Choreographing Writing

Often scholarly types get hung up at the outline. This link is to a very useful list of things to do to create a book to build a personal brand. I find this interesting because being identified as a scholars is and has always been beholden to personal branding. We had a corner on that market and never named it!

Go read this article. Full of useful ideas, the author, Roger Parker, makes a point to help you create your own process.

If you have ever struggled with getting your next piece of writing out there, remember to let go of the outline once it is done. "Save Time Turning Ideas Into Profitable, Brand-Building Books" is for people who never thought they could write a book, but have in fact generated hundreds of pages of worksheets and speeches. Our problem as academic-types is that we come through a culture of hazing bent on convincing us that our singular voice is possibly already wrong before it is heard! Rest assured, your topic would not have chosen you if you were wrong for it!

The process of obtaining approval and certification to then write makes it very hard to turn around and write! Once you get going, there is no one to give you permission anymore. So what is the tendency? To go back to the outline, rework it, remap the project and bug your advisor again to approve it. Of course, it will be hard to get their approval again, because they have moved on to the next task. A tepid response from an advisor about the next, greatest outline usually creates panic and generates a third outline...and less of a response from an advisor now fearing that you will never start to actually write. Your newly refined outline is not the problem, your need for closure is.

When I worked as a professor, I would assign art therapy projects for students who were particularly stuck in the need for approval. This article by Roger Park lists some of my favorite ways to choreograph your thoughts so that the graphos literally leaps out of you. The biggest idea? Get back on the floor; leave your computer alone. Use tactile devices to organize your thoughts, not lists and lists. Once you can feel it, see it and interact with it, you will hear your project's logic and serve it the resources it needs.

Silfredo La'O paints through dancing. His solo is literal choreographing, experimenting with traditional movement from Santería, itself, soul writing through dance.

Like a great solo, you will know when a move is not "true" to the momentum of the moment that preceded it. In order to get the solo to work, to garner belief in its reality, you became an expert in it by playing, poking, falling, failing, releasing, breaking it, beginning again and playing some more. You want the solo to convey its meaning and support you as a choreographer or dancer. What if you wrote from the same place?

What if you were clear that you were creating a personal brand? The thing about branding is that you have to get the stuff out there more quickly than we are accustomed to in scholarship. But what if you could get your writing project out there without looking for the next qualifying exam, certificate, scathing review? Do not let go of outlining, but switch instead to planning, to mapping. This subtle shift will help you get some gestural healing going so that your project can support your voice and you, its truth.

Anna B. Scott holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies, worked as a professor for almost ten years, makes dance theater, and writes on all types of topics.  If you are really stuck or under duress of a deadline, a writing coach maybe right for you. Contact the Dancing Oracle for support. Remember, it is your passion.

Das Racists and Video Dance History

Get More: Das Racist, Music, More Music Videos

Can you name all the Michael Jackson music videos cited in this new one?

There is likely some insane inside joke here about earning 1M just by saying "Michael Jackson," but I find using pastiche as a mode of production, not just presentation, quite interesting. Das Racists are definitely "overedumacated" traffickers in histrionics and assorted tomfoolery, yet, the collisions they create in their lyrics and videos causes somatic dissonance, which ain't supposed to happen. Throw the corpo-real something, it will calculate, right? Well, apparently, fact is not only stranger than fiction, but is fiction.

Live Action Adverts

Increasingly, the dance flash mob is casted, and professionally choreographed. Perhaps T-Mobile's series in 2007 did it best, literally cramming a train station full of dancers who rocked out so hard, their infectious enthusiasm spread to passersby who picked up snippets of the choreo and joined in. Lately, however, the drive to control the message of the flash mob has generated a fourth wall in semi-public, but mostly private consumerists spaces.

The latest effort of Beyoncé to take over the world through hairography and pumps comes not from her Goldeness Herself, rather from a "flash mob" created for Target to celebrate the launch of her album at the retail chain, or given the date, her team's nomination for an MTV Music Video Award for best Choreography. This video has very high production quality and most strikingly, has a storyline, just like a regular advertisement would. Give it a look:



As you can see, the crowd is forced out of their space, their routine for shopping, not because they want to watch necessarily, but because the producer realized that the best place to stage the mob was by the registers, which became the backstage for the waves of dance crews. Displacing the shopper does not turn them into an audience member. In fact, it could be argued that this particular iteration of flash mob is not the "gift" we have come to enjoy from large scale group choreography. Done in tiny teams each with exceptionally virtuositic timing (seriously, who would pick up these moves in a few moments other than another professional dancer), matching costumes meant to harmonize with the other brand in the room--Target--this flash mob for Beyoncé is foisted upon the shoppers. There is no negotiation of space, the music pumped overhead tells them they are in a different space, and the cameraman definitely cut down their ability to move across the aisle to the check out lines.

This is not a dance flash mob: it is an advertisement that disrupts the main show just like a regular one. The only difference? This ad does not pay dancers residuals, stalks the viewer, blocking the exits, and unfortunately, the bathroom.

To Dance is To Calculate

Science Fiction writer, math coach, and former ballerina Catherine Asaro discusses how Western classical dance is an obvious form of physics. She goes on to talk about the math of classical music as well. All very rooted in"The Great Western Traditions," this interview still works to show how the division between art, science, and math is a false one that breeds gender bias and forecloses innovation.

This clip is an excerpt of a 20 minute interview for the Big Think. You may watch the entire video on their site.

Choice Time: Why Being Able To Choose Stops Action in its Tracks

From a corporeal perspective, this type of alienation returns as an excess of gesticulation, of disordered patterns seeking amelioration through organized communal release. The indecisive nature of modern society is best resolved through the ordered patterning of group choreography, as delineated in the above video. However, from a pure choreography perspective, we can then understand the decline of modern dance (which rewards singular works that are not easily performed by just anyone) and the rise of the dance flash mob (which by its very nature obviates choice and requires literal lockstep adherence in order for the performance to be a success) as yet another symptom of the Ideology of Choice embedded in Capitalism. Moreover, this "decision" to participate in a flash mob, already requiring that one does not fully think for ones self and absolves one's responsibility through the rubric of "play," feels like "true" action, and thus terminates while mimicking real social action. Perhaps we can think about the incredible array of dance competition TV shows as an attempt to harness the result of the angst of choice while generating even more, and therefore more ways to capitalize on this emotion/sensation of lack of actual social action.

Dance and Value: roots in the drum

This week in Afrologica (where most of my blogging has been taking place for 2010), we are investigating how value is created in dance as well as hot spots to take dance that are embedded in a drum culture. I thought it would be interesting to start by looking at the Danza Contemporanea De Cuba, as they exist as an arts entity that is highly prized in a country where dance arts are vibrant and often part of several distinct drum cultures. It is also a state organ, and therefore a highly curated presentation of "Cubanismo;" one could even argue that their repertory could be considered as much censorship as it is curatorial audacity: arts placed in a primary position to drive and augment governmental policy. Intriguing.