Contact Improvisation gets big!

In the not so distant future, within 5 years I'd say, a contact improvisation duet will happen on a stage. It will receive great accolades and fanfare. Critics and arty folks with indeterminate European accents and thick black framed glasses will talk about the brilliance of the choreographer, how cutting edge and brilliant she or he is. The choreographer will be praised for discovering new ways of movement, and entering uncharted waters of aesthetics challenging what people think of as dance.

But, the piece will not be labeled as contact. Improvised, yes, as that is becoming more the trend here in Europe on the big money stages. And the choreographer will personally not have done contact improvisation. The dancers, maybe. Probably a few classes. I doubt that a really famous and funded choreographer would know any people who are really good at contact improvisation, that bastard child of the dance art world, and would have to use ballet-gone-release dancers who can partner.

Using language riddled with isms and dead French thinkers names, this choreographer will bring the tools of CI into the brighter wider better funded stage. Using words ending with "icity" and words with "post", "pre", and "neo" suffixes, the choreographer will dazzle us and amaze us with a new dance frontier.

Will it be Forsythe, or Le Roy? Bel, maybe. How about Wade? Sehgal?

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National Debts

The population of Germany according to the CIA is 81,471,834 (July 2011 est.)
The national debt of Germany is € 1,895,561,620,931 according to nationaldebtclocks.com

The population of the United States according to the CIA is 313,232,044 (July 2011 est.)
The national debt of the United States is $ 15,091,192,666,470, also according to national debt clocks.com.

Dividing the debt by the population gives us a €23,266.47/German debt and a $48,178.96/American debt. Converting the Euros to dollars with an exchange rate of €1=$1.36, gives us $31,642.40.

This gives us a difference of $16,536.56, that each American owes MORE to whomever than each German owes.

What have you gotten for your $16,536.56?

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Hmmm...

Ok last attempt before the zoo.

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One more try

this?!

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Now, maybe both icons will be there...

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Maybe this one!?!

Here goes nothing...
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Hmm...that last one didn't work maybe this one will...

Fiddling

Currently fiddling with getting twitter and FB share links to be in every blog posting without having to insert the code every time. I think I have the twitter code in, but not the FB one yet. Let's see.

Also realizing that the iPad kinda sucks for content creation.

Not post anything only pre

From an email to a friend - (with some additions)

I think that we are not "post" anything, only "pre" what is coming down the pike.  I think that "post" implies that whatever we are past, what tools, logics, and aesthetics we explored in the past are over and no longer relevant. But love stories are not gone. Dances about the human condition are still being made. They are not being created with Graham technique, but with release, CI influenced deconstructed ballet choreography. So why if the logic(topic) of the piece is basically the same, but the tool used is post - or contemporary we do not call the piece modern? What criteria are we using to define work - the tools used, the logic expressed, or the aesthetic used?

Every age, -ism, and ide[a]logy that is created doesn't die out but becomes part of the available pallate(sp?) palette, incorporated in to what people have and can use, expanding the reified world.

We all get hung up in the details as opposed to viewing the relationships among the details.  Heidegger, after all, said that existence is defined by relationship to.

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The Conservative Rhetoric

Republicans have historically borrowed more than Democrats.

Who cares...Gay people shouldn't marry.

Our bridges, roads and other infrastructure are crumbling.

Who cares...Marriage is for only a man and a woman.

Our schools are crap and America is losing its competitive edge.

Who cares...Gay people are ruining marriage.

The polar ice caps are melting and the Earth is heating up.

Who cares...Gay people are brainwashing our children.

The so called "death tax" only affects people who actually have money.

Who cares...Gay people are causing the breakdown of the American family.

The politicians you keep voting for keep screwing you.

Who cares...Gay people shouldn't adopt.

We are running out of antibiotics.

Who cares...Gay people shouldn't be able to visit their partners in a hospital.

Our oceans are overfished.

Who cares...Gay people invented AIDS.

Solar, wind, and wave energy sources could be completely viable if we invested in them.

Who cares...Gay people ruined marriage.

Why are we still subsidizing the profitable oil companies?

Who cares...Gay people ruined marriage.

etc.

The fear of being Understood

"As soon as someone says to me that they understood my performance, I become instantly discouraged." —Kazuo Ohno

This quote to me exemplifies what is wrong with most dance. Once it, the dance, the art is understood, the artist fears that it is destroyed. Why does understanding something destroy it? I remember once hearing a friend say that she didn't want to know too much. How can we ever know too much? The more we learn the more we learn how much we do not know. The more we learn about astronomy, the more we learn that there is an almost number of stars, nebula, planets out there to investigate. The more words we learn, the more questions we can formulate.

Ohno's quote makes me thing of the post I wrote recently about formulaic vs. poetic. It also reminds me of a quote I heard once but can't find anywhere about philosophers. Something like the greatest fear philosophers have is that they will be understood.

I think people fear being understood because they themselves are actually hiding behind a mask, a curtain. Like the Wizard of Oz. Yes, they can do what they do and do it well. But they want a bigger more grandiose image of themselves for people to see so that others will be impressed and so that they do not have to explain themselves, because that can be arduous and (cynically) they really can not articulate what they are doing/thinking/feeling. The next time you hear someone say that something was good or bad ask him or her to articulate why. Dollars to donuts, s/he will not be able to do so.

Why should we laboriously articulate our thoughts, when we can just express them emotionally (wrapped and bundled in signs, signifiers, etc) in a shorthand that leaves room for interpretation? If expressed clearly, we might find out clearly, that there isn't as much there as we would like there to be.

The imagination after all is more powerful, than...

Formulaic vs. Poetic

The difference between the poetic and the formulaic is that you haven't figured out the formula for the poetic yet.

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Abstract Industrialism

Watching my 6 month old daughter and how busy she is when she is awake made me think of the term abstract industrialism. Similar to abstract expressionism, abstract. Is there an abstract realism? Anyways. M. is usually quite busy, moving herself, vocalizing, grabbing things, putting her limbs and other objects in her mouth. Very industrious she is as babies if her age are.

Industrious - working energetically and devotedly; hard-working; diligent: an industrious person.

Wha she is trying to do, what her intentions are. I see that she has the book and is banging it. Is that all she is doing? Maybe that is all she is doing and I shouldn't be trying to read more into her actions. (see post about seeing vs. imagining)

Maybe what she is doing is realistic industrialism, and my confusion about her intentions makes it abstract. Hitting a book while shouting "babababababab" isn't abstract. It is hitting a book while shouting "babababababab". Nothing unclear there.

Which then makes me unsure about my original idea for this post. Which was - most improvisational performances are good examples of abstract industrialism. A lot is going on but no one really knows why. But maybe the abstraction comes from wanting to see more than there is

Hmmm must think about this more.