Best of the Week

I thought that the "Best of the Week" was the movies by Leni Riefenstahl because we watched two contrasting works by her, which displayed her. The first one, which was the divers from the olympics, showed elegance. She also used different video editing techniques such as shooting from different angles and slowing it down at certain points. The second one started out elegant and displayed beautiful parts of Germany. Then it began to showcase Hitler and his power of the Nazi party. She shot from many strategic angles in this film to highlight the mass amount of people in the convention center. It also led to the class discussion of what is art and is racist idea's are considered art. I thought that was interesting as well because  our class got into some philosophy. I wouldn't Leni Riefenstahl's work art because it is more propaganda. Some propaganda can be considered art if it is a poster or something. But since it was more of a documentary I wouldn't consider her work art.

Aestetics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCA6bdRgN8E

The choreographer is Emily Shock. She is a very cutting edge, contemporary choreographer. She choreographs for a very popular dance team and I kind of find her stuff over rated. But this piece I think is very good because she makes the bodies match the instruments. For instance when the violin is playing their bodies are melting and swaying. Or when the bass is being plucked they are sharp and intense. Also, the musicality, When the singer says "eye's" the choreographer doesn't have the dancers touch their eyes or do anything that the audience would expect. But instead she has the girls looking around. Or the singer say's "world" and the girls moving around aimlessly. She also has some repetition in the piece, which I generally don't like because I want to see something new. But in this case when the music repeats the dancer's are also repeating what they just did. At one part they are all slightly bent over and then they fall down, then that part repeats because the bass repeats.

There is also hardly any technical elements, (turns, jumps, etc...) which is unlike the choreographer. I liked how she didn't put in technical stuff because it show's off the dancing ability, and you can see the story behind the song rather than showing off the girls skills. I think that she actually took something presently and made it into this dance. I can tell that the dance has real emotion going on, not just a made up story to try to win a competition. Which is typically what most competitive choreographers try to do, just jam as much eye catching stuff into a dance as possible and make it look good, and I appreciate that she came up with something from the heart and showcased it for everyone to see.