Modern Dance 2 / Spring 2020

Alexis Jackson

Professor Jorge Morejón

Dan 211

05 May 2020

Room With a View: Dance that Addresses Current Issues

In this paper, I will be discussing the piece, Room With a View, a contemporary dance performance by MN Dance Company. This specific dance entails techniques that we discussed daily in class, so it is a perfect example to talk about. The choreographer writes that this dance tells the story of contemporary existence marked by the anxiety brought on by the lack of compassion and difficult human relationships. What better way to talk about modern dance, than a dance that addresses issues in our current society!

There were many aspects of this dance that were very creative. The use of the light in the opening scene is extremely clever, as the main male dancer opens the door and the light pours in, along with the other dances rolling through the door as well. We see the contrast at the end when he opens the door and lets all the other dancers, or his struggles, go. There were not many props used in this piece, only a few very essential ones such as the picture frame, the door, and the two chairs. Additionally, the characters did not wear extraordinary outfits, yet very neutral black and white t-shirts.

The lighting throughout the whole performance was dark with a spotlight on the dancers but only to show the minimal amount of expression possible. There was a soft background music that added some intensity to the piece but did not overwhelm it. These aspects all represent analytic post-modern dances because of the simplicity of the performance. All of these characteristics of this dance was to create a mood and set the stage for the underlying meaning behind the dance. In this dance we see the internal struggle the main dancer is fighting with.

It appears that the picture frame is used to show his flashbacks of his memories. He opens the door at the beginning of the show and allows the other dancers to come in; these dancers represent his struggles both internally and externally. We see that the movements change; they are sometimes very rigid and fast, while sometimes more slow and flowy depending on the situation. However, he always seems to be rigid and fast while opening the door, probably because he does not want to let his feelings or past bad memories in. All of these moves are extremely symbolic.

Throughout this performance it was easy to spot things that we talked about during class. For example, each character had a different kinesphere. We see some characters extending themselves, opening their bodies, embracing the air and world, while others are not. The picture frame prop also limits those dancers' kinesphere and this must be done on purpose as symbolism that they did not want to express themselves. These memories were not good and should be kept as a memory and not be relieved. Additionally, there is a huge presence of floor work throughout this entire piece. We see the Humprehy/Weidman technique as the dancers are playing with their resistance to gravity.

They are using all levels, with extreme emphasis on the floor work. This technique is not only beautiful, but once again represents the internal struggle of the character fighting to get up and failing and end up back on the floor. We tried this technique during class and it was hard because it was our first time, however these dancers have mastered it and show how aesthetic it looks when done correctly with lots of practice. Another technique that was used a lot throughout this performance was Isadora Duncan’s balance and off balance technique. We see the dancers constantly transferring their body weight so effortlessly and then returning to their natural balanced positions.

These are just a few of the things learned during class that were incorporated into this piece. Watching this performance is like watching everything come full circle. The biggest takeaway from class, that is exemplified in this dance, is that every dance has a meaning behind it. Even if it is the slightest thing, there is a reason behind it. Of course, dancer’s faces will show tons of expression. However, you should pay particular attention to dancers' fingertips because even the smallest extremities have their very own expression in movement.

Like Martha Graham said; learning how to do the actual technique isn’t hard, but learning how to express yourself through your dance is the real struggle. That is because most people can train their bodies to move in certain ways, but there is nothing like someone moving with such expression and passion behind their movement. In Room With a View we see that passion in every movement with the internal struggles the dancer is facing. Dancing is more than just moving your body. In every performance the littlest things are thought about in extreme detail and there is always a purpose behind it. Whether it is conscious or subconscious dancers will move in ways that their mind wants to. This should be cherished and celebrated.

Dancing is a beautiful and victorious act that we all take way too much for granted. Especially in times like these with Covid-19, we should be utilizing dance and body movement to express ourselves and let out of stress, anger, and sadness. Dance is not only for sad feelings, you should dance when you feel happy, you should celebrate yourselves and your loved ones. Dance should be incorporated into everyone’s life as fun and for therapeutic measures. Without a doubt, something great will come from this time, and I sense there will be a new movement in dance and I am excited to see what it is.

Brent Engel

Dan 211

4/16/20

Brent’s Experience

The first day I stepped foot into Modern Dance level 2, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was comfortable because I had my friends in the class and was familiar with you as my professor but didn’t know what to expect from the class itself. Once the class started, we warmed up every day for forty-five minutes. After, we went through different dance movements that opened us up to unique styles and strategies to learn from. In my essay, I am going to outline my favorite stretches, movements, and overall thoughts of Dance 211.

Every day, I looked forward to dance class. It was extremely nice to enter an environment full of smiles and energy. My favorite part of all my classes this semester was the stretching aspect of modern dance. I understand how important it is to stretch and the negative impacts that are associated with not stretching. I didn’t realize how much my body physically hurt from the sports that I played in high school and college. Running and basketball put uncomfortable tension on my back, hips and hamstrings. Our different warmups made me looser. The coolest stretch was when we had to close our eyes and feel like a string was pulling us up. That helped relax my neck and shoulders. In addition, I enjoyed warrior pose with one hand on the ground and the other reaching up to the sky. This stretch definitely opened up my hips allowing me to dance and move more at ease. Lastly, I found the stretch that requires balance by grabbing the bottom of one foot and stretching it straight out, to be an effective hamstring stretch. When the class went virtual, I appreciated you taking your time to lead the online stretches. My favorite part of the it was the meditation sessions. I fell asleep every time!

“Jimmy, you are a great dancer, don’t listen to Brent” -Professor. I loved watching my other classmates try to perform the daily dances, ensembles, and their personal performances. Everyone tried their best to dance, even though some were better than others. I’m not the best dancer, but I loved embarrassing myself and trying to be a star. Chloe was an amazing dancer and it was very cool to see how talented some of the class truly was. On the other hand, I was grateful for the basketball players to teach me “the woah.” I always wondered how people were doing that on the dance floor! Moreover, it was awesome exploring the modern dance techniques. In particular, I liked the warmup dances where we had to move around the room at different levels without bumping into each other. It taught the class to be free, enjoy life, and laugh. Also, I enjoyed dancing with the wooden staff and cloth. I liked when we had to pretend like we were in a box and had to maneuver around that space only. It was great to explore different areas while being cautious of our surroundings.

All in all, I had a fantastic experience in Modern Dance Level Two. My professor and classmates taught me a lot about life in general. It was great to be able to let go of any feelings and social pressure that a lot of students face in a college environment. Every class I was able to smile and learn something new. The most important thing that I learned is, it’s not what you have in life, but who you have in your life. Cherish the time with those who force you to grow and bring you endless amounts of happiness. Love, friendship, and health are the three most important qualities a human can experience in their lifetime.

Kenza Salgues

Dance 211

04/20/2020

Lecturer : Jorge L Morejon

Against all ODDS

Dance class is not a common class. I still remember the day when my advisor announced

to men that I had to do Dance 211. I was at the same time excited, and worried. First, I was
excited because I was going to be with four other teammates, and because it was a different
kind of class than what I was used to. But I was also a mixed bag because I had just come
back from a very long ankle injury, which had kept me off the court for a year, so I was
afraid of not being able to maximize my rest time, which is essential to allow me not to feel
pain, but also to be able to perform on basketball courts. The good part is that all of this was
just an illusion.

The reality is that this class taught me and gave me much more than I expected, and I will
tell you the reasons and the benefits that allowed me to get out of this experience of growth.
Firstly, I am someone who cares a lot about what people think about me. I would even say
that this is one of my biggest weaknesses, because it can have a real impact on my feelings,
but also on my mental health. Like any weakness, I try to hide it as much as possible, but
when I arrived in this dance hall, I directly knew that this weakness was going to be a
problem. I felt discomfort, there were mirrors on all the walls, and I was going to do
something which I considered myself to be "bad" in front of like thirty people, some of
whom I knew. The first class was like a nightmare for me, then you very quickly put us
at ease by telling us that there were no good or bad dancers, that what was really important
was to feel good and comfortable about what we produced. I totally agree with what you
said, but it was difficult to become aware of it, and so to feel more liberated. It’s at this
moment that we studied pedestrian movement, it is a movement that helps you to feel
more comfortable around people that we do not really know, and that moment was a trigger
for me. I had left my comfort zone, and since then I have seen nothing but improvements,
but also fulfillment in my personal life. Furthermore, I was going through a complicated
personal situation, my father was sick, which was not easy to manage because he was
located in France so very far from me. At the same time I had just come back to basketball
courts after a year off, which was a very good news, but also raised many doubts and
anxieties because I didn’t feel like I was the same player as before. I was totally lost,
and afraid because I felt that all the sacrifices that I had made and that I was making
might be useless. Then, I observed you, and I noticed that you were using your
feelings and emotions through dance. You expressed them, but also made them feel
to other people without even using words.

So I decided to do some research on the side, and I found that Dance could allow you to
feel and express the feelings you have, and that it was very important for a large number
of dancers to express it through their passion. This is the case for example for Jose Limon
and Isadora Duncan. Duncan believed in “emotion before motion”, explained moving with
a freedom, language of liberation and transformation, to make it a vehicle for big emotions,
big ideas and great art. For them, you must be emotionally very invested in your dance
before you perform, and it also helps captivate public attention by transmitting energy
to them. So, I tried, telling myself that I couldn't lose anything anyway, and that's when
I totally invested myself mentally and physically in this class. Consequently, I directly
started to see the benefits and improvement that I was doing, and that was helping me in
my daily life. When I was leaving class, I was feeling very relaxed and Zen, which is
probably due to all the stretching that we were doing, but also all the good energies that
were in this room.

One of my biggest improvements during this class was probably about my concentration;
I realized the importance that concentration could have and its repercussions. I also realized
that it was very often denigrated, and little known although it was very important for every
human. Firstly, being focused is important for everybody, no matter who you are, but for
dancers, it’s probably the most important thing to master, that's why for every “new” dancer,
concentration can be a real challenge. Most people see dance as just entertainment that you do
in the nightclubs, or with your friends for fun, they think that being focused is not necessarily
important in this area. But on the contrary, being focused is important for dancers to control
balance, control the direction of travel during traveling turns, and it helps the performer
embody the choreography, but also accomplish what he needs to do. Moreover, dance can
help you know how to find the concentration necessary for performance and well-being, such
as with the Flow. It is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity
is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the
process of the activity. So, like I'm a big competitor, I decided to work on my concentration,
which not only helps for this class, but also for basketball.

In basketball, we are constantly told about the importance of knowing your body.
Personally, I am someone very professional, this is what impresses everyone due
to my young age. For me, my body is what will allow me to earn money later, but
this therefore requires making many sacrifices which not everyone is ready to do, such
as eating a balanced diet, going to bed early, stretching, doing treatment, doing extra
work etc. It’s not easy at all, especially when you must make sacrifices for your family,
but I believe that it's worth it. I learned a lot about my body during Dance 211, which
allowed me to be even more interested and excited to be in this class.

And I particularly learnt about how important your body is when I discovered how to
use the different spaces, because Dance also allows you to be able to use the whole space
that surrounds you, and is not content not just on one level. What I particularly like, is that
you have the option to just stay in one place, and use that space in the best way possible.
For example, the Laban's cube movement, or like Horton’s technique, which are both
techniques which goal is to help the dancer to be stronger, by improving his strength,
balance, but also his flexibility improve by constantly moving.

Horton’s was my favorite technique to study, and exercise. I think this is since
I recognized a lot of similarities with my sport. As a basketball player, it’s important to
have a good balance, but also to be fast on our feet without losing control. When
I practiced Horton’s technique, I felt like I was doing one of my personal workouts, so
I was extremely focused because I knew that it was not only a dance, but it was also
going to help me in the future.

To conclude, Dance 211 has been a source of liberation, therapy, and growth for me.
I feel like I'm a better and stronger dancer for sure, but also, a better woman, and basketball
player. Dance is all about positivity, balance and freedom, which are three essential elements
in life to be happy, so I will keep dancing in the future for my mental health, and my
happiness. It all begins against all odds, but I wouldn’t trade for anything that I’ve experienced
this semester thanks to this class.

Final Paper

Isabella Iglesias

DAN 211

April 24, 2020

Modern: Narrating a Story Without Having to Talk

I enrolled in a modern dance class this semester never expecting that at some point we would transition to online instruction and that I would be dancing from my home. I had been previously exposed to modern dance but just to observe, I had never danced or even tried to before. I grew up going to ballet, tap, and jazz classes, but I was never involved in modern dance. I just never saw myself performing those movements, which caused me to never enroll in classes while growing up. It was not until this semester, that I decided to enroll in DAN 211, Modern Dance II, where I learned about what really goes behind those so-called “movements”. During the first weeks of class, I learned about the different levels, managing my own space or kinesphere, and even pushed myself to create an 8-movement solo phrase, something I did not expect myself to be doing in such a short period of time. Throughout the semester, I have learned about different dancers and their different techniques. Some examples of these dancers are Jose Limon, Marta Graham, Isadora Duncan, Lester Horton, and several other pioneers of modern dance. They all have different movements that make each technique different, but one thing they all have in common is the emotion they put behind those movements. After comparing and contrasting all these great modern dancers and their performances, I realized to name my dance “Emotion”.

Since my performance is not based on one single technique, yet on the mix of every technique we have learned in the class I want it to have a name of something that all of them have in common. My solo performance was created all across the semester, which started a couple of months ago already. I have been adding movements almost weekly, each of the movements depending on the technique we discussed in class that week. I started creating my dance from a the comfort classroom with a mirror I could look at to see how much I liked the movements or not, and then just suddenly started dancing from my room and recording myself on a my phone so that I could see what I was doing after. Something I learned in this class, and which really changed the way I thought about modern dance is that feelings, emotions, and thoughts are expressed through these movements. Across the past couple of weeks, I have experienced happiness, excitement, sadness, anxiousness, and things that feel so weird in these uncertain times that I cannot even find a word to describe them. Through my movements, I have been able to express them in different ways, for example, moving faster and bound to express anxiety, or just creating free movements on the floor to express sadness.

The past couple of weeks, personally, I have experienced things I never in my life expected to. These feelings and thoughts that have been going on in my mind have shaped the way I create my movements. Being trapped at home has helped me get out of my comfort zone and devote more time to my dancing, which I guess has helped me become better and better with time and practice. I started my solo dance very “by the book” and focusing only on what we learned in class. Now that I have gained a little more knowledge on the different techniques and movements and how important it is to connect your mind to the movements I am creating, I have been able to move more freely and easily than what I did before. It has been very interesting to see how I went from being extremely shy about dancing in a classroom surrounded by people doing the same thing to just making the movements without even thinking about them. Personally, I think of this as an achievement.

Overall, I am very thankful that I got to enroll and learn so much from this course, even though it ended up being from a distance. I now think of modern dance as a way of expressing my emotions without having to speak, which is something I find extremely awesome. Ironically, I am glad I experienced all these challenges and changes during this time, which influenced a lot on my dancing and pretty much helped me create my own technique. It helped me see modern dance as a way of narrating a story without having to talk, rather than the super complicated movements I thought of before.

Rachel Rao

Professor Morejon

DAN211

29 April 2020

Freedom to Create Our Own Movement

This paper is a self-reflection on what I have learnt in class and my expression through doing the choreography work. Before spring break, I enjoy spending half an hour doing stretching work with everyone. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Modern Dance Level-2 is my fourth class. So, every time I was very tired when I went into the classroom. But, stretching is so comfortable and relaxing for me. I do like how we are taught to close our eye and feel the peace in our heart. I think this is the fantastic place of this class, because we are allowed to empty our brain for just a few minutes.

I also like how we do the different exercise in class, especially we are allowed to walk around and do some specific pose. I love how we are give the freedom to create our own movement, because we are taught in this way that modern dance are filled with freedom. It’s not as disciplinary as Ballet, but we also need to follow the instructions. The hard part of this class is to create different phrases of our choreographed dance; especially it’s hard to remember the moves we created last time.

However, this problem was solved while putting every piece together and when I started to think what theme I want to express in my dance. So, with the movements I created before, it’s was pretty easy for me to do the choreographic work. But it became hard again when I added emotion into the dance; I forgot my next movement all the time. I want to tell the story with my emotions, but my body was not ready yet. So, I practiced a whole day without music. After getting better at all of the movements, I added emotions that made the dance more fluid.

The reason I choose Yihunyisu as my background music is that the composer of this song, Buyi Mao, is trying to express how much he misses his mom. This is also what I want to express through this song, and the melody of this song is very soft and gentle. I want to use the simplest body language to tell everyone the story of the people who are away from home. During this pandemic, families are the ones I worried most about. I created this dance for them and I would like to let the audience know this feeling.

I do treasure the experience of doing my choreographic work in this class, because it’s a expression of my spirit and it’s a great chance for me to tell a story, with my body. I also realize that those fancy techniques in modern dance are important, but the more important ingredient in a dance, is the storyteller and his/her story.

DJ Ivey

Modern Dance II

Professor Morejón

29 April 2020

Unearthing Through Expression

Dance can help people to express and emote in several ways. Dancers use dance as a means of expressing themselves. Sometimes they cannot express in words and movement is the only healthy way for them to release. Modern Dance II has been able to help me in the same way. I did not imagine at the start of it that it would mean as much as it did. I sometimes have trouble with expressing myself and taking time away from the outside world. The class created some relief for me.

Most of the time there is a lot going on in my world. I have my academic responsibilities, athletic responsibilities, student organizations and my home life to deal with every day. Some days it can be very overwhelming for me. I have many late nights and early mornings trying to do everything I need to get through the day. No matter what it is, I am still tasked with obligation nonstop. This class has essentially been a safe space for me. It has been a positive outlet for my thoughts and feelings. I’ve unearthed a lot through this expression. There were some things I were not even aware of being released and worked through.

My time in the class was the perfect time for me to get away from everything. For that period, I did not have to think about, home, school, or sports. I could just relax and block everything out for the moment. It also helped me to take my mind off of any negative thoughts or negative things happening in my life. None of the things happening around me mattered for the time being. There were sometimes days when I could not totally escape. But those days gave me the time and space that I needed to think through the things that were happening around me.

Furthermore, the class was a time for escape, but it was a period of reflection for me too. It allowed me to think more deeply about the things happening around me as well and find solutions to some of the negative thoughts and feelings boggling me. Being in the class just made me spirit feel free. I do not have to hold back who I am because I am letting it all out through the dance. The pain gets away from me and the rhythm takes over.

I never thought that dance would help me as much as it has. I became an experience for me to learn about myself and learn how to deal with negativity in my life. I was able to do all of this in addition to all of my responsibilities. It felt good to be able to express myself through my body in a new way. I was able to express myself without judgement. The most rewarding thing to come out of this is that I gained more confidence. The experience was very freeing for me. At the end of each class I was relaxed and some of my worries faded away. I would have never imagined that expressing myself through dance would become so beneficial for me.

DAN211

Professor Jorge Morejón

Wenyuan Ma

May 2, 2020

Life Impressions Through Dance

This semester, I chose to take Modern Dance II as an artistic training course. I thought could cultivate my feelings and relax my emotions by enjoying dance while I was studying nervously. I think this was a good idea. What dance is, for me, maybe Wikipedia or Baidu. I did not have any intuitive understanding of dance. I only watched it on variety shows such as the Spring Festival Evening. However, I did not see it. I could not feel the beauty of dance through it. This idea completely changed by taking Modern Dance II with Professor Jorge Morejón.

Learning this course has been significant to me. Although there were only two lessons per week, I had some preliminary understanding of the art of dance that I did not know before; I think that I learned a lot. As a student of mathematics, I would rarely go to watch those dance videos on weekdays, and there were many technical terms in the course. Nevertheless, after watching these dance video, even I who barely understood the dance could be shocked by how charming the dances were, and how exciting the dances were.

Due to the coronavirus, we were forced to start dancing lessons at home, but this did not affect my interest in this lesson. The professor found a lot of warm-up videos, and there were many articles to help us better understand some dance ideas. Our professor even found different kinds of warm-up skills to make the course more interesting. Through those videos, I learned that the exploration of dance culture focuses on the content and formation of dance and activities related to dance. Relying solely on dance itself to study, makes it impossible to clarify its origin. Research results from fields of study such as sociology, history, ethnology, folklore, linguistics, geography, aesthetics, and anthropology must be included in order to explore dance. Learning about the formation of dance background, exploring its multiple cultural factors, and thereby promoting the construction of a new dance discipline, gave birth to modern dance studies.

I realized that all dance art is derived from real life, and they all express some delicate feelings in our lives. Although dance is not the prose we learned or the TV series we watched, the emotions it express are very intuitive. The thoughts expressed in dance are quite abstract. Dance expresses its own emotional world through metaphoric movements. I can say that dance expresses the art in our lives, even more when life is shocked.

I am very happy I was able to take this course. It not only cultivated my feelings, but it also relaxed my moods; it deepened my understanding of dance and the interpretation of life through dance and dancers on the stage. Even more, it helped me to strive for my life ideals.

Dan 211

Modern Dance II

Gongzhu Zhao

Final paper

5/2/2020

Feelings, Emotions and Human Expression

This semester our Dan 211 is about Modern dance II. Modern dance is a form of dance opposite to classical ballet that arose in the west at the beginning of the 20th century. Its main aesthetic point of view is to oppose classical ballet's conformism, departure from real life and pure pursuit of skills. It is a broad genre of Western concert or theatrical dance, primarily arising out of Germany and the United States. In this paper I will talk about what I learned from Modern Dance II and how it affects my ways of life.

To begin with, I learned lots of ideas and techniques of modern dance from multiple dancers and choreographers by watching their videos on YouTube and go through readings on our class blogs. For example, Isadora Duncan was the predecessor of modern dance. She focused on the center of the torso or solar plexus, bare feet, loose hair, free-flowing costumes. She also incorporated humor and feelings into the emotional expression of her dance. Her dance combined lots of things from the natural power of human beings, such as, running, skipping, leaping, jumping, and some abrupt movements. She thought that dance should not be restricted by rules like meaningless gymnastics.

Jose Limon is also a dancer who made a deep impression on me. He electrified the world with his dynamic masculine dancing and dramatic choreography. He was one of the 20th century's most influential performers and dance makers. He spent his whole career promoting a new form of dace art within the field of American modern dance. The key concept for his technique was that he used movement through position, mind, and body which was dynamic, and gestural. This technique was very useful for new dancers, and it minimized the risk of injury. And this technique became very practical for most dancers. What I learned from Limon is that we need to put emotion, experience, and humanity to our dance, which is powerful and emotional.

Moreover, I also learned basic concepts and movements from the four phrases before recess, which are box, floor, flow, and shapes. These four phrases are the basic structure to construct my dance through the whole semester. From my understanding of these four phrases, box is a kind of imaginary cube that one dances in. It is a three-dimensional space with limited movements for one’s dance. However, in the box you can move your body up and down in different levels, which are upper level, middle level, and lower level. Floor is a kind of movement performed mostly on the floor, which means one’s dance happens on lower level. Flow is an elegant way to perform dancing. Flow looks soft like wind and water, which gives people a graceful feeling. In contrast with Flow, Shape is a more powerful movement. It gives one a representation of strength and structure.

All in all, through this class, I learned lots of information about the characters, background, skills, concepts, techniques, and knowledge of modern dance. The most important thing is dance is not just about movements, we need to combine dance with feeling, emotions, and human expression.

Franco Aubone

Dance 211-R

Final Paper

Prof. Jorge Morejon

Dancing as Freedom

In this paper, I would be telling my own experience of dancing and how it has impacted on my daily thinking. I remember enrolling in classes for the spring 2020, and I was excited to find an elective that was different from the rest of the classes in the business school. However, my condition of being timid and shy in front of people was holding me back for taking classes such as dance, theatre, public speech, etc.

Initially, as every single student at UM, you must talk with your academic advisors to enroll in classes to check that you are going towards your degree. One the observation that they told me was that I would be more relaxed if I chose one elective instead of another business class because it was going to be our Tennis season and in season period, time is what you never have. As I said previously, my shyness was holding me back to take a different class and experiment a new venture, but it was not until my teammates called me and proposed to enroll together that I made a decision. Since that moment, I never doubted that it was the perfect opportunity to take Dance 211 as it was something, I wanted to, but I was not sure about myself as a dancer. Thus, walking into a class by yourself is not the same that going with your teammates, the fear of embarrassing yourself starts to go away and you take it as a moment you will share with them.

Additionally, we never thought that we were going to learn so many things about our physical and mental responses which had a great impact on our daily routine. As an athlete, where you are told to do a specific task, you do not think that your body can be stimulated to produce new movements completely different from what you have been doing since a kid. Therefore, every class was a more comfortable feeling that the one before, we started to realize that what matters is the freedom in your mind, the same one that everyone has when is a little kid. Once you can connect your mind with your body and begin to make one movement followed by another and then another, you completely forget you are a tennis player, and you experiment a new stage of yourself totally free and happy.

Also, while learning about this new stage about ourselves, we learned things that we could implement in our tennis life. That is, Dance 211 taught us the importance of a proper breathing and stretching. So, when you realize the importance of learning new things and then use them in different aspects of your life, is when you are closer to reach your maximum potential as a human being. In my experience, I had implemented those two things into my tennis training, and I am sure that my body will thank me for listening to those advices that help one to have a healthier and better lifestyle.

In conclusion, I would say that I have taken so many things with me from this class. Honestly, I thought it was going to have no impact on my life, but it has been so much different in a positive way that I would never regret to be part of this. Athletes often do not see classes like this as a chance to improve their physical condition, but if you are willing to learn and adopt new things it can really help you mentally, physically, and spiritually.

Shanglin Li

Modern Dance II

Professor Jorge Morejón

May 4, 2020

Modern Dance: Breaking Prejudices

I still remember the day I enrolled into the course of Dan 211. Before taking the course, I always thought Dance is a very easy and boring thing to do. Everyone can be a Master of It, just by following steps, listening to orders, and keep practicing it until you can do it fluently without thinking. A class without thinking, and by following orders is quite boring. But many of my friends recommended to take it, then here I am. After I took it, I think I entered into a totally different world. It broke my prejudices. It overturned what I had thought before.

In the first class, professor made us to stretch for warm up. Some of the movements are very close to the floor. I felt quite uncomfortable with that. Because in my old mind, stay close to the floor, or lay down on the floor is an inappropriate behavior. The floor isn’t clean, and as a young adult, playing on the floor is inappropriate. However, after taking class with the Professor, I learned that first, floor work appears a lot in modern dance, for example, what we learned in Graham technique, floor work is used extensively. By doing floor work, I felt more connected to the floor in relation to gravity. Now, I was able to perform works between high, middle and low levels. When we were babies, we liked to play on the floor; we were rolling back and forth; we liked to do different movements on the floor. But, as we grow up, we are estranged from it. That is not right, and by performing floor work, we can have flexible joints and a relaxed body.

As I have just mentioned above, I always thought dance is easy to do; you just follow orders and keep doing it; then you can call yourself a dancer. But what I have learned totally reversed my old way of thinking. Dance is a performing art. Dance doesn’t only have aesthetic value, but it also contains symbolic meaning, often associated with a particular culture. It can also express the dancer’s meaning; it is a tool to release our emotions and keep our minds healthy in this disturbing world. A dance without thoughts cannot called itself a dance. It loses its soul. When we are dancing, we need to pay our full attention to it, be discipline, and dance with expression. We can enhance it with meaning and make it special.

Before I took the course, I would say “I am shy. I don’t want to make a speech in front of a group of people." However, this dancing course helped me to improve that. Now, I feel no shame about dancing on the stage. I compare my attitude before taking the course; I was looking forward to going to class. This dance class is not only a place for having fun, but also a place for us to purify our minds, to think deeply about our lives. Dan 211 broke my old prejudice that dance is a easy thing to do by following orders. In Modern Dance, you need to put your passion and your thoughts into your movements, in order to make it special and unique. When we are doing floor work, staying close to the floor is not a bad thing; we can feel more connected to gravity, and that can help us to relax to keep our bodies in a better state. Moreover, taking dance class lessens my fears before the public; now, I have a better mind and physique than before.

Kelsey Marshall

DAN 211-R

Mr. Morejón

Reflection: Working with Space, Movement, and Balance.

In my time spent in this class there were a couple of ups and downs but I really enjoyed this class. I believe that the class was very well structured. I liked how in the beginning of class we would go through a stretching routine to warm up our bodies to help prevent injury. I enjoyed how you took the time to learn step by step on learning different types of dances and how they were all able to connect with each other to create one big solo dance.

One thing that I can say that I struggled with the most in this class is staying engaged throughout the whole class. The beginning of the class I was always ready to go start the class off. The reason why I believe that I struggled with this is because this class was always after an early morning practice and a lecture class. My energy throughout the class will always seem to die down on me. All throughout the beginning of the semester I was going through an ankle injury that made it very limited to what I was allowed to do. I always tried to participate as much as possible and tried to give my full effort when we were learning new dances.

One thing that I benefited the most from this class was the stretching portion of the class. This part benefited me because this allowed me to become a little more flexible and it helped in my sports. Being flexible allowed me to move better and feel a lot looser throughout the day. The one thing that I learned the best in this class was working with space, movement, and balance. These things are important when doing dance because, in order to dance you have to have good balance throughout the body, the movement is what is needed to create rhythm and flow, and lastly the space is important.

Overall, I really enjoyed the time spent in the class. Even though we switched to online which became a little more difficult to keep up with the assignments and dance routines I feel like I learned a lot about different dance techniques and I was able to get out of my comfort zone and do things that I wouldn’t normally do like dancing in front of others. Thank you for allowing me to stay in your class and I appreciate all the new things you were able to teach me even through this awful pandemic.

Estela Perez-Somarriba

DAN 211

April 27, 2020

Professor Morrejón

Saint Matthew Passion by John Neumeier

The work that I will analyze is Saint Matthew Passion by John Neumeier. This complex and religious masterpiece was originally composed by Johann Sebastian Bach in the 18^th century, and director and choreographer Neumeier carried it to the stage in 2010 for the first time. He created one of the most important ballet compositions in dance history. Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion represents Christ’s passion and culminated the composer's sacred music era. It has moved audiences over the years due to its biblical story, symbols and authenticity.

Due to how groundbreaking and pioneering this work was, Neumeier decided to develop a ballet that would integrate his own style of dance without losing the essence, core and fundamental nature of the original composition. The American choreographer was able to convey true emotions and intensity through dance due to the many different figures and personalities that appear throughout the dance, and the dramatic opportunities the passage itself has.

Neumeier’s way of understanding dance is unique and rhythmic. In other words, dance is a type of language and can speak for the human soul and spirit. His ultimate goal was to express through a specific choreography the experiences and beliefs presented in Christ’s passion. I believe he wanted to depict a human Jesus who suffered and accepted his destiny, just as the Bible implies. Even though the root of the play and guidelines were narrow due to the sensitivity of the passage, he wanted to give dancers the freedom to express from their inner self within the dramatic structure of the play. He had to face challenges such as the rehearsal process as it is explained in the video which made him to innovate in many different ways.

All of the dancers performing are young and wear white robs. They execute smooth, dynamic and rhythmic movements. Their bodies and face expressions convey solemnity and devotion while moving across the space. They use the space very well and there is a relationship between gravity, the floor, and the dancer. They convey from within the same emotions that were transmitted in Christ’s passion: sorrow, forgiveness, repentance, love, fear…It was interesting to observe the parts of the dance where the dancers improvise and have the opportunity to manifest their true feelings in that specific moment. The dancers move in harmony throughout the whole play, they seem free while making intense and drastic movements at particular points in time.

This magnum opus reminded me of many things we have worked on and learned in class this year. From different levels and directions, to the avoidance of judging ourselves and copying somebody else’s movements, the significant impact modern dance has had in dance history and everything in between. All of this has been a continuous learning process. Personally, I believe it is striking and breathtaking to feel so many different emotions when watching and analyzing Saint Matthew Passion by John Neumeier. It is a fine balance between simplicity and complexity, flow and drastic movement, appreciation of details and modesty…

John Neumeier aimed to foster expressiveness from the dancers. He also focused on developing a ballet masterpiece that represented his understanding of dance as a language and Bach’s musical manifestation. Throughout the dance, the audience can perceive modern dance's influences and the feelings the dancers convey from the beginning until the curtain closes with Jesus Christ’s death.

Over all, it is very fulfilling to learn from this performance and acknowledge the areas where I can improve as a dancer. I also know that I have come a long way since the beginning of the semester, trying my best to be more relaxed when dancing and work on the flow between my mind and my movements. I could observe different techniques and gestures that we have worked on in class during this rehearsal and I know I will continue to embrace modern dance in the future.

Hanxiao Lin (Chloe)

Jorge Morejon

Dan 211

5.6.2020

Dance: The Voice in Our Hearts

I was fortunate that I bought a ticket of World of Dance that was taken place in Miami. I got a chance to watch this famous dance competition live. I reviewed this competition online again because every performance was so excellent that I could not forget about it and I want to share my experience. World of dance was founded by David Gonzalez, Myron Marten, Tee Sherpa and Michael McGinn in 2008. It is the world's largest dance entertainment company and it helps to elevate artists and brands through its events, entertainment and digital engagement. Their events are held all around the world. The competitors are free to showcase their skills, from hip-hop and contemporary to ballroom, Latin and more, bringing their passion to battle it out with the best of the best. After reviewing this event, I understood more about the art of dance. Dance exists without borders. People are free to express themselves in their dance. Dance is infectious.

I saw solo dance, couple dance, trio dance, and dance crew in the competition. Any form of dance was acceptable. The audience liked any type of performance. I could not see any bias from the audience. After many hip-hop performances, a dancer with a fancy and different costume came into stage. She showed us an amazing Indian dance. She showed us the beauty of her country. The audience gave her a round of applause. In the live battle part, I saw dancers from different age ranges. When two dancers were battling, every other dancer and audience gave their best support. Dance is not about age, countries, or the formation of performances. I could tell from the audience’s reaction that borders disappeared at this time. Dance is an art that can erase the distance between people.

I could see stories in the performances. One dance team, which was formed by most African-Americans, used their performance to tell people to stop racism. Racism is always a sensitive topic in today’s society. People always try to avoid talking about racism. However, in the stage, dancers used their bodies and movements to express their opinions freely. Another dance team used their dance to depict the news we see in daily life. Every dance is a miniature reflection of our lives. It can be happy, sad, and/or meaningful. There is always a story behind the dance. People are free to talk about their stories because no one will judge them at this moment.

Dancers in the stage were well related to the audience. The audience would scream, record, wave their arms, and applaud when the performance was exciting and reached its climax. I could see people’s happy faces. When the dancers expressed sadness, the audience became silent. There was a show on the stage, at the same time, there was another show down here in the audience. Dance is infectious because the audience can feel the same way as dancers. It is like magic. The emotions that dancers want to express are powerful.

Dance is the most miraculous thing in the world. The space in the dance is silent but noisy. We can talk about any stories in dance because no one will stop us and judge us. The voice in our hearts speaks out loud in dance. The audience becomes our biggest support because we are connected through dance.

Name: Xueyi He (Bonnie)

Class: Dan211-R

Instructor: Jorge L. Morejón

Date: 05/05/2020

Just Dance: Every One Can Be a Dancer

Before attending this class, I have taken three dance classes before in our university. I had never thought that I would continue taking dance class because I am the person who is not good at balance. However, by taking more and more dance classes and after watching the performance by Frost Studio Jazz Band, I realize that even though I am not professional, and my postures during dancing are not pretty, I can still dance in my way with the music.

About three weeks ago, I watched the live performance, The Music of Duke Ellington, from Frost Studio Jazz Band. This performance uses many instruments such as saxophone, piano, cello, etc. They have performed several songs. The first one leaves me a deep impression. At the beginning, the melody is slow. The conductor also moves slowly with the melody. Later, when the melody of the song goes quicker. the conductor moves quicker as well. Although he is not dancing, his body just moves unconsciously with the music. In addition to the conductor, I find that performers move slightly with the music. Especially when some of saxophone players stands up and has a solo, some other performers nod with beats and move their body with melody as well. When I observe those phenomena, I realize I am also moving with the melody. And this situation occurs frequently in online class when I create my phrase based on techniques of modern dance.

Before this class, I am afraid to dance in the public. Though I was interested in modern dance, I was still afraid that modern dance was difficult to learn. This is because I can only move my body in simple ways. Although I have attended three dance classes before, I still lack confidence. In my view, modern dance is graceful and requires good balance. This worry has increased when I saw some of my classmates can dance very well. Hence, at the beginning of the class, I was afraid to move my body as large as I can.

However, things change by the time. Based on the decomposition of modern dance techniques by professor, I learned this easily. What is more, before I dance, I always recall what professor always says in class: do not look at mirror because it will make you judge yourself. Indeed, the postures of my dancing is not professional and look not pretty enough, but during study the main points of choreographers’ techniques, I learned that dance is the expression of our emotions and movements caused by gravity and breath. Usually, our body will move slightly due to breath and the weight caused by gravity. for example, we will stretch our body when we exhale, and when we lose our balance, we will fall to the one side. Those phenomena are common to see, but we seldom realize it. To be more specific, dance derives from our daily life. When I learned those details , I became more confident when I dance. During the period of online class, I always play some music and move my body with it based on technique of modern dance, without considering whether the movements look pretty or not. At that time, I just follow my heart to move.

In conclusion, everyone can be a dancer. Do not compare ourselves with others or judge your movements. What we can do is dance with music, move with emotions and enjoy it.

Sofia Nelles

5/6/20

Final Dance Paper

Dance: A Judgement Free Zone

Overall, Modern Dance II was an amazing and fun filled class that exceeded all of my expectations. I especially think that it is great how our class was able to overcome hardships this semester and complete our work online. I remember my first time in this class like it was yesterday. We spent the first weeks trying out new classrooms until we found one that was spacious enough and it became our home for the class. I watched new people join at the beginning and soon all of the people became familiar to me. From the first class, I did not know what to expect, but I knew that my experience was going to be positive. I remember we did an activity where we were to dance around the room standing up and on the floor. We made the room smaller and smaller until everyone was almost touching each other and trying to dance. We were all laughing and smiling by the end of the activity, and from that moment I realized just how comfortable I could be in Dance 211. It became a judgement free zone in which I was able to learn how to express myself comfortably and freely.

Our professor made sure that we always had something to do in class and he inspired good attitudes in all of his students. He truly did not judge anyone on anything even though some struggled with not having any dance experience or language barriers. This is something that made me even more comfortable to be myself in the class. I admit that I can be shy, especially in large classroom settings, but in this class, I did not need to use words to express myself and I could use my body. Starting out with a warmup every class that remained generally the same was a way to keep structure and was a great way to inspire creativity later in the class. My favorite thing about the days in the classroom was when we would do group lines. We would line up in groups of about six or seven and do various dances across the room. I loved being able to express myself in this way because I did not feel the pressure of having everyone in the class looking at me alone. I also enjoyed learning all of the different dance styles that we did.

The ensemble was something that pushed my boundaries in a good way. It got me out of my comfort zone because as a gymnast, I was used to creating dances and performing them on my own. Expressing myself in the context of a group was difficult at first, but something that I came around to. Everyone in the group was able to dance in their own way while doing the same moves. I added my own style and flavor into every step and so did everyone else. I became confident in my group and grew a bond with the people in it. The solo aspect also pushed my boundaries in a different way. When we had to perform our solo phrases for the class in small groups, I was nervous in the beginning. After a few times, I actually found it very fun to show the class my own style and the moves I was able to come up with for my solo phrases. They were able to see how I expressed myself just the way that I saw myself.

The online learning exceeded all of my expectations. When the pandemic began, I was worried about how this class would still exist considering all that we did previously was dance in groups in the classroom. The blog questions challenged my thinking and allowed me to learn so much about dance that I never knew before. Answering the questions on the discussion board was another way that I was able to express myself in this class. I love to write, and I feel like I have a very unique style of writing. Through the blog posts, I could add my own style of writing into all of the questions that I answered about dance and different dance styles. The questions challenged my thinking and allowed me to share my ideas and style of learning with my classmates and professor. Also, having the time to practice and post videos of myself dancing at home gave me more time to create moves that truly allowed me to express myself and display my style. I am thankful for a great class despite the circumstances that we were all faced with.

Pablo Aycart

Dance 211

Jorge Morejón

May 6th, 2020

My Experience: Before, During and After

Dance was always one of the things I was really curious about. I was very eager to learn different techniques and apply them to my life. I think dance links really well with my personality since I am a really outgoing person and I love trying new things. When I heard I could take a course in Modern Dance, I didn’t think twice. Later, I found that some of my friends and teammates were joining the class and that added an extra to it.

As the semester began, I was very excited and interested to see what modern dance was about. We went to the first dance classes and it was actually very different from what I expected, but in a positive way. I never imagined learning how to dance would be like learning a new language or a new sport. The process of becoming a dancer is very similar to the one to become an athlete. It’s all about practice, repetition and muscle memory, and slowly with time earning the confidence and trust in your body to let your body go. Being a tennis player, I can say that it gave me an advantage since I approached each and every class with the right mindset to learn. The first days were a struggle but day after day my body slowly started to become used to some of the motions and movements. It was then when we started to experience new techniques and a new challenge was ahead.

As we reached the midpoint of the semester an unexpected and crazy scenario hit us. After we found out that COVID-19 was a worldwide pandemic that paralyzed everything, our course was forced to be moved to distance learning. Fortunately, enough, that did not stop our process and we were able to resume our course with no issues. It was a challenging situation since many things happened very quickly and there was a lot to deal with, especially during the first 3-4 weeks. However, our professor was very understanding and was a huge help for us throughout these tough times. He offered us flexibility to adapt to the schedule since the students were all over the world in different countries and in different time zones. He also managed to make it enjoyable and easy for us to keep up with all the material. We learned new techniques each week and kept up with everybody through weekly blogs.

This course has made me realize a lot about myself and has been a huge help in many different ways. There are many takeaways that I am taking with me into the future, but to summarize my main two areas of growth; they have to definitely be the physical and mental aspects. Physically I have managed to improve my flexibility, my core stabilization, my alignment, my strength and my balance. Mentally I feel I have learned so much about myself and that’s all credit to dance. I am now able to focus on my breath and relax on moments of stress, I am a lot more aware of my body positions and movements on a daily basis, and last but not least, it helped me overcome fear, nerves and uncertainty about what people thought about myself. Dance teaches you to be yourself and that there are no limits when you practice it. There is not a right or wrong, it’s just yourself on the dance floor expressing your feelings and telling a story through your performance.

In conclusion, after dealing with a worldwide pandemic we were still able to make it through our dance course and learned many things that are going to stay with us for a lifetime. Thank you professor for your work and dedication on what could have been a disaster but you still managed to turn it around and made it a success.

Anastassia Cafatti

Letting Go: Dance in the Raw

Being completely honest, doing this dance was a challenge for me. I had to go back in time in terms of my dance skills and let go of all of the frameworks I had previously established in my mind in order to enjoy this experience to the fullest. Letting go of past dance skills, habits and knowledge is definitely not an easy thing to do. I am a believer than in order to master a new style of dance, you need to approach it from the start, no matter if you have been dancing for a week or twelve years. I felt like if I tried using my past knowledge to create this dance, it would contaminate the beauty and rawness of it. I tried to let go of my past dance ideas and be playful with it by experimenting with all the things we learned in class: space, looking, levels, angles, jumping, isolations, etc.

When we were in class, I tried my best to enter the room with a clear mindset, free of any judgment or entitlement. This was something I learned from my past experience in the dance improvisation class that I took a year ago. Due to the fact that we all had extremely different dance levels, we had to all be “leveled” in a way. All the skills we learned in class which included shifting weights, using our hands in the shape of a box to start with movement and exploring the area around you very tightly. Then, we did it in an enlarged way as to fill up the space, as well as floating. Being intentional and down to earth with our movements really helped me form a rich set of tools that I was able to utilize while I was bringing my phrases together.

At one point I found myself too stuck in trying to make a perfect square with my arms, or trying to start a phrase or continue it and felt choppy. That is when you, Jorge advised me to let go. I asked you if using music was fine, and you said that it was. I remember we had a talk about how incredible it is that us dancers are taught in a way to follow the rhythm of the music, but when left in silence, we go blank. That was definitely something I worked on.

I came up with a lot of the phrases in silence in class. A few other classes I put on earphones and listened to some music. However, tried very hard to not make the music guide my moves. After watching Isadora Duncan dance, I took a lot of inspiration from her repetition of movement and her utilization of grasping and feeling. She used a lot of free floating and airy movements, and very delicate ones, but she also used some very down to earth moves.

The beginning of this dance is inspired by the beginning of the class, when we were taught to stand in a good, straight position, balancing the weight of our feet, and walking around. I played with velocity and speed by using my own shadow behind me. The next section was about using my arms in combination with my legs like the exercise we did on Laban's box. Throughout, I tried to feel the music and I believe it helped me work a lot on my choppiness. In order to combine the individual phrases, I realized that feeling the music helped me a lot. This was definitely essential to me and to making my body feel as one. I also tried to incorporate some of the movements that we did in our stretching sessions.

Towards the end, I tried to bring everything to the beginning. I imagined it like one big circle that allowed me going back to the walking and the different levels and directions. Classes like these really test your own personal skills. They make you realize that there is so much to work on. I may know a lot about belly dance´s base but I sure had a lot to learn about modern dance.

Thus, this dance to me had a lot of meaning. Ultimately, it was like I let go for a bit of everything that is happening in the world and let my feelings flow. I wore the mask on purpose, because that is how I feel. I named my dance selfish because that is how I think of the current situation in our world right now. People are selfish; selfish to have created this virus, selfish to have made it spread, selfish about buying everything for themselves at the supermarket, and selfish about trying not to get other people sick.

In times like this, the best and worst of humans come out. I am able to see both sides, but have been shocked by the selfishness. Humans are stubborn. In times like this where the world should be unified as one, you still see problems arising all over. I believe that the mask gave my piece a sense of reality. This is my reality right now, and this is how it is making me feel. The masks takes away a lot of your freedom, just like social distancing.

I began the dance looking back and forth like very paranoid at myself and the world, only to realize I was alone; it was my own shadow. After realizing that I was alone in social distancing, I realized that I had more power and control and began moving my arms to occupy the space around me. I did a lot of movements of bringing things towards myself, like collecting goods, collecting strength, collecting whatever we need at this time to survive. I ended up by going to the same place, alone having achieved nothing by myself.

The message of this dance for me is that we might be having to keep social distance, but that we are not alone. We should not be selfish, but full of love towards oneself and others to allow us to be caring and empathetic. Parts of us might not be fully free as they used to be, representing the mask, which will always be a part of who we are and our story, but we are in control of taking this time to reflect. This cycle of finishing where I started is only to show how important self-reflection is to break the selfishness cycle, or any other cycle in the world.

Initially, my plans for this dance were extremely different. I was not very sure about how I was going to piece it all together or what meaning it would have. However, it felt liberating to dance and let my body go using the skills learned in class. To me, more than about steps, dance is about meaning and connection. I really pushed myself to work on expression, and even though you can´t see my face, I hope I was able to transmit that through my movements and through the music I chose, also called Selfish by Madison Beer.

All in all, this process of creating this dance has allowed me to see how much I was able to open up and absorb. I love to learn new things, new styles, and new ways of expression. All of them can bring so much into our own lives. Dance helps us connect with our inner selves, with the world, and others. This class was exactly all of that. I felt such a nice energy in there with everyone who was a part of it. Such a dynamic group taught me so many things that probably they don´t even know they did. I hope my dance is able to transmit something to you and that you enjoy it in its rawness. It is definitely not perfect, but it is full of feeling.

Yu Zhang

Dreaming with a Broken Heart

At the end of the semester, I'm going to analyze a dance that I've seen and been impressed with and talk about and reflect on how this semester's lessons affected me or helped me with dance and so on. First, I'd like to introduce a dance program I like very much called "so you think you can dance." This show presents different types of dance through competition. What I like about this show is that it maintains the same respect for all dancers and gives them the space to create their own works. One of the most impressive or moving was Mia Michaels' "Dreaming with a Broken Heart."

Mia Michaels is an Emmy Award-winning choreographer. If you have seen the show, you'll be familiar with her work. Although she is the choreographer of modern dance, in the program "so you think you can dance", she often has to choose the movements according to the kind of dance the dancer is good at, and arrange works with different styles. Her works are full of emotion, conflict, complete stories, and she especially likes to use props (such as benches, doors, beds, etc.) to enhance the narrative sense of the performance.

She has many touching modern dance works, including the ones that won an Emmy Award. But what impressed me most was Kherington and Twitch's "Dreaming with A Broken Heart" on "so you think you can dance" in 2008. In this dance, female dancer Kherington is a modern jazz dancer, while male dancer Twitch is a hip-hop dancer, two dancers of different styles. Mia Michaels choreographed an extremely "simple" dance for them. The 11-year-old work has no difficult spins, no flexibility, no lifts, not even much coordination, or even "dancelike" movements.

More than a minute of music later, a bed, a bag of petals, blue light and two people,was enough to recreate the most vivid sad scene. The dance, the incredible difficult movements, the incisively and vividly beautiful lines, ultimately enhanced the expression of emotion. The weakness of the midnight dream, the choking twitches, the frantic searching, the knocking down, the panic, the shrinking back, the wakening up, the dreaming again with a broken heart, as the song goes were all expressions of the dance. "When you're dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part!" the dancers seem to scream as they moved.

I think I was impressed by the dance performance because Mia Michaels was able to fully feel the story behind the dance through the emotion expressed by her body and the change in her expression. Just like the Limon dance technique that we learned this semester, by spreading out every part of our body to make our dancing smooth and unconsciously let the audience feel our inner feelings we are enhancing our story. Secondly, I found that Mia Michaels's breathing was very intriguing to me as audience member and a dance student. Every movement of Mia Michaels' dance was perfectly related to her own inhalation or exhalation. This also made her dance smoother and more natural. These are two of the most important things I've learned this semester.

Because I have been dancing as a hobby, sometimes I also feel confused thinking that my movement is not beautiful and so on. At the beginning of each class, I would stretch or warm up. I was very confused at first because I felt like the dance I was doing didn't seem to have anything to do with the basic movements we were learning. Slowly, I understood that all these preparatory activities were to stretch our own bodies; only when the body is relaxed enough can it achieve the real effect of the dance. My body also gradually improved from the rigid state at the beginning of the semester. Now, I always feel that my body was curled up when I look at the previous dance videos. I feel this has been part of my progress this semester. In other words, I really learned some professional dance knowledge or tips this semester, which has made me more interested in eventually continue dancing.

Borui Wang

DAN211

Dance: A Discipline for Oneself

I learned how to understand life from dance, how to integrate life into dance, and how to express my feelings and heart in dance. Before this dance class, I thought dance was about combining different movements. However, I now think that we should not remember and imitate every movement stiffly, but feel the movement of the body from our own heart and feel every muscle and joint from our own body. Warm-up exercises before dancing can both relax the mind and move the body, but also can focus your attention on your body, feel and guide the gentle movements of the body, and the transition from one movement to another.

Dance is a philosophy; it is also an art; it is the practice of self-expression. When the same dance is performed by different dancers, one's own understanding of the content of the dance will be added, as well as the appropriate adaptation of it to our own perception. I thought that modern dance was all about stretching the body and showing the lines. Traditional dances are more about celebrating the harvest and extending the culture of the celebration. However, after learning various dance techniques, I found that modern dance has a lot of content and inspiration from traditional dance, as the unique understanding of fold dances have been added to it.

In any given story, modern dance allows the use of body language to better show the inner feelings of the characters. Of course, any detail of their lives can be used as the movement material for the dance story. Moves such as walking, jumping, and the integration of different movements are put together creatively to achieve a highly aesthetic dance. At the same time, dance is not just about performance. As I mentioned, it's an art form.

Modern dancers often add their thoughts on life, society, and the world into their dance. Each dancer is a student who learns more and thinks more in continuous dance practice. Some dancers can achieve a state of selflessness while dancing, as if he or she can talk to heaven and earth, communicate with nature, and demonstrate a higher philosophical stand about dance. Everyone's dance is different, has their own characteristics, so different and at the same time so distinctly beautiful. Just like everyone and everything in the world is independent from one another, common and non-common, but equally beautiful, dance is as well a statement of unique beauty. In this process of continuous self-improvement, everyone will open their hearts to accept themselves and others. Just like in class, you tell yourself and others that you are beautiful, that they are also beautiful.

I gradually found myself dancing, and I also gradually gained confidence in my life. Dance and life are inseparable; dance can come from life; the core of the dance can also be integrated into life. In my life, I can gradually pay attention to the beauty around me and the small details in life, and I will work harder to make myself a better person. Now I often do warm-up exercises before the dance class to relax and calm my mind. All the movements done in dance are not only related to each body part, but also to the inner world of the dancer. You can't do a good dance if you're anxious and not paying attention. That is what I have learned this semester; it has been extremely useful; it has made me think differently about my life and what modern dance really means.

Yingjie Wu

Analysis on “The Phantom of the Opera”

I watched “The Phantom of the Opera” on "The Show Must Go On" on April 21st. In fact, I watched the live version of this opera in the theater when I was traveling in the UK during last summer vacation. The stage, the perfect music and the magnificent dance have left a very deep impression on me. Now I watched the YouTube version of this show again, which made me recall my last summer. Combining the video and my memory in the theater last summer, I want to talk about my feelings about the Phantom of the Opera mainly about three aspects, namely audience as a part of the performance, stage design, dance and, music.

1. Audience as a part of the performance

At the beginning of the performance, the theater design hangs a large chandelier above the seat of the auditorium. The audience would think that this is a decoration of the theater. However, when sparks burst out and the chandelier fell, the audience all became scared and then screamed. This design makes the audience immersed into the performance. “The Phantom of the Opera" has a plot with strange scenes happening on stage. They are part of the drama and it allows the audience to experience these "strange things" by themselves. In this way, it can give audience members a strong sense of presence, enhance their perception of the plot, and even make them performers of the musical.

2. Stage design.

“The Phantom of the Opera” is one of the most amazing musicals which have the greatest stage design I have ever seen. It applies various technologies to the design and stage props. It creates various performance atmospheres according to the development of the plot. For example, shortly after the Phantom met the hostess in the lounge, the scene immediately switched to the basement within merely tens of seconds. In the underground maze, the smoke haunts the entire stage. Candle holders are put on the stage, and the phantom rows the boat. This scene design brings out the gloomy atmosphere of the underground maze. It takes a lot of technology to convert scenes in a short period of time and complete many incredible scene layouts. The scene is also part of the performance, which brings a very direct and impactful visual experience to the audience.

3. Dance In terms of dance, the dance in The Phantom of the Opera is mostly ballet, as we can see in Hannibal, Dumb Servant, or the rehearsal of Christine when he first appeared on the stage. The most memorable thing for me is the grand dance scene in Masquerade. In Masquerade, there are the largest number of actors. Dozens of actors dance social dance on the stairs together and a lot of ballet movements were added to it. They are in line with the design of this masquerade in the palace. In this scene, all actors wear the most luxurious clothes, have the most exaggerated appearance, and are all different and attractive in the way they look. They all fill the show with the mysterious color of their dances.

4. Music

In a musical, the audience may forget the details of the story, dance costumes, and even the actors, but the music itself cannot be forgotten. Excluding other artistic elements, looking at the music itself, we can still use it to understand the emotions in the musical. A good musical’s theme is extremely impressive. The musical composition in The Phantom of the Opera is in line with the development of the musical plot. At the beginning, "The Phantom of Opera" used organ as the main instrument, highlighting the mysterious colors, and also using a musical instrument commonly used in theaters to pull people back to the old time. "Think of me" highlights Christine ’s unique voice and gives a hint of her sweet past with the man; "Music of the Night" and "All I ask for you" reflect the fascination and love between the three characters that conform the love triangle. The touching melody and the simple but beautiful lyrics make these songs everlasting.

In conclusion, when I watch The Phantom of the Opera there are four elements that touch my feelings deeply. The audience participation element makes me not only a spectator but also a performer. The stage design’s gloomy atmosphere makes me apprehensive about what will happen. The dance accentuates a sense of urgency that keeps me on edge. The music haunts me way after the performance is over. This is why the video is so effective; it reminds me of the actual experience I had when I saw the musical live.

Teresa Deng

DAN 211

Sharing Myself With the World

I have been used many medium to express myself, like writing, drawing, sports, singing etc. but dancing is the one I never try before. Even though I like seeing the dance performance and I find their movements are so beautiful, smooth and expressive, I never think I could do well since I never learned dance before. However, the modern dance 2 class has totally changed my opinion. I learned there is so much possible in my body and I also learn many techniques to express my own feeling, emotion through my body. After realizing this, I am just so happy that I found another way to express myself and this make me feel released and free.

One of the most impressive topic is Katherine Dunham’s technique. Dunham travel and studies the art and culture of many African American community and merged these elements into the American dance. She speaks out for the inequality in the community and transformed it into her dance. Her techniques taught me how to demonstrate my feelings, emotions, even stories in the dance. In her technique, Dunham combined ballet, modern dance and African dance moves. In her choreography, she dances in fast beats and there are many spin and jump and the wave of the shoulder. Learning from her technique, I find myself are better in expressing myself with all the quick and exciting movements. I used to think only the slow, smooth and small movement could demonstrate negative feelings, but Dunham’s dance fusion taught me that sadness could be expressed with thousands of ways and there is no limited.

Another topic that I found intriguing is Limon’s technique. Compared to Katherine Dunham’s excited and quick movement dance, Limon’s technique is more focus on your inner sense and body ware. One key concept of Limon is the isolation of your body parts and their consequential moves. In his technique, there are many swinging and the feeling of your body weight. After learning his technique, I found he danced in a very smooth and peace style and I have a stronger body sense. I can feel my breath, my weight, and he gravity and these all help me better expressing myself. Limon’s center work includes many bounces and the combination of slow and fast moves. I found I really like using this way to express myself in the dance because it is so similar to my feeling; sometimes calm and relaxed, and sometimes excited. With all the delicate movements, I feel I can express my emotion in a more fine and smooth way. I found every part of my body is expressing something and every little movement could represent something.

Martha Graham’s technique is the other one I found so effective in expressing my emotions and feelings. The main concept of Graham’s Technique is the depth of the breath and the emotions. She describes her dance as a language that is used to communicate emotion. From her technique, I learned how to move from the center, how to control my breath, how to aware of the space and making every little movements effective in expressing myself. I learned how to be aware of my breath, which is what I always ignore in dance. Releasing and contract of the pelvic is another focus in her technique and there are many spiral, I found I love this so much and the tiny change of the body part could demonstrate total different emotion in the dance. Graham technique also focuses on floor work so I learn how you express the emotion with my body on the floor. Her techniques are all about the expression of emotions, even tiny movements or simple facial expression has emotional meaning behind them.

I feel I am so lucky to taking this modern dance class. My body used to be really stiff and bored and I never think I could express myself with it, but now I just realize it could be so expressive and flexible and expressing whatever I think. With all the techniques, I learned in the class, I feel it gives me so many more ways to share my feelings with other, not just speaking or singing. Now I feel every part of my body could be an effective tool in expressing and there is no restriction in sharing myself with the world.

Zhou Jia Yuan

Dan211

Morejon, Jorge L

April 29, 2020

Waldeinsamkeit

Because of I study a lot of modern dance skill, I choose to watch the “Hoyoung Im rehearsing his Waldeinsamkeit” which is a kind of modern dance. I want to learn and improve my modern dance skills from the dance. In other ways, the music and the dance deeply took me to his dance. I was attracted by his dance. I look forward to the day when I can dance as well as he does.

He showed this sadness to the fullest through his movements. At the beginning he takes a lot of steps backwards, like we see difficulties and problems in our life, and the first reaction is staying away from them. Then he sits down while holding your knees while spinning, and finally twists on the ground. That is what we learn in class. That is how to change our levels from high to low. This action I did is not good-looking, I have never thought about and tried like him. That is very beautiful and fluent. The twist movement vividly expresses his emotions. I can feel his pain. This movement is originated from our life, just like stomachache and tumbling on the ground in pain. After tumbling on the ground, he tried to change his level to middle. His legs lift his body in half, but after a second his body falls to the ground again, and the direction he falls is very different. He did this set of actions twice. He tries to stand up from the pain very hard, but his pain beats him again. The different direction seems to refer the different difficulties and different problems in life. He tried to defeat it, but he has no power. He did a good job in expression his emotion and thinking.

His performance gives me a good example of expression emotions. I studied expression during the online class, and I watched many videos about expressing emotions from many dancers. I understand expression is important. Many movements from this show is coming form real life. Thus, I will try to look for fragments of this feeling in my memories when I want to express it in dance. In our class, we study a lot in different direction and levels. Movements from different levels and direction makes me become more flexible. Those enhance my dance and make my dance look not very stiff. I learned how to choose music which match my dance and what I want to express. The music he choose is so suitable because of the suitable melody and low rhythm.

In conclusion, I study a lot of modern dance skills in this class. I make a progress in expression, and my body become more flexible. With the work in this semester, my dance become fluently and more beautiful. I learned a lot in class, and I believe one day I can dance as well as the dancer in this show.

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Zhenyu Zhou

Professor Jorge Luis Morejón

DAN 211

How Modern Dance II Has Affected My Ability to Express Myself through My Body

Modern Dance II brings me a lot of feelings and self-improvement. In the classroom, I learned that modern dance is a dance school that rises in the early 20th century and opposes classical ballet. In modern dance works, Professor Jorge Luis Morejón emphasizes the weight of the dancers rather than the lightness like ballet, and we should care about space. Modern Dance II improved my understanding of expressiveness, cultivated the control of my body and comforted my soul.

Modern Dance II has improved my understanding of expressiveness. In today's society, dance is an indispensable element of our lives. Whether it is a social dance on social occasions or those young people who casually play handsome and cool street dance, it will give people a pleasing feeling. It can be said that where there is music, there will be a dance. Modern dances range from free movements to excavating movements in emotional motivation, to the practice of pure movements, to the massive participation of life-style movements, which are returned to the dancers and become the dance of life. The "down up up" I learned in class, dancing with ribbons, dancing with wooden sticks, and re-express these feelings through my body. Completing a modern dance requires dancers to infect and communicate with the audience to the maximum extent within a limited time, which makes me dare to express myself. In the process of learning modern dance, I realized that I must express my inner emotions through facial expressions and body movements. Modern dance has brought me simplicity, natural authenticity, and full of passion, giving people infection, inspiration, and beauty. Specifically, the dance passion and confidence shown by modern dance deeply infected me.

Modern Dance II has cultivated control of my body. First of all, modern dance brought me musical training. I think music is the soul of dance. Only when the movement of modern dance is set off by music can it be more vital and artistic. The style of music guides the style of action, guiding, and controlling the style of action. The change of the strength of the music creates internal conditions for the strength and fluctuation of the movement, thereby increasing the rhythmic beauty of modern dance. In the classroom, we use different music each time we warm up, and we choose different styles of music each time we choreograph. After arriving in the class, Professor Jorge Luis Morejón lets us learn different styles of dance, and the music they use All made me feel different music styles. I can feel that jazz often shows an atmosphere of joy and joy, rock music has a free and unrestrained feeling, and light music shows a relaxed and lively. I can also express different rhythms through different music. For example, the same combined action can be completed with different rhythm music, and the same rhythm music can be used to accompany different combined actions.

Modern Dance II comforted my soul. I felt the strength, speed, endurance, flexibility, and sensitivity of human movement in the warm-up training of Modern Dance II in class and after class for a long time. I can feel that through this course, my flexibility has been greatly enhanced. This is not only reflected in the body, but my entire soul is also comforted, I can feel more that I live in my body. The use of breathing control techniques in dance also brought me a lot of feelings. I think the performance and practice of modern dance are not only physical activities but also psychological activities. All movements are expressed through emotions and muscle movements. Dancers use psychological training to achieve the desired effect of psychological training, and their abilities are gradually strengthened, so that they can effectively control themselves during the performance, make the technology easy to use, and make the performance Fully exerted. The most important thing is that modern dance is very free, which cultivated my creativity. Modern dance retains not only various types of basic movements in dance, but also absorbs many movements from related sports and art categories. After processing and refining, it has become a modern dance-style movement.

All in all, I can feel the expressiveness of modern dance. The quality training, psychological training, and innovative training of dancers have improved my expressiveness. Therefore, Modern Dance II improved my understanding of expressiveness, cultivated the control of my body, and comforted my soul.

Modern Dance 2 / Spring 2020

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Review

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Modern Dance Virtual Recital / Spring 2020

Modern Dance Virtual Recital / Spring 2020

Modern Dance Virtual Recital / Spring 2020

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Modern Dance Virtual Recital / Spring 2020

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Modern Dance Essays