Edgar Degas. A French born artist who identified and engaged with paintings of dancers.

Below are some images of the paintings Martin told me to have a look at. These paintings are very traditional in reference to how a dancer should look like. After having a closer look at the paintings, the dancers look quite lonely, even though they are with other dancers. It makes you think about what life would be like as a professional dancer and how much work they have to put in to look  a certain way. They also look quite sad. None of the dancers look happy to be dancing. These paintings make you think  about the demands each dancer has to go through and makes me wonder about my developing idea of learning to dance.

References

Edgar-degas.org, (2015). The complete works – Edgar Degas – Page 1. [online] Available at: http://www.edgar-degas.org/the-complete-works.html [Accessed 22 Apr. 2015]. 

Since my last blog post, I have been exploring the idea of body image and body size and how that relates to what society says you can and cannot do. I will be focusing on my own experience of my struggle with accepting how my body looks.

From a young age, particularly in primary school, I was bullied because of the way I looked. I have always been tall and I had big feet, but it was this bullying that inspired me to change the way I looked. In secondary school I was always involved with sport, no matter what it was, from rugby and netball to running and shot put. I dropped the pounds and toned up, but I was still bullied because I was still bigger than everyone else.  It was only when I decided to ignore the comments because I can’t change my height or the muscles I built.

Now I am in university, I have noticed the change in my body. I have put on a lot of weight and I admit that, but that shouldn’t stop me from doing what I want to do. I know I can loose the weight again but just because I have  put the weight on, doesn’t mean I can’t be happy and not pursue the things I want to achieve.

My performance is an exploration of this and has developed when I have not been taken seriously in auditions, especially dance auditions because of my size. So I am going to change this. I am going to prove to those who told me I can’t do something by performing a dance routine. I am challenging those ‘rules’ that society has placed due to peoples image.

I will take my own research and explore why a persons size is constantly being challenged. In addition I will constantly document my findings and my own feelings/ development towards my performance.

In class, for the past two weeks, we’ve been asked to start thinking about material for our solo performance. 

In the first week, we were instructed to share something personal and to tell it to the rest of the class. This little story should only last five minutes but would see how we delivered the story. My story was about the relationship between me and my little sister. The story started with me stating how I am a bitch to my sister. I mean, when she was born I went to see her for the first time and decided I did not like her, as she was not the little brother I had hoped for, and took it upon myself to put her in the hospital bin. After this little incident, I started to warm to her like a four year old older sister would with a new toy, and played little role play games with her. Believe it or not, this ended badly too. Playing the role of the doctor feeding my little sister, the patient, eye drops that I found on the side left my sister hallucinating and running into walls while talking to these strange people she was seeing. Off she went to the hospital getting her stomach pumped while I was grounded and sent to my room, screaming to people to passed by to save me. Oh, but she had her fair share of revenge, all the fights and snitching that went on between us. It’s safe to say now that we do love each other, if she ever got into trouble I would be the first person she would contact. But it is still fun to wind her up. That’s what sisters are for.

My sister, Megan, aged 2 with my dad.

In the second week, we were asked to share a diary entry. For this, I wanted to share something that I experienced a year ago, and something that has altered my life mentally for a long time. The context of the diary entry is something I do not tell a lot of people as there is a lot of surrounding stigma, and people who I have told who I thought were my friends, well, turned out to be very two faced and are no longer friends of mine. I felt like there was a lot of trust within my class and after sharing my diary entry with them, I felt a great weight was lifted off of my shoulders. I’ve realised that in solo performance, to get a honest performance you have to be honest with yourself, and this diary entry and the context surrounding it is something I would like to experiment with further.

With both little performances, I have always tried to play with the idea of comedy, as this is something I do in every day life. Hiding traumas I have experienced with a little joke at the end to lighten the mood, but still making sure my point was made. This is something I would like to develop and will be looking in to similar female comedians to study there delivery on stage.

Marina Abramovic, born 30th November 1946. Became a visual artist within the performance art industry.

Marina Abramovic

Yesterday, in my Solo Performance class, a discussion arose regarding Abramovic. Is she really an artist performer?

Abramovic has been known for her shocking performances, such as Rhythm 10 (1973), where she took twenty knives and played rhythm roulette to Rhythm 0 (1974), where Abramovic stood in a room which had seventy-two objects that could induce pain or pleasure, and told the audience to choose.

This is where the discussion started to heat up. The question, is Abramovic’s work really art?

My argument was that yes, it was and still is. She uses her body as a piece of art. She pushes her art to the extreme which, understandably questions the artists works, but just because she is extreme doesn’t mean it is not art. For example, Rhythm 0. Abramovic stood in the room where the audience were participants. There was no influence for the audience to inflict pain, as they could of easily chose one of the seventy-two objects that didn’t inflict pain, however eighty percent of the audience chose to harm Abramovic. With no influence, they were becoming the extremist. Abramovic was the art and the audience the artist. This questions, is her work really extreme or are the audience the ones who push to the extreme.

You could also say that the real artwork of Abramovic is the discussion after her extreme performances. Years, even decades have passed and we are still discussing her work, and in my opinion, we still should.

Major Tom performed at Lincoln Performing Arts Centre on Thursday 5th February.

Major Tom and Victoria Melody

http://www.thepublicreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/Major-tom.jpg

This one-woman theatrical show was about how Victoria got a dog, a Basset Hound called Major Tom, and how Victoria followed advice from family and friends who encouraged her to enter Major Tom into dog shows. After a very turbulent start, and well, ending too, Victoria realised what she was putting Major Tom through and started to enter herself into something very similar, a pageant show (for humans). She herself became Mrs Brighton and the story then became about the similarities Major Tom and Victoria experienced as they went through a very similar journey together.

To be completely honest, the dog was the selling point for me. I’m a dog person, not a beauty queen lover who is jealous of the fake tan, fake smiles, and the fake support for world peace, (maybe I am a little bit but that’s not the point here.) However, when I was watching and listening to what Victoria was saying, I realised she knew what she was putting herself through. She came across as being really down to earth and was doing this for the experience. Yes, she admitted to becoming a little vain, but comparing her experience to that of Major Toms, humoured me.

In the post show talk she explained how she documents hundreds of hours of video footage to create her one woman shows which also made up a lot of Major Tom. I thought this would be a very useful practice for me, to record as much as I can, not just videos but keep a notebook with me and write down any ideas or take photos to use within my solo performance.

Another interesting technique Victoria used was that she spoke from memory. She did this by recording herself speaking about her experience and then transcribed these so she could choose what would make the cut, and what would not.

Overall, I really liked Major Tom. As one of my first solo performances I have seen, it was a great start and I am looking forward to seeing her new performance, Hair Peace.