7 posts tagged “dance”

Last week was horrible.  I felt like I had a midlife crisis.  Couldn't go to the Church of Ballet.  Couldn't find stability during a stormy moment in our Relationship --  Mr. ESB & I.  Couldn't do anything practically but recover and do my drug of choice:  knitting, knitting, reading, and more knitting.

I forced myself to attend a dance performance.  When I can't dance, I can't bear to see dance.  The pain of that unfinished business turns every moment of dance into a harsh, strident recrimination:  you were never good enough, you're too old, you're too fat, you didn't try hard enough, you were too lazy.

Ramaa was incredible.  She's in her 40's or perhaps even beyond and as it's written in Louise Erdrich's <The Bingo Palace>:

"When women age into their power, no wind can upset them, no hand turn aside their knowledge; no fact can deflect their point of view."

So it is with Ramaa.  She sits in the center of her power and she has so much to teach, give, and share.  She handles her body, the instrument of her art, with confidence and she communicates through words and a warm graciousness that inspire me not to give up.  Or at least, I feel happy that there are some who have not sagged under the weight of aging and responsibility.  A limp art produced if any.

I wore this part of a dance costume as street clothes for about seven years.  And now it no longer fits me.  I've laundered it so that the fabric can be disassembled and then re-assembled possibly into costumes for choreography of a fairy wedding I always wanted to stage.  That too is a dream faded with time to just an ephemeral ballet.  It seems that getting married is something my ingenue self held in relative esteem and my adult self, no longer an ingenue, realizes is not on my path.

It was another night for cooking and thus listening to public radio while hours of prep cooking goes on.  A part-time job fell through today.  Health insurance for patients of a company I was going to work for apparently has fallen apart and so I will not have 15 hours worth of work a week that I was looking forward to doing.  And so I find myself dancing again.  When I don't have as much work, I have time to dance more.  After tearing my peroneus brevis tendon mid July, I got out of shape from babying the injury.  That seemed to go on and on forever, despite the rehab exercises.  Well, it still hurts, but now I understand the good pain and the bad pain.  Good pain:  lateral ankle sore from working.  Bad pain:  ankle tendons feel like they're thinning and about to rip.

A position that challenges my ankle in robam kbech boraan (classical Cambodian dance).

We decided to save money by making our own juice from fruits given to us and by making inexpensive stews that last us for several days.  Classic stew tonight:  potato-leek stew with onion, garlic, and sausage.  Filler stew:  potatoes, zucchini, onions, garlic, corn, garbanzo beans, lentils, carrots, and sausage.  I can't express to you how inexpensive vegetables really are if you choose humble ones -- particularly if in SoCal the shopping is accomplished at an "ethnic market," meaning the local bodega or Asian market.  The quality of the produce may not be organic, but it's fresher and cheaper than at our desperation mainstays like Trader Joe's or farmer's markets.

What makes a good dancer?  A matter of taste and here at White Cloud Apsara, I get to talk about dancers I admire and why.  (This entry was also posted on www dot whitecloudapsara dot com).

Yumi Nakatani impresses me as a dancer.  She impresses other dancers.  She takes class regularly with discipline, attention to detail, focus on improvement, applying corrections, and I never see her taking off-days personally.  

Watching her dance, I immediately feel the music.  Each moment bounds with sheer exuberance.  I feel movement differently than she does, but watching her, first I feel the music, then I feel the joy, then I feel the dancing....  

It’s like reading about a country I loved to visit from the perspective of a great writer.  A writer possessed of warmth and friendliness, an attention to detail that is not fussy or precious, an openness to others:  they can do their thing around her and there is no judgment for having less technique or a heavier body or for just beginning to learn ballet.  

I am always struck by Yumi’s graciousness toward fellow dancers-- an acceptance of others, a sunniness in class and rehearsals.  Dancing.  It’s just about dancing.  That’s where her energy goes.

You know, there are a lot of dancers that have skill, that have potential, that have natural talent.  And they take that rawness and they put their energy somewhere else.  I'll save the discussion for where the energy goes for another entry.  When I look at Yumi, I see what happens when you take that energy and you focus it just on dancing.

Recently, I saw her dance the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker.  The camera my friend loaned me was a professional camera, but it wasn't designed for action photography (he's a professional still photographer).  I took 219 photos and only 1 was clearly in focus.  Looking through the 100 odd photos that weren't completely out of focus, I noticed specific ways that the camera captured Yumi's great ballet technique.

1.  Parts of her remained in focus through sequential shots.

For a camera to capture parts of her in relative focus through sequential shots means that that part of her body did not move.  You can see that when she descends from arabesque to penche or ascends from penche to arabesque:  the supporting leg stays in focus the whole time.  (Relative focus:  remember, I was dealing with low light levels and a recalcitrant camera.)  

In good technique, the dancer learns how to move in the most essential way.  Pared away are wobbles, wavering balance, fluttering affectations.  A spareness to the movements allows a great dancer to draw your attention to specific lines in the choreography:  the arabesque line, the penche line, the arch of the leg, the unfolding of the foot.  Your eye is drawn away from how the other dancer supports her with his hands or shoulder.  Your eye in fact, is drawn away from the male dancer.  In traditional ballet, the leading instrument to convey beauty is the woman, the woman in the pointe shoes dancing in the spotlight.  This means that her legs, back, and arms unfolding in space have to captivate your interest.  They do with Yumi.

Look at the height of the leg in this shot.  

Her thigh is in attitude derriere, unfolding to an arabesque.  Lesser dancers have the habit of dropping their thighs and arching their backs forward, leaving their shoulders up in a slight hunch as they go into arabesque.  A good dancer raises the leg from passe, securely through attitude, and then unfolds the leg until it is fully extended all without dropping the height of the thigh or the torso.  

This requires strength in the back muscles to keep the torso height and an even greater strength in the abdominal muscles to keep the energy lifting instead of pinching into the back or settling into the flexibility of the back.  

Having done several sessions of Thai yoga bodywork on Yumi, I can testify that her back muscles are well-developed and strong.  She has equal strength to support her flexibility and that's the key here.  Lesser dancers count on their flexibility to put them into the beautiful ballet positions.  When a lesser dancer depends on flexibility to create the line, there's something missing in the dancing:  the true strength to take the dancer further than the superficial level of line only.  

Something has to animate the dancing.  Some people call it guts.  Some people call it good technique.  As a pilates instructor, I call it a strong core.  As a dancer-choreographer, I call it great dancing and a deep sense of imagination.

2.  Her tutu stays in focus through successive shots of her turning -- whether in fouette turns or pirouettes.

When the camera captures the dancer at a slower speed than ideal for an in-focus shot, the camera becomes a stop-action photography machine on a single shot (see this grand jete that shows the ascent of Yumi's leg in the splits).  

At this speed, the camera shows if a dancer is mis-aligned in his or her turns.  If Yumi was "off," her tutu would waver up and down with shadow impressions of where the tutu had been.  You can see in these shots that her hips stay level and that her turns are secure.

3.  Phrasing.  

This is harder to see in the photos.  You can see Yumi smile and that it is genuine in these photos.  

What you can't see is that Yumi doesn't turn her performance on and off like even principal ballerinas in unnamed regional companies do.  The dancing is organic and she imbues it an unfolding development from impulse to impulse. 

There is a beginning to the movement, it has its contrasting moments (its conflict), and its surprise endings or also its ecstatic endings.  

Lesser dancers hit the poses, pull off the harder movements, but they get accused (by dance critics like Robert Gottlieb) of dancing like cardboard because watching them dance you can't feel the music in their performance because there is none.  You can't see any rhyme or reason to their difficult moves because they don't bother to invent one for themselves.  You don't get pulled in to an imaginary universe because they're not living in an alternate reality created by music, the moment, the audience, the choreography, the space.  They're counting steps and maybe thinking about a cute pair of pants at The Gap.  I'm not sure what Yumi thinks about when she's dancing but I can tell you that whatever her inner universe, it's completely the world of that particular dance as she experiences it.

The main reason why I admire Yumi -- besides the sheer pleasure watching her dance in class, rehearsal, and performance -- is because I got to watch her build herself into the dancer she is today.  I met her years ago when her muscles were not as strong nor as capable as they are today.  She is the one that put in the time, applied her teachers' corrections, watched good and bad performances, had the courage to dance differently and better than she had before each day, each week, each month, each year.  You know getting good at ballet is like being a good zen buddhist monk.  You put in time each day to practice and get better.  You don't learn how to meditate for hours in one sitting.  You build it up over time.  I have seen Yumi do that and that daily practice and discipline that has led to so much beauty and so much greatness in the dance, that I admire.  That inspires me.

Nah.  I'm a big fan of dressing comfortably so that I can move in any I want to -- big, fast, vigorous, rambunctious, sleepy -- without being hampered by my clothing.  At the same time, I LOVE beautifully constructed clothes and I LOVE fabric.

So with this flamenco-inspired ensemble of jade green rayon/polyester twill skirt, black rayon velvet jersey fringed sleeveless surplice, and acrylic lasagna scarf, the skirt is deliberately made a size and a half larger than the intended model's size, the top stretches, and the scarf adds a little vibrance so that wherever the wearer keeps the scarf, your eye goes to it.  When the model hasn't eaten for a few hours, the skirt hangs down by her hips, but after a full meal, it rides up to the waistline.  It's a zippered skirt and even if your silhouette is "rectangular" rather than "pear-shaped," it still works!  Believe me.  I'm a rectangle.  I added fringe to the top so that it lengthens the torso line and adds extra movement which detracts from how flat or tiny one's waistline is, too.  And the top is incredibly comfortable.  You can workout in it, go to the office in it, go on a date....  I hate having to change all the time into new outfits.  That just isn't practical.  Because I love fabric so very, very much, I also added more fabric than necessary by putting a long ruffle on the base of a basic straight skirt.  When you walk in the ruffled jade skirt, it walks with you and makes you more conscious of your femininity, how you move, and the weight of nice fabric against your legs and hips.

I write these things so that you can get an idea of how I envision attractive clothing for the average-sized woman.  I'm actually not in the fashion industry.  I've been in the dance performance side of things for a long time and the fitness industry, too.  I'm used to being around dancers that DO eat burritos, but its just a couple nibbles in between an arduous technique class and vigorous rehearsal.  I've quizzed a dancer/pilates instructor/model who confessed that she stopped runway modeling because she had to force herself to be so much below healthy weight that she was always crabby from being hungry.  And I've worked with pilates instructors with the "perfect body" that only eat energy bars or at our annual holiday party at a great restaurant, ate four bites of their entree, no bread, no wine and then said thank you I'm done to the waitress.  Hmm....  I actually ate my whole entree and a lot of bread.  I do exercise but more to feel calm and happy in my body, to have the great neuromuscular habits that allow me to enjoy ballet rather than feel tortured in class, and to feel confident inhabiting my body.  But I don't try to look perfect in a size 2 dress.  Nah.  I enjoy eating too much to do that.  (See previous entry.)

And that's the vision behind LotusMonkey Boho Fashion.

I'd timed the photos with the cd so that the 44 outfits worn by the 7 courageous, non professional models (all pilates instructors or clients, except for one lovely art historian) so that each model came onstage and returned taking 21 seconds each.

What happened when the show started and adrenaline kicked in was 12-17 second showings.  To make up for lost changing time backstage, a couple of the models -- who are dancers -- improvised to the music.

Obviously, this was Led Zeppelin!

And here, Gypsy Kings!  Viva Selena and Donna!  Ole!  Be inspired!  Live wild and free!

These designs pictured from the defile and all the other 44 designs can be seen on my Flickr Vision Account and are available for sale through LotusMonkey.Etsy.com

I consider this the best piece of Ung's that I've heard.  He tends to write in the avant garde classical music idiom and shows heavy influence from Twentieth Century classical avant garde masters.  I felt that having a specific ensemble for whom to compose, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and the collaborative influence of Neak Kru Sophiline, Ung narrowed his focus and developed themes better than usual.  Although looking at the sheet music with my binoculars and listening to the sopranos struggling to match each other's difficult rhythms, I felt the piece could have used at least 8 more rehearsals.  The two guest soprano singers distracted from the overall texture:  who asked for that much rich vibrato?  That's like adding cream reduction sauces heavily infused with rich Burgundies to an altogether different Asian dish based on simpler notes of tamarind paste, galangaal root, coconut milk, chicken broth, and some meat and various vegetables.  Faced with this musical experiment, how would one choreograph robam kbech boraan? The grounding rhythms and grooves of pin peat and the slightly nasal wind and vocal instruments all support the sense of vertical space that characterizes robam kbech boraan.  How would you move without it?

If I were to choreograph to the "wrong" music, I'd start off as if the music were still there.  And sure enough, there was a pin peat drummer sketching out a rhythm for certain sections of the music.  And then there would need to be a cultural collision where the traditional movements open to how "Spiral XII" chooses to evolve.  And that's what I saw.  I saw Neak Kru Sophiline extending the range of possibilities in the traditional vocabulary:  dancers linked arms and instead of gently revolving in formations, they rapidly whirled into vortices.  Where the supple hand and finger gestures, so keenly the focus and ultimate expression of flowering beauty and metaphor in robam kbech boraan became stunted in closed fists (Spiral XII referred to several episodes of life under the genocidal Khmer Rouge).  The gentle traveling step that in ballet is the buttery soft bourree is a softened, knees-bent glide in robam kbech boraan and this was used extensively to cover distances in her choreography.  

In this last step, Neak Kru showed her expertise:  no other dancer glided with the smoothness or danced with the assurance of her Eastern and Western training (she received her Masters degree in dance at UCLA).  The depth of her "plie" (bent knees), her control and mastery of gesture, her attention to detail all signified a level of awareness and care that most dancers do not possess.  The Khmer Arts Ensemble dancers certainly were game for the experiment; I could see that they were pushed and being pushed, uncertain, though serene.  I wanted something more, though, a sense of deep imagination between the dancers and the dance.  

Watching Neak Kru, I feel that she has quite an abundant imagination.  Each gesture relates to the gesture before it.  The way the gestures evolve have an internal story.  Her imagination gives the accumulation of gestures a rich significance made up of small, meaningful moments relating to subsequent and previous meaningful moments.  What brings me to tears watching Neak Kru (in orange, above) over and over again, is the sense that she brings of the space around, above, below, and beyond her own body.  She pivots in space, angling her torso, arms, and head on a diagonal slope and I see a halo the space she passes through and the circular pathway her body has carved.  When she dances, I see that she inhabits and infuses a context beyond her actual body.  And what other dancer is doing that today?  

In her prime, Darci Kistler did that.  And today?  today?   Today, I take the sacrament of daily dance practice and kneel before the fruit of Neak Kru Sophiline's work.  She can show that dance is truly a moving meditation that goes beyond mere pleasing visual spectacle or harbinger of Artist's Message.  Something else happens that is more organic and far reaching than Surface and Program Content.  And would to god that we could all practice and breathe life into art that deeply.