Good evening. My name is Mila Parish and I'm really thrilled to be here
with you tonight to share with you Chair Pillow, Interactive Gateway into
the Digital Classroom. In this short presentation, I'm going to share with
you some of the strategies and methods employed within this research
project.
This is a large and extensive project which took over a year fully. Uh It
, it includes many components. One of the most important components is
this reconstruction of Chair Pillow, a work choreographed by Yvonne Rainer
in 1963. Chair Pillow is a small dance, a short dance in a much bigger
work called Continuous Project Alter Daily, which is part of the Judson
Dance Theater. In addition to doing the reconstruction of the work, Chair
Pillow, we are also reconstructing the work and revising the lava notation.
That's the current notation score for Chair Pillow. In addition to
reconstructing the work and revising the Lava notation score, we're
developing a dynamic interactive online curriculum based on this work.
This curriculum focuses on Yvonne Rainer. In addition, it focuses on
postmodern dance and the 19 sixties, the art of the 19 sixties, the music
of the 19 sixties the politics and the social issues of the 19 sixties.
One really exciting aspect of this project is the integration of
technology and specifically the use of webcasting each performance,
rehearsal and uh practice session has been live webcast on the internet.
And in fact, this performance is being live webcast. We had many
individuals who are really important members of this project team and most
importantly is Yvonne Rainer herself, postmodern icon. We had the very
great honor to have Yvonne come here and work with us. She came last week
in order to check the score of chair pillow. It was a, a moment of a
lifetime to have Yvonne come and, and share with us and coach in this
dance prior to Yvonne's coming to a su and working with us. We worked with
Pat Catterson. Pat Catterson is Yvonne's uh specific reconstruction. She
came about a month ago and worked with us for three days nonstop, working
on chair pillow coaching and guiding the n the nuances of the work. In
addition to Pat um Valerie maccabee, a lava not from Ohio State University
came and she is doing the revision to the lava notation score. Uh We could
not have done this project without three members of our research team,
three graduate students. Uh The first is uh Jennifer Walker, uh research
assistant extraordinaire. Uh I feel certain that without this project, it
would certainly without her on our team, the project would certainly have
looked different. Jennifer assisted us with curriculum, she taught classes
, she coached teachers, she called parents. She picked up the artist, she
got coffee when that was necessary. So she was a real integral member of
our team. In addition to Jennifer, April Sie, our video goddess, she
videotaped absolutely every aspect of this research presentation from the
very moment that we met for the first time, we have over 60 hours of video
footage and it is April's job to now pore over all that footage and edit
it. And we're posting much of that footage on the web. And last but
certainly not least is Nancy Happel. She is our, our webcast
queen. She uh helped us along through, through all of the trials and
tribulations of webcasting. Uh So it's my great pleasure to, to thank all
those members of our team. And next, I'd like to introduce you to Kathy
Lindholm Lane, my colleague in this research project. And she's going to
be sharing with you some images and some of the ideas that were expressed
in this research project. Kathy.
Thank you, Mila. Good evening everyone.
First of all, I'd like to talk about the community. Um Our dance community
consisted of 16 dancers who you will see very shortly. 10 of them are
university students and 66 of them are high school students from the
Greater Phoenix community. We, we started the process of working together
with Deborah Hayes circle dances and that's what you see in this image is
the dancers working together.
We spent a significant amount of time watching and discussing dance and
walk, watching and discussing this particular uh movement. And in dance.
Right here you see students watching a soloist who is doing an
autobiographical dance that was inspired by choreographer Remy Charlotte.
Throughout the process, participants experimented with postmodern
choreographic ideas. Here, students play a game of twister which later
became a metaphor for struggle more on that in a moment
after discussing and reading about the social, political and historical
issues of the 19 sixties, students identified three important struggles,
the women's movement, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war. And
those were the three struggles that they chose to explore further through
choreography. This is an image of that exploration.
Um as Mila said, we are webcasting and this is just a moment where we
first began to webcast and we had students calling family and friends to
ask them to, to tune in to the broadcast.
This was an intensive rehearsal process and students, high school and
university students became very close and I I think you'll see that in
their dancing, but also it's reflected in this picture. During a workshop
break,
we staged a sixties style happening in the lobby of this very building. Uh
One group as you can see, decided to do their happening on the stairway.
Another used the entire lobby including the recycling bin.
It was vital for students to think about and write about what they were
experiencing to give us feedback. It is a feedback and these reflections
that we will be using to refine and fine tune our curriculum, which we'll
be working on throughout the next year and perhaps beyond, it's an
extensive process that is not over yet.
Our last exploration before Yvonne Rainer came um involved site specific
works. We felt it was important for students to be introduced to the work
of Anna Halpern who influenced the Judson church theater dancers. So they
did one of Anna Halpern's dances. Uh One of her Earth dances in
preparation for performing outside. Here's a group performing at the
library and another at the business school.
And then Yvonne Rayner, we had a phenomenal experience of working with her
last weekend.
And as Milo mentioned earlier, we had a not working with us, Valerie Moab.
This is an excerpt of the score that she's creating for chair pillow in
the upper right corner. You can see the, the name of the dance and then
along the left side um going up and down, you can see the words to the
song by. Um Bye. Uh I can do an attorney. Thank you, Mila.
All right. It is our goal to provide a comprehensive curriculum on
postmodern dance with links to other artists and events of the Times for
students all over the world. In fact, we have one of our dancers, brother
logging in from Utah today and, and who knows where else people are, are
logging in from, um, the site can be viewed through arts work, which is uh
an organization on campus. We've placed some cards on the table just
before you leave the theater and it's got the website address on there if
you'd like to check in and, and look at the website as it's developed.
This is a page from the website you might notice at the bottom a little uh
square that's a, a little movie. We have very small movies that illustrate
specific concepts throughout the lesson.
And we end as we began with Yvonne Rayner and chair pillow. We hope you
enjoy the dance and thank you.
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please note this file is also available for download at www dot Bush
speech dot C jb.net. Here is Mr Bush.
Ok. It was a, well, the president isn't sitting there trying to think
about what to say. I can assure you the president is sitting here because
someone, a member of television has sat him down and said it will queue in
30 seconds, Mr Bush and so has offered as it looks to him, this is what
we've expected them to do and now here he is good evening today. Our very
freedom came under attack. The victims were moms and dads, friends and
neighbors, despicable acts of terror terrorist attacks can shake the
foundations of our biggest buildings but they cannot touch the foundation
of America. These ax shatter steel but they cannot dent the steel of
American resolve. America was targeted for attack because we're the
brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world and no one will
keep that light from shining
immediately following the first attack. I implemented our government's
emergency response plans. Our military is powerful and it's prepared to
take every precaution to protect our citizens at home and around the world
from further attacks.
The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I have
directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement
communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We
will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed that. I
appreciate very much the members of Congress who join me and strongly
I think world leaders to offer to the world
and all those who want peace and the
very
close to the president, it was a sense of safety and security and
inspection and I pray they were covered by a power greater than any of
revolution spoken through the ages in Psalm 23. Even though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for you are with me.
This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our
resolve for just America has stood
down any enemies before and we will do so. This is really important.
None of us will ever forget this around the world. Yet we go forward to
the all that is good and just to the
to be an American, he said thousands of lives that were sudden in the end
, the thousands of lives suddenly. And he also did a lot of other things
in this very short speech, Peter. He gave voice to the anger that many
Americans are feeling. He talked about the quiet, unyielding anger of
America and then was very pointed in giving reassurance. Military is
prepared. President H was so expansive Peter. It wasn't just supported or
funded. It was any who harbored that he may have given sanctuary at any
time that is a very open ended commitment. And then I thought by the way,
also, if I may add that this president, particularly who, uh, who feels so
strongly about his, uh, his Christianity, I felt it a good time to say, uh
to quote those lines from Psalm 23. Um, even though I walk or even though
I walk through the valley of death, I fear no evil for you are with me.
Ok. And uh
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