Filed under: art, Dance | Tags: autumn quartet, lindsey whittle, matt morris, sparklezilla
My brilliant and renowned art writer of a twin brother Matt Morris wrote an excellent and insightful piece about my recent project “Autumn Quartet” for Sparklezilla, an online blog-based zine published by Lindsey Whittle.
You can download the full issue here.
Matt’s article about the piece is p.23-25.
Filed under: creative process, research | Tags: autumn quartet, bebe miller, labanotation, Norah Zuniga-Shaw
As part of a course I am taking this quarter with Norah Zuniga-Shaw and Bebe Miller, I am working through an analytical excavation of the creative process of Autumn Quartet. There is such a density of material to consider. There is video documentation of the piece itself, the months and months of blogging here throughout the process, and two Labanotation scores that I wrote last quarter documenting the set movement phrases in the piece. A central consideration of this analysis is the identification of an “implied hero,” an ideal or perspective of “utopia” that is “worshipped/pursued” through the process of the piece. As of now I think what comes out most clearly are fundamental assumptions that if the body is the site of identity (I believe it is), and the body/identity is constantly participating in the performative reinscription of social normalities, and if physical practices/disciplines are methods in which this participation takes place, then dance and choreographic practices carry significant possibilities for the interruption/intervention/re-enforcement/reiteration/deconstruction/reconstruction/rethinking/etc. of those socially(bodily) regulated normalities. The investigation of this piece centered around issues of relational power, intimacy, trust, indeterminacy, and operating(moving) within/transgressing imposed regulatory systems (such as the algorithmic score for the piece).
In this post I wanted to share some of the collected materials through which I have been sorting.
First, there are the blog posts (anything tagged under “autumn quartet”). These posts serve as a chronological history of the lineage/evolution of ideas and my perceptions/understanding of the work. There is a sense in which this collection of writing in itself functions as an “analytical investigation.” My work with these writings have been seeking the meta-narratives in which the piece was participating. How does the language with which I discuss the piece (as a microcosm) reflect potential understandings (rooted in the performative bodily practice of the piece) for the macrocosm of societal regulatory structures, relationships, power(political) dynamics, and physical etiquette?
There are the hours and hours of video footage. Which I will not offer here. But what I can offer is a five minute “montage” video in which I identified “key” moments in the last few months of practice. It may or may not be definitive of the whole process, but it does create an interesting exchange between moments/choices/acts that occurred over months of time:
There are the Labanotation scores. These are the source materials that I have taken the least amount of time to analyze, but there is something in how they may reveal structures, implications for bodily deportment, assumptions concerning space/body, etc.:
As part of my analysis/thought process, I constructed a “mind map” for conceptual lineages within the process. I organized these in a Presi site that you can explore. Interesting to me are the networks of meaning, the paths that can be followed from one idea to the next, the relationship between “initial interests” and “emergent interests” and how they create circuits of meaning. The Presi interface is fairly simple. You can zoom in and out using the controls, move around the map by clicking-and-dragging, and move through an example of tracing a conceptual lineage on the map by clicking the forward arrow:
I also wanted to offer the original algorithm for the piece. Typed it is about a page and a half (originally three pages hand written). It is the regulatory structure for the piece, describing the situation in which we made choices and formulated each iteration of the piece.
This project will likely continue to evolve throughout the quarter, but these were my initial sources/findings. As they constitute both an evolution of a creative process and a new creative research model, it felt appropriate to share them here.
At some point I hope to find time to blog. I want to write about the experience (success) of the “Cuddle” piece last weekend in Cincinnati, and discuss a new process in which I am engaged excavating/analyzing the creative process of “Autumn Quartet.” During the time I have spent watching the various videos of practice sessions, re-reading the almost thirty pages of blogging I have done about the piece, and reviewing the notation of the movement material (I have notated both of the primary movement phrases for the dance in Labanotation), I generated this image. It is pulled from a short video I made that glimpses various moments of the piece that I experience as somewhat definitive. This image offers a similar, stationary glimpse. And it will have to suffice in lieu of a more involved post to come:
Filed under: cosmology, creative process, Dance, Ontology, research, yoga | Tags: annie sprinkle, autumn quartet, breakups r tough, butoh, chakras, cuddle, eco-sexuality, ecosexuality, elizabeth stephens, forsythe, judith butler, KNOW(TOUCH)ME(YOU)(MY/YOUR BODY), labanotation, love art lab, monster partitur, scores, scoring, sexecology, trio a, u.turn art space
Two ideas have been steeping for the last few weeks. It’s about time to get them down somewhere.
The first is a piece that I am performing next weekend at U·turn Art Space in Cincinnati. I participating in a group show entitled “Breakups R Tough.”
This is the gallery’s description of the show:
“Cincinnati, OH—About now, many of those relationships that were flourishing at Valentine’s Day aren’t looking so good. U·turn Art Space is pleased to announce a group exhibition that generates a wry discourse to deflate the melodrama of failed relationships. The exhibition includes Shawnee Barton, Stephanie Brooks, Alex Da Corte, Craig Damrauer, Erica Eyres, Lynne Harlow, Peter Huttinger, Eric Lebofsky, Joetta Maue, Casey Riordan Millard and Michael J. Morris.
Artists using embroidery, drawing, installation, performance, photography, sculpture and video offer different perspectives on crisis points in the human experience. Not strictly focused on just the ‘breakup’ between romantic partners, Breakups R Tough considers how interpersonal interactions cease or mutate into something more chaotic. Grafted into the dialogue are slanted looks at other stages in the quest for love, companionship and sex, such as propositions, courtship and self-pleasure. The assembled artists will address the topic with humor, wit, sexuality, physical comfort, and suggestions for remodeling our culture’s structure for types of relationships and categories of love and conflict.”
You can read more about the show here as well.
This is the published blurb about my piece:
“During the opening reception of Breakups R Tough, Morris will be creating a performance piece in homage to a 2005 artwork by the Love Art Laboratory, which is comprised of the famed sex artist Annie M. Sprinkle and her wife, artist and activist Elizabeth M. Stephens. LAL is a seven-year long undertaking in which the two women facilitate annual performance-based projects and rituals, including wedding ceremonies. In their first year, 2005’s Red year, Sprinkle and Stephens created the work entitled “Cuddle” in the Femina Potens Gallery. Once a week, during the exhibition the artists would put on cuddle outfits and spend several hours cuddling gallery visitors who had made advance appointments. They invited the participants to take off their shoes and socks and cuddle with them for seven minutes. This piece has been recreated by LAL in multiple locations, both nationally and abroad. After receiving a grant to travel to California and interview Sprinkle and Stephens in December 2009, Michael J. Morris will conceive a version of this piece as a performance in the U.turn exhibition. His piece is intended as a subversion of popular cultural perceptions of interpersonal acquaintance and intimacy, physical promiscuity, and socially authorized physical behaviors, while also serving as a celebration of the body as central to identity and expressions of love in non-traditional forms. For more about the Love Art Laboratory, please visit the website here.”
You can read about and view documentation of LAL’s original piece here.
There are marked differences between Annie and Beth’s (and their dog Bob’s) original piece and my re-created homage to their work. Aspects that immediately spring to mind are the differences between cuddling with a lesbian couple and cuddling with a single gay man, the difference between this piece being staged in an alternative arts space in San Francisco (or Glasgow or Austin, where it has subsequently been restaged) and staging this piece in a gallery in the midwest, in Cincinnati. Another difference is that I am attempting to partially contextualize the piece in Love Art Lab’s current work. As simple an alteration as it may be, I am making a purple bed/space: purple sheets on the bed, purple curtains (hopefully), and maybe even a purple cuddling costume. Love Art Lab is currently in their Purple year, the year of the Third Eye Chakra (Ajna), centered on intuition and wisdom. My hope is that the recontextualization of the piece goes deeper than just a shift in color but also in intention. In the original piece in 2005, the emphasis came out of the Red Year (Root Chakra, Muladhara), Security and Survival. Here cuddling seemed to be a kind of reassurance, a cultivation not only of love (part of the mission of LAL) but also a kind of interpersonal security, the safety offered by holding or being held. I think these aspects can’t help but carry over into my re-creation of the piece, but there is also the potential for a shift in intention to be one of knowledge and knowing. The act of cuddling, this temporal physical engagement being an act of both knowing and being known. As I’ve stated, my interests for the piece are “intended as a subversion of popular cultural perceptions of interpersonal acquaintance and intimacy, physical promiscuity, and socially authorized physical behaviors, while also serving as a celebration of the body as central to identity and expressions of love in non-traditional forms.” These notions harken back to the piece I created last year (and enacted this year in the process of Autumn Quartet), “KNOW(TOUCH)ME(YOU)(MY/YOUR BODY)“. Because my research and current perspective situate the body itself as the site for the perpetual perception, negotiation, and performance of identity, I often find it troubling that our culture privileges visual and verbal modalities for the acquaintance of individuals. We get to know one another predominantly by what we see of one another and what we say. I am interested in subverting this, privileging the body not only as the site of identity, but a potential site of acquaintance. The Cuddle piece serves this, and I think there is something of this physical “getting to know you” that echoes the knowing intuition of the Purple Year of LAL. I’m also thinking about the extension of the body/self into the environment (this is essential to my understanding of “Sexecology” and “Eco-Sexuality,” ideas that have emerged from LAL and their performance work), and how the construction of this “cuddling space,” the bed and the curtains and the (hopefully) soft lamp light, may also serve as an extension of myself, the implication of myself into the space, and the subsequent implications for inviting gallery patrons into that space. I am also fascinated by the relationship between this work, Love Art Lab, the chakra system (and thus Tantric philosophy out of which it emerged) and my own yoga practice and teaching of yoga. How does my teaching inform this work, and how might it is turn inform my teaching?
I’ll let you know how it goes.
In a seemingly completely unrelated speculation (but of course it is all related), I am thinking about a practice or a course (or book?), something like “Scoring: The Constitution of the Moving Self.” This thinking started while writing my recent paper on the process of reading and dancing Trio A from Labanotated score (see previous post), but has evolved into a constellation of thought, touching on my predicted dissertation research and additional systems of “scoring” that I have explored. I am thinking about the lived “here-and-now” experience of the dance and the dancer as inseparable, that in the moment of dancing, both are mutually defined by one another (or, perhaps more accurately, as one). I am thinking about how dances or movement are generated and created, and how the individual is constituted through those generative processes. Because I think of movement as an extension of self (and a force by which the self is invented in the present here-and-now), I am interested in how scoring systems are used to generate movement and in doing so generate individuals. I am thinking about scoring systems like Labanotation and Motif Description, but also verbal/imagistic scores used to produce movement, as in Butoh (the language used to generate movement are called “Butoh-fu” which literally translates to “Butoh notation”) and Gaga, and the various systems of scoring that I experienced in the Forsythe project here at OSU last year, things like “room writing” or inscribing in space (tracing imagined forms in space), and the production of the wall score for Monster Partitur (line tracings of shadows produced by paper sculptures from skeleton models that emerged from a personal history). I am also thinking of Fluxus scores and scores used in choreographic practices by artists such as Pina Bausch. What comes to mind is the question of “what is a score?” Right now I am thinking of it as a persisting physical, linguistic or conceptual artifact by which movement is produced. The nature of the scoring system determines that nature of the movement and the nature of the method by which it is produced. I am not thinking of scores so much as documentation of what was (a record of movement that existed) as much as I am considering it as a generative source. It is, of course, situated somewhere in between these moments/movements: the means by which the score was generated (this may be a documentation of movement as in Labanotation or an idea, as in Butoh) and the movement that the score then produces.
Central to these ideas are the fact that the movement produced (by the score) is intrinsically unique and definitive of the individual. While the score itself is persistent, the movement it produces is not. It is unique to the individual, as the individual body, emerging from and simultaneously contributing to the identity of the individual.
There is a relationship between scores and the regulatory normalities by which persons are constructed/produced. I’m reading Judith Butler right now, and I am thinking about the pervasive culturally constructed systems by which individuals are regulated and produced. Gender, according to Butler, does not precede the acts by which gender is signified, but is in fact constituted by those acts by which it is perceived to be persistent. I am thinking of the engagement of the individual with the score as an active co-creation/participation in the generative structures by which the individual is produced. By enacting the score, the individual practices agency in the formulation of action and the methods/structures by which they are produced. If identity (and gender) are not that from which performative acts emerge but are in fact constructed through the sequence/repetition of performative acts, what then is the implication of the persistent score in the generation of acts? What is there to analyze in the relationship between the score and repetition?
And so, in a sense, it all relates. “Cuddle,” as formulated and enacted by Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens in 2005 now serves as the score by which my own actions are produced. I engaged with the documentation of that work as a score and in doing so select the structure by which my self, my situation, and my contribution to culture and society are produced.
I would love for this to be a course at some point, examining the nature of scores and scoring, how it may reflect, co-create or interrupt the pervasive social “scores” by which we are produced (I love the idea of situating Butler in the context of movement scores/scoring), and exploring various systems of scoring in the conscious production of self. If I apply for jobs at some point, I could imagine this being a course that I would propose to teach.
Those are my thoughts today. I hope to have time to continue to serve these ideas as weeks go by. I hope to continue to read and dance Trio A as a means of constructing myself, and to engage with additional scores in the production of movement/self.
Onto the spring quarter . . .
I am already exhausted today and the day has hardly started. I did not sleep well last night; around 4AM I stopped trying. I got out of bed and tried to get my mind off of things by doing household chores. Around 5AM I decided to shower, make coffee and “start” my day.
I can’t seem to get my mind to slow down and stop spinning. In my yoga class this morning my theme is revisiting the idea of “letting go” (the arching theme of the Bhagavad Gita, which we have read from this quarter). It seems apt here on the last day of class, the last week of the quarter, transitioning from one season to the next, winter to spring. It’s personal as well: last night was the last practice for Autumn Quartet. It has been a process for us since September, and now it is over. And as I laid in bed all night unable to sleep, I realize how much I am not ready to let go of it. I feel as if I am only now beginning to fully understand some of what we were doing, the potential significance of what was going on, and I feel torn between the desire to go deeper into those places, investigating their possibilities and implications, and the reality that at least within this project, this process, the unique constellation of the four of us, I will not have that opportunity. I keep feeling sensations similar to the cyclical reprocessing of an argument, when you keep thinking of what you could have said, what you “should” have said. It’s a sensation of, “Oh, but . . .” only to realize that there is no space in which to make such amelioration. It is now passed, “fixed” in memory (as much as memory can be considered fixed), and I find myself in the present, faced now with the work of letting go.
Because so much of how I have thought about this piece has been described here, it feels natural to share the perspectives that are occurring to me now, this week. The first has to do with intimacy, as demonstrated in the stripping and biting, and even in the source material from which those actions were inspired (the stripping coming from the season finale of season 2 of The L Word, the biting inspired by the craze of vampirism in popular media). It has something to do with a kind of situation in which intimacy occurs . . . situations in which we ask/desire others to be responsible for our intimacy. There’s something about the desire to be intimate and the construction of a situation in with the “other” is made responsible for that intimacy. When we strip for one another, it is a response. I have almost exclusively considered my situation in the role of the “angry gestures” which demands for someone else to strip. I’ve considered the dynamics of power of this construction (the person in “angry gestures” being stuck there until someone responds, the shift of power when someone does respond, and the negotiation of how far the person will strip), but I have not been explicit in my explication of the implicit desire in these roles. When I am in “angry gestures,” it is both compulsory (prescribed by the algorithm) but also motivated: I choose to initiate the phrase that brings me to that “terminal position” and at least in part that choice is fueled by desire: I want someone to undress for me. However, only recently have I become aware of my experience of desire in the other role, the one responding by stripping. On some level, there is the desire to undress, to be undressed by the actions of the person in “angry gestures” (I am the one removing my clothing, but they are the one’s demanding it; I am being undressed by the both of us). This is what I am recognizing as the construction of a situation in which the “other” is made responsible for the intimacy between us: I am undressing, but it is because I have put myself in a situation in which I am being asked (demanded, forcefully) to undress. I have a similar experience in waiting to be bitten. By bringing myself to that “terminal position” I am asking to be bitten. It is a dramatic transference of responsibility for intimacy, an explicit desire/request/demand to be bitten, to be inside someone else’s mouth. Of course, these are partially abstractions of my experience. The emotions involved are rarely as clear and unaffected as this: the piece is (was . . . I keep writing in the present tense, the piece is now over . . .) intrinsically interpersonal, our relationships form the piece (on some level) and the piece has formed our relationships (on some level). There were plenty of times, depending on how I was feeling about the other person (or perhaps more specifically how I was feeling about myself in relation to the other person) that I specifically did not want to strip for someone . . . but even that is not uncomplicated. If I truly didn’t want to engage in that situation, then I would not have; there was nothing in the score that demanded that I respond. If I did so, it was fueled by some degree of desire to do so, whether it was an act of care for the person in the terminal position, an intentional demonstration of doing what I did not want to do, or simply (none of this is simple) a unit in an ongoing dialogue of our relationship.
As with the themes of violence and sexuality that emerged in the piece, I think this dynamic of the transference of responsibility for intimacy has implications as a meta-commentary on dance practice itself, the “tell me what to do so that I can do it” way in which so much of dance training and choreographic process is organized. Again, this is an oversimplification of what is in practice a flowing tide of agency between dancer and choreographer, instructor and student, but still I think it gets at something, something like “enable me to do this thing that I desire to do.” This of course has personal implications as well.
I need you to make it possible for me to do what I desire to do.
I feel as if I am ranging dangerously close to a psychological self-analysis through the analysis of this piece, the structures I put in place and what they may elucidate about either the way in which I construct/conduct relationships or the way in which I want to construct/conduct relationships. An implicit respect for the agency of the other, a need to not overstep that agency, and in desiring, a request for the other to make it possible to act on that desire.
This week I also finally began to understand some of the choices I made regarding the sound score, what it might mean to go from “Poker Face” to “Bad Romance,” how the one might lead to the other (playing games and what playing games get you), and the appropriation of the text of various docu-porns.
But the day is moving on. The sun will be up soon, birds are already chirping (it must be spring after all), and I have to teach yoga. Continue to practice letting go.
Filed under: inspiration | Tags: autumn quartet, bad romance, butoh, lady gaga, trio a, yoshito ohno, yvonne rainer
Somewhere between here:
and here:
and here:
and here:
Where is that?
Filed under: creative process, Dance | Tags: autumn quartet, chakra, nudity, swadhisthana
I don’t have long to reflect on the ideas that are spinning around “Autumn Quartet,” but this seems to be typical of 2010 thus far. Too many ideas, not enough time.
Last week we had two guests in our practice of the piece, and their perspectives and feedback were both fascinating and valuable. The most poignant thought I went away with was the ongoing question of how to situate the work in such a way that it can be experienced/appreciated as a practice primarily concerned with our (the four of us dancing) kinesthetic/spatial/personal experience of it. It is not concerned with the visual spectacle of the piece, or even a transmission or communication of our experience. It is concerned with our experience, whatever that might be, within the confines of the experience itself (the algorithmic score, the movement material/vocabulary, the space, the time in which it occurs, our experiences of one another, etc.). I have not yet found a successful way at framing the piece in this way without devaluing the presence of the observer.
The other lingering ideas I had about the piece after last week:
-Structural elements of the algorithm: I am thinking about the possibility of adding the score, a minor detail, that shifts some of our walking patterns contingent on the spatial organization of others in the space, how this transforms our experience of the space, our attention to one another, and adds yet another power dynamic of dictating spatial organization. I’m not sure if it will work, but it’s an interest.
-The question of nudity came up again. Why is it that we only strip to our underwear? How would it be different if we were completely bare? Are we as a group (the four of us) at a point at which we can be naked with one another/what might that mean/how might that be affected by the presence of observers? On a practical level, can we dance the movement phrases without our bodies literally getting in the way? If not, what might it mean that the movement material is “designed” for the clothed body, violent or brutal to the naked body? I’m not sure . . . and if full nudity were to come into the piece at some point, how might that be instigated? Do we discuss it again, make decisions before we start? When I look back at the score, it describes “the final state of undress,” whatever that might be, allowing for it to be individually determined and allowing for the possibility of full nudity. Is any discussion beyond that necessary? It is a question/lots of questions, not an answer.
-There is the lingering question of love.
-There is a question of pleasure. In my yoga class this morning I taught about swadhisthana, the second chakra, and the indication that pleasure/potential pleasure is always accessible within one’s experience, as one’s body. I began to wonder about this dance, and whether I still experience it as pleasure, if I am still “finding the pleasure” as I dance it.
We are only scheduled to dance the piece three more times. I’m not sure how these questions might be addressed in those practices. But as they have come up in my contemplation of the piece, I wanted them to be included in this bog account of its process.
Filed under: art, creative process, Dance | Tags: "love is not a pie", amy bloom, autumn quartet, coco loupe, love, love art lab
This weekend I had the distinct pleasure of seeing my dear friend CoCo. It seems that without fail CoCo has a way of shifting or adding to my perspective of my own work. Saturday evening amidst the revelry of a birthday party, she referred to my documentation/description of the process of “Autumn Quartet” and mentioned her realization that throughout all of what I’ve written, there is no mention of love.
I have to admit, I was a little stunned. I thought of the Love Art Laboratory, and how I hold them as such icons, such inspirations for my work. Their stated purpose is to create work that explore, generates, and celebrates love. Their work served as a significant inspiration for this piece; I am particularly moved by what I perceive to be a sensational integration of life and art in their lives, and as I initiated this piece, I think it was my goal to synthesize or replicate some aspect of that integration. I am not convinced that I succeeded in this intention (I’m not even sure that I know/knew what the realization of that intention would look like), but certainly the piece has become something, something full of content and implications and complexity and contradiction, orbiting around increasingly pronounced topics/themes. I can be pleased with that.
So now there is this question of “love.” Where is love in this composition of implication/explication, violence, sexuality, undressing, power dynamics, etc.? I think my immediate response is that I don’t know how to choreograph love. I’ve figured out ways to choreograph these other elements, but I don’t know if I can compose or orchestrate love. And yet I think that we love each other. I know that I love Erik, Eric, and Amanda, and I know that the process of this piece has been a significant contributor to the cultivation of that love . . . and yet I never set out to make that a goal. I don’t feel responsible for whatever love we feel for one another . . . instead, I feel responsible for creating a space, a situation, in which relationships occur. They could have gone any way . . . this process could have made us despise one another, perhaps. Or maybe not . . . so much of it has been about intimacy and trust, knowing one another in intimate and corporeal ways. Maybe when we dare to engage another person like that, love is inevitable? It that too utopian? Is it even accurate?
When I was talking with Beth and Annie in San Francisco, I remember talking about the space between sex and love, and Annie said, “Well, all sex is love.” Beth responded, “No, it isn’t. Not necessarily. Some sex is just fucking.” I think the conclusion that we came to was that even “just fucking” had the potential to be a kind of love. Love has many forms.
It makes me think of a short story I read last week by Amy Bloom entitled “Love is Not a Pie.” A crucial moment in the story comes when it is revealed that a woman has two loves, her husband and their friend who is also her lover. She explains to her daughter that love is not a pie; it is not something that is sectioned off and dolled out. It is different with each person, for her husband, for her lover, for each of her daughters, etc. Love is big and diverse. “Just fucking” may be a kind of love. Dancing and biting and undressing may be kinds of love.
Maybe love is another implication in the piece that could use explication? Maybe that’s another consideration for the growth/development of the piece. How do we forefront love along with violence and sex and intimacy?
We only have four more “rehearsals” for the piece. We’ll only do it four more times. I entirely expect that it has already changed, already transformed. I expect this consideration of love may shift/change it further. And I fully expect further observations/revelations/recognitions to occur in the process. At the end of the quarter, it will not be the same as it has been.
Filed under: creative process, Dance | Tags: aphex twins, autumn quartet, docu-porn, fluid: men redefining sexuality, ISAN, jiz lee, lady gaga, madison young, porn, sex, sexuality, Thin Line Between Art and Sex, tommy midas, violence
I think I am finally coming to a greater understanding of what the meaning or reason of this piece might be. I have been working for a few days on a new soundscore with which to experiment in our rehearsal this week. It is the basic mash-up that I have described before (Marie Antoinette soundtrack, ISAN, Lady Gaga, Aphex Twins) with new text and sound loops woven into it. The new text/sound is taken from two films by Madison Young, “Fluid: Men Redefining Sexuality” and “Thin Line Between Art and Sex.” I have transcribed the text in earlier posts, statements made by Tommy Midas and Jiz Lee. I have also lifted sound from the sex portions of these films, weaving sounds of fucking, sucking, moaning, groaning, slapping, sighing, orgasming, etc. into the soundscore. It’s pretty hot, a little kitschy, borders between overstimulation and potential humor. I recognize that. There is a sense of both poignancy and humor to hear Lady Gaga sing: “Russian roulette is not the same without a gun, and baby when it’s love if it’s not rough it isn’t fun,” while at the same time hearing a woman begging “choke me, please, choke me, please,” while someone else is moaning while getting slapped around. Several of my peers have asked why I’m creating this soundscore, and here in lies my new understanding: I think I am trying to make aspects of dance that exist implicitly in our practices explicit in this piece/practice. Often in the dance world, especially in Western theatrical dance and dance training, sexuality is significantly downplayed, as if to suggest that sex plays no part in what we are doing. I do not mean to imply that dance is all about sex, not at all. But dance is a physical practice, essentially embodied, and sexuality is persistently a part of our embodied existence. We may not be conscious of it, we may not even acknowledge it, but it is always present. I am interested in acknowledging this, bringing it from its implicit, unacknowledged place into the foreground, explicitly acknowledged as a dynamic in what it is we are doing. I don’t think that this piece/we as a cast/this academic institution are quite ready to literally have sex as part of a dance, especially in front of spectators (although I have to say that this intrigues me), so I am exploring other ways to make the sex/sexuality explicit. This soundscore is one strategy. I think the stripping and biting and rolling around on the floor in our underwear also foreground a space in which sexuality occurs. Similarly, I think the component of the biting is a strategy for making explicit the implicit violence of dance. Dancing is difficult, demanding, and often destructive to our bodies. There is an inherent masochism and sometimes sadism to much of dancing. By creating a dance in which masochism and sadism are made explicit in these “biting scenes,” mixing it up with intimacy, friendship, dancing, and the implication of sex, I am foregrounding aspects of what we do that generally go unacknowledged/unexplored.
I don’t think this is the only reason or meaning behind this work. I think equally as important are the themes of integrating art and life, shifting power dynamics, and agency/indeterminacy as I detailed in my previous post. I was discussing some of these ideas with a colleague of mine this afternoon, and she commented that maybe all of this, the dancing, the sex, the violence, Lady Gaga, maybe it’s all the same thing. Then she refined that statements: maybe it isn’t that it is all the same, but that it is all always a part, always at play. There is sex in dancing even if the dancing is not about sex. There is agency and indeterminacy and improvisation in sex, even if the sex is not about exploring these ideas. There is violence in dance practices, and in sex, and it is sometimes tangled up with intimacy, pleasure, fulfillment, excitement, etc. In a truly post-modern turn, this dance is perhaps less about isolating and examining each of these aspects of human existence and more about blurring the lines between them, layering them in all of there complexity and contradiction, just as they occur in life. Because the dance is our live, our lives are the dance, etc.
Filed under: art, creative process, Dance, Grad School, research | Tags: abhinavagupta, Alva Noë, annie sprinkle, artXX, autumn quartet, butoh, carol queen, eco-sexuality, ecosexuality, elizabeth stephens, identity, jiz lee, love art lab, madison young, mark johnson, perfume: the story of a murderer, post-modernism, queer theory, sexecology, sexual epistemology, Synchronous Objects, the body, Thin Line Between Art and Sex, tommy midas, Yoga
This week I read an article by Alexandra Carter entitled “Destabilizing the Discipline: Critical debates about History and their Impact on the Study of Dance.” In it she describes history not as neat boxes of knowledge but as clouds of “dispersing interplay” of discourses. My life, art, and interests feel a bit like that right now. I feel as if I have several large foci with small shifting bolts of connective tissue (big ‘ole mixed metaphor) linking them together. Some of these are illustrated in my tag cloud, others are not so concrete as to have a “tag” attached to them. I feel like I am trying to figure out how they all relate, how they inform or reinforce one another, and how the work I am doing might adequately address/serve/interrogate all of these interests.
At the heart of it all is the body. There is the subject of my arching research interests, that of situating the body as the site of the perception, negotiation, and demonstration of identity, and how this state is considered within the choreographic process. Specifically I am interested in considering movement material generated by the body as the extension of personal identity, and examining how the physical practice of movement material constitutes not only the construction of dance but also the construction of personal identity.
From here I am already aware of the paths that connect to other interests. One that seems to be of increasing centrality is the expansion of the notion of the body. This comes up in my yoga teaching, in the paper I wrote about Synchronous Objects, and in the ideas I have surrounding the work of Love Art Laboratory, Sexecology, and Ecosexuality. In yoga I privilege the body as the site of perception. The sage Abhinavagupta wrote: “Nothing perceived is independent of perception, and perception differs not from the perceiver; therefore the [perceived] universe is nothing but the perceiver.” If perception is a physical activity, as Mark Johnson, George Lakoff, and Alva Noë (among others, I am sure) have suggested, and if perception is the unity between the subject and the object (that which is “external” of self, the perceived universe), then the body take on far more importance as the site not only of the subject, but the subjective universe. This is perhaps not a profound recognition, but I think it may have profound implications. Our experience of the world can no longer be entirely considered as a subject moving through an external landscape; instead, the subject (and thus the body) becomes implicated in the “external” world. I think this may be the connection point to Sexecology/Ecosexulaity. The foundation of my understanding of these radical, fabulous, and beautiful notions as they have evolved out of the collaborative work of Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens is that one looks to find sexual (thus bodily) content in the natural environment. I think this recognition of the body as already implicated in environmental situation by virtue of its role as the creative/perceptual site for the subjective universe offers a natural extension to the exploration of sexuality in that environment. For more about my ideas surrounding sexecology/ecosexuality, see my earlier post. Going back to my yoga practice/yoga teaching, part of the way in which I understand yoga is a kind of alchemy of self, the “splendor of recognition,” the recognition being that Self is not separate from the universe in which it occurs, consciousness is the substance by which we create our own universe, Self is not fixed, nor is the universe, nor is the body, and that by cultivating this awareness of the body/Self/universe in our yoga practice, we are substantially transforming not only ourselves, but our consciousness, and thus the universe in which we live.
Adjacent (but connected) to these interest is the piece that I am working on right now, Autumn Quartet, with Erik Abbott-Main, Eric Falck, and Amanda Platt. This piece has been in process since September, and I am still not quite sure I understand it yet. There are so many blog posts writing specifically about this piece, I don’t want to be redundant, but the major ideas that have emerged from this process are: the relationship between intimacy and violence, undressing/redressing the body, shifting power dynamics, indeterminacy/agency (as created by the structure for the piece being an algorithmic score), the integration of life and art . . . those are the main ideas. Recently I’ve become interested in how this piece relates to sex, the presence or implication of sex in the piece even in the absence of actual sexual action. As I listened to Jiz Lee and Tommy Midas discuss sex in a couple of docu-porns by Madison Young, I was reminded of this dance. I’m still not quite sure what the connections are, but I think they are there. Part of how I am interrogating those connections is by bringing that text, that language, into the process, into the studio. I am situating it into my commentary on the work here on my blog, and in the sound score for the piece. [On a side note, I follow both Jiz Lee and Madison Young on Twitter, and it was an exhilarating surprise to have both of them tweet about my using that text in this piece]. I think as I watched footage of a run-through of the piece, I also began to make aesthetic associations with several films, a few that I have been thinking about since the start of the piece, and one that I had not considered. The last couple of scenes in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer have always been iconic moments for me, and as I looked at this dance, I recognized images that directly relate to those scenes, namely the wild flurry of bodies in various states of undress, and the biting, consuming, eating of a person. In case you haven’t seen the film, I don’t want to go into too much detail, but it was a new connection for me.
Other points of interest branch out from this piece. I am in a course looking at the history and theory of post-modern and contemporary dance this quarter, and in considering what it is I would like to research for this class, this piece has suggested several points: the utilization of undressing as choreography, its reasoning, its perception, etc.; the explication of violence in choreography in post-modern dance: this has interested me for a while. Much of dance has an intrinsically masochistic quality to it. It is difficult, demanding, and often damaging to the body, in small, overlooked ways. I am interested in tracing the expansion of explicit physical violence in choreography, and considering how it might be indicative of an explication of the intrinsic violence, masochism, and even sadism of dance practices. I am also considering writing my paper on Love Art Laboratory, Sexecology/Ecosexuality, as a component of this course, as the destabilization of fixed parameters of the body might be considered essentially post-structuralist, i.e., essentially post-modernist.
I have been feeling hungry for Butoh lately. Butoh has been the most transformative, fulfilling, actualizing physical practice of my life. Studying with Yoshito and Kazuo Ohno in Yokohama in 2006 was a formative experience for my dancing life. And yet ever since I came to grad school, the time and attention I have made available for a Butoh practice has been non-existant. I regret this, and at the same time I’m not sure of the solution. And yet all of these things, the body as the site of identity, the situation of the subjective universe, subliminal and explicit violence, these are all aspects that I find that Butoh can address.
I’m interested in applying notions of queer theory to choreographic practice, subverting the assumed normative roles of choreographer and dancer, without reverting to the post-modern model of dancers generating movement/choreographer structuring that movement. While that suggests the (perhaps illusion?) of a democratic process, I don’t know if it has substantially subverted those roles. Again, I think of statements made by Jiz Lee in “Thin Line Between Art and Sex” about being a “switch,” the fluidity of roles, leading and following, and how that sexual perspective might inform not only dance practices (as reflected in forms such as Contact Improvisation), but also choreographic methodologies. Truly, I am fascinated by Jiz’s ideas. They have addressed a whole spectrum of concepts that I have wanted to explore for a while and to which I have not yet given my attention. Jiz also wrote an article in a publication called ArtXX looking at the relationship between cognitive science and queer porn. I just ordered my issue; can’t wait to read it.
Which leads to the last interest that I might address here, and that has to do with a notion I’ve considered as “Sexual epistemology,” or ways of knowing that emerge from sexuality, sex, sexual identity, etc. This sense of considering choreographic process from the perspective of “switch” as suggested by a kind of sexual identity could be considered a kind of sexual epistemology. I am curious about what modalities or methodologies might be suggested by other sexual topics, like penetration/non-penetration, arousal, auto-erotic behavior, kink, etc. I have been interested in how the “sex-positive movement” might address or inform academia, or even more specifically, dance in academia. There has been some acknowledgement of sexual dynamics as playing a role in dance practices, but I question whether these have been acknowledged through as “sex-positive” lens. Carol Queen defines sex-positive as follows: “It’s the cultural philosophy that understands sexuality as a potentially positive force in one’s life, and it can, of course, be contrasted with sex-negativity, which sees sex as problematic, disruptive, dangerous. Sex-positivity allows for and in fact celebrates sexual diversity, differing desires and relationships structures, and individual choices based on consent” (quoted from her article “The Necessary Revolution: Sex-Positive Feminism in the Post-Barnard Era.”). How might our acknowledgement, treatment, and even utilization of sexual understanding affect dance practices in a positive way? I don’t know, but it is a budding interest of mine.
I’m not sure of all the ways in which these interests relate. Nor am I sure of how to give attention to all or any of these during the difficult and demanding period of grad school, but even just by articulating them and cataloguing them here on my blog I feel that I have served the process in some way.
On to other things.
