space form flows: in the city: Montreal - experimental LAB dance companies

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Montreal - experimental LAB dance companies

1970's: after the European immigrants introduced classical ballet to Canada, WWII led many to return overseas for jobs. After WWII, many influential figures in the dance world came to Canada and Montreal. Montreal became known for its risky experimential dance LABS, collaborating with other creative faculties : theatre, poetry, film, art and architecture.

How does dance translate the human nature of movement into a performative field of reality?

Jean-Pierre Perreault

choreographer / artist/ dancer Eironos

Believes a dance piece should not tell a story - dance is bad at that. Like his visionary impressionist paintings he shows his dancers at preliminary choreography sessions, a piece conveys a sense of emotion embedded, fantastically, in the movement itself.

I think, unintended narrative means the interpretation of the piece is one where time freezes, and the piece is layered stills. Human perception of space and time do not exist. In this way, one can feel an intuitive "sense of emotion" about the piece, as Perreault intended.

Ginette Laurin

choreography / O Vertigo Danse

architectural settings, clothing as extensions of the dancer.

DV8

DV8 - official website (London)

This dance/film group perfer not to be called 'dancers'. combines the art of film with movement to entice the relational and surreal nature that performance through film convey to the audience.

references:

http://www.sdhs.org - school of dance history scholars

http://www.artsalive.ca - public access on history and contemporary dance culture

http://www.montrealdanse.com/en/main_en.htm - contemporary danse, LAB research

http://www.agoradanse.com/technique.php - houses national/internation dance performances

Danser a Montreal: Germination d'une histoire choroegraphque. Oro Tembeck, Presses de l'Universite du Quebec, 1992 - montreal's evolution of dance

http://www.fortier-danse.com/ paul andre fortier - LAB danse with interdisciplinary 'outside eye' for choreographers

No comments:

Post a Comment

glossary of terms

agent

body-space - virtual space relational to the human body and milieu. -william forsythe's theory of human-dynamics relationship with space. body-space is not "carved out" as the body moves through a milieu. body-space is virtual and is actualized as output from ones mind by ones orientation, perception and translation of the inputted body-space-milieu data.
body-space co-exists with the bodies thermal dynamics.

co-existence - when a and b influence each other and happen in response to each other.

effort -
regulation of flow of movement:
body's control mechanism (cause)
-instinct
-external work
-internal attitudes, and states of mind

explains how there is more to movement then purely mechanical actuation.

effort is always present in any bodily movement; otherwise they could not be preceived by others, or become effectual in the external surroundings of the moving person. effort is visible in action, audible in song or speech, felt, smelt and imagined.

-movement tendencies can become habitual inner attitudes/ character and temperament.

effort manifestations -

animals/ simple effort manifestations - restricted series of effort combinations form the typical body shapes and movement habits of different species, maintained throughout long generations. *micheal serres, parastie part3- reversible worlds (without the parasite) vs. irreversible worlds. (with the parasite).
[how does the movement change when parasited?]

hemodynamics - the study of the forces involved in the circulation of blood. "the status of blood flow in the circulation, the sum result of cardiac output and resistances- eg, vascular resistance to flow.
Dorland's Medical Dictionary for Health Consumers. © 2007 by Saunders, an imprint of Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved.

IRT- infrared thermography. the technology of viewing temperature traces in image and video. conversion of infrared radiation to wavelengths perceivable to the human eye in the electro-magnetic spectrum.

rest - something else than relaxation, as in rest all effort is absent, while in the activity of relaxing some effort is present. in relaxation the degree of exertion contained in the effort might be reduced without, however, abolishing it altogether. rests inserted between exertions for the sake of recovery from fatigue represent the cession of end of a movement or of a sequence of movements. (l) of rest between operations must be proportionate to the (l) and intensity of exertion in order to allow the muscles and nerves to recover from fatigue. the time needed for recovery is that sufficient (a) for the elimination of waster material accumulated during work in the muscle and nerve tissues, parts of which have been burned up in producing the efforts, and (b) for the building up or feeding of new muscle tissue which can be used in the following exertions. (p.5, laban, Effort.)

rhythmised - "the contentment accompanying the beauty of well-rythmised and therefore skilled movements plays a great role in the economy of human effort" (p.6, laban, Effort.)

shadow movements - tiny muscular movements, which have none other than expressive value. "frozen" effort manifestation, and personal effort characteristic. (raising the eyebrows) "often done unconsciously and often accompany movements of purposeful action like a shadow.. "handsomely moulded features can become most repellent when grimacing, and ugly people can assume the nicest expressions when smiling " - (p.11, laban, mastery of movement.)

synthesis - the non-euclidean intersection, // and co-existence of topologies. aka the natural tendancy that everything is one in the same and can be true mathematically, experimentially, and philosophically.

temperature profile- temperature data obtained from IRT interface

temperature-trace - the trace the body-space qualifies through the physiological phenomenon of skin surface radiation. co-exists with space trace.

thermograph- still image processed from IR thermal imager.

sense impression - each movement originates from an inner excitement of the nerves, caused either by:

-an immediate sense impression

or a

-complicated chain of formerly experienced sense impression stored in the memory.

this excitement results in the voluntary or involuntary inner effort or impulse to move (external effort) (p.19, laban, mastery of movement.)

snapshot perception - the mind is able to receive only a single phase of the interrupted flux of movement. the illusion of stand-stills creates an artificial separation of space and movement. seen from this 'snap-shot' point of view, space seems to be a void in which objects stand and-occasionally-move.

successive - short sequence for stop frame thermographs

W.S.T.F. (weight, space, time and flow) - motion factors.
"the components making up the different effort qualities result from an inner attitude (conscious and unconscious) towards the motion factors." (p.11, laban, mastery of mov'mt). nature accidents.

"we can observe whether people yield to the accidental forces of weight, space and time, as well as to the natural flow of movement in the sense of having a bodily feeling of them, or whether they fight against one or more if these factors by actively resisting them." (p.20, laban, mastery of movement)
-feeling.
-resistance.

mechanical explanation of the production of energy and its transformation into movement:

weight: follows laws of gravitation
space: skeleton is a system of levers which distances and directions in space are reached. levers are set in motion by nerves and muscles which furnish the strength needed to overcome the weight of the parts of the body that are moved.
flow: flow of motion is controlled by nerve centres reacting to external and internal stimuli.
time: movements can be exactly measured.
energy: driving force of movement, developed by process of combustion within the organs of the body.

regulation of flow of movement:
body's control mechanism (cause)
-instinct
-external work
-interal attitudes, and states of mind

-movement tendencies can become habitual inner attitudes/ character and temperament.

temperament - long term movements that manifest from ones inner attitudes/ former experienced sense impressions.

tendencies - short term movements that manifest from immediate sense impressions.

trace-forms - the trace that the body-space qualifies. (laban)

Search This Blog

Blog Archive

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Montreal - experimental LAB dance companies

No comments:

Post a Comment

topics

glossary of terms