A new day, a new quarter–after Winter quarter’s character-building experience (and I needed so much more character…) I am on to a fun and not-as-crazy Spring quarter. If only it were Spring quarter in Seattle–here’s the lovely University of Washington campus during spring:
But alas, I’m in Columbus, OH (moment of silence while I fondly remember my UW days…)
Ok, the pity party is over: one of the fun things about this quarter is continuing Labanotation, and the geek-frissons of delight the class gives me. We are centering the class around learning the Parsons Etude from the American Dance Legacy Institute. The Etude is a medley of his choreography and typical movement phrases that he put together into a 4-minute piece. It seemed like a good idea to work on when watching it on videotape, but it turns out that it’s kind of hard too–tricky how that works.
Anyway, it’s one of several pieces available from ADLI that come in a package of video, music, notation, performance rights and so on for $100 or less. I can’t give ADLI enough praise for making accessible the work of choreographers like Jose Limon and Donald McKayle–no huge fee, no special permissions needed, just buy the package and start dancing! A lot of people talk plaintively about the need to preserve dance’s past, and bemoan the lack of historical knowledge on the part of today’s dance students–but ADLI is actually doing something about it. I wish there were more efforts like this in the dance world, but we tend to be such control freaks that the idea of letting choreography go out into the wide world without supervision tends to freak us out. At least it’s a start! Through ADLI, dance students are getting first-hand experience of wonderful works and choreographers, and even if they aren’t performing the pieces like professional dancers would, the sky hasn’t fallen… Dare I suggest that more choreographers/holders-of-a-choreographer’s-copyright take this example as impetus to get over their own preciousness and just get their work out there?!
(But meanwhile I am grumpy about having to hold that balance for counts 4-5-6. Mean ol’ David Parsons!)
April 9, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Just because you are a character does not mean that you have character. Glad to hear that you are building some!