Color Guard Research Paper

A ballet dancer’s general intention when performing any piece is to convey a message to the audience. A message is relayed through the dancer’s strategic facial expressions and body movements. Each movement has a purpose in articulating the dancer’s energy, and confidence within themselves to express the emotions and inspire the audience (Lucas). A dancer’s energy and

In addition to being used as an artistic demonstration, ballet can also be used as a sport. There is a saying among ballerinas, “Ballet. Like sport, only harder.” Why harder? you might think. It is undertaken mostly by girly girls. It is demanding because...

Individuals can experience release, whether from worldly cares or from physical tension, through the marvelous art form of ballet. Hence ballet, in its many aspects, has much to offer individuals and can be seen reflecting to many Western ideals through this art. Most people often find ballet just appealing to the eye and are just seen watching it be performed. Have you ever wondered what influenced ballet and where it came from? Ballet is reflective of Western ideals in many ways whether it is culturally, politically and aesthetically. Not only is ballet used to appeal to the eye and experience release from worldly cares, but also to demonstrate some sort of history and reflect Western ideology.

Freshman year in high school, I loved being in marching band; I did not, however, pay much attention to the color guard. The color guard, as a team, refers to the people that spin different pieces of equipment and dance while performing with the band during their halftime show. The entire purpose of color guard is to perform the music using different pieces of equipment and dance. I joined the color guard in the middle of my sophomore year, and, since then, I have happily stayed in the program. Fortunately, for my senior year, I earned a spot on the rifle line, the prestigious equipment line in color guard. My rifle is a thirty-nine inch long piece of wood carved and cut to look like a rifle. It is covered with white paint, a black leather strap screwed into the wood in two distinctive areas, and has white tape on the nose, neck, and butt areas. It is around eleven years old, and has dents, scratches, and the paint and tape are both coming off. The color guard

The notion of cultural authenticity, in seeking to solidify cultural form, authenticate some forms over others. Yet the contemporary ballet dance as an art form is remarkably dynamic and constantly interacting with other art forms in the globalizing world. The objectification of the contemporary ballet as authentically American will lead to the condemnation of innovation in the aesthetics of the dance style, and the suppress of artistic creativity in the name of a well-intentioned yet misplaced cultural authentication. To prevent the ossification of the contemporary ballet, Kevin McKenzie, the current artistic director of the American Ballet Theatre, once said in an interview, “The great art forms will always adapt and absorb whatever cultural influences are around it, and ballet is no exception. It absorbs influences from all other forms, without losing its own language and identity.” His words are strongly proved in the evolution of the contemporary ballet dance performances in American, in which not only the dancing movements absorbs a large number of new constituents from different cultures such as the lion and dragon dance from China, but the stage settings and costumes are changing significantly during the past decades. For example, the Alonzo King 's LINES Ballet Company in San Francisco performed a contemporary ballet dance show utilizing the ancient Egyptian pictographs as its background scenario last year, which wouldn’t have come true if the notion of cultural authenticity is legitimatized. That authentication process freezes the dynamism of culture denotes the high degree of illegitimacy of pursuing cultural

W.E.B Du states “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colorline…” The colorline is still very much alive in the twenty-first century, it is actually getting worse in my opinion. We are all equal, color should not define who we are as humans.

Sometimes dancers are underestimated. Some people argue dance is not a sport when every dancer considers it a sport because of the time and hard work it requires. In the article “The Sensitive Knowledge of Dance,” Marcia Almeida argues that dance should be valued as a producer of knowledge in the arts. In doing so, she analyzes how dancers use sensitive knowledge, their development of new body technologies, and points out the difficulties that dance faces in traditional academia.

As discussed during class, dance has always played a large part in society and political affairs. However, what we covered was largely before the nineteenth century. These more than one hundred years that separate what we covered and the Ballets Russes was a time of great artistic innovation. The commodification of ballet was also very interesting to me. Previously, ballet and dance were used in social gatherings, however at the turn of the twentieth century it morphed into something that could be bought, sold, and traded. Garafola notes that, choreographers like Fokine could receive top dollar for their efforts (Garafola 196). I found it very remarkable just how much Diaghilev’s success relied on outside sources and his ability to integrate the Ballets Russes into the era’s operatic marketplace. When looking at the interaction between society and dance from the other direction it is interesting to note that during the twentieth century, dance became much more cosmopolitan in terms of artistic styling. Dance arrived at the forefront of the careful balance between social and artistic behaviors within the academic culture of France, in which a majority of these undertakings were purely of commercial

Ballet has been an art form since the late fifteenth century, but society did not truly see the impact of ballet until the nineteenth century. Modern day thinkers possess the idea that ballet began with tutus and pointe shoes, but it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that this opinion was observed. Ballet has come a long way. It has survived the turmoil of many wars and has changed itself by accepting new ideas and impressing the audience with its unique stylistic views.

Essay Exam 2 Andrea Castro The Color line also known as “colortocracy”, is an invisible line that Dubois’ created to show the segregation between African Americans and Whites. This line stood between equality for several years, and African American’s are still being discriminated today. Dubois’ showed how un-equality tore apart African Americans not only emotionally but mentally as well. His theory showed how blacks had to wear a “veil” over their identity.