1&2 by Jacquelyn Edwards

Innovation in dance

ballet modern Technology electro hop tribal cirque du Soleil salsa

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Fall 2011

Issue 1: $19

A note from the Editor Constanze once said “Dancing is dreaming with your feet,” and while this may be true, dance is much more than just learning where to step and what angle to twist your foot. And dare I say that it is even much more than mastering the 1&2 of the beats. Dance is what happens after the 1&2, what is created in form as a reaction to music and emotion. For those who dance and for those who admire the dance, this publication will take you on a journey through what is means to dance. It will show you how innovations in dance break down categorical walls and further the ideal of what dance can truly be: freedom. “Technical perfection is insufficient. It is an orphan without the true soul of a dancer.”

Publisher, Editor in Chief Lois Brightwater Associate Publisher Stephanie Snee Senior Editor Katherine Bourne Associate Editor Sean Grant Design Director Jacquelyn Edwards Senior Designer Alexa Shaich Marketing Manager Demondre Edwards General Manager Jordan Veasley

Contents ›

‘Radio and Juliet’

Merce Cunningham

The creator of modern dance By Alastair Macaulay

Technologic

Technology’s Impact on Dance Art Forms By Ashley Johnson

“Something 2 Dance 2”

Electro Hop in 1980s Los Angeles and Its Afrofuturist Link By Gabriela Jiménez

Dancing back identity in Acholiland, Uganda

A photo essay By Richard Stupart

Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Iris’

Creative minds behind Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Iris’ By Reed Johnson

Dance Origins

Infographic By Osman Khan

Excerpts from Embracing Difference

Salsa Fever in New Jersey By Katherine Borland

Ballroom Dance Steps

Foxtrot, Waltz, and Swing By CentralHome

Dance in Buenos Aires

A photo essay By Jacinta Young

The Rules Of...

Declining a Dance By Christie Young

Dancing in the Streets

Stripped Down to Its Art By Gia Kourlas

Beauty in the Form

A Photo Montage By Lois Brightwater

Fall 2011 Issue 1

‘Ra

Shakespeare’s love story fuses with Radiohead’s music as Tijuana Krizman plays Juliet alongside choreographer Edward Clug in ‘Radio and Juliet’. (Karli Cadel / October 12, 2011)

Performance Information ‘Radio and Juliet’ Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 Atherton St., Long Beach $45; $40 seniors (562) 985-7000 http://www.carpenterarts.org Calendar@latimes.com

adio Juliet’

powered by Radiohead, Shakespeare By Katherine Tulich Slovenia’s Ballet Maribor will perform the contemporary ballet based on Radiohead songs and Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach. When British alternative rockers Radiohead recorded such landmark albums as “OK Computer” or “Kid A,” they might not have had Shakespeare in mind. But with “Radio and Juliet,” Romanian-born choreographer Edward Clug has married the band’s music to the world’s greatest love story. This version of “Romeo and Juliet” definitely invites a new look at the oft-told tale. “You could call this quite a twisted version,” says Clug, the artistic director of Slovenia’s Ballet Maribor. “My intention was not to retell the story but offer the audience an experience from a different perspective.” The celebrated contemporary ballet, which has been touring the world since 2006 and makes its Southern California premiere this Saturday at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach, is an intriguing mix of modern and traditional. In this version, the story is updated to present day and the piece is squarely focused on Juliet’s experience, as she awakens to find Romeo lying dead next to her. “It’s a retrospective through Juliet’s mind and her own experience,” says Clug, speaking from the troupe’s rehearsal space in Maribor, Slovenia. “In the original story, she takes her own life, but I start at that point. She is stuck in that moment of unfulfilled love. People keep asking me, ‘Does she die in the end?’ I didn’t want to kill her again. I wanted to ask, ‘What if Juliet didn’t take her own life-what would have happened?’” Juliet is the only character identified in the piece, while six male dancers take on the symbolic roles of all the male characters. “She is the one trying to find her way in this masculine universe,” Clug says. Juliet is performed by Slovenian dancer Tijuana Krizman Hudernik, who has been a soloist with the ballet since 2004. “It’s a special feeling being the only woman on stage,” she says. “Edward’s style is so unique. No matter how many times I perform, it’s always a challenge.”

Fusing razor-sharp, inventive and highly technical movements with music and video effects, this piece has been called by critics a pure example of “Clug style,” an extension of his award-winning choreography. “I don’t have a specific influence and didn’t study any specific techniques,” says the 38-year-old, who became a soloist for Slovenian National Theatre in 1991 before taking on the artistic direction of Ballet Maribor in 2003. “I think you can definitely see that the dancers are grounded in good classical backgrounds, but I wanted to make it a lot more contemporary and unique.” Clug, a Radiohead fan, first came up with the idea of an entire piece based on the band’s songs when he choreographed a duet to “Life in a Glasshouse” from the 2001 album “Amnesiac” for a dance competition in Japan in 2002. “The president of the jury said he saw the whole story of Romeo and Juliet in five minutes, and that’s what put the idea into my head,” Clug says. The one-hour performance uses 11 Radiohead songs, including “Bullet Proof ... I Wish I Was” from the band’s second album, “The Bends,” “Fitter Happier” from “OK Computer” and “How to Disappear Completely” and “Idioteque” from “Kid A.” Clug said it was the atmosphere rather than the specific lyrics that inspired him. “There are moments when the story meets the lyrics, but that was not really the point. It’s the overall emotion they create in their music,” he says. “It makes the story much more approachable and updates it to the 21st century.” Clug says many audience members have never heard of Radiohead. “Many times, people come up to me and want to know where this incredible music is from,” he says. “This is not just for dance purists. So many people of all ages connect to it.” While the ballet has been winning praise and drawing audiences all around the world, Clug is yet to get any response from the band. “We have never had any feedback from them, but I really hope one day it happens,” he says.

Merc

Cun

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dance is an art in space and time. The object of the dancer is to obliterate that.â&#x20AC;? -Merce Cunningham

nningham By Alastair Macaulay The choreographer Merce Cunningham died on July 26, 2009. He was 90. Almost 10 years before, on the stage of the New York State Theater, he was awarded the city's highest cultural award, the Handel Medallion. To that audience he recalled, as he has on other occasions, how he arrived in New York for the first time in September 1939, by train, ready to join Martha Graham's company as its second male dancer: “I stepped onto the sidewalk, took one look at the skyline and thought, ‘This is home.’” Earlier in 1999, two weeks after his 80th birthday, he presented the premiere of a magnum opus, “Biped,” in Berkeley, California. It seemed, if any Merce Cunningham piece may be said to have any subject beyond itself, to be full of images of transcendence, of life beyond death. Its many exits and entrances, astonishingly lighted by Aaron Copp, were magical. Above all, and most surprising from a man of 80, “Biped” looked fecund, abundant, a cornucopia of poetic invention. That Berkeley audience greeted it with a mighty ovation (as audiences the world over have ever since). At a reception afterward Mr. Cunningham recalled how he had recently visited his brother in his hometown, Centralia, Washington. After they had talked of various old acquaintances, his brother asked, “Merce, when are you going to make something the public likes?”

He loved paradox, awkwardness, imperfection. In 1992 he gave the premiere of another magnum opus, “Enter,” at the Paris Opera. Cunningham, still dancing at 73, had two solos, one of which made references to his companion of 50 years and closest artistic associate, the composer John Cage, who had just died. As happened with almost every work of Cunningham dance theater, neither Mr. Cunningham nor his dancers had heard the music in rehearsal. So they did not know in advance that the score by David Tudor (a longtime friend and colleague of Cage and Mr. Cunningham) would include duck quackings and goose honkings that sounded automatically ridiculous and unusual. The independence of music and choreography was just one of the ways-though surely the most profound-in which Mr. Cunningham, as Mikhail Baryshnikov said, “reinvented the dance.” Since the early 1950s the central, only occasionally broken, law of Cunningham dance theater is that the music, designs and choreography are made separately and not assembled until dress rehearsal or the first night.

Mr. Cunningham was for many years a phenomenal dancer and has committed his whole career to virtuoso technical accomplishment. Like Nijinsky-but without the madness-he had an astounding jump, an extraordinary neck, an animal intensity, an actor's changefulness. Like Nijinsky he did not mind offending his audience.

There are further methods whereby Mr. Cunningham changed dance and dance making. On March 31 at the Guggenheim Museum (he was a central figure in its current exhibition “The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1969”), he demonstrated two of them. One was his use of chance as a method of composition, which he began experimenting with in the 1950s, in particular after discovering the I Ching. The other was his use of a Life Forms (now DanceForms) system of dance composition on the computer, which, from 1989 on, he not only used but also helped to develop.

He enjoyed applause, but he had been used to-and seemed amused by-boos, bad reviews, near-empty theaters and people walking out of performances. His work did not ingratiate; his dancers did not address the audience in a “Let me entertain you” manner. That his company did far better business and generated far more excitement in Paris and London never changed his love of living in New York.

Recently he shocked not only his company but also the dance world by firing his three senior full-time dancers, Holley Farmer, Daniel Squire and Koji Mizuta, officially for “artistic reasons.” It is widely assumed that this is a legal euphemism and that the reasons were economic; every American dance company is suffering, and the three fired dancers, being senior, had been earning the most. 5

â&#x20AC;&#x153;You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, [...] nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls.â&#x20AC;? -Merce Cunningham

Some have also assumed that the decision was not really or originally made by Mr. Cunningham, who at the time was approaching 90, confined to a wheelchair and increasingly limited in physical energy. And so, this version goes, he had been falling increasingly under the influence of those with whom he ran his operation. (They are: his executive director, Trevor Carlson; his assistant, Robert Swinston; and the head of the John Cage Trust, Laura Kuhn.) When Martha Graham was in her final years, she allowed those who ran her ship to make decisions that, had they truly come from her, would have been increasingly uncharacteristic. Mr. Cunningham danced with Graham from 1939 to 1945; was his history repeating hers in pattern? It may be dismaying to observe how these people (or their successors) govern Mr. Cunningham’s artistic estate. Who could keep his company going posthumously and successfully? About a month before he died, Mr. Cunningham decided that after his death the Merce Cunningham Dance Company would embark on a final two-year international tour and then shut down, the Cunningham Dance Foundation, which supports the company, announced on June 9. At merce.org, the first Cunningham quotation you find in “About Merce” is: “You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls.”

Technologic Technology’s Impact on Dance Art Forms

By Ashley Johnson

DanceForms 1.0 DanceForms 1.0 is another technological resource used in the art of dance. This piece of software helps a choreographer envision different dance steps (or even entire routines) to see what the finished performance will look like before it is actually performed by real dancers. DanceForms 1.0 uses an easy to understand, three-dimensional environment for easy visualization. This software allows choreographers to animate single dancers or large groups of dancers and even has a library of existing dance movements to save time. Not only can this software be used for choreographers, but it can also be used for students interested in becoming one someday. The software serves as a great teaching tool and includes many features such as zooming, panning, and tilting any and every motion from any angle. DanceForms 1.0 is already being used in a large number of colleges and universities across the nation including New York University, Stanford University, and colleges in Japan, Canada, Israel, and more. Figure 3.1 shows the Browser, Performance, Studio, and Score windows in DanceForms 1.0. While using this software “a user can insert key frames in the Score window, pose figures in the Studio window and allow DanceForms to interpolate between poses. DanceForms can create fluid movement between any two poses or choose poses from the many ballet and modern dance palettes as key frames.” After positioning poses and creating key frames, the user can animate the “dancers” and watch their creativity in action.

DanceForms 1.0 screenshots

“They can follow their instincts from moment to moment, making improvisational choices that subtly or profoundly change the work.”

Troika Ranch Choreographer, Dawn Stoppiello, and composer/media artist, Mark Coniglio both had a vision to incorporate digital media into dance performances. Together, Troika Ranch was created in 1990 and located in Los Angeles until 1993. In 1994, Troika Ranch relocated to New York City and now travels around the world with their famous performances. Troika Ranch is known for their use of interactive digital media and technology being the focus of each performance. Each movement made by a dancer interacts with the video image. Troika Ranch also uses sensory devices allowing dancers to “approach a performance in a manner similar to a jazz musician: they can follow their instincts from moment to moment, making improvisational choices that subtly or profoundly change the work.” A normal setup for a Troika Ranch performance will usually include one (or more) movement sensing devices used to interact with a computer (offstage). The sensing device is used to measure the movements of each performer on stage. The Midi Dancer is a sensing device implemented by Troika Ranch. The Midi Dancer is a body suit with attached plastic fibers used to measure each movement of the major joints in the human body. When the dancer moves, a signal is sent to the offstage computer and is then changed into code that corresponds to other equipment used for the performance (such as video cameras or digital sound devices). The dancer is always changing the video and sound just by moving.

Troika Ranch continues to improve their technological mediums. The sensory device they use today has a video camera on the stage. It is connected to a computer that runs specific software (called EyesWeb) that shows a 12-point virtual skeleton on the dancer’s body (seen by the camera). These points are linked to another form of software that creates three-dimensional images in real-time to the movement of each point. EyesWeb is the software used by the company and is meant for research projects on multimodal interactive projects. EyesWeb has been licensed to over 15,000 users and companies. Isadora is another piece of software used in Troika Ranch performances and is the primary technology used to create three-dimensional images. Isadora was created by Mark Coniglio. It specializes in providing “interactive control over digital media, with special emphasis on real-time manipulation of digital video.” Isadora collects different motions from each sensor and “uses that information to control and manipulate digital video, music synthesizers, sound modulation devices, theatrical lighting, and robotic set pieces.” 16 [R]evolutions is just one of many performances by Troika Ranch. This performance is about the evolution over a period of 100,000 years. The performance begins with an animal-like human and ends with today’s era-a working man. 16 [R]evolutions uses “live camera tracking technology, [in which] the movements of the dancers generate interactive 3-D imagery in real-time.” 11

Dance and projection technology

Dance and light technology

Troika Ranch performan

Dance and projection technology with Troika Ranch

Troika Ranch performance

nce

“something 2 dance 2” Electro Hop in 1980s Los Angeles and Its Afrofuturist Link

By Gabriela Jiménez

’s hip hop culture developed in the early 1980s. Marked by the dynamism and diversity of the city’s residents (DjeDje and Meadows 1998, 1), Los Angeles–based hip hop belongs to a rich black cultural legacy. Like the jazz created during the Golden Era (1920–29), the gospel innovations of the 1960s, and the soul explorations of the 1960s and early 1970s, electro hop is part of a trajectory where innovation in black Los Angeles contributes constantly to American culture. Electro hop, or techno hop, is a subgenre of electro and hip hop— a fusion of both—cultivated almost exclusively in Los Angeles during the 1980s; primarily dance music, it derived from electronic music and forms of production. Granting its relative short popular existence, roughly from 1983 to 1988, electro hoppers formulated a subculture comprised of an impressive list of artists, recordings, independent records labels, and widely attended events hosted at high schools, clubs, skating rinks, sport arenas, and coliseums. Furthermore, electro hop’s notoriety played a formidable role in the restructuring of KDAY-1580 AM in Los Angeles. As with hip hop on the East Coast, electro hop was created and enjoyed primarily by marginalized young people of color—although, in both cases, young black males figured most prominently. Unlike East Coast hip hop, which experienced national visibility through the 1980s, electro hop remained largely a regional musical style— even when groups like the L.A. Dream Team recorded and released studio albums with major record companies such as MCA. Whereas East Coast hip hop producers sampled primarily disco, funk, and soul, electro hop artists focused initially on making their own beats with minimal sampling. And, just as hip hop took the shape of a multifaceted subculture during its nascency in mid-1970s New York— comprised of four elements: DJing, MCing/rapping, break dancing, and graffiti writing—electro hop, too, involved derivations of similar art forms. As gangsta rap’s direct precursor, electro hop lacks visibility in formal academic circles. Celebrated accounts on hip hop and its subcategorical manifestations mention electro hop in passing, if at all, when discussing gangsta rap (Kelley 1996, 95; Chang 2005, 301– 302). Los Angeles’s electro hop community demands consideration. Most accessible information on electro hop comes from the artists themselves and dedicated fans. Some influential electro hop artists like Egyptian Lover and Arabian Prince continue to produce, DJ, and/or perform in the electro genre, thereby expanding upon the music they created in the 1980s. Electro hoppers take

advantage of the Internet’s potential and use interactive websites like MySpace to share music, memories, and other information. Electro hop fans, too, in both the United States and Europe dedicate time and resources to the dissemination and collection of information by way of the Internet. Loyal fans have formed communities through hip hop web forums and self-made websites. Other electro hop buffs include Europeans, specifically Germans. Electro hop’s early dialogue with the German electronic group Kraftwerk (Egyptian Lover and Arabian Prince 2008, 56; Fleisher 2008, 54) inspired the electro hop sound, perhaps allowing some Germans to relate to it. Whatever the explanation for the fascination, two Germans—Sandro De Gaetani and Stefan Schütze—are responsible for one of the most comprehensive and detailed sources on electro hop, the website West Coast Pioneers. This highly interactive website includes many primary and secondary sources.

“ AfroFuturism is a critical perspective that opens up the inquiry into the many overlaps between technoculture and black diasporic histories.” As a versatile subculture grounded in music, electro hop developed in the physical and discursive spaces of 1980s black Los Angeles, although other socialized groups had their impact. From high school gyms to skating rinks to clubs, electro hop arose around South Central Los Angeles and spread to other areas of the city where young people of color made a significant minority—the West Side (Venice and Santa Monica) and parts of the San Fernando Valley. Electro hop, as I demonstrate, was not only a dynamic cultural movement befitting a place in Los Angeles musical history but also one that evolved from extant cultural practices and socioeconomic realities. Moreover, electro hop’s response to cultural and socioeconomic factors place it within the Afrofuturist (dis)continuum where Afrodiasporic lived experiences and mass representations are (re) evaluated through technology, cyberworlds, and (outer) spatial tropes. And where, according to Alondra Nelson, “Afrofuturism can be broadly defined as ‘African American voices’ with ‘other stories to tell about culture, technology and things to come’” (2002a, 9). In another publication, Nelson (2000) writes, “Neither a mantra nor a movement AfroFuturism is a critical perspective that opens up the inquiry into the many overlaps between technoculture and black diasporic histories. AfroFuturism looks across popular culture… to 15

“ AfroFuturism looks across popular culture to find models of expression that transform spaces of alienation into novel forms of creative potential.” find models of expression that transform spaces of alienation into novel forms of creative potential. In the process, it reclaims theorizing about the future.” Electro Hop: Overview of Aesthetics, Production, Recordings, Artists, Record Labels, Audiences, and the KDAY Connection Conceptualized by young adults, electro hop as a musical style began in Los Angeles roughly in 1983 and, as the decade materialized, fostered a multidimensional subculture—involving its own dancing styles, visual art, fashion, and performance venues. Producers, DJs, and rappers recorded and released music via newly founded independent record labels whose local popularity in large part influenced KDAY’s transformation into the first allhip-hop radio station, and whose leverage on the streets of Los Angeles attracted major record companies (e.g., MCA and Epic) that took notice of it toward the end of the 1980s. Pinpointing the exact moment something commences is replete with problematics; that having been said, the publication (i.e., recording, pressing, release, and luster) of Uncle Jamm’s Army’s song “Dial-a-Freak” is a reliable point of departure. A collective of mobile DJs, Uncle Jamm’s Army published “Dial-aFreak” in 1984. This is not the first electro hop song necessarily, nor the first recording of hip hop music on the West Coast—most hip hop historians point to 1981’s “The Gigolo Groove” by Captain Crunch & the Funky Bunch and Disco Daddy and Captain Rapp’s “Gigolo Rapp” as the first hip hop songs on the West Coast (De Gaetani and Schütze n.d.)—but its musical characteristics, popularity, and producers’ leverage contextualize electro hop’s development. Released on Uncle Jamm’s Army’s imprint, Freak Beat Records, “Diala-Freak” demonstrates electro hop’s musical aesthetics. Electro hop relies on electrophones, especially since the music of the German group Kraftwerk and other electro funk musicians (namely, Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force, Cybotron, Twilight 22, Jonzen Crew, Man Parrish, and Newcleus) galvanized it (Egyptian Lover and Arabian Prince 2008, 56; Eshaker 2008, 9). Music producers used drum machines like the Roland TR-808, Oberheim DMX, E-mu SP-1200, Linn LM-1, and Akai MPC 60C in combination with synthesizers like the Roland Jupiter-8 and the Moog, turntables, and vocoders for the purposes of manipulating the voice (Cross 1993, 22, 64; Egyptian Lover and Arabian Prince 2008, 59). In “Dial-a-Freak” we hear drum machines, synthesizers, and a vocoder. The up-tempo and highly strophic qualities of the

song are also characteristic of electro hop since it was dance music. Lyrical content and delivery allude to the primacy of beats over words. Various recordings pronounce more interest in musical innovation and in voice manipulation than in lyrics. Raps in electro hop tend to showcase unelaborated rhyming patterns and, for the most part, make minimal use of literary devices (metaphors, alliteration, similes, etc.): “Here I am mind so blue / Freaks on my mind don’t know what to do” or “Here we are under the stars at Venice Beach / You be the student in the class and I will teach.” Prevalent in “Dial-A-Freak” are also electro hop’s major lyrical themes: technology (“I got an eight-way phone so I can call my freaks”), virility (“Should I sit here? / Or should I call up a freak to drive me up the wall”), dance (“Just ain’t nobody like me / I’ll make you break freaking ET”), eccentricity (“I’m so sexy, I’m so unique”), and Afrocentricity (“In pyramids, on the Nile / I ride my camels in the sand with style”). Other notable songs with these recurrent themes include Unknown DJ’s “808 Beats,” an ode to his dexterity on the Roland TR-808 (“The music is devastating it was easy to create / cause I am the master of the 808”); Arabian Prince’s “Strange Life,” which promotes uniqueness (“The end is not near so don’t scream and shout / live a strange life until your time runs out); Egyptian Lover’s “Egypt, Egypt,” an example of Afrocentricity (“Egypt is the place to be”); the World Class Wreckin’ Cru’s “Cabbage Patch,” which deals with dancing (“Here’s a new dance that can’t be matched / so just step to the floor and do the cabbage patch”); and “Freak-a-Holic” by Egyptian Lover (1987) champions masculine braggadocio (“All of my life I’ve been a freak / doing what I want seven days a week”). These topics appear throughout electro hop’s recordings. Electro hop artists were either part of DJ crews modeled on those of the 1970s ( further discussed in the section “National and Local Cultural Influences”) and/or solo artists. DJ crews like Uncle Jamm’s Army began producing, recording, and selling their own music. They combined their knowledge of what people preferred to dance to and added rapping to it. Taking additional notes from the burgeoning East Coast hip hop market, DJ collectives and affiliated artists created their own musical style: electro hop. As such, Los Angeles–based hip hop emerged from the mobile disco culture of the 1970s. It was in these groups where some of electro hop’s most influential figures got their start. Initially, Uncle Jamm’s Army enlisted Egyptian Lover, Arabian Prince, Kid Frost, Silky D, DJ Bobcat, and Chris “The Glove” Taylor, among others. Other collectives recording their own music

and consisting of prominent individuals, some of whom also released solo projects, included the World Class Wreckin’ Cru, the L.A. Dream Team, the Knights of the Turntables, Electrobeat Crew, Dark Star, and Bobby Jimmy and Critters. Women also contributed musically to electro hop. The exception rather than the rule, Silky D and Mona Lisa Young were respected DJs. In 1987, JJ Fad released their song “Supersonic” on Dream Team Records. The song served as the first single for their debut album of the same name in 1988. Approximately nineteen years later, the famous hip hop producer and rapper Will.i.am sampled the song for Fergie’s “Fergilicious” (2006), bringing electro hop to the mind of contemporary hip hop fans. The Mistress and DJ Madame E produced two singles, “I Got Your Wild Thang” (1989) and “Mic Jack” (1989), and one album, Leather and Lace (1989), on Techno Kut Records. Having developed from the mobile disco culture of the 1970s, electro hop’s audiences were those who attended the nomadic DJ crews’ events at house parties, high schools, skating rinks, clubs, sports arenas, and coliseums (see further discussion in the

section “National and Local Cultural Influences”). They were young people of color from the city’s socioeconomically segregated areas—South Central, Watts, and parts of the West Side. These thirteen- to twenty-one-year-olds (Snowden and Johnson 1983, 59) continued to attend skating rinks and clubs where electro hop could be heard and danced to in the 1980s. Gang members frequented electro hop events; however, gang violence did not infiltrate electro hop spheres until later in the decade (Simon 2006; D. Williams 2007). Electro hop artist Ice T states in the TV documentary Breaking and Entering that those who managed to avoid getting involved with gangs were electro hop’s primary participants—creators, dancers, and audiences (Carew 1983).

There was also a look to electro hop, as Breaking and Entering and photographs of the time and artists reveal. Tracksuits dominated for practical reasons; for example, it is easier to dance in them. Also prevalent was the classic teenager outfit of jeans and T-shirts. Some electro hop artists took more eccentric routes by wearing, for example, doctor costumes or dressing in Egyptian gear, or what they imagined that looked like (Egyptian Lover 2007). There was a preference for tight clothing, hair products and even makeup. Photographs reveal Prince’s influence on the style of the time as an effeminate masculinity comes to the forefront (Carew 1983). Facilitating the formation and spread of electro hop was the creation of independent label imprints established by artists. West Coast Pioneers has a detailed list of independent labels that released electro hop music exclusively or as part of a wider catalog. Dream Team Records, Egyptian Empire Records, Electrobeat Records, Freak Beat Records, JDC Records, K.M.A. Records, Kru-Cut Records, On the Spot Records, Players Only Records, Rappers Rapp Disco Co., Rapsur Records, Saturn Records, Street Talk Records, Techno Hop Records, Techno Kut

Records, and Macola Records are some of the most noteworthy labels (De Gaetani and Schütze n.d.). Founded in 1984 by Don McMillan and located then at 6209 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood (De Gaetani and Schütze n.d.), Macola pressed records for anyone willing to pay the rate of $1,000 for five hundred copies (Eshaker 2008, 10), akin to Disc Makers today. This enabled electro hop musicians to sell their recorded products for profit at swap meets and similar venues (A. Williams 2006). At some point, Macola got rid of their open-door policy when people at the company realized it was more profitable to sign artists (Eshaker 2008, 10). Although vinyl pressings may have the record company on their labels, a large majority of electro-hop... continued on page 54

Dancing back identity in

Acholiland,

Uganda

By Richard Stupart

From 1987 to 2006, the Lordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony, terrorized communities in northern Uganda. Since the departure of the LRA to the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and Southern Central African Republic around 2006-2007, many communities have been struggling to rebuild not only their physical homes, but to try and reestablish communities and traditions torn apart as families and villages were fractured, robbed of elder members, and dispersed to camps across Northern Uganda. Amongst one community, dance has become one means of remembering shared identity and tradition. This photo essay by Richard Stupart highlights the story.

Cirqu

ue du Soleil

ris’

A Q&A with director-choreographer Philippe Decouflé and composer Danny Elfman

By Reed Johnson Last week previews began at the Kodak Theatre for “Iris,” the latest big-top extravaganza by Montrealbased Cirque du Soleil. The show, which its producers hope will run at the Hollywood & Highland complex for the next decade, is a valentine to the art of cinema that combines circus acts, avant-garde theatrics and a touch of Hollywood razzle-dazzle.

because I have to give an homage to cinema in general. So I decided to work mainly on what was before cinema, about the fascination we have for images. It’s the beauty of movement.

The two top-billed members of its creative team are director Philippe Decouflé, a Paris-based director, choreographer, and composer Danny Elfman, former frontman for the progressive rock band Oingo Boingo and author of dozens of feature film scores, including Tim Burton’s “Batman” and “Alice in Wonderland.” We spoke with them about “Iris” this week at Elfman’s studio in Los Angeles. In conversation, the pair work together like an aerial act. Elfman, humorous and up-front, maintains a steady patter of anecdotes and impressions about the show and its progress. Then Decouflé swoops in with elegantly crafted thoughts in Parisian-accented English. This is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Elfman: Well, there’s no comparison, almost on any level. Film, first off, you have a finished product, or semi-finished, by the time I come in. Secondly, it’s a film, and you know what you’re supposed to do. I knew that “Iris” was going to be in a constant transformation. But the thing that is most interesting is that there was no template to look to, to follow.

This show is about cinema, not about Hollywood, although here in L.A. we sometimes think of them as synonymous. Elfman: It’s almost like cinema as an idea, rather than “movies.” We’re not trying to make you think of “Lawrence of Arabia,” not trying to make you think of Alfred Hitchcock, we’re not trying to make you think of specific movies. It’s almost as much of an homage to [Louis] Lumière as it is to any single director. Decouflé: The basic subject is cinema. For me it was so dangerous, I didn’t know what to do for a long time. Because if we talk about just one school of cinema — like, I’m a fan of Alfred Hitchcock, but I cannot do a show which is an homage to Hitchcock

Danny, how does doing “Iris” compare with working on a film?

How did you two begin working together? Elfman: We started two years ago. Philippe already had a lot of work done. He was creating the show in Paris. I just started writing music and sending it over to him. Philippe, why did Cirque want Danny involved in this show? Decouflé: Cirque du Soleil asked me to work on this show and to find a creative team. So my very first idea was let’s ask Daniel, because he’s one of my favorite composers. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is a movie I have seen 50 times. And I had the chance that Danny, he hadn’t seen a lot of dance shows in his life, but he saw my solo work in New York a little while before. Elfman: It was really a bit of fate. I had an agent who was booking concerts. So one night in New York, he says, “We’re going to go see a show, a dance show.” And I get to the theater and there’s just this picture of one person. It’s a solo. And I go, “What?! You’ve 23

“ You will be mesmerized by the difficulty and gravity-defying tricks, the mind-boggling talent of the acrobats and the ingenuity of dance.”

taken me to a solo performance? Oh my god, I’m going to see a modern dance solo performance! This is going to be horrible!” And I loved the show. I said, “Whoever this Decouflé is, I’d love to work with him some day.” And six months later I get this call saying Cirque is interested. And you also have to remember I started out as a street musician. I was a fire-breather, same as Guy [Cirque Chief Executive Guy Laliberté]. My first performing in my life was with a French musical-theatrical group, Le Grand Magic Circus. The music for “Iris” incorporates many different styles, from Latin jazz to Balinese gamelan and Japanese taiko drums to surrealism. Elfman: Sometimes I’d get an idea thrown at me, just something to grab hold of. So there was lots of things, like doing Gershwin-esque, or doing Leonard Bernstein, doing something romantic. Philippe, you often use live music for your dance pieces, right? Decouflé: Since, I don’t know, like 15 years ago, I decided to play only with live music. Because I think it’s always better for the audience when all the elements that I use are live, and when they play together. And the relationship between dance and music for me is really very close. Dance almost always needs music, except you have the [Merce] Cunningham and [John] Cage style, where they decided to have the music independent from the choreography, but I’m not from that tradition. Danny, are you the only Hollywood guy involved in the creative team? Decouflé: Are you a Hollywood guy? Elfman: What a scary thought! Decouflé: It’s true that I have a very French team [ for “Iris”]. For example, my set designer, he’s mainly working in cinema. Elfman: I guess I would have to be the “Hollywood guy” in the team. Although, it’s funny, after 26 years of working in Hollywood, I still don’t consider myself a Hollywood guy. I’m not a Hollywood guy in the sense

that I don’t connect with Hollywood. I go to openings when I absolutely have to. As much as I support the Academy [of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] and all the good things they do, because I love cinema, and cinema was my inspiration to get into music. How did that translate into making music? Elfman: All accident. My early designs in life were to be in movies — not an actor, but a cinematographer, an editor, a writer, maybe a director. Everything but an actor or a composer. My training was spending every weekend of my life at a theater. And I lived in an area where the kids went to the theater every Saturday and Sunday. Philippe, does the culture of Hollywood — the Academy Awards and that kind of thing — interest you? Decouflé: I don’t know it so well, so I can’t say. But I could say almost the same as Danny in many points, because I do what I do by accident also. Because it’s a bit the same. When I was a kid, every day when I was in school, at midday I was escaping to go to the movies, mainly to cartoons. When I was a kid I was always crazy about Tex Avery. Did you like cartoons because you can do anything in them? Decouflé: Yeah, it’s something about freedom, freedom of movement. So there is something about reaching the impossibility which interested me a lot. And voilà, I began to do what I did also by accident. I thought I was going to work in the movies, to make lighting, or the film credits at the beginning and the end of the movies. Is there anything you haven’t been able to do in the Kodak Theatre? Decouflé: I have a model of the Kodak Theatre in my house in Paris, a big one, and I’ve slept with it for three years. (Laughter.) There is a basic problem in the Kodak: It’s the American sickness of king-size. It’s too big. It’s a reproduction of an Italian theater, but really like king-size. So we had to fight to try to twist

the relationship that the spectators have with the space. Because if you respect the normal aperture, it’s too big, too far. Elfman: That’s what I noticed right from the beginning. “Iris” is much more human-based. There’s a sense of anticipation that’s more old-school circus than the new Cirque du Soleil shows. Because I’ve seen “O” twice, I’ve seen “Ka” twice. And I never feel that anything could ever go wrong in those shows, they’re like clockwork. But here, you have four people, two people, six people, just doing their act, there’s no help, there’s nothing but them and their bodies. I bite my nails and grit my teeth much more than in any other Cirque show that I’ve seen. I know they’re going to be OK, but I have to look away at moments because it just looks too insanely difficult. To me, of all the Cirque shows I’ve seen, this one, its unique quality is that connection with the human element. You don’t need $100 million of CGI. You’re just watching performers performing. And, I must say, what a joy that is.

Acrobatics in “Iris”

How

Dance Music Origins: Present Day

Music Travels By Osman Khan

The Evolution of Western Dance Music

usic tourism (visiting a city or town to see a gig) is on the rise. But why stop at gigs and festivals? Why not visit the birthplace of your favorite genre and follow the actual journey various music genres have taken as one style developed into another? To make it easier to trace the threads of music history, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve created an interactive map detailing the evolution of western dance music over the last 100 years. The map shows the time and place where each of the music styles were born and which blend of genres influenced the next.

The Evolution of Western Dance Music Screenshots of the interactive module

Infographic of dance music origins: 1800

Infographic of dance music origins: 1900

Infographic of dance music origins: 1950

When the explosion of dance music arrived in the 80s, many genres arrived in the same 5-year period as the genres they influenced. In this situation, the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;influencerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; genre starts to fade in on the map at the time the influencing line appears.

Infographic of dance music origins: 1980

Infographic of dance music origins: 2000

To view the interactive map, visit thomson.co.uk

Beauty Form in the

A photo montage for your enjoyment By Lois Brightwater