Week 3 / First Brahm's Waltz: Choroegraphy 1 with Music

Week 3 / First Brahms' Waltz: Choreography 1

Rede Matchen - With lyrics

Students were divided in smaller ensembles according to their height. There are 3 ensembles. One groups the taller students, the other the medium height and the last one groups the shortest students. It may seem arbitrary to group them that way, but at this point, with very little sense of how to create smaller ensembles, we thought that visually it would certainly make them look better. It seems as if students appreciated it.

Students, began to create movement based on the lyrics of Brahms' waltz Rede Matchen, already as smaller ensembles.

Week 2 / Andrea Seidel: Duncan 3

Walk in Beauty: Prayer from the Navajo
 

In beauty I walk

With beauty before me I walk

With beauty behind me I walk

With beauty above me I walk

With beauty around me I walk

It has become beauty again

This prayer was used by Ms. Saidel to illustrate in movement Duncan's use of Keats poem about beauty and truth.

Influence of Delsarte's Gestural Language 

Posture

Gesture

Vocal Espression

Expressivity

"Living Pictures"

Connection between Movement and Mental Attitude

Principles of Flexibility and Lightness of the Body

Art for art's sake as opposed to what it brings into focus

Body divided in head, torso and limbs = three essences of human behavior (mental, moral, vital)

Action occurred in three corresponding ways: away from the center (eccentric), balanced (normal), and toward the center (concentric).

Law of succession based on Greek statues

Body linked to to points of three-dimensional space: attraction and repulsion, fall and rise, tension and relaxation. 

 Duncan was also influenced by Stebbins's rules for artistic statue-posing by Watching in a mirror to see if she could indeed move from pose to pose in a fluid manner "as unaffected as the subtle evolutions of a serpent.

 The Dancing Women of Tanagra

Tanagra Figures of Isadora Duncan: Guardians of Isadora dancers: Dicki Johnson Macy director

Duncan's Main Interests

Link between the perfectability of the body and the perfectability of the soul
Moral function of art

Various parts of the body express emotions

Duncan made her gestures travel across a stage by means of the simple walks, runs, and skips that came easily to a naturally athletic child, by the jigs and reels her Irish grandmother knew, and by the social dances she studied and taught.

At the core of her art always lay the idea that a Delsartean gymnastics teacher had bluntly expressed in 1889: "Strength at the centre; freedom at the surface."

About the Waltzes

Deborah Jowitt in Images of Isadoe: the Search for Motion, describes the "lovely Brahms waltzes, the Schubert and Chopin pieces" by saying that the basic three-step pattern of the waltz appears in many guises. they pulse in place, rush forward, turning. She adds that "usually it's a very light and lilting thing, done mostly on the toes, but without a trace of stiffness." The robust hop-step-step-step of the polka she completely transformed - sharpening it sometimes by opposition in the arms and body, delivering it with triumphant force (jstore.org)

References

Jowitt, Deborah. Images of Isadora: The Search for MotionAuthor(s): Deborah JowittSource: Dance Research Journal, Vol. 17/18, Vol. 17, no. 2 - Vol. 18, no. 1 (Autumn, 1985 -Spring, 1986), pp. 21-29. Published by: Congress on Research in DanceStable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1478076Accessed: 25-01-2020 18:24 UTC

Week 1 / Andrea Seidel: Duncan 2

Suggested Book:

Isadora Duncan in the 21st Century: Capturing the Art and Spirit of the Dancer's Legacy

by Andrea Mantell Seidel

Part artistic study, part intimate memoir, this book illuminates the technique and repertory of American dancer Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) and her enduring legacy from the perspective of an artist and scholar who has reconstructed and performed her work for 35 years. Providing an overview of modern activities and trends in the teaching and performance of Duncan’s dance, the author describes her own work directing The Isadora Duncan Dance Ensemble, the company that sought to implement Duncan’s mission to create not a school of dance but “a school of life.”

Video:

 Lori Belilove & The Isadora Duncan Dance Company 2013-2014 Season Highlights

Notes:

Use of the solar plexus and the breath as the center of movement (Mantell Seidel  31)

Attention to the wave and the undulating line when the body is in motion (34)

The wave is not only essential principle in the movement of the upper body, but also in relation to isolated parts such as he foot and the thigh (37).

The Elgin Marbles

 

The Parthenon Marbles also known as the Elgin Marbles, are a collection of Classical Greek marble sculptures made under the supervision of the architect and sculptor Phidias and his assistants. They were originally part of the temple of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens. The Elgin Marbles were use by Duncan as reference when designing the lines of the body in movement, "seeking to discover how to make movements that would communicate, as she thought this figures did, the beauty and holiness of a human body" (LaMoche 113).

Reference

Nietzsche's Dancers: Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, and the Revaluation of Christian Values 

by K. LaMothe

Week 1 / Andrea Seidel: Duncan 1

Video: Isadora Duncan Masterworks directed by Andrea Mantell Seidel,Miami

Guest Professor: Andrea Mantell Seidel

Introduction:

ANDREA MANTELL SEIDEL is a Professor of Dance, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and founding director of the Intercultural Dance and Music Institute housed in the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University. Additionally, she serves as executive director of DanceArts Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization supporting historic dance preservation; trustee of pioneer modern dance choreographer Eleanor King’s choreographic legacy; and as artistic director of the critically acclaimed Isadora Duncan Dance Ensemble. Dr. Seidel will share with Modern Dance 4 her expertise on Duncan Technique.

Notes:

Andrea M. Seidel is a 4th generation Duncan dancer. 

The class will use waltzes to complement Duncan technique. 

Isadora's motto was "emotion before motion."

Emotion begins with the breath. 

The breath is related to the rhythm.

We gathered in a sitting circle where we began to focus of breathing.

We focused on the solar plexus using our arms and we breathed.

Dr. Seidel made reference to movement concepts based on arches and waves.

The inhale is at the top of the wave and the exhale is at the bottom of the wave. 

Waltzes are a musical examples of arches and waves. 

Video

DNB -- Brahms Waltzes (1913) by Isadora Duncan

 Notes:

The accent in the waltz is on the one (e.g. 1,2,3).

The accent in the mazurka is on the 2.

The upper body is static

The dance uses one or two arms

The skips are on the1

the steps can be large and small