MASSEY Dave Slreport S17

Parts II-V Sabbatical Leave Report II. Re-statement of Sabbatical Leave Application The intention behind this sabbatical proposal is to study contemporary dance forms from internationally and nationally recognized artists in Israel, Europe, and the U.S. The plan is to take daily dance class, week long workshops, to observe dance class and company rehearsals, and interview directors, choreographers, and artists to gain further insight into their movement creation process. This study will benefit my teaching, choreographic awareness, and movement research, which will benefit my students and my department as courses are enhanced by new methodologies, techniques and strategies. The second part of this plan is to visit California colleges and universities to investigate how contemporary dance is being built into their curriculum. Creating a dialogue with my colleagues about this developing dance genre will be important as my department implements contemporary dance into its curriculum. The third part of the sabbatical is to co-produce a dance concert in the San Diego area showcasing choreography that has been created using some of the new methodologies, techniques and strategies founded and discussed while on sabbatical. I will document all hours in a spreadsheet submitted with my sabbatical report. I estimate 580 hours. III. Completion of Objectives, Description of Activities Objective #1: a. To explore, learn, and document best practices in Contemporary Dance b. I started my sabbatical researching contemporary dance and movement. I scoured the web for journals, magazines, videos that gave me insight into how people in dance were talking about this contemporary genre. I also read several books that were thought-provoking about contemporary movement, training and the contemporary dancer. The best of the information is documented in this report in appendix I. This information can also be found online at http://davesdances.com/sabbatical/ under What Is Contemporary Dance? and Thoughts by Contemporary Dancemakers. People were incredibly generous allowing me fantastic opportunities on my sabbatical. I was able to study and observe with such international dance companies such as BODYTRAFFIC, in Los Angeles, Batsheva Dance Company, Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, Vertigo Dance Company, in Israel, and Gallim Dance, and LeeSaar The Company, while in New York. I also attended many other contemporary dance performances, as well as took and observed contemporary dance classes, all of which are documented in appendix V. I spoke with several of the artistic directors from these companies, three of which allowed our exchange to be recorded. Others didn’t allow a recording of our conversations. The recorded interviews can be found at http://davesdances.com/sabbatical/ I created a list of words and phrases that I kept hearing, or that I developed because of things I was hearing frequently, which I will now use to speak about movement, create movement, and generate energies in all of my courses and choreography. These words/phrases will help strengthen my teaching methodologies, strategies and techniques, because they speak clearly and articulate meaning to the dancer, without explaining, giving dancers the opportunity to explore, create, and work collaboratively with the choreographer/instructor. They’re also extremely useful in the choreographic process, in a dance technique course, or in a dance composition course – any time while working with dancers or speaking about dance. Along with these words/phrases, I included a dictionary of Gaga terms. (Gaga is a contemporary movement language developed by Ohad Naharin, who is artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company, in Israel – where I was fortunate to go during my sabbatical). Both of these lists of words/phrases and terms can be found in appendix II. I included videos of some exercises/tasks that I’ve started to use to create movement along with strategies that I use to create different movement qualities with the dancers. These new techniques give an active, creative voice to the dancers. These videos can be found at http://davesdances.com/sabbatical/ under the headings Movement Creation Processes and Movement Quality. c. I spent 352 hours on these activities. Objective #2: a. Investigate the direction contemporary dance is moving into academia b. I spoke with universities and community colleges about contemporary dance. Specific schools are documented in appendix III. These conversations confirmed my thoughts that there is still much conversation to be had about what contemporary dance is. Maybe we’re on the precipice of a budding Dave Massey - Page 2 of 20 new dance genre, but as of now, there is no clear definition and without it, it is difficult to call contemporary dance a defined dance genre. Contemporary dance exists because of the definition of “contemporary”. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines contemporary as “happening, existing, living, or coming into being during the same period of time; marked by characteristics of the present period”. Therefore, contemporary dance is a catch-all category most popularly used by television’s So You Think You Can Dance and perpetuated in the competition dance world. The more accurate terms might be subsets of already existing dance genres, such as: Contemporary Jazz, Contemporary Modern, Contemporary Ballet, Contemporary Hip Hop, etc. Both 2 year and 4 year schools were “thinking” about contemporary dance. This is where the discussions got very interesting. I found that if the faculty member that I was speaking with, had expertise in Modern Dance, then he/she stated the necessity of creating Contemporary Modern Dance as a way to make a distinction from classic modern dance (modern dance from the era of Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Katherine Dunham, Lester Horton, etc.). The same was true of ballet professors. They saw the need for Contemporary Ballet to differentiate from Modern Ballet. Also, the same train of thought existed for jazz instructors who saw the importance of differentiating classical jazz (Luigi, Matt Mattox, Gus Giordano, etc.) and Contemporary Jazz. This happened again and again when I spoke with professors whose focus was in dance technique. Professors that were dance historians had a broader thought process about contemporary dance. Some agreed that contemporary dance was comprised of dance that was happening today, in the various dance genres, but not a genre in itself. Others stated that contemporary dance was a developing dance genre. Not quite definitive at this point, but could see it coming to fruition in the future. One university, in our own region, had a unique view point on contemporary dance. They didn’t believe contemporary dance to be a dance genre, and didn’t like the term because it was so ill defined. They are thinking about using the term “experimental” dance and creating their own definition. As I align academia’s views, with artists in the professional world, they are not wholly the same. Most of the professional artists I spoke with think that contemporary dance is a legitimate, or at least a burgeoning dance genre. They speak of the freedom and the fusion that the contemporary genre offers them to be able to commix modern, ballet, jazz, hip hop seamlessly and create beautiful dance works. They don’t feel constrained to conform to a specific style, but can play, change and mingle dance styles however they wish. This is the freedom that is observable as I view contemporary dance. Because the schools I spoke with were still in the thinking stages of how they might create coursework in contemporary dance, no concrete courses were shared. What was valuable is the conversation that began among colleagues. It was helpful for us to see where and how contemporary dance could fit into each program. c. I spent 52 hours on these activities. Objective #3: a. Co-produce a dance concert in the San Diego area and create choreography for the dance concert b. This was a fantastic experience! Two choreographers, a lighting designer and I sat down and created a plan where we would self-produce a dance event in the San Diego area. Venues were located and checked out. Dancers were auditioned. Lighting instruments were rented and borrowed. I settled in to the choreographic process. After all of the sabbatical opportunities of watching contemporary dance performances, observing contemporary dance classes and rehearsals, reading about contemporary dance, looking at video, I was excited to start my own choreographic process in contemporary dance. To develop the movement, I used several techniques and strategies that I list in appendix II, along with some of the movement creation process that can be found under Movement Creation Processes and Movement Quality at http://davesdances.com/sabbatical/. Another major part of this process was finding music. I spent lots of time listening to music. I wanted to incorporate mixed dynamics and movement qualities into my piece. The music score/soundscape had to be in sync with this desire. The music/sound was finally narrowed down to five pieces. Then the process of editing it together began. I used Adobe Audition to edit my music. Some of the music was elongated, some shortened, some mixed together, and then all of it changed and changed and changed again as the choreography developed. The finished choreographic work, along with the soundscape, can be found at http://davesdances.com/sabbatical/ under the heading AWAKENINGS. Dave Massey - Page 3 of 20 As part of this process, I was also tasked with creating the evening’s program. This required the use of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign. This took some time, but was another creative outlet. A copy of the program can be seen in this document in appendix IV. c. I spent 197.5 on these activities. IV. Contribution to District a. This sabbatical gave me opportunities that I had never afforded myself before. I was able to delve into this contemporary dance research by reading, observing, dancing, communicating and networking on an international stage.

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