2 0 1 3 -2 0 1 4 U M S L e a r n i n g Gu i d e Dance Series
Co m pag n i e K채fig Correria Agwa
TA B L E OF CON T EN T S
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CONNEC T
05 Why?
16 Invitation to the Dance
07 Artist
18 UMS Night School
09 Art Form
19 About UMS
12 Performance
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U MS Dan ce Ser i es
C oBmLpEa g n i e K 채 f i g TA OF C o rCON r e rTi EN a ATgSw a
Friday, February 14, 8 pm Saturday, February 15, 8 pm Power Center
FEBruary
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L EARN Compagnie K채fig
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WHY? U M S E d u c at i o n A r t i st i c S tat e m e n t
The two dances in this program-- Correria (“running”), created in 2010, and Agwa (“water”), created in 2008— traverse a series of geographic and stylistic borders. Mourad Merzouki, the choreographer and artistic director of Compagnie Käfig, first met the eleven dancers for these works, all young men from Brazil’s favelas (slums), at the 2006 Biennale de Danse in Lyon, France; they were introduced by Guy Darmet, Merzouki’s longtime mentor and the director of the Biennale. Merzouki, who is of French-Algerian descent, grew up in a working-class suburb of Lyon, one of eight children. He was encouraged to take up martial arts and circus skills from a young age; hip-hop dance, which he embraced as a teenager, was a less expected choice. He says, “In my culture, nobody dances. But if I dance, I think I will never die. It’s as important as that.”
Merzouki was captivated by the Brazilian dancers’ stories of growing up in the favelas, and their commitment to creating opportunities for themselves despite the challenges of their upbringing. Nearly a quarter of Brazil’s 6.3 million citizens live in the sprawling favelas; though the government is working to take control of the slums back from the militia and drug gangs who have run them in the past, they are still plagued by rampant armed theft and other violent crimes. The murder rate—which is three times higher in Brazil than the world average—has shaved seven years off the life expectancy of residents in the Rio favelas. The majority of victims are young men, like the Compagnie Käfig dancers. Correria and Agwa are both inspired by those stories exchanged between Merzouki and the Brazilian dancers; Merzouki incorporated the dancers’ own movement vocabularies into the choreography.
He would give them “homework assignments” to create movement passages, which he would edit, shape, and knit together to create the final piece. Each work is a dynamic fusion of hip-hop, samba, capoeira, circus, martial arts, bossa nova, and modern dance styles. Though Correria and Agwa derive from the dancer’s personal stories, which are necessarily shaped by their time and place in contemporary Brazil, Merzouki describes his dances as “stories on universal themes.” He sees dance as a universal, and unifying, language. “What’s interesting in hip-hop culture,” he asserts, “is to change negative energy to a positive energy, thanks to artistic expression. That’s what we’re doing in Käfig, day after day. For me, to put together or join onstage and in the different venues people from different origins, ages and cultures is the best way to make possible a meeting, or dialogue, between people.”
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WHY? ON L INE : C o n n e c t i n g t o th e p e r f o r m a n c e Engage more fully with all that is UMS on the Lobby, where you can access the behind-the-scenes activities that keep us humming year-round. Visit UMS Lobby for multimedia and exclusive artist content, and to give us your thoughts about various UMS activities.
www.umslobby.org
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AR T I S T Co m pag n i e K ä f i g : Five Things to Know
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Born in 1973, artistic director Mourad Merzouki began studying martial arts and circus skills at age seven; at fifteen he began dancing hip-hop.
Merzouki founded Compagnie Käfig in 1996. Since then, he has created 17 pieces for the company, which performs approximately 150 shows around the world each year.
All of the dancers use stage names—such as Sorriso, Pitt, and Dieguinho—rather than their given names, in a nod to hip-hop culture.
The company is named after one of Merzouki’s early dances, “Käfig,” meaning “cage” in both German and Arabic. Merzouki sees his work as breaking different forms of dance out of their stylistic cages.
The company is now in residence at France’s Centre Choregraphique National de Creteil et du Val-de-Marne, where Merzouki serves as director.
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A r t i st ON L INE : G e tt i n g t o K n o w M o u r a d M e r z o uk i Compagnie Käfig’s artistic director Mourad Merzouki talks about his background and artistic influences in this interview of him by the Office of the French Consulate in Toronto, translated from French into English.
http://bit.ly/1ji8KO8
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art form dance movement Choreography is the series or combination of movements that creates these fundamental patterns in time and space. Like words in a sentence, the individual movements are just as important as the product of their combination. In dance there are many different types of movement. Here are some options to explore as you think about dance.
ty p e
DEFINI T ION
S usta i n e d
An even release of energy that stays constant, either fast or slow, but not both.
P e r c uss i v e
Sudden bursts of energy that start and stop quickly.
Swinging
A drop of energy into gravity that sustains and follows through.
S us p e n d e d
This is the movement at the end of a swing, before gravity takes over.
C o ll a p s e
A sudden and complete release of energy, like fainting and either of the full body or a single body part.
Explosive
A gathering of energy that is released as a burst of one huge sudden action, either of the full body or a single body part.
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art form dance E L E M EN T S The elements of dance — easily remembered with the use of the acronym BEST: Body, Energy, Space, and Time — can be helpful guides in watching or thinking about dance. (from Cornett, C. (1999). The Arts as Meaning Makers. Person Education, Inc.)
B OD Y
ENERG Y
S PACE
TIME
Parts: Head, shoulders, elbows, hands, knees, feet, etc.
Force: Smooth or sharp
Level: Low, middle, high
Rhythm: Pulse, beat
Isolation: Movements restricted to one area of the body such as the shoulders, rib cage or hips
Weight: Heavy or light
Levels: The height of the dancer in relation to the floor. When a dancer is at a low level, a part of his torso might touch the floor; when a dancer is at a high level, he might be in the air or on his toes
Speed: Pace, tempo, rate
Shapes: Curved/angular, small/large, flat/rounded Actions: (Non-locomotor) Stretch, bend, twist, rise, fall, circle, shake, suspend, sway, swing, collapse or (Locomotor) walk, run, leap, hop, jump, gallop, skip, slide Locomotor: Movements that occur in general space when a dancer moves place to place Non-locomotor: Movements that occur in a person’s space with one body part anchored to one spot and that are organized around the spine or axis of the body
Strength: Tight or relaxed Flow: Sudden or sustained, bound or free
Direction: Forward, backward, up, down, sideways Size: Large or small
Accent: Light or strong emphasis Duration: Fast/slow, short/long Phrases: Dance sentences, patterns and combinations
Destination: Where a dancer moves Pathways: Patterns we make with the body on the floor and in the air Focus: Where a dancer looks
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AR T FOR M Online: Capoeira Capoeira is a dance style featured in Agwa and this video segment from the PBS program A Gulf Coast Journal not only highlights the background and history of capoeira, but also explores how people in the US are exploring this traditional Brazilian movement form.
http://bit.ly/1erDe9u
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PERFOR M ANCE Co r r e r i a Agwa
Maybe it’s my circus background, but I like a show when dance is mixed with many things. - Mourad Merzouki
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PERFOR M ANCE Co r r e r i a Agwa
Co m pag n i e K ä f i g Mourad Merouki, artistic director and choeographer
Dancers Diego Golcalves Do Nasciemento Leito Alexsandro Soares Camphanha Da Dilva Hélio Robson Does Anjos Cavalcanti Aldair Junior Machado Nogeuira José Amilton Rodrigues Junior Cristian Faxola Franco Geovane Fidelis Da Conceicao Aguinaldo De Oliveira Lopes Diego Alves Dos Santos Cleiton Caetano De Oliveira Leonardo Alves Moreira
a b o ut th e p e r f o r m a n c e One of the pieces featured in these performances is Agwa, which is all about water—the most vital component of the human body, a precious natural resource to be preserved, and a symbol of renewal: “Hundreds of clear plastic cups serve both as brilliantly simple set design — the cups are neatly placed in vertical strips across the stage, or stacked like fragile sculpture — and as props juggled precariously, like uprightly undulating Slinkys,” a Boston Globe critic notes. “The dancers — standouts, all of them — are gleeful and charming when they groove and slide, and simply jawdropping when they pitch and fly.” Excerpt from Agwa by Compagnie Käfig http://bit.ly/1ca7IzM
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PERFOR M ANCE O n l i n e : S t r e e t D a n c e a n d B a ll e t ? Companies like Compagnie K채fig cross-over and cross-pollinate from various artistic influences regularly, and in this post on the UMS Lobby, intern Sarah Squillante explores the specific distinctions between street dance and concert dance.
http://bit.ly/1aAiFuK
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CONNEC T “Invitation to the Dance” (Courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival) UMS Night School About UMS
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Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival
Invitation to the
Dance
By Ella Baff, Jacob’s Pillow Executive and Artistic Director Over the years, many audience members have shared their dance experiences with me. Some have described connecting immediately and viscerally with dance as the most basic and universal of the arts. Others were reluctant at first, but finally relented to a dance enthusiast friend and attended a performance. And some acquired a taste for dance over time, starting with a well-known entrée and expanding into an adventurous feast in new realms. Whether you find dance to be a familiar country, or worry you won’t “get it” and will be out of the cultural loop, read on. Here are some helpful guideposts for seeing, discussing, and appreciating dance.
Check your preconceptions at the door
Trust yourself
Multiple ways of understanding
It’s natural to come to any new experience with preconceptions. Remember when you had none, and try to get into that mindset. Try not to foreclose on your experience on the basis of preconceptions (and misconceptions) about dance’s accessibility. Many people have shared with me that they were convinced they wouldn’t enjoy a particular kind of dance or artist’s work but were delighted to discover something new and exciting.
Remember the analogy about being in a foreign country. You may feel ignorant not knowing the language, but relax; you packed your instincts, intelligence, interpretive skills, and curiosity. Let the work you see on stage “happen” rather than trying to make it happen. A dance will often reveal its own rules about how it should be “read” if we are attentive and patient. You may not know a particular dance tradition, form, choreographer, or company, but you are already equipped with tools that translate in new territory. No passport required.
Both scientific research and common sense tell us that people process information in many ways, and not all of them relate to verbal processes. Babies read non-verbal signals about human emotions long before they acquire speech. Body language is an essential form of communication throughout our lives, and we can often tell more about a person by how they move than by what they say. As the choreographer Martha Graham famously said, ‘Movement never lies.’ You can respond to movement and interpret meaning without the intervention of verbal language to characterize your response.
The language of the body Verbal communication represents much of how we think and who we are. When we communicate with others in the same language, there’s a good chance that the meaning of what we say will be understood. Sometimes we travel to another country where the language is foreign to us. We are on the outskirts of a secret that everyone else is in on. We may feel challenged or awkward. How do I interpret meaning? What if I make a mistake? Like music, dance has no linguistic equivalent. Dance is an art form of the body, and the body speaks in many dialects created by a vast range of choreographers and long-held traditions everywhere on the planet. Dance is typically more evocative than literal. It is non-verbal, and therefore imbued with unique capacities to communicate across language, cultural, and other barriers. Its vocabulary is often thrillingly virtuosic, but it is built on basic movement ideas that are a common life experience for all of us.
Location, location, location Contextual information locates valuable reference points that yield insight into a particular dance style, tradition, or an artist’s creative process. At the Pillow, you can find out about how dancers train and how dances are made. You can talk with artists; observe dancers in class with master faculty at The School; explore the Archives on site or online to learn about dance history or see performances from long ago or last week. You can attend free performances, informative talks before every performance, post-show discussions with artists, and related visual art exhibits. And you can take a morning movement class yourself; no prior experience required. Add to the resources you bring to your role as an audience member, and you’ll find that the experience becomes even richer.
Ambiguity can be a source of aesthetic pleasure People tend to read movement as intentional and literal. When we see ballets such as Swan Lake, we can follow a story; that helps. But dance is often abstract and ambiguous, and part of the dance experience is embracing that ambiguity. It may be puzzling and uncomfortable, but relax – you are free to make up your own “story” about what is happening on stage. Allow yourself to harvest feelings, images, and ideas from what you see. They may cohere or not, but you will expand your meaning-making. Ambiguity can be a source of adventure, pleasure, and personal discovery.
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Looking is learning Whether you are a neophyte or an aficionado, here are some tools that will help you to access the many different worlds that artists conjure for us on the stage. Exercise patience, and trust that “meaning” will reveal itself over time. Allow for the possibility that there may be moments of confusion or even boredom along the way. Give yourself over to the pace and energy of the work; free-associate with the imagery; and recognize that whatever your response, it is meaningful and authentic. Try out one or more of these approaches and see what works for you.
The Journalist’s Eye
The Anthropologist’s Eye Think of dance-going as a form of “field research” on a “culture” about which you have no prior knowledge. For experienced dancegoers, this is a way to keep one’s eye fresh and challenge preconceptions. Before making evaluative judgments, ask: • If you were an anthropologist, how would you describe the way these people move? • Do the men and women move in the same manner? • What kinds of bodies are on stage, and what parts of the body are being engaged? • Are the people moving in isolation or as a group?
• Do they appear to have rigid or flexible rules?
• How would you describe the movement in your own words?
• Try this fun exercise immediately following a performance:
• What is the speed and energy of the dancers? How do they change over time? • What connections can I make with how the movement looks, such as sports, nature, other dance works, or everyday movements? • What is the relationship between the music and movement? • What does the work evoke in me emotionally? How does my body feel when I am watching it? • What do I know about the work and the choreographer who created it? What does the choreographer say about his or her work?
I hope that by sharing some of my own thoughts and experiences as well as those of colleagues and audience members, I have given you some new tools to enrich your appreciation of dance. Practice is an essential tool for artists, and its value for audiences is equally important. With a new sense of confidence and curiosity, I hope you will feel comfortable talking about dance with friends, family, fellow audience members, and all of us at the Pillow. I promise you that every attempt to grapple with something new or unfamiliar will make you feel more empowered. Remember, there’s no passport required – and everyone’s invited.
• What appears to bring them together or move them apart?
A journalist typically asks what—and who, what, and where—before tackling why. Focus in on what you are seeing, and more global reflections on meaning will follow.
• What body parts are being used? In what way?
Go forth and talk about it
The Linguist’s/Grammarian’s Eye
Seeing Dance, Talking Dance
• Write down a few adjectives that characterize your initial emotional response. • Write down a few verbs that characterize the movement. • Write down a few adverbs to express the quality of the movement. Now work backward from the emotional feel of the piece (the adjectives) to a better understanding of the ways in which the movement material and choreographic structure had evoked your responses.
Engaging Dance Audiences is administered by Dance/USA and made possible with generous funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Source material for Invitation to the Dance, as well as other writing on dance literacy, is available in Presenting Dance: Dynamic Dialogues from the National Dance Presenters Leadership Forum at Jacob’s Pillow by Mindy N. Levine. ©Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival If you are interested in duplicating this essay or any part of it, please contact us at info@jacobspillow.org.
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U M S N i g ht S c h o o l Can a body ask a q uestion ? Te ll a joke ? Cre ate a contrad ic tion ? A dancer would say “yes” to all of these questions. But what about you? Bodies are expressive, and we know things about one another based on observing bodies in motion. This session of UMS Night School highlights how focusing on movement gives us ways to think about watching dance—and other performances. With Clare Croft, Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Michigan. In collaboration with the U-M School of Music, Theatre & Dance. These 90-minute “classes” combine conversation, interactive exercises, and “lectures” with genre experts to draw you into the themes behind each performance. Sessions are designed to both deepen your knowledge of the performing arts and connect you with other audience members. Sessions are held on Mondays from 7-8:30pm, January 27—March 31, 2014 (no class on March 3) in the Founder’s Room of the U-M Alumni Center, 200 Fletcher Street, Ann Arbor. Visit www.ums.org/learn for complete details.
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ABOUT UMS U M S E d u c at i o n a n d C o mmu n i ty E n g a g e m e n t D e p a r tm e n t S ta f f Ken Fischer UMS President Jim Leija Director e m i ly B a r k a k at i Teaching Artist Shannon Fitzsimons Campus Engagement Specialist Mary Roeder Associate Manager of Community Engagement Om a r i Rush Education Manager
D T E E nerg y F oundation E ducator of the y ear M att K a z mierski is congratulated b y Yo - Yo M a at the U M S F ord H onors G ala .
One of the oldest performing arts presenters in the country, UMS is committed to connecting audiences with performing artists from around the world in uncommon and engaging experiences. With a program steeped in music, dance, and theater, UMS contributes to a vibrant cultural community by presenting approximately 60-75 performances and over 100 free educational activities each season. UMS also commissions new work, sponsors artist residencies, and organizes collaborative projects with local, national, and international partners. Learning is core to UMS’s mission, and it is our joy to provide creative learning experiences for our entire community. Each season, we offer a fun and fascinating lineup of workshops, artist Q&As, conversations, and interactive experiences to draw you in and out of your comfort zone, connect you to interesting people and unexpected ideas, and bring you closer to the heart of the artistic experience. We exist to create a spark in people, young and old alike, exposing them to things they haven’t seen before, and leaving them with a lifelong passion for creativity and the performing arts.
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T HANK YOU!
CREDI T S AND S PON S OR S This learn in g Gu i d e i s th e p rod uc t of th e UM S E d u c at i o n an d Commun ity E n g ag e m e n t De partmen t. RESEARCH ED AND WRI TTEN BY
Emily Barkakati & Shannon Fitzsimons
These performances are made possible through generous support individuals, corporations, and foundations, including the following UMS Education and Community Engagement Supporters:
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
University of Michigan
Ed ited by
Omari Rush Special thanks to Sarah Squillante for her contributions, feedback, and support in developing this guide.
Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation Ann Arbor Public Schools Educational Foundation Anonymous Arts at Michigan Bank of Ann Arbor Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan Confucius Institute at the University of Michigan Dance/USA Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Endowment Fund DTE Energy Foundation The Esperance Foundation David and Jo-Anna Featherman Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation David and Phyllis Herzig Endowment Fund Hooper Hathaway, P.C., Charles W. Borgsdorf & William Stapleton, attorneys JazzNet Endowment Mardi Gras Fund Masco Corporation Foundation Merrill Lynch
Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs Michigan Humanities Council Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone, P.L.C. THE MOSAIC FOUNDATION [of R. & P. Heydon] National Endowment for the Arts New England Foundation for the Arts Quincy and Rob Northrup PNC Foundation Prudence and Amnon Rosenthal K-12 Education Endowment Fund John W. and Gail Ferguson Stout Stout Systems Toyota UMS Advisory Committee U-M Credit Union U-M Health System U-M Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs U-M Office of the Vice President for Research Wallace Endowment Fund
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