January 2011
20 posts
“Participant observation obliges its practitioners to experience, at a bodily as...”
– - James Clifford, ‘On Ethnographic Authority,’ 1983, p. 119
Joy of Motion Presents 'Percussive Dance Project'
Washington D.C.’s Joy of Motion Dance Center presents their ‘Percussive Dance Project,’ a new show in their annual choreography showcase series. The show will introduce new works in tap, flamenco and step. The show features a veritable who’s who of D.C.’s resident percussive dance artists, including, Tappenstance, Soles of Steel, Furia Flamenca, Metro...
‘The Curious Beetle,’ by Jeremy...
David Parker of The Bang Group to Offer Free...
David Parker and Jeff Kazin, members of New York’s The Bang Group, featured recently during the Symphony Space’s Stam-pede Percussive Dance show (New York Theatre Review rehash here) will offer free workshops at Cleveland State University later this month. The workshops will aim to build rhythmic awareness through ballet technique, using the Cecchetti Method as it relates to rhythmic...
John Blacking's 'Dialectical Approach' to Dance...
“In Blacking’s terms, a dialectical approach is a process which attempts to create an exchange between analysts and informants so that informants can share in the intellectual process of analysis. This process should be rather different from that usually associated with ‘interviews’: there should not be the two separate phases of data collection and...
WatchExploring the sonic possibilities of seemingly incidental sound generated by moving bodies, Kasumi’s ‘Soundboard’ uses the noise of dancers striking each other and the floor as choreographic accompaniment:
“This piece is as much about the sound as is it the image. Using only the percussive sounds of the dancers’ bodies hitting the floor and each other, I created the audio...
WatchThe Chicago Tap Theatre’s ‘LoveTaps’, directed by Mark Yonnally, explores the concept of lonely singles searching for their soul-mates through internet dating, and what happens after those couples meet their on-line prospects in-person. During intermission, the audience will decide which characters get to be paired up with each other, creating entirely different performances from...
Bloomington's Fourth Annual Dance Extravaganza:...
Locally-organized annual event in Bloomington, Indiana presents a vibrant ‘extravaganza’ of traditional music and dance.
Below is the information from the event’s Facebook page:
“It’s another great assembly of musicians and dancers, for a sumptuous evening of percussive dance, great tunes, and sweet songs. This year, our special guest is Matt Brown, a multi...
The Cane Creek Cloggers present a 'Percussive...
A cross-cultural percussive dance evening curated by the Cane Creek Cloggers of Chapel Hill, North Carolina to be presented later this month in Carborro, North Carolina. For more information, visit www.canecreekcloggers.org or www.artscenterlive.org.
NY Times 'Percussive Dance' Query
Recently intrigued by the NY Times’ online search engine that ‘allows you to search all articles since 1851,’ I queried percussive dance. Among the 1,076 entries, this was the earliest, published on June 10, 1988 and advertising a production of Ira Bernstein and the Ten Toe Percussion Ensemble. The entry reads as follows:
“Forty toes will be tapping, clogging and...
Watch
Sklar's Five Premises for a Culturally Sensitive...
by Deidre Sklar, originally published in DCA (Dance Critics Association) News, Summer 1991
“To speak of movement as a way of knowing implies that the way people move is as much a clue to who they are as the way they speak. The postures and movements of people in an Episcopalian church congregation, for example, are not only different from the postures and movements of people at a...