The Gesture & The Citizen

Iemanjá's Footprints

2012-01-01T21:42:00.000-08:00

It's customary in Brasil to head to the ocean for New Year's Eve to thank the Mother of Fishes, Iemanjá for all that she did to help keep your family coherent, cohesive and flourishing. All about the family, by extension, she is also about community and nation building. Iemanjá's dance moves like the tide coming in and out. With hands outstretched like a fan or foam on the waves, Iemanjá stitches

Choreographing Writing

2011-09-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

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

Das Racists and Video Dance History

2011-09-09T17:15:00.000-07:00

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

Live Action Adverts

2011-07-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

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

To Dance is To Calculate

2011-07-14T10:57:00.000-07:00

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

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

2011-07-09T23:11:00.000-07:00

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

Dance and Value: roots in the drum

2011-01-19T00:39:00.000-08:00

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

Digital Media and Learning Conference

2010-02-18T09:15:00.000-08:00

This is a quick note about a conference where I will perform in a few hours! The MacArthur Foundation is supporting the Digital Media and Learning Hub at UC Irvine to host its first conference on the topic. Registration was closed once they hit the 400 attendee mark! That is great, and yet, kinda terrible, because there does not appear to be a streaming alternative. Well, I am working on one.

Pandora's Box or Aunt Kizzy in the Kitchen? Avatar, an illicit memoir

2010-01-07T22:30:00.000-08:00

In Second Life, I am homeless. Not only am I homeless, but I am trapped on some wild island with creatures similar to the ones I just saw in 3D in the film, Avatar. And this island was designed and is populated by Germans, who all have very intensely colored bodies and costumes. I am dressed in flare jeans and baby doll dress top. I was asked if I was African, in German of course. That was about

How does Shakira "have it all?"

2009-11-24T02:50:00.000-08:00