AADH Day 18 Garth Fagan

• Focus on Jawole Willa Jo Zollar

• Donald Byrd

• Garth Fagan -

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Donald Byrd and Garth Fagan -

• Emphasis on Community,

• Authentic Human Beings, Natural movers

• Communicating through language music and Dance

• Abstraction in Movement – Create form any and all points of view

• Social and Political Awareness to Action

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar: A Self Study

• Early aesthetic:

• Grew up in all black community did not know about segregation had black role models teachers

• Performed for black social clubs as the floor shows

• College and grad school revealed dance as a possible career, dance became a total occupation for her.

Zollar - influence by black women dance artists and culture

• Nontsizi Cayou - uses African source material for contemporary expression

• Diane McIntyre - worked with live jazz music and an emphasis on improvisation

• Blondell Cummings - accessed personal history and gesture

• Kai Takai - trained people to move naturally

Urban Bush Women

Zollar’s personal aesthetic direction

• Seeks authentic people, variety in age

• Interest in folk art, draws on life experience of her dancers - seeks dancers who bring the power of their lives

• Respects age, most in company over 30

• Wants to use voices, dancers should be actors and able express verbally

• Company is run democratically all participate in decisions because all will be affected by them

Urban Bush Women

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar- Focus on improvisation

• Improvisation inspired by jazz music and group dynamics link to African process.

• Improvisation gives the individual a voice, “collective” individualism, used to express her political messages of a black woman’s experience

• Performance aesthetic lead to community outreach

• Improvisation workshops in communities for educational reform and social change - http://www.urbanbushwomen.org/current.html

Urban Bush Women

Urban Bush Women

Batty Moves - a celebration of the derierre. Zollar addresses body image

Urban Bush Women Current projects

• Batty Parties

• Teaching Youth

• EMPOWERED YOUTH WORKSHOPS

• B.O.L.D., Builders Organizers & Leaders through Dance, is a program that develops participants' problem-solving, consensus building and leadership development skills through dance training and choreographic development.

Donald Byrd - background

• From North Carolina, grew up in Florida,

• Went to Tufts and Yale Universities – elite education institutions

• Cambridge School of Ballet and London Contemporary Dance

• Formal company in 1978, LA moved to NYC in 1983

• Has danced with Robert Wilson, Katherine Posin, Twyla Tharp, Gus Solomon, Karole Armitage (her work 2nd on bill at Ailey concert)

Donald Byrd’s work

• Bola Blue, a duet created for video, emphasis on close-ups later on stage

a. Wants audience to see real people expressing themselves (as does Fagan, Zollar) yet through stylized movement.

b. Main inspiration relationships, how people interact and how theatre is a place of interaction between audience and performers

c. Wants to communicate things that connect him to other people

Donald Byrd - Abstract Modern Ballet

QuickTime™ and aH.264 decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Minstrel Show

• A look back on a US performance institution

• The agenda to surface the residual racism and stereotypes that are still with us.

• Incorporated audience participation to surface racist jokes in currency today

• Had his performers wear blackface

• With this work he addresses traditional African American performance tradition

Minstrel Show

QuickTime™ and aH.264 decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Minstrel Show

QuickTime™ and aH.264 decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Byrd addresses the question of being pigeon-holed

• Byrd - labels are superficial, art is about expansion, possibility, opening up

a. Artists who create to fit labels have stopped growing

b. He seeks an audience interested in having an experience in the theatre, not sure what will happen - but open

c. He is black - says it doesn’t have anything to do with his work, he went to white mainstream institutions,

worked to assimilate himself which changed him from his black culture origins

Garth Fagan (1940- )

• History

1. From Jamaica, toured with Ivy Baxter’s National Dance Co. from Jamaica – performed Afro-Caribbean dance

2. American teachers include Lavinia Williams (Jamaica) Ailey, Graham, Limon, and Primus, in NYC. Graduate of Wayne State University

3. Draws on eclectic music, jazz to classical

4. Danced and choreographed for companies in Detroit before going to Rochester to teach

5. Started “Bottom of the Bucket, But” in 1970 now known as Garth Fagan Dance Theatre

Fagan technique

• Based heavily in modern ,weightiness, passion, inner landscape

• Balletic speed with disciplined lean bodies

• Cultural roots in African sources, Ghana dance

a. Concepts of African utilitarian - dance for self not viewer, strong fluid backs, poly rhythms, dance into and on the earth/floor

• Jamaica experience - dance from the inside out

Time After Before Place

QuickTime™ and aH.264 decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Postmodern influences and Black Dance

• Likes the freedom, experimentation option of pedestrian movements range of concepts from postmodern

• Rejects distinction of modern/black dance - it is a cultural difference not a racial one. “We don’t speak of Jewish dance.”

a. He and dancers are black, but his white and Asian dancers do same movement based on their training (echo of Dunham)

b. Black dance label, is a ploy to divide, conquer, limit artists

Post modern influences, Black Dance

• Appreciates recognition of the formal concerns in his work,

a. Because bias in America assumes blacks choreographers don’t understand formal concerns

b. His work is about space, movement invention, redefining space and form

c. Necessary to push the form, and to represent our time

Time after Before Place 1988

• A reflection of African trip with company in 1985

a. Africa, a profound experience, different pace and point of view, different concept of time, and distance

b. Contradictions also profound

• The work reflects the meeting of the 3rd world and western culture

a. His experience, black yet educated in western system in Jamaica - an island influenced by British rule

Griot New York 1993

• Collaboration with Milton Pryeur (sculpture) and Wynton Marsalis (jazz score)

• Griot – village historian in Africa. Fagan plays the contemporary historian of contemporary urban life - the artist’s role.

a. both celebrating the beauty and joy of life and the gritty unfortunate aspect – The Disenfranchised.

• Includes communal dances with fresh individuality. Also the duet features complete trust and mutuality between the couple.

City Court

QuickTime™ and aH.264 decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Fagan and Marsalis discuss the origins of the work

QuickTime™ and aH.264 decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Spring Yaounde

QuickTime™ and aH.264 decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

The Disenfranchised

QuickTime™ and aH.264 decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Orac Sea - Communal finale open to individual expression

QuickTime™ and aH.264 decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

City Court

QuickTime™ and aH.264 decompressor

are needed to see this picture.