Dance Arts by Lil Buck

@jtimberlake Spike Lee told me you saw my work. From one Memphian to Another :) Enjoy https://t.co/NT8TTtHhog
— LIL BUCK (@LILBUCKDALEGEND) March 31, 2014

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Lil Buck is a 26-year old Chicago-born, Memphis-raised, and LA-based jookin' dancer.  A talented artist, really.  He studied ballet for two years, and also learned from neighborhood mentors.  He brings his ballet grace and limberness to bear on contemporary, popular dance, which he draws on to interpret a classical piece like The Dying Swan.  He shows how incredibly limber he is.

Liesl and Rolfe Dance `Sixteen Going on Seventeen

I wanted to write an article for Dance Arts, and this scene from `The Sound of Music came to mind.  At first, however, I thought it was Maria and Georg who danced it for their love song `Something Good.  But I couldn't find a clip of their scene.  Then, I realized it was Liesl and Rolfe for `Sixteen Going on Seventeen.  A jolly good delight of a number.  Director Robert Wise knew how to work simple props (benches, lights) and film the young couple dancing inside a gazebo on a rainy evening.  

The Liesl and Rolfe gazebo in Salzburg, Austria

`Buying the Beatles, by Zach O'Malley Greenburg

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“This is what I do. I bought the Buddy Holly catalogue, a Broadway catalogue,” McCartney told the young singer. “Here’s the computer printout of all the songs I own.” Jackson was fascinated. He wanted to start doing the same, and his entrepreneurial instincts quickly clicked into gear. “Paul and I had both learned the hard way about business and the importance of publishing and royalties and the dignity of songwriting,” Jackson wrote in his autobiography.

I haven't yet plunged into the publishing world, and formal copyright matters, but I will.  But I get the sense that once a publisher steps in, the artist loses some measure of control - and ownership - over his or her art.  Apparently the artist can acquire those publishing rights.  For a fee.  But that fee, for something that has innate value, amounts to an investment, and a return may very well await that artist. Paul McCartney knew it, and beginning with that conversation just outside London, Michael Jackson also knew it.

For Holmes à Court, there were few pleasures greater than a grueling business negotiation. He took particular glee in toying with overzealous Americans (“They are just looking for me to play according to their rules and make it a big game,” he once said of his stateside counterparts. “The Viet Cong didn’t play by the rules, and look what happened.”) None of that mattered to Jackson. His instructions to Branca: “You gotta get me that catalogue.”

Robert Holmes à Court was an Austrailian billionaire who owned the Sony/ATV catalog, two-thirds of which was Beatles songs, which Jackson wanted terribly.  The billionaire played up his ownership rather well, and knew how to play hardball with exquisite power and control.  Any negotiator, artist or otherwise, must realize that others may play under a very different set of rules.  In that context, they must decide, then, how exactly to play.

There’s also an artistic explanation for McCartney’s unwillingness. “I never thought Paul McCartney would buy it because it’s very difficult for a creator of something [to buy] it,” says Bandier. “It would be like Picasso, who spent a day doing a painting, to buy it for $5 million like twenty years later. It wouldn’t be a thing that Paul would do.”

I'd say there is something distasteful about having to buy your own stuff.  But that is thinking like an artist or an aficionado.  This is business, and requires business sentiments and steeliness.  

Jackson’s constant refrain: “You can’t put a price on a Picasso . . .you can’t put a price on these songs, there’s no value on them. They’re the best songs that have ever been written.” During a finance committee meeting, Jackson wrote Branca the aforementioned note that still sits in the lawyer’s home: “IT’S MY CATALOGUE.” 

But, oh, you can put a price on a Picasso.  Or a Beatle, for that matter.  It's a veritable commodity and is subject to financial transaction.

The latter told Jackson he was making a mistake and that he should stick to being an artist. “That was my advice,” says the former CBS chief. “And he disregarded it, luckily.” Jackson didn’t have a business school education, and multiples of cash flow meant little to him. But he had a tremendous sense of value—and in Branca, a lieutenant able to help him make the most of that.

No one is endowed with foresight, absolutely no one. Someone may have a sense, or someone may engage in Big Data analytics and arrive at predictive models, and they still don't have a crystal ball to look into.  What Jackson had, without any doubt, however, was his ferocity of want and his aesthetics for ownership.

Jackson’s single-minded focus on buying the catalogue despite vociferous objections from the record industry’s brightest minds might strike some as impetuous. But in hindsight, it’s clear that he was correct to follow his instincts, even to those who doubted him at first—and that his sense of the value of copyrights was impeccable.

Sometimes we have to listen to what others say.  Other times we must not listen to what others say.  The complexity and the beauty of anything in life - art, business, or something else altogether - is determining which situation exactly we're in at a given moment.

Reference: Buying The Beatles: Inside Michael Jackson's Best Business Bet.

Evocative and Haunting, by Jacob Sutton

I absolutely love these photos.. #photos by Jacob Sutton pic.twitter.com/mwS6Wsa64p
— Heather (@itsa1drful_life) May 30, 2014

Jacob Sutton is a fashion photographer, based in London, and I happened upon his work in this tweet from Heather.  To me, a number of things collide onto these evocative, haunting photographs - Underwater Girl: something sensuous yet eerie, something earthbound yet beatific.  Honestly, they reminded me of Ophelia, who had the misfortune of being drawn to Hamlet, in the midst of his bizarre sorrow, and who falls into a brook and drowns to death.

There is another sequence of photographs in Sutton's website - Flour Power - which are just as stunning but in a very different way.  A young man falls backward onto a flat block of flour.  He gets up, dusts himself off, and stomps on the flour, and falls in a heap.  It's an amusing yet somber explosiveness, and the young man is covered in the remnants of his emotions.  Sutton photographs the careless mounds of flour in the aftermath of those emotions.

The Quirky, Humorous Art of Aparna Rao

In this charming talk, artist Aparna Rao shows us her latest work: cool, cartoony sculptures (with neat robotic tricks underneath them) that play with your perception -- and crave your attention. Take a few minutes to simply be delighted.

Aparna Rao is part of the duo Pors & Rao, based in Bangalore, India, and her TED Talk is absolutely charming.  I love art that engages us, but Rao describes works in progress that also interact with us.  They're neither static nor distant.  In fact, they seem so positively alive, as to have adopted the quirkiness, humor, even imperfections that make us human.  Two tiny hands hold up a sheet of paper, but in time they fidget and quiver, because they get tired after all.  In the hands of an artist like Rao, very charming in a demure way herself, recourse to technology doesn't have to render art as robotic, or impersonal, or steely.

I love the golden typewriter that Rao created for her proud, imperial uncle, who was clearly old-school.  But Rao cleverly fabricated the electronics, so what her uncle typed could be sent as e-mail.  I love the Pygmies, which, like people and animals, get habituated to familiar sounds, but react and scurry with anything unfamiliar.  But what I especially love is the room, where two or more people enter, and one of them disappears.

Rao explains, at the end, that she and Pors don't really love technology because it's such a pain.  But technology helps imbue their creative creatures with emotion and behavior, plus apparent intelligence and personality.

`Love Never Felt So Good, as Homage

My friend Paula posted this on Google+ three weeks ago, and she loved it, and I loved it immediately, too.  I noted: Superb! JT & Co. can star in "Step Up 5" (lol). With more sophisticated editing tools, and more footage to draw from, artists in front of, and behind, the camera today are limited only by their creativity.  Past and present are seamlessly and appealingly woven in this video.

It was five years ago this month that the King of Pop died, suddenly and shockingly.  I was in Dubai, and making a fervent, feverish attempt to launch several art projects and thereby extricate myself from a job I increasingly disliked.  This video is a homage, and it's a perfect coupling of two musicians - Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake - I really love for their on-stage showmanship and hip make-me-want-to-follow-along dancing.

Very `Happy Portraits of Europeans

Pharrell Williams' `Happy video clearly went viral, but just from casually scanning YouTube, I think the infectiously happy music has spawned a viral number of covers, too.  It's online inspiration at its best.  Here is just a sampling of those covers that I like, and what I like has to do with good dancing, quality filming, and deft editing.

The Tatry Mountain Resort, in the High Tatras of Slovakia, is popular in both winter and summer.  It is a mountain range that also borders southern Poland, and these happy Slovaks are in Vysoká of the Eastern Tatras.  Michaela Galová, the smoldering lady in a bikini with an infectious smile and a body to die-for, steals this music video.  She also leads a group dance, and closes the festivity by blowing us a kiss.

From the Eastern High Tartras, to Western Slovakia, we arrive near the Czech border: Trenčín.  I love these videos, because we get a portrait of a city and its people: From cobblestone sidewalks and avenues, to grassy foothills and wooded clusters, Trenčín impresses me, as a non-European, as quintessentially European.  Quite a lot of history, quite a lot of spirit.

Campi Bisenzio is a municipality in the Florence Province, of the Tuscany Region, in central Italy.  It boasts the first internal combustion engine.  The filmmaker must've used a drone to capture a birds eye view of happy Italians and with both a rising and a swooping camera.  But what I like most is the synchronous lip-syncing of many dancers.  Of course, too, the viral algorithm is to install sexy ladies in bikinis as thumbnails.

Brno is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, in the historical South Moravian Region.  It is the seat of judicial authority, as the Constitutional, Supreme, and Supreme Administrative Courts are situated there.  I love the footbridges, forming natural lines to film, and simple uncrowded plazas, fit for lower angle shots.  I also love the range of dance, from ballet, to hip-hop and break dancing.  How about the dude with flaming hair, mustache and beard, and how about the pretty girl in a white dress (rf. thumbnail)?       

Angers is a city in the historic Anjou Province, in Western France.  Here, for me, it's less the panorama of the locale, and more the indoors that make up these happy folks' lives: from a radio station, music and dance halls, and museums; to gymnasiums and ice rinks; to escalators and trains.  I don't know if the Tour de France has ever passed through Angers, but again I love the portrait that this `Happy video paints.

Dr. Ron Art Aspires to i am OTHER

Pharrell Williams

Pharrell Williams isn't just the creator of a viral music video, but also the mind behind a multimedia, cross art venture called i am OTHER:

i am OTHER, created by Pharrell Williams, is a creative venture and way of life. We are proud to be different and believe that individuality is the new wealth. This shared philosophy flows through each pillar within the company: music, film, television, apparel, tech and multimedia. 

Brought to you by Pharrell Williams, i am OTHER is dedicated to Thinkers, Innovators, and Outcasts. By celebrating creative people and pursuits of all kinds, we showcase architects of global culture, music, fashion, and the arts.

Pharrell is where I, and Dr. Ron Art in particular, aspire to be.  Not exactly the same things, of course, but underneath it all definitely an abiding love for a wide range of art and for the people who create and enjoy them.

In September 2011, Madeline Bell, an 18 year old health science student from California, sang a beautiful voice performance into her laptop in her dorm room and submitted it to UJAMs international voice casting for Ubisofts Assassin's Creed Theme. During the two weeks of the contest, she was voted into the Top 20 by the public, and a jury consisting of Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe and Simon Landry (Ubisoft) chose her as the winner. Three weeks after her performance, this video was shot, showing Madeline blowing everyone away at Hans Zimmers Remote Control Productions studios.

UJAM

UJAM is one of Pharrell's projects, and I'm intrigued by it.  Before sliding full-on into blogging in July last year, I made a ton of videos, mostly for Dr. Ron Art but also for my other ventures: Theory of Algorithms  and The Core Algorithm, Ron Villejo Consulting, and Dr. Ron on the Internet.  One main challenge for me was managing the soundtrack.  I had only a bare bone budget, so my editing tool was Live Movie Maker and my soundtrack options were entirely on YouTube.  But I longed to have my own soundtrack and to manipulate it in a video accordingly.

This musical performance by Madeline Bell for the Assassin's Creed reverberates, for sure, so much so it was goosebumps and flushed cheeks listening to her.  Whoa.  Apparently UJAM offered her the platform to submit her piece for this contest.  At some point, I will return to video-making, and I have definitely flagged UJAM for when I do.

Happy and Holistic Syncopation Behind Dance

Stylish, spirited and very talented

I ran into Anatomy Of A Dance Hit: Why We Love To Boogie With Pharrell, and was curious as to what neuroscientists from Denmark had to say about Pharrell Williams' crazy hit:

Moving to music is an essential human pleasure particularly related to musical groove. Structurally, music associated with groove is often characterised by rhythmic complexity in the form of syncopation, frequently observed in musical styles such as funk, hip-hop and electronic dance music. Structural complexity has been related to positive affect in music more broadly, but the function of syncopation in eliciting pleasure and body-movement in groove is unknown. Here we report results from a web-based survey which investigated the relationship between syncopation and ratings of wanting to move and experienced pleasure. Participants heard funk drum-breaks with varying degrees of syncopation and audio entropy, and rated the extent to which the drum-breaks made them want to move and how much pleasure they experienced. While entropy was found to be a poor predictor of wanting to move and pleasure, the results showed that medium degrees of syncopation elicited the most desire to move and the most pleasure, particularly for participants who enjoy dancing to music. Hence, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between syncopation, body-movement and pleasure, and syncopation seems to be an important structural factor in embodied and affective responses to groove.

Reference: Syncopation, Body-Movement and Pleasure in Groove Music.

Those are a lot of words to say what happens when it comes to dance beat.  Syncopation is how music shifts from a strong beat to a weak beat, jarring the rhythm some, adding quirkiness to it, and making it more interesting.  Howard Goodall explains:

The neuroscientists found that as far as making us want to dance, it was a matter of balance between predictability and complexity: that is, just enough steadiness and orderliness, yet just enough jarring and quirkiness, too.

Besides `Happy, these three music videos have grabbed me off my seat, and made me dance exuberantly, and this while driving the car.  I imagine that how a song shifts among beats must, in and of itself, be syncopated, too.  In other words, the pattern of syncopation must also be syncopated, in what amounts to, perhaps, as meta-syncopation.  

Moreover, I imagine that it isn't just about sound, but also about visual, linguistic and cultural.  The lyrics of `Happy is inspired and determined.  Those of `Rock your Body and `Moves like Jagger are imperative.  The `Drill and `They Don't Care About Us are about a cultural phenomenon and icon, whose very aura is dance.  Science gives us insight, then, in to what makes us move to music, but art and spirit complete the experience for us.  

Pharrell Williams' Infectious `Happy

41-year old Pharrell Williams is the suave frontman on, and also the genius behind, this infectiously joyful music video. Since it was posted six months ago, it has commanded nearly 270 million views, perhaps testament to how much we are moths to the flame of happiness.

`Happy is on the soundtrack of the hit animation film `Despicable Me 2, and this music video makes kinetic typography of the lyrics.  You see, even its words feel the rhythm and the beat, and want no other thing than to dance to it, along with millions of us.

If these music videos are simply way too short for your happy cravings, how about 24 hours of happy?