The first of our weekly, unfocused work sessions will be this Wednesday, December 3, 6:30, in the Newnan School of Dance studios, downtown Newnan on Greenville Street.
Category: starting up
Quo vadis?
Where do we go from here?
New website
Head over to http://lacunagroup.org and check it out. Let me know what needs to change: what we need to add, clean up, streamline, make clearer.
This blog will be part of it, but I have to find the time to move it over there. Not as easy as it sounds, and I won’t bore you with the big voodoo science magic entailed.
The blog will continue to be our workspace, our journal, as we begin to develop William Blake’s Inn. Expect fresh perspectives.
Marc’s theatre training materials will be split off into their own section, which will make them easier to reference.
Another way to look at it
I’m going to start out more simply. As usual, Marc has amazing things to say, but he writes at such length that one hardly knows which part to respond to. (Pardon, Marc.)
I do appreciate Marc’s comment that what we do onstage does not need to detract from the music/poetry. That said, I think we have plenty of opportunity to dazzle the audience, and may develop more: I can always make more music to stretch things out.
Case in point: “Two Sunflowers Move into the Yellow Room” probably should contain minimal dazzlement during the main song, but there’s nothing that prevents us from adding a Ballet of the Sunflowers which takes the main theme and extends it into a bigger piece.
Two things happen there: it lengthens the program a little bit, and I do think 34 minutes is too short, and it gives more children stage time. That’s the thing we’ll explore over the next few months.
But to make this brief and open up for comments, I don’t think we need any kind of plot/script/frame to make it work. There’s a sense of movement through about a day and a half in the whole piece, and I really think that’s all we need to offer the audience. I think I’ve said this before, but one instructive model is that of Cirque du Soleil. They may set up a barebones storyline at the opening, but the following two hours is just one visually arresting image after another. Connectivity? Not so’s you’d notice. Logical plot? None.
Contact Improvisation Workshop
Attention adventurous performers,
Saturday May 6, from 2 to 4, Newnan School of Dance will offer a workshop introducing Contact Improvisation to interested dancers and actors and citizens (and as of this writing, it’s free). Annette Tomassi will teach it.
What is contact improvisation? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_improvisation
It was invented in the late sixties by Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark Smith, dancers connected, at that time, with the Judson Street/Grand Union group in NYC-(one of Twyla’s early stomping grounds, too). –Paxton trained as a gymnast and a Merce Cunningham company member. Nutshell definition: the active and passive giving and taking of weight with Newton’s Universe having the last word. Continue reading “Contact Improvisation Workshop”
Meeting, 4/19/06
And so we met.
We put two charts on the wall, one labeled NONTRADITIONAL and the other TRADITIONAL.
Continue reading “Meeting, 4/19/06”
Inaugural meeting I: Prep
Newnan School of Dance is located at 30-something Amlajack Boulevard. On Bullsboro, at the Starbuck’s intersection, you turn away from Starbuck’s. A half a mile or so on the right you will see a converted warehouse with a dancer stuck on it; you are pretty much across from the University of West Georgia “Newnan Campus” at this point.
If you have some collapsible soccer mom chairs, bring them. There are a few chairs, but to circle up (loosely, mind you) comfortably, a chair may be kinder than the floor.
Wear comfortable loose-fitting clothes. We will be doing some physical warm-ups and hopefully getting some work done.
Bring a notebook/journal and something with which to write.
Some axioms
Apparently (for I am no mathematician nor a historian of mathematics) there were two famous British mathematicians, G. F. Hardy and J. E. Littlewood, who famously collaborated on a lot of stuff that would have even Marc crying “Reader’s Digest!” Before they began their collaboration, which they did almost exclusively through written correspondence, they decided to formulate some rules which would protect their “personal freedom,” whatever that means.
I think they bear consideration as we begin our own collaboration in considerably closer quarters.
The first of them said that, when one wrote to the other, …, it was completely indifferent whether what they wrote was right or wrong …
The second axiom was to the effect that, when one received a letter from the other, he was under no obligation whatsoever to read it, let alone to answer it …
The third axiom was to the effect that, although it did not really matter if they both thought about the same detail, still, it was preferable that they should not do so.
And, finally, the fourth, and perhaps most important axiom, stated that it was quite indifferent if one of them had not contributed the least bit to the contents of a paper under their common name …
[From the collected works of Harald Bohr, quoted by Bela Bollobás in the foreword to Littlewood’s Miscellany, Cambridge University Press, 1986. ]
Can we get this on a t-shirt?
Gathering Topics
Drunk with power from my new-found ability to post, I thought it might be fun to start another list. For this one, assume that Lacuna will meet on a recurring basis for two hours per “gathering”. Propose a topic that you think would be valuable and interesting for one or more of these gatherings. As long as we are speculating wildly, you may as well include who you believe should facilitate the topic. While volunteering yourself certainly increases the likelyhood that the event will actually transpire, it is by no means necessary.
The original e-mail, once more…
Below is the first idle e-mail I sent to Dale and requested he distribute when I finally realized I had a crush on the Auntie Mame cast. I want to put it on the blog because it contains a very sober and simple expression of desires. It’s what’s real for me. Please remember the first e-mail as we go off on our tangents and to our extremes. For me it’s all sharing and it’s all performance and it’s all attempts to go to the extremes of thought and gesture to see what’s there. It’s how I play. But the seed of the group idea is in the text of the e-mail. That’s very real and realizable and doesn’t contradict anyone’s convictions (I hope). So I wrote this:
Dale knows I have a propensity for writing manic e-mails during my morning witching hour–you know: that period of caffeine fueled euphoria during which we believe our own press and that all things are possible; so I sent this to him first for comment and judicious distribution.
And now, if you are not put off by self-consciously baroque syntax, please continue and read the pitch. Continue reading “The original e-mail, once more…”