Another definition

The choreography of a piece is that which is repeatable between iterations.
Ugffhhpklj
The improvisation of a piece is that which is not repeatable between iterations.

5 new words

infrapresentationologist -  one who studies what lies below the surface of presentation

maltempotude - the condition of having the incorrect temporal relationship with another

anteformology - the study of what comes before a shape comes into existence

heterokinespherism - the state of existing in at least two different shapes

quasicorpologist - one who has seemingly studied the human form and its potentialities

The Essay That Describes Itself

This is the first sentence.  This is the second sentence.  This is the third sentence.  This is the fourth sentence.  This is the fifth sentence.  This is the sixth sentence.  This is the seventh sentence.  This is the eighth sentence.

This is the ninth sentence.  This is the tenth sentence.  This is the eleventh sentence.  This is the twelfth sentence.  This is the thirteenth sentence.  This is the fourteenth sentence.  This is the fifteenth sentence.  This is the sixteenth sentence.

This is the seventeenth sentence.  This is the eighteenth sentence.  This is the nineteenth sentence.  This is the twentieth sentence.  This is the twenty-first sentence.  This is the twenty-second sentence.  This is the twenty-third sentence.  This is the twenty-fourth sentence.

This is the twenty-fifth sentence and the first one of this paragraph.  This is the twenty-sixth sentence.  This is the twenty-seventh sentence.  This is the twenty-eighth sentence.  This is the twenty-ninth sentence.  This is the thirtieth sentence.  This is the thirty-first sentence.  This is the thirty-second sentence.

This is the thirty-third sentence and the first one of this, the fifth paragraph.  This is the thirty-fourth sentence.  This is the thirty-fifth sentence.  This is the thirty-sixth sentence.  This is the thirty-seventh sentence.  This is the thirty-eighth sentence.  This is the thirty-ninth sentence.  This is the fortieth sentence.

This is the forty-first sentence.  This is the forty-second sentence.  This is the forty-third sentence and contains the largest prime number yet in this essay.  This is the forty-fourth sentence.  This is the forty-fifth sentence.  This is the forty-sixth sentence.  This is the forty-seventh sentence.  This is the forty-eighth sentence.

This is the forty-ninth sentence.  This is the fiftieth sentence.  This is the fifty-first sentence.  This is the fifty-second sentence.  This is the fifty-third sentence.  This is the fifty-fourth sentence.  This is the fifty-fifth sentence.  This, the eight and final sentence of this paragraph, is the fifty-sixth sentence.

This is the fifty-seventh sentence.  This is the fifty-eighth sentence.  This is the fifty-ninth sentence.  This is the sixtieth sentence.  This is the sixty-first sentence.  This is the sixty-second sentence.  This is the sixty-third sentence.  This is the sixty-fourth sentence.

This is the sixty-fifth sentence.  This is the sixty-sixth sentence and the second of this paragraph.  This is the sixty-seventh sentence.  This is the sixty-ninth sentence.  This is the seventieth sentence.  This is the seventy-first sentence.  This is the seventy-second sentence and the final one of this paragraph.

This is the seventy-third sentence.  This is the seventy-fourth sentence.  This is the seventy-fifth sentence.  This is the seventy sixth sentence.  This is the seventy-eighth sentence.  This is the seventy-ninth sentence, which will be followed by the eightieth sentence.  This is the eightieth sentence.

This is the first sentence of the eleventh paragraph.  This is the second sentence of the eleventh paragraph.  This is the third sentence of the eleventh paragraph.  This is the fourth sentence of the eleventh paragraph.  This is the fifth sentence of the eleventh paragraph.  This is the sixth sentence of the eleventh paragraph.  This is the seventh sentence of the eleventh paragraph.  This is the eighth sentence of the eleventh paragraph and therefore the eighty eighth sentence.

This is the eighty-ninth sentence.  This is the ninetieth sentence.  This is the ninety first sentence.  This is the ninety-second sentence.  This is the ninety-third sentence.  This is the ninety-fourth sentence.  This is the ninety-fifth sentence.  This is the ninety-sixth sentence and if the author were to use the classic two thirds one third ratio point to have the climax, it would be here.

This is the ninety-seventh sentence.  This is the ninety-eighth sentence.  This is the ninety-ninth sentence.  This is the one-hundredth sentence.  This is the first sentence when proper grammar dictates that numerals can be used according to the Chicago Manual of Style and therefore the 101th sentence.  This is the 102th sentence.  This is the 103rd sentence.  This is the 104th sentence.

This is the 105^th sentence.  This is the 106^th sentence. This is the 107^th sentence. This is the 108^th sentence. This is the 109^th sentence. This is the 110^th sentence. This is the 111^th sentence. This is the eighth sentence of this paragraph, the 112^th sentence, and if you have been paying attention you would know that each paragraph so far has had eight sentences and therefore this paragraph is the 14^th paragraph.

This is the 15^th paragraph.  This is the 15^th paragraph.  This is the 15^th paragraph. 

This is the 15^th paragraph.  This is the 15^th paragraph.  This is the 15^th paragraph. 

This is the 15^th paragraph.  This is still the 15^th paragraph.

This, however, is the 16^th paragraph.  This is the second sentence of the 16^th paragraph.  This is still the 16^th paragraph.  This sentence, too, is part of the 16^th paragraph.  As is this one.  And this one, too.  This sentence, also, has the pleasure of being part of the 16^th paragraph.  This sentence is also part of the 16^th paragraph.  As is this one, the final sentence of the 16^th paragraph.

This is the first sentence of this paragraph.  This is the 130^th sentence of this essay.  This is the third sentence of the 17^th paragraph of this essay. Numerically, this sentence marks the halfway point of this paragraph.  This is the fifth sentence of this paragraph.  This sentence marks three quarters of the way through this paragraph.  This is the seventh sentence of this, the 17^th paragraph.  This is the last sentence of this paragraph.

This is the antepreantepenultimate sentence of this paragraph.  This is the preantepenultimate sentence of this paragraph.  This is the antepenultimate sentence of this paragraph.  This is the penultimate sentence of this paragraph. This is the ultimate sentence of this paragraph which is the final paragraph of this essay, the Essay on Nothing.

Formulas for Poetry

the next time you hear people describe something as poetic, ask them if they don't really mean formulaic

the lists below are from Wikipedia


A
▪ Action (literature)
▪ Anacreontics
▪ Antilabe
▪ Antistrophe
▪ Arlabecca
B
▪ Ballad
▪ Balliol rhyme
▪ Balwo
▪ Blank verse
▪ Blason
▪ Bosinada
▪ Bouts-Rimés
▪ Bref double
C
▪ Canto
▪ Carmen (verse)
▪ Chant royal
▪ Cinquain
▪ Clerihew
▪ Cobla (Occitan literary term)
▪ Copla (meter)
▪ Couplet
▪ Cumulative song
▪ Cumulative tale
D
▪ Décima
▪ Dinggedicht
▪ Dodoitsu
E
▪ Elegiac
▪ Elegiac couplet
▪ Elegy
▪ Envoi
▪ Epode
F
▪ Fixed verse
▪ Free verse
G
▪ Ghazal
▪ Gogyōshi
H
▪ Hainteny
▪ Heroic couplet
▪ Heroic verse
▪ Hudibrastic
▪ Humdrum and Harum-Scarum
K
▪ Kantan Chamorrita
L
▪ Lục bát
M
▪ Monostich
N
▪ Nonnet
O
▪ Octonary
▪ Ode
▪ Olonkho
▪ Oríkì
P
▪ Palinode
▪ Pantoum
▪ Pantun
▪ Paradelle
▪ Pathya Vat
▪ Pentina
▪ Poetic closure
▪ Poetic Meter and Poetic Form
Q
▪ Quaternion (poetry)
▪ Quatorzain
▪ Quintain (poetry)
▪ Quinzaine
R
▪ Ragale
▪ Recueillement
▪ Rhyme royal
▪ Roundel (poetry)
S
▪ Saturnian (poetry)
▪ Sestet
▪ Sevenling
▪ Sijo
▪ Silva (Spanish strophe)
▪ Sisindiran
▪ Skolion
▪ Slavic antithesis
▪ Song thất lục bát
▪ Stanza
▪ Stichic
▪ Stichomythia
▪ Strophe
▪ Syair
▪ Synchysis
T
▪ Tanaga
▪ Tanka (poetry)
▪ Tanka in English
▪ Tanka prose
▪ Terzanelle
▪ Thai poetry
▪ Thanbauk (poetic form)
▪ Tristich
▪ Tweede Asem
U
▪ Uta monogatari
V
▪ Villanelle
▪ Virelai nouveau
Y
▪ Yadu (poetry)

And if this isn't enough there are even more, and more, and more, and more...

This is the arch I've built as a memorial to my father.

Mastercard

Klein Tools 55-1/2 in. Grizzly Bar: $110.72


Bostitch 36" Steel Wrecking Bar: $19.08



Craftsman 16" Pry Bar: pries less

Cleaning

Dish washers wash dishes.

Hair dryers dry hair.

What do vacuum cleaners do?

3 of the Roses Framing Statement

Repetition as a theme for investigation presented itself to me during the Erasmus Intensive.  Kirsi Monni, head of the Helsinki program, during her presentation said that there is no repetition in Trio A.  At the end of her talk I said that there is a lot of repetition in Trio A and showed several examples.  Maybe I was being pedantic.  One man's pedanticalness is another man's accuracy.  Yes, Trio A could be said to have no repetition as there are no long sections of movement that repeat, but if the time frame that one uses to examine all of the choreography of Trio A is short, several instances of repetition do appear.  The arm swings in the beginning, the toe taps, the ear flaps.  These repetitions are just within the kinesphere of the performer.  If we look at other performance elements we see a lot of repetition.  The performer is always the same person.  The costume never changes.  The performer repeatedly does not look at the audience.  One of the performance instructions for Trio A is to keep the same speed throughout the piece - if you start slow, stay slow; start fast, stay fast.  In other words, repeat the velocity.  Keeping vocally silent is another form of repetition in Trio A.  How many ways of repeating exist in Trio A?  How many ways of repeating exist in any choreography or performance?

One hallmark of contemporary dance could be said to be the continual search for the new.  The new way to move, the new sounds, the new taboo to break, the new way to engage the audience, to frustrate, to excite, or aggravate them.

I am sure that we have all heard "Oh, that's been done" in relation to a performance.  But if that, whatever that is, has been done, then Gertrude Stein is wrong.  A rose is not a rose.  But if a rose is a rose is a rose does mean that there is no such thing as repetition because the context is changing then nothing has ever been done before and we can stop worrying about newness.  Or maybe something similar has been done.  And for some folks that similarity is too close for comfort.  Enough change has not been instilled into the second rose to be different enough to be something new.

The human body can sense a 1% drop in water levels triggering a thirst response.  Maybe in art there is a similar response.  The change from one rose to the next needs to be greater than 1% to be registered.  Or maybe 10%.  I read once that humans can detect temperature change in a space only after the initial temperature drops 10%.  How to measure this percentage necessary between roses I do not know.

Taking a very wide "zoom lens of attention" to performance in general, we could say that 90+% of performance is a repetition of something else.  We sit here, performers there and we watch.  Humans on one side of a box watching humans on the other side of the box.  Zoom in and change the lights, change the framing statement, change the performers etc. and each piece is wildly different.

Emperor Penguins, the ones that stand with eggs on their feet all winter while their mates eat and then switch roles.  To me they all look alike.  I can't tell them apart.  They are just repetitions of each other.  But penguins can certainly tell each other apart.  Maybe if I took more time, trained my eye and zoomed my lens of attention in, I could see beyond the repetition and see the variety.  Maybe Stein should have said a penguin is a penguin is a penguin is a penguin…

Coming back to my research.  Some of you saw the piece I presented during the Erasmus presentation - a repetition of a spiral initiated by my right foot.  Using that initiation repeatedly and by changing the physical context around that repetition I was able to craft my trajectory through space.  The physical context I changed by altering where on my body(hands, pelvis, shoulders, quads etc) I increased or decreased pressure into the floor; how large or small I made the angle between my legs; how tight or open I made the spiral by varying when in the spiral my upper body followed the initiation of my lower body.  All these elements within the repetition led to change.

Recently, I have been more interested in repetition within the body's kinesphere than in repetitive actions that relate to the space or repetitive actions that are used to create a physical remainder.  Examples of those kinds of work are Bruce Nauman's Square Dance or Richard Long's A Line Made by Walking (1967).  One of the second years repeated Nauman's Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square in December.  If traveling through space does happen during my kinespheric repetition, that is fine, but not the goal.  One ah ha! moment I had about physical repetition and looking back on it now, seems quite obvious, is the relationship to time.  Repetition of an action is not time dependent.  The repetitions can happen rapidly and evenly spaced in time or the time between actions could be quite long and the action happen only twice.

I have also been investigating repetition in relation to words by using Context Free Grammar language generators to create texts.  From what I understand they generate a type of Mad Libs that are then filled with vocabularies of a certain genre.  One such generator for physics I came across is snarxiv and is described as "a random high-energy the­ory paper gen­er­a­tor incor­po­rat­ing all the lat­est trends, entropic rea­son­ing, and excit­ing mod­uli spaces."  Another text generator I came across,  is The Postmodernism Generator.

Could I create a sensible piece of writing using "senseless" repetition?  I selected chunks of text from the Postmodernism Generator at random, hitting refresh to generate more texts and created a "Frankenstein" text.  With a little word substitution here and some rewriting there, I tried to breathe life into this text.  I repeated words throughout the text hoping that their repetition would create enough of a through-line to create meaning. While I do not think that if looked at with a wide zoom lens the Frankenstein text I created has meaning, there are some interesting nuggets in it.  It is possible that the whole text is coherent and I do not have the ability to understand it.

These nuggets, if they already existed in the texts of Lacan, Eco, Lyotard, or Derrida, are now available to me without their original context, thus allowing me to craft my own meaning out of them.  The original context is not interfering with my perception of them.

In my attempts at repetition I invariably created change.  This change, to draw a geographic metaphor, can be catastrophic or gradual.  Gradual change in geology is just as it sounds, gradual.  The Himalayan mountains grow about 5 mm a year. For us 5mm is nothing but for a bacterium that 5mm might as well be the Himalayas.  The opposite view of gradual change or gradualism is catastrophism - sudden, huge events that radically altered the face of the earth, creating mountains and valleys in moments.  From a human perspective, the recent events in Fukushima, Japan were huge and devastating.  For the Earth, a mere hiccup.

A similar idea in evolutionary biology is phyletic gradualism(slow, gradual but continuous change) versus punctuated equilibrium (rapid change with longer moments of stability).  An example of rapid change in evolution in species is the Cambrian explosion.  This "rapid" change lasted 70-80 million years.  An incomprehensible time frame for humans, but only 2% of the age of the Earth.

The change created by my repetitions can be viewed as gradual or catastrophic.  While holding a static pose, I might fall slowly due to my hands and feet sliding out from under me because of increased perspiration.  I might have fallen abruptly due to muscle fatigue.  The distal and proximal initiations might have changed abruptly or evolved slowly.

Two artists whose work resonates with me are Sol LeWitt and Agnes Martin, artists whose work involves a lot of repetition.  I first encountered LeWitt's work several years ago when Kelly suggested that I look at a piece of his called Variations of Incomplete Open Cubes.  When I looked at it I saw something very similar to a sculptural project I was working on.  I was trying to figure out all the possible variations of the minimum number of lines needed to indicate a cube.  I was working at the time with 16 gauge two inch square steel tubing.  The pictures I saw of LeWitt's piece were just what I had been drawing.  I first saw Martin's work at the Dia:Beacon in Beacon, NY in 2006.

In reading about them I came across some words about and by LeWitt and Martin.  I will share just a few here with you.  I find that these words are a distillation of how I tend to look at or make work.  Jannis Kounellis said of LeWitt "His fundamental square, I believe, has as its target the iconographic excesses…"  Agnes Martin in her poem The Untroubled Mind writes - "…this is a return to classicism/Classicism is not about people/and this work is not about the world…Classicists are people that look out with their back to the world…it's as unsubjective as possible…The classic is cool/a classical period/it is cool because it is impersonal/the detached and impersonal"

The works I presented to you I consider to be works in progress.  I do not have a definite answer why.  I feel that I know what tools or processes I have created - the physical scores, the texts - and am confident that they can take me some where.  I just do not know where yet.  Each of these tools has as its generative source a form repetition - the first, repetition of thought; the second, repetition of intention; the third, repetition of process.  What I do know is that I am interested in repetition as a means to target iconographic excesses and to create work that is not about the world, trying to make something as unsubjective as possible and through the repetition wash away past experience. 

To repeat Lisa repeating Ric repeating Deborah Hay -

What I am really trying to do is just be here in my body, in this costume, doing this movement and not have what you think this movement is from your past experience interfere with your seeing now.

*************

click here to see 3 of the Roses, my final presentation for the second semester of my MA SODA program.

156 points!

and the eyes have it.

Sol LeWitt

According to Lord Polonius which statement is true?

1. Sol LeWitt wore heels.
2. Sol LeWitt was short.
3. Sol LeWitt had small feet.

please explain your reasoning

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Maybe...maybe not

Why do we say that?

If it, the situation might happen then it also might not happen. We don't need to say both "maybe" and "maybe not".

Save your breath.

Pick one.

What is it?

Flo eminates from the kitchen.
Grub is collated frantically.
Foxy lemmings kite checks.
Worst Oma eliminates four tiny kittens.
Bald Mary stems collegial fraternizing.
The rebar knows kind chicks.
A kangaroo taps foul Tibetan koans.
The wild bran challah collective failed.
We all got tan in Kay's chalet.
The tilted atrium failed the kinetic colloquial festival king's child.


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Names

Maybe I have written about this before, maybe not. I do know that I have thought about this a lot. A parking lot full of thoughts, a parking lot at an amusement park full of thoughts. A parking lot at an amusement park next to an outlet mall full of thoughts. Though the amount of thinking doesn't me that the transmission of these thoughts will be very clear.

Name of dance companies/collectives...More and more groups/people are using the forward slash,"/" after their name with a word or phrase to name their group. Just came across one today - Jesse Hewit/Strong Behavior. From what I have seen/heard about him Strong Behavior is an apt title.

There is also Jess Curtis/Gravity and Nir De Volff/Total Brutal. Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts also use the forward slash but in between the names of the two artists, not between the names of the artists and their company name. Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods is another example. As in her case and De Volff's the website is only the company name whereas in the case of Curtis the website is his name followed by the company name and with Hewit the website is his name without the name of the company.

Ultima Vez/ Wim Vandekeybus might be another example. On the ImpulsTanz website, the names are written with the forward slash but on the website no such relationship could be found. This leads me to believe that the use of the forward slash on the ImpulsTanz website was a result of a decision of the Austrian dance festival and not of the Belgian choreographer.

Why use the forward slash? Is the name of the company not enough? Or is the individual better known than the company? Or is this a return to the modern, i.e. glorification of the individual? First there were "royal" dance companies, then something like the Ballet Russe, not named after an individual but no longer tied to a monarch. Then came something like the Denishawn, named after the two artistic directors, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn (great uncle of Wallace Shawn...just kidding). Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Mark Morris Dance Company, Trisha Brown Dance Company, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, etc..

Then came the format that added the dancers in the title - Sasha Waltz & Guests, Scott Wells and Dancers. This format somewhat puts the dancers and the choreographer on an even level, but still the dancers remain anonymous.

Then there came the random word/phrase format entering the post-modern, removing the hierarchy completely as choreographer/creator and performers are not indicated - Pilobolus, Goat Island, Lower Left.

Granted there is not a definite time line when one name format is used and another is no longer used. All formats exist now and companies are continually named in a varieties of formats. One company based in Seattle went from the post-modern format to the modern one - Phffft became Khambatta Dance Company. Why the change, I cannot say. Maybe the choreographer decided to go more "mainstream" with the name. Look at the names of the best funded companies in the United States.

So as asked above, is the use of the slash combining the choreographer's name and the company title a return to the modern?

How about something like - The Andrew Wass Dance Company and Dancers Project Dance Theatre/Non Fiction?

P.S.
Why is the word "dance" in so many dance company names? How many bands have the word rock or music or band or hip hop or rap in their names?

What does this mean?

What does this say?

Redundancy

A PIN number is what people use at an ATM machine.

Love Hurts With Frequency

Love hurts with frequency.

Drinking a lot of beer is what ails me.

The young lad wept loudly because he didn't catch the ball.

Johnnie Carson was as good as a host as Jack Paar.

Hank always wore nylons when he went stalking

The geologist thought the coarsely foliated and crystallized rock was nice.

After a vigorous food fight, the Maitré d was gored by the spaghetti squash.

Hank spends much of his time looking at a book about reeds and other marsh flora.

He chewed in rhythm while eating a beet salad with a nice balsamic vinaigrette dressing.