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Form and Freedom in Kathak Performance

Sarah Morelli

in A Guru's Journey: Pandit Chitresh Das and Indian Classical Dance in Diaspora

In Pandit Chitresh Das’s kathak community, a full-length kathak solo was considered the primary rite of passage for a senior kathak student transitioning into a performance career. This performance ... More

In Pandit Chitresh Das’s kathak community, a full-length kathak solo was considered the primary rite of passage for a senior kathak student transitioning into a performance career. This performance was particularly formidable because Pandit Das expected them to include upaj, or spontaneous, non-choreographed dancing. This chapter explores the various types of improvisation found in kathak and methods by which kathak students practiced the skills needed to improvise. Finally, this chapter considers means by which Pandit Das inserted upaj and other forms of rhythmic spontaneity into the large-scale and largely choreographed productions expected by promoters, funders, and audiences.Less

Introduction

Susan Leigh Foster

in Valuing Dance: Commodities and Gifts in Motion

The Introduction poses the central question of the book: how is value defined and determined in dance? In answering this question it puts forth a definition of value as a central element within human ... More

The Introduction poses the central question of the book: how is value defined and determined in dance? In answering this question it puts forth a definition of value as a central element within human life, but one that is always determined in relation to the specific histories, contexts, and people where it actualizes. Predicated on the symbolic encoding of actions as well as objects, value is often determined through exchange in which one object, service, or event is deemed equivalent to another. The Introduction then considers the general context within which the author’s study of dance as a form of exchange developed: the neoliberal, global marketplace; the increase in service forms of labor; the desire for authenticity; and the precarity of workers. The book argues that despite its ephemerality, dance manifests a materiality that makes it available for study as a form of social exchange. Teachers and students, choreographers and dancers, and performers and viewers all exchange dance. The study considers how value is produced during these exchanges by focusing on two types of transactions: commodity and gift.Less

The Power of Performance

Alva Noë

in Learning to Look: Dispatches from the Art World

This chapter details one of the performances in the exhibition “Move: Choreographing You” at the Hayward Gallery in London's Southbank Centre in 2010. The exhibition looked at the way performance and ... More

This chapter details one of the performances in the exhibition “Move: Choreographing You” at the Hayward Gallery in London's Southbank Centre in 2010. The exhibition looked at the way performance and visual art intersect and collaborate. In one of the performances, the audience entered Queen Elizabeth Hall while the performers were already on the stage. Xavier Le Roy, the choreographer, then addressed the audience and encouraged everyone to have a conversation, including the performers. There was no use of amplification during the show, so everyone had to try very hard to make themselves heard. Conversation is not just talking; it is a dynamic of shared attention and listening. Ultimately, what the audience experienced in the theater was a simple, uncontrived, spontaneous group phenomenon. And it had to with politics and power: speakers sought to project their personal power into the situation. Indeed, what the audience experienced was a kind of political theater.Less

Totalitarianism, Uncertainty, and Ballet

Janice Ross

in Like a Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet as Resistance in Soviet Russia

This chapter describes Yakobson's use of improvisation to choreograph movements and gestures beyond what the body could do. In his company, Yakobson utilized the unexpected chance to reflect artistic ... More

This chapter describes Yakobson's use of improvisation to choreograph movements and gestures beyond what the body could do. In his company, Yakobson utilized the unexpected chance to reflect artistic freedom and a non-totalitarian view of the future. Upon the formation of his own company, Yakobson worked feverishly. At the same time, he was nursing an ailment that turned out to be stomach cancer. As his condition deteriorated, many opportunities opened up for his company and for himself to travel overseas. However, he died on October 17, 1975 at age 71.Less

The Duel and the Rhetoric of Honor

Scott K. Taylor

in Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain

This chapter discusses the concept of a duel and its main aspects during the Golden Age in Spain. The duel was not simply a flurry of irrational violence but was instead a carefully choreographed ... More

This chapter discusses the concept of a duel and its main aspects during the Golden Age in Spain. The duel was not simply a flurry of irrational violence but was instead a carefully choreographed ceremony designed to restore an honorable reputation to someone who had been defamed. In the example that opens the chapter, the scribes are careful to record that although the hammer thrown by the constable Eugenio Perez Oliva failed to hit its intended target, it did knock the hat off of a third party, Miguel Dominguez. Removing another man's hat, considered an extension of the head, was a symbol of disrespect in the vocabulary of gesture that early modern Castilians employed in their confrontations. Certain parts of the body, including the head, had heightened importance in the rhetoric of honor because they were seen as metaphors for the person.Less

Rome (2005–8)

Sylvie Magerstädt

in TV antiquity: Swords, sandals, blood and sand

This section contains a case study of the HBO–BBC co-production Rome (2005–7).

Starz Spartacus (2010–13)

Sylvie Magerstädt

in TV antiquity: Swords, sandals, blood and sand

This section contains a case study of the HBO–BBC co-production STARZ Spartacus (2010-13).

A Great Place to Make a Show

Kevin Winkler

in Everything is Choreography: The Musical Theater of Tommy Tune

Tommy Tune’s skill in reassembling a musical’s various elements into a new entity was pushed to an extreme with Grand Hotel. He chopped up, or spliced, the book (by Luther Davis) and songs (by George ... More

Tommy Tune’s skill in reassembling a musical’s various elements into a new entity was pushed to an extreme with Grand Hotel. He chopped up, or spliced, the book (by Luther Davis) and songs (by George Forrest and Robert Wright) into a mosaic of melody, movement, and dialogue that conveyed the simultaneous urgent, heated activities of a hotel staff and guests. Tune workshopped Grand Hotel not in a rehearsal studio, but in a dilapidated hotel whose once-elegant ballroom evoked the ambiance of the show’s setting, 1928 Berlin. His desire for nonstop movement, with no waiting for set pieces to arrive, led him to utilize more than forty gold chairs that could be endlessly configured to create a suite of rooms, a hallway, or a bank of telephone operators. Grand Hotel’s direction and staging became inseparable from its book and musical program. It was more tightly choreographed than any previous Tune musical, with the theatrical equivalents of filmic quick cuts and dissolves. Tune was acknowledged as the last of the superstar director-choreographers, and Grand Hotel was one of the most strikingly staged musicals of its era. But there was grumbling that Tune’s dazzling stagecraft was in service of weak material and, moreover, that he preferred it that way, allowing him to come to the rescue and deliver a hit through his superior staging skills. The star of any Tommy Tune musical now appeared to be Tommy Tune.Less

Choreographing Masculinity in Contemporary Israeli Culture

Yehuda Sharim

in Choreographies of 21st Century Wars

The history of the Israeli soldier, including his or her physical training and regimentation, is one not only of constant and ingrained pursuit of nationalistic forms of military heroism but also of ... More

The history of the Israeli soldier, including his or her physical training and regimentation, is one not only of constant and ingrained pursuit of nationalistic forms of military heroism but also of acts of resistance, oppression, and confusion. This chapter explores Israeli society’s preoccupation with ideologies of war and masculinity. It considers the construction of masculinity, as choreographed by Israeli Army training manuals and the media, and its contribution to a complex sense of Israeli manhood. Using the affair of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive for five years, the chapter reads Shalit’s body and image, like other Israeli soldier-civilian bodies, as a contested site that challenges, resists, and advances concepts of masculinity and nationality. Through an investigation of individual and social agency in the embodiment of ideologies, this chapter questions the role of nationalism in the staging of Shalit’s heroism and performance of Israeli national and moral superiority.Less

Specter of War, Spectacle of Peace: The Lowering of Flags Ceremony at the Wagah and Hussainiwala Border Outposts

Neelima Jeychandran

in Choreographies of 21st Century Wars

Every evening at the India-Pakistan border stations of Wagah and Hussainiwala, the gates at the border are closed for the day with a retreat ceremony called the lowering of flags. Performed by the ... More

Every evening at the India-Pakistan border stations of Wagah and Hussainiwala, the gates at the border are closed for the day with a retreat ceremony called the lowering of flags. Performed by the Border Security Force of India and the Pakistan Rangers, the lowering of flags is a choreographed drill with slogan chanting, speed marches, high kicks, and foot stampings. This state-organized performance, though a public spectacle, is also an arena for staging political conflicts between the two countries. Through their bodily choreographies, the soldiers evince the tensions between India and Pakistan caused by frequent battles over territorial intrusions and militant infiltrations. By mobilizing theorizations of body narratives, hypermasculinity, and nationalism, the chapter shows how the soldiers play out their aggressions and employ the drill, not only as a substitute for cross-border battles and military interventions, but as embodiments of the nation and protectors of the motherland.Less