Dance Dilemma

          We finally had a good part of the dance that we were all pretty excited about.  It took a while to get to since we spent most of the time creating, taking apart, thinking up ideas, and improvising.  Our assignment for our past dance day was basically to think about our choreography in a different way.  We tried separating pieces of our dance and changing up the order thinking maybe that would make it better.  We also tried more improvisation and listening to each of our ideas as they popped up.  We ended up coming up with more bits to our odd and unique choreography, but at the same time, we weren't ready to change what we had.  If we think up something better, we will definitely open space for change, but we have a base for the dance and it is pretty interesting.

What is art?

          We had a very long conversation about this in STAC and there were many viewpoints on what the answer would be.  One that I agree with is from the thoughts of Duchamp, a dadaist who believed that art is whatever you decide it to be.  To him, even a urinal was art since he said it was going to be.  Someone else said something which I'm sure many can relate to.  She said that art is a form of expression, meaning that you can put your feelings into your creation.  My art almost always takes off from my mood.
          Once in the middle of last school year, I was so upset, but what surprised me is how I coped with it.  I am not the best best at drawing.  Actually, I was pretty bad.  I ran upstairs to my bedroom, tears running down my face and I opened up my sketch book and I grabbed a pencil.  I didn't know what I was doing.  I started scribbling a figure and realized I was making a person, but it was all disfigured and looked extremely emotional.
          I showed my drawing to my mother, not sure it was embarrassing or impressive and I could see she got all my emotions out of the picture.  It was the first drawing I did that wasn't pathetic like a child trying to make the smily face look symmetrical.  Every day for months after that, I didn't put my sketch book down.  I loved being able to express myself this way.  It was quiet, relaxed and it helped greatly with my drawing abilites.
          In both fun works, such as Ducamps's, or in more serious works, such as my drawing, these were pieces of art that came from feelings.  They were our forms of expressing our selfs, as is every other true piece of art.  Art is what ever you decide it to be, but the best works are always those that come from your strongest feelings, such as happiness, anger, love, or worry.  As long as you create based on your feelings you don't just get a pretty display, but a piece of art.

More Dada with a Dance of Power

          Our new dance project is similar to our last, but we can make it very different.  This piece is supposed to be from a dadaist's perspective in the choreographing, but with an underlying topic of power.  We came up with a dance representing the power struggles of popularity between girls of our age.  It was a take off of the movie, Mean Girls.  Luke then watched what we had and he told us it should be from the perspective of Dadaists, so we started over and did a lot of improve to see what we could pull from it.  While we were figuring out our dance, the Georgian Television filmers came and filmed us talking over ideas and working with what we had and doing mostly improve.  This was very exciting to me because even a television appearance in country of Georgia helps present me to the world, but this was nerve racking to the others.  Now that we have so many ideas from playing around with many odd bits, we have a lot to incorporate in what will became a very cool dada dance with the topic of power.

A Creation to compete. One to wear. Who's will it be? This week's when to care.

          Those t-shirts mean competition and it's that time of year again.  We had the three periods of STAC art to make the design and we had time at home to complete it.  Draft.  Draft again.  Front.  Back.  Touch up.  Sharpie time.  Add color.  The vote is on.  I learned a big lesson from last year.  Although my design was intricate and really cool, I wasn't able to finish it in time.  Besides, the winning design was Leah's and her shirt was simple and strait to the point.  It won, not for the pictures, but for what it represented, and that was cleverness and truthfulness.  "Earth without art just spells Eh."  This year I took a completely different route and did something simple and clever.  I danced and thought and danced some more.  Then it came to me.  The "S" is a flimsy letter, but becomes strong when held by a tack.  "Stick the S in the tack.  That's creative."  On the back, I put the eight disciplines on flying papers held by tacks and wrote.  "Love your Mama and Dada...," which made what I think to be a simple and creative template for the shirt.  I saw one draft that had a really cool design and I can't to see the others and vote on my favorite!

To Perform a Dance of Dada

Our costumes were set.  We knew what we were doing.  It was the day of the dada fest and we were determined to make our performance special.  After all the work we put into it, we got up onto the floor of performances and and did our odd, but interesting dance.  We hope it came off well and we didn't mess up the steps, but was it what dada was all about? Did it appeal to the audience.  These are the questions we can't answer ourselves, even though we tried to accomplish both of these tasks.