16. be the first kid in your block to rule the world

 


Presentations and Zoom and Time and Artefacts!


The final presentations from the lovely module three cohort - it was great to see the progression of where things are heading on this journey, thank you all for sharing!

It brought up lots and lots of thoughts. I was a bit stressed on your behalf - I think thirty minutes is a very short amount of time. It was interesting the different approaches to packing in and presenting of information. It is also interesting what comes out when we speak, the language that we might fixate on for hours as we design our written work. When I hear you speak around your research sometimes there is a beautiful honesty where I really meet you, it’s not intellectualised or poetic it is just you and it is real - I also see the opposite when our fast brain runs ahead of us and we inadvertently slip up, we contradict or fall back in to old habits. How we can we differentiate this from intentionality and make exceptions in spoken presentations - should we?

I care a lot about form and quality - potentially too much. I needed a more elegant system to share over zoom, the majority of videos shared for instance were not synced with music and/or lagging and glitching on my end. I think this is a real shame. It appeared it could have been useful to have a session around using zoom for holding presentations. Something to suggest for next year?

There aren’t many overarching things I can pull out - something strikes me about genre and definitions. Some people interestingly don’t allude to their movement style - just calling it dance or movement. I often do the same. Especially when we talk about contemporary dance I wonder if that is what we really mean, I wonder how other people relate to schools of thought around what is contemporary, modern, lyrical, conceptual… 

Many people presented films, which completely makes sense I guess. It was a lovely mix of feeling like the intimate audience at the premiere of an indie-dance film to voyeurism in the studio alongside you. I wonder how it was to see each others films - from the outside it was interesting how similar products were sometimes produced by very different artists. Also just exciting to notice when there is a holistic approach to reflection - video editing as reflection, choice of music as reflection, camera angles as reflection, presentation/finality as reflection. There’s this beautiful moment where the simplicity of being speaks for itself, it’s also a huge risk.

I’m nervous about doing it myself. 

But it will come :)


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Be the First Kid in Your Block to Rule the World - Secret Army, Season 1, Episode 16


Comments

  1. Ann Louise WallDecember 22, 2022 at 6:03 AM

    Thanks for this post Matthew. I was disappointed to miss these so it's really interesting to hear your views on them. I was just thinking about the genre issue you raised and how contemporary can mean different things to different people. You reminded me how I once was taking part in a competition which had a 'contemporary dance' category which I was told encompassed ballet, jazz, tap and creative dance styles. I thought it was rather amusing, but it also highlighted that it really can be quite a vague area and almost requires further explanation the word 'contemporary' is not necessarily enough of a description.

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    Replies
    1. Matthew RawcliffeDecember 30, 2022 at 1:49 AM

      Oooh that's so funny Ann - I consider myself a contemporary dancer and you would definitely not want me anywhere near tap shoes aha!

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