Sign in or 
Share this
Give Thanks, Performance Sketches
Author: M. McNeal
Over the years, I have developed a quasi-scripted approach for all my creative work. Using what I call a "patchwork aesthetic" I mix genres of performance (live dance and vocals, soundscores, video, etc.) with non-linear modes of storytelling. I sew together images, ideas, debates and/or seeds generated in discussion with movement themesto create work that is cohesive but never quite literal.
For Give Thanks (2008), my throughline was the notion of house as an urban church space, a site of praise, joy, life affirmation in the face of daily-lived struggle. I began to articulate what I see as a technique of "fierceness," found across the black gay ballroom voguing circuit, the spectre of disco diva glam, and more generally in Chicago house's urban modality of both cool attitude and fierce embodiment on the dance floor.
In the world of house music, the body is both sacred and profane. Pleasure from the act of dancing, being open about a more flexible sexual politics, and the agency of becoming other than who you are in daily life (the mask of fierceness and working it) become tools for navigating contemporary environments.
Within my circle of Chitown friends we have often joked about how the painting featured at the end of the opening for the sitcom Good Times (at left) and the Emerald City dance sequence of the Wiz (youtube sequence below) are depictions of an energy, attitude that we know as “house.”
If we begin to unpack these images, what do they convey that parallels a house consciousness?
They portray blackness as divinely human, as bodies worthy of value/dignity even in imperfection. As beautiful even in sorrowful conditions. Part jook joint, part blues’ tradition of transparent vulnerability/trickster down but not out life perspective, part sophisticated swank, part diva, part folk, part on/of the block, in the community, and always a celebration of being/existing, always a “both/and” ethos of reality, rather than a cut n’ dry, "it is or it ain’t" sensibility.
Over the years, I have developed a quasi-scripted approach for all my creative work. Using what I call a "patchwork aesthetic" I mix genres of performance (live dance and vocals, soundscores, video, etc.) with non-linear modes of storytelling. I sew together images, ideas, debates and/or seeds generated in discussion with movement themesto create work that is cohesive but never quite literal.
For Give Thanks (2008), my throughline was the notion of house as an urban church space, a site of praise, joy, life affirmation in the face of daily-lived struggle. I began to articulate what I see as a technique of "fierceness," found across the black gay ballroom voguing circuit, the spectre of disco diva glam, and more generally in Chicago house's urban modality of both cool attitude and fierce embodiment on the dance floor.
In the world of house music, the body is both sacred and profane. Pleasure from the act of dancing, being open about a more flexible sexual politics, and the agency of becoming other than who you are in daily life (the mask of fierceness and working it) become tools for navigating contemporary environments.
Within my circle of Chitown friends we have often joked about how the painting featured at the end of the opening for the sitcom Good Times (at left) and the Emerald City dance sequence of the Wiz (youtube sequence below) are depictions of an energy, attitude that we know as “house.”
If we begin to unpack these images, what do they convey that parallels a house consciousness?
They portray blackness as divinely human, as bodies worthy of value/dignity even in imperfection. As beautiful even in sorrowful conditions. Part jook joint, part blues’ tradition of transparent vulnerability/trickster down but not out life perspective, part sophisticated swank, part diva, part folk, part on/of the block, in the community, and always a celebration of being/existing, always a “both/and” ethos of reality, rather than a cut n’ dry, "it is or it ain’t" sensibility.
isislady |
Latest page update: made by isislady
, Nov 8 2008, 8:24 PM EST
(about this update
About This Update
Moved from: Househedz
- isislady
No content added or deleted. - complete history) |
|
Keyword tags:
None
More Info: links to this page
|
There are no threads for this page.
Be the first to start a new thread.
