting to pin dance to this trellis it becomes apparent that dance is slippery and cannot be easily categorized. It is clear however that discipline and dance are deeply entangled. Natasha spots this in the body of the soldier.

These men of the 17th-late 18th centuries were molded into figures with upright postures, programmed steps and structured attitudes; compare to ballet, especially, where all of these are instructed from an early age. Even the goals are similar - achieving honour and respect (of movement), grace, alertness, agility and strength. The quote on pg. 136: "A body that is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved", is applicable to any dance class or performance, even improvisational. We are constantly subjecting our bodies to our aspirations and limitations, using the body and our knowledge to further its abilities for the task at hand, transforming it (whether in attitude or structure) to execute movements and improving it for the short-term goals and the long-term benefits.

Foucault opens his section on docile bodies with a reading of Montgommery's 1636 military manual La Milice francaise. It's description of the dancerly pikeman, who 'will have have to march in step in order to have as much grace and gravity as possible' resonates with Thoinot Arbeau's dance manual Orchesographie. Written less than 50 years earlier, it had illustrated the strong linkages between choreography in the court and on the battlefield.

Thinking that making a dancer is just another instance of creating a docile subject (be it a soldier, factory worker, school child, or mental patient) can be uncomfortable to say the least. Janet points out how subtle power mechanisms can operate to form the subject.

For example the idea of coercion - that the power structure is being so fully and well imposed because of the fact that it's being slipped in the back door, so to speak. "Small acts of cunning endowed with a great power of diffusion, subtle arrangements, apparently innocent, but profoundly suspicious," (p. 139). It's not being beaten into people, it's "proper" execution is being rewarded. It is being made convenient. I think that these ideas have a very great relationship to the more "open" versions of modern and contemporary dance technique. Even when we are not working from highly stylized and codified techniques, we are still being instructed by a teacher, being ordered into levels, being auditioned for placement and so on. Therefore if we are properly disciplined in WHATEVER is the "proper" kind of "technique" (even if that is merely a general body awareness?), we are being subject to a certain power structure based on WHO decided what is "proper".

We are inside a discipline machine with all of the spatial and temporal markers Foucault describes. This class demonstrates that. A component of the dance {1,2}/3 or graduate study in the department of dance at Sarah Lawrence College. The class is physically located in a distinct place within a time table. The time and space within the class is also divided and in doing so controls the physical activities of the participant bodies. Some stand, some sit, some on the floor, some on chairs, some speak, some erase, some write and some read. We move inside the computer for a spell. Then there is time and space designated for dancing. Our bodies and activities are seem well placed within space, time and the structure of the academy.



But, Sarah Rosner pushes back with a contrarian maneuver.

I think the thing that hit me most about the idea of discipline via the control of movements is how much i DIDN'T feel like it applied to my experience of dance.

And Sarah Richison voices related discontent, but finds in it a contradiction.

say you revolt. are no longer docile. escape from prison. you find some way to do some other dance. so you move off and do your own thing and someone follows you. someone wants to do your dance. are you then the new discipline? yes. you have manipulated their body, right.

For those of you who were looking for straight answers I fear that we have none. Instead we are left with a set of contradictions and a general understanding that dance is slippery, at times obedient and located, at other times disobedient and dislocated.

Here are one, two, three, four dances, two made inside the institution and two made outside. Dissect them with regards to this contradiction between dance's discipline and disruption.

Creativity & Education

Hi everyone! Just wanted to post this, if you have any time for weekend viewing. It's a fantastic speech on education and creativity... it's about 20 mins long but definitely worth watching. In keeping with our interests in dance, creativity, education, and even discipline!

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

Enjoy, and have a great weekend:)
N.

mildly organized thoughts

I found myself relating very much to the article as a dancer. In contrast to Sarah Rosner, I have spent much of my dance career taking ballet, jazz and classic modern dance techniques. I was very much reminded of ballet, but I was also reminded very much of classic modern dance techniques! Consider a Graham class: it is not enough just to contract and release. One must cup the hands just so, tilt the head just so, as was the case in many of the directions for activities in the reading.

Also, I was reading information on Laban (as many of us were) for Rose Anne at the same time. The specificity in Laban's work could be used to the same end! And consider how much more disciplined dancing bodies could become if we all worked from highly specific notations!

Despite the obvious links to classical technique, I found certain other ideas even more interesting to consider. For example the idea of coercion - that the power structure is being so fully and well imposed because of the fact that it's being slipped in the back door, so to speak. "Small acts of cunning endowed with a great power of diffusion, subtle arrangements, apparently innocent, but profoundly suspicious," (p. 139). It's not being beaten into people, it's "proper" execution is being rewarded. It is being made convenient. I think that these ideas have a very great relationship to the more "open" versions of modern and contemporary dance technique. Even when we are not working from highly stylized and codified techniques, we are still being instructed by a teacher, being ordered into levels, being auditioned for placement and so on. Therefore if we are properly disciplined in WHATEVER is the "proper" kind of "technique" (even if that is merely a general body awareness?), we are being subject to a certain power structure based on WHO decided what is "proper".

Also, Foucault talked about scenarios in which individuals were more fully controlled when their superiors created living arrangements for them to remain grouped together and within the confines of the institution. This is most perfectly exemplified in colleges and universities. It is also exemplefied in the traditional arrangements of dance festivals. You travel to the festival, and you live and work with dancers, in the place where the dancing happens, for as long as you remain at the festival. This can also happen when a company tours - wherever they go, their bookings are together. You are never separated from your fellow dancers. Or the choreographer.

Which brings me to my most troubling point. How does one act as a choreographer and not play into this power dynamic? Regardless of what technique or style one is working in, choreographers tend to want specificity from their dancers. I know I do. But attention to detail is, according to Foucault, one of the greatest arenas for control. In an article I read this summer, Anne Bogart wrote, "Art is violent. To be decisive is Violent. . . . To place a chair at a particular angle on the stage destroys every other possible choice, every other option." Choreographer Stephanie Skura wrote in "The Politics of Method": "Dance is political not only because of its subject matter but because of the way dances are made, how they are structured, and what they show about people relating to each other." She goes on to discuss the manner in which dances are traditionally made: an idea, often even including movement/steps, comes from the choreographer, who then sets it on the dancers. So the dancers are doing her/his idea, and often even her/his steps. She questions, I believe rightly so, how a dance with liberal subject matter and ideas can be made with a conservative use of bodies - how a dance can be "about" not exploiting individuals, when all the dancers line up and move in unison or careful canon in traditionalist spatial design.

There are other ways to think about dance and power relationships, however. As Sarah Rosner pointed out, more and more dancers ARE being asked to be part of the creative process, to improvise, etc. Even the idea in modern dance that anyone who can dance can make dances is infinitely more democratic (in its true sense) than ballet traditionally has been.

There is definitely power that a dancer gains by having a "disciplined" body. The greater a dancers awareness of her own body in space and time is, the greater her own capabilities to make decisions with it are. Even in a class or a traditional choreographic setting can be seen this way. If a dancer has training in multiple forms and styles, is versatile, then she can choose to portray a choreographer or teacher's directions in any of those ways. For example, in any given combination, I have the power to control whether my foot is pointed flexed, winged, sickled, relaxed, or in constant motion. The teacher or choreographer can present me with directions and images, but ultimately, I have enough control over my own body to make a choice about the status of my foot. I can choose to disobey.

This calls to mind Teaching Conference. Rose Anne has been describing the teaching of creative movement to young children as a process of guiding them to their own movement and their own creativity (as opposed to giving them steps). Similarly, I overheard Barbara talking to one of the ballet 3 students, telling her that her goal is to lead the students to the place where they can be asking the questions of technique for themselves, and she doesn't point out the questions, but rather just helps guide them to the answer that works for them. Emily has said similar things to me. Sarah Lawrence, I find, is an interesting institution in that it guides you through self discovery. Yet it is a long standing institution. I'm not sure how I reconcile these ideas yet.

I feel as though I'm starting to ramble, so I'll just say one more thing:

I am frightened by how docile we have become as a people. Granted, we no longer sit "just so" at our desks. But generations of training and docility have effectively bred rebellion and dissention out of us, I fear. (I'm sure this also has to do with the disappointments of past rebellions and revolutions - such as the deaths of JFK, Dr. King, and RFK in such short succession during the '60s). We are so docile that we are apathetic. We don't know how many of our rights are being usurped in this time of war, and we don't care to find out. I think that being part of the internet generation affects our apathy as well. We post a bulletin on facebook or myspace instead of going to a rally. I am sure that books could be written on the correlations between apathy and the under-active, undersocialized bodies of our current age.

I think that's it for now.

Thought this might be interesting

Hey guys -

I found it on free NYC, and it looks pretty cool.
Have you heard anything about this Tony?
Post of the reading to follow (soon, i promise!)
- Sarah A.O.

Interference Opening

Date: Thursday, September 27th - Nov. 10th
Time: 6:00pm
Location: Eyebeam (540 West 21st St)
Cost: Free

"Eyebeam is pleased to present Interference, the second in a series of three group shows commemorating the organization's unique role in supporting artists experimenting with, and critically examining, the impact of new technologies in creative endeavor. The show will feature eleven artists and collectives whose projects tackle the ever-shifting boundaries between public and private space and consider the ways in which these limits are understood, utilized and represented. Employing a diverse array of media and strategies including data visualization, performance, community engagement and intervention, the artists address issues of autonomy and access, in some cases becoming actors within the very environments they describe." The opening reception will be followed by a live VJ performance as collective montage by Angie Eng, Benton-C Bainbridge and Caspar Stracke. All Ages

Docility and Dancenicity

So here are some of my thoughts on the first part of the assignment: Relating dance to Foucault's "Docile Bodies". I was intending it to be short, but somehow I predict that shall not actually happen!
I initially did not think it would be easy to compare an article on discipline and punishment with dance... how would the writing give me material to work with in regards to an ART form? However, as I started reading phrases and words began to jump (jete?) out at me: "grace", "power over the active body", "art over the human body", "details", "distribution in space". These are just a few of the many I actually underlined. If you were reading those words out of the context of the article, what subject matter would automatically come to your mind?
I found the section regarding the making of the soldier's body to be very applicable to how we work with our bodies as dancers. These men of the 17th-late 18th centuries were molded into figures with upright postures, programmed steps and structured attitudes; compare to ballet, especially, where all of these are instructed from an early age. Even the goals are similar - achieving honour and respect (of movement), grace, alertness, agility and strength. The quote on pg. 136: "A body that is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved", is applicable to any dance class or performance, even improvisational. We are constantly subjecting our bodies to our aspirations and limitations, using the body and our knowledge to further its abilities for the task at hand, transforming it (whether in attitude or structure) to execute movements and improving it for the short-term goals and the long-term benefits.
Foucoult discusses discipline as domination. Although I cannot make any perfectly tangible connections here, I did think that his notes regarding obtaining effects of utility through the elegance of discipline (pg. 137) inspired a similarity to be reached between this and the use of discipline to attain the aesthetic rewards that dance has to offer. Dancers and choreographers
can work themselves to the bone to discover the most fleetingly beautiful line, moment of contact or significant gesture, but that feeling of having utilised our body and accomplished this makes every second of frustration and pain worth having lived through.
To move into choreography for a bit, the development of discipline reminded me of the development of modern dance. They both originated in scattered locations, were prone to imitation (e.g. Ruth St. Denis imitating dances of various exotic cultures), were distinguished from each other by their applications (Anna Pavlova creating ballet's accessibility throughout the world, the disparity between Martha Graham's use of breath versus Doris Humphrey's), and both adopted their own methodologies (Cunningham/Limon/Balanchine technique). Dance, also, was "adopted in response to particular needs" (pg. 138) - Isadora Duncan's need to create simple dance as expression; Graham's need to develop a representation of modern/current America through dance, while using it to deal with the advent of world wars.
Towards the end of the article, Foucoult describes how activity was controlled. In ''The temporal elaboration of the act'', there is a description of requisite steps for marching troops of the mid-eighteenth century. The detail of the measurements, time and movements involved is astounding. It is comparable to any advanced ballet class or staging of a work such as Humphrey's ''The Shakers''. It can even be applied outside the art of dance - for example, to playing one of Rachmaninov's Piano Concertos. It is that level of exactitude, required to provide the quality and expression desired.
It is possible to draw comparisons to dance through mentions of distribution in space and/or relation to other objects in space (pgs. 141 & 164), especially as far as creating and observing choreography is concerned. An aspect of rhythm can be inferred from the discussion - "the place [the body] occupies, the interval it covers, the regularity, the good order according to which it operates its movements". Instead of reading that the body can become part of a machine, we can think of it as part of an impressive piece of group choreography, whether in unison or not (this especially resonates for me after watching 'Water Study' & 'Chronicles' today in Dance History class!)
Discipline, in no matter what context, provides humanity with a framework... a structure, if you will. It institutes foundations and principles which can be utilised to gain knowledge. This can be applied to any aspect of life, whether as one that exhibits these qualities or does not. It was especially poignant to read this on a level where dance could be discovered within the words. I just find that I am refreshed to think that fortunately, dance today has many aspects which use discipline in a less invasive fashion. Modern techniques exist that are based on natural states of breath and emotion. Ballet companies finally are learning to prioritise the health of their dancers. Therefore, while discipline of the techniques can still be retained, the discipline of the humanity and art involved is constantly being redefined.
In a coda of a conclusion, one last little thought from pg. 141 that made me chuckle: "Napolean did not discover the world; but we know that he set out to organise it". And what better prominent dance figure does that portrait of a major historical disciplinary figure bring to mind, than the man who decided to codify and organise dance... Rudolf Laban!

-- Natasha:)

Simple Timing

Here are two simple timing mechanisms. Build both of them and explain what they do. The code for these is in the comments section of this post.

Which do you think is better (more computationally efficient) ? Build a simple mechanism using two "line" objects to have a number go from 0.0 to 2.0 in 5.5 seconds and then back from 2.0 to 0.0 in 2.0 seconds.

Read the help patch for "line" to start you on your way.

Dance is a Discipline

Here are pictures left out of the English edition of Foucault's Discipline and Punish. You can see them all HERE.

Okay smarty pants, a few questions:
What does Foucault's section on docile bodies have to do with dance?
What does it have to do with technology?
What does it have to do with pedagogy?
What does it have to do with power and politics?
What kind of power does our dance technique give us?

Extra credit:
Find Arbeau's 1589 dance manual online.
Post some of its pictures and use some language to put it in the context Foucault's docile bodies.

Welcome

Hello everybody. This is where we are going to conduct out of class discussion. Everyone should check their email to get the invitation to the blog. Follow the link in the email to open your own blogger account. Then you will be able to contribute to this conversation.

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Now check out the comments section below to see some more action.