Horrific Movement

I'm taking a course in basic Laban Movement Analysis-- this stuff is fascinating to me as a movement teacher. It's giving me a whole new vocabulary to talk about what's missing in a choreography or performance, or what's excellent. it's also giving me a structure to speak about why some movement combinations seem "natural" or "creepy."

Useful when you teach Gothic bellydance classes.

After this second workshop (all taught by a martial artist, not a dancer-- extra interesting!), I'm starting to understand the concept of movement affinities and disaffinities better. Which makes me bounce up and down.

Basically, movement affinities are combinations of effort and direction that fit together naturally. For example, if you think of "light" as a quality of weight, the first direction that comes to mind is "up." If you think of "strong" or "heavy" as a quality of weight, you think immediately of "down."

A disaffinity is when you combine effort and direction in non-intuitive ways-- light movement down, for instance, or strong movement up. A primary use of movement disaffinities is comedy-- when your body is saying something other than what the situation seems to be calling for. Think of the uses of slow-motion falls to add comedy-- you expect quick speed, but the fall is sustained instead.

Another use of movement disaffinities is horror. When it's well done, it's the kind of creepiness that you can't place, the instinct that tells you, "Cross the street rather than walk past that guy-- something's not right." If you see someone backing away slowly from something, you know this isn't just a normal startle reaction (back/quick is the usual movement affinity). Something is wrong here.

I plan to have a lot of fun with this in future Voodoo Sisters pieces. We use plenty of disaffinities in our work already (see Vampian Lespire Cats!), but this can take it to a whole new level. Watch this troupe.

-mv

The Fury of Overshoes

I woke up and I'm four years old this morning. I need a nanny.

First, Lux Interior, frontman for the Cramps, one of my favorite bands ever, died.

Then I read the Joe Weil poem, "Love Poem for My Mother Clare," which recalls so exactly my grief over my deceased gothfather in its invocations that I can't stuff the loss back in the box and shoulder my adult responsibilities, like copyediting.

It's winter and the whole world is frozen and even the warm puppy snoozing on my lap can't take away the ache entirely.

This poem by Anne Sexton is what I read when I spontaneously regress.

The Fury of Overshoes

They sit in a row
outside the kindergarten,
black, red, brown, all
with those brass buckles.
Remember when you couldn't
buckle your own
overshoe
or tie your own
overshoe
or tie your own shoe
or cut your own meat
and the tears
running down like mud
because you fell off your
tricycle?
Remember, big fish,
when you couldn't swim
and simply slipped under
like a stone frog?
The world wasn't
yours.
It belonged to
the big people.
Under your bed
sat the wolf
and he made a shadow
when cars passed by
at night.
They made you give up
your nightlight
and your teddy
and your thumb.
Oh overshoes,
don't you
remember me,
pushing you up and down
in the winter snow?
Oh thumb,
I want a drink,
it is dark,
where are the big people,
when will I get there,
taking giant steps
all day,
each day
and thinking
nothing of it?

Abstinence Porn and Vampires

In an interview with USA Today, Stephen King came out and slagged Stephanie Meyers's _Twilight_ series, saying she "can't write worth a darn."

I couldn't agree more, although, in the interest of full disclosure: I'm a frustrated YA novelist. What? A tiny slice of schadenfreude never hurt anyone.

Just last night my friends and I were talking about _Twilight_ as "abstinence porn" and debating the relative merits thereof. Kenwyn said that there is a venerated place for teen romances that encourage romantic and sexy feelings but don't place demands on girls to do anything about those urges.

I think of how excited I used to get watching "The Outsiders," with all those yummy men and one delicious Diane Lane Cherry on top, and I can't help but agree.

And yet.

What I'd really love to see is the female version of "Porky's" or "American Pie." Because, y'know, girls have sex drives, too, and it's about time we celebrated that, taught our girls to pay attention to what feels good and cultivate it. Kenwyn's point was that abstinence porn is a kind of gateway drug that honors sexual feelings but in a safe way, for those girls who might not be ready to engage in sex play.

My point was that girls need media that focuses on the pleasures of their own bodies. Right now, the choices for teen female sexuality are either abstinence or objectification, and although objectification does confer a form of power when the sex object can successfully manipulate the viewer, neither is satisfying.

And I just don't buy that the anticipation of an event is better than the actual event. Idealization is not more exciting than the five senses. I love that Anne Sexton poem in which she describes God as wanting to have a body so he can come down to Earth and give it a bath now and then.

That being said, art is wonderful when it can prolong the tension between anticipation and gratification. But not for 300 pages, Ms. Meyers.

I loved Judy Blume's _Forever_ because the protagonist is responsible about sex but also wholeheartedly gets her rocks off. I can't think of too many YA novels in which there isn't some kind of consequence for the gorgeousness of sex, can you? I can't think of a single contemporary one.

In _Twilight_, the vampirism seems completely incidental to the thrust of the story. Any circumstance that would've prevented the main characters from getting together would've done just as well. Where's the blood? Where's the violence? Where's the existential agita? My newest favorite vampire novel is Scott Westerfeld's _Peeps_. It's the freshest treatment of the subject that I've seen in a long time. My second favorite is the Melissa de la Cruz _Blue Bloods_ books.

Why I do what I do

Reading the paper last week, I came across a review of the NYC City ballet's current show, "Founding Choreographers I". I'm always interested in reading reviews and criticism of dance, to see how people think about it and what they notice.

One section caught my eye: "Several members of Tuesday's cast dancers... have aspects of tension across the upper torso that rob the carriage of their necks and heads of the clarity that surely characterizes a true Robbins stylist." Later the reviewer mentions that a dancer's "head is so well-placed that its least shift registers expressively."

(I'm going to keep an eye on Alastair Macauley, the reviewer. He is paying attention to the use of the dancer's body as the tool it is for expressing emotion and story in movement.)

This is why I do what I do, why I teach like I teach.

In my class, it is of vital importance that students focus on turning their bodies into well-trained tools for expressing the emotions and stories inherent in their choreographies. A tense, clumsy, or inflexible body is hampered by these limitations, unable to rise to the peak of its art form, or to live up to the artistic vision of its choreographer.

I see lots and lots of dancers in my travels, visiting festivals and so on. The really good ones are technically AND EXPRESSIVELY stunning. And why? Because they have trained their bodies for clarity of expression as well as of movement. There is nothing in the way of their emotions-- not a clumsy hip, a tight shoulder, a weak thigh holding them back. Most of them probably don't even think about it this way-- these are the dancers we call "naturally gifted."

I believe that these natural gifts can be taught. I believe I am able to teach them, not only to my own body, but to others'. I believe I have no talent for expressing this (see the rest of this post!).

I wish I did. I know so many people who would love to dance the way I can teach them.