1. “Mind and Medium in the Modern Dance”
Katherine Gilbert
Presented by Liam Julian and Edited By: Laura Pratt and Dr. Kay Picart

2. Art: Dead vs. Living
What is the contradiction between dead and living art?
Where has art lost its life?

3. Isadora Duncan
“She put the ‘soul’ back into the dance at approximately the moment when William James was deleting it from psychology.”

4. Soul functioned on two levels
For Duncan, soul was the most important part of art – especially dance – that motivated its very existence.
Soul functioned on two levels
1 – ____________________________
2 – ____________________________

5. Soul as Motivator How did Duncan see the soul?
How did she see the body?

6. Must we dismiss the body merely because of its limitations?
But, perhaps …
Does the body not carry its own expressive, aesthetic nature that warrants appreciation?
Must we dismiss the body merely because of its limitations?

7. Hat did Duncan think could motivate pure dance?
What is an externally motivated body?

8. Soul from Nature
For Duncan, nature was the ultimate determiner of ___. Human movement arose in nature, thus, dancers responded to nature’s call.
What was the “holy” dancer?

9. But, perhaps …
Do you think that Duncan placed such an importance on the initial motivations of dance that she neglected the middle and end?

10. What does Rudolf von Laban think fo the new form of dance?

11. What is dance content to Laban?
Content & Form
What is dance content to Laban?
What was the sequence?

12. Laban would ask – How does this dance performance, or any art performance, interact with the surrounding space?

13. An Overview Dance, as art, motivated by the mind in terms of: Soul
Biological, primal communicant

14. “Art is that activity, Aristotle says, which produces something distinct from the act of producing it.”
In Aristotle’s model, art is supposed to have identifiable form, but it is also supposed to provoke the intense feelings with which, for many, art has become synonymous.

15. Is this preoccupation with form necessary?
Might it (the preoccupation) simply be something entirely external, set up by those who desperately want definition for the indefinable?
Why can’t art exist without form? Why does it need to adhere to an outside imposition of values and procedures?

16. What is the abstract dance?
Abstraction
What is the abstract dance?

17. There are new problems that arise here.
“Recollection of dance … is no more than the recollection of all art’s birthright.”
But …
There are new problems that arise here.

18. How do we know what’s going on?
If art owes nothing to medium, if dance operates independent of any and all structure …
How do we know what’s going on?
Is this important?