POST 2
Thank you for the thoughtfulness of your comments last week! Continue to play with using imagery and specificity to describe what you see and what it evokes for you. The more that you can connect what you see with your experiences/questions from class the better. Continue to indulge in your curiosity through observation and questioning.
QUESTION: How do you experience sound/silence in relationship to the stillness/movement within this piece?
The silence makes you really focus on the movements. The piece with the sound has a steady tempo whereas the quiet parts have a fast movement that ends or slows quickly. In general, the movement increases with the sound.
ReplyDeleteSound influences our perception of motion. Generally louder sounds are produced by more force the dancer exerted on the ground. It was peculiar to see some of the sounds being produced by different people off stage such as at 1:15 and 3:00. Although the sounds were produced artificially, my mind would have believed that the noises were coming from the dancers themselves because the combination of movements and sounds was so cohesive.
ReplyDeleteI thought this piece brought out the idea that the dance doesn't necessarily need to follow the music, but instead that the dance could be the inspiration for the music. It seemed like the dancers were making their own form of music with the way their bodies hit the floor, making different sound patterns, which I thought was an interesting way to approach a dance.
ReplyDeleteYou hear the footsteps ever so quietly in the simple background and the squeakiness of the shoes as the man slides around, it resembles birds whistling. Their bodies screech against the floor when they press down, and they hold still when there is no sound. When they run together, they sound like birds fluttering and thus spin. When they fall you hear it. To hear just their bodies sounds beautiful. I felt the point was to demonstrate that our bodies are music and hence the greatest art form.
ReplyDeleteThis piece has an emphasis on utilizing as much space as possible. Even without music, a beat is still created as the dancers create a relationship with the floor. The free style flow of their movement that resembles birds create different sounds representing the element of breaking barriers and transformations. This can be seen especially from 2:02 - 3:48 where there is rapid variation and sequences among the different pairs of dancers.
ReplyDeleteDance isn't just about putting a piece of choreography to certain beats of a song. This piece really exemplifies this point. They use their movement to communicate rather than letting a song communicate what their dance moves are trying to say. Silence lets observers focus in on the movement of the body, and how the body itself can make it's own noise in relationship to the dance moves. Then they played with the idea of noise that our body should make when dance, yet coming from someone else. This was an interesting take on movements and the music/sounds that go with it.
ReplyDeleteANTERPREET KAUR:
ReplyDeleteWhen i think "dance," I simultaneously think of music as well. However, this piece reminded me of a quote by Ted Shawn, "Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made."
As Laila mentioned above, dance does not necessarily have to be the response of music. Instead, music could be the result of the dance movements.
I noticed that in the first about 4 minutes of the video in the absence of recorded music, I tended to focus more on the dance moves. When the music started to play towards minute 4, I realized I was feeling, connecting with, not the moves as much as I was feeling the music.
Rosiee Sirimitr:
ReplyDeleteI saw that movement alone was able to create a dance piece and that to dance, music is not always necessarily needed. By having no music, the dancers allow the audience to really zero in on the actually dance aspect of dancing instead of the entertainment aspect with the music.
The silence definitely made the movement of the dancers stand out more. This piece seems to prove that dancing doesn't need music accompaniment at all and that the movement could actually be the music in itself.
ReplyDeleteThis piece reminded me of the contemporary music piece called "4:33" by John Cage that I learned from my Contemporary Music class last year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HypmW4Yd7SY
This piece showed that it is the silence and the sounds you hear in the silence that is the music. For example, if someone coughs in the audience or if the musician adjusts himself or turns the page, that is considered the music. That is how I perceive this dance piece. It is very similar to "4:33" because the dance and the sounds from the dance come together to make the overall music of the piece.
As previously stated, this piece demonstrates that dance is not necessarily directed reliant upon music. The lack of music emphasizes the movements of the dancers. I thought it was fascinating that the dancers were able to move in sync without the aid of music. In addition, the way that the dancers created sound with their bodies and feet reminded me of tap dance, specifically how tap dancers use their movements to generate sound which highlights their movements and talents.
ReplyDeleteIn this piece, the choreographer uses the elements of dance as they are in the bare, inviting the spectator to step outside the box; and perceive the performance from another angle, without the distractions of the so called "glamour", light effects, costumes or music.
ReplyDeleteMy experience watching this piece, was to realize that stillness and movement are not opposite of each other, rather they are the effect and the cause of one another. Stillness would never be stillness if it hadn’t been movement before. Stillness is a former movement. Movement is a future stillness. Similarly sound and silence are also contained in their counterparts.
Creativity is the experimenter, testing its hypothesis with these four elements on stage. Provoking and pushing restrictions/limits of the usual and ordinary to create an unusual extraordinariness to witness.
This choreography was very interesting to watch in that the dance could be interpertated independently and so could the sound, but I could also see it as a whole. Half the time, the dancers were silent in movement with barefeet, but the sound made by the woman with her hands on the floor and also with her shoe created a very special effect in bringing an edge to the choreography. It made me wonder if the sound came first or the movement. The utilization of space reminded me of how we also run around in class, sometimes partner and partner, sometimes just being aware of our surroundings. This piece really raised some questions for me like what does it mean to walk, to run? It is the basics of movement, but how can that change by simply donning a pair of shoes or changing the speed of motion in relation to the people around and the space beneath you.
ReplyDeleteThe choreography of this video impress me, because although the steps were really slow and sharp, you can see the need of technique in the choreography.
ReplyDeleteAlso I like the sound types that they use. For example, at the beginning of the video, there was a boy dancing and a girl in the floor with water making noise. The interest part is that the girl makes the noise as the dancer make steps. The idea that this part give to me, is that in contemporary dance you not only improvised in step, but also in music (the girl has to feel the steps to produce music according to them).
I find this piece interesting because when there was no music used when dancing, it made me concentrate more on the movements but towards the end when music started to appear, I focused more on how the dance can connect to the music. When the woman in 3:00-3:10 used tapping as a way to connect with the guy dancing, it showed the relationship between them because of the music she created through her feet to make noise for the guy's dance step.
ReplyDeleteI think that with the silence and stillness and the movement and sounds it allows the person who is watching to really be engaged in the movement. You are able to not only see the movement but hear it as well which to me brings more of a connection between the audience and the dancer. I really liked this choreography, and to me, without music it allowed the dancer to express their own story without a narrative. The silence made the movements stand out much more and brought more focus to the dancing.
ReplyDeleteThe silence is offset by the distinct sounds made mostly by the dancers' feet in contact with the floor. This places a lot of emphasis on the reltionship of the foot with the ground and allows the audience to really focus on the swift movements. With the thumps of footsteps and squeaks produced by sliding the feet against the ground, the audience is engaged in the intent behind each movement as the dramatic effect of each is heightened with the incorporation of deliberate sounds.
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ReplyDeleteThe silence definitely made me focus my attention on the movements of the dancers. I was really impressed with the precision in the partner sections because the dancers were able to synchronize their movements without music keeping them on the beat. I also had similar thoughts to Amy when the woman made sounds with her foot for the man dancing and it made me think how there is a song within the dance even without actual music playing in the background.
ReplyDeleteWithout any extraneous melodies or beats to heavily influence my cognition, I found myself paying much more attention to each dancer's movements. My brain had to work harder to make any sense out of the choreographies, so much so that I started to "hear" music that my mind was composing on its own. For example, 2:02-2:13 was the high-shrill of a string quarter and 2:34-2:51 gave me an orchestra with a piano percussion. If others felt this same sensation, I wonder if everyone bears some level of synesthesia. I cannot say that silence is associated with stillness, because 2:35-2:45 displayed dynamics movements with almost no sound. These movements were smooth and fluid. But if we watch and listen a bit further in that same segment, abrupt sounds were accompanied by abrupt movements (as was near 1:15). Silence or soft sounds were associated with calm, harmonious movements.
ReplyDeleteI really like that this piece is named "The Song" because to me the dancers seem to be playing the song with their movements. The silence of the piece allows for me to focus more on how the dancers move freely but with a purpose. As the dancers' sped up or slowed down it was like they were making the rhythm of the song they were creating.
ReplyDeleteThe piece is really interesting in the sense that it creates a "song" within the movements of the body in relation to the floor. Through the spinning to the floor, to the sneakers making scuff sounds as the feet brush off the floor.. there is a constant flow of sound through the movements. Even through "silence", you can hear the movements within the balls of the feet across the floor..or even the sound of each vertebrate as a movement is made.
ReplyDeleteI see this dance more as a free-spirited improvisation, or freestyle if you will. Like what most have said, the fact that there is no music playing (in terms of instrumentals) does force a viewer to interpret the dancers' moves with more focus. However, you could easily argue that although there might not be bass, voice, or instruments playing, a person/dancer's body is actually the real instrument. The way a body is formed to move allows for different sounds. For example, a swift slide of the leg will create high/sharp pitches. Slower movements are softer and more relaxed. I think the purpose of the dancers and those who created sound from the dancers movements is to portray how the body naturally creates "song" as it was titled.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting that the dance had no music. In fact, it seemed that the way they moved created sound--the sliding of the shoes, the pounding of the feet and thesqueaking of the hands--and that became its own music in a way. Also, I was really impressed that the dancers could move in unison, without music or even any apparent beat.
ReplyDeleteIt was also interesting to see how the dancers kept their head in relationship to their body. When they were balancing, their heads were usually straight, in line with their body, even if they were on a 45 degree angle (despite most peoples' instinct to look straight forward). And they would often use their heads to initiate movement, such as turning, leaning, stepping, etc.
The sound and movement in relationship to one another is correlated in a sense that the body of the dancer is their instrument. By using their bodies to create sounds, we tend to focus more on their movements and the process in which it took to do a certain movement, such as hearing the gliding of the feet or steps in order to do a certain jump, etc. I feel like there was a correlation between the movements and the speed of the sounds that they were making, such as a more graceful move had a more silent and soft sound, whereas the big and powerful moves were followed by greater percussion sounds that came along with it. The dancers bodies are instruments that create the song in this video, and all of their sounds turned into music for their movements.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how the dance became the song instead of the dancers dancing to a song. My favorite part was when the girl was making sounds with her hands on the floor to the movements the man was making. I think this shows that you don't need a melodic song in the background to dance to. The lack of music makes the dance feel raw and real. It allows the viewer to focus solely on their movements. It also allows the audience to experience whatever emotion the dancer is trying to portray, and not the emotion of the song. As a side note, it was really interesting to see them run around the space of the stage like we do in class. It seems like such a simple exercise, but it has a lot of meaning to it as well
ReplyDeleteEven though this piece has no music the fact that is done in silence makes it very interesting seems as if its more natural and not so choreographed. I feel that the dancers might even feel more free at the fact that they don't have the music in the beginning as a background which can sometimes make dancers speed up or lose the counts because of the beats of the music. The movements seem very wild bu unique.
ReplyDelete"The Song" made me re-think about the relationship with dance and music. I used to believe that a choreography will not be beautiful without music. However, "The Song", like a instruction, teach me the dance can be also great if there's no music synchronized. What's more. I'm pretty appreciated with the ability of the dancer who make the rhythm with the silent dancing. Every jump, every slide and more other movements seems to be a piece of music itself.
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