http://hdl.handle.net/2173/85226 Wed, 22 May 2013 00:01:07 GMT 2013-05-22T00:01:07Z http://hdl.handle.net/2173/144171 Title: Predictability and inevitability in dance-music relationships in Mark Morris's Falling Down Stairs Authors: Duerden, Rachel S. Description: Full-text of this article is not available in this e-prints service. This article was originally published following peer-review in Dance Chronicle, published by and copyright Taylor & Francis Inc. Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2173/144171 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2173/144166 Title: The mis-shapen pearl: Morris, Handel, Milton, and l'allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato Authors: Duerden, Rachel S. Abstract: Mark Morris's L'Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato (1988), embodies ideas about how to live a good life. L'Allegro is unusual in that it is a full evening-length work, yet has no through-narrative; it has characters and action, but these change in each of the many individual sections. However, together these embody a dialogue – really a three (or four or even five)-way discussion between poet, composer and choreographer about the best way to live. The relationship between dance, music and text, and the implied conversation across the centuries between Milton, Handel, Jennens and Morris, offer insights into the way such layering of creativity can illuminate our engagement with art. As in so much of Mark Morris's work, the relationship of choreography and music is of paramount importance, and this will form the main focus of the discussion here. Handel's secular oratorio of 1740 is itself a setting of John Milton's companion poems, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso (1631), which explicitly explore through debate the relative merits of different approaches to life. Handel's musical setting includes an additional ‘voice’ in the debate: Il Moderato, words by Handel's librettist Charles Jennens, offering a ‘middle way’, or ‘18th century balance’, as John Eliot Gardiner has it (1980:16).1 For the purposes of this essay I focus chiefly on the dialogue between dance and music as manifest in a few ‘moments’, with reference also at times to the poetry and its rhythms. In this, I am guided by theories of art as embodiment as expounded by Paul Crowther. When we engage with art, we do so in the fullest sense of perceptual, that is, with our whole, embodied selves. Art, as the embodiment of ideas, does not teach us anything specific about the artist or his/her world, but it does reveal something of the world-view of the artist as an embodied being. There is thus the potential for empathy, and imaginative engagement; we are not passive consumers but active reciprocal participants. Through close reading of a few short examples drawn from the work, I employ structural analysis to examine music-dance relationships, referring also from time to time to the poetry, which itself reflects key characteristics of both choreography and music. These examples show how dance, music and poetry manifest characteristics that are suggestive of similar perspectives on life, both individually and in relationship with one another. John Creaser, writing of Milton's poems, observes that they embody a sophisticated and resilient playfulness conveyed through verbal nuance and rhythmic buoyancy, a revelation of temperament and sensibility rather than an exploration of ideals. (Creaser 2001:377) Description: Full-text of this article is not available in this e-prints service. This article was originally published following peer-review in Dance Research, published by and copyright Edinburgh University Press. Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2173/144166 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2173/144165 Title: Fantastic geographies: dancing Dido across continents, centuries and genders: from Ancient Rome, through Enlightenment London to Modern America. Authors: Duerden, Rachel S. Description: Paper presented to Topographies: Sites, Bodies, Technologies, The Society of Dance History Scholars Annual Conference in conjunction with the Dance Critics Association, Stanford and San Francisco, California June 19-22, 2009. Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2173/144165 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2173/144170 Title: Transfigurations: changing sensibilities in two choreographies to Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht Authors: Duerden, Rachel S. Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2173/144170 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z