Participation in group fitness classes at Westmoreland Athletic Club in Greensburg, was on the decline, according to executive director Laurie Corbett, and the club wanted to find a way to increase participation and introduce new people to its classes. Says Corbett, “We needed to add some variety, and introduce club members to the various formats of the classes we offer.”

What the club came up with is a monthly class called Tag Team. Corbett explains: The group fitness instructors get together and choose a theme for the class, including music and class content. The theme is then used as a backdrop for the class, which includes more than one instructor. The class typically starts out with a warm-up, then a hi/lo-impact segment, moves into kickboxing, thento step,then toa weight segment, and ends up with yoga or a Pilates mat class segment. (more…)

The tradition of metal, and black metal in particular, allows for an interpenetration between the Dionysian and the (supposedly) Apollonian order of “normal” reality, taking for granted, one would assume, that “normal” reality is controlled by some sort of “artificially” imposed array or effective category of imposed will, an overreaching, overarching, authoritative superego-in-action, and not taking for granted that ostensibly Dionysian events are nothing but an artificial, traditional representation/performances of symbolic “chaotic” happenings in order to impose, by logical supposition, an opposing Apollonian order that may not actually exist.

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Limited to surface appearances because of exhaustion…

It was while searching through the various pictures available, Texas – although one of the members of this group let me know that they are now a little closer to me, being based for the present out of Austin, that I began to reflect on the possibility of an essay detailing the appearances, imagery, poses, behaviors, etc. of musical groups on stage and what these habits, expressions, supposedly “spontaneous” movements and gestures could “mean” when examined closely. I am an enthusiastic seeker when it comes to witnessing the ability imagery has to support or alter (depending on its own internal/native characteristics) one’s ideas and thoughts about a band and that band’s music, and so I often come across imagery – planned, manipulated, caught offhand or not, etc. – on the internet or in magazines that has the ability (I feel) to either add to my understanding of a band’s music, the personalities “behind” the music, the “image” they are trying to present to their audience, etc.

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