Martha Graham's Limitations Analysis

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With our country in such disarray racially and politically, the image of African American women raising their fist really spoke to me. Using the fist as my motif, I spent a lot of time experimenting with movement that could be done while holding a fist. In hopes to avoid my choreographic habits I tried to reflect on the Martha Graham’s Lamitations piece I viewed earlier this week. Her movement was so simple, which was what I tried to reflect in my original piece. However I took the simplicity without the development. Unlike Martha I lost growth and improvement in my dance. I just repeated the same motif over and over. Ironically I was moving not only in my preference but I was being a lazy choreographer. In pursuit of being abstract by give …show more content…

My main focus was to abstract my movement and push myself. The main adjustment I made was the change in pace. It was suggested to I show more struggle and fight throughout the piece; I do that now by increasing the speed of the movement. Quick actions of reaching, grabbing and pulling all translate the external and internal conflict the women in the picture might have faced. Moving fast is not something that I enjoy doing, for various reasons. Besides the fact that I feel as though quick movement put a lot of pressure on my joints, I also have this mental stigma the causes me to believe that moving quick has an impact on how clearly I communicate the intent of the piece. Subsequently I tried to make sure my movement had a clear purpose. When my partner originally looked at my piece she really enjoyed how dynamic it was. This was one of my original attempts of creating, which I created right after we experimented with movement quality. Somehow I lost sight of that quality in the piece. Feeding off of that comment I decided to take a new approach towards the piece. I travel around the space more, I change levels, speed, doing these things not only creates dynamics but also is much more interesting to the

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