“The Art of Making Dances” by Doris Humphrey

I got this book on loan from a friend, I was curious since I have choreographed a number of dances but I have never sat down and studied it myself. A book appeals to me much more than a class because classes on choreography tend to start at the mind-numbingly simple as most dancers only have experience with doing moves that have been given to them, not coming up with their own. And since I’ve been choreographing for a while I so don’t want to go back to that stage, I more want ideas I can mess around with and think about. Or feedback on a larger piece, but that’s unlikely.

The book is very comprehensive and methodological when it comes to dance. It quite literally starts with a discussion of who the choreographer is and habits that a choreographer should have when it comes to noticing movement and adapting it to other bodies. It goes through the tools of the trade like symmetry/asymmetry, phrases, the stage itself, and having multiple bodies to work with. Then there’s dynamics, rhythm, motivation, words, music, props, and finally overall form. Most chapters have a basic illustration to show what she is referring to with things like symmetry or opposition as well. It ends with a checklist and Humphrey’s thoughts on the field of dance as a whole (in the 60s anyways).

Overall, this was a great read but I think it requires a certain amount of familiarity with the dance world. She talks about existing pieces such as “Giselle” or the “Dying Swan” variation that you’d probably have to close the book and watch before going back to it. If you have that knowledge though, this is a very thorough overview of modern dance and how to think about/construct it. She really builds her knowledge from the ground up and covers everything very completely.

At the end of the book is a list of dances that she made, and I was really interested in going to find some after reading this. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like many survived, I was able to find two recreations of her work online and not much else, a few snippets really. It just goes to show how fleeting dance is as an art form, there isn’t a good way to write it down and once you’ve performed it, if someone hasn’t memorized it the choreography is truly just gone. And here’s a pioneer of modern dance whose whole body of work has been greatly reduced. Even a few dances by other people that she references I couldn’t find, the preservation just isn’t there.

Anyways, with regards to what I’ll be thinking about, she did definitely give me some ideas. I hadn’t thought much about the stage itself and how I use it beyond how center is very powerful. She has a whole chapter on entrances and exits. Bows too get a dedicated section. There’s also a bit about words and dialogue in dance which I never thought about before, but she is right in that dance is a singular art form where performers are not expected to make noise. Seems like it’d be fun to shake that up.

So this was a great read, possibly for me only, but I am very glad that I picked it up. I hope that in the future I can attend a performance of some of her choreography, it seems a shame to have read so much about it to never see it.

This Is Beautiful: Med School Smoker

 Ok so unique to the school that I'm at (I think) the med school students each year put on a silly show mocking the school and the faculty. I had never been, it's one of those things that I think is cool for sure, but I wouldn't go unless I knew someone in it. And I finally knew someone, one of my lab mates was acting in the show. It was so fun! All the music was parodies of existing music, and the plot was just Scooby Doo characters running around. But there was some great stuff here, the pit musicians and some singers were amazing! The dancing was not good at all (sigh), but that was my main complaint. 

The plot itself was also pretty good, they made the deans of the school the villains and called them out on giving themselves raises while the med school students have to pay too much tuition. I do have to wonder if this is an established route for med school students to call out authority and then they don't do it elsewhere in ways that actually impact them, but I might be overthinking it. But I was surprised that there was so much about how students are overworked and pay too much, while the administration of the school gets rich. 

Anyways, this was a ton of fun and I almost wish that I started going earlier! I hope my lab mate is able to keep doing this so I keep having a reason to attend.

“Blood of Tyrants” by Naomi Novik

We are so close here, this is the penultimate book in the Temeraire series! (Check out books one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven elsewhere on the blog.) This is definitely building up to a climax with Napoleon, and it satisfyingly has a decent amount about Laurence and Temeraire’s relationship as well. It does have some weird jumps in it though, and it unfortunately doesn’t seem as though we will be ending with the rest of Temeraire’s formation.

The book starts with Laurence washed up on shore. He’s lost all memory of the past eight years, meaning that he thinks he is still in the Navy and is the captain of a ship. As it turns out, he’s in Japan while the country is closed to foreigners, and so he is taken in by a nobleman but is effectively a prisoner. Eventually he escapes and starts to make his way across the countryside aided by a servant. Meanwhile Temeraire is going nuts trying to find Laurence and in the process they are irritating most of the Japanese officials since they aren’t supposed to be there. Hammond is being delightfully annoying trying to get Temeraire to forget it. Of course though, Laurence bursts out of the woods to only be confronted by this protective dragon and hilariously when Temeraire insists that he is a captain and a prince of China Laurence only responds with “like hell I am.” Very amusing.

From there we journey to China and this is where things get interesting. My favorite parts of the book are where Laurence is trying to remember, or remembering fragments of things, and is just trying to make sense of it while his whole crew dances around certain issues like how he’s a disgraced captain and all that. There’s a very amusing passage where he realizes that Emily Roland is a girl and reads a letter from his mother asking after her and puts two and two together and starts to wonder if Emily is his daughter! Which she isn’t, but there’s another layer where his mom thinks he is the father and it’s all very confusing and funny.

Once in China, there’s an abrupt transition to an assassination attempt on Laurence and the other prince. They manage to escape unharmed, but the Emperor decides to send Laurence into China to root out some rebels that are smuggling opium from the English. They get out there and find a destroyed town, but learn that it’s an inside job, the same assassins are also trying to sow discontent in China. As part of this they find Arkaday and Tharkey who have been trying to find Laurence and warn him that Napoleon is now in Russia. Things change drastically after that, they depose the Chinese general and then Laurence and Temeraire head to Russia with the Chinese forces while the rest of the formation returns to England.

There’s so little of the book left but also all of Russia. This is the first we see of the country, turns out that the dragons there are extremely large hoarders of treasure, and the rest are very tiny and treated like servants. The Russians don’t know how to control their dragons, fundamentally, so it’s either treasure or physical violence as the group learns that in the Russian breeding grounds dragons are chained and starved. This becomes strategy, Napoleon is losing until his forces set loose a ton of breeding ground dragons who are so hungry that they start eating Russians and then fleeing to join Napoleon. The book ends with Laurence anticipating another battle with much more evenly matched forces.

There was a lot that I really liked about this book, including the loss of memory plot. Yes it is a little of “this is late in the series and we need to be reminded of a few things” but it was also very entertaining and funny. Plus it doesn’t hurt to see Laurence grow to care more for Temeraire and less for his government again. I do wish that there was more of this though, as soon as we hit China we are pretty much done with talking about it and it’s mostly mentioned in passing.

There are also some really abrupt and weird transitions, to the point where it is hard to follow. This first happens with the assassination attempt in China, I wasn’t sure if this was going to be revealed as a drill or some other plot at play here. But it was all sincere. It happens again when they decide to go to Russia, suddenly we are in Russia talking to the generals there with no sense of how we got there. The nice thing about this series is that it is similar to George R. R. Martin where Novik includes how they get from place to place instead of teleporting them so I hope that this trend does not continue.

Beyond that, it was interesting to see Russia and another outlook on how dragons are treated and integrated into human life. And I do find it fascinating how Novik continually holds up China as the exemplar for how to treat dragons rather than the “more civilized” Europe as would have been believed at the time. It’s a nice shift in power in history and how we view it by deconstructing a little why we should have thought Asia to be an inferior society.

Looking forward to the last book, I do wish we were with more beloved characters from throughout the series. Maximus and Lily have returned to England and I doubt that they would make it back in time to defeat Napoleon. I hope that there will be a way to bring them all together, I adored their presence in this book and I would hate to leave it off on a sour note.