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Hip hopping out

This will be my FINAL blog post for Dance History 2. Hope no one is too sad... I know I’m not. Our hip hop discussions this week highlighted clowning, krumping, house, waacking, and voguing. I was intrigued to learn that the very serious, and slightly scary looking, krumping came from clowning. After watching videos of krumping, I’m not surprised that police thought those dance battles were fights. There was a lot of pushing yet there was no fighting going on between the dancers. I loved learning about the communal aspect of hip hop and how many different people used it to express emotion. I felt that this week allowed me to earn a greater appreciation for the hip hop style. I also felt more interested in learning the different characteristics of every hip hop style so that I can accurately name them when I see them. I especially felt this on Thursday when we began talking about waacking versus voguing; two styles that I love!

For many years now I’ve said that I’m a huge fan of waacking but, before today I thought it was only focused on the arms. After watching a couple videos on waacking, I realize now that the flying arms and wrists are only a part of it. I loved what Annika said about it almost looking like a runway combined with fast arm movements. I’ve also began to notice that I will start combining waacking and voguing as one thing when they are two separate styles. Just like I brought up in class, for a while I thought voguing was only hitting poses around the face, which it isn’t. I can thank Madonna for making me think that. I’m glad we got to take the time and learn about the hip hop culture and style over this half of the semester because I didn’t know much about it. I now have a better understanding and greater appreciation for it.

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Concert Dance Including Hip Hop?

It is officially the end of week 13, which felt like it lasted a year long in my opinion, but we made it! This week we continued on with hip hop by reading some interesting articles and watching a few different videos throughout the week. We started having in depth discussions about what we felt like hip hop was compared to what we see on the daily now at studios and on social media. I grew up doing hip hop at my dance studio, but I’ve began to realize how that wasn’t truly hip hop at all. This week I also started noticing the comparison between males dominating hip hop and females dominating ballet. Females are seen as more frail and graceful which is why you will see a female more often in a ballet class over a male. Hip hop was all about competition and was very aggressive, which is why males were associated with the style. Each gender can do both but there is an underlying stereotype that has followed them.

These conversations led us to the idea of hip hop dance on the concert stage and in film. Just like jazz, I think these two things began to take it away from it’s original form. Not that it can’t exist on the stage or on film, but it begins to take away the competition aspect of it. Dancer and choreographer, Rennie Harris, was the first to bring hip hop to the concert stage. Harris was from Philadelphia and started as a stepper. He enjoyed using his work to make a statement on the issues in society and as a form of therapy. In the rehearsal process, he may have started from improvisation to create his work to eventually lead to the set choreography, which I believe is respectable to the style. It came with good intentions and he tried to bring this style to more of the world. At this point in my life, I don’t think the hip hop I see on the daily is actually true hip hop but I enjoy watching it. The main thing for me is to recognize when it is authentic hip hop and when it’s another branch off of our large tree.

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Hip Hop and Media

I had another little break from posting on here but I’m back again for week 12. This week our discussions were on hip hop and the media. In hip hop, there are so many different styles: b-boying/b-girling, popping, locking, house, and krumping. We discussed all in detail but mainly focused on break dancing. Along with our topic of breaking, we talked about media and how the media changed the way breaking was done. I honestly wasn’t shocked learning this because the same thing happened with jazz dance. Both styles were originally done as improvisation and changed because of media, the people who were doing it didn’t get much credit, and the correlation with music changed. Many of us have heard the phrase, “any publicity is good publicity”, but is it?

In class this week we watched a video about Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk for the first time. Everyone was amazed by it and it was a big hit. But how many people know he wasn’t the one who created the moonwalk? Or that its original name wasn’t “the moonwalk”? I didn’t even know this! It even took Michael a while to give credit to the people he learned it from. It’s awesome that break dancing was getting this exposure but it wasn’t very fair. This connects back to jazz and our ideas on appropriation. We live day in and day out with appropriation around us whether we see it or not. Media is a huge part of this. I’m happy our art can spread so fast these days but its changing what it was originally. We can see how this played out in jazz dance and now I can see how this happened to hip hop. Even the clothing these people wore to dance in became a style and somehow the street kids became stylish. Breaking brought about this social competition on the streets but when the media came into the picture, it was just about cash prizes and European tours. There is no doubt media changed breaking’s form and meaning.

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Dance and Gender

Hey everyone! It’s been a long time since I’ve posted on here but I’m back for Week 10 to discuss a very interesting topic, dance and gender. This may be something you’ve considered before or something you’ve never noticed. It has occurred to me that when I see a dance piece, often in modern dance, where all the dancers are dressed exactly the same, I don’t notice at first who is a male and a female but I eventually look for it later. It doesn’t matter to me if the females are lifting the males or if the males are gracefully flying across the stage. Our art shouldn’t limit who can do what. Janice LaPointe-Crump mentions how gender is one of the first things we notice in a performance and how we normally find it funny to see a “dainty gorilla and a macho sylph”. 

We know how physically men and woman are different, women with a wider pelvis and greater torso flexibility while men are normally taller and have more upper body strength. But who says a woman can’t have large arm muscles and a guy can’t lift his leg above his head? We need to stop playing off of these gender roles once set in place and live in the now. It is 2019, women are not weak and men don’t always have to be the hero. Not all of these physical characteristics can be easily changed but a female can be strong and lift other dancers while a male can increase his flexibility despite his lack of a wide pelvis. People should also consider how rude it is to call dance a female only art, and claim that all males who dance must be gay. Ballet was made popular by a man. It was dominated by men, and men played the female roles. We can thank Louis XIV for making ballet become as popular as it did. So next time you see a dainty gorilla or macho sylph and want to laugh, consider all of the hard work they have put in. And remember it’s 2019, these male and female stereotypes don’t need to exist in dance anymore.

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Protofeminism

We’ve finally made it to our last week of discussing ballet in Dance History! Woo hoo! That personally makes me very excited. Ballet is beautiful and all but talking about its history for the last seven weeks has me yawning. Our final week brought us into a discussion on three very distinct ballets. The first Firebird, then Rite of Spring, and lastly Les Noces. All three ballets were created for Ballet Russes but in three different years and by three different choreographers. Each one showcasing a different view on women. I was surprised that ballet would show a woman as something other than a prize to be won.

Firebird came first in 1910, choreographed by Michel Fokine. The Firebird was a strong female character who actually saved the man for once. This was new. It still isn’t often today that the female saves the male. The second ballet was Rite of Spring. Premiering in 1913, Rite of Spring had a sacrifice and one female dances herself to death. Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed the ballet and I wouldn’t call it a hit; the audience rioted. So we first have this powerful strong woman in Firebird, and then three years later we sacrifice a girl thanks to some old men. Last is Les Noces. Nijinsky’s sister Bronislava Nijinska choreographed this ballet that premiered in 1923. In Les Noces, could be called a feminist ballet, before feminism was a thing. Nijinska choreographed the women’s lack of interest and anger towards their duty to get married. Here we see the women as a prize to be won but Nijinska goes beyond the prize aspect and shows how the women felt being forced into marriage. Did we only receive this story because Nijinska was a woman? If it had been choreographed by her brother the ballet could have been something completely different. It’s interesting to see how these three different ballets created within 13 years of each other tell a very different story on who women are and who they belong to.

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Discover and Assemble

We are almost to the halfway point in the semester! Our discussion this week in Dance History had my mind racing with questions and ideas. I began discussing all of these ideas with my roommates tonight and I think we could’ve talked for hours about these topics. My two roommates are also dance majors but are in the other section of Dance History so they’ve had similar discussions in class but were surprised by some things that we’ve discussed in ours. Some of the most interesting ideas to us were what makes a style contemporary versus modern versus lyrical, appropriation of dancers, and the body image that came with George Balanchine. The topic that I didn’t think would leave me questioning as long as it did was an idea from Balanchine. He believed that God is the only one who creates, everyone else discovers and assembles. I’m not one with a very religious background so this was never a thought that occurred to me but does intrigue me. 

No matter if you believe in a higher power or not, in this dance world of ours, it is rare that we ever create something new; we just assemble the tools we already have. We talked about this in Choreography class because people would put too much stress on creating something unique when that isn’t possible when we have so much dance history preceding us. I think of a time when I would say, “I created this”, when honestly, I just put the pieces together. During our show, It Can Happen Here, there was a piece choreographed in collaboration by Rebecca Pappas and her dancers and she took no credit for making the whole piece. What happened was the dancers discovered movement, and Rebecca assembled it. I know this discussion could lead me to 10 other tangents but I’ll leave it here. As of now, we aren’t creators, just people who discover and assemble.

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"Russian”

Deep into our 5th week of Dance History, our readings brought us Stravinsky, Balachine, Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Massine, and Fokine. Mainly, a bunch of names that are hard to pronounce; but ones that are highly respected. Our first reading, In The Royal Image, by Deborah Jowitt provided us with a background on George Balanchine and how Americans thought he wasn’t “Russian” enough. In our second reading from Ballet & Modern Dance: A Concise History, Jack Anderson wows the reader with all of the successes of Sergei Diaghilev, a Russian that Balanchine worked under. A main discussion point we’ve had over the last few weeks is, how “Russian” is Russian ballet? From what we’ve read, many of their choreographers, musicians, and dancers came from Europe and weren’t actually Russian. Then, Anderson comes along and proves this point even more.

Anderson informs us that even after WWI when Ballet Russes became mainly international, “the personnel remained largely Russian, and when dancers from other countries were hired they were expected to adopt Slavic names” (p.142). Three of Diaghlev’s stars were Alicia Markova, Anton Dolin, and Lydia Sokolova. Would you have guessed that these three were all British? These name changes were just one of the reasons why the rest of the world started believing that ballet was mainly Russian. This is something I’ve believed too. I thought Russia had a huge impact on the ballet world, which they did, but because of the European dancers, choreographers, and musicians that they were bringing in. So, is it right that we give them the title of “Russian” ballet?

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A Female Becoming A Male

In this fourth week of Dance History, we read two articles that discussed the practice of females taking males roles during the Romantic Era of ballet. The first article was, In Pursuit of the Sylph by Deborah Jowitt, and the second was, The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet by Lynn Garafola. In the second article written by Garafola, she quotes Gautier who said, “Nothing is more distasteful than a man who shows his red neck, his big muscular arms...” and continues on about his calves and massive frame that just doesn’t belong in the beautiful ballet world. Reading this honestly surprised me because I couldn’t imagine ballet without males. To think that people used to criticize a male’s strong look and replaced them with youthful, beardless women is shocking! It has made me start thinking about how people would feel if we still did this today and what if young, beardless men played women's’ roles in wigs?

Zoe brought up the question, why do you think a female playing a male role wasn’t that big of a deal during the nineteenth century? For me, I think it wasn’t a big deal back then because it was only for the stage. If these women would have tried to live day to day as a man people would probably have had a problem with that. Also, I think the viewers found it more pleasing to the eye to have two similar bodies that moved in similar ways. Critics thought muscular males disrupted the stage and looked horrible alongside the ballerinas. This isn’t something that bothers me but there are many things today that we are okay with that people from the nineteenth-century would flip out over. 

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Hundreds of Years in 12 Pages With Hefty Expenses

During this third week of class we continued our discussion on the history of ballet. Focusing on a chapter called, Ballet: A History in Broad Brushstrokes, written by Carol Pardo, we experienced over 400 years of ballet in just 12 pages. How could one fit hundreds of years of ballet in just 12 pages? Well, Pardo made sure to hit some of the most important spots like ballet’s beginnings, the romantic ballet, Russian ballet, and the future of ballet. Going into class, it was just another article. But by the time I left, I had so many new questions and thoughts about ballet’s aesthetics and structure over time that my mind was bouncing from topic to topic.

The most important topic to me during our discussion was, does ballet require hefty finances to survive? My immediate thought was yes. For class you need leotards, pink tights, ballet shoes, hair ties, bobby pins, and possibly a hairnet. For a performance you’ll need a costume, new tights because all of your pairs have holes, gel to keep your hair slicked back, new shoes because your old ones are dirty, and of course stage make up. This is the list for just one person alone; a leotard could range anywhere from $20-$100.  

But then I think, does ballet need to be this expensive? I understand a company putting on a full ballet production may need plenty of money for a set, costumes, and to pay their dancers but, what about our traditional ballet classes? I think this aesthetic of ballet, a leotard, bun, and pink tights, is driving the cost up and preventing ballet from being easily accessible to everyone. If we want to see ballet grow and continue, why not make it more accessible for those who can’t afford to pay studio prices and buy five leotards, pink tights, and ballet shoes? Many kids wish they could be in dance classes and don’t get the opportunity to because their families can’t afford it. 

I hope as the years go on, we find a way to make ballet more accessible to all.

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Blog 1

Written about the book Ballet & Modern Dance by Jack Anderson.

Have you ever thought about where ballet started? Do you assume that it was started by a female? Do you make this assumption because most ballet dancers are female? Well, you’re not completely wrong; but you’ll be fascinated to learn that King Louis XIV was one of the biggest influences on the history of ballet. 

Catherine de Medici, mother of Henry the III from Italy, was the one to bring ballet to France during the 1500s. It wasn’t what we would typically expect to see today but it was the start. Although ballet originated in Italy, it grew faster and became very important in France. Hence, all of our ballet terms being in French. Many Italian composers and dancing masters sought to find jobs in France. King Louis XIII was a dancer before King Louis XIV, but “ballet reached its peak under King Louis XIV” (pg. 52).

Louis XIV made his entire life a spectacle; rarely making a separation between art and life. Louis “chose some of the finest talents of his day” (pg. 55). His dancing master, Pierre Beauchamps, stressed the five positions of the feet that we still use almost 400 years later. I would have never imagined that a man would have been the one to influence the five ballet positions that we use today. 

Before reading this book, I had known that King Louis XIV played a big role in the ballet world but I hadn’t realized it originally came from Italy. And though it started there, it became a bigger deal in France. Surprisingly, because of a man. And these men would often play women’s roles which is another surprise since even now someone may question a man about his sexuality if he played a female role. I’m interested with how this idea changed over time and eventually became looked down upon. 

Anyway, we should all thank Catherine and Louis XIV for bringing us this beautiful art form.