Project 1: Spinning Dervish Abstraction

For the first project we were assigned to choose a body position and turn into a six cuts abstraction. The dance position is origin from dervishism, a member of Muslim that is known for their extreme poverty and continence. The photo captures a female dervish doing the whirling while dressed in religious costume. Both of the arms are blurred in the image due to the fast speed of the spinning. The photo is mainly made up by the pure white color of her dress and the ebony background which these two opposite colors create a strong contrast that emphasis the dervish’s movement. The effect of the photo due to its strong contrast isolated the subject itself from the world, it reminds the viewer of the idea behind the Sufi Whirling.
The dervishes stand at the same point and spin their body repetitively in circles. The purpose of the dance is listening to the music and focus in god. It is an imitation of planets orbit around the solar. Dancers are able to abandon personal desire by non-stop spinning to blend their souls together with the universe. The pose is that the dervish opens her arms raise them straightly up above her head, and fast spinning of the body unroll her long dress to the ground. The structure of the pose can be interpreted as the dancer fully opens her to the sky and the ground to embrace the Mother Nature.

 

First 50 sketches and research information of dervish whirling pose.

Since the dance move was oriented in the same direction as spinning tops, so I did research on the concept of spinning tops and appropriated.

 

 

Study of movements from principle of design from Italian Futurism and Matisse.

 

 

Field Trip to Miya Shoji

Models

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chipboard mock up failed to freestand and the size was unsatisfying, so I went back to the process of redesigning quarter scale models. Total of 15 quarter scale models were made.

 

model 4.2 – final quarter scale