These past two weeks have been extremely interesting in STAC. A lot of things have happened recently for the better, and I'm really excited to see where that takes us.
Last Friday we went on a field trip to NYC. We went to Sculpture Center, MoMA PS 1, and the Whitney. There was also a show, but due to my unexpected illness, I missed it and had to go home instead. That being said however, the part that I went on was awesome and I cannot wait to go on another trip and have a better experience!
My favorite museum we went to on the trip would probably have to be the Sculpture Center. I didn't love everything there, but there were some exhibits that I really thought were cool. For example, the broken mirrors in the shapes of stars reflected onto the walls. I thought that looked really awesome and was really clever. And the bare tree outside of the Sculpture Center was really cool too.
Another thing I liked during the trip was the music room in MoMA PS 1. It was just a plain white room filled with speakers that played all different notes. As you walked around the perimeter of the room, you could hear the individual voice parts. If you walked into the center of the room, you heard one combined song. It was really interesting. That was my favorite exhibit of the day.
And as insignificant as this may sound, I learned how to be weather prepared on this field trip! Walking through a monsoon (literally, a monsoon) in NYC really makes you appreciate things like Hunter rain boots and rain coats. So sure it sounds stupid, but this trip really made me appreciate all of that stuff.
Dada dance. Like I mentioned in an earlier blog post, Luke gave us Dada assignments based on our disciplines. He told us to create Dada. And well, I think dance really did a great job of creating Dada.
Due to time constraints and music classes, it was hard to find time to get together as a whole and work on the choreography. But, after a while of worrying, we finally found time, and finished our piece. It was certainly not what we expected at all.
At first, we wanted our piece to be about self-expression, and to incorporate tap and ballet and hip hop to "Born This Way" by Lady Gaga. We also wanted to do something where we wore one ballet shoe and one tap shoe. And we had another idea where we flip flopped music and dance genres and mixed it up. But all of that soon changed.
We ended up using the song "Dance In The Dark" by Lady Gaga with some of her other hits ("Money Honey," "Bad Romance," "Teeth," and "Born This Way") mixed in and "Welcome To The Jungle" by Guns n Roses. Clips of "Blow" by Ke$ha and "Freewill" by Rush were also used throughout the number.
What started off as a dance about "self-expression" soon became a dance about human nature, power of women, suicide, and reincarnation. Did we ever expect it to be that way? Well, hell no. But that's Dada.
The girls wore tribal face paint and feathers while the one boy of our group wore a bandanna. It probably symbolized something subconsciously, but to us, it just made it look better. I think the costuming was a huge part in this piece. It really showed some of the main ideas in this dance. And it looked weird in the beginning, which made it Dada.
I am honestly extremely proud of how this dance turned out. We all worked so hard on this choreography and I am so proud to say that our hard work paid off.
I think I've learned a lot from Dada. Dada really taught me to be free, not just with dance, but with art and life.
Dadaists have it kind of easy in a way. Aside from being sneered upon by some, dadaists can be who they want to be and get away with it. And call it art. No matter how you express yourself, while using Dada, it's art.
With dance, it would sometimes be hard for me to just let go, given the fact that all my life I've been told to have perfect posture, pointed toes, and technique.
In Dada, flexed feet is not "illegal," perfect posture is not "mandatory," and technique can be applied in many different ways. It gave me a completely different outlook on dance, art, and life itself. And I'm honestly really glad that it did.
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