Thursday, October 20, 2011

RPO Contest and Others

RPO Project and Contests

The next RPO project/contest is for the November concerts.  These have a Spanish/Latin theme.
Please listen to the following recordings and think about creating poems inspired by the music.  The winning poems will be read at the concerts, just like the postcards in September.

 Arild envisioned the poetry to flow off of the Ravel Bolero and/or the Gabriela Lena Frank Three Latin American Dances (Spanish/Latin elements).


Bolero
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-4J5j74VPw

Bolero is a form of slow-tempo Latin music and its associated dance and song. There are Spanish and Cuban forms which are both significant and which have separate origins.[1]
The term is also used for some art music. In all its forms, the bolero has been popular for over a century.


Bolero rhythm.[2]
The bolero is a 3/4 dance[3] that originated in Spain in the late 18th century, a combination of the contradanza and the sevillana.[4] Dancer Sebastiano Carezo is credited with inventing the dance in 1780.[5] It is danced by either a soloist or a couple. It is in a moderately slow tempo and is performed to music which is sung and accompanied by castanets and guitars with lyrics of five to seven syllables in each of four lines per verse. It is in triple time and usually has a triplet on the second beat of each bar.

Sample poem:


 Interpretation: Ravel's "Bolero"



User Rating:
-- /10
(0 votes)




Softly, slyly, flute and drum begin to weave their net
Of notes; the slow seductive beat evokes the stomp of gypsy feet
Inside some smoky dim cantina, where a woman's silhouette
Is dancing with abandon to the pulsing, pounding theme
Of the flamenco or fandango...the bolero or beguine.
It's unremitting rhythm, darkly sensual in tone,
Restrains a fierce and frenzied spirit in it's own
Measured meter...persistent and alone
Beneath the sultry overtones
Of the trumpets and trombones,
Echoed closely by the throbbing of the strings
In which the melody continuously, sinuously sings
A refrain that is almost overcome
By the passion and the power of the drum,
Of the drum.
Now, in the same obsessive cadence, and without accelerando,
It mounts to it's finale in a thunderous crescendo
With the crashing of the cymbals and the gong!
And the hot, erotic beat of the drum,
Of the drum, of the drum.


2003


Jane Clark  

Bolero

Bolero

By Gerald Stern b. 1925 Gerald Stern
So one day when the azalea bush was firing
away and the Japanese maple was roaring I
came into the kitchen full of daylight and
turned on my son’s Sony sliding over the
lacquered floor in my stocking feet for it was
time to rattle the canisters and see what
sugar and barley have come to and how Bolero
sounds after all these years and if I’m loyal
still and when did I have a waist that thin?
And if my style was too nostalgic and where
were you when I was burning alive, nightingale?   


  • Export
  • Print
  • Cite

Bolero.(Poem)


March 22, 2003 | Dove, Rita | 
  
 
In "Bolero," for example, the rhythm of the dance is duplicated visually
 on the page, with one extremely long line followed by two short lines 
in an approximation of the "slow / quick-quick" of this very slow and 
sensuous dance. I wanted the reader to be stretched out to the limit of 
the page, and only then snapping back to the left margin--to reality? 
back to earth?--where he is allowed to take a breath (i.e., the stanza 
break) before returning to the fray. 
 
Bolero 
 
   Not the ratcheting crescendo of Ravel's bright winds 
   but an older, 
   crueler 
 
   passion: a woman with hips who knows when to move them, 
   who holds nothing back 
   but the hurt 
 
   she takes with her as she dips, grinds, then rises sweetly into 
   his arms again. 
   Not 
 
   delicate. Not tame. Bessie Smith in a dream of younger, 
   (Can't you see?) 
   slimmer 
 
   days. Restrained in the way a debutante is not, the way a bride 
   pretends she 
   understands. 
 
   How everything hurts! Each upsurge onto a throbbing toe, 
   the prolonged descent 
   to earth, 
 
   to him (what love …

Ravel's Bolero
by Kate Burnside
Saturday, May 01, 2004


Ravel's Bolero...

Passions building,
throbbing, pulsating
Tautly rising towards
climactic crescendo

Flashing steel blades
dice and toss,
mixing together
a mele of images:

Firstly, figure skaters
searing through hot ice
Bodies fully charged and tensed
Athletically counterbalanced
Sinuously connected
Sensuous poetry in motion
Pure sex on a stick, oral as gelatti:
even the delicate
touch of his hand
on the small of her back
is suggestive
as the breeze dances
and plays with
the hem of her skirt;
Theirs is a muscular power
braced and under control -
the gleaming flanks of the
purebred stallion
stamping and nodding,
waiting to be unleashed from the stockade...

Then the bathing-suited beauty,
tanned and svelte
bounding along Bondi Beach;
freely flowing later
in the buff,
humping and pumping
slow and rhythmic
Cleopatra cat-like features,
her clattering beaded braids
swaying in time to the music...

Moist heat or dry ice
Ravel's Bolero
Legs 11 out of 10 every time!


Gabriela Lena Frank Three Latin American Dances 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mavn0xKNcEs

And don't forget Hollins (10th and 11th women poetry)


Bennington

 www.bennington.edu/NewsEvents/YoungWritersCompetition/YW_Submission.aspx
Scholastic, New England Young Writers Conference, etc.

 
2

Submission Form

Students in the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades during the current academic year are invited to submit one of the following by the November 1 deadline.
  • Poetry (a group of three poems). Poems must be typed.
  • Fiction (a short story or one-act play). Short stories must be typed, double-spaced, and fewer than 1500 words. Scripts must be typed, double-spaced, and run no more than 30 minutes (playing time).
  • Nonfiction (a personal or academic essay). Stories and nonfiction must be typed, double-spaced, and fewer than 1500 words.
Scholastic Haiku contest

www.scholastic.com/dellhaiku/?eml=SMP/e/20111018//txtl/DellHaiku/0/ContestDeadline/SL1//////&ym_MID=1373091&ym_rid=6224539

Pantoums
www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5786

Senryu
startag.tripod.com/HkSenDiff.html

HMWK: Bring in Poetry Writing books for Monday,  Read Ch. 11-15
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)