Class Dispatch to David

Here’s what we did today:

• We did a yoga consisting of Standing Four to Warrior Three and Back to Standing Four to encapsulate the feeling of transitioning from air to surface to underwater (it was hard—Claire fell over many times, Carter did not)
• Then we read over the overture and discussed how movement and sound can capture the text without a literal narrator

We then had a lecture about historical attempts to capture underwater environments through science and art:

• We talked about how depth impacts lung capacity, Boyles Law
  • TDLR: The deeper you go, the less volume of air your lungs can hold
• We talked about the history of people’s interest in underwater environments
  • People have been curious since ancient time
  • Starting with 1716—with Haley’s diving bell—scientists tried to bring humans underwater in a safe, habitable, and prolonged way
    • You can track the progression to James Cameron and Jacques Cousteau’s dives
• There has always been a tie between scientific invention being used for entertainment
  • After the invention of sheet glass in 1853, aquariums became a wildly popular spectacle
    • Science pushing art and art pushing science was/is a large theme in the history of underwater exploration
  • We compared, through the centuries, the depictions of theatrical backdrops to the scientific understanding of underwater environments
• Artists have been exploring ways to depict sea creatures and their movements
  • Sea creatures inspired the romantic ballets and puppets
  • Starting with Das Rheingold (1869), early flying rigs were made to allow opera singers to be mermaids
  • At first, there was a big push for performers to replicate sea creature life exactly
  • Later on, performers transitioned into more abstract and symbolic representations of sea life.

Then we split into two groups to devise passages from the Overture:

Group 1: Gannet paragraph

• We focussed on the moment of transition from air to water
  • We worked on exploring this transition through the specific ways that the gannet dives into water

Group 2: Dolphin paragraph

• Focussed on the moment of dolphin emergence from the water
  • Had a moment of heightened moment of arrest to encapsulate this transition from water to air
• Had fun using the piano as underscoring

• As responses to this discussion post C & C will upload the videos of both groups’ attempts
  • PS: If it won’t play, let us know, and we’ll email it out

See ya mateys!

C & C