I think that the most unexpectedly enjoyable moment in today’s movement class for me was when Ondrej lead us to do the “rolling star” exercise: you lay down on the floor with your legs and arms stretched out in the form of a star and, initiating the movement from your torso, you roll to the side, gathering all your limbs and curling up into a ball while still fully laying on the ground. It is one of the fundamental moves in contemporary dance, widely used as a basis for various movements or as a transition from one pose to another. Even though it is such a simple move, doing this exercise brought me an unexpected amount of joy. I could remember how long it took me to learn how to properly do it a few years back when I was doing contemporary dance in high school; at the same time, it was so pleasurable to move with a clear idea in mind of what you have to achieve. You could even say I felt proud to realize that I knewhow to do something properly already (although it doesn’t mean that I did it correctly). However, as I am reflecting on it now, I think that the exercise also brought me a sense of nostalgia – it is tied to my memories of high school and reminds me of a particular period of my life. It is interesting how a particular movement can have not only universal (“artistic” may be a more fitting word) significance, but also personal. In a way, it links back to the idea of a fluid meaning and the importance of contextualization – the meaning is not only constructed through a historical context, but is also altered by each person’s own history.

During today’s choreography class Trajal challenged us modify our personal choreographies that we created in the first class to fit into the minimalist, post-modernist style we have been discussing. Essentially, this meant removing all theatricality, virtuosity and phrasing from our movements. After discussing this exercise with other students I realized that many of them found this challenging and even limiting. For me personally, however, it did the opposite: the restrictions fueled my creativity, and I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted to convey through my movements. Having a ‘set of rules’ forces you to think more intensely about your choices and allows you to focus on the “how” rather than the “what.”

Reading MedeaI saw many links between the themes present in the play and the discussion about gender norms and performativity from yesterday’s class with professor Debra. Gender expectations are not natural, and definitely not inherent – they are constructed and passed on mostly through repetition. The discussion made me think about the binary of gender and how most individuals would naturally find themselves somewhere in the middle of the feminine/masculine spectrum, or wouldn’t be caught up in the spectrum at all if the dichotomy did not exist. I saw that one of Medea’s tragedies was that her life was constrained by these gender expectations, and I would interpret them as one of the main causes of her brutality. Through the character’s monologues we see that she despises the “weak, submissive, gentle and softly caring” female portrait, as she clearly possesses a dominant personality. The desire to distance herself from these societal norms forces her into the pit of violence and hatred, as she tries to reinforce her own voice through actions that contrast with the traditional “female” role. This once again reminded me of Stuart Hall and his discussion on binaries. Hall explained that often groups who are discriminated for a certain set of traits try to distance themselves from it by acting completely differently. However, it does more harm than good, as instead of breaking down the binaries people simply reinforce them by moving from one side of the spectrum to the other. In Medea’s case, she wants to get away from the traditional view that a woman is a gentle caretaker, but her actions reiterate the stereotype of an irrational, evil woman.