Nancy Stark Smith
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Nancy Stark Smith
__NOTOC__ Nancy Stark Smith (February 11, 1952 – May 1, 2020) was an American dancer and founding participant in contact improvisation. Early life and education Born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 11, 1952, Stark Smith was the child of Dr. Joseph J. Smith, a professor of gynecology and obstetrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and his wife Lucille (Stark) Smith. In 1954, her family moved to Great Neck, New York, and her mother died when she was five. Initially she trained as an athlete and gymnast and had little interest in dance, “I’d see the dancers standing in front of a wall of mirrors looking at themselves and making little movements. I didn’t understand what was exciting about that.” Stark Smith’s interest in dance was sparked in her first year at Oberlin College, where she participated in a residence with the Twyla Tharp company. She was intrigued by Tharp’s movement practices and inspired to continue studying modern and post-modern dance. While i ...
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Contact Improvisation
Contact improvisation is a form of improvised partner dancing that has been developing internationally since 1972. It involves the exploration of one's body in relationship to others by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement awareness. It has evolved into a broad global community of social dancing around "jams" characterized by their welcoming attitude towards newcomers to dance, as well as seasoned practitioners, and is often found overlapping with ecstatic dance communities. American dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton originated contact improvisation, drawing from his past training in aikido, a martial art form, to explore and push boundaries with his colleagues and students to develop this new practice. Contact improvisation plays with the artistry of falling off balance, counterbalance, finding the shelves of the body, learning the mechanics of the body in order to handle someone else's weight or be lifted, breathing techniques, and can involve the ...
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Contact Improvisation
Contact improvisation is a form of improvised partner dancing that has been developing internationally since 1972. It involves the exploration of one's body in relationship to others by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement awareness. It has evolved into a broad global community of social dancing around "jams" characterized by their welcoming attitude towards newcomers to dance, as well as seasoned practitioners, and is often found overlapping with ecstatic dance communities. American dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton originated contact improvisation, drawing from his past training in aikido, a martial art form, to explore and push boundaries with his colleagues and students to develop this new practice. Contact improvisation plays with the artistry of falling off balance, counterbalance, finding the shelves of the body, learning the mechanics of the body in order to handle someone else's weight or be lifted, breathing techniques, and can involve the ...
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Writers From Brooklyn
A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, plays, screenplays, teleplays, songs, and essays as well as other reports and news articles that may be of interest to the general public. Writers' texts are published across a wide range of media. Skilled writers who are able to use language to express ideas well, often contribute significantly to the cultural content of a society. The term "writer" is also used elsewhere in the arts and music, such as songwriter or a screenwriter, but also a stand-alone "writer" typically refers to the creation of written language. Some writers work from an oral tradition. Writers can produce material across a number of genres, fictional or non-fictional. Other writers use multiple media such as graphics or illustration to enhance the communication of t ...
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Oberlin College Alumni
Oberlin may refer to: ; Places in the United States * Oberlin Township, Decatur County, Kansas ** Oberlin, Kansas, a city in the township * Oberlin, Louisiana, a town * Oberlin, Ohio, a city * Oberlin, Licking County, Ohio, a ghost town * Oberlin, Pennsylvania, a census-designated place * Mount Oberlin, Glacier National Park, Montana ; Schools * Oberlin University, a private university in Machida, Tokyo, Japan * Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ..., a liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio * Oberlin High School (Louisiana), Oberlin, Louisiana, United States * Oberlin High School (Ohio), Oberlin, Ohio, United States * Oberlin High School, Jamaica ; People * Oberlin (surname) * Oberlin Smith (1840–1926), American engineer {{disambig, geo, ...
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Modern Dancers
Modern may refer to: History *Modern history ** Early Modern period ** Late Modern period *** 18th century *** 19th century *** 20th century ** Contemporary history * Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century Philosophy and sociology * Modernity, a loosely defined concept delineating a number of societal, economic and ideological features that contrast with "pre-modern" times or societies ** Late modernity Art * Modernism ** Modernist poetry * Modern art, a form of art * Modern dance, a dance form developed in the early 20th century * Modern architecture, a broad movement and period in architectural history * Modern music (other) Geography *Modra, a Slovak city, referred to in the German language as "Modern" Typography * Modern (typeface), a raster font packaged with Windows XP * Another name for the typeface classification known as Didone (typography) * Modern, a generic font family name for fixed-pitch serif and sans serif fonts (for examp ...
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2020 Deaths
This is a list of deaths of notable people, organised by year. New deaths articles are added to their respective month (e.g., Deaths in ) and then linked here. 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 See also * Lists of deaths by day The following pages, corresponding to the Gregorian calendar, list the historical events, births, deaths, and holidays and observances of the specified day of the year: Footnotes See also * Leap year * List of calendars * List of non-standard ... * Deaths by year {{DEFAULTSORT:deaths by year ...
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1952 Births
Year 195 ( CXCV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Scrapula and Clemens (or, less frequently, year 948 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 195 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * Emperor Septimius Severus has the Roman Senate deify the previous emperor Commodus, in an attempt to gain favor with the family of Marcus Aurelius. * King Vologases V and other eastern princes support the claims of Pescennius Niger. The Roman province of Mesopotamia rises in revolt with Parthian support. Severus marches to Mesopotamia to battle the Parthians. * The Roman province of Syria is divided and the role of Antioch is diminished. The Romans annexed the Syrian cities of Edessa and Nisibis. Severus re-establish his h ...
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University Of Rochester
The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The University of Rochester enrolls approximately 6,800 undergraduates and 5,000 graduate students. Its 158 buildings house over 200 academic majors. According to the National Science Foundation, Rochester spent more than $397 million on research and development in 2020, ranking it 66th in the nation. With approximately 28,000 full-time employees, the university is the largest private employer in Upstate New York and the 7th largest in all of New York State. The College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering is home to departments and divisions of note. The Institute of Optics was founded in 1929 through a grant from Eastman Kodak and Bausch and Lomb as the first educational program in the US devoted exclusively to optics, awards approximately half ...
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Postmodern Dance
Postmodern dance is a 20th century concert dance form that came into popularity in the early 1960s. While the term "postmodern" took on a different meaning when used to describe dance, the dance form did take inspiration from the ideologies of the wider postmodern movement, which "sought to deflate what it saw as overly pretentious and ultimately self-serving modernist views of art and the artist"International Theory and literary practice, edited by Hans Bertens, and Douwe W. Fokkema, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1997. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/northeastern-ebooks/detail.action?docID=622707. and was, more generally, a departure from modernist ideals. Lacking stylistic homogeny, Postmodern dance was discerned mainly by its anti-modern dance sentiments rather than by its dance style. The dance form was a reaction to the compositional and presentational constraints of the preceding generation of modern dance, hailing the use of everyday movem ...
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Judson Dance Theater
Judson Dance Theater was a collective of dancers, composers, and visual artists who performed at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, Manhattan New York City between 1962 and 1964. The artists involved were avant garde experimentalists who rejected the confines of Modern dance practice and theory, inventing as they did the precepts of Postmodern dance. History Judson Dance Theater grew out of a composition class held at Merce Cunningham's studio, taught by Robert Dunn, a musician who had studied experimental music theory with John Cage. ''A Concert of Dance'', the first Judson concert, took place on July 6, 1962, and included the work of 14 choreographers performed by 17 people, some of whom were students in the Dunn composition class. Other performers in the concert were members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, as well as visual artists, filmmakers, and composers. The concert included works by Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, David Gordon, Alex and Deborah Hay, Fr ...
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Dance Improvisation
Dance improvisation is the process of spontaneously creating movement. Development of movement material is facilitated through a variety of creative explorations including body mapping through levels, shape and dynamics schema. Improvisation is a free, seemingly unstructured, less technically strict and impulsive form that draws inspiration from everyday dance practices and influences. It is a movement technique that is capable of evoking dramatic and thought-provoking content just as well as more codified western dance techniques such as ballet and non-western movement forms. Dance improvisation is not only about creating ''new'' movement but is also defined as freeing the body from habitual movement patterns (see Postmodern dance and Judson Dance Theater). Dancer and singer Michael Jackson combined improvisation in both of those definitions, insisting that he had an interest in performing a dance to ''Billie Jean'' only if he could do it a new way each time. A lot of improvisatio ...
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Florence, Massachusetts
Florence is a village in the northwestern portion of the city of Northampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts. During the 19th century, Florence was a thriving manufacturing village shaped by progressive ideas on religion, abolitionism, and education. History Early History Before the arrival of European settlers, the area of Florence and Northampton was called Nonotuck, meaning either "middle of the river" or "far away land." Nonotuck was a settlement in the Pocumtuc confederacy. Name The Florence area was known as "Broughton's Meadow" referring to John Broughton, a settler from Springfield who purchased the land in 1657 as part of Northampton's settlement. Broughton's Meadow was used to describe the area until 1846. Other names included "Warner School District" after three brothers who had lived in the area during the early 19th century, and "The Community" referring to the Northampton Association of Education and Industry from 1842 through 1846. In 1848, the village took on ...
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