In Fall 2017, Life as a Modern Dancer launched a new concept for post-performance discussion and writing. The goals are multi-fold:
- What are new ways to invite post-performance writing (since so few publications now print dance reviews, and there are fewer and fewer dance critics in the United States)?
- How can choreographers hear and read more from audience members about their impressions and experiences of dance events?
- Can we offer new mechanisms for choreographers to gather language about their work, to further their work and to promote their work?
The premise is simple. If you attended the performance of Molly Rose-Williams' Social Movement at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley on November 17 and 18, 2018, please take a few minutes here to leave a comment. Write down images, impressions, appreciations, and questions from the performance. These can be words, phrases, or a few sentences. Then please sign it with your name and a descriptor, such as:
Jill Randall, Director of Life as a Modern Dancer
Chris Randall, dance enthusiast
Reed Randall, first-time audience member
We thank you for your time, support, and thoughtfulness. Here's to more dialogue, more reflection, and more writing on the dance performance experience. As choreographer Mariah Steele noted, we are "democratizing dance criticism."
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I saw an expansiveness of play, a generous connectivity amongst the dancers and extended to the audience. Molly's solo work, in particular her use of gesture and pantomime is captivating in its embodied simplicity. Her smile is everything. The whole work felt like a generous expression of her being and a gift to the beholder.
Posted by: KJ Dahlaw | 11/18/2018 at 12:01 PM
If every blink of a thought had a movement, if every momentary impulse coursed into gesture, if every desire and counter-desire flowed into multiple nerve endings, if every emotion ignited the body that contains it—if, from this convulsive theater, intentions emerge, merge, and disperse—that would be the dance of Social Movement. In fact, it is.
Thank you, Sharon Coleman
Posted by: Sharon Coleman | 11/18/2018 at 03:38 PM
Karen shared this comment on another thread on the blog, but I wanted to include it in this thread as well. - Jill Randall, Blog Director
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This evening I was treated by a friend to the opening performance of Social Movement.
Thank you very much for an evening spanning the joys, sorrows, troubles and triumphs of being human. The troupe of performers engaged their audience for over an hour and led us through such familiar terrain in new and comforting ways. To see the movement increase and decrease, to see individuals take up a train of thought through movement, to see four individuals mesh as one, to receive the security of concerted movement juxtaposed with random, spontaneous movement, to watch as music became the medium that bound human movement together.....all this and more was mine to imbibe in! I came away feeling quite nourished on a soul level; fortified by the medicine that sound, lithe bodies can bring to a space. Thank you so very much.
In addition, I would like to share that my work as a movement artist was further inspired by tonight's performance. I teach and perform the art of eurythmy; a movement art that stems from out of the wisdom of the human being, the human as physical, spiritual, social being. It is taught in most schools with Waldorf education. In eurythmy the sounds of speech are made visible, as are the tones expressed in music. It serves the ongoing understanding of what it means to be human, which in essence is living word, living music.
Throughout the evening of Social Movement, there were positions and gestures of head, arm, leg, body, that all reflected soul qualities in a human's experience. It was fascinating to watch these eurythmic elements being grafted into the choreography and improvisation of your work. The sequence done by Molly in her soliloquy was highly captivating as well. The endless repetition of backward somersaults effected a palpable change in me as I watched this ongoing movement. From intrigue, to satisfaction and comfort, to sadness and despair, to horror, her choreography seemed to ring utterly true to the human condition. It was brilliant!
If ever you wish to know more about eurythmy, do explore. There are elements that would find a good home in the work I saw tonight, and there are aspects of it that may be of use to your ongoing study of dance, movement, and its place in our world today.
Best wishes,
Karen Gallagher
Posted by: Karen Gallagher | 11/17/2018 at 09:37 PM
Posted by: Jill Randall | 11/18/2018 at 04:37 PM
Among the many aspects of tonight's event that impressed me were the groundedness of the performers -- literally and otherwise -- and watching Molly watch the dancers during part of the quartet, with what looked to me like wonder and joy, which was what I felt during each section. I noticed simplicity, clarity, and honesty of gaze. I look forward to watching further flowering of ideas, work, experiments -- and I missed the tamales, so hopefully they'll recur?
Posted by: Valerie Gutwirth | 11/18/2018 at 08:55 PM
Thank you for a wonderful evening on Sunday and for all that you shared. I have many images and ideas to hold onto, when thinking about social movements and my place in them:
-Are we holding each other up, or slowly pressing/pushing each other down?
-When do I really see someone and be in an authentic and present dialogue with them?
-How can we find moments of levity despite the darkness?
As for the dancing and choreography, there were lots of great moments:
-A great cast of artists and a beautiful synergy with the group.
-Loved the physicality of the work.
-Loved the balance of recorded music, silence, and ambient sounds and sounds that a moving body naturally makes.
Thank you for the experience!
Jill Randall, Blog Director of Life as a Modern Dancer
and Artistic Director of Shawl-Anderson Dance Center
Posted by: Jill Randall | 11/19/2018 at 02:15 PM
In these terrifying and maddening times of demagoguery, hatred, intolerance, and violence, the outcries for "social justice" are flagrant and animated. So when I saw the title of Molly's newest work, "Social Movement", I expected the evening to deliver a one/two punch of justifiable outrage and protest. But "Social Movement" is just that - SOCIAL! My lovely thesaurus aptly lists synonyms for "social" as: affable; civil; communal; collective; community; cordial; entertaining; gracious; gregarious; intimate; and so on. But Molly's, social movement, delves much deeper than that.
Molly and her four collaborators: Jesse, Ky, Chelsea and Galen, brought unabandoned exploration, physical and emotional strength and trust into play. Like human building blocks, they emboldened humor and hope. They moved, cajoled, and cradled each other like grizzly cubs enmeshed in endless discovery and joy. I drew
metaphors easily that address our human frailty while bolstering our strength and resolve. In the unadorned simplicity of being completely in the moment, I found the dancers weaving a story of intimacy that involved absolute devotion, keen attention, compassion, and support -- metaphysical antidotes for our ailing humanity. Or -- as Molly calls it: SOCIAL MOVEMENT!!
Thank you for an evening of full-range playfulness and honesty. While the work as a whole feels like it is in the early stages of emerging, the dancers were nonetheless captivating and engaging. I was tickled by the vaudevillian slapstick door-play, and Molly's radiant/open face, humility and sincerity always wins hearts and minds.
Posted by: Ann DiFruscia | 11/23/2018 at 11:23 PM