Transcript Asian Dance Study - Rush Arts Dancers

Asian Dance Study
The Arts Academy at Benjamin
Rush
Classical Court Dance
Cambodia
• Dances played an important role in fertility rights
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an ancestor worship for thousands of years.
Dance was extremely integral in religion and
society.
“The King Dancer’s” group that lives in the
palace (up until 1970) that performs ancient
ritual dances
Dances themselves are slow,smooth, and
wavelike in pace and gesture; almost hypnotic
based on myths from Sanskrit Epics:
Mahabharata and Ramayana
Classical Theatrical Dance
Japan
• Kabuki Theatre
• Started its early roots around the same time
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ballet; 400 years ago
Female roles are played by men
Onagata: person who performs in Kabuki
Tradition and teaching is kept in families
Dance and Drama are united in the performance
Kata is the term for the stage movements used
Kabuki
Kabuki
Kabuki
Bukagu
Bugaku
Classical Dance
India
• Bharata Natyam: formal dance that is connected
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to devotional dances of Hindu Temples
Natya Shastra: a written work that began 2,000
years ago identifies the techniques used in the
Sanskrit plays.
Movement focuses on specifice eye and hand
gestures that all express a certain human
emotion.
The goal of the performer is the achieve Rasa
with the audience.
Rasa is when the emotional connection occurs
from the theatrical dance performance and the
Asian Dance Aesthetics
Aesthetic Definition: (Merriam-Webster)
a particular theory or conception of beauty or art : a particular taste for or approach to what is pleasing to the senses and
especially sight <modernist aesthetics> <staging new ballets which reflected the aesthetic of the new nation -- Mary
Clarke & Clement Crisp>
•National Territories being covered: important to note that each country encompasses it’s own dance style, therefore
aesthetic. This is a general overview of philosophical and religious beliefs throughout the ages that influenced the dance
aesthetic of these nations.
I.India
II.China
III.Japan
•Aesthetics developed through the philosophical and meta-physical traditions that would ultimately reflect through the
dance styles.
•India
I.Hindu and Buddhist basic influential belief
a.Brahman: the individual self-realization through spiritual refinement
b.This basic ideology spread to China, Korea, and Japan.
c.Through the self-discovery through the art of movement it is believed that the man becomes closer to the realities of
the world. This is intern compared to the relationship of the “creator and the created.”
d.Rasa: the emotional connection that occurs between the artist’s movement and the audience.
•China
I.Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism
II.Confucianism: focus on was human relationships, with the family in the center and other affiliations springing from this
strength. Dance served as a function to teach proper conduct in these relationships.
III.Daoism: the Dao, or inner nature of all things, is discovered within the human being through focusing on “meditative
breathing principles”
IV.Chan: reinterpretation of Buddhism in China and Japan. “respiratory control, kinetic restraint, and stillness”
a. Taijiquan: method of focusing movement on the relationship with the space surrounding the body from China.
b.Yugen: “the inner beauty of a passing moment that cannot be expressed in words.
Selma Jean Cohen: National Encyclopedia of Dance: http://www.oxford-dance.com/entry?entry=t171.e0011.s0002&srn=1&ssid=820482434#FIRSTHIT