Filed under: Dance | Tags: burr johnson, canyon, Chaos Territory Art: deleuze and the framing of the earth, deterritorialization, elizabeth grosz, gilles deleuze, hahn rowe, james clotfelter, john jasperse, john sorenson jolink, kennis hawkins, lindsay clark, Norah Zuniga-Shaw, Synchronous Objects, tony orrico, wexner center for the arts, William Forsythe
Photo by Tony Orrico
My experience of John Jasperse‘s Canyon, performed at the Wexner Center for the Arts on 28 April 2012, is a play of territories at the precipice of chaos, a shifting superimposition of structures and organizations—of bodies, of time, of space—that enact opportunities for disruption, deterritorialization, and disorganization, and a gesturing towards a fullness of that provides the very grounds from which organizations like “bodies,” “time,” and “space” emerge. My vocabulary here is particular, and it is worth clarifying at the front end. In watching Canyon, I am immediately struck by the multiple dimensions that are at play within the work, not simply “space,” “time,” “bodies,” etc.—fundamental elements of dance/choreography—but the particular structures through which these elements take on definition. I think of these structures as territories, following Deleuze and Guattari. Elizabeth Grosz, discussing Deleuze, writes, “… the constitution of territory is the fabrication of the space in which sensations may emerge, from which a rhythm, a tone, coloring, weight, texture may be extracted and moved elsewhere, may function for its own sake, may resonate for the sake of intensity alone. And, equally, insofar as its primordial impulse is the creation of territory in both the natural and human worlds, art is also capable of that destruction and deformation that destroys territories and enables them to revert to the chaos from which they were temporarily wrenched. Framing and deframing become art’s modes of territorialization and deterritorialization through sensation; framing becomes the means by which the plane of composition composes, deframing its modes of upheaval and transformation” (Grosz 12-13). Sitting in the audience in the Wexner Performance Space, I am met with a collection of such framings, mappings, and organizations: a white Marley floor set askew (not parallel to the walls); a line of bright orange flags—themselves reminiscent of staking claim to land as a new “territory”—dividing the floor into two halves; structuring of the space accomplished through lighting (lighting design by James Clotfelter), inscribing blurry delineations of brightness and shadow; and perhaps most overtly of all, sprawling linear compositions in fluorescent tape traversing the walls and floor (visual design by Tony Orrico). Each of these materials suggests a mode in which the space has been organized or territorialized, a system through which structures have framed (and in doing so, produced) “space.” These various territories do not describe the same space; rather, they function as divergent structures superimposed on one another offering multiple accounts of space, each organization a route for disorganization when considered through a different logic. The lights do not territorialize spaces that reside within the bounds of the lines of tape; the lines of tape do not align with the rectangular Marley floor nor the rectangular architecture of the space; the line of flags cuts through these various other territories; and so on. In this sense, the superimposition of territories effects a series of deterritorializations, each structure producing a rupture in the others, each exceeding the logic of the others. This dense layering of territories/organizations/structures produces the opportunities for their own undoing. Grosz goes on to write, “… art is not only the movement of territorialization … it is also the converse movement, that of deterritorialization, of cutting through territories, breaking up systems of enclosure and performance, traversing territory in order to retouch chaos, enabling something mad, asystematic, something of the chaotic outside to reassert and restore itself in and through the body, through works and events that impact the body” (Grosz 18). At these sites of rupture, where these various territories cut through one another, I am brought close to something, what Grosz calls “chaos”: it is that full potential that provides the very conditions for extracting experiences and concepts such as “space.” It is at the collision between these territories where I glimpse their undoing, where I brush up against chaos and “the beyond.”
And the performance has not even started yet.
As the sound score begins, dancers come running through the audience into the space. The dancing feels familiar. It is exquisitely precise; it springs lightly and circles and swings, almost entirely vertical, and always with a particularity that feels both powerful and measured. At first I think that the familiarity of these vocabularies feels generic, then something happens: I notice the spatial pathways of these dancers, juxtaposed over and against the lines drawn on the floor and walls. They move with precision, yet it is precisely not the paths traced out along these lines. Between the “territory” of these highly organized bodies—organized both in the clarity of the choreography, but also in the evident regulation of their training—and the tape, the lights, the demarcation of the Marley floor space, the architecture, I falter. These frameworks or systems of organization (or, again, territories) each provide a way to see and structure the space, and they do not align. They do not operate through the same logic, and thus they continually cleave through one another. Bodies fall into temporary lines with one another, but they are lines that intersect and extend through other lines (light, tape, Marley, cement, flags) in the space. In this sense, what seems familiar or even generic takes on new, unexpected properties. The movement—however familiar it might feel—enacts an unfamiliar operation in the disruption/deterritorialization of other versions of the space, and in doing so, makes the movement itself no longer what it might have seemed to be.
Space is not the only element that is produced through these various forms of organization: these bodies, as bodies do, are moving in/through time. Their movements repeat, and the rhythms of their repetitions segment time, as does the music, and the time produced through the movement of bodies and the repetition of those movements is not always the same as the time that is produced through the complex rhythmic structures of the sound score (composed by Hahn Rowe). These temporal territories deterritorialize one another (or, at the very least, suggest routes—”lines of flight”—along which deterritorialization might be accomplished), and in doing so, I brush up once again with that from which time becomes.
Somewhere between time and space, I encounter the alignments of bodies: dancers coming into synch with one another, sometimes in brief or extended unison, sometime in shared timing of different gestures, sometimes in shared or similar vocabulary that is not in synch with one another. [William Forsythe and Norah Zuniga Shaw define “alignments” usefully in their introduction to the Synchronous Objects project: “Alignments are short instances of synchronization between dancers in which their actions share some, but not necessarily all, attributes. Manifested as analogous shapes, related timings, or corresponding directional flows, alignments occur in every moment of the dance and are constantly shifting throughout the group.”] In these moments of alignment between bodies, fleeting territories emerge, briefly establishing logics capable of holding these dancing bodies together, traversing other configurations of time and space, while also interrupting the clear/stable individuation of bodies on stage.
At a pivotal moment in the piece, the performers distribute themselves across the stage, pulling up the fluorescent orange tape that has traversed the white Marley throughout the performance. This is the first time that these bodies have moved along these lines, taking on the organization of these marks, but they do so only within the very moment that they become unmarked. This is breathtaking, the mundane task of pulling up tape demonstrating something of becoming unmarked/disorganized/smooth in the very moment of reiterating/retracing the given marks. I think of Judith Butler’s suggestion that the opportunity for the subversion of performative regimes is in the repetition of those very performatives. The repetition is the site of agency, the point at which the doing can become undone. The strips of tape peel and snap off the floor, into the air, and are rolled into great balls. So much happens in these moments: following these lines, the lines become undone; the two-dimensional moves suddenly through the air, three-dimensionally, and coheres as haphazard clumps. The linear formations are made to break with their own logic, rapidly transitioning into new states, themselves becoming the tools for their own deterritorialization. Something similar happens with the standing flags throughout the piece: at various points, dancers reconfigure these flags, and in doing so, simultaneously produce new [organizations of] spaces while undoing the spaces that had been described by the flags only moments earlier.
These are the mechanisms of the piece, these various structures intersecting and undoing one another and themselves. But throughout it all, there is the suggestion of something more, something beyond, what Grosz calls “chaos”: “Chaos is not the absence of order but rather the fullness or plethora that, depending on its uneven speed, force, and intensity, is the condition both for any model or activity and for the undoing and transformation of such models or activities. This concept of chaos is also known or invoked through the concepts of: the outside, the real, the virtual, the world, materiality, nature, totality, the cosmos, each of which is a narrowing and specification of chaos from a particular point of view. Chaos cannot be identified with any one of these terms, but is the very condition under which such terms are capable of being confused, the point of their overlap and intensification” (Grosz 26-27). In Canyon, this chaos is most articulate to me in that which is beyond, that which is out of bounds, out of reach, out of sight, off balance, just beyond what is accounted for within the available logics of time and space and bodies, just beyond what is demarcated by the choreography, the lights, the floor, the visual designs, etc. The beyond/chaos operates constantly at the edges of the territories, and I catch glimpses of it in their mutual disruption, but it is perhaps physicalized most overtly in the ridge on the floor at the edge of the performance space: the Marley floor takes on a kind of topographical elevation, inclining upward into a short roll near the far “upstage” edge (see photos). Throughout the performance, dancers and objects move over this ridge to disappear behind it. Quite literally, we were shown where visibility ends and unseeable/unforeseeable possibilities exceed both the visible as well as the floor space. Similarly, dancers frequently enter and exit the space through the audience seating, simultaneously extending the “performance space” and—depending on where one was sitting—crossing out of sight. In these moments, I became keenly aware of what was beyond this organization—“the performance”—and the liminal space at the margins of what is included within the time/space of the performance. This was for me the ongoing brush with chaos between and beyond the intense proliferation of organization(s) within the work.
Photo by Tony Orrico
Finally, this sense of “the beyond” is articulated throughout the dancing bodies of the work. Time and again, dancers (Lindsay Clark, Kennis Hawkins, John Jasperse, Burr Johnson, and John Sorenson Jolink) perform at the edges of their balance (there is a lot of stumbling in this piece), at the edges of unison, at the edges of alignment, at the edges of clear geometric spatial formations, at the edges of stability; frequently, they fall or spill or are thrown or slide into this “beyond,” into excess, off balance, no longer fully in control, not quite in unison, no longer in a straight line. I love the moments of the dance in which the dancers seem to to drift and wander, with drifting foci and limp bodies, somewhere between intoxication and a dream stake, a kind of a wandering about wonder that does not clearly define its trajectory, that does not rigidly contain these bodies. The limits of clear organizations/structures/territories—again, of balance, of unison, of alignment, of spatial formations, of stability, etc.—are explicated through these excesses. This is what lingers with me as the night wears on: the sense of what exists just beyond how this moment is structured, the specter of chaos as the rich, full ground from which territories—those various ways in which my body, this space, this time, my sense of self, my geographical situation, etc. etc. etc.—take on precarious constitution. This is not to disparage organization or structure or territory; these are the strategies through which we navigate our experience and our worlds; these are the strategies with which dances—all art, in fact—are made. Rather, there is a quiet hopefulness in the lingering effect of Canyon, an awareness of the conditionality, contingency, and precarity of such structures, a persistent sense of what exceeds these frames, of hovering at the edge of what else (and how else) might be possible, between and beyond.
Cited: Grosz, Elizabeth. Chaos, Territory, Art: deleuze and the framing of the earth. New York: Columbia U P, 2008.
Filed under: Dance, creative process, inspiration, art | Tags: Synchronous Objects, William Forsythe, mark johnson, embodiment, ballets russes, improvisational technologies, prada, elizabeth stephens, annie sprinkle, lady gaga, judith butler, sexecology, femina potens, fame monster, moca, francesco vezzoli, frank gehry, damien hirst, bolshoi ballet, vaganova, diaghilev, jill johnson, george lakoff, amelia jones, heidegger, henry sayre, action painting, chihuly, tit print, yves klein, accessibility
I haven’t updated as recently as I would have liked. There is so much going on here at the end of the quarter, but I feel that there are several points that I want to quickly share. I confess, there is very little overt connective tissue between these various ideas, but the common denominator is that they are occupying my attention right now, and as I hope is clear through the overall journey of this blog, that which occupies my attention inevitably finds its way into influencing “the work” (i.e. my creative practice, the dances I make, the papers I write etc.)
So there’s Lady Gaga. There’s her new album Fame Monster that is blowing up my world.
And there’s its connection to ballet. On November 14th, Lady Gaga premiered her new song “Speechless” at MOCA’s 30th Anniversary Gala in Francesco Vezzoli’s “Ballets Russes Italian Style (The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again).” She played a piano customized by Damien Hirst, wore a hat designed by Frank Gehry, was accompanied by dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet, who were attired in costumes designed by Miuccia Prada. That alone should be enough said. But you can read more about it here. And see a clip of it below. And an image.
So for my last week of teaching ballet this quarter (to beginner non-majors), I set all of my barre combinations to Lady Gaga, predominantly the new album, as an homage to this contemporary intersection of high Russian ballet and contemporary pop culture, it in itself an homage to the Ballets Russes and the work of Serge Diaghilev. After having taught Vaganova Technique all quarter, it felt appropriate.
I had an amazing opportunity to take a class with Jill Johnson, former dancer with William Forsythe and the Frankfurt Ballet (among a list of other credentials). I relished the opportunity to revisit a way of moving that became familiar last winter working with Nik Haffner and Forsythe’s “Improvisational Technologies.” Today Jill emphasized the relationship between these ideas and classical ballet technique, epaulement as rotations in the body, and working rigorously in abstracting these various rotations and counter-rotations. It was not the same way of moving that I explore last year, but there was significant overlap, and moments of realizing how that experience last year changed the way that I move “naturally.” You can see me exploring some of those ideas in a piece I performed in October here.
I am also working on authoring a new paper, the working of title of which is “Body of Knowledge/Knowledge of the Body: An Analysis of the Presence of Embodiment in Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced.” I am working to construct a working theoretical definition of what is meant by “embodiment” from synthesizing writings by Mark Johnson, George Lakoff, Judith Butler, Amelia Jones, Heidegger, and Henry Sayre, among others, and then looking for the presence of embodiment in Synchronous Objects. I have found that there is a fairly widespread uncomfortability amongst dancers engaging with this dance-based research project. I think it has something to do with a sense that the knowledge that we know as our moving bodies has been extracted, transformed into date, and re-presented in forms/objects other than the moving body. My interest in the implication of embodiment throughout the project, in the site of origin (the dance), the collection and translation of the choreographic systems into data, the transformation of the data into alternative re-presentations, and ultimately (and perhaps most viscerally) in the viewer of the project himself or herself. While the paper is still in the works, I feel that there are implications of embodiment throughout the project; this is most acute in the viewing of the project. The project is an object to be viewed, to be understood by a viewer. It is a request for the re-embodiment of the knowledge being re-presented. I am attempting to describe that not only does the site itself necessitate the (embodied) presence of the viewer, but that the way in which the objects themselves are understood are through conceptualizations of time, space, density, movement, etc. that emerge from an embodied experience of the world in which we live. This is supported primarily by Johnson and Lakoff’s writings in Philosophy in the Flesh and The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. I’ll keep you posted on the paper. In the mean time, I hope you go and explore the site.
In the reading I’ve done in preparation for writing this paper, a gem of a resource was a book I came across by Henry M. Sayre entitled The Object of Performance: the American Avant-Garde since 1970. Sayre writes about the shift of importance in the visual art world from the art object to the performative act, and in doing so the shift of “presence” from the artist/object to the viewer of the object. He writes beautifully about the photograph emerging as a respected medium, a signifier of both presence (the viewer of the photograph, and even the photograph as an object itself) and absence (that which the photograph depicts). He also wrote about the action painting (re: Pollock, Krasner, others) as a significant shift, in which the paintings that were bought by museums and collectors were not the action painting itself. It was a thing concerned with the immediacy of the action; the painting acted as a trace, a document of the action, and yet an object itself. Like the photograph. Like Synchronous Objects. It has sparked some fascinating notions as I have engaged with visual art after this reading. Last weekend I saw a series of works by Dale Chihuly, mostly large glass sculptures. It was fascinating and exciting to engage this work as “movement traces,” the documentation of the actions of the glass artists (which, in Chihuly’s work, art already mostly interpretations of Chihuly’s “action painting” designs for the pieces), and even farther as potential “movement scores.” Visual art as movement score. Reading visual art as movement scores as a method for engagement. There is something there.
Speaking of art object as documentation of action, I just ordered a “Tit Print” by Annie Sprinkle. She posted on her facebook today that she just made another batch of them, and had them on sale today. They consist of large ink or paint prints using her breasts as her instrument. I think they’re lovely, a kind of Yves Klein way of revealing the body. And the fact that I am going to San Francisco later this month to interview Annie and Beth and see their upcoming show “Sexecology: Making Love with Earth, Sky and Sea” at Femina Potens Gallery.
One of Annie's Tit Prints
Finally, a little rant: I am exhausted about hearing about making art or dance “accessible.” I take issue with this word. Because it rarely refers to making art experiences available to the population. It most often implies that the art be constructed in such a way that the viewer can “get something out of it.” It is not about making the art itself accessible as it is about making a specific experience (or kind of experience) of the work accessible. I think it has emerged from the collective anxiety of audience and artist worrying that they have somehow misunderstood the art experience. And my issue is this: “accessible” implies that there is something to be “accessed,” something encoded that must be (able to be) decoded. It assumes that art is essentially communicable, that its purpose or intention is that the viewer understand or “access” the experience that the artist has of her or his own work. And I think that is simply not the purpose of art. My theory is also that we live in such a visually complex, communication driven culture that we spend our lives trying to “figure out” what we’re supposed to understand from images, advertising, commercials, etc. etc. etc., that we come to the art experience with that same pressure. It is my opinion that the art experience is perhaps the opportunity for reprieve from this way of engaging and understanding. The purpose is not to access the encoded meaning, but instead to engage with that with which you are presented and make it meaningful for yourself. Construct meaning rather than access meaning, using your experience of the dance or sculpture or literature or music, etc., as the materials by which you construct your meaning. In this sense, I am opposed to making art “accessible.” I am in favor of making art available. But I would like to do away with this language/concept that there is anything to “access” in art. It is there. You experience it. You make that experience meaningful for yourself using the materials before your as the materials of your meaning.
There. That’s my little rant for today.
Back to reading/writing about Synchronous Objects.
Filed under: Dance | Tags: 60x60, david gordon, random breakfast, the strip, valda setterfield, wall street nightclub, William Forsythe
Finally I am posting video footage from the 3 October event 60×60 Dance held at Wall Street Night Club. Enjoy:
Filed under: art | Tags: ann hamilton, anne carson, BAM, meredith monk, new york times, William Forsythe
I just read a review of William Forsythe’s “Decreation,” a piece choreographed in 2003 with connections to Anne Caron’s book by the same name. Anne Carson is my favorite author, unquestionable. Autobiography of Red, Eros: The Bittersweet, Plainwater, Glass, Irony, and God, etc. I love these books. This is not the first time that I have discovered connections between Forsythe and Carson. But I ache to witness this connection:
“The Forsythe Company performs through Saturday at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn; (718) 636-4100, bam.org.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/arts/dance/09forsythe.html?_r=1&ref=dance
I found a short video clip of the piece:
Later this month, Meredith Monk will also be performing at BAM. October 21-25, she will be presenting Ascension Variations, another piece created in collaboration with Ann Hamilton. I don’t think there is any way that I will be able to see that show, but it feels destined that one day I will be able to see Monk’s work. She, along with Hamilton, is one of the most important artists to my work and I have yet to see her work live.
Again, I found a little video:
One day . . .
Filed under: art, Dance | Tags: 60x60, coco loupe, david gordon, gender, improvisation, improvisational technologies, random breakfast, sexuality, the strip, valda setterfield, William Forsythe
60×60 is now over. I hope you were able to make it. It was an amazing show full of diverse talent and good energy. I felt that both of my pieces were successful in executing their intentions. The first was an improvisation intending to utilize Forsythian Improvisational technologies to which I was introduced last year, as well as ways of moving that I associate with those technologies. It was one minute long and explored material both standing and on the floor.
The second was dual purposed and highly conceptual. It was an homage to “The Strip” section of David Gordon and Valda Setterfield’s Random Breakfast. It was also intended to deconstruct the relationship between the socially presentable body and the actual body (or corporeal morphology) of the individual. It was something of a temporal palindrome, starting upstage, walking directly downstage while undressing, then moving back upstage while re-dressing. All in one minute. A friend said to me afterwards that the piece could have gone on for much, much longer. I agree. I have a sense that I will re-stage the piece at some point. I am interested in how the fully clothed body that is viewed at the end of the piece is different from the fully clothed body at the beginning because of what has transpired in-between. It is always all about the in-between. The piece also commented a bit on gender and sexuality: I wore heels, women’s slacks, and a large black lambs wool coat. During the performance (the images below are from the dress rehearsal) I wore a t-shirt that says “Legalize Gay: repeal prop. 8 now!” It also had an oddly intimate feeling beyond just the exposed body; there was something about the action of undressing and re-dressing, the clumsiness, the un-sexy-ness.
CoCo Loupe graciously photographed the dress rehearsal. I share those photos now with you as documentation of the piece. Video footage may be posted in the next few weeks or so. Additional footage/images/commentary may appear at http://60×60.blogspot.com/ in the weeks to come so stay tuned there.
Also, I just received this by email today from the directors of 60×60:
“Mark your calendars now. We will be coming back to Columbus to
do this again during the first weekend in October, 2010. Tell your
friends and colleagues. Let’s make the next one bigger and better. More
details will come as things are confirmed…. stay tuned.” Very exciting.
Here are the images from the two pieces:
Filed under: creative process, Dance, Grad School, research | Tags: "endless reach", choreographic object, choreography, dance notation bureau, DNB, labanotation, labanotation teacher certification course, motif description, Synchronous Objects, TCC, William Forsythe
As part of the Labanotation Teacher Certification Course (TCC) that I am taking right now, we have been asked to design and teach an “integrated” class, in which we find ways of introducing, exploring, or utilizing Labanotation in the context of another course. Examples we were given by our faculty included an integrated repertory experience in which we used notation floor plans as a learning tool for learning a section of Anna Sokolow’s Steps of Silence (taught by Valerie Williams), and modern technique class incorporating the introduction and exploration of the Labanotation movement concept “space holding” (taught by Julie Brodie), and an composition class utilizing Laban’s Motif description as a creative/generative opportunity (taught by John Giffin).
Already we have had excellent examples presented by my classmates, including integrating Labanotation into a Modern dance class for non-majors, a study of embodied dance history looking at Helen Tamiris, a musical theater (or dance for actors) class, and a elementary notation class looking at hula dance. All have been richly informative and inspirational.
I am teaching again tomorrow, and although I have my lesson plan, I am still fleshing out the underlying philosophy of what it is that I am doing. I am planning an integrated Repertory, Composition, and Notation class in which students learn historical choreography from a Labanotation score (for tomorrow’s class, they will be reading a piece of my own choreography from 2007 entitled “Endless Reach”), then create their own compositions from a Motif score of the same dance. I am interested in using this opportunity to question and investigate the nature of choreography and choreographic information. As I am writing this, I can’t stop thinking about the Synchronous Objects project and Bill Forsythe’s essay on “Choreographic Objects.” In his essay, Forsythe question the nature of choreography, its potential to exist in forms other than the dancing body (which he coins as “choreographic objects,” distinct primarily due to their persistence through time); “Synchronous Objects” was a lengthy exploration or demonstration of that contemplation. It examined one dance, one piece of choreography, in which the “essence” of the material was counterpoint, in movement material, alignments, and cueing. This was the “essence” of this particular exploration of this choreography. I remember during the Synchronous Objects Symposium, Bill was fairly explicit that this project was not for the purpose of preserving the dance for re-staging purposes, but for exploring its potential to generate new forms of expressing the choreographic information within the dance. While I am interested in this course providing an opportunity for embodied history, the preservation of dance works by their “re-staging” in contemporary bodies, I am also interested in investigating the nature of choreographic preservation and dissemination. I suppose this entire investigation stems from a question of what is the nature of choreography. More and more I am convinced that it is not “the steps” or specific movements/actions of the dance; historically, choreographers have changes the specific movements of their dances time and time again. In some cases, they have completely recreated entire sections of dances, added or taken away dancers, rearranged sections, edited the music, etc., and yet the piece of choreography itself has been retained. What then is essential to the choreography? And in that question there is another: what must be passed on in order for the choreography to “survive” or continue to live?
For those reading who are unfamiliar with the difference between Labanotation and Laban’s Motif Description, the former is a more specific notation describing specific movements, positions, timing, etc. Motif, by contrast, is far more open to interpretation. It describes general actions such as “moving on a circular,” “turning,” “jumping,” “standing still,” “gesturing in an arching motion,” etc. capturing the important elements or motifs. The Dance Notation Bureau’s website has an excellent explanation of both Motif and Labanotation. Of Motif, they offer:
“Motif Description is a method of recording movement that is closely related to Labanotation. In fact, many notators consider them subgroups of the same system. They use most of the same symbols and terminology, have a similar format, and both record fundamental components, such as direction, action, dynamics, and timing, that are found in all styles and forms of movement.
The main difference between the two scripts is the type of information they communicate. Structured Labanotation gives a literal, all-inclusive, detailed description of movement, so it can be reproduced exactly as it was performed or conceived. In contrast, Motif Description depicts just core elements and leitmotifs; it highlights what stands out, is most important, or is most impressive. A motif score might convey the overall structure of a dance improvisation, what one should focus on when learning how to swing a golf club, the primary movement features of a character in a play, or the intent of a person’s movement in a therapy session.
An example of Motif Description is shown below (see the example by follow the link to the DNB above and clicking “Motif Description Basics”). The notation indicates the salient components of a dance sequence; other aspects of the movement are left to the discretion of the performer. For instance, the notation states that the first part of the sequence is about turning. The manner of turning is open to interpretation. It might be done on one foot or while sitting on the floor, using a free or controlled quality, finishing with the body facing the front or the back of the room, or with some other variable. All of these interpretations would be valid, as long as turning is the movement’s focus.
The notation is written going up the page, i.e., first there is turning, then flexing, then extending, and so forth. The length of the symbols indicates the timing of the movement; longer indications have a greater time value than shorter indications.”
By drawing from a Motif description of historical dance works, including my own choreography, the choreography itself provides information that shapes the generative process of new work. I suppose another lingering question of mine is “To what degree is this ‘new work’ a dissemination or continuation or preservation of the ‘original’ choreography? To what degree might it be the ‘original’ choreography? To what degree is it something altogether new?” In all restaging situations, there is interpretation, and interpretation is a creative act. There is a sense in which it is both a reproduction of the “original” but also something new “after the original.” The work created tomorrow by my students become “new choreographies after Endless Reach by Michael J. Morris.” And there is a sense in which the choreography’s life has been continued.
More questions than answers, but maybe that’s the way effective, subject-centered teaching happens best, especially when one is “teaching” something like composition or a creative process.
So that’s something that I’m thinking right now.
Filed under: art, creative process, culture, Dance | Tags: agora, body attitude, choreography, coco loupe, deborah hay, identity, impermanence, junctionview studios, monster partitur, spectacle, the body, wexner, William Forsythe
So I tried to blog about seeing my friend/colleague/teacher CoCo Loupe perform Deborah Hay‘s “The Runner” yesterday at the Agora festival at Junctionview Studios here in Columbus, and it just didn’t happen. The experience just did not lend itself to the third person. So I have instead decided to invite you, gentle reader, into my “personal” creative conversation with CoCo. I offer excerpts of our email correspondence as another way of looking into this dancing life, another way of contributing to the “cultural library” of dance literature. Here we go:
Michael wrote to CoCo 9:11am, 17 May 2009:
“I loved watching you dance. I will never tire of your movement quality. And maybe it’s just because we’ve been working on this in class (or maybe it’s part of why we’ve been working on this in class?), but I was transfixed by your ability to move from focus to focus, from extremely inner concentration, to smiling and making eyes and playing with a puppy, etc. I was fascinated how this affected your entire body attitude, or way of carrying yourself, your way of moving through the space, through your joints, in and out of the floor, etc. This plays a huge role in the “big thought” I left with.
I left thinking a lot about context and perception and framing and how dance is a truly physically transgressive medium. It rejects so much of how we’re “supposed to be” in our bodies. And as long as it is removed from us, sanitized by the proscenium or the performance space or even just a demarcated time and space in which it has been stated “this is a dance,” society/the culture of society can palate it. They can recognize their way of looking, their role of coexisting with this moving body. In the opposite “extreme,” when a space has been designated or described for “social dance,” in a club or bar or whatever, there is a kind of clarity in the expected role or way of looking/coexisting with the moving body. In the performance yesterday, all of this become blurred, and it was all related to the shifting of your “body attitude.”
I watched the dance, watched you dancing. But maybe it was the choreographer in me . . . I couldn’t not watch how it existed/negotiated itself in the space, with those others present in the space. And this is where I hit my “descriptive wall” in my blog, so bear with my meager language. There was a process of watching the audience not recognize, then recognize that they had not recognized, but rarely did they ever quite grasp what it is that they had not recognized. This was most palpable when your physical countenance was the most “normal” (fit neatly within the definition of the socially acceptable body), moments of just standing and looking, or meandering. They were brief, and those co-habitants (I’m not sure I can call them “audience members” in this speculation) who came upon you in those moments did not distinguish you/your body as atypical or anomalous in the space. But then your countenance would shift. Sometimes it was as subtle as the pacing of your steps, a shift in focus, or a sudden stop. Sometimes it was more overt, like a sudden battement or rond de jambe en lair. But whatever it was, in that moment, they would realize that there was something present that they had not previously recognized. That body (your body) was not “playing by the rules” and they did not know why. They were in this strange in between space of almost panic? When they had this moment of recognition, still had not oriented themselves in it, recognized that they had very likely walked right “into the middle of something,” and knew that they had been seen doing so. Maybe too much of my creative ideas right now have to do with shame, but I saw these flickering, vibrant moments of shame, when they recognized not only that this body (your body) was not playing by the rule, but by implication, neither was theirs. They suddenly weren’t quite sure of the rules, and they were aware of how public their “misstep” had been. Different individuals handled themselves differently in this suspended space, but it was that moment that I found fascinating.
And what it says about our perceptions of the body, our expectations and rules for it. And how quickly we take cues and prescriptions for ourselves from the other bodies we encounter. I felt like it revealed something so fragile: maybe the choreography of identity? Maybe when you develop a research interest you begin to see it everywhere, but it was something like that. Up until their encounter with you, the others in the space knew the “rules” and they were playing by them! That’s maybe the crux of this connection is that it revealed some layer of awareness or intentionality of the ways in which these other individuals were handling themselves in their bodies, the way they were choreographing their actions to fit within their understanding of the “rules,” and by encountering you/your dancing body, their understanding of the rule, and thus their “choreography,” was called into question. So fragile.
Moving past that moment/observation, I was interested in the moments in which your actions were recognized as a dance. And it seemed really clear. When there were spectacular actions (again, battements, rond de jambes en lair, roles to the floor, jumps, etc.), it was seen as a dance, you as a dancer, and thus both as entertainment. The viewer would stop and offer their attention. And when the “moments of spectacle” (for lack of a better term) had passed, so did the attention of many. I thought to myself, “These people are not ‘people-watchers’. They are not the kinds of people who are drawn into subtlety, who sit on the Oval and simply observe how people are their bodies, and how that works itself out. They don’t find themselves captivated by the gate of a person, or the architecture of the body.” I don’t know if it had to do with the amount of STUFF going on visual/aurally/energetically/etc. but so many people walking around seemed to be doing so like . . . something dense and blank, and gave pause to whatever made a large mark/impact of their perceptual fields. Because of this, it was interesting to watch people come in and out of an encounter with your dancing body as a dance.
It made me think of something Bill Forsythe said about the thought behind “Monster Partitur” and the whole exhibition at the Wex. He talked about how in the art gallery culture, their is a certain “viewer agency” to meander, to wander, to direct attention for whatever duration, to come in, to leave, etc. And in the dance world, we tend to hold our viewers captive. They come in, they sit down, we turn out the lights, and for the most part, they are expected to STAY. He was interested in moving dance into the gallery space to potentially explore this viewer relationship. it raises questions like, “Dance, unlike a static object, literally changes and unfolds over time. How does its meaning or relevance shift if the viewer can come in or exit an encounter with it at any point? How is its value effected if they don’t see the ‘beginning’ or the ‘end’, only some piece in the ‘middle’?” I felt that “The Runner” leant itself to this way of viewing remarkably well. There is something about the piece, how it moves from one thing to the next with very little through-line, how each moment it partially characterized by the total abandonment of the previous moment, that gives immense permission to see/encounter only a part of it. I felt like I was fully engaged with the piece for its duration, but by the end I could not begin to describe the sequence of events, or even recount all of the events that had transpired. Just as it seemed as if you moved from moment to moment, event to event, with a total abandonment of what came before, I felt that I was invited to do the same. Which seems to relate much more to that “gallery, come and go as you please” mentality than to the proscenium “come in, watch from beginning to end, then leave” way of engagement. In that sense, I commend you hugely. I think Agora was a perfect match for the piece. I think I would also love to see it in the Wex, either in a gallery or outside on that quad . . . something about framing it in the manner of engagement associated with gallery/museum spaces that I described above. I think that is a fascinating connection between the context and content of the piece.
And I think that’s all I have right now. I have this other thought, something about interpersonal engagement, the way the socially devious body, or the dancing body, becomes less “personal” or “human” in the way that people relate to it . . . but I haven’t found the words for that yet.
Thank you for an amazing performance, for creating such a thought-provoking experience, for being “benignly socially devious” in your body/environment, and the commentary that offers. Thanks for introducing me to Agora. I would love to experience it again in years to come, maybe even share work there.
-M”
CoCo wrote to Michael 9:54am 17 May 2009
“[from reading what you wrote], I immediately heard Deborah saying something to the effect of YOU MUST BE IN LOVE WITH IMPERMANENCE. i will get the exact wording from my notes later and send them to you. but that is one of the foundations of this work. her point being….you can’t take this moment too seriously..it’s gone. the next is here and you’re it and your cells are it and it’s gone. don’t die when that moment dies and goes….just let it go and enjoy the next. this is one of the big things i’ve been trying to share with our class at OSU……maybe i need to dig up Deborah’s exact words and share them with the class…..that’s what i’ll do.”
and at 10:30am 17 May 2009:
“there is great vacillation b/w interacting with people/objects/energy in the space and the same entities that are built into the structure of the work. the inner logic of the practice is constantly melding/threading/weaving with the natural flow and construction of the logic that comes with the environment in which the practice is being …..practiced…..(word weirdness)
anyway….it’s a very strange and lovely state that i’m in when doing The Runner…..i never feel like i’m “being” a particular way towards the environment….like extremely inner concentration, to smiling and making eyes and playing with a puppy….although i am doing those things…..while i’m doing them, i really don’t have an attachment to the connotations of those gestures and actions…..like “oh i’m doing this and it means this or can be read as that so therefore i’m building/having/presenting an experience that must hinge on this/that meaning”……it’s more like, “oh….i’m attending to this right now because it’s in the lab….and i need the lab….but i’m inviting being seen and surrendering the pattern of facing a single direction, while every cell in my body is getting what it needs….and it’s no big deal”…….so while the action seems very specific and makes it appear that i’m “meaning to make a statement by doing something like snarking a dog’s nose”, it is actually very omni-dimensional …..from the sheer physiological/anatomical physicality of the experience to the linguistic/textual interpretive potential of the experience……………….
does this make sense? in a way it means having to let go of accepted notions of dancemaking…..dancedoing…..dance-ness. there is no structural heirarchy….the rules are laid bare in the moment and constantly shift so that no goal or meaning can root itself other than the perpetual attention to the directive.”
I hope that offers you some insight into the performance, my perspectives, some of CoCo’s perspectives, and maybe in the larger sense the way we dancing artists think of/talk about what it is we do. Welcome.
Filed under: creative process, Dance, Grad School | Tags: butoh, doubt, marcia siegel, monster partitur, notre-dame de paris, osu, Synchronous Objects, victor hugo, William Forsythe
Today was the first day of classes in our spring quarter at OSU. Besides starting work in a smattering a new and exciting courses, today we were graced with a special visit from Bill Forsythe. It was a pleasure to see him again and hear him talk a bit about his work and the work we’ve been doing. He sparked lots of idea, many of which will not get decent attention in this post, but which I at least wanted to jot down, for myself and for you. In no particular order:
-He spoke briefly about making dance legible, and how difficult it is to put dance into words, to articulate verbally what is essentially non-verbal. I tend to think of it as articulating the ineffable. Dance is something that is so rooted in immediate corporeal experience, so many sensations and feelings that do not have names, that do not lend themselves to verbal description. I find that sometimes when I try to discuss dance and what it is I do as a dance artist, I am tempted to wax into poetry and metaphor, hedging in this ineffable practice in descriptions that cannot possible translate the actual experience, but hopefully create some sort of defined space in which exists the indescribable thing itself: dance. I am actually interested in hearing Marcia Siegel speak on this subject on Thursday. She is giving a guest lecture on the subject of Forsythe’s work in relation to criticism. I am interested in how that might address this concern, for putting dance and choreographic knowledge into words.
-He spoke about how early on he began to question if a thing had to be the way that it was. This is such an important question. It emphasizes the arbitrary nature of practically everything we do, especially choreography. When faced with the infinite field of potentialities for human movement, each time we make a dance we make a series of choices of what we will do, the sequence in which it will occur, and this becomes choreography. Throughout the creative process, I am constantly coming to find myself asking this same question: “Is this how it has to be? How else might it be?” I think it has to do with clarifying WHAT it is you are doing. What are your intentions? How malleable are those intentions? Might I abandon them if I see something new emerging in the work? Whatever it is I am attempting to serve and embody in the work, how else might it be? What other movements, what other organizations, does it even need to be a dance? What other form might these concerns take?
-This segued into another idea, that of DOUBT. Bill encouraged us that the ability to constantly doubt what it is we know is a greatest gift in dancing and making dances. I dare say, it is a/the great gift of living, of being human, the ability to constantly recognize the limited base of perception and experience on which we “know” anything. This is so important in the creative process, the ability to look into the face of the things you “know,” your pre-existing assumptions for your work, your field, and ask yourself how you know this thing that you think you know. I think doubt is a space of amazing creative potential. I have long thought that doubt and faith share a common source, and that is uncertainty. Faith is that in which you can believe despite uncertainty; doubt is that which you may not be able to believe due to uncertainty. When we allow ourselves to live in that uncertain place (because whether we admit it to ourselves or not, uncertainty is always where we live), we open ourselves to potential motion. Uncertain is like unstable, able to shift, able to fall, able to tumble and roll, and in that motion, make new discoveries. I have a reverence for doubt, and doubting what we “know” as dance artists is a perfect way to keep things moving. By questioning what it is we know, we risk finding new answers, new solutions, making new choices based on these new discoveries, and new work comes out of these place.
-On the subject of “knowing,” Bill touched on a the idea of “feeling as knowing” and “knowing as feeling.” Because dancing is an active experience (like consciousness itself?), it is a way of knowing that has roots in the feeling of that experience. This sort of concept seems to re-prioritize the hierarchies of knowledge, giving validity to a way of knowing that comes purely out of personal, subjective, physical sensation.
-Victor Hugo’s “This Will Kill That” was recommended to us. It is the second chapter of his larger work Notre-Dame de Paris and illuminates how the printing press was potentially responsible for the recession of cathedral architecture, shifting from a visual to verbal culture. This seems relevant in the discussion of translation and literacy shifts, how the evolution of technology is involved in both of these.
-The misunderstanding or challenges of making dance legible perhaps lie in a larger cultural issue of text and literacy being privileged. So how then do we explicate what it is that we do/know without depending on something as privileged as text? The “Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, Reproduced” project has depended on a visual literacy, translating choreographic data into visual representations of that data. Remember, that web project goes live THIS WEDNESDAY!
-We have the unique ability to discuss art as a state of BEING because we are our art, it exists as us; dance is an embodied art form.
-In the larger version of this “Monster Partitur” (“You Make Me a Monster”), the audience participates in the construction of the cardboard “monsters” that serve and choreographic information for the piece, before being told the story of the piece’s origin’s: Bill’s wife’s illness, her bleeding, her bending, and her death. Bill described the experience he has witnessed in the audience once they have been told the story, once they realize that the folding of the cardboard skeletons is in some way referential to this personal narrative. He spoke of them being implicated in the story, and how their work then felt somehow dirty or contaminated by the revelation of what it represented or referenced. It raise for me the question of how this described experience translated into my experience of the “monster making,” having the fore-knowledge of what it was I was doing and its origins? It certainly contained none of the surprise. I hardly even feel that it felt contaminated . . . it felt beautiful, reverent, but in the way that Butoh feels beautiful and reverent to me, honoring the fullness of experience, including the grotesque, the unpleasant. I have long felt (and still do, to some degree) that the nature of beauty or aesthetic experience is one of contrast. We appreciate a thing as “beautiful” by its relation to something else. Some of the most moving and dismantling art for me has been integration of this contrast within the single composition, in which the lovely is mashed up with the grotesque; both become richer due to their companion. I think this sort of experience, one of “beauty,” was a big part of negotiating the foreknowledge of the origins of the cardboard monsters in the process of making them. The work was crafting, making elegant forms and compositions (the lovely), while being framed by, or even saturated with, the knowledge that this work came out of grief, out of suffering and death. As tempted as I am to spin off into a discussion of the synthetic process of beauty, suffering as a source of transcendence, I think I have to stop now.
Maybe I’ll have time to flesh these out a bit more later in the week? We’ll see.
Hope you are able to make it to some or all of the events going on this week (see earlier post).
Filed under: art, Dance | Tags: accad, Alva Noë, bacKspace, hixon dance, Maria Palazzi, monster partitur, Norah Zuniga-Shaw, osu, Synchronous Objects, William Forsythe
As I look out over the calendar for the next few weeks, it’s more of the same: art event after art event, with so much to see. I hope I get a chance to see it all. I hope you do too.
This week, 1 April, is the long anticipated launch of “Synchronous Objects for One Flat Things, Reproduced” (you can read more about it in the New York Times, featured in my previous post). This is in conjunction with many other exciting events related to Forsythe’s work.
william forsythe
The Wexner Center for the Arts and the Department of Dance at OSU is hosting the “William Forsythe Symposium: Choreographic Objects.” Here is the official description of this event:
“You’ll hear about how this idea takes form in the works on view in the exhibition William Forsythe: Transfigurations and inSynchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced by William Forsythe, an ambitious new web project created by Forsythe with Ohio State’s Maria Palazzi (Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design and Department of Design) and Norah Zuniga Shaw (Department of Dance) and an interdisciplinary team of collaborators from across the arts and sciences. To celebrate the launch of the web project, invited outside experts contextualize the project in terms of its relevance to current trends in the philosophy of cognition and architecture.
A celebrated roster of special guests joins Forsythe for these talks: Mark Goulthorpe of MIT’s School of Architecture; Alva Noë, professor of philosophy at the University of California Berkeley; Synchronous Objects creative directors Maria Palazzi, director of ACCAD and associate professor in the Department of Industrial, Interior, and Visual Communication Design, and Norah Zuniga Shaw, the director of the dance and technology program and assistant professor in the Department of Dance; and Charles Helm, the Wexner Center’s director of performing arts and curator for the Forsythe exhibition.”
If you are not in the Columbus area, or if you are and are unable to be in attendance, follow the link above to watch a live stream of the symposium on Wednesday.
The previous day, 31 March, Alva Noë, professor of philosophy at the University of California Berkeley, will be giving a lecture and book signing at OSU in the Sullivant Theater from 12pm-1pm. He is a member of the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the author of Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain and Other Lessons From The Biology of Consciousness and Action in Perception, both of which explore the idea that “consciousness is not something that happens inside of us–not in our brains, or anywhere else; it is something we do.” It sounds like a riveting lecture, and extremely relevant to dance as well as human existence.
This week will also host the performances of “Monster Partitur.” Here is the official statement from the Wexner concerning this event:
“Dancer Alessio Silvestrin delivers a mesmerizing performance against a backdrop of sculptural elements created from life-size models of human skeletons and line drawings traced from these gnarled forms, which also serve as cues in the performer’s score (the word “partitur” in the title is a reference to the musical scores utilized by orchestra conductors).Monster Partitur is a condensation of and companion to Forsythe’s Bessie Award–winning You made me a monster.
Show Times
Wed, Apr 1 | 2:30, 5:30, 6:30, & 7:30 PM
Thu, Apr 2 | 12, 12:30, & 7 PM
Fri, Apr 3 | 11:30 AM; 12, 12:30, & 7 PM
Sat, Apr 4 | 12, 12:30, 1, & 7 PM
Sun, Apr 5 | 12, 12:30, 2:30, & 3 PM
Please arrive early to see the performance. Performances are free, but audience size is limited to approximately 50-60 viewers per performance, who will be admitted on a first-come, first-served basis. The performance is approximately 20-25 mins. in length (and seating is not provided).”
You can read more about my experience in contributing to the production of this piece here.
Hixon Dance is presenting “Airs and Dances: An Evening of Live Music and Dance” starting next week. Here is their official description:
“In our upcoming concert, Hixon Dance will present 4 new works, all accompanied by live music!
Featured music includes Claude Debussy’s “Sonata for Cello and Piano,”
Francis Poulenc’s “Sonata for Clarinet and Paino,” and two works by local composer Jacob Reed.”
