Dance Commentary- Kandinsky stimulus

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Dance Commentary

To begin the project, we were given a visual stimulus in the form of Composition IV by Wassily Kandinsky; after taking down our initial ideas for development- such as the dividing lines through the painting, and the heavier use of colour on one side that suggested to us that two different forces were taking place in the painting- we considered how these ideas may be transferred into the actions that would make up our dance piece. From these initial ideas, we began to expand on the concept of the two sides of the painting, and the use of military figures on the border, could represent the contrasting states of War and Harmony (something which would work well not only in terms of relationships between dancers with differing themed actions, but would also make an impact aesthetically with a variety of space-usage and levels).

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We chose to explore this all beyond words by firstly improvising a gestural motif- inspired partly by the work of Lea Anderson as a stylistic model- that could work almost interchangeably, subject to action type (i.e harsh actions such as slapping the floor to suggest ‘War’). Something else we wished to incorporate was the idea of using sticks to create our own beat against the music, insinuating war as unnatural but also giving us the convenient freedom to physically express war and dictate our own dynamics.

Through improvisation, we have looked at a number of relationship formations, and intend ...

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