Day 1 Prompt: Dance
Mar. 17th, 2025 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chestnut_pod posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tolkienekphrasisweekMandatory Art Form Prompt
Day 1's required ekphrasis theme is dance. Dance is one of the most basic human art forms: anyone at all can dance. From virtuoso concert dancers to happy toddlers to clubbers to someone moving to music alone in their room, dance is a constant in the human experience. It does not require able bodies, hearing, or resources beyond oneself and the urge to move. As a spectacle, a social practice, a religious activity, exercise, or any of its other manifold uses, dance is at once enduring and utterly ephemeral. Before the invention of video and dance notation to preserve choreographies, specific dances survived solely through practitioners passing their body memories down to those who danced after them. Ekphrasis of dance, then, seems particularly suited to contemplation of transience, ecstasy, discipline, memory, and community.
Optional Writing Method Theme
The first suggested style for writers is the review. Common in newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, and personal blogs, critical reviews weigh the strengths, weaknesses, and contexts of exhibits, performances, and individual artworks. Reviews can be more or less personal, formal, and objective in the criteria and styles they use to rate the merits of their subjects. By critically analyzing the critics, much may be revealed about the reviewer’s own biases, contexts, and artistic milieux. What kind of reviews might we see in Tolkien’s universes?
Optional Art Method Theme
The opening optional artistic theme is upcycling/creative re-use. Just as classical choreographers are forever reusing the formal steps of dance in ever-new combinations, consider literally or figuratively recycling an old art project.
Optional Pain Theme
“But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken forever do they pass into song.”
Of the Sindar, The Silmarillion
Today’s optional pain theme is salvage ekphrasis: lost art known only from other works of art.
Optional Joy Theme
There are strong traditions of mentorship, apprenticeship, and communal training among dancers: before the invention recording technologies and dance notation, all dance was passed down through lineages of tutelage. Learning in community can be generative and inspiring, creating lifelong bonds and ensuring the safe passage of precious knowledge from generation to generation. For a hit of happiness on Day 1, consider the benefits of cooperative learning and the importance of transferring knowledge down into the future.
Some examples for your inspiration.
Day 1's required ekphrasis theme is dance. Dance is one of the most basic human art forms: anyone at all can dance. From virtuoso concert dancers to happy toddlers to clubbers to someone moving to music alone in their room, dance is a constant in the human experience. It does not require able bodies, hearing, or resources beyond oneself and the urge to move. As a spectacle, a social practice, a religious activity, exercise, or any of its other manifold uses, dance is at once enduring and utterly ephemeral. Before the invention of video and dance notation to preserve choreographies, specific dances survived solely through practitioners passing their body memories down to those who danced after them. Ekphrasis of dance, then, seems particularly suited to contemplation of transience, ecstasy, discipline, memory, and community.
Optional Writing Method Theme
The first suggested style for writers is the review. Common in newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, and personal blogs, critical reviews weigh the strengths, weaknesses, and contexts of exhibits, performances, and individual artworks. Reviews can be more or less personal, formal, and objective in the criteria and styles they use to rate the merits of their subjects. By critically analyzing the critics, much may be revealed about the reviewer’s own biases, contexts, and artistic milieux. What kind of reviews might we see in Tolkien’s universes?
Optional Art Method Theme
The opening optional artistic theme is upcycling/creative re-use. Just as classical choreographers are forever reusing the formal steps of dance in ever-new combinations, consider literally or figuratively recycling an old art project.
Optional Pain Theme
“But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken forever do they pass into song.”
Of the Sindar, The Silmarillion
Today’s optional pain theme is salvage ekphrasis: lost art known only from other works of art.
Optional Joy Theme
There are strong traditions of mentorship, apprenticeship, and communal training among dancers: before the invention recording technologies and dance notation, all dance was passed down through lineages of tutelage. Learning in community can be generative and inspiring, creating lifelong bonds and ensuring the safe passage of precious knowledge from generation to generation. For a hit of happiness on Day 1, consider the benefits of cooperative learning and the importance of transferring knowledge down into the future.
Some examples for your inspiration.
