India’s Bollywood
Bollywood is the name given to the Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry in India. When combined with other Indian film industries (Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada), it is considered to be the largest in the world in terms of number of films produced, and maybe also the number of tickets sold.
The term Bollywood was created by conflating Bombay (the city now called Mumbai) and Hollywood (the famous center of the United States film industry).
Bollywood films are usually musicals. Few movies are made without at least one song-and-dance number. Indian audiences expect full value for their money; they want songs and dances, love interest, comedy and dare-devil thrills, all mixed up in a three hour long extravaganza with intermission. Such movies are called masala movies, after the spice mixture masala. Like masala, these movies have everything.
The plots are often melodramatic. They frequently employ formulaic ingredients such as star-crossed lovers, corrupt politicians, twins separated at birth, conniving villains, angry parents, courtesans with hearts of gold, dramatic reversals of fortune, and convenient coincidences.
Bollywood song and dance
While most actors, especially today, are excellent dancers, few are also singers. Songs are generally pre-recorded by professional playback singers with actors lip-synching the words, often while dancing. so […]
The dancing in Bollywood films, especially older ones, is primarily modeled on Indian dance: classical dance styles, dances of historic northern Indian courtesans (tawaif), or folk dances. In modern films, Indian dance elements often blend with Western dance styles (as seen on MTV or in Broadway musicals), though it is not unusual to see Western pop and pure classical dance numbers side by side in the same film. The hero or heroine will often perform with a troupe of supporting dancers, usually of the same sex. If the hero and heroine dance and sing a pas-de-deux (a dance and ballet term, meaning "dance of two"), it is often staged in beautiful natural surroundings or architecturally grand settings.
What is Bollywood dancing?
Bollywood dancing is a commercial name for modern Indian dancing. It's a combination of classical Indian dance (which is the base), folk dancing such as Bhangra and sometimes has a Latino and Arabic influence. It's fun and very expressive and there's a lot of deep meaning behind music in the films. You can actually express what the music means, through the graceful movements of the body.
Taken from http://www.bollywoodworld.com/whatisbollywood/
Japanese and Western Origami
East
The art of paper folding arose in China during the first or second century A.D. By the sixth century, it had spread to Japan. In this small island country, paper was a scarce, treasured material initially confined to the wealthy nobility.
As trade made paper increasingly available and affordable, the art of origami became popular among rich and poor alike. However, the Japanese never lost the impulse to save even the tiniest scraps of paper to fold into miniature origami models. The oldest surviving publication about origami, the Senbazuru Orikata ("How to Fold One Thousand Cranes"), appeared in 1797. The first comprehensive collection of origami figures, the Kan no modo ("Window on Midwinter"), was published in 1845.
West
Meanwhile, the Moors, Muslims from North Africa, brought paper folding to Spain when they invaded in the eighth century. Although their religion proscribed the making of representational figures, they were keen mathematicians and astronomers who were fascinated with the geometry of tessellation and the folding properties of the square.
Even after the Moors were expelled in 1492, the tradition of paper folding survived in Spain, to be revived and rejuvenated by the poet and philosopher Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936). He created a number of original models, including a gorilla, a teapot, and a vulture. Through his followers, the art spread to South America, and by the 1930s, origami was enjoying a vogue in both Spain and South America.
As global trade introduced Japanese aesthetics to the rest of the world during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, origami gained popularity steadily. The influential educator Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) included ornamental paper folding in his kindergarten movement which he introduced in Germany around 1835.
Paper folding was a popular children's pastime in Victorian England, and John Tenniel's famous illustrations for Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll feature two simple paper hats. These hats are typical examples of the type of origami popular in the West, where, until recent years, it has been practiced mostly by children and has not been revered as an art, as in Japan.
Taken from:http://web.archive.org/web/20001008002845/http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~vbeatty/exhibit_archive/origami1/history/origins.html
Dia de los Muertos:The Dead Come to Life in Mexican Folk Art
By Mary Jane Gagnier Mendoza
For foreigners, the traditions and celebrations in Mexican homes and cemeteries during the Day of the Dead seem strange, if not incomprehensible. There is mourning and rejoicing; sadness and silliness - woven together into one emotional fabric.
To me, it's like welcoming the return of a dear friend or relative, who moved far away and visits just once a year. Mexicans try very hard to be with their families for this fiesta, as the living and the dead gather for the most complete of family reunions.
The Day of the Dead activities actually span several days, beginning late at night Oct. 31, when the spirits of dead children (angelitos) start arriving, followed by adult spirits sometime during Nov. 1. They leave, after joining in a family meal, on Nov. 2. Although exact times for the spirits' entrances vary from pueblo to pueblo, the angelitos always arrive ahead of the adults. […]
Mexicans have a distinct view of themselves in the afterlife. First, you keep your identity, since to return to this world for the Day of the Dead, you must remain who you were. This explains the profusion of skeletons of all sizes, doing ordinary day-to-day things. If uncle José was a barber, he continues as a barber after death. Placing a skeleton figure of a barber on your altar reaffirms to uncle José that he has not been forgotten on his spiritual return.
Most Oaxacan homes have a highly adorned Day of the Dead altar. Sugar skulls with the names of dead loved ones inscribed in their icing indicate to the returning spirits that they have indeed returned to the right spot, where the living await their arrival. The altar is a sort of landing pad and its objects serve as signals to guide the spirits home.
Throughout the year, but especially during the Day of the Dead season, calacas, or skeletons, are displayed in shops throughout the city. In the Abastos market, for a few pesos each, you'll find cardboard, wire and cotton-ball figures depicting nearly every walk of life. The more upscale folk art stores display elaborate ceramic and paper mache calacas, individually signed by renowned Mexican folk artists.
Dia de los Muertos:The Dead Come to Life in Mexican Folk Art
For foreigners, the traditions and celebrations in Mexican homes and cemeteries during the Day of the Dead seem strange, if not incomprehensible. There is mourning and rejoicing; sadness and silliness - woven together into one emotional fabric.
To me, it's like welcoming the return of a dear friend or relative, who moved far away and visits just once a year. Mexicans try very hard to be with their families for this fiesta, as the living and the dead gather for the most complete of family reunions.
THE SPIRIT OF POSADA
The name Posada and lively skeletons are linked as few other icons of contemporary Day of the Dead culture. Jose Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913) popularized Mexico's life of the dead in bitingly satiric, mass-produced etchings and lithographs that have enthralled Mexicans for generations.
By depicting social and political personalities as calaveras, Posada's posters achieved lasting and unrivaled popularity. By caricaturing his targets in their bare bones, his scathing and often risky political satire became funnier and thus more acceptable. In his posters, priests, politicians, farmers and streetsweepers share the same destiny - death, an end neither money nor power can outwit. For a country living in extreme social inequality during the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship, the idea of the rich and poor alike one day rubbing elbows (if only bone to bone) was attractive to the masses.
Posada's handprinted calaveras, accompanied by witty social commentary in rhyming verse, reached the farthest corners of the Mexican Republic. To this day, his work pervades the image and spirit of Mexican folk artists. The Catrina, an upperclass lady of the turn-of-the-century always depicted in her broad-brimmed hat, has become a classic in Mexican folk art and is displayed prominently in many store windows. The images can be found in everything from fine ceramic and artistic paper mache figures, to inexpensive papel picados and plaster miniatures.
Nothing is static about Posada's calaveras (mischievous skeletons). They are always up to something, going somewhere or, as in the Calavera Oaxaquena, just raising hell.
Taken from http://www.donquijote.org/culture/spain/flamenco/
Dia de Muertos:The Dead Come to Life in Mexican Folk Art
By Mary Jane Gagnier Mendoza
For foreigners, the traditions and celebrations in Mexican homes and cemeteries during the Day of the Dead seem strange, if not incomprehensible. There is mourning and rejoicing; sadness and silliness - woven together into one emotional fabric.
To me, it's like welcoming the return of a dear friend or relative, who moved far away and visits just once a year. Mexicans try very hard to be with their families for this fiesta, as the living and the dead gather for the most complete of family reunions.
THE ALTARS AND THE ROLE OF EPHEMERA
No exploration of the Day of the Dead would be complete without a discussion of the empheral creations used in its celebration. Most of the elaborate Day of the Dead altars found in Oaxacan homes are adorned with authentic works of art meant to last no longer than the fiesta itself.
To Western culture oriented to preserving everything as long as possible, it may seem strange to expend so much labor on objects having no other purpose than to be consumed and destroyed. Mexicans, especially indigenous Oaxacans, see themselves as empheral beings in an empheral world. To enjoy material objects, yet be willing to relinquish them, is totally natural to them.
Nothing is more empheral than the sugar used to make elaborate skulls, angels, and animals for the Day of the Dead. Saving these items for the following year would never occur to Oaxacans. Children used to wait all year for parents to buy them calaveras de azucar with their names inscribed in the icing. Today, chocolate skulls are replacing the sugar ones, but the tradition of eating sweet skulls is as alive as ever.
Papel picados - intricately cut tissue paper banners depicting scenes of skeletons dancing, drinking and otherwise celebrating - are strung along the edge of altars, creating a lacey border. Non-Mexicans often ask how to preserve them. "You shouldn't," I say, "because they were never made for that." Such emphemera celebrate other events and fiestas as well. White tissue paper is used for weddings. Red, white and green commemorate Independence Day. A riot of color surrounds the Day of the Dead. When fiestas end, papel picados are left to fly in the open air until rain reduces them to nothing.
Spanish Flamenco
First there were the legendary Tartessos, and later, nine centuries of Muslim occupation. Neither passed without leaving an imprint on Andalusian culture, and both influenced flamenco, directly and indirectly. The earliest mention of flamenco in literature is in Las Cartas Marreucas of Cadalso, in 1774.
During its Golden Age (1869-1910), flamenco developed into its definitive form in the epoch´s numerous music cafés (cafés cantantes). Flamenco´s most intense form, cante jondo, expressing deep feelings, dates from this period. And in the cafés cantantes, the art of flamenco dance rose to new heights as the dancers became the major attraction.
Cante Jondo
The role of the guitar reached its peak during the café cantante years, as well, with the guitar developing into an essential part of the flamenco art form. From 1910 to 1955 flamenco singing was marked by the ópera flamenca, with an easier kind of music such as fandangos and cantes de ida y vuelta-the latter clearly showing South American influences. From 1915 onwards flamenco shows were organized and performed all over the world. However, not everyone was happy with that development and in 1922 a group of intellectuals, among them Manuel de Falla, organized a contest in Granada to promote "authentic" cante jondo.
Modern day flamenco frequently shows influences of other kinds of music, such as jazz, salsa, bossa nova, etc. And flamenco dance has changed, with female dancers often showcasing their temperament more than their artistry.
Taken from http://www.donquijote.org/culture/spain/flamenco/