Session W2-1
Location: Room L101
Time: 12/26 14:00-15:30
Moderator: Yi Ling Liu
W2-1-1
Legacy Lin’s body and mind unity – presented in "ORPHAN"
Presenter : Yi Ling Liu
Abstract
According to the different value goals, human emotion expression modes can be divided into object emotion, personal emotion, self-emotion and the emotion in special situation. The Legend Lin Dance Theatre has helped dancers to be aware of the individual self and the surrounding environment, allowing them to see the perspective of the body core concept through those six principles. This paper examines through the six action principles of " Steady, Calm, Relax, Sink, Slow, Strength," created by Lin in her company daily practice and performance training. The main goal is to find different styles on the body usage that reflects the aesthetic style of Legend Lin.
In participating in the graduation performance of "Orphan," I found the role of the orphan is through the presentation of similar style, which shows children of their helpless during the civil war in Syria. The choreographer was inspired by the performance of the Legend Lin Dance Theatre. She has taken Legend Lin’s courses before she starts the dance “Orphan”. The body training and ritual of the performance, has made the choreographer aware and be able to absorb different physical appearances as her motivation in choreography. Later, the choreographer created this theme for dance work, Orphan. She quoted on the program that the style of the Legend Lin Dance Theatre is her inspiration. The dancer in her new piece successfully conveyed the deep message through their eyes, facial expressions and emotional physical movements. Moreover, the choreographer also created the different new idea to show the emotions and feelings that fits her choreographic idea.
In the study, the researchers will focus on exploring body as a starting point in Legend Lin Dance Theatre to understand the dance piece “Orphan"; how the physical characteristics of the body set off the emotionality of the entire work. It will internalize the belief of “mindfulness” in thinking, speaking, and acting which changes oneself, affects the audience, and allowing performers and viewers to realize that "Mediation is a strong power to enhance the performance".
Keyword：Legend Lin Dance Theatre, the interpretation of dance, body and mind unity, Mediation
W2-1-2
Navigating Dunedin, New Zealand, through Dance
Presenter : Caroline Clark
Abstract
Dance happens within ever-changing intersections of circumstance, some generated through location. By way of illustration, this paper presents an ethnographic portrait of one such place: Dunedin, New Zealand, a Pacific community abundant with dance forms that dynamically emerge and reiterate. As the recipient of a 2017 Caroline Plummer Research Fellowship in Community Dance hosted by the University of Otago, I conducted six months of research centered in the creation of a purposefully diverse, community-based dance oral history archive. Themes emerging from interviews, experiences, and the affordances of location and identity reveal how dance has resilience within this city, considered to be the oldest colonial city in the nation, as an intersection of global cultures fostered by local practitioners. Accordingly, this research analyzes a multiform community of practitioners and organizations, such as Māori, hip hop, French Renaissance and bharata natyam, defining themselves in relation to place and a sense of purpose. The data reveal the meanings and connections that dance has for those who “find a way.”
This paper further addresses the theme of this conference, “Navigating Location, Negotiating Identity,” by connecting the varied oral histories of participants with interdisciplinary scholarship in human geography, notably in relation to geographer Amanda Rogers’ theories of performing intercultural interactions, migrant mobilities, and geopolitics in conversation with cultural theorist Michel de Certeau’s performative strategies and tactics. Through coming to know these dancers, one comes to know Dunedin moving in its spatial affordances, tensions between colonizers and the previously colonized, and generational shifts.
Certeau, M. de, & Rendall, S. (1984). The practice of everyday life. University of California Press.
Rogers, A. (2018). Advancing the geographies of the performing arts. Progress in Human Geography, 42(4), 549–568. doi.org/10.1177/0309132517692056.
W2-1-3
Dance in Central Asia: Disorienting the Orientalist Gaze and Moving Beyond Hierarchical Classicism
Presenter : Tara Pandeya
Abstract
This presentation will examine dance forms from Central Asia through the lens of the dominant Western scopic regime. My work draws from twenty years of study, research, practice and performance of dance forms from Central Asia. If dance and its practitioners are not recognized as actors of intangible heritage, vital pieces of our humanity and collective history will be lost. Performance of heritage and the study of dance gesture in historical settings has the ability to provide deeper insights into the musical, cultural and environmental contexts of ancient artifacts, people and practices. Classical Central Asian dance forms, based on the maqaam system, date back more than 1,000 years. These classical forms are distinctive in gesture, technically rigorous and, like ballet,were patronized in the royal courts. I examine early 20th century orientalist characters and dances of ‘otherness’, otherwise known as ‘character dance’ in ballet, which were often designed from ethnographic sketches in the Central Asian steppe. What effect do the present-day re-stagings of historical ballets with orientalist characters in ‘brownface’ have on the psyche of the multicultural audiences it meets? Why are classical dance forms from outside of the western hemisphere categorized as ‘ethnic’ or ‘non-western’ classical? Cliches associating contemporary and innovation with the West and the traditional, stagnant and nationalistic with the East, limit opportunities for artist’s individual expression and self-definition. The spectrum through which our world heritage has been communicated, both on the world stage and in the field of academia, must be rebalanced and expanded.
