Please join us at our next Chew on This
Tuesday, 4/30 at 12pm
Kaufman conference room 160
Aesthetic Beneficence: Tourism and Art Production in Haiti
Art objects from are sold to tourists and collectors throughout the Caribbean and the Americas as souvenirs and decorative objects that signify notions of exoticism, tropicality, and primitivism. How have writers, art dealers, curators, and collectors helped to shape and advance such problematic narratives? How did “Haitian art” come to be classified as such and by whom? What discourses are advanced as a result of such classifications? How can theories of tourism help us analyze the history of contemporary art in Haiti and understand the responses by artists in Haiti and abroad?
Peter Haffner is a second year PhD student in the Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on the connections between tourism and the production of art in Haiti through an interdisciplinary approach that includes visual studies, museum studies, cultural studies, tourism studies, and art history. After receiving his BA in Art History from Bard College, he worked in several New York City art galleries in a variety of positions. In addition to his academic work, Peter is a co-leader of the upcoming student-curated section of the Fowler Museum at UCLA’s 50th anniversary exhibitions.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Thursday, February 14, 2013
2/19: Doran George
Please join us at our next CHEW ON THIS:
Tuesday, 12/19/13 at 12pm
Kaufman conference room, 160
PRESENTER: DORAN GEORGE
Moving constructions of nature: dancing the Somatically trained body from collective resistance to compliant individuality.
Dramatic historical change defines a lineage of “Somatic” contemporary dance practice based on the idea of universal human physiology and subjectivity. Biological and mechanical constructs form the logic for dance classes, which are said to uncover “natural” movement that emphasizes authenticity, individuality, and harmonious cooperation. By the 1970s, alliances and interconnected pedagogies had formed a transnational web of associations between artists and institutions teaching Somatics in several post/industrialized “Western” locales. Principles in the rhetoric of Somatics sustained three distinct phases of development: over forty years dancers embodied transformation in the conception of democratic participation, self-representation, and capitalist productivity. 1970s collective participation was established to achieve “direct democracy,” as practitioners critiqued established modern dance, fueled by mistrust of “representative democracy” and hierarchy. The 1980s and 1990s saw the recalibration of Somatics to staunch individuality in identity-based protest choreography, even while “signature choreography” was marked in a new arts business-growth culture. By the close of the 20th century the widespread institutionalization of Somatics embodied late capitalist appropriation of previously critical practices: Personal responsibility and individual freedom for dancers has purportedly displaced authoritarianism, yet ‘natural’ self-determination and flexibility are requirements serving the smooth and efficient running of an unequal economy.
Doran George is a dance artist completing a doctorate at U.C.L.A. on ‘Somatic’ training in contemporary dance. He has received arts funding from L.A. Cultural Affairs, London Arts Board, Arts Council of England, British Council, Finnish Arts Council, venue commissions and regional funding. Doran has danced for various choreographers, and works as a mentor, most recently through the California Choreographers In Mentorship Exchange program, and The Wellcome Trust in London. He also uses performance to investigate social problems like bereavement and diagnosis with terminal illness. Doran has chaired academic conferences and presented numerous symposia in the arts. He is in print and on the web in dance, film, and performance art journals and art publications, and has chapters in forthcoming Oxford University Press publications. He teaches in universities, art colleges, and professional dance settings. Doran trained at the European Dance Development Center (NL) and completed an M.A. in Feminist Performance at Bristol University (U.K.)
Tuesday, 12/19/13 at 12pm
Kaufman conference room, 160
PRESENTER: DORAN GEORGE
Moving constructions of nature: dancing the Somatically trained body from collective resistance to compliant individuality.
Dramatic historical change defines a lineage of “Somatic” contemporary dance practice based on the idea of universal human physiology and subjectivity. Biological and mechanical constructs form the logic for dance classes, which are said to uncover “natural” movement that emphasizes authenticity, individuality, and harmonious cooperation. By the 1970s, alliances and interconnected pedagogies had formed a transnational web of associations between artists and institutions teaching Somatics in several post/industrialized “Western” locales. Principles in the rhetoric of Somatics sustained three distinct phases of development: over forty years dancers embodied transformation in the conception of democratic participation, self-representation, and capitalist productivity. 1970s collective participation was established to achieve “direct democracy,” as practitioners critiqued established modern dance, fueled by mistrust of “representative democracy” and hierarchy. The 1980s and 1990s saw the recalibration of Somatics to staunch individuality in identity-based protest choreography, even while “signature choreography” was marked in a new arts business-growth culture. By the close of the 20th century the widespread institutionalization of Somatics embodied late capitalist appropriation of previously critical practices: Personal responsibility and individual freedom for dancers has purportedly displaced authoritarianism, yet ‘natural’ self-determination and flexibility are requirements serving the smooth and efficient running of an unequal economy.
Doran George is a dance artist completing a doctorate at U.C.L.A. on ‘Somatic’ training in contemporary dance. He has received arts funding from L.A. Cultural Affairs, London Arts Board, Arts Council of England, British Council, Finnish Arts Council, venue commissions and regional funding. Doran has danced for various choreographers, and works as a mentor, most recently through the California Choreographers In Mentorship Exchange program, and The Wellcome Trust in London. He also uses performance to investigate social problems like bereavement and diagnosis with terminal illness. Doran has chaired academic conferences and presented numerous symposia in the arts. He is in print and on the web in dance, film, and performance art journals and art publications, and has chapters in forthcoming Oxford University Press publications. He teaches in universities, art colleges, and professional dance settings. Doran trained at the European Dance Development Center (NL) and completed an M.A. in Feminist Performance at Bristol University (U.K.)
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
11/27: Yvette Martínez-Vu
Please join us for our next Chew on This
Yvette Martínez-Vu
Tuesday, November 27 at 12pm
Kaufman Conference Room 160
Surrogated Objects and Cultural Performances in Rosi’s Botánica
Among Latino communities in southern California, multiple botánicas offer immigrant populations ways to create and sustain support systems through object-centered syncretic practices. My investigation will focus on the ways that glass candles sold in my mother’s botánica are continually surrogated to set in motion a series of performances that produce spaces of cultural and economic capital as well as communities of female solidarity and survival.
Yvette Martínez-Vu is a PhD student in Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA, where she also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English. Her research investigates the role that ceremonial objects in contemporary Mexican and Chicana performance play in manifesting nonwestern forms of knowledge production and transmission. As an undergraduate, Martínez-Vu was awarded the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellowship and for two years now she has served as a Mellon Mays mentor and program coordinator through UCLA’s Undergraduate Research Center. At the moment, Martínez-Vu is thrilled to be co-organizing Hemi GSI Convergence 2013, an interdisciplinary conference among activists, artists, and scholars across the Americas, which will be hosted at USC and UCLA.
Yvette Martínez-Vu
Tuesday, November 27 at 12pm
Kaufman Conference Room 160
Surrogated Objects and Cultural Performances in Rosi’s Botánica
Among Latino communities in southern California, multiple botánicas offer immigrant populations ways to create and sustain support systems through object-centered syncretic practices. My investigation will focus on the ways that glass candles sold in my mother’s botánica are continually surrogated to set in motion a series of performances that produce spaces of cultural and economic capital as well as communities of female solidarity and survival.
Yvette Martínez-Vu is a PhD student in Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA, where she also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English. Her research investigates the role that ceremonial objects in contemporary Mexican and Chicana performance play in manifesting nonwestern forms of knowledge production and transmission. As an undergraduate, Martínez-Vu was awarded the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellowship and for two years now she has served as a Mellon Mays mentor and program coordinator through UCLA’s Undergraduate Research Center. At the moment, Martínez-Vu is thrilled to be co-organizing Hemi GSI Convergence 2013, an interdisciplinary conference among activists, artists, and scholars across the Americas, which will be hosted at USC and UCLA.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
11/13: Chew on This: Laurel Tentindo
Please join us for our next Chew on This
Laurel Tentindo
Tuesday, November 13 at 12pm
Kaufman Room 280
Freedom through Systems of Choreography: Trisha Brown's Early Works
Judson Church transformed the aesthetics of contemporary dance by redefining the value system and movement vocabulary dancers employed from then on. In Chew On This I will focus on Trisha Brown's (a member of the Judson Church) Early Works - performed on rooftops, parks, and on the sides of buildings. Trisha described herself as a brick layer with a sense of humor. These pieces are methodical and often involve a rule game. I will show how these pieces allowed Brown to develop a basic language that she then took to the proscenium stage to create pieces like Glacial Decoy, Set and Reset, and her current work. I am asking questions about form/freedom, the preference for abstraction, the source of movement vocabulary and about what our generation's relationship is to the discoveries of the Judson Church.
Laurel Jenkins Tentindo’s dances are energetic drawings on which costumes, objects, and puppets ride to evoke aesthetically rich and emotionally resonant worlds. Laurel’s choreographic and dancing practices are deeply influenced by the Skinner Releasing Technique, Improvisation, and Trisha Brown’s movement vocabulary. As an acclaimed member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company from 2007-2012, she performed repertory spanning Ms. Brown’s 40-year career, and developed original roles in Brown’s three most recent pieces. Laurel also worked closely with choreographers Vicky Shick, Sara Rudner, and Liz Lerman. She appeared in Harry Partch’s opera, Delusion of the Fury, directed by John Jesurun at the Japan Society, NYC, and The Mad Dancers, Washington DC. Laurel developed choreography for Poe (and the museum of lost arts), directed by Elise Kermani. Laurel’s independent choreography has been performed internationally and in NYC at Danspace St. Marks Church, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Dixon Place and Joyce SoHo. Working with puppet theater director Luis Tentindo since 2007, Laurel has collaboratively created two evening length experimental puppet theater pieces exploring the interaction between bunraku puppetry and dance. Would You Still Be You? and The Mud Angels received support from the Jim Henson Foundation. This spring 2012 Laurel was a guest faculty member at the New School and created an original dance with the students inspired by the underlying principals of Trisha Brown’s choreography. Laurel is a certified Skinner Releasing teacher.
More information
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCQhi_7xa9s&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocIg5y_4ZRY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ru_7sxvpY8&feature=related
Laurel Tentindo
Tuesday, November 13 at 12pm
Kaufman Room 280
Freedom through Systems of Choreography: Trisha Brown's Early Works
Judson Church transformed the aesthetics of contemporary dance by redefining the value system and movement vocabulary dancers employed from then on. In Chew On This I will focus on Trisha Brown's (a member of the Judson Church) Early Works - performed on rooftops, parks, and on the sides of buildings. Trisha described herself as a brick layer with a sense of humor. These pieces are methodical and often involve a rule game. I will show how these pieces allowed Brown to develop a basic language that she then took to the proscenium stage to create pieces like Glacial Decoy, Set and Reset, and her current work. I am asking questions about form/freedom, the preference for abstraction, the source of movement vocabulary and about what our generation's relationship is to the discoveries of the Judson Church.
Laurel Jenkins Tentindo’s dances are energetic drawings on which costumes, objects, and puppets ride to evoke aesthetically rich and emotionally resonant worlds. Laurel’s choreographic and dancing practices are deeply influenced by the Skinner Releasing Technique, Improvisation, and Trisha Brown’s movement vocabulary. As an acclaimed member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company from 2007-2012, she performed repertory spanning Ms. Brown’s 40-year career, and developed original roles in Brown’s three most recent pieces. Laurel also worked closely with choreographers Vicky Shick, Sara Rudner, and Liz Lerman. She appeared in Harry Partch’s opera, Delusion of the Fury, directed by John Jesurun at the Japan Society, NYC, and The Mad Dancers, Washington DC. Laurel developed choreography for Poe (and the museum of lost arts), directed by Elise Kermani. Laurel’s independent choreography has been performed internationally and in NYC at Danspace St. Marks Church, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Dixon Place and Joyce SoHo. Working with puppet theater director Luis Tentindo since 2007, Laurel has collaboratively created two evening length experimental puppet theater pieces exploring the interaction between bunraku puppetry and dance. Would You Still Be You? and The Mud Angels received support from the Jim Henson Foundation. This spring 2012 Laurel was a guest faculty member at the New School and created an original dance with the students inspired by the underlying principals of Trisha Brown’s choreography. Laurel is a certified Skinner Releasing teacher.
More information
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCQhi_7xa9s&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocIg5y_4ZRY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ru_7sxvpY8&feature=related
Monday, November 5, 2012
11/06: Chew on This: Emily Beattie
Please join us for our next Chew on This
Emily Beattie
Tuesday, November 6 at 12pm
Kaufman Conference Room (160)
Emily Beattie
Tuesday, November 6 at 12pm
Kaufman Conference Room (160)
A Feminine Reflex: Emily Beattie's performance work in 'Gone with the Wind: Remixed"
A Feminine Reflex is the name of a work-in-progress dance and technology performance that Emily Beattie created for a performance in UCLA's Theater, Film and Television Department in the Spring 2012. After an overview of the course that led to this performance, and a brief discussion about the process for the dance work, Emily will share documentation of"A Feminine Reflex". She would like to open a discussion surrounding the choreographic strategies employed for media integration in this performance.
Emily Beattie (Fredericksburg, VA) makes performance work for site, stage, and film. She collaborates with composers, filmmakers, multimedia artists, poets, and performers to create work that critically addresses the effect of technology on live arts and global communities. Her performance work has been featured nationally in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, and internationally in Ecuador and Japan. Emily received her training at the Boston Conservatory where she earned her BFA in contemporary dance. Currently, Emily is pursuing her MFA in the World Arts and Cultures/Dance department. Her thesis dance work shadow is commissioned to perform in Brown University’s Spring Festival of Dance in 2013. As a performer, Emily is in development on projects with David Rousseve/Reality, and Lionel Popkin with premiers starting in 2013.
A Feminine Reflex is the name of a work-in-progress dance and technology performance that Emily Beattie created for a performance in UCLA's Theater, Film and Television Department in the Spring 2012. After an overview of the course that led to this performance, and a brief discussion about the process for the dance work, Emily will share documentation of"A Feminine Reflex". She would like to open a discussion surrounding the choreographic strategies employed for media integration in this performance.
Emily Beattie (Fredericksburg, VA) makes performance work for site, stage, and film. She collaborates with composers, filmmakers, multimedia artists, poets, and performers to create work that critically addresses the effect of technology on live arts and global communities. Her performance work has been featured nationally in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, and internationally in Ecuador and Japan. Emily received her training at the Boston Conservatory where she earned her BFA in contemporary dance. Currently, Emily is pursuing her MFA in the World Arts and Cultures/Dance department. Her thesis dance work shadow is commissioned to perform in Brown University’s Spring Festival of Dance in 2013. As a performer, Emily is in development on projects with David Rousseve/Reality, and Lionel Popkin with premiers starting in 2013.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
10/23: Chew on This: Peter Sellars
Please join us for our next Chew on This
Peter Sellars
Tuesday, October 23 at 12pm
Kaufman Conference room, 160 (location might change)
'Hello, WHAT?!?'
Peter Sellars, professor in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance shares first-hand updates about his work.
Peter Sellars, a director of opera, theatre and film, is renowned worldwide for his innovative treatments of classical material from western and non-western traditions, and for his commitment to exploring the role of the performing arts in contemporary society. He has served as artistic director of the Los Angeles Festival, the American National Theatre at the Kennedy Center, the Boston Shakespeare Company and the Elitch Theatre for Children in Denver. He is a recipient of the MacArthur Prize Fellowship and was awarded the Erasmus Prize at the Dutch Royal Palace for contributions to European culture. Recent projects include directing John Adams' El Ni’o; Handel's Theodora; Stravinksy's The Story of a Soldier; a 25-year survey exhibition of the work of American artist Bill Viola; Jean Genet's The Screens, adapted by poet Gloria Alvarez, with the Cornerstone Theater Company and performers from the community of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles; and Peony Pavilion composed by Tan Dun and featuring renowned Kun Opera performer Hua Wenyi.
Peter Sellars
Tuesday, October 23 at 12pm
Kaufman Conference room, 160 (location might change)
'Hello, WHAT?!?'
Peter Sellars, professor in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance shares first-hand updates about his work.
Peter Sellars, a director of opera, theatre and film, is renowned worldwide for his innovative treatments of classical material from western and non-western traditions, and for his commitment to exploring the role of the performing arts in contemporary society. He has served as artistic director of the Los Angeles Festival, the American National Theatre at the Kennedy Center, the Boston Shakespeare Company and the Elitch Theatre for Children in Denver. He is a recipient of the MacArthur Prize Fellowship and was awarded the Erasmus Prize at the Dutch Royal Palace for contributions to European culture. Recent projects include directing John Adams' El Ni’o; Handel's Theodora; Stravinksy's The Story of a Soldier; a 25-year survey exhibition of the work of American artist Bill Viola; Jean Genet's The Screens, adapted by poet Gloria Alvarez, with the Cornerstone Theater Company and performers from the community of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles; and Peony Pavilion composed by Tan Dun and featuring renowned Kun Opera performer Hua Wenyi.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
10.05 - Carl Schottmiller
Please join us for the first Chew on This of the Fall Quarter 2012!!
Carl Schottmiller
Tuesday, October 9 at 12pm
Kaufman Conference room 160
‘The Shade of it All’:
RuPaul, ‘Camp Capitalism,’ and the race to redefine drag
With her reality show RuPaul's Drag Race, RuPaul creates a new field of cultural production tha redefines drag in her image. By decontextualizing and repurposing material from Paris is Burning, RuPau uproots drag from its community based activist-oriented origins and repackages the art form as self-centered, materialistic endeavor in whihc only gay man participate. As her reality show grows in popularity and disseminates this distorted understanding of a vast art form, Drag Race erases alternate, more subversive modes of gender identification and performance.
Carl Schottmiller is a Ph.D student in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance. With a BA in Women’s Studies & English and a MA in Folklore, he utilizes a multidisciplinary approach to explore the connections among gender performance, folklore, and social activism.
His current project analyzes how drag performers generate community-based, activist-oriented kinship systems as alternatives to an ineffective, heteronormative nuclear family model.
Carl Schottmiller
Tuesday, October 9 at 12pm
Kaufman Conference room 160
‘The Shade of it All’:
RuPaul, ‘Camp Capitalism,’ and the race to redefine drag
With her reality show RuPaul's Drag Race, RuPaul creates a new field of cultural production tha redefines drag in her image. By decontextualizing and repurposing material from Paris is Burning, RuPau uproots drag from its community based activist-oriented origins and repackages the art form as self-centered, materialistic endeavor in whihc only gay man participate. As her reality show grows in popularity and disseminates this distorted understanding of a vast art form, Drag Race erases alternate, more subversive modes of gender identification and performance.
Carl Schottmiller is a Ph.D student in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance. With a BA in Women’s Studies & English and a MA in Folklore, he utilizes a multidisciplinary approach to explore the connections among gender performance, folklore, and social activism.
His current project analyzes how drag performers generate community-based, activist-oriented kinship systems as alternatives to an ineffective, heteronormative nuclear family model.
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