Personal Aesthetic by Sophiyaa

We've spent the past week talking about the word "aesthetic" and how it applies to us. What's my personal aesthetic? Watching/working with Youth Creates and Moving in The Spirit to put on their show helped me understand the kinds of dances and exercises I am drawn towards. That helped me begin answering that question. I do believe that my aesthetic is in the making and is no where close to complete at this point. In reality, I think my art will begin to lose its purpose when I'm able to give my aesthetic one specific unchangeable definition. So I'm glad I'm still understanding who I am as an artist. I've divided my understanding of my aesthetic into several parts to help myself process it better.

The Indian:

I'be grown up in north and south India, watching a huge amount of traditional theatre and dances. My general take away from the dances are "expressions". Indian dances such as Bharatnatiyum and Kathakali tell stories through small hand gestures and incredibly expressive eyes. When I initially started researching Indian dances, I found myself uninterested in the dances I watched- potentially because I had seen them so often. Then I played a Bharatnatiyum video with Ethiopian music in the background- just out of curiosity. Suddenly, I was more interested in what I was watching because their was something unfamiliar about it. It also made me see the movements in a different manner. The music didn't necessarily fit the piece but it made me get rid of my boredom with the dance form.

This is an example of how important expressions are to Indian story (its also the video I watched with different music).

I definitely found myself thinking that the expressions were too dramatic at certain points, but i still think its an interesting way to tell a story- without saying a single word. 

I also found myself drawn towards dance forms that weren't necesarily 'traditional'. Yes, I'm talking about Bollywood. 

Please ignore the man sinking into water in the beginning, unless you think its choreographically interesting. 

I love a lot of the movements in this video and I think them combined with spoken word would be an interesting experiment. 

The Spoken Word Poet:

I'm new to spoken word poetry but am very interested in it. I've written two poems surrounding the idea of "home" and "where I come from" and hope to add movement to them. Maybe some taken from the videos above! I met a spoken word poet called Theresa Davis who's going to do a workshop with Youth Creates that I am very very excited for. 

Here are excerpts from my poems:

Where I Come From

When my grandmother was a little girl, she’d climb up to the roof every evening at exactly six pm. Holding on to her sisters’ hands

Ears strained,

barely paying attention to the glassy sweat scraping against her neck,

just to listen to that one word from a giant unseen megaphone

From a far away pedestrian God:

“Safe”.

Where I come from, trains move so fast that I have to force my eyes to stay open

Don’t blink

Necks extended beyond dreams

Dreams absorbing every bit of reality.

Where I come from, you have to breathe in more often than breathing out

freshly cut grass

rain on dirt

Monsoon sandstorms.

Home.

Every evening at six, my grandmother would stand on the roof with her sisters,

Toes curling up on the cold cracks of religious earthquakes.

Ears reaching beyond her imagination to hear that one word from a monotonous god

“Safe”

Gravity

I remember sitting there, holding on to the sides of seat 27D thinking about the newly made blisters on my hands that I was too afraid to look at.

The man next to me, held on to a newspaper with creases that screamed boredom.

I am terrified of flying.

Cold toast churning in my stomach

Holding on to my gravity

Floating

Evaporating

Locker 227. Overflowing with unfinished homework, unreadable sticky notes, expired food and expired tomorrows

Still working on them! These are just small parts of both. 

The Image-Maker/Director:

I am fascinated with making images that stick out to people, using materials and subverting the meaning that we typically associate with them. Here are some pictures that inspire me or trigger some thought me that I can only explain after making an entire performance thats completely different from the original photograph:

I am also working on "Anon(ymous)" written by Naomi Iizuka as a potential show to direct in the Spring semester, which allows me to experiment with a lot of images (eg. there's a scene where the lead is talking to a goddess while swimming in an ocean- yes, I love it very much). It also surrounds the idea of having your home taken away from you and having to rediscover what home means to you- along with the affects it has on your identity. 

That's all I've got for now! I'm going to keep adding different dimensions to help myself figure it out what this thing called "my aesthetic" is.