Things I’ve written in school, part 3

Ok, this is it for the moment. Another paper from Karen Eliot’s history class. It has a bibliography AND footnotes–I’m in grad school folks!

(I’d love to hear comments on any of these papers–and feel free to post up fabulous inspiring writings!)

Paul Taylor’s Esplanade: Illuminatory Locomotion[1]

The history of dance during the 20^th century in America is a fascinating story of questioning and experimentation. Early in the century, pioneers such as Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham questioned the supposed artificialness of ballet, and experimented with creating new ways of moving, in the process establishing the field of modern dance. As the century progressed, so did this process of questioning and experimentation, within ballet and modern dance both. But while the field’s practitioners might differ from their predecessors in methods, aesthetic values, movement vocabulary, and so on, successive generations of artists did not essentially differ from each other in their base worldview. That dance movement was another sort of movement, elevated beyond the movements of everyday life even if sometimes echoing them, was an unquestioned assumption.

Until the 1960’s.

Things I’ve written in school, part B

This is a paper I wrote this quarter for Karen Eliot’s 20th Century Dance History class, another great course (but part of what made it a nutty quarter!)  A quick thank you to her and my peer reviewers for their feedback!

(And this paper is complete with scholarly references and stuff–I’m really in school!  The bibliography is at the end.  Which is a better place than in the middle, I guess.)

Mirthful Martha

            There are people known for being light-hearted and funny, always good for a laugh.  Martha Graham was not one of them. 

Things I’ve written in school, part I

I’ve decided to be brave and post some things that I’ve written over the last two quarters. I’d also like to invite you to post (or send to me to post) things you have written that you like, or things you have read that you think should be shared.

That’s right folks, we’re dancers and we read and think… Shocking!

This first paper I’m posting was written last quarter for Candace Feck’s wonderful Dance Criticism and Aesthetics class.

Absence:

Or, Why I am Dancing

The absence of a thing can be more striking than its presence. The emptiness left behind takes on form; reveals in sharper definition what had been there; shows the web of relations, assumptions, desires, which are noisy in their silence.