VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, [10] ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 21:19:37 03/04/08 Tue
Author: SS
Subject: TA362LESSONPLANS1

Noah Eaton


1) The Black Beat Made Visible: Hip Hop Dance and Body Power
Thomas F. DeFrantz


http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:el_M4_OtOKUJ:web.mit.edu/people/defrantz/Documents/BlackBeat.PDF+american+dance+%2B+ephebism&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us

Du Bois's 1903 theory in "Souls of the Black Folk" of "double consciousness," articulated as "two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings ... in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder" suggests a doubling of desire contained by the tenacity of the black body and released in dance (Du Bois, 1961: 3). Black social dances enact this duality in divergent resonances available to dancers and viewers.


*


All African diaspora dance, including black social dances, may be likened to verbal language most in its conspicuous employment of "call and response" with the body responding to and provoking the voice of the drum. In an encyclopedia entry titled "Primitive African Dance (and Its Influence on the Churches of the South)," choreographer Pearl Primus asserted African orality as a defining feature of dance performance. After conducting research in the early 1940's, Primus wrote of the linguistic features of African diasporic dance and the relationship of dance to drum: "On my trips south of the Mason and Dixon line in 1944 I discovered in the Baptist Churches the voice of the drum - not in any instrument, but in the throat of the preacher" (Primus, 1949: 387). She continues to conclude that in "emotional impact, group reaction, rhythms, tempos, actual steps and the exact precision with which they were done, dance in the Southern Baptist Churches so closely
resemble the dance in Africa as to leave no doubt in the mind that the American form emerged from the
African" (Primus, 1949: 389). Her essay suggests a triangular configuration of orality, dancer, and drum as
guiding precepts of African diaspora dance.


*


"If we can accept that the dance responds to the drum, not solely in a reactive manner, but within a configuration of communicative collaboration, we can understand how dance is performative, mirroring the way in which speech may be equated with action. Dance movements convey speech-like qualities which containmeaning beyond the formal, aesthetic shapes and sequences of movement detailed by the body in motion."


*


Robert F. Thompson (1963), Marshall and Jean Stearns ([1964] 1979), Delores K. Cayou (1971),Katrina Hazzard-Gordon (1990), Jacqui Malone (1996), and Brenda Dixon Gottschild (1996). The formalqualities of motion perceived vary slightly according to each author, but all build on the categories articulatedby Thompson in 1966 to include: "the dominance of a percussive concept of performance; multiple meter;apart playing and dancing; call-and-response; and, finally the songs and dances of derision" (Thompson,1966: 88). In 1983 Thompson expanded on these principles slightly, to include an "inner pulse control" and"suspended accentuation patterning," two principles which aid in understanding complex meter and thelayering of rhythmic accent central to African diaspora dance and music (Thompson, 1983: xiii).5Building on Thompson's work, Gottschild articulates a series of intertextual "processes, tendencies, andattitudes" of Africanist performance practice (Gottschild, 1996: 12). Her work explores the intangible essenceof performance through concepts which stress its theoretical hallmarks: embracing the conflict ("a precept ofcontrariety, or an encounter of opposites"); high-affect juxtaposition ("mood, attitude, or movement breaks thatomit ... transitions and connective links"); ephebism ("power, vitality, flexibility, drive, and attack ... thatrecognizes feeling as sensation, rather than emotion"); and the aesthetic of the cool ("an attitude ... thatcombines composure with vitality") (Gottschild, 1996: 13-16)

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.