emails for classmates

tvagui11@stlawu.edu tzintzun

vrbean10@stlawu.edu tori bean

lebell09@stlawu.edu laquan

cdbrya10@stlawu.edu cynthia

tjcost10@stlawu.edu tommy

erdayb12@stlawu.edu emma

npdeve12@stlawu.edu neil

ngdign11@stlawu.edu natalie

etlago12@stlawu.edu elizabeth

alluca11@stlawu.edu allegra

eepenn11@stlawu.edu emily

jhraue12@stlawu.edu julia

qrself11@stlawu.edu quinn

msshoe10@stlawu.edu matt

vnsmit13@stlawu.edu victoria smith

aetalb10@stlawu.edu ally

Assignment #2

ASSIGNMENT #2: REPETITION AND MEANING

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
                                    by Wallace Stevens

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,  
The only moving thing  

Was the eye of the blackbird.  

II

I was of three minds,  

Like a tree  

In which there are three blackbirds.  

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.  

It was a small part of the pantomime.  

IV

A man and a woman  

Are one.  

A man and a woman and a blackbird  

Are one.  

V

I do not know which to prefer,  

The beauty of inflections  

Or the beauty of innuendoes,  

The blackbird whistling  

Or just after.  

VI

Icicles filled the long window  

With barbaric glass.  

The shadow of the blackbird  

Crossed it, to and fro.  

The mood  

Traced in the shadow  

An indecipherable cause.  

VII

O thin men of Haddam,  

Why do you imagine golden birds?   

Do you not see how the blackbird  

Walks around the feet  

Of the women about you?  

VIII

I know noble accents  

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;  

But I know, too,  

That the blackbird is involved  

In what I know.  

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,  

It marked the edge  

Of one of many circles.  

X

At the sight of blackbirds  

Flying in a green light,  

Even the bawds of euphony  

Would cry out sharply.  

XI

He rode over Connecticut  

In a glass coach.  

Once, a fear pierced him,  

In that he mistook  

The shadow of his equipage  

For blackbirds.  

XII

The river is moving.  

The blackbird must be flying.  

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.  

It was snowing  

And it was going to snow.  

The blackbird sat  

In the cedar-limbs.

In addition to the Wallace Stevens poem, please watch this short film on Jackson Pollock’s process and consider rhythm, repetition, and movement in his work (and in the film-maker’s work who produced this short documentary).  Viewable here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cgBvpjwOGo

Somatic Work: Going further with the somatic writing—take a phrase (movement shape) and transpose it on at least three parts of your kinesphere and vary at least 3 elements of its performance: (speed, size, force/musculature, continuity, dimensionality, directionality.) Learn your phrase so you are able to repeat it for the class on Thursday.

Notebook Prompt:  After you complete the musing, movement, and writing exercises—how do you see/feel them relating to or diverging from one another? Was Pollock dancing?  Why or why not—how or how not?

**We will be meeting in the Noble Center dance studio on Thursday for class. Wear VERY movement-friendly clothing (no jeans... sweats or yoga pants or even shorts, etc.)

For Tuesday 2.28.14

1. Please bring physical notebooks.
2. In those physical notebooks--have or discuss or sketch something from outside the class that references repetition in a way that interests you (drawing/journal entry/snapshot/found item).
3. Be ready to move.
4. Be ready to discuss obsessions/passions/ things you may want to explore (content-wise or process-wise in your final project).  This is your attempt to woo partners into your vision. Treat it accordingly.

assignment#1 w/DaVinci links

ASSIGNMENT #1: FIRST REVISION & THE NOTEBOOK

Artistic Praxis:  Students will either revise or completely re-do one of the two in-class exercises (on your own) for Week 2. 

Notebook:  Every single week, you should be paying attention to the world around you to find connections between the classroom and your daily life.  Please bring in pictures, writing, youtube clips, music… anything that you see as relevant to the subjects we are discussing.  Perhaps this week, you could attune yourself to the theme of repetition.

Musing: Look around in DaVinci’s notebook http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/dv/index.htm.  And also, if you desire, in his Sistine Chapel— (http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html). This could easily take you hours, even days.  At some point, extricate yourself in order to complete the re-vision assignment.  DaVinci’s notebook contains writing and drawings (you must click on the items labeled Pl.2, 3, etc. to see the drawings and diagrams that accompany the text) pertaining to physics, biology, botany, painting, anatomy, and invention.  He denied himself no sector of knowledge, but he also acknowledged that composing his thoughts on so many disparate things could lead to a lack of organization in his notebook and to a certain circularity.  I encourage you to take up his attitude when beginning your artist’s book:

And this is to be a collection without order, taken from many papers which I have copied here, hoping to arrange them later each in its place, according to the subjects of which they may treat. But I believe that before I am at the end of this [task] I shall have to repeat the same things several times; for which, O reader! do not blame me, for the subjects are many and memory cannot retain them [all] and say: 'I will not write this because I wrote it before.’ 

                                                                                                        –from “The Prolegomena”

Syllabus

PARALLEL PLAY:

A COMPOSITIONAL PRACTICUM

IN MOVEMENT & WRITING

______________________________________________________________________________

DESCRIPTION:

The act of composition is common to all art forms. In this class, students (who needn’t be expert in any discipline) will be asked to create work across mediums. By juxtaposing two art forms that are seldom paired (movement and writing), the class will spark both exploration and discussion about the merits and drawbacks of genre separation in this multi-modal, mash-up era. By starting with two practices that involve tools most of us possess—our own language-use and our bodies—we will be able to create work that pushes at boundaries and defies expectations. Artists, actors, musicians, and athletes of all types welcome.

______________________________________________________________________________

MATERIALS AND MUSINGS:

The materials of the course arrive from several vectors.  Some are art products created by artists outside of the medium they are most known for (Bourgeois, Nijinsky).  Some are reflections on hybridity or examples of works that exhibit hybrid characteristics (DaVinci, Simic, and Cornell, Munoz). And some deal with philosophical issues of the choice of artistic medium (Pollock, Langer, Lorca).  This triad of materials will encourage students to experience the workshop on both process-oriented and philosophical levels and will offer them models of cross-artistic engagement.  All these materials were chosen for their ability to not only explain or model some facet of the course, but for their potential to inspire; in other words, I chose these materials not only to illustrate strategies and theories that I desired to include in the course, but because as art-products and essays they have moved me.

Dime Store Alchemy, Charles Simic (on the work of Joseph Cornell)

In Search of Duende, Federico Garcia Lorca

OUR BLOG—(review it every Wed and Fri morning)

Online (or provided by me throughout the term):

The complete text and drawings of Leonardo DaVinci as translated by Richter, 1883

Pages from Drawings and Observations, Louise Bourgeois

“The Task of the Translator” Walter Benjamin

Sections of the Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, ed. Romola Nijinsky

TED talk (meditations on humor, media, and evolution with Vik Munoz)

 “Deceptive Analogies: Species and Real Relationships Among the Arts” from Problems of Art  
       by Susanne K. Langer

Jackson 51 (Hans Namuth’s 1950 short documentary on Jackson Pollock’s painting process)

Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, reciting the monologue “What a piece of work is man…”

GOALS: This course is meant to facilitate the exploration of compositional strategies in dance and in writing (music? video? photography? theater? painting? sculpture?), to foster analogical thinking across disciplines, to encourage both theoretical and historical interest in the arts, and to spark a desire for further explorations and studies of both the fields of dance and literature, ultimately promoting a fuller engagement with and attention to the world.

_____________________________________________________________________________

GRADES: Because of the workshop nature and experiential/discussion nature of this course, no absences are preferable. Two absences will be permitted without penalty. A third absence will lower your grade by .5. A fourth absence will result in failing grade. Plan your illnesses accordingly.

_____________________________________________________________________________

WEEKLY THEMES & IMPORTANT DATES:

                 

                  WEEK 1: JAN 21 & 23 / INTRODUCTION AND LIMITATION

                             

                              Syllabus and Intro and Day to Day Life of the Class

                              Discussion of the NOTEBOOK

                              First Exercises—Limited Vocabulary

                  WEEK 2: JAN 28 & 30 / PARTNERSHIPS AND REPETITION

     

                              On Thursday the 30^th meet with Kerri Canedy’s class in Noble Center

     

                  WEEK 3:  FEB 4 & 6 / SILENCE AND PRESENCE

                              Thursday the 6^th – Workshop #1 – all groups

                             

                  WEEK 4: FEB 11 & 13 / PERSONA AND POSSIBILITY

                              Wednesday the 12^th PK Hall Studio Matejka Performance 7:30PM

                              Thursday the 13^th Meet with Studio Matejka—Black Box

                              Sunday the 16^th 3-6PM Master Class with Studio Matejka (limited space)

                  WEEK 5:  FEB 18 & 20 / PREPARE FINAL WORK PROPOSALS

                              Monday the 17^th 4PM Interdisciplinary discussion with SM (limited space)

                              Tuesday the 18^th meet in Groups to Create Proposal

                              Thursday the 20^th meet with Kerri Canedy’s class in Noble Center

                  WEEK 6: Feb 25 & 27 / MONOLOGUE & DIALOGUE

                              Tuesday the 25^th all groups present the written proposal to the class

                              Thursday the 27^th – feel free to support your teacher at her reading in Sykes

WEEK 7: MAR 4 & 6      / DIALOGUE OF SELF AND SOUL

                              Thursday the 6^th meet with KC’s class in NC

______________________________________________________________________________

                                                       Spring Break!

______________________________________________________________________________

                  WEEK 8: MAR 18 & 20 / YOU & I, ME & YOU, NEGOTIATIONS

                              Thursday the 20^th – Workshop #2 all groups

                  WEEK 9: MAR 25 & 27 / HALF-WAY AND  WAY OUT THERE

                              Thursday the 27^th meet with KC’s class in NC

                 WEEK 10: APR 1 & 3 / MINE AND YOURS AND OURS AND NO ONE’S

                             Thursday the 3^rd – Workshop #3 all groups

                 WEEK 11: APR 8 & 10 COLLECTION AND OBSESSION

                             Thursday the 3rd – In-class rehearsal time and troubleshooting

                            

                 WEEK 12: APR 15 &17 / TRANSLATION AND TRANSFORMATION

                             Thursday the 17^th – On stage in the NC (adjudication for performance)

                 

                  WEEK 13: APR 22 & 24 / PROJECT AND PORTFOLIO

                              Show week, arrangements made for installation

                  WEEK 14: APR 29 & MAY 1 / SHOW & TELL

                              April 29^th— PILOBILOS IN POTSDAM!!!!

                              Notebooks DUE – Public Installation and Reception