AdeChicke Torbert - solo
I had to refrain from blogging about SYTYCD season 7, which turned out to be quite a bore with a few exceptions. Let’s begin with the audition elimination. When judges failed to choose two superb male dancers that auditioned in NY, the injured Anthony Burrell and D.J. Smart (who later featured his amazing audition choreography in episode 21), I asked myself “o.k. now where is this program going?” Anthony, D.J and slated season 7 winner Alex Wong, would have offered a highly polished performance quality, perhaps as an unfair advantage to the other contestants. But why was the later injured and eliminated Alex chosen over the other two? Was this a deliberate casting angle?
courtesy of mail.com
Sunday evening we lost 90 year old Merce Cunningham, another pioneer of the modern dance era. Cunningham was a founding father of the New York City school of modernist dance training along with Paul Taylor and Jerome Robbins. As a rebellion to traditional styles of Graham and Balanchine, he presented dance as theater, using pedestrian movement in city life, juxtaposed by sound accompaniment. His achievement was to have dance and music composed independently of each other showing dance as independent thought or “chance”. This has surged a new process in the modern dance genre by the succeeding talents of Mark Morris and Twyla Tharp to name a few. In part, we have Cunningham to thank for the abundant display of “dance as thought,” the “but” “what if?” theory; “de/re-contextualized” choreographic phenomenon coveted today on many University campuses.
Also tagged in: accompaniment, Balanchine, choreography, dance, Jerome Robbins, Mark Morris, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, modernist, Paul Taylor, pedestrian, pioneer, sound, storytelling, theater, Twyla Tharp
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Vertie Hodge photo Houston Chronicle Myra Beltran
Well today marks the start of February, Black History Month, a month of historical remembrances that we have ever known to date. Barack Obama and family have set a new precedent in the lives of many Americans. All over the internet one can find pictorials of what this momentous occasion has meant to many Americans, more importantly the elder African-American community. It has been over 40 years since a national identity has been acknowledged through the efforts of the Civil Rights Era. The “I Have A Dream” speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has now come full circle in its meaning and understanding. However, the struggle is not yet over. As our youth choose not to remember the drudgery of American Slavery, it is of every importance that our accomplishments to American colonization be revered.
Also tagged in: "I have a dream.", 1st Black President, 44th President of the United States, African-American, African-American colonization, Africanism, Barack Obama, Black Culture, black history, black history month, Civil Rights, First Lady of the United States, Gullah Sea Islands, inaugural parade, inventions, Martin Luther King, Michelle Obama, New York, Schomburg Library, slavery, Vertie Hodge
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