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Queen (image six)
Gesturing to the beginning of the piece, Yuka once again calls members of the community in just as she did in Gospel. She is the announcer, the emcee, the procession leader, opening the court for the entrance of its own urban rag tag royalty. Two male performers enter with force, eating the floor as they cross it. Owen glides, Mark pops. It is a combination of a muted fierceness combined with extroverted over the top flounce. They are competing companions.
This section feeds off my pure fascination with the battle element of the underground ballroom scene. I love the kinetic power of the hits, accents, dips, stops and direct attack in movement that is intertwined with a complementary set of movement aesthetics: elegance, lightness, sustained lines of the body, detail of the arms and hands. The juxtaposition is sublime. The Queen section is the most skeletal to me at this point. I look forward to resetting it with the intention of matching the potency of an actual battle.
When I bear (mediated) witness to these clips of ball scenes, I am aware of my own involuntary physical responses - wanting to vocalize, cry out, move. (I must note here that I am dying to attend a live ball competition) There is something in this style/logic that speaks to some part of my movement base - something about letting a ferocious presence tumble out into the external world rather than keeping this "other" persona internalized.
Right now I can admit to occupying a space of delight. I am savoring the visceral reaction and the resulting divine pleasure more than attempting to understand this phenomenon through conventional analytical thought.
But there are seeds of ideas that I want to explore as I anticipate deconstructing this movement style/logic in its context(s):
Men signing women….Men expanding notions of manliness….Women wanting to experiment with the kind of "performance" that happens when men signify womanness…Or is the spectre of woman even part of this analysis? What and who is really being “performed”? And what work is “performance” doing?
This is perhaps the most direct illustration of fierceness as a technique for living – it is a mask, it can cut a competitor to shreds, it is training to stay a step ahead, to stand up for oneself. Performance, in this instance, is also a challenge to repression. It is the laying bare of taboos and the disenfranchised (so often these two are co-joined) - blackness, maleness, bodies, the popular, the poor, the young and reveling in the human beauty to be found in these forms and communities. It is the pleasure of long arms and flowery wrists taking space and being recognized (finally) as gorgeous and valuable. It is hands akimbo on male hips while head cocks sidewise in a body gesture more commonly associated with the codes of (black) womens’ body language as if to say there is no unitary dress code for gender here - all narratives are free to expand. It is a challenge to an onlooker to see through the guise being performed and to call one on it if the performance falls short. It is a code of survival as one must work, eat, serve one's competitor.
In this place, performance is serious business. It is the affirmation of life even as it is embodied testimony of the harshness of life.
This section feeds off my pure fascination with the battle element of the underground ballroom scene. I love the kinetic power of the hits, accents, dips, stops and direct attack in movement that is intertwined with a complementary set of movement aesthetics: elegance, lightness, sustained lines of the body, detail of the arms and hands. The juxtaposition is sublime. The Queen section is the most skeletal to me at this point. I look forward to resetting it with the intention of matching the potency of an actual battle.
When I bear (mediated) witness to these clips of ball scenes, I am aware of my own involuntary physical responses - wanting to vocalize, cry out, move. (I must note here that I am dying to attend a live ball competition) There is something in this style/logic that speaks to some part of my movement base - something about letting a ferocious presence tumble out into the external world rather than keeping this "other" persona internalized.
Right now I can admit to occupying a space of delight. I am savoring the visceral reaction and the resulting divine pleasure more than attempting to understand this phenomenon through conventional analytical thought.
But there are seeds of ideas that I want to explore as I anticipate deconstructing this movement style/logic in its context(s):
Men signing women….Men expanding notions of manliness….Women wanting to experiment with the kind of "performance" that happens when men signify womanness…Or is the spectre of woman even part of this analysis? What and who is really being “performed”? And what work is “performance” doing?
This is perhaps the most direct illustration of fierceness as a technique for living – it is a mask, it can cut a competitor to shreds, it is training to stay a step ahead, to stand up for oneself. Performance, in this instance, is also a challenge to repression. It is the laying bare of taboos and the disenfranchised (so often these two are co-joined) - blackness, maleness, bodies, the popular, the poor, the young and reveling in the human beauty to be found in these forms and communities. It is the pleasure of long arms and flowery wrists taking space and being recognized (finally) as gorgeous and valuable. It is hands akimbo on male hips while head cocks sidewise in a body gesture more commonly associated with the codes of (black) womens’ body language as if to say there is no unitary dress code for gender here - all narratives are free to expand. It is a challenge to an onlooker to see through the guise being performed and to call one on it if the performance falls short. It is a code of survival as one must work, eat, serve one's competitor.
In this place, performance is serious business. It is the affirmation of life even as it is embodied testimony of the harshness of life.
isislady |
Latest page update: made by isislady
, Dec 7 2008, 8:32 AM EST
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