Carol Kaminsky and Jorge Luis Morejón (Faculty)
Dance Program/Vocal Performance/Frost School of
Music
“Dancing Glass: Reflection of Art through Dance,”
Research Project. (CREATE Grant)
Lowe Art Museum's Glass Community Day
Photographer: Maydelaine Rodriguez Castillo
Audience Members' Reviews
I
attended the Frost School of Music’s “Dancing Glass” performance in the Lowe
Art Museum this past weekend. I absolutely loved it and enjoyed every minute of
the performance! It was not at all what I expected, and I was pleasantly
surprised. This performance consisted of six different acts, and each group of
dancers was assigned a work of art to inspire an improvisational dance piece.
The dancers were from the improvisation class within the dance department at
UM. My favorite piece was definitely the one inspired by Head #4 by Beril
Vallien (1996). Although the dance was a little creepy at first, I thought it
was incredibly creative. Additionally, I loved watching the “on the spot”
improvisation performance by Carol Kaminsky and Jorge Luis Morejón. I could only
imagine how nervous you might have been, I know I would have been! I think it
was really beautiful and symbolic of Target by Janusz Walentynowicz (1997). I
came to the show with a friend, and when you asked the audience what the Target
piece might symbolize or look like, my friend told me that “It looks like it
means that you are a target everywhere, no matter where you are” because there
are faces in all frames of the piece, not just on the bulls eye. I thought this
was really insightful and wanted to share. I think this performance related to
our course obviously because it was a dance performance, but also because it
allowed the dancers to express themselves and use symbolism to tell a story
about an art piece. I think this was really beautiful and could potentially be
therapeutic. Karina Lutfey
I
attended the event that took place on 1st December at the Lowe Museum that was
performed by University of Miami dance students and Frost School of music
students. The reason that I chose this event to write a response paper was that
this show was the most related event to our dance class. The most impressive
dance among all the movements is the improvisation creation for the art piece
named Target. The movements are very challenging as the dancers use action to
depict the original work of art. However, the dancers skillfully exerted the
distance to show the connection and separation from the original art piece. The
exact facial expression and proper tool assistance help audience perfectly
refine the work of art-Target.The improvisation movement is quite similar from
what we have done in the class since the purpose of the course is to bring the
techniques of dance therapy to dancers. Movements in the dance are the
essential combination to treat patients from dance therapy. The movements
remind me of the Laban effort action and how it can enhance individual’s
movements’ preference. In addition, the specific movements enhance people’s
following emotions: anger, fear, happiness and sadness. Yukun Zhang
Dancing
Glass: Reflections of Art through Dance was a performance put on by DAN 190
Improvisation students, where they had to pick out a piece of art from the Lowe
Art Museum and make a dance routine to it. The dance routine had to start from
improvisation and then develop into a routine. There were 6 dances in total, in
response to 5 pieces of art. My two favorite performances were in response to
the work “Spiral Neon”. Both of these dances did a great job of representing
the colorful, connected spirals that were the focus of the piece. The colorful
wigs and the colorful tassels brought out the colors from the spirals, and then
the dancers held hands and moved in circular motions to represent the circular
spiral shapes and the connectedness of the artwork. This was the first time
that I had seen art portrayed through dance and I could definitely see the
Spiral Neon in each of the two dances. The performers did a great job of
bringing this structure to life. The other performances were to “Head
#4”,“Target”, “Resurrection Angel”, and “Dancers”. Of these performances, I
liked the representation of “Head #4” and “Target” the most. In “Head #4” the
dancers all wore white masks to match the head in the figure and they did a
great job of making the figure into a dance. It was very cool to look for
certain things like the fact that the tallest girl had the box on top of her
head, which I connected to the sculpture because the head was at the top of the
podium and it had the box on the very top. I found myself really trying to connect
the sculptures to the dances and I was very happy when I could see a clear
connection. Christian Brown
