Investigating Technique

Bales, Melanie & Rebecca Nettl-Fiol (eds.)
The Body Eclectic: Evolving Practices in Dance Training
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008

Disclaimer: I firmly believe inquiry into the body to be the most noble of lifetime studies and that the process of learning a physical technique is a brilliant way to get to the heart of your investigations. At first glance, I thought The Body Eclectic: Evolving Practices in Dance Training, edited by Melanie Bales and Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, might be too specific to dance students (even more specific, I assumed it was aimed at university undergrads) to be of value as contextual material for Lincoln Center Institute-style thinkers. But as I delved into the book with my own interests at heart—above disclaimer firmly pinned to my sleeve—all the questions I hear during Lincoln Center Institute (LCI) workshops about the technical requirements of dance, where and how people learn to move the way they do, and the enthusiasm for delving into the philosophy of the body in motion came flooding forward from the text.

Greene’s Cultural Call to Action

Greene, Maxine
Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, Art, and Social Change
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995.

If you seek solace from the drone of daily life and envision a society in which our imagination enables us to strive together for a better, more engaged future, read this book! If you share my love for education, social justice, and poetry, read this book! If you are interesting in imaginative teaching and learning through aesthetic education, read this book!

I Put a Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone

Simone, Nina.
I Put a Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone
New York: Da Capo Press. 1991

While there have been countless celebrated and extroadinary divas, something about the style, sound, and mere presence of Nina Simone remains unique. Perhaps a result of her turbulent life, her uncompromising personality, her distinctive voice and musical genius, or her indefinite seat at the table for human freedom, Nina Simone sang America’s soundtrack during its darkest times. Brilliant, gifted, and bitter, Nina Simone offers a heartfelt and humble rendering of her exceptional journey in I Put a Spell On You, in hopes of providing clarity and truth to her often misunderstood life.

Folk and Fairies in Action

Zipes, Jack
Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002

“Again!” Is what I proclaimed as my weary eyed mother attempted to close Cinderella after she read it to me for the umpteenth time. It was clearly my favorite fairy tale. Since the beginning of time, young people all over the world have uttered these words whether to a story teller, to a reader, or to a remote control. In Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales, Jack Zipes presents newly updated versions of seven essays originally written in 1979. His scholarly essays emphasize the significance of religion, class, politics, historic events, and social happenings on the meanings derived from these seemingly innocent tales.

Art in the 21st Century

Art:21 Season 4
PBS Home Video, 2007

When my work is on display and people ask me questions about it, I sometimes find myself tongue tied. How do I begin to explain the process which leads me through the creation of a painting? Yet it is in the act of creating that discoveries are made, choices are pondered, new possibilities become apparent. I’m not alone among visual artists who would rather make a piece than talk about it. Some artists prefer to speak about their work in their work environment, where they can demonstrate what they do. In Art:21, a PBS television series that is now available on DVD, we are treated to the marriage of the visual and the verbal revelations of contemporary artists as they go about the process of making art. We see them in their studios or sites as they paint, sculpt, excavate, film, weld, carve, burn, collage, wire, light, install, remove, construct, deconstruct, etc. These are not stodgy formal interviews at a table with a glass of water and a host in a business suit. These are beautifully filmed, adroitly edited presentations of artists in action.

The More You Know, the Better You Can Imagine

Tharp, Twyla
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life: A Practical Guide
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006

“Memories are slippery, like butter, “ a fifth-grader announced at PS 116 in Manhattan. He was reflecting on Hilary Easton’s dance theater piece, It’s All True. As Lincoln Center Institute teaching artists we are endeavoring to layer opportunities for experience, reflection, and articulation about the creative experience. This student’s answer had it all, poetically phrased and succinctly said: Easton’s dance explored the slippery qualities of memory, point-of-view, and the sensuality of forbidden pleasure (in this case, the unadorned taste of butter). This fifth-grader articulated the kind of connection we teaching artists hope to facilitate as we design workshops, which, at their best, are mini-templates for creative, imaginative experience and deep interaction with a work of art. Secretly, I have a personal footnote to the LCI model; I am hoping for lifers—students and teachers who discover their own life-long devotion to art, art-making, and a creative life through experience and interaction with a work of art.

Recent Acquisitions to the Heckscher Foundation Resource Center @ Lincoln Center Institute

More than 10,000 and growing! Click here to see a list of resources added to our collection last month.

May Highlight
Butterwick, Kristi
Heritage of Power: Ancient Sculpture from West Mexico
New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004

Last month we purchased some new art books at the annual sale at the store of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among the offerings were current and past exhibition catalogs at up to 70% off the regular price! These new visual art resources range in topic from modern Chinese painting to American glass art. A personal favorite is Heritage of Power: Ancient Sculpture from West Mexico. This book features forty Precolumbian sculptures from the West Mexican states of Jalisco, Colima, and Nayarit. The expressive ceramic figures of warriors, couples, and ballplayers are just some of the artistic gems from the Met’s collection featured here.

Interested in learning more about art from Western Mexico? Visit The Metropolitan Museum’s Web site for a general overview of the time period.

Click here to purchase this book.

Click here to find a library near you that owns this book.

Authorized to borrow resources from LCI’s Resource Center? Click here to send an e-mail request (please include your name, address, relationship to the Institute, and title of the resource you would like to borrow).

Presence in Contemporary Theater Practice

Power, Cormac
Presence in Play: A Critique of Theories of Presence in the Theatre
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988

I am a visual learner and am part of an ever increasing number of people heavily influenced by concepts and products transmitted purely through virtual means. As a stage director, I have been in situations with people outside of the industry where I have been forced to justify my profession. They ask, “When are you going to graduate to film?” Hmmm . . . graduate? I found the topics discussed in Presence in Play: A Critique of Theories of Presence in the Theatre by Cormac Power—for instance topics like the actor/character duality and different philosophical theories about fiction and “liveness”—to be a fresh reminder of why I work with the live medium: the embodied presence. I especially find Power’s ideas interesting because I have recently started integrating technology into my theatrical work, considering the role of the virtual in an embodied art form. This book provided a vehicle to help me organize and articulate my own thoughts about my work as an artist-educator, stage director (in particular), and theater professional (in general).

“The Music. The Music, this is our history”

Jones, LeRoi
Blues People: Negro Music in White America
New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1963

As a saxophonist who has spent the last 15 years devoted to the history, practice, tradition, and evolution of jazz and blues music, I began reading this book with the assumption that its content would be familiar, perhaps like that of a jazz history class. However, Blues People took me on an entirely different path, one of extreme presence, passion, and enlightenment.

The Role of Imaginative Play

Barell, John
Playgrounds of Our Minds
New York: Teachers College Press, 1980

Few people would disagree that in the 21st Century, the rate of change is accelerating. A YouTube video posted in October 2008, Did You Know? , illustrates this with some attention-grabbing points. “The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.” “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist…using technologies that haven’t been invented…in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” “The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38.” Whether you accept that the rate of change is exponential, as in this video, or merely rapid, the skills required to thrive in an environment of swift change are quite different from those necessary for existence during a period of slow evolution. Imperative skills for upcoming generations in the face of rapid change include flexibility, adaptability, innovation, and creativity. Fostering and enhancing these skills poses critical challenges for the educators of today and tomorrow.