Good evening. My name is Mila Parish and I'm very pleased to be with you
this evening to share with you something up here, Chair Pillow,
Interactive Gateway digital Classroom. In this short presentation, we will
provide background information and strategies implemented in this research
project. Like most research projects. This project has many facets. First
and foremost is the creation and the reconstruction of Chair Pillow, a
dance choreographed by Yvonne Rainer in 1963.
As part of the Judson Dance Theater, Chair Pillow is part of a work called
Continuous Project Altered Daily. In addition to the reconstruction of
this work, we wanted to revise the existing lava notation score for the
dance and develop a dynamic interactive online curriculum for high school
students and their teachers. This curriculum is multifaceted. It focuses
not only on Yvonne Rainer, postmodern dance, but the 19 sixties,
political
technological as well as the music of the 19 sixties. A really exciting
aspect of this research project is the implementation of webcasting. All
of our rehearsals and performances are being webcast on the internet. And
in fact, this performance is being webcam.
We had many people help us with this research project, first and foremost
is Yvonne.
Yeah, I'm gonna check with you. That was one of the most remarkable
experiences in my life. And certainly, I, I think of the dancers lives
prior to Yvonne coming out, we met Pat Patterson who set the dance and
coached us in the nuances of this work. She worked with us for three days
straight. So it was an intensive experience. In addition to Pa Valerie
Mocky came out in order to revise the existing la locations for for the ST
now, three really important graduate students assisted us with this
research project. First and foremost is Jennifer Walker. She worked for
the entire year on this research project assisting us with curriculum as
well as teaching the classes. April. See you see a video video camera in
her hand. She was our dance documentary. She is our video goddess. She
videotaped absolutely every moment of this research project we have over
60 hours of videotape. So it is a daunting task that she has in order to
catalog and then edit and then post this video online. In addition to
April, this is Nancy Campbell. She is our queen of webcasting. She
assisted in every aspect of online webcasting with lots of troubleshooting
and problem solving. Next, I'd like to bring out Kathy Lindholm Lane and
she's gonna share with you some of the workshop strategies implemented in
this research project. Kathy.
Thank you, Mila. Good evening everyone.
Our cast was made is made up of 16 performers. Six of them are high school
students from the greater Phoenix area and 10 are university students.
These dancers worked for 2.5 hours every Saturday since mid November. Plus
, put in additional time when the guest artists were in residence. Early
activities in the workshop focused on building community between these two
groups. Uh Here you see our dancers performing one of Deborah Hayes's
circle dances for everyone.
A significant amount of time was spent observing and watching. Um Here
students are watching a student perform her autobiographical dance which
was inspired by the work of choreographer Remy Charlotte.
Throughout the process, participants experimented with postmodern
choreographic methods and ideas. They played a game of twister when
investigating game structures and later, this game of twister became a
metaphor for the struggles of the sixties.
After discussing and reading about the social, political and historical
issues of the sixties, students identified the women's movement, the
Vietnam War and the civil rights movement as issues that they wanted to
investigate further in choreography. The resultant dances were blended
together and performed at the high school dance festival in February. It's
a state high school dance festival. This piece was called Speak Out
Together. We have a voice
as Milo mentioned, we would broadcast every rehearsal performance and
guest artist residency. Uh This image is from the first time that we
webcast and you can see all the dancers getting on their cell phones and
calling friends and family to get online and and see them work
long intensive rehearsals also helped to bond this community of dancers.
We even s staged a sixties happening outside in the lobby. This group of
dancers chose to make their happening occur on the stairwell.
This group used the whole lobby area upstairs downstairs and even the
recycling bin.
It was vital for students to reflect on and write about their experiences.
At the end of each workshop, it is this information that we will use to
refine and test the curriculum. Next year,
our final exploration before Aunt Vonn Rayner arrived was centered around
the work of Anna Halperin, a West Coast dancer who greatly influenced the
Jets and Dance theater. The dancers performed her earth dances in
preparation for creating and performing outside this group stance is by
the Hayden Library and this is by the Business School
and then Yvonne Rainer came and it was a phenomenal experience.
This is an excerpt of the Lavin location score for Chair pillow. It's like
a music score in that a dancer who's trained in LA A notation can read it.
But unlike music score is read from the bottom up.
It is our goal to provide a comprehensive curriculum on postmodern dance
that leads to other artists and events of the times for students all over
the world. The site can be viewed through arts work and there are small
postcards just before you go out the door, they look like this. We'd like
you to pick one up and you can access the website on the address on, on
the, through the address listed here. We'd love to hear what you have to
say about the site. And this is a page from the website
down at the bottom. It may be hard to tell, but this is a movie. We have
several movies embedded in the website to illustrate the curriculum.
And finally we end where we began with Yvonne Rayner and Chair co Thank
you
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