...What is ballet to you? Ballet is not just dancers twirling around on the tips of their toes, it's more to it. There are actually many different styles and techniques. “They sometimes tell stories, contain narrative action, characters, and a beginning and end. The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty are famous story ballets from the 19th century” (“Types and Styles of Ballet”). Dance itself is a chain of measured and pattern bodily movements that are usually performed to differents types of music. It is a form of art that is performed in many cultures by people to express themselves and their ideas through movement. Dance is a profession for some and a passion for others. Ballet is so popular because not only was it the first type of dance to...
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...October 2014 Table of contents Abstract 3 Introduction 4 Combination and balance 5 Stage design, lighting and costume modeling 6 Understanding and harvest 8 Conclusion 9 Reference: 11 Appendix: 12 Abstract This essay will explore the use of contact improvisation in choreography and performance through analyzing an artwork in a dress rehearsal of Sydney Dance Company's production ‘Louder than Words’. A brief description of the artwork ‘Louder than Words’ will be introduced at the first. Then I will go further discussion about how contact improvisation inspires and integrates into the choreography include other different dance types such as ballet, modern dance and pedestrian movement in this artwork. Moreover, I will analyze how contact improvisation match up with stage design, lighting and costume modeling to sublimate the choreography and performance for an artwork. Finally, I share some understanding by myself about ‘ Parenthesis of Louder than Words’ and the harvest through learning choreography of contact improvisation. Introduction Louder than Words features two world premieres, one by Sydney Dance Company’s Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela and the other by Greek famous choreographer Andonis Foniadakis (Clive Paget, 2014). This essay will focus a dress rehearsal of Andonis Foniadakis’s new work Parenthesis to have a discussion (Appendix 1.1). Parenthesis is about relationships, but taking in a broader range from social and group to intimate personal contact...
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...Introduction In my essay I am going to be discussing ‘Tragic Ballets ‘and ‘Heroines’. As a child I spent a brief period studying ballet and on a visit to Prague, in February 2013, I enjoyed watching the Russian Ballet perform 'Giselle' at the Prague State Opera House. I have often wondered why so many ballets and the female heroines in them end in tragedy. My essay will discuss the issues that female heroines face and the events that eventually bring them to their fate. I will also discuss the origins and definitions of ‘heroine’ and ‘tragedy’. In order to examine my chosen themes I started my investigation by watching, analysing and comparing the films ‘Black Swan’, ‘The Red Shoes’ and the ballet ‘Giselle’. I read the feminist writings of Marina Warner on the portrayal of women, the Catholic Church and also her book on ‘Joan of Arc. In my essay I will be discussing the themes of love, conquest, devotion, deception, spirituality and how they play a role in altering the lives of the female protagonists in various different situations and offer my own opinions on how the tragedies are formed. I will begin my comparison of the female heroines that I will be discussing, with Giselle. Figure 1'Giselle and Count Albrecht' The Russian Ballet Giselle is a poor peasant’s daughter who falls in love with Count Albrecht. Count Albrecht’s character plays the main part in the protagonist Giselle’s downfall during the ballet, as he breaks her heart when she learns that he is betrothed...
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...Gender is a common topic in society, it has essential role in people’s lives. The word gender can relate to sex, but sex is biological differences between men and women while gender refers to cultural and social differences between men and women. Masculinity is a part of gender, it is a set of qualities, characteristics or roles generally considered typical of a man. There are many different kinds of masculinities, each one can represent a group of man. This essay will critically analyze the characters of masculinities in light of gender relations, and use the film, Billy Elliot to support the argument. In this film, Billy’s father, Jackie is a traditional man. He had traditional thought of the society and could not accept some new ideas. He thought a real man should do football or boxing rather than ballet, so he objected Billy to learn ballet. (Billy Elliot, 2000). Not Billy’s father, but also his brother Tony, has the traditional thought as his father. The important reason is that both Tony and Jackie are miners, they should take responsibility of the family. They had heavy pressure from their works, so they became more aggressive and are more close to macho. Coal-mining is essentially based on physical strength, coal-mining community can be seen as patriarchal society. So they had power to make decisions in family. Patriarchy is a social system in which the male is the primary authority figure central to social organization and father hold authority over women and children...
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...Bedinghaus explains that the unique styles of dance are identified by the appearance and the physical characteristics. There are special shoes and costumes based on what the specific style of movements are in each dance. You would not do ballet in hip hop shoes because it does not look the part of a ballerina nor would it be safe. Along with the clothing, music is also very important for the different styles. Dancers listen to the music to tell a story and show what they are feeling through their choreography. “People enjoy expressing themselves through movement. The word "dance" conjures up different images for different people’’( Bedinghaus 1). For each person around the world, dance means something different to each one of them. People who dance professionally define dance much differently than...
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...masculinity) This essay examines the visual representations of working-class masculinity portrayed in Stephen Daldry‟s stage musical adaptation of the film Billy Elliot (2000). After a brief discussion of the portrayal of the male ballet dancer in the dancing scene since the 1990s and the inherent voyeuristic inclinations of contemporary audiences, the analysis will focus on five aspects of male presence in Billy Elliot the Musical (2005). The dynamics of working-class masculinity will be contextualised within the framework of the family, the older female, the community, the self and the act of dancing itself. These aspects will be referenced using reviews of the musical version of the work and articles written on the film of Billy Elliot. However, have today‟s audiences conditioned their gendered gaze to allow for the male ballet dancer to dominate the contemporary stage? Or do we still control our social perceptions and cultural associations with out-of-date images of the past? Have popular perceptions about the male ballet dancer changed? Is there a birth of a new male dancer phenomenon? However, have today‟s audiences conditioned their gendered gaze to allow for the male ballet dancer to dominate the contemporary stage? Or do we still control our social perceptions and cultural associations with out-of-date images of the past? Have popular perceptions about the male ballet dancer changed? Is there a birth of a new male dancer phenomenon?Even if nineteenth-century ballet became „so...
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...How children should be raised 1: Give an account of childraising principles as presented in the three texts. The first text I would like to start from is the one called "Why I love my strict Chinese mom", by the 18-year-old Sophia Chua-Rubbenfeld. Many things have been written about Sophia’s mother, and that is why she decided to write an essay to her mother, to convince the critics that they were wrong. In this essay, she is writing about her mother’s upbringing from her point of view and that she is very thankful for her, because her strict parenting has forced her to be more independent. In the essay, she tells us some of the childraising principles her mother used on her. When she got to high school, her mother realized that she needed to grow up. All the girls in her school started using makeups and that is why she took Sophia to a drugstore to buy some makeup and taught her to use it. Another thing is that the mother taught Sophia to live life to the fullest. She was not satisfied, when Sophia did not do her best at something and therefore she taught her to push her body, to the limits of her potential. Her father has also had an impact on her upbringing. He taught her not to speculate about people’s opinion and to make her own decisions. The other text is the one called "Let them eat pizza: Parenting guru's recipe for bringing up children", by Kate Loveys. Dr Bryan Caplan is the opposite of “Tiger Mum”. When it comes to parenting children, Dr Bryan Caplan thinks...
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...The Osage Firebird by Sudipta Bardhan shows about Betty Marie Tallchief’s life and how she became famous. Her life exemplified overcoming challenges and hardships in order to do what she loved. In the passage, Bardhan ordered the subsections in a way that would be the most chronological of Betty’s life. This makes it very convenient to do research on her biography. This essay will be divided into three different topic paragraphs: Betty’s early life, her hidden talent, and her Legacy. Betty Marie’s early life was influenced by her grandmother’s heritage and Indian culture. She spent some of her childhood on the reservation in Oklahoma. Betty treasured the tales and the pride of the Osage culture that Grandmother Tallchief taught her. In her...
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...November 2012 Analytical Essay Jean Kwok: Where The Gods Fly Imagine permanently moving to a country where the language, the culture... everything is foreign to you. This is the reality of most immigrant parents, who try to raise their children safely in a foreign country, where strong influences can strip a person of their cultural identity. This is the exact situation we are dragged into, in the short story 'Where The Gods Fly' written by Jean Kwok. Here we meet a Chinese mother's unwelcoming approach, towards her daughter's passion for the arts of ballet. The story is told by a first person narrator, from a mothers perspective. Her, her husband and her daughter migrated from China when her daughter, Pearl, was still a child. We notice - while reading the story - that the narrator shifts in the grammatical tense, which is what structures the plot of the story. In the present narrative tense, we find the mother in some sort of religious state of mind where she prays to certain gods and spirits, for example: “Ah, Amitabha, Buddha of great compassion, I whisper...” (P. 1, L. 24). While she finds herself in this state, she is reminded of their, her family's, life since they moved from China to America, these parts of the story are, obviously, told in the past tense. The story begins in the present tense, as a sort of exposition. We are introduced to the narrator's situation, the main conflict of the story: she wants to take her daughter out of ballet school, as she predicts:...
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...American music being define through Aaron Copland's music. Although there are many sources used for this study the following represent the sources most critical for this study. Some of the sources that are more biographical in nature such as “Composer from the Brooklyn: An Autobiographical Sketch,” will allow this paper to shape the parameters of its argument by placing Copland in Paris and establishing the effects of him living and studying there. Copland said, “It was a fortunate time to be studying music in France. All the pent-up energies of the war years were unloosed. Paris was an international proving ground for all the newest tendencies in music.”1 Since this paper is arguing against Copland as the epitome of American music this essay provides background information that will be use against Copland as being truly American artistically speaking. In Annegret Fauser article, “Aaron Copland, Nadia Boulanger and the Making of an 'American' Composer” she points to Boulange as a key factor in Copland development into the American composer we know him as. The purpose of her article was to understand Boulanger role in shaping Copland's concepts of national identity in music.2 She also alludes to Copland pointing to Paris as the origins of his nationalism. Fauser wrote, “Copland himself ad repeated in almost all the secondary literature points to Paris as the source of Copland's nationalism, especially his discovery of jazz as an “American” sounding musical vernacular in the defamiliarized...
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...Child raising Engelsk 1 1) The first texts is about a very strict Chinese mother of her 18-year-old girl. The essay is written by the mother’s 18-year old daughter because her mother published an essay called “Battel Hymn of the Tiger Mother”. This essay got many negative responses from the readers and the daughter explains her childhood for the readers of “The Wall Street Journal”. In the essay Sofia, the daughter of the Tiger Mother, tells about how her strict mother handled her as a child and “how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids”. This Chinese mother raised Sophia this way; if Sophia didn’t do her best her mother would say it to her. As an example, Sophia writes in the text that once she gave her mother a birthday card, and how her mother didn’t approve it, because she knew the Sophia hadn’t tried her best. Sophia had a lot of rules example she couldn’t be with her classmates after school, have playdates in her early childhood, watch TV, play computer games or play any other instruments than piano or violin. Sophia didn’t mind, for her it was to have goals in life and she didn’t care what people thought of her strict Tiger Mother. For her it was the perfect child raising. In the second texts, a parenting guru tells that he think that children should be allowed to watch more television and eat pizza, he believes that parent try to hard raising there kids. He thinks that the parent should let their kids handle their own life, it will...
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...Select one of the national-based cultural examples presented in Gannon and Pillai (2012) (understanding Global Culture) and analyse the extent to which the metaphor explains or describes the prevalent business culture in that country. The Russian Ballet Word Count: 2450 This essay is going to examine a chapter from the book “Understanding Global Cultures” of Gannon and Pillai (2012) – “The Russian Ballet” and for what extend it speaks the truth about the Russian business culture. As well, the essay is going to provide some extra information and will provide a clearer example of what is the Russian business culture like. Through the essay, I am going to provide different examples and case studies, which explains why do culture clashes matter. The world has become more globalised and connected through the internet. It made possible the formation of all kinds of communities of people with common interests, who are all around the world. Today, information is much more accessible and easily exchanged, as a result from today’s technology, as well as many people can afford to travel around the world. As a result, from this business practices have become more global and cross-cultural. Business must learn to market products in different countries and to deal with their different government restrictions. As a conclusion from the above in the future business ethics would become increasingly less adequate. (Shirin, 2011) Culture is day- to-...
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...To what extend the need of being perfect leads man to its own destruction? Perfection seen through the film “The Black Swan”. Claudia Patricia Villacís Galarza IB Code: 001421-054 Words: 3980 Abstract The research question of this extended essay is: To what extend the need of being perfect leads man to its own destruction? It is an analysis of perfection through the film The Black Swan. In the film the main character, Nina, is an obsessed ballerina who at the end destroyed her own life. I began the essay trying to prove that her obsession with being perfect is what leaded her to her destruction and death, but after analyzing the movie it all turned around. I based my investigation in reviews of the film, different type of articles; such as from doctors who give their opinion about Nina’s behavior. These ones in particular where the most important for the answer of my research question, because these doctors have analyzed the mental condition of Nina and together with my own opinion it helped me to come to a conclusion. I also focused on the opinion of various dancers about the film, because they are the ones that understand the world of ballet more than anyone else. At last there were also interviews with the director to explain why he decided to make this movie and what he was trying to prove through it. The movie was, of course my principal source, I applied the whole investigation in the analysis of the movie. Then after having read all that information and having...
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...be heavy. At waist level of the door there is a keyhole in the doorknob and as I slide my key in I notice the several scratches on it caused by the countless of times when I accidentally miss the keyhole. As I slowly open the door, one first notices the barren cement walls that have been painted white. The carpeted floor has a grey checked design that fills the floor around the entire room. To the right there is a full length mirror carefully stucked to the wall with 3M tape. With that being the main reason why every time I look at it, the uncertainty of it falling to the floor overcomes over me. Below lies a shoe rack containing shoes made for every casual to formal occasion, from orange rubber slippers to the shiniest gold glittered ballet flats that blind you with one look. I turn to my left and I see a spectrum of rainbow colored clothes hanging from uniform black hangers bursting out of the closet. They are arranged so neatly that suffice to say any mum would be proud. Below them are two white and black laundry baskets for the easy sorting of light and dark colored clothes. As I approach the bed across the room, the smell of freshly laundered clothes hits me. I easily identify the source as the two white crisp shirts hanging by the side of the bed. Looking down I notice the mattress covered fully in a theme of white consisting of a pillow, bolster and a comforter. On top of the bed sits a closed laptop with bright blue case and numerous stickers plastered all...
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...My name is Yumeng Shi and I think I would be a good addition to the National Junior Honor Society because I have demonstrated all of the five pillars throughout my middle school years. Scholarship, character, leadership, community service, and citizenship are all important traits in my life. In this essay, I hope you will learn why I am a beneficial part of the National Junior Honor Society. Throughout my middle school career, my grades have all been on the High Honor Roll. In 6th grade, I earned the Presidential Award for my academic achievements. I also take many extracurricular classes and activities, including extra math, chemistry, and Chinese classes. During the summer of 2023, I attended the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth camp...
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