Breaking Boundaries Dance Company

Though this isn’t exactly music therapy related, this post is my therapy related.

For my birthday, my fiancé Thomas had the perfect idea to purchase tickets to four different modern dance performances throughout this season. After the first performance a few months ago (of the Zenon Dance Company), I was inspired to go to an “open dance class.” I decided the word “open,” and the words directly under that text on the flier, “open to anyone,” meant that I, having taken some modern and some jazz back in the day, would be able to attend the class.

Best $10.00 workout I’ve ever had. I was sore in every part of my being for a week.

Turns out the words “open” and “open to anyone” didn’t quite include me. However, I absolutely loved being in a dance space with real dancers.

We went to a Breaking Boundaries Dance Company performance tonight. Enter my therapy. I have always loved dance, but never so much as to attend more than one performance in, say, five years (they’re pricey). I have to acknowledge that my discovery of one of my favorite artists, Tom Waits, was at a dance performance back in college. I saw a dance choreographed to “God’s Away on Business,” and I won’t ever forget it. For a few months following, I was consumed by Tom Waits, and that particular song.

My point is simply that I am fascinated by this other art form. I love the physicality of the music. I love that I have no idea what the story is, most of the time, and that I don’t have to figure it out. I adore how dance activates and agitates me.

Stupendous.

Fascination Station: Björk’s “Biophilia”

I love Björk. I have for years. I even liked how she sent me to tears for days in “Dancer in the Dark.” 

I find Björk to be a creative genius, with the beats she produces, the instrumentation she manufactures and manipulates, and the ideas she seems to be constantly generating. This is why I was thrilled to hear a description and review of her newest album, “Biophilia,” on the The New York Times Science Times podcast.

Who knows

 

 

 

“[The album] is no ordinary album. It uses unusual and newly-invented instruments to reflect the rhythms of nature.”

–Pam Belluck, The New York Times

 

 

Ritchie King wrote about “Biophilia” for Science Times, and you can hear some of what he has to say about it here.

Björk combines her music with iPad apps in order to make her product interactive. I am fascinated by her.