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A Slowly Aging Dance Series, Installment Five

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If you're keeping up with the blog, you know that I was recently in a dance performance in Gifu, on a day that was also my Artistic Director's birthday (December 18th, 2011).  A few days later I went to the last class before winter vacation.  It was a crazy class in that we were all tired, one of my friends spilled tea in her bag and had to skip out of most of class, and another girl was there to run through a solo she's performing in a few weeks.  After the warm-up, I spent most of the time doing yoga and Pilates.  When the solo dancer needed a break, Yuko sensei called me over and spent some time teaching me noh-inspired classical Japanese dance.  She put on music and improvised, and I followed along, fascinated by the subtle movements.  I decided, then and there, to make her a birthday dance honoring our times of cultural exchange.  I set the piece to an Okinawan song, and for movement I improvised much like Yuko sensei, attempting to stay within a simple, evocative vocabulary.  The song speaks about building a home, welcoming a lover, dressing for an event, and other such community/family events.  In a way this video is a companion piece to Music Box, a dance I made in response to the feeling of being on display in Japan.  This dance, while still acknowledging my Western roots, focuses on commonalities I've found and connections I've made here.  Matt helped me with the Japanese four-character compound name, 方向観念 (houkoukannen), which roughly translates into Sense of Direction.  It felt right, because I have developed a sense of direction as an artist and person over my time in Japan, in no small part thanks to my time with ModernDanceYouCo.

If You Give a Girl a Camera, Installment Five
"Sense of Direction"
Music: Obokuri-Eeumi by Asazaki Ikue
Original credits are in Japanese.

   

 Note: I earn no money from this blog, nor any place this video has appeared so far.

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