The Role Of Sound In Storytelling
The Connection Between Writing And Dancing
Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly
“Fred Astaire represents the aristocracy when he dances,” claimed Gene Kelly, in old age, “and I represent the proletariat.” The distinction is immediately satisfying, though it’s a little harder to say why. Tall, thin and elegant, versus muscular and athletic – is that it? There’s the obvious matter of top hat and tails versus T-shirt and slacks. But Fred sometimes wore T-shirts and slacks, and was not actually that tall, he only stood as if he were, and when moving always appeared elevated, to be skimming across whichever surface: the floor, the ceiling, an ice rink, a bandstand. Gene’s centre of gravity was far lower: he bends his knees, he hunkers down. Kelly is grounded, firmly planted, where Astaire is untethered, free-floating.
When I write I feel there’s usually a choice to be made between the grounded and the floating. The ground I am thinking of in this case is language as we meet it in its “commonsense” mode. The language of the television, of the supermarket, of the advert, the newspaper, the government, the daily “public” conversation. Some writers like to walk this ground, recreate it, break bits of it off and use it to their advantage, where others barely recognise its existence. Nabokov – a literal aristocrat as well as an aesthetic one – barely ever put a toe upon it. His language is “literary”, far from what we think of as our shared linguistic home.
Astaire is clearly not an experimental dancer like Twyla Tharp or Pina Bausch, but he is surreal in the sense of surpassing the real. He is transcendent. When he dances a question proposes itself: what if a body moved like this through the world? But it is only a rhetorical, fantastical question, for no bodies move like Astaire, no, we only move like him in our dreams.
But Astaire, when he dances, has nothing to do with hard work (although we know, from biographies, that he worked very hard, behind the scenes). He is “poetry in motion”. His movements are so removed from ours that he sets a limit on our own ambitions. Nobody hopes or expects to dance like Astaire, just as nobody really expects to write like Nabokov.
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Musicians: Why You Should be Using Content Marketing
Why Content Marketing Works So Well
Think about it like this – would you be more likely to purchase an album from an artist you follow if you just saw one or two announcements about it’s release? Or if you had been following a weekly vlog series documenting the creation process that went into creating the album for a month?
You see? It’s presented like entertainment – who wouldn’t be interested to see what goes on in the studio? But after spending all that time watching that series, the fan is invested in your project – both from a time perspective as well as emotionally.
Start Before You’re Ready
The key to effective content marketing is to start before you’re ready. Don’t wait until you have something to promote (like a new album, tour, gig, or song) to start building an audience. Start NOW. Begin creating a fanbase around what you’re already doing everyday. Remember, the process can be just as valuable to you from a promotion standpoint as the finished product. Then, by the time you’re ready to release, you have a captivated audience just waiting to see what you have in store for them next.
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Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beauty of Traditional Japan
Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Ballet in Brilliant Color, the Triadic Ballet First Staged by Oskar Schlemmer in 1922
Jonas Kaufmann, Sophie Koch – Final Scene WERTHER
La Scala Ballet returns to Paris with Ratmansky’s Swan Lake
After the success in Milan before the summer, La Scala now takes Alexei Ratmansky’s Swan Lake to Paris for six performances at the Palais des Congrès. The production was coproduced with the Opernhaus in Zurich, where it had its premiere in February of this year.
Last year, the company took Giselle to Paris to great acclaim – Le Figaro: “Le Ballet de la Scala embrasse Giselle” – and if there is an audience who can fully appreciate Ratmansky’s work on Swan Lake, it is the French.
La Scala’s own orchestra will be playing for the opera in Milan, so the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra Miskolc will accompany the dancers in Paris, conducted by Rossen Milanov.
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