“Look into my eyes. What do you think? It’s yours.” -Robert Battle tells the story Judith Jamison offering him the position as the 3rd Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre
“Look into my eyes. What do you think? It’s yours.” -Robert Battle tells the story Judith Jamison offering him the position as the 3rd Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre
Slow Dancing will be exhibited on the steps of Widener Library at Harvard College from 7-11pm nightly from April 20th-29th.
Slow Dancing is a series of 43 larger-than-life, hyper-slow-motion video portraits of dancers and choreographers from around the world, displayed on multiple screens. Each subject’s movement (approximately 5 seconds long) was shot on a specially constructed set using a high-speed, high-definition camera recording at 1,000 frames per second (standard film captures 30 frames per second). The result is approximately 10 minutes of extreme slow motion. The trio of portraits will be randomly selected for each cycle, allowing viewers to simultaneously compare dancers from different styles and cultures.
What at first appears to be a series of still photographs unfolds gesture by barely perceptible gesture—a motion portrait in which each dancer’s unique artistic expression and technique are revealed. Viewers can choose to focus on one dancer’s complete performance or observe the interplay among the screens. The extreme slow motion enables the viewer to share privileged information about the complexity of the simplest gestures, catching details that would normally escape the naked eye.
“I really admire fashion people because for me when I see them working and creating, I see artists with the same excitement as I have [for dance] and I love to share it with them.”- Choreographer, Blanca Li, who recently collaborated with Stella McCartney
summer 2011: inspiring leprosy-affected children in the south of India through dance and art. photos and thoughts from a most remarkable experience.
“Great art begins with an idea. Sometimes a vague or even bad one. How does that spark of creativity find its way to the canvas, the page, the dinner plate, or the movie screen? How is inspiration refined into the forms that delight or provoke us? We enlisted some of America’s foremost artists to discuss the sometimes messy, frequently maddening, and almost always mysterious process of creating something new.”
Scott Barry Kaufman, a cognitive psychologist, studies the complexity of creative people. Particularly performers.
“The evidence is clear: for a large majority of performers, in some of the most extroverted forms of performance, there is a great ability to juggle multiple faces and a need for downtime and reflection. New psychological research is showing just how intertwined and prevalent Openness to Experience, flow, abnormal perceptual experiences, and extroversion/introversion contradictions really are in creative people, especially artists.”
“We humans are natural dancers. Dances can be celebrations, or for praise, or for an audience - or just a simple act of letting the rhythm move your body. Dancers can communicate ideas, preserve cultural identities, strengthen social bonds, or just have a lot of fun. Collected here are recent photographs of us, human beings around the world, professional and amateur, in motion for all of the reasons above and more.”
"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
Steve Jobs
"I think we are all… hopelessly flawed"
Friedrich Bhaer (little women)
Not entirely unlike my own life, it seems.
“I’m great at leaving. I am less talented at getting left though I should be better given how much it’s happened. Hong Kong was a train station set to techno and social circles depended on the location of your father’s employ. You could never rely on having the same friends year in and out. You never knew when your own number was going to get called. How expats process upheaval is where we differ from immigrants. There is a tacit understanding among us that maudlin goodbyes are indulgent and uncalled for… In New York, I find I am less watchful, less greedy, less restless. Besides, I have finally acquired a handful of friends that I do not hold at arm’s length to analyze. And with them, I do not secrete every meaningful thought away in the apothecary drawers in my brain. They ask me questions and I respond with answers, not decoys or digressions… I am grateful that they get through my force field. I even tell them so.”
