The Arts in New York City

Arrive no later than 3pm to our meeting place…
… the northwest corner of 19 St. and 10th Avenue, in the Chelsea neighborhood. From there we are going on a MARCH through about 20 different galleries and ten blocks in 2 hours. SPEED will be important so Ryan, make sure you’re not injured. Wear comfortable shoes & leave heavy bags at home if you can. You will not need your computers. You can take pictures in the galleries if you want.

The Chelsea gallery district is the center of the art market in New York City. The galleries mainly show new work by contemporary artists in all media – painting, sculpture, photography, moving image, etc. All the galleries are free but the art inside is not!

In the evening we will be attending City Center’s Fall for Dance program, starting at 8pm, on W 55th St, between 6th and 7th Aves. Expect to see performances by four different dance companies, each with different aesthetics and approaches to the medium of dance. Like visual art, dance has many styles and encompasses many different vocabularies. I’d like you to think about what the essential elements of each dance might be, and how the dances might be similar and different.

To prepare you I am including info about each of the four pieces:

PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY
Arden Court, Choreography by Paul Taylor
Arden Court was created for the Taylor Company in 1981 and was one in a famous series of modern dance works that Mr. Taylor set to baroque music. This dance for six men and three women was inspired by a series of little symphonies by English composer William Boyce.

Arden Court is a 1981 dance for six men and three women, set to excerpts of various symphonies by William Boyce. It is one in a series or works by Mr. Taylor set to baroque music. Arden Court is often described as “pure” because its main concern is the movement. It is set against a backdrop of a large pink rose, and the dancers wear various lycra costumes in complementary pastel tones. The dancers appear driven by the music, working with and against its impetus; thrusting into the phrases and rebounding off them. Similarly, the dancers obey and defy gravity, often within the same short phrase. Leaps and arabesques alternate with deep lunges and rolls across the floor.

KIROV BALLET OF THE MARIINKSY THEATRE OF ST.PETERSBURG
Middle Duet, Choreography by Alexei Ratmansky
A man and woman perform a claustrophobic and accelerated partner dance in a small pool of light in this contemporary ballet set to the music of Russian composer Yuri Khanon.

“Middle Duet,” made for the Kirov Ballet in 1998, is set to an excerpt of “Middle Symphony” by Russian composer Yuri Khanon. It was originally part of a Ratmansky “triptych” that included ballets to music by Stravinsky and Scriabin. It is a duet between a black-clad man and a woman in a dark purple mini-dress. They dance mostly in a shifting light pattern on the floor that resembles sunlight pouring through a window. The impression is claustrophobic, as if the dancers are imprisoned in a gloomy, abstract space. As the orchestra plays the thumping rhythms of “Middle Symphony,” the woman puts her legs through evolutions resembling a fractured and accelerated version of the kind of facing-the-barre pointework you might see in a mid-level ballet class. Her legs twist and cut through the air. The male is the woman’s barre, bracing her torso and providing the strong center point to which she always returns. Throughout Middle Duet, Ratmansky plays with transitions between a ballet dancer’s familiar tightly held verticality and the release of that control. Shifts are initiated by the syncopated starts and stops of Khanon’s rhythms, and the dancers seem to have tango dancers’ proclivity for unexpected shifts of power and control amongst themselves.

SHANTALA SHIVALINGAPPA
Varnam (Excerpt from GAMAKA), Choreography by Shantala Shivalingappa (U.S. Premiere)
Shantala Shivalingappa shares traditional Kuchipudi Indian dance with Western audiences, and she is celebrated for her lightness, grace, and joy.

Kuchipudi is a classical dance style from South India that evolved in the state of Andhra Pradesh, in a small village which gave it its name. It is known for its graceful movements and its strong narrative and dramatic characteristics. Like all Indian classical dance, it originates from the Natya Shastra, a 2,000-year-old treatise by Bharata Muni that covers every aspect of Hindu dance and drama.

A varnam is a complex musical composition of the South Indian tradition, which is often the centerpiece of a classical Indian dance program. This varnam, choreographed by Shantala Shivalingappa, is dedicated to OM, the primal sound, the pure, eternal vibration, which is the source of the universe. The last part of this varnam will be danced on a brass plate, a technique typical of the Kuchipudi style.

JUILLIARD DANCE
Deuce Coupe, Choreography by Twyla Tharp
Set to the music of the Beach Boys, this dance, created by Twyla Tharp in 1973, was a light-hearted, nostalgic depiction of youth for the generation confronting the conflicts in Vietnam. This was Tharp’s first piece made for a ballet company.

Deuce Coupe features a lone ballerina performing classical vocabulary juxtaposed against a raucous and vivacious ensemble of partiers. The piece was originally created for the Joffrey Ballet. It had its New York premiere at New York City Center in March 1973.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 4:44 pm and is filed under UPCOMING EVENTS, Zoe Sheehan Saldana. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.