Yoann Bourgeois: Stair Dance

Yoann Bourgeois: ‘I want to return to the spirit of childhood' (The Guardian)

Image: YouTube

[ed. Don't miss this one - delightful dance art.]

What Can Music Do Today?

30 months ago, I promised to publish my next book on Substack.

Today I fulfill that promise. Below I share the final chapter of my online book Music to Raise the Dead.

I’ve published the entire work in 22 installments. Each section can be read as a stand-alone essay. But taken together, they outline a secret musicology you can’t learn in music school. (...)

***

The music business wants to sell... entertainment. But the audience keeps reaching for something more.

That’s why musical events in the 21st century emulate those of ancient days to an uncanny degree. Even a high-tech genre such as EDM (electronic dance music) typically comes embedded in quasi-ritualistic events where otherworldly experiences and altered mind states are pursued with an intense fervor not much different from the mindset ancient Romans brought to their mystery cults.

These rituals might be known nowadays as raves or parties, but the actual behavior—and the quest for transcendence that drives it—is very much an extension of the ancient practices described in this book.

This mixture of music, ritual and transcendence keeps recurring for a very good reason. We still have much to learn about the impact music and rhythm have on the human brain, body chemistry, and physiology, but we know enough to grasp how powerful songs can be on a merely organic basis, without paying even the slightest attention to metaphysics or spirituality. And our body of knowledge is increasing rapidly—perhaps too fast for our music culture to adapt to what we’ve learned.

Just a few months ago, a team of scientists at Stanford University discovered a new way of producing out-of-body experiences in a test subject. Normally this requires ketamine or PCP (angel dust), which induce changes in brain cells associated with this altered mind state. But these Silicon Valley scientists found they could achieve something similar without any drugs—merely by using rhythm.

They began testing this with mice. But they needed to invent a special instrument that used light to control the rhythmic firing of brain cells. The results were remarkable. “We could see, right before our eyes, dissociation happening," remarked one of the researchers.

Could this work with humans too?

A severely epileptic patient, who had dissociative experiences, gave them the opportunity to test their hypothesis. When they emulated the rhythm that accompanied these interludes they found they could trigger an out-of-body experience. Somehow the rhythm could remove the linkage between mind and body, although only temporarily.

The scientists eventually concluded that the brains of mammals may possess this capability as part of its functioning, although few have found a way to tap into it.

This is a remarkable finding. But it merely reinforces the cumulative history and alternative musicology presented in these pages. We now are beginning to understand what happens inside the body of shamans in the midst of a ritual experience or of others in possession trances. We can measure changes in body chemistry among participants in a drum circle or vocalists engaged in group singing. We now understand the significance of surprising brain scan patterns in the MRIs of jazz musicians engaged in improvisations. All this new science confirms the old myths.

The body of research accumulates with increasing rapidity. And the results all testify to the empirical reality of the journey discussed here. Science, not superstition, validates the transformative power of music and rhythm.

Put simply: the quest is real, and song is the conductor—in a high tech digital age just as much as in a traditional society. I could fill up a book with summaries of research projects of this sort, but the problem at this stage isn’t a lack of scientific understanding, but rather the troubling fact that almost none of the key decision-makers driving our music culture have the slightest awareness of what we’ve learned here, or its potential impact.

We suffer not from mere ignorance, but from a mismatch between our expanding knowledge base and the narrowing parameters of a click-driven musical ecosystem.

Let’s take the simple question: How long should a song last? The music industry is convinced that a 3-minute song is the ideal duration for a hit record. But this is simply a legacy from the early days of recordings when the technology only had sufficient disk space for a song of that length. The limitations of the medium imposed that constraint, and the companies who ran the record business made a virtue of necessity. The 3-minute song became an artistic rule.

But have you ever noticed how people play their favorite song over and over—when it’s finished, they put it on again from the start? Have you noticed how DJs at a party seamlessly move from one song to another, without any silence in-between, often using two turntables (or digital tools with the same effect) to create a smooth transition from song to song? Have you been to a rock concert where the band plays their hit song for much longer than three minutes—with the audience responding viscerally and enthusiastically to the expansive time frame?

This isn’t coincidence or happenstance, but aligned with what both ritual and science tell us. In my research into music-driven trance, I’ve encountered again and again accounts that specify a duration of around ten minutes before an altered mind state is achieved.

I’ve seen this both in anthropological fieldwork and scientific research. Even a skilled participant needs time for music to work its magic—and three minutes is rarely sufficient. This is why listeners repeat songs or construct playlists, or why bands in concert play their songs longer. They all understand intuitively that the song needs to be longer than 180 seconds.

It’s only the people running the music business who haven’t figured this out.

And the industry has grown further out-of-touch with each new technological shift. Consider that the payout structure of streaming—now the major source of revenues in the music business—rewards artists who fill their albums with short songs. Tracks on Spotify count as streamed if someone listens for just thirty seconds. This arbitrary decision punishes artists who perform longer songs—but those are the songs that satisfy our deep-seated desire for longer, more immersive musical experiences.

There’s no surprise here: the music business runs on money, not the alpha and theta brain waves of trance-like experiences. When a choice needs to be made between the two, cash flow seals the deal.

It’s tempting to dismiss these considerations as irrelevant. After all, how many music fans really want to go into a trance or make a journey to another realm of existence? Mom would have told me to stay away from that crowd. That ain’t the way to have fun, son.

But on a purely theoretical level, this subject can’t be so easily dismissed—if only because it deals with the most profound philosophical mystery of them all, namely the bridge between mind and matter. This is the deepest rabbit hole of them all, and has bedeviled philosophers, psychologists, theologians, neuroscientists, and every other kind of thinker who peers into the biggest of big issues.

A recent theory, proposed by Tam Hunt and Jonathan Schooler, goes so far as to claim that consciousness is built on rhythm. “Synchronization, harmonization, vibrations, or simply resonance in its most general sense,” in their words, create our very sense of self—and I note with interest that these are all terms with musical associations.

They continue:

“All things in our universe are constantly in motion, in process. Even objects that appear to be stationary are in fact vibrating, oscillating, resonating, at specific frequencies. So all things are actually processes. Resonance is a specific type of motion, characterized by synchronized oscillation between two states. An interesting phenomenon occurs when different vibrating processes come into proximity: they will often start vibrating together at the same frequency. They “sync up,” sometimes in ways that can seem mysterious….

Examining this phenomenon leads to potentially deep insights about the nature of consciousness in both the human/mammalian context but also at a deeper ontological level.”

In other words, rhythm may not be just the pace of reality, but reality itself.

The implications of this emerging perspective are too large for a book on musicology, no matter how ambitious. But one overarching fact is clear: music and rhythm have a power to transport us that may seem magical, but is as real as can be—perhaps even woven into the structure of the universe.

Are there limits to the musical journey? Is there a boundary beyond which it no longer operates? The title of this book even considers a trip outside the conventional demarcating lines separating life (as conventionally defined) and whatever exists outside it—in other words, music to raise the dead.

Is that legitimate, or even possible? (...)

Researchers increasingly validate and quantify these beliefs—proving music’s efficacy in improving endurance, lessening strain, and inspiring performance. And for a good reason. We now know that music impacts body chemistry, brainwaves, mood, heart rate, body temperature, grip strength, blood pressure, and many other parameters.

I offer these details on athletics as a single case study in how music empowers individuals who aspire to heroic achievements. But the same story could be told for a range of other disciplines.

• Most surgeons nowadays rely on song playlists during procedures, and believe it improves concentration and results.

• Computer programmers also rely on music while they write code, and many of them have enthusiastic stories to share about the benefits they have gained from working to musical accompaniment.

• Soldiers apparently need their music too—why else would government spending on military bands represent the single largest federal expenditure on arts and culture year after year?

• Or consider the case of astronauts, who invariably bring music with them on their missions, even to the surface of the moon. And when NASA sent its Voyager probe into the far reaches of the universe, the authorities decided to include a gold-plated copper recording featuring the songs of planet Earth.

You may wonder why extraterrestrials need to hear Chuck Berry singing “Johnny B. Goode” or Blind Willie Johnson’s slide guitar on “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.” But music has been part of every heroic journey in the past, so it would be odd to leave it off this longest of strange trips.

I should perhaps apologize for focusing on glamorous professions, such as astronauts and brain surgeons. I do this for dramatic effect, and because these examples reveal the capacities of music to propel vocations of the most demanding sort. But the vision quest and its music are accessible to all, just as much to a cook or factory worker as to an Olympic athlete.

by Ted Gioia, Honest Broker |  Read more:

Image: Ted Gioia

[ed. See also:

MUSIC TO RAISE THE DEAD: The Secret Origins of Musicology
Table of Contents
Prologue
Introduction: The Hero with a Thousand Songs
Why Is the Oldest Book in Europe a Work of Music Criticism? (Part 1) (Part 2)
What Do Conductors Really Do? (Part 1) (Part 2)
Is There a Science of Musical Transformation in Human Life? (Part 1) (Part 2)
What Did Robert Johnson Encounter at the Crossroads? (Part 1) (Part 2)
Where Did Musicology Come From? (Part 1) (Part 2)
Can Songs Actually Replace Philosophy? (Part 1) (Part 2)
Were the First Laws Sung? (Part 1) (Part 2)
Why Do Heroes Always Have Theme Songs? (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)
What Is Really Inside the Briefcase in Pulp Fiction? (Part 1) (Part 2)
Where Do Music Genres Come From?
Can Music Still Do All This Today?

The first ten chapters were about music history—revealing ways music has served as a change agent and source of enchantment in human life.

But the last chapter asks whether this still can happen today.

A performance featuring traditional Dunhuang music and dance is staged during the 7th Silk Road (Dunhuang) International Cultural Expo in Dunhuang, northwest China's Gansu Province, Sept. 20, 2024. The three-day expo concluded here on Sunday. (Xinhua/Lang Bingbing)

Image: Xinhua News

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Paul Simon on Almost Everything: "Errand to Brazil (1987-1990)"

Above: Simon and the Bahian drum troupe Olodum perform “The Obvious Child,” the first track on The Rhythm of the Saints. I was impressed to learn that the fade that occurs at 2:30 was accomplished not via studio manipulations, but by Olodum itself. I was less surprised, but equally delighted, by a falsetto vocal lick, at 4:00, that Simon had clearly lifted from somewhere in his deep catalogue of Fifties doo-wop. Yes, he said, it was from “Deserie,” a 1957 hit by the doo-wop quintet the Charts. As in the song “Graceland,” in which the South African guitarist Ray Phiri had dipped, without thinking twice, into American country music, “The Obvious Child” was a true musical exchange (or, if you will, mutual appropriation).

***

Shrugging off renewed accusations of musical tourism, Simon set his course for Brazil. His original plan was to follow the diaspora to its third stop, Cuba. But he was so thrilled by what he found in Brazil, and probably so exhausted by what turned into a two-and-a-half-year project, that he never got to Cuba. Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints stand as Paul Simon’s two great experiments with world music.

When Simon arrived in Brazil, Nascimento’s producer, Marco Mazzola, got things underway by introducing Simon to Grupo Cultural Olodum, the majestic drum troupe and cultural collective from Salvador, Bahia’s capital city, with whom Simon recorded the track that opens The Rhythm of the Saints, “The Obvious Child.”

Whereas township jive, mbube, and the other South African genres that Simon incorporated into Graceland are secular, Simon saw The Rhythm of the Saints as purely and simply an exploration of its title (...). The Yoruba religion, Ìṣẹ̀ṣẹ, recognizes a Supreme Being, Olódùmarè, from whom Olodum takes its name. Olódùmarè reigns over the orishas, or lesser gods, of whom there are anywhere from a few hundred to more than a thousand. Olódùmarè has no gender, but orishas can be male or female. It goes without saying that they have supernatural powers.

The orishas represent specific aspects of human or natural life. Ayelala is the female orisha of justice and punishment, Babalú-Aye, who is male, of illness and health. In an Afro-Brazilian rite, which typically involves drumming, singing, and dancing (beautifully captured in David Byrne’s movie) a worshipper calls on one or another of the orishas to inhabit his body. Every orisha has a specific rhythm associated with it, of a complexity, power, and seductiveness which left Simon entranced.

~ Paul Simon on Almost Everything, Chapter 5 of 5: "Errand to Brazil (1987-1990)" - Tony Scherman (Among the Musical)

David Byrne, Stop Making Sense
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Japanese choreographer Saburo Teshigawara and a dancer rehearse the ballet Voice of Desert as part of the Montpellier dance festival at the Théâtre de l’Agora
Image: Sylvain Thomas/AFP/Getty Images

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Petr Barna as Charlie Chaplin

Petr Barna at the 1992 Albertville Olypmics's Exhibition Gala.

Though as far as sport and competition go, for those not familiar with figure skating, exhibitions are done after the competition and the winners or runners up* get to perform. They are not for a prize nor are they scored; he wasn't competing for anything here. Exhibition skates are more relaxed rules-wise, so sillier choreography and costumes, weirder song choices, and props are more often seen in them.

*For those curious, Petr Barna won bronze in this Olympics!

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[ed. I keep coming back to this. What a great performance.]

The Method of Becoming a Character

On the surface level, acting can seem like a relatively fun job. You memorize lines, put on costumes, play pretend, and hang out on set with creative and engaging people. But like all jobs, there’s a reality that most people don’t consider. For acting, it’s executing it in an authentic manner.

To put that into perspective, not only do actors need to memorize pages and pages of script (and that can be a lot), but they also need to deliver it genuinely, as if they were speaking it for the first time. Their reactions and the way they display emotions also have to be read as genuine. Moreover, some actors have to memorize how to perform additional activities on the side, such as a dance, a walk, or an accent. All the while, they can’t look at the camera or break character. They must always be in a state that best impersonates their character. This is often why actors have to shoot multiple takes, even for just one sentence, to get a scene just right.

 

In our increasingly critical society, where every detail is scrutinized, clichéd acting can doom a film to irrelevance. So how does an actor realistically capture a character’s role? One infamous technique is method acting.

Method acting is the process in which an actor adapts to their character’s physical or emotional state through a range of techniques. This, in theory, veers away from clichéd acting and instead exhibits originality in their portrayal of a character. No wonder that Leonardo DiCaprio ate raw bison and endured hypothermic conditions during his role as Hugh Glass in The Revenant; he was nominated six times for the Academy Award for it.

However, despite these great performances, this level of dedication to play a role can come with major health risks ranging from physical strain and injury to mental health issues such as trauma, fatigue, depression, anxiety, sleep deprivation, and their accompanying psychotic disorders.

The Birth of Method Acting

In the early 20th century, Russian actor and theater director Konstantin Stanislavski set out to revolutionize the novice world of stagecraft. He created a systematic approach to acting through a combination of techniques from various theaters and entertainment companies, calling it “the system.” Some could say he was feeling rather creative that day.

Thus, the method was born out of the system, designed to allow actors to realistically experience their roles rather than trying to imitate them. Stanislavski believed that by reforming their emotional and mental outlook, actors’ performances would accurately embody their characters.

Stanislavski then taught this innovative approach to his students, and when they performed in the United States, their techniques piqued many American actors’ interests. Deciding to commercialize this opportunity, a few of Stanislavski’s students relocated to the United States and established the American Laboratory Theatre. There, they began teaching the method to a new generation of actors who would go on to star in Hollywood, popularizing the mechanisms of method acting, and the rest became history.

Over time, three students of Stanislavski’s system stood out: Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, and Stanford Meisner, all of whom would become prominent figures in method acting. They defined “the method” in their unique way, each emphasizing their techniques and beliefs. Thus, the modern version of “the method” is essentially a combination of three, each a refined version of the original system, all aimed at helping actors connect more deeply with their characters.

Adler and Strasberg, now two of the most famous method coaches, parted ways due to their differing interpretations of “the method.” Strasberg, whose students included Al Pacino and Marilyn Monroe, focused on the emotional aspects of the system. He advocated for the use of personal experiences to portray a character, with the belief that the most natural performance could only come from immersing yourself in real experiences or events, leading to a genuine expression of emotion.

On the other hand, Adler, who trained well-known actors like Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, emphasized the importance of “given circumstances.” This meant encouraging her students to draw their performances from their imaginations rather than their personal experiences.

Adler heavily disagreed with this approach, stating, “Drawing on the emotions I experienced – for example, when my mother died – to create a performance is sick and schizophrenic.” Despite her intense statement, Strasberg’s emphasis on personal experience is agreed to be the definition of the method, which may explain why it remains so controversial today.

Actors Who Took Their Roles to the Next Level

Several actors have made headlines for their extreme dedication to Method Acting. These on-set moments in acting history highlight the lengths actors will go through to embody their characters despite the detrimental impact on their health. From losing or gaining significant amounts of weight to living in isolation, these actors push the boundaries of what it means to be a character.

Natalie Portman in Black Swan

Natalie Portman’s role as Nina, a dedicated ballerina in Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film Black Swan, is one of her most notable performances. The film follows Nina’s obsession with perfecting the contrasting roles of the White and Black Swan in a ballet production of Swan Lake. Portman’s preparation for the role mirrored her character’s dedication, involving rigorous training with former New York City Ballet dancer, Mary Helen Bowers.

In addition to ballet training, she incorporated swimming a mile a day into her routine. Her training schedule was rigorously brutal, starting with two hours of ballet a day for the first six months for strengthening and injury prevention. Later, at about six months, she increased to five hours a day, which included swimming and ballet classes. Two months before filming, she added choreography to her routine, extending her training to approximately eight hours a day. On top of this, Portman lost 20 pounds and lived primarily off carrots and almonds in order to achieve the slender frame of a ballerina.

by Ashley Chen, The Science Survey | Read more:
Image: Avel Chuklanovon/Unsplash

Death of the Slow Dance?

How the One-Time Rite of Passage Has Evolved for Gen Z

In a viral clip that went on to dominate social media for weeks on end, Grammy-winning R&B icon Usher proceeds with business as usual at his My Way Las Vegas residency. He spots Emmy-winning actor Keke Palmer in the crowd, serenades her, and the two share a brief but respectful slow dance. His hand never goes below her waist, and her hand never leaves his shoulder.

And yet, following the video hitting social media, madness ensued. From misogynistic expectations of women’s self-presentation post-motherhood to discussions of the ins and outs of live performance etiquette, the clip unleashed a Pandora’s Box of discourse.

Millions of people inevitably shared their opinions, but an especially fervent disapproval of the interaction arose amongst straight men, particularly young straight men. What was once a key element of the American cultural fabric and a commonplace, uncontroversial practice had become the center of a firestorm of discomfort, disapproval, and outright rejection. What happened to the slow dance? How did this simple rite of passage and communal experience for young people come to mean and represent something completely different than what it did just one generation ago?

Most DJs agree that the dominant sound of slow dance songs has long been R&B, particularly soulful downtempo numbers that center romance and love as the chief emotions of the moment. But just as streaming has hyper-individualized music consumption and discovery, so has technology when it comes to the slow dance — at least according to DJ Stylus, a 30-year career DJ.

“I came into DJing because it was this magical thing that happened where you put music together in this interesting way that makes for a unique shared experience that is unique to that specific moment,” he says. “But what I’ve found is that technology … fragments the communal experience. So, it’s almost like people are having these performative moments through their devices, for people that aren’t even really sharing in what’s happening. We’re all together, but we’re alone.”

Much handwringing has been done regarding Gen Z and its relationship to the ever-quickening pace of technological advancement. There is also the fact that a significant portion of Gen Z has spent some of its formative social years — the end of high school and the beginning of college — isolated and alone due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns. Those years, which normally house key rites of passage like prom and many people’s first adult parties, were snatched from millions of young people. Slow dancing has proven to be such a culturally rich experience largely because of how the practice funnels heightened levels of intimacy and vulnerability into core memories — a phenomenon that is harder for Gen Z to cultivate because of the unprecedented omnipresence of technology in their lives. (...)

Like every generation before them, Gen Z operates in a sea of juxtapositions and contradictions. While this is far from their fault, as much as social media has connected the world, it has also exposed the uglier side of society with more immediacy and a wider reach than ever before. Meme culture and reaction pictures and videos epitomize this; so many of those images are taken and circulated without the consent or knowledge of the subject, and no one wants to become the next meme on an Internet that remembers everything. Given that it has mostly grown up in the presence of phones, Gen Z is acutely aware of the dynamics at play when it comes to the convergence of social media and public spaces, and that hypervigilance undercuts the tenderness of the slow dance.

As with most things in life, the slow dance didn’t just disappear on a random Tuesday. “It wasn’t like it was an overnight drop off, but it’s been a combination of things that have kind of led to it,” says DJ R-Tistic, one of the DJs that helped jumpstart the recent wave of slow dance discourse on Twitter. Classic slow dance songs still get played at the functions young people frequent, and young people are still getting on the dance floor, so all the necessary elements are present. Nonetheless, the dominance of the traditional slow dance has steadily waned. “I actually did an event for Pretty Little Thing the other day, and that’s one of the younger crowds I’ve had in a minute,” says DJ R-Tistic. “There were a lot of 23–25-year-olds, and all they want to do is twerk.” 

by Kyle Denis, Billboard |  Read more:

Image: YouTube

[ed. Eh. No. See also: The Death of the Slow Dance (and Other Emerging Trends) (Honest Broker):]

"Not long ago, these songs—played at slow tempos in dimly-lit dance halls—were how couples explored intimacy in a risk-free environment. This was so popular that guys paid to dance with total strangers. (...)

There’s a paradox here. The younger generation is sexually liberated but, according to another DJ, slow dancing is “too intimate and scary.” (...)

Journalist Kyle Denis tries to explain this situation:

Ironically, the once-chaste act of slow dancing may now be more taboo among young people, because of the intensity of its intimacy. When you are slow dancing, you are face to face with another person, staring into their eyes for an extended period of time. That is a stark difference from most approaches to twerking, where a woman’s back is to another person’s front, as a song that emphasizes the casualness of sexual interactions blasts in the background.

This phenomenon deserves more investigation, and maybe even statistical research. I’d be curious, for example, to see what actual dancers have to say about front-to-front versus front-to-back musical courtship."

Ryuichi Sakamoto, 1952–2023

Ryuichi Sakamoto, 1952–2023 (The Baffler):

"I stepped into his catalog blind, selecting 1981’s Left Handed Dream probably for its cover: a close-up photograph of Sakamoto’s face in a loose, softly abstract application of full kabuki makeup. From the music itself, I expected the sounds of vintage Japanese pop with which I was vaguely familiar: sleek funk-flecked city pop, bombastic anime themes, and soapy teen idol hits. What I heard instead was a fractal slice of time, deeply psychedelic in its ability to warp the texture of lived experience. Here, traditional Japanese taiko was stretched and refracted into slow, simmering, primeval techno, but from a time before techno had a clear name or lexicon, before it called Detroit or Düsseldorf its home. Here, shards of new wave were crushed under marimba mallets and scattered into a steaming sea. There was sprawling, raw-edged sci-fi gagaku and—something I soon found to be a path through Sakamoto’s work—a prevailing sense of huge, mythical urgency that he was unafraid to use any and every tool available to communicate. And when those tools were insufficient, he invented new ones."

Image: James Hadfield

[ed. Left Handed Dream (full album) here (YouTube).]

Fatboy Slim ft. Bootsy Collins

[ed. Rabbit hole review. I saw some reference to Fatboy Slim this morning and while I'd heard the name before (not completely comatose), I didn't know a thing about his music. So, found this recent video of a visit to the US in 2022. Then this one, a classic with Christopher Walken (which I do remember). Ok, popular DJ. Got it. See also: Sunset (Bird of Prey); and, Praise You.]

Free Falling

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[ed. Fire for you (Cannons).]

Maggie Cheung with Tony Leung - Wong Kar Wai
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Food to GoGo

After a cease-and-desist shut down their attempts at a Boober Eats food delivery service, Portland strip club Lucky Devil Lounge has found another new way to keep the lights in this pandemic. "You pull in and you get one or two songs with the gogos, then we bring your food out to you and then you go on your way," explains owner Shon Boulden in the video above.

According to Oregon Live, the service costs $30 per car, plus $10 for each additional occupant, plus a mandatory food purchase. You can still get Boober Eats, too, only now it's served under a different name.

But honestly it just looks like something out of Blade Runner or Neuromancer. I'm just glad the dancers are given some kind of PPE.

Pandemic drive-thru strip club is pure cyberpunk dystopia (Boing Boing)

[ed. Where there's a will, there's a way.]

Mikhail Baryshnikov & Ana Laguna, Choreographer

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Bill T. Jones

[ed. I'll admit there are certain elements of my cultural life that are complete black holes (dance and poetry being a couple of examples). Until this morning I'd never heard of Mr. Jones, yet apparently he's one of the world's most celebrated artists (a MacArthur Fellowship 'Genius', and National Medal of Arts recipient, among others). Here he demonstrates the process of creating fluid motion from minutely choreographed details. I wonder if any of this could help my golf swing? See also: Bill T. Jones: A Life Well-Danced.]

Naked City

There is a theory that the mind is a collection of symbiotic identities, some conscious, some unconscious, that form an uneasy alliance for the sake of survival. Truthfully, that’s my theory, although I think I read something similar once. I am now working on a new theory, that New York City is similarly a collective, that what looks like a group of entirely separate individuals who happen to walk past one another all day long is actually one great organism.

I find this idea reassuring, because life here can make you feel not just unimpressive, not just peripheral, but entirely negligible. I have lived in New York for more than 22 years, which I am sorry to say is more than half my life. In that time, I have never stopped asking the question: Do I belong here? Am I woven into the tapestry, or am I a dangling thread? How does everyone seem to know one another, and where is everybody going? Why is the line at Sarabeth’s so long? Why are the libraries closed on Sundays? Was there a memo about wearing Hunter rain boots? Why are dogs not allowed in my building? Every day, I am confronted by mysteries. But if New York City is actually dependent on every last person within its boundaries, deriving not just energy but also narrative structure from all who move through it, then maybe I’m not negligible after all.

I have tried to explain to others the feeling I get on a typical day in the city — that we are all characters in some sort of Yiddish short story, but it’s unclear who are the heroes and who are the villains, whether it is a comedy or a tragedy, who are the stars, and who are merely the background. You see and hear so many things in a day. So I’ll start from the beginning — the beginning of yesterday, that is, and go through one whole day, and hope that you’ll come along for the ride.

Yesterday began like many others. I was in the check-out line at Zabar’s, and I overheard an exchange that intrigued me. A middle-aged woman in nondescript, baggy clothes, her hair a combination of layered bohemian chic and I-don’t-care gray — a West Side classic — was talking to another woman, who was younger.

“We’ll go downtown to my place, we’ll have a cup of coffee, and we’ll talk. Later, I’ll put you in a cab. Sound good?”

I composed a silent plea. Take me too. I can’t think of any place I’d rather go than downtown to your place, for a cup of coffee. I felt strongly that this woman had curtains — big silk curtains — and her apartment had a sitting room and a poodle or two sprawled on the rug. Her place had a view of a public garden, and there was primrose in bloom, and maybe a fountain, and people smoking, and other people kissing, and a few in the midst of lovers’ spats, and rain kissed the earth, just there, in that garden. A cab! Is there anything to excite the imagination more than the hailing of a cab after someone unexpectedly asks you over for a cup of coffee? I wanted the younger woman’s problems, whatever had invited the older woman’s concern. The word “downtown” had become a cashmere shawl, one I wanted to be wrapped in immediately.

The checker put my groceries in the bag. I trudged home, feeling blue. Once again — not at the center of it, not where the action was, the discourse, the problems, the connection. At home, I made myself some coffee, but there were no silk curtains, no poodles, no conspiring or commiseration.

A short time later, I traveled south to my dance studio, Steps, which sits in a hub of Upper West Side activity. You’ve got the Beacon Theatre just across Broadway, the Ansonia just south, and next door, Fairway Market, which is a holy pilgrimage in itself. I’ll say just this: Fairway has an entire room devoted to cheese. Also: things you didn’t know you wanted, because you didn’t know they existed. Artichoke paste. Lambrusco vinegar. Garam masala. Chocolate latte balls — $1.25 a bag.

On the elevator at Steps, I witnessed an altercation. A young, paunchy man wearing earphones got on before this other woman and almost held the door for her. I say almost because he held it for a second, then let it go too soon, before she was safely inside, so the door banged into her. She didn’t need a hospital or anything, but there was no question he was in error. The elevator takes approximately three hours to get from the lobby to the third floor — where the classes are — and back. Catching the elevator is therefore a big deal, as is holding the door for that one last person who is desperate not to wait three more hours for the next ride. The woman quietly harrumphed. Message received. Wild-eyed, the paunchy man said, “I HELD THE DOOR FOR YOU.” She did not accept the falsehood. “You did NOT hold the door for me,” she replied. “You let the door SLAM on me.” Enraged, he replied, “I am not talking to you.” “It sure sounds like you are!” she shot back, and he became so angry that I prayed the elevator was almost at the third floor. I didn’t fear for her safety, but maybe a little I did. When she walked off the elevator, he cursed her. I don’t mean he used foul language, I mean he cast a hex. Sarcastically. “Hope your tendus aren’t all sickled!” he said.

Performing arts shade! (A tendus becomes sickled when you point your foot in the wrong direction, which is a gross dance error, the equivalent of a social gaffe while interacting with, say, the queen of England. You don’t want to get caught sickling your tendus.) All at once, I felt kinship with both the aggressor and the victim in this elevator standoff. I don’t know exactly what defines New Yorkers, but it has something to do with our ability to keep the rhythm of these altercations without missing a beat, like children playing double Dutch.

In the sunshine of Studio II, a motley collection of dancers was warming up for the 10 a.m. ballet class. The teacher is tall and blond and haughty — so imperious her instruction borders on camp. She speaks with a British-implied accent and adorns her daily performance with an array of hairstyles and lipsticks. Her smile is lopsided and sudden, just enough to alert us that her condescension is mostly for show. She has a fabulous accompanist and sometimes there are 100 people taking class. It’s ballet with a cabaret atmosphere, and I suspect people love this teacher because she makes them feel like party guests. The spectrum of humanity attends. At the barre, one sees principal dancers from American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet, so immaculately sculpted and graceful that they strike one as circus performers or possibly even figments of the imagination. Also at the barre: an elderly woman in a wig who carries her ballet shoes in a plastic bag from the liquor store.

We are all freaks in this room — spiritual cousins of sorts, worshipping at the same church. Here we find rapport and community, gossip and disdain. The mighty sylphs chat with the old loons, and the rest of us try to figure out where on this spectrum we fall. Everyone here is drawn to ballet as a monk is drawn to prayer, and this commonality surpasses — if only in this hour and a half — our jagged differences in achievement.

A tiny woman stood behind me at the barre. She smiled and said hello. She knew me from the playground I frequent with my child. How was life? How was school? What grade was my daughter in now? Good. OK. Second. Her girls were fine, she said, except for one thing. What was that? I asked. They were both enrolled at the School of American Ballet (S.A.B., as it’s known around here), and they weren’t happy. The School of American Ballet is a “feeder school” for New York City Ballet, which, for many people, is the pinnacle of the art, the highest goal, the shiniest of prestigious places. It’s also known for being a hotbed of sexism, not to mention a place keen on anorexia as a way of life. Still — New York City Ballet! My daughter takes class at another, saner place, but even at 7, she’s heard of S.A.B. It’s where the perfectly turned-out, smooth-bunned, pearl-earring-bedecked baby giraffes are going when they make a sharp turn and head into Lincoln Center. I researched when the annual audition day was — sometime in early spring. I don’t know what made me do it, except of course I do: At the center of New York City’s ineffable glory are cosmic sources of radiation — Times Square, the Chrysler Building, the grandiose arrangements of limelight hydrangeas in the main hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the School of American Ballet.

by Leslie Kendall Dye, Longreads | Read more:
Image: Homestead Studio, based off Oksana Latysheva & Vivali / Getty

Martha Graham Dance Company
via:

Who Killed the American Arts?

The arts in America are dying. In the 20th century, Americans defined the world’s popular culture, but the 21st century world has no need of America’s arts. Through technology transfer, the world entertains itself with knock offs like Bollywood and K-Pop. In the 20th century, Americans created a new art form in jazz and its derivatives, and turned Hollywood into the world’s dream factory. In the 21st century, African American music has collapsed into monotone misogyny, and digital sex (see Julie Bindel) is America’s real movie business. Americans are in the gutter, looking up at porn stars. And the rest of the world is barely looking, or listening, or reading at all. (...)

Everything is derivative and nostalgic. Nothing of note happened in painting or dance — or criticism, because the task of the American critic is to write obituaries and rewrite press releases. In music, Taylor Swift, once the Great White Hope of a dying industry, emitted a scrupulously bland album by committee. The jazz album of the year was, as it was last year, a studio off cut from John Coltrane, who died in 1967. The show, or what remained of it, was stolen by Lizzo, an obese but self-affirming squawker who, befitting an age of irony and multi-tasking, is the first person to twerk and play the flute at the same time. Meanwhile at the Alamo of high culture, 87-year-old John Williams marked the Tanglewood Festival’s 80th anniversary by perpetrating selections from Star Wars and Saving Private Ryan for an audience of equally geriatric and tasteless boomers.

In a dying culture, the best cases, like Wynton Marsalis and Bob Dylan in music, are curators of the Museum of American Greatness. The worst reflect a spiral into coarse nostalgia, as the needle wears out the groove: Stadium Country, Quentin Tarantino, the decay of fiction into self-help and affirmative action. The worst of all subordinate aesthetic values to political dogma, which is why it’s an offense to point out that the decline from Duke Ellington and Aretha Franklin to A$AP Rocky and Lizzo is a slide from civilization to barbarism.

by Dominic Green, The Spectator | Read more:
Image: MTV
[ed. See also: Who’s Got the Country Music Blues? (The American Conservative).]

Alan Walker - Faded (Remix) ♫ Shuffle Dance

[ed. One commenter: 'even her hair dances better than me'. See also: How to shuffle / Cutting Shape Tutorial #1 || Easy Steps for Beginners (YouTube).]