Working my way through the spirals and layers of material that I have while attempting to take vast unspoken concepts I have worked with my whole life and trying for the first time to articulate them in my own words. I think I had a break through this week and feel a bit of momentum. Although this post is a bit all over the place it indirectly touches on all three of my themes and puts into words things I have struggled with. I have been driven by this idea of defining the intuitive aspects of art and art instruction. I have embraced the idea that there is often an overlap with the language of world religions that remains unspoken. Art like religion addresses human suffering and a relationship to big life questions. So in the spirit of taking a stab at "big life issue," I have continued to elaborate on theme #1 from last week: Defining Lynn with
theoretical connections.
With an intended commitment to deepen understanding, academic
theorists in the jazz dance paradigm look backward to codify, and
make sense of historical and cultural differences within the jazz dance form. By
sorting out differences, accentuating them, and creating boundaries around each
perceived lineage, details of a more blended fusion becomes hidden and
distorted through the lens of the hierarchical categories. This hierarchical
stance renders subtlety insignificant and blinds us to the similarities that prevail across lines of difference, ignoring the possibility of a common ground.
Artistic forms often engage with broad concepts and ideas around
“big life issues,” such as birth, life, and death that have generally fallen
under the heading of religious. The ritualistic practice of any art form
participates in broader conversations and addresses vital matters.
This week I read from An
Aesthetic of the Cool, by Robert Farris Thompson. Thompson is an American historian and writer with a focus in
the art of Africa and the Afro-Atlantic world. He has been a member of the
faculty at Yale University since 1965.This article provides an in-depth
foundation for the etymology of the word cool,
tracing its African origins. Written in 1966, Aesthetic of the Cool is cited as being the first academic article
documenting the concept of cool and has been referenced by jazz music
historians, including Lewis MacAdams in Birth
of the Cool. Beat, Bebop and the American Avant-Garde[1].
Accepting the belief in current jazz dance academia that jazz music and
jazz dance evolved synchronously[2],
Thompson’s research provides language that is inherent in the pedagogy of LS
and her jazz dance technique. LS states, “For me, everything begins with the
music[3].”
Raised in
the taunting melodies and harmonies of classical music, trained with the
heartbeat of Russian ballet, vetted by the Broadway jazz dance circuit and
infused with the African polyrhythms of jazz music in the 60s, 70s and 80s, LS’s
life evolved in a way that crafted vast musical principles into a foundation of
impenetrable spirit. Moved by the rhythm of generations before her and conducted
by the wisdom of experience she created a dance pedagogy that transformed
countless lives across multiple continents. Given her integrated relationship with music and dance, there are two
pieces of Thompson’s article that directly link to the legacy of LS.
The first significant piece of this article relates cool to transcendental balance as it evolved from West African
Manding divination[4]. Prior to the European colonization of
West Africa, divination was an
accepted form of religious practice in which a diviner was consulted and accepted methods practiced to access what
was considered to be spiritually authenticated knowledge regarding the life’s
“big questions.” These questions included things like relationships, marriage,
birth and death. Depending on the African tribe, the methods for divination
varied in form. Methods ranged from basket divining where sacred objects
pertaining to the question at hand were placed in a basket, a ceremony
performed and symbolic answers provided by the diviner to secret water drumming
ceremonies invoking the spirit of the dead[5].
Within divination there is a convergence of the spiritual seeking, ritual,
symbolism, community, social redress, and ultimately transcendence. Similarly,
in An Aesthetic of the Cool,
Thompson explains that the concept of cool
is related to spiritual transcendence, representing
the mastery of body mind integration. This mastery is exhibited when an
artist can channel their emotion into the work of their artistic craft and
remain aloof in their composure as opposed to being consumed by the emotions of
reality. The goal of this aesthetic is to act
as though one's mind were in another
world, the world of spirit. This does not imply disconnection, but
rather a spiritual development to the higher self.
The language of West African
divination, and Thomspon’s Aesthetic of
the Cool is reminiscent of McKenzie’s definition in The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory
and Criticism
regarding “cultural performance” that was permeating the artistic landscape of
theater and dance in downtown Manhattan during the 1970s. McKenzie outlines
three identifying components of cultural performance. First it involves social
and self-reflection through dramatization or embodiment of symbolic forms.
Second alternative embodiments are presented. Third, inherent in cultural
performance is the possibility for conversation or transformation of both
individuals and society.
LS is a practitioner of body mind
integration. She lived her life seeking answers to life’s big questions through
the vehicle of movement, teaching movement and the training of movement
teachers. Jazz music and dance has been her backdrop and provided the tools.
Her quest for answers to her own suffering have led to the evolution of her
Simonson Technique. Contained within her class structure, including her
renowned 10-minute warm up are the solutions she conjured in the form of
anatomy and alignment principles. Elia,
in Simonson Says, reminds the reader
that LS has been a teacher for more than thirty years in fifteen different
countries[6].
LS draws on these experiences to continuously hone the ritualistic nature of
her jazz dance class and pass it on to generations of new teachers. The four
basic principles of S…. Jazz Technique are built on the personal mastery of
body mind integration and the aesthetic of the cool outlined by Thompson:
According to LS, by increasing awareness, a dancer has the potential to dance
injury free throughout their lifetime. Every student contains the capacity to
be taught to dance by integrating their body and mind. When the student is
recognized and witnessed as a whole person, not just as a technician, then
their awareness changes. The rhythms, energy and style of jazz music are the
foundational inspiration for movement.
LS performs her role as teacher not
unlike that of the Manding diviner. The sacred space created in her movement
studio contains a convergence of the spiritual seeking of the student, ritual
repetition of the warm-up and structure of the class with its improvisation
segment and the expressive component of the performance time at the end of the
2-hour transformation, symbolism in the physical movement, community, social
redress, and ultimately transcendence.
The second
significant piece of An Aesthetic of the
Cool, relates to the historical significance of the word cool as it relates to specifically to
jazz music, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. According to Thompson, the word cool has political implications as it
is an expression of community. That community may be a relationship between
more experienced musicians in a jazz club excluding the less experienced, or a
relationship between a musician and a dancer connected to a rhythmic vocabulary
beyond the onlookers. Thompson claims that, cool
can be a function of craft in fields of expressive performance like dance
and music. Used in this way, the term is an acknowledgement of a deeply
motivated, and complexly intertwined sense of elements serious and pleasurable,
disciplined and playful, consciously and artistically interwoven. It is from the mastery of these skills that
relationships are formed. Inherent in these skills is a collectedness of mind
that allows for availability to the relationship at hand. Thompson clarifies
that according to Yoruba tradition, drumming is only cool if the drummer is not too self-involved and therefore open to
the shared communal expression of the music. The 1940s and 50s gave birth to
some of the finest jazz artists ever to exist. The introduction of heroin into
the landscape fueled the ephemeral rise and fall of many a cool jazz musician. Drug addiction does not allow room to be
anything but self-involved shifting the journey from integration of body and
spirit to one of the spiritually bankrupt drug-high. However, at the height of cool, many jazz musicians have been
documented in their ultimate marriage of body and soul through their instrument
of choice, inspiring countless musicians and dancers.
In Birth
of the Cool. Beat, Bebop and the American Avante Garde, author Lewis
MacAdams weaves a cultural history of the American avante-garde in the 1940s
and 1950s through the lens of jazz musicians in New York City. MacAdams
documents the history of “the cool,” tracing its origins to the fringes of
society, particularly African American men living in resistance to the
oppression of white America, the Jim Crow laws and the betrayal of the same
country they were expected to fight for in World War II. MacAdams follows the
concept of cool from its darkest days in the shadows of Manhattan to its
journey to mainstream America via the fusion of musicians, poets and
philosophers of the time. Jazz musicians like Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie,
Charles Mingus. Poets like Allen Ginsberg and Juliette Greco. Writers like Zora
Neale Hurston and Jack Kerouvac. With a focus on jazz musicians of this period,
MacAdams brings a cultural foundation, local history and superb storytelling to
life in the present. The author traverses the boundaries of social class, race,
and art form making connections between people, places and language[7]. LS was an artistic product of these times, and for her everything
was motivated by the music. She responded to the interdisciplinary call of the cool.
Cool Jazz followed on the heels of
Bebop. It merged the philosophical underpinnings of Existentialism and the
music of Bebop[8]. It
signified the transition of jazz musicians from clowns and entertainers to that
of artist. It was a marriage of classically trained musicians, African rhythmic
foundations and culturally savvy individuals. In
1957, cool jazz pioneer Miles Davis
released his famous album entitled, The
Birth of the Cool, on Capital Records. In this compilation, Davis treated his ensemble as a single
section based on a model of choral music to achieve a voice like quality with a
“purified aesthetic[9].” It was an overtly modern
sound with radical implications.
In the 1950s, LS’s girlfriend Vicki brought the cool jazz of Miles Davis back from
San Francisco and the two started improvising around the living room.
Hearing that kind of jazz transformed LS. It was as if there was already
something familiar in the sound and it was new all at the same time. Her
connection to the music was intuitive. Or perhaps, it was the coolness as
achieved by Davis and transported through the notes to LS. Suggested in the lore
of the West African etymology, through the aesthetic of the cool, one person
can restore another to serenity though the
newness, purity, rebirth and healing contained within. LS’s connection to the
music of Miles Davis marked the beginning of a life-long journey intertwined
with jazz music and the spiritual metaphors contained within it.
In 1984, Dance Space Inc was founded
at 622 Broadway, NYC by LS and four of her students, LD, DP, MG, and CW. It was
to be the home of the Simonson Technique for more than ten years. It contained five studios, two performance
spaces, a Pilates room, an Alexander Technique room and a non-profit wing that
provided funding for independent artists. The five directors formed a community
around the principles of the Simonson Technique and ranging through four levels
from beginner to advanced. Jazz music was at the heart of this community and
all five directors would eventually follow the call of the cool down different pathways in relation to the music of jazz.
However, the community had a political leaning as described by Thomspon simply
by aligning around the Simonson principles. Blocks away, another new dance
studio opened within months on Dance Space Inc. Dance Space Inc, its foundation
vibrating with the live musical rhythms of ancient African traditions, would
long outlast the short-lived Pineapple Dance Center.
I believe that Thompson’s etymology
best suits the jazz culture and rests at the foundation of Lynn Simonson’s
evolution as a jazz dance artist and teacher. Thompson states that,
“Manifest within this
philosophy of the cool is the belief that the purer,
the cooler a person becomes,
the more ancestral he becomes. In other words,
mastery of self enables a person to transcend time and elude preoccupation. He
can concentrate or she can concentrate upon truly important matters of social
balance and aesthetic substance, creative matters, full of motion and
brilliance. Quite logically, such gifted men and women are, in some
West and Central
African cultures, compared in their coolness to the strong, moving, pure waters
of the river.”
Thompson’s description provides the framework for Lynn
Simonson’s approach to dance, choreography, jazz music, improvisation and life.
Simonson emphasizes the importance of carrying things forward while honoring
the past. The balance of these components create the transcendental balance
that connects back to the Manding people of West Africa. This honoring of the
continuum past was lacking in the definition of improvisation outlined by Carter
in Improvisation in Dance. On the other hand, Thompson points out the notion
of full embodiment symbolized in
the aesthetic of the cool. In this sense, argues Thompson, “coolness
imparts order not through ascetic subtraction of body from mind, but quite the
contrary, by means of ecstatic unions of
sensuous pleasure and moral responsibility.” This description explains a sense of ordinary lives raised to an
idealized level, not the childish nihilism referenced by Carter.
(Next up…..How does Lynn represent the ecstatic union??)
This
week I would like to flush out the details of LS’s pedagogy. Outlining her
technique, the principles, and her framework for training teachers.
Resources:
De Boeck, Filip, and René Devisch. “Ndembu, Luunda and Yaka Divination
Compared: From Representation and Social Engineering to Embodiment and
Worldmaking.” Journal of Religion in Africa, vol. 24, no. 2, 1994,
pp. 98–133. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1581328.
Elia, S. Dance
Teacher Magazine. Simonson Says. 2001.
Gioia, T. The
History of Jazz. Second Edition. Oxford University Press. New York. 2011.
Gridley, Mark
C. "Styles",
in Ron Wynn (ed.), All
Music Guide to Jazz. San Francisco. 1994.
Guarino,
L. & Wendy Oliver. Jazz Dance. A
History of the Roots and Branches. University Press of Florida. FL. 2014.
MacAdams, L. Birth of the Cool. Beat, Bebop, and the
American Avante-Garde. The Free Press. New York. 2001.
McKenzie, J. Performance studies/ The Johns Hopkins Guide
to Literary Theory and Criticism. Performance
Studies. Second Edition. 2005. https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/architecturebodyperformance/files/257077.htm. Retrieved on 8/1/2019
Silva, S. Taking
Divination Seriously. From Mumbo Jumbo to World Views and Ways of Life.
Silva, S. Taking Divination Seriously: From Mumbo
Jumbo to Worldviews and Ways of Life.
settings
settings
Religions 2018, 9(12), 394; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9120394
Received: 24 August 2018 /
Accepted: 29 November 2018 / Published: 30 November 2018
Thompson, R.F. An
Aesthetic of the Cool. UCLA James S.
Coleman African Studies Center. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3334749
Accessed: 14-09-2019
Zimmer, B. When
Cool Got Cool. Visual Thesaurus. May 27, 2010. Retrieved on 10/10/2019:
[1] MacAdams, L. Birth of the Cool. Beat, Bebop, and the American Avante-Garde. The
Free Press. New York. 2001. P. 70
[2] Guarino, L. &
Wendy Oliver. Jazz Dance. A History of
the Roots and Branches. University Press of Florida. FL. 2014. P xvii.
[4] Thompson, R.F. An
Aesthetic of the Cool. UCLA James S.
Coleman African Studies Center. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3334749
Accessed: 14-09-2019
[5] Silva, S. Taking Divination Seriously. From Mumbo Jumbo to World Views and Ways
of Life.
Silva,
S. Taking Divination Seriously: From
Mumbo Jumbo to Worldviews and Ways of Life.
settings
settings
Religions 2018, 9(12), 394; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9120394
Received:
24 August 2018 / Accepted: 29 November 2018 / Published: 30 November 2018
[6] Elia, S. Dance
Teacher Magazine. Simonson Says. 2001.
[7]
MacAdams, L. Birth of the Cool. Beat, Bebop, and the
American Avante-Garde. The Free Press. New York. 2001. P24.
[8]
Ibid. P24
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