Belated Choreographing Ideas

Negative

I had this idea of people carrying 'trash' to the riverside, dumping it there without a care. Then the people would turn to leave, stop, and assume the position of trash. The previous 'trash' would rise up as people and 'dump' the new trash, and so on. Slowly, both sets of people/trash would weaken, until they collapse entirely. They would be dressed in dull, 'ugly' colors like gray, dull gray-green, etc.


Positive

On the other hand, building on my previous 'negative' idea, there could be a new group of people dressed in bright green. One would come and take the 'trash' from one of the current people's arms, walking off camera to dispose it properly. Another would come, and more and more, until the people themselves begin to do the same, slowly shedding the gray clothes to reveal the same bright green clothes underneath.

Reflection on Takers

Reading that one line in Ishmael at the end of chapter 10 sent a shiver down my spine. Maybe it was the way he worded it. To use words like 'ultimately', 'beyond recall', makes the whole sentence that much more solid. The whole thing is made to feel that much more of a truth rather than an opinion.


The worst part is that we can't deny the truth of these words. We can plaster other concerns over them, pretend that those words were never written. We can say, oh, I think we should focus more on global warming, or genocide, or dictatorship in Africa, but it doesn't change the fact that Ishmael's words are very much TRUE.

The fact is, we DO destroy an unbroken chain of real wisdom every time we allow or even encourage a Leaver culture to dissipate in the sands of time. When a species dies, we ARE snapping the chain of its evolution. We are proud that we can trace back our lineage into centuries past, but then we cut off the future of another species' descendants.

"It is ugly."

I don't think those words do this truth justice. This is beyond 'ugly'. This is beyond the language we have invented for ourselves.

Blood, Sweat, and T-shirts

In the clip, there was only a brief look at the six youths getting on a train. An admittedly disgusting train, but still just a train. We learned that most of the people on the train were incapable of rising above their positions in life, not because of personal faults, but because they did not have the money. They did not have the money to feed themselves, let alone pay for education.
It reminds me of one of the passages in "Travels of a T-shirt". The laborers in that bok worked long hours, hours that did not allow for time to study, and the pay was pitifully little, far too little to pay for more than the barest essentials. Like those workers on the train, they could not rise above their station in life, even if they had wanted to. Even an extra hour of work, an extra diligent attention on needle and thread would not earn enough money for one to rise to a higher status. There is, in short, no hope for these workers to become 'better'. They're too focused on actual survival for them to think of the future.

Mugabe

This man has 'eaten' from the Tree of Knowledge...or so he thinks. With that major success of liberating Zimbabwe, Mugabe has been handed the magical apple bestowing knowledge.

It's a pity that he didn't read Ishmael, or even the Leviathan, because no human has the right to say that he is above all others. Unfortunately, his path was littered with minor successes, all of them perfect little rose-tinted lenses to make him believe that his path was truly the right one to take. Killing someone, or many someones? Oh look, we've got diamonds! That's a sign that we're doing right!

He doesn't SEE the whole picture, only the pretty canvas of his 'success'.

The worst thing is that if someone manages to overthrow him, there's a possibility that the whole bloody circle will start again. A single, golden moment of freedom, of flight, then the accelerating fall in which we are fooled into believing is flight.

Scary, how more and more of Ishmael's words are leaking into real-life situations, our true life here on planet Earth.

Dongmen

• How did the site of DongMen alter the choreography that you created in the classroom?

• Now that you know this site better; If you were to go back to Dongmen what would you add or subtract from your choreography to make it stronger?

The site didn't really change our choreography at all. The escalator was just longer than the stairs, and we just put a bag on the ground to prevent our dancers from getting too dirty. Other than that, everything was the same as it was in school.

I'm not entirely sure. I might take out the weird part where we went 'shopping' and use different choreography,, but that's all.

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