Tiff

I’m going to change it up a bit.  I know there isn’t much to change up since I can’t keep a steady focus, but this week I’ll be doing what I seem to do best, which is being critical of other people’s choreography.  On a literary note, the play for this week would have been Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, but I don’t have much to say about it besides the fact that it is perhaps one of the most excellent comedies ever written.  The trouble with comedy is that it often does not involve very heady subjects, unless of course they are in the vein of dark comedy.  That does not mean that Earnest is to be discounted, though.  Wilde’s satire of the trivialities of Victorian high society is spot on.  His wit, which he is famous for, can be found almost anywhere in the play.  The characters are unbelievable, walking contradictions and the coincidental occurrences that make up the plot are ridiculous, which of course makes them hilarious.  It is a very entertaining read, one I would recommend for anyone.  So read it already!

This weekend I saw a dance concert.  It’s been about a month and a half.  I couldn’t even write about the last because it was so disappointing.  The company was Moving Current, who I’ve mentioned before.  They were also hosting a guest company, the Modern American Dance Company.  The first piece was called “Tribal Ground,” which bothered me right off the bat.  Why?  The word ‘tribal.’  I’ll explain in a bit.  It was danced by MADCO.  There were three sections, three main dancers and three corps members.  Of course, if you’re a jungle boy or girl, clothes have to be got from somewhere, right?  Costumes consisted of earth-tones and looked as though scraps of material had been pieced together in some places.  The important point of this dance lies in its sexuality.  

A side note to explain my point: Some artists in the early twentieth century adopted a tendency to ‘primitve’ art.  One of these artists, Ernst Kirchner of The Brücke group (Dresden 1905) decorated their studios with drapes depicting very simplified figures engaged in various sexual acts.  The figures were simple because non-western art was seen as a pure form of expression untainted by Western academic values.  Ok.  This wasn’t necessarily bad, but it only served to reinforce the ideas of the culture of ‘the other.’  ”They [The Brücke] identified the art of Africa and the South Sea islands with sexual freedom, and sought to employ its formal and visual language as a way of attacking bourgeois inhibitions” (Gaiger 32-3).  The image to the left is titled Girl under a Japanese Umbrella.  It was painted by Kirchner in 1909.  Again, there is nothing wrong with nudes, but the figures in the background are to be viewed “as ciphers of uninhibited sexuality,” which then automatically transfers their meaning to the woman in the foreground (33).  

In the same way, “Tribal Ground” suggested ‘primitiveness,’ and therefore the presumption that all ‘uncivilized’ peoples are sexually free.  Five women versus one man.  What guy wouldn’t love that?  Now, the company probably only employs one man, but it’s not about how many dancers you have, it’s about how you use them in the choreography. In the first section he danced with one woman primarily.  As the music dims he stands alone as all five women surrounding him advance threateningly.  It’s hot, it’s exotic, and it’s offensive.  The second section is an overtly sexual duet performed by the male dancer and a different woman. As she makes sultry faces at him and fixes her hair, he can’t keep his eyes off her.  The assumption can be made that he can and wants to have any woman within reach.  In the third section he danced with both women.  Wow.  My friend Hannah said that it seemed as though the choreographer wanted to see certain dancers in certain positions, and I truly believe her.  It was tasteless, and clearly choreographed by a man.

I might continue this in the future, but for the moment it has completely exhausted me.  Think about your work before you throw it out there.

Cited: Gaiger, Jason. “Expressionism and the crisis of subjectivity.” Art of the Avant-Gardes. Ed. Edwards, Steve and Paul Wood. London: Yale University Press, 2004. 13-61.

On receiving some feedback from last week’s post on A Doll’s House, I was told that it was intimidating.  Of course, this was also said by my boyfriend who reads zero literature.  My sister, who is close to an expert as far as plays go thought it was fine.  So I’ve got two pretty polarized opinions from two people of very different experience.  In any case, I will give a brief overview of the action of the play before I pour out some of my thoughts.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read the actual piece, though.  And, comments are always more than appreciated.  I’d like to know how other people are perceiving my writing!

Miss Julie was written by August Strindberg in 1888.  Julie is the daughter of a count (age 25), Jean is her father’s valet (age 30), and Kristine is her father’s cook (age 35).  It is midsummer eve and the servants of the household are celebrating with a dance outside.  The action takes place in the kitchen.  Jean and Kristine are engaged.  Julie enters from outside and begins flirting with Jean.  Kristine falls asleep.  Julie wants Jean to dance with her but he is worried about what the others will say.  When the group of dancers comes inside Julie and Jean flee to his room so as not to be seen together.  They have sex, although it is not explicit and only assumed through context.  When both enter again into the kitchen there is a lot of back and forth.  Jean thinks they should leave together, then it turns out neither of them have money.  Julie loves him and then hates him, is at once desperate and disdainful.  Kristine wakes up in the morning, discovers what has happened, and leaves for church.  Julie decides that suicide is the only way, and Jean gives her the razor.  The play ends with Julie walking out of the kitchen, supposedly to her death.

The first thing my professor asks our class after we finish a new play is how we feel about it.  You know, I still don’t know whether I like or dislike this play.  I have some very strong feelings about it, but not of that sort.  In my mind there are three major conflicts in the play: class, gender, and Julie’s confusions.  Central to understanding the character of Julie is her background.  Her mother refused to marry her father, and so became his mistress instead.  Julie was born.  The Count was embarrassed and made his mistress his wife.  She rebelled by teaching Julie to hate men, burning down the house and then having her lover lend her husband the money to rebuild it, possibly the greatest humiliation.  Poor Julie is a walking contradiction.  She is described as half-man/half-woman, and these halves are constantly raging.  We decided that Julie definitely displays sado-masochistic tendencies: wanting to hurt others while at the same time desiring to demean herself.  So the confusion in her head must battle against the strictures of class and gender.  Julie has been brought up to treat Jean however she pleases and Jean has been taught to have complete reverence for everything the Count own.  BUT he is still a man, and in that sense he has total power over Julie, the power which is ultimately victorious.

Jean deserves a paragraph all to himself.  That’s how big of a prick he happens to be.  He does not consider the consequences of his actions, and most certainly feels no sympathy for whoever they might harm.  Jean is also ruthlessly selfish about his life goals, to the point where he is able to encourage Julie to kill herself because she is a roadblock to his success.  About three-quarters of the way through the play we are warned of the dangers of Jean.  Julie enters the kitchen, ready to run away, and has brought her greenfinch, whom she doesn’t have the heart to leave behind.  Jean chops the bird’s head off with a meat cleaver.  Unthinking and unfeeling.  I also believe that he plays Julie to the last: to get what he wants from her (sex and power) and then to get ahead.  She does not pull him into her emotional rollercoaster.  He takes advantage of her extremely vulnerable and unstable state of mind to eventually lead her down the path to self-destruction.

A short note about Julie: if there is one thing Julie wants, it is to no longer be an aristocrat.  This is a dream she describes to Jean: “I’ve climbed up on top of a pillar. I sit there and see no way of getting down. I get dizzy when I look down, and I must get down, but I don’t have the courage to jump. I can’t hold on firmly, and I long to be able to fall, but I don’t fall. And yet I’ll have no peace until I get down, no rest unless I get down, down on the ground! And if I did get down to the ground, I’d want to be under the earth” (Jacobus 747).  The first line of the play is exclaimed by Jean: “Miss Julie’s crazy again tonight; absolutely crazy!” (744).  What she is doing, dancing with her servants, would be considered crazy for a woman of her stature.  Julie is committing social suicide by cavorting with those “lower” than her.  It may be crazy, but it’s what she wants.  Reinforcing her damnation, she sleeps with Jean.  This is her attempt to give up her status.  Unfortunately though, her nobility will not allow her to live with such dishonor, which is an additional reason she must sacrifice herself.  When she does fall from the pillar, the only reasonable place to land is under the earth.  Her only acceptable solution is death.

Cited: Jacobus, Lee A. The Bedford Introduction to Drama. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005.

I know I promised a post about So You Think You Can Dance, but school just started, and I figured, “Hey, why not write about what I’m reading?”  It’s good material, thought provoking stuff, classics.  I think that I will probably focus on the plays I’ll be reading in my Modern Drama course.  So here goes: A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen (the translator of this particular version decided not to make “Doll” possessive because Nora owns nothing that exists in her house).  If you have not read this play I suggest you find it somewhere and read it.  Not only is it excellent, but you probably won’t understand what I’m writing about, and my post gives away the ending, so I don’t want to spoil anything for you ahead of time.  This conclusion comes after the second reading of the play for me.  I expect my thoughts will change every subsequent time I read it.  I will be focused mainly on Nora’s departure from the house in the close of the play, and what I think about that particular action.

At some point in our lives, we have a choice to make.  The decision lies between what we are and the person we will become.  Nora’s father and husband (Torvald Helmer) are of the unfortunate group of people who are never presented with that choice.  As a result, they know no other way of living.  So I would say that neither of the men are completely responsible for Nora’s position in Act III.  What makes me side with the men is something Nora says toward the end: “When I lived at home with Papa, he told me all his opinions, so I had the some ones too; or if they were different I hid them, since he wouldn’t have cared for that” (Jacobus, 732).  In the same way, she speaks of living with Torvald: “You arranged everything to your own taste, and so I got the same taste as you – or I pretended to; I can’t remember” (732).  Nora saw the other choice, she knew of another way of living, and it took her eight years to realize that she chose the wrong path.  Only it isn’t something that can be erased.  In changing her mind, Nora leaves behind a husband and three children, and as unhappy as she may feel in her current position, she still has a duty to fulfill, at the very least to her children.  Sure, Torvald may be an ass at multiple points in the play, but if Nora is suddenly so aware of what is important in life, I believe she should know that her children come first.  The fact that she is able to leave so suddenly gives me the impression that Nora is a terribly superficial character.  When all throughout she supposedly loves her children and Torvald so very much.  Nora should have changed her life when she had the chance, before she created the irreparable damages in her life of having kids and getting married (for the record, I don’t think those are bad things, just bad for her).  I just really disliked Nora this time around, and I didn’t really feel sorry for her at all.  I was definitely more sympathetic towards Torvald, despite his shortcomings.  Read it!  Let me know what you think!  My position is by no means the only valid one out there!

Cited: Jacobus, Lee A. The Bedford Introduction to Drama. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005.