Discuss

What kinds of physical tasks require specific bodily training systems?

In what ways can bodies that are trained to do extraordinary tasks be considered as altered bodies?

How are bodies that are highly trained to perform specific physical tasks viewed in current U.S. society?

How is the body like a machine?

Are there examples when the whole body functions as a machine?

Are there examples of specific body parts functioning as machines?

What kinds of machines does the body resemble?

How does the body differ from a machine?

Classroom Activities

Watch: View the footage of Elizabeth Streb’s Wild Blue Yonder.

Analyze: Think back over what you have observed in this viewing and generate lists of action words that describe the movement they have just witnessed. As a group, create a collective list of verbs and write them on a board or other surface visible to the group.

Discuss: What kinds of mediating strategies does Streb use to instigate the movement choices that the group has listed? How has Streb constructed and organized the performing space to evoke particular movement responses? What kinds of machines or apparatuses are employed in the work? Are the bodies manipulating these machines? Are the machines manipulating the bodies?

Experience: Having reviewed the kinds of actions characteristic of Elizabeth Streb’s movement vocabulary, invite the group to discuss their own physical, kinesthetic responses to observing this movement:

• Was it exciting?
• Was the movement scary?
• Was it predictable?
• Did it resemble everyday movement?
• Did special physical training seem to be necessary to carry out these activities?
• Did students feel included or excluded as they watched this work? That is, did they feel inclined to participate in this kind of movement themselves or did they feel “put off” by or unable to participate in this kind of movement?

Write: Find three new examples of movement at home that are related to machines, and identify whether the body is primarily active or passive in each of these instances? Does the machine assist or incapacitate the body in some way?

Born in Rochester, New York in 1950, Streb enjoyed a physically active childhood. By the time she reached high school, she had honed the skills to play on the varsity basketball and baseball teams, and was “obsessed” with downhill skiing and motorcycle riding (Eichenbaum 153). In 1968, she entered the State University of New York at Brockport, where she earned an undergraduate degree in Modern Dance.

Following graduation in 1972, Streb moved to San Francisco, where she danced for two years as a member of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Conventional dance concerns, however, did not sustain her interest for long. Where modern dance claimed to be innovative, she found it mired in tradition, concerned with making steps rather than taking action; where it claimed status as an independent art form, she found that its movements were too often tied to storytelling, music, and visual illusion, rather than those concrete physical concerns that are particular to movement, such as velocity, force, and palpable bodily risk. Ultimately, she found that the existing state of concert dance was fundamentally “dishonest,” based on practices that were intended to camouflage the effects of gravity and impact rather than put them on display.

Returning to New York, Streb began a series of physical experiments that continue into the present, generating alternative choreographic ideas that heighten and showcase the body’s capabilities. She founded her company, Streb/Ringside, in 1979, which she continues to direct now under the name STREB as a kind of laboratory for the scientific exploration of movement information. In performances of her work, she strives to make the body’s actions reverberate in potent ways with the viewer: by foregrounding the thuds, smacks, and wallops of physical contact between the dancers themselves and between the dancers and the various surfaces with which they interact, Streb hopes that those in the audience will have physical sensations that allow them to participate directly in the thrills — and chills — of bodily motion.

In the twenty-seven years since she founded her company, Streb’s work has steadfastly penetrated the conventional boundaries of dance, fusing her artistic interests and training with ideas from the worlds of circus, extreme sports, public spectacle, and physics. Her performers crash against walls and other solid surfaces, swing from bungee cords, cables and poles, take flight by means of trampolines, poles, and swings, dive through glass, and dodge moving obstacles, such as swinging cinderblocks. She creates performance environments that include specially designed apparatuses to extend or limit the body’s range of motion, thus producing distinct parameters within which the performers solve a variety of physical problems.

She also maintains and promotes her strongly held belief that art must exist for a broad public, not for the elite few. Accordingly, she has staged her works in amusement parks and city garages, in the huge salons of Grand Central Station and in the fields of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in theatres, outdoor festivals and on television. Since 2003, she has taken up residence in a large industrial garage in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, where she has banished the formalities of the traditional concert hall. Here, neighbors and guests are invited to observe open rehearsals, take classes from company members, and watch performances from movable chairs and floor mats, while they sit munching snacks from the house popcorn machine. A statement by Streb on her company website summarizes these beliefs:

We want to be part of the general public’s daily activity just as working/walking/shopping/commuting. We want them to see us invent new pieces dancing/flying/flailing/crashing. We want them to watch/question/interact/participate in our creation and to get a clear picture of the hard work that mingles with skill and talent in the making of art. For the past decade, in this way, I have consciously worked to shift the paradigm of how we see art, where we see it, why we see it … continuing a general quest to bring dance to the people, believing that there is a huge untapped number of people out there who are dying to participate in an Action Exchange.

Learn more about Elizabeth Streb and her work.

Eichenbaum, Rose. Masters of Movement: Portraits of America’s Great Choreographers. Washington DC: Smithsonian, 2004. 152-155.

Dances too can include movement that is machine-like and/or can integrate the use of machines in their composition. Such dances may contest or celebrate the presence of machines in human life and/or may extend or limit the body’s movement potential in various ways. Indeed, Michael Jackson’s 1973 song “Dancing Machine” is just one of many representations of the dancing body as a sleek and efficient machine. While there are many negative dimensions to this analogy, especially with regard to the social pressure to “control” our bodies (particularly our weight), there are some positive aspects as well. For instance, if we imagine lifting the leg in terms of a system of pulleys, where a weight drops down the back in order to raise the limb in front, we can physically realize a battement in which the pelvis stays even and the back of the leg lengthens through its natural extension. This is a classic image given to beginning dancers to keep them from lifting the hip in order to lift the leg. So too, imagining our limbs as pendulums can help us release into the full motion of a swinging arm or leg.

One of the crucial issues at the intersection of the human body and machines is the question of natural and artificial. While science fiction is filled with cyborg bodies that are literally half human/ half machine creatures who can do amazing things, we tend to see dancers as “naturally” graceful. This is, of course, a misnomer, as most dancers train their bodies for many, many years in order to appear as if pirouetting on their toes was completely “natural.” Indeed, for a long time, dancers tried to execute movements in a way that looked “effortless,” and a measure of their skill was how well they were able to hide the physical labor involved in dancing. Recently, however, dancers have become interested in revealing that muscular effort to the audience. For instance, Elizabeth Streb chooses to highlight the physical prowess of her dancers, emphasizing their strength, daring and stamina by asking them to repeatedly engage in extreme feats. Sometimes people see Streb’s work as an exhibition of gymnastics, rather than as a dance. Her use of technology — trampolines, or gymnastic equipment — on which to stage her works, as well as her use of video projections in the background resists traditional definitions of beautiful dancing. And yet, because of her use of machines of various kinds, Streb also presents her audience with the possibility of seeing the incredibly graceful arch in a flying back flip over and over again.

Classroom Activities

Write: Make a list of machines that extend or limit bodily possibilities.

Look: Examine the photos of Alan Boeding’s 1985 dance Circle Walker displayed on the Primary Sources page. Discuss the relationship between the human figure and the apparatus pictured. How would you characterize this relationship? Who seems to be leading the actions portrayed in these images, the man or the machine?

Watch: View the video of Circle Walker by Alan Boeding (performed by Jim Cappelletti in 1998). Read Circle Walker: Notes and Contexts for more information on this dance.

Write: Free-write responses to Circle Walker, paying particular attention to using descriptive verbs and adverbs.

Discuss: What is the nature of the relationship between the dancer and the machine in this film?

• Would you call this dance a duet?
• How does the movement of the dancer affect the sculpture and how does the sculpture affect the motion of the dancer?  Is this a machine?
• Is this choreography beautiful?
• Can you identify specific examples of ways in which the machine expands or limits the movement possibilities of the dancer?

Discuss Further

• What is a machine?
• How do bodies relate to machines?
• In what ways can bodies be served by machines?
• Can the body or specific body parts be replaced by machines?
• In what ways might bodies be considered subservient to machines?
• What are some ways in which the body’s possibilities can be extended by machines?
• What are some ways in which the body partners with machines?
• Do machines assist or constrain the body’s possibilities?
• Is the body itself a machine?
• List and describe a number of machines used by people for various purposes.
• What is the function of the machine in American society?
• Describe movement patterns found in different types of machine use (repetitive patterns, designs in space, pathways, rhythmic attributes, movement qualities, etc.).
• Does gender play a role in the types of machines people use? Explain.