Ballet is an art form created by the movement of the human body. It is theatrical--performed on a stage to an audience utilizing costumes, scenic design and lighting. It can tell a story or express a thought or emotion. Ballet can be magical, exciting, provoking or disturbing Dance in India comprises the varied styles of dances in the country. As with other aspects of Indian culture, different forms of dances originated in different parts of India, developed according to the local traditions and also imbibed elements from other parts of the country.[1] Sangeet Natak Akademi, the national academy for performing arts, recognizes eight distinctive traditional dances as Indian classical dances, which might have origin in religious activities of distant past. tap dance noun : a kind of dance in which you wear special shoes with metal plates on the heels and toes and make tapping sounds with your feet tap dance is a form of dance characterized by using the sound of ones tap shoes hitting the floor (or other surfaces) as a percussive instrument. As such, it is also commonly considered to be a form of music. Two major variations on tap dance exist: rhythm (Jazz) tap and Broadway tap. Broadway tap focuses more on the dance. It is widely performed as a part of musical theater. Rhythm tap focuses more on musicality, and practitioners consider themselves to be a part of the Jazz tradition. Indian Dances Dance in India has a rich history. The cadence of Indian dance has weaved the thread of magic in the midst of its motion, poise, beauty and emotion. It is through the grace of movement, amidst the elegant motion of Indian dance ‘freedom finds its image whilst dreams their forms’. The mystical aura in Indian dance adds to the allure of its beauty and grace whilst mirroring its copious tradition in India. Dancing is an art because it may tell a story, express an emotion or set a mood. Some dances consist of symbolic gesticulations that tell a story entirely through movement. Dance is mostly cultural and can be identified with a certain group, society or generation, unlike science. William Shakespeare says men and women in this world play their part as it is destined in seven stages. The stage is well set as to how one enters and exits. One man passes through seven stages in his life from when he is born into the hands of the nurse to the final stage where he leaves this wide theatre, the world. In the second stage, he grows from infancy to a boy with shining face. He reluctantly goes to the school. Next stage is the teenage, filled with love and passion where his heart rules the head. He is an ardent lover praising his beloved all the time. From a man of emotions, he is turned into a sturdy and bold soldier who is ready to fight and make sacrifices even in the face of danger. With advancing age, maturity and wisdom he assumes the role and attire of a Judge in the next stage. He makes judicious and uncompromising decisions. In the sixth stage he becomes physically weak, fail and looks like a pantaloon. He faces problems of loss of vision, memory and his manly voice now resembles to that of his childhood voice. In the last stage he loses senses almost everything teeth, taste, vision and gets back to the stage of an infant, which the poet aptly calls as the second childhood. There are certain elements common to all theater. These elements are present whenever a theater event takes place; without them, an event ceases to be theater and becomes a different art form and different experience. To sum up, the following are the major elements of theater: 1) Performers 2) Audience 3) Director 4) Theater Space 5) Design Aspects (scenery, costume, lighting, and sound) 6) Text (which includes focus, purpose, point of view, dramatic structure, and dramatic characters) Ayn Rand (/ˈaɪn ˈrænd/;[1] born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum; February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1905 – March 6, 1982) was an American novelist, philosopher,[2] playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, Rand moved to the United States in 1926. She had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful in America, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead. In 1957, she published her best-known work, the novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own magazines and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982. Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge and rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism, and rejected ethical altruism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral[3] and opposed collectivism and statism as well as anarchism, instead supporting a minarchist limited government and laissez-faire capitalism, which she believed to be the only social system that protected individual rights. In art, Rand promoted romantic realism. She was sharply critical of most philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her, except for some Aristotelians and classical liberals.[4] Literary critics received Rands fiction with mixed reviews,[5] and academia generally ignored or rejected her philosophy. The Objectivist movement attempts to spread her ideas, both to the public and in academic settings.[6] She has been a significant influence among libertarians and American conservatives.[7] I am hijacking the discussion for no other reason then I couldnt wait anymore to start on this chapter. What is Art? Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments. Arts purpose, says Rand, is to concretize mans fundamental view of himself and of existence. After defining art in broad terms she then turns to the task of classifying the major branches of art. Literature, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and Music are all closely tied to man’s cognitive faculty. Singled out are: Music, for its ability to deal directly with sense-of-life emotions; and Architecture, for its uniquely utilitarian purpose. I would like to focus on Music (my understanding of the other Arts is too immature to comment on the discussion) and leave it to the better qualified to comment on the other sections. While the other arts focus on abstractions of perceptual awareness (ie. visual conceptualization for Painting), music is much different. “The fundamental difference between music and other arts lies in the fact that music is experienced as if it reversed man’s normal psycho-epistemological process.” Instead of focusing on a concretized concept, a listener to Music searches his subconscious for an ‘emotional concept’ to fit the emotional state induced by the music. The process of emotional abstraction is precisely what forms one’s sense of life and this is what Music touches so deeply. People generally agree on the feelings invoked by Music but differ in their appraisal of the feelings the Music invokes and depends on their sense-of-life. An interesting thought during the discussion of Music and other cultures was that “the experience of certain sense-of-life emotions precludes the experience of certain others”. Unanswered is the question why Music is able to cause us to experience emotions. Music theory combined with cognitive science is where the answer may someday come from, but Music theory is mired in subjectivity and until the discovery of a conceptual vocabulary, “no objectively valid criterion of esthetic judgment is possible in the field of music.” We know that the periodic nature, the mathematical nature, of music is what differentiates it from noise (however this seems to contradict Linz’s dislike for Bach). Rand’s hypothesis on the nature of man’s response to music is that Music generally conveys a concretization that is primarily epistemological, while the other forms generally bring metaphysics into focus. Since our brains are a tool of integration, modern music with its rejection of musicality for monotony and noise represent a paralyzing force mirroring the paralyzing philosophy that makes it possible. exploration of Brecht’s aesthetics and their relation to contemporary theatre through study of his “Short Organum For Theatre”. 1 –>Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is an enemy of modern American theatre. He was a distant, egg-headed theoretician, consumed by politics. His alienation effects, which deliberately distance the audience from the drama of the performances on-stage, have no place in a theatre dedicated to the frisson of collective identification or the brave plumbing of emotional depths. America, thankfully, has moved past him, to a place of fuller, red-blooded expression.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 10:03:06 +0000
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