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Poway Oceanside Providence RI
Connecticut A Common Ground Community Arts Center 346 Main Street Dunbury, CT Dolores Matzen The Ridgefield School of Dance To sign up for our monthly Enewsletter, please click here.
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ETHNIC DANCE the Audience of Ethnic Dance by Morwenna Assaf, Director of the Art/Dance Academy Complex, Oceanside, CA This is written for all of those students, teachers, dancers & also all of those people that make up our general audience. A lot of the value of any art work lies in the emotional impact on the viewer. We, as performers all hope to be appreciated. As a performing artist we have only one opportunity to please our audience. Once a movement is done it is dead. We cannot hope to retrieve it. It is over. The audience becomes our "do-it-yourself" critic. Therefore it is important to make yourself a good audience and will give you so much more appreciation for what you are seeing. It will enrich what you observe and help you evaluate what you see.I am going to break down the two main divisions of ethnic dance performance into (1) communal & (2) performance.
1.Nightclubs
Since the basic motivation is to entertain. Just sit back and enjoy Art/Dance - divided into three main aspects: Ballet, Contemporary and Ethnic/World Art/Dance is a full evening’s performance on a concert stage or at least a facsimile thereof. One should not attend with the idea of being entertained but an enlightening one. Therefore expect to be educated and enlightened. Have a certain sensitivity. ETHNIC/WORLD dance is all dances dances of alien background.
According to La Meri "to fully appreciate all the aspects of ethnic dance
is the work of a lifetime. For our purposes we can have three divisions: All dances that are not Oriental/Eastern are considered
Occidental/Western. ORIENTAL/EASTERN A/ Movement comes from the waist up
(emotional). Preparation before you can appreciate eastern dance arts including our own Middle Eastern version. Folk dance brought to the stage is no more communal but performance. The same goes for trance dances and all dances of ladies. But even with transplanting it to the stage the origins of motivation and technique must be maintained. As a "do it yourself" critic of dance you must know what you are seeing. First learn to appreciate dancing. By criticism I do not mean censure. You cannot define and judge every performance the same way. Never demand perfection. To quote again Madame La Meri "Art is capable of perfection but the artist is not." The dance has many faces. When a dancer appears on stage try to estimate him, then sit back and enjoy. For example if attending a student recital don’t expect the performance to have the polish or perfection of a professional. Your pleasure will be in judging the appropriateness of the motivation of the dance and the seriousness with which the students handle the presentation. Know what you personally are looking for in a performer. Technique? Aesthetic beauty? Emotional impact? To recognize an artist it takes a touch of the artist in the beholder. Give appreciation where it is due. Give appreciation to those who contribute to the advancement of the art. An artist presenting anything is a step forward in art. Dance is a national resource for international understanding. Encourage, applaud , give the rising young dancer a place to learn this loftiest of arts and keep him physically & spiritually alive. Dancers only grow with experience. See as many performances as you can it provides dynamic lessons in technique and expressiveness. It inspires you in your own studies. It can plant ideas in your heart that you never dreamed of. It can turn the lights on as to what all that class time is about. You learn why you repeat over & over again the same exercises. So support all your fellow dancers & get out there & try it yourself. While I am at it. Lets give a great round of applause to all those new students and old who performed for our fabulous SAMEDA Christmas party. I for one was thrilled to see the new girls who got out there & tried their wings. Those of us who have been around a year or two know how not always does everything go perfectly. You know the old saying ---- happens. I think you all deserve a thank you for a very enjoyable evening. This was my first SAMEDA party. Hope we have many more. Unlike sports, dance is not - or at least should not be - a competitive
activity. Dance is movement that has been organized so that it is rewarding to behold, and the craft of making and arranging dances is called choreography. Because dance can assume so many guises, the viewer should regard each dance he/she views with fresh , unprejudiced eyes. All dance styles are not alike, and some, to the uninitiated eye, may look decidedly odd. Usually, dance is accompanied by suitable music which will do much to emphasize a work’s rhythmic vitality or establish its emotional atmosphere. . Costumes may contribute to a works effectiveness. Dancers inhibit time and space simultaneously, and the interest of a dance derives from space, time, positions of bodies, from energy, dynamics and the way movements are rhythmically organized for effort and rest. From all this activity and interactivity the dance is built. Dance communicates because it prompts responses within us. Dance is not simply a visual art, it is kinesthetic as well; it appeals to our inherent sense of motion. As we watch dancers on stage, our own muscular systems react to the strain or relaxation of their movements. We not only observe what happens, we also, in some empathetic way, feel it. The art of dance is as old as the human race. REFERENCES: Anderson Jack, Dance Morwenna Assaf Home To CEDAR
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