Filed under: Dance, research, yoga | Tags: butoh, catriona sandilands, david abram, eco-sexuality, ecology, ecosexuality, erotic, karl cronin, love art lab, sexecology, spanda, tantric philosophy, Yoga
I don’t really have time to be blogging. But the last few weeks have presented several opportunities for collaboration with some of the artist/scholars I admire most in the world. This has been a significant catalyst for coalescing some of my own ideas about my work, the direction of my research, and the germinating ideas that might form the connective tissue between dance practices, queer theories, ecology, Tantric philosophy, and my interests (specifically) in yoga, Butoh, the Love Art Laboratory, Sexecology, Ecosexuality, and the work of Karl Cronin. This is fairly raw brainstorming, but I think some ideas are finally beginning to mesh in such a way that they might then be interrogated, deconstructed, and applied to creative (and) scholarly practices.
The central issue (at the moment) seem to be permeability, specifically the permeability of the body. An interest of mine in the field of dance is how dance practices, especially choreographic practices by which the formulation of the body is a collaborative endeavor necessarily incorporating the participation of (a)other(s) beyond the seemingly persistent “individual,” is a practice in/of/as permeability, transformability, interdependent functionality, and the erotic.
The assumption on which many dance practices are predicated is that the body is not “fixed” but is necessarily not fixed (even as many dance techniques can assume the form of “fixing”–correcting, but more importantly, constraining, consolidating) in order to formulate a new, specific dancing body, fully contextual within the practiced and performed dance work. It is a practice that in the history of the body, but does not view that history as fully constrictive or deterministic–it is a malleable set of constraints, and dance practices in which additional, intentional information is provided the body in order to facilitate its (re)formulation become practices by which that malleability is engaged. Because the body (an admittedly complex and somewhat elusive term, both material and discursive) is the site/nexus for the assumption of identity/identification, sex, gender, sexuality, and subject-hood in the process of performative reiteration, the permeable, transformability/malleability of the body assumed in (some) dance/choreographic practices has potentially radical implications.
Dance (especially choreographic) practices are often necessarily interdependent, practicing the meaning or significance of the body to be (formulated) beyond the individual or morphological boundaries. These practices emphasize a systemic functionality/”definition,” reorienting the experience of the body/self and its situation into the inclusion/incorporation of other necessary participants (even the solo dancing choreographer is the demonstration of the sedimentation of a nexus of citations that reference the participation of others through which the (present) body takes on its form). This interdependency is where I identify a ready correlation with ecologies and ecological analysis, giving attention to the ways in which dance practices (and perhaps even the cultural and social constructions surrounding dance practices) function as systems of interdependency, and dancing bodies and that which is produced by and simultaneously formulates those practices. There is room here as well for the consideration of the movement of power within these potentially imbalanced systems, how interdependency does not necessary (and does rarely) suggest egalitarianism, but instead suggests the mobility of power across relations of imbalance and dependence.
Incorporation.
In-corporation.
This word may become significant. It is in direct dialogue with my Tantric understanding of “recognition.” This can be potentially deconstructed, the similarity/difference between the incorporation into the self and the recognition of the “other” as not separate from the self.
Dance, choreography, chore(c)ography (love this–suggested to me in a recent email from Catriona Sandilands . . . chorecography . . . there may be something there) is a perpetual practice of incorporation, not in the sense of colonization, but in the sense of synthetic exchange and the interdependent formulation of bodies.
This is what I might (presently) identify as the eroticism of dance practice/chorecography: the space of lack/desire that compels the practice, the necessary interdependency and the mobility towards that interdependency. To be clear, lack does not necessarily denote desire (eros), but desire is necessarily predicated on lack. The eroticism of dance practice is what I might identify as “generative lack” or “constructive lack,” as opposed to a lack that functions as the definitive outside for non-lack.
Returning to the “central issue,” this permeability might also be identifiable as the “queer(ing)” element of dance (choreographic/chorecographic) practices. The assumed non-fixity of the body, the permeable pursuit of new corporeal possibilities, perhaps the ambiguity of the exchanges within these practices, seem inherently non-normative or even anti-normative (even, as I mentioned above, when dance practices function simultaneously as normalizing utilities, such as the ballet lessons potentially contributing to the “docile female body,” or competitive athletic dance forms potentially becoming yet another site for the defensive reiteration of (impermeable) masculine identity). I am not sure that “queer” itself suggests a concern with interdependent systemic functionality (ecology) (although it may . . . the permeable, while not intrinsically “erotic,” does lend itself to it; and “queer” and “erotic” may share a coalitional affinity of abjection; ecology may be intrinsically erotic; thus . . .), but “queer” definitely offers a manner of approaching the examination and consideration of ecological relations, and this approach may be qualitatively similar the the approaches of many dance practices.
Other thoughts:
This week in conversation with Karl Cronin, Karl discussed the difference between the big “I” and the little “i”; the big “I” suggests the individual is not so bounded and discrete as we might think, but instead is an active participant in a larger “organism” in which the subject is always implicit. This immediately connected to my background in Tantric philosophy, and the affirmation of diverse expressions of a common unity. This is further situated in David Abram’s writings about the situation of the human subject in constant sensorial reciprocity with the more-than-human world. In Tantric philosophy, especially in Kashmir Saivism, all differentiation and diversity emerges from the common source of Consciousness. In dialogue with contemporary philosophies of embodied cognition and the embodiment of perception, it lends itself to the body as far more expansive and inclusive than it neatly demarcated by our presumed physical morphology or even our normative discursive description of “the body.”
In preparation for my second comprehensive exam, I am also re-thinking the work of the Love Art Laboratory, specifically their ecosexual performance weddings. In addition to the themes of ecosexuality, and the engagement of the Earth, Sky, and Sea as Lover, I am beginning to contemplate the formal structure of these performances, their intensely collaborative structure/infrastructure, and the formal suggestion of union/unity and diversity/disparity. The wedding itself is a ritual of unification, and its performance in the work of LAL is a non-normative performance of a normative regulatory device. The wedding ritual itself is queered by the manner in which it is carried out. While Annie, Beth, and their Earth/Sky/Sea lovers function as a focal point for the event, the production and performance of the weddings are intrinsically plural(istic). They take the form of performance art variety shows in which many, many artists are showcased, all for a shared purpose. Individuals cycle through the roles of performer and audience. The unification that is enacted (recognized? formulated? in-corporated?) in these wedding rituals is accomplished through shared political, social, cultural, artistic, environmental (etc.) intentions, and is enacted through the community of attention and appreciation, in which viewers become viewed and viewed become viewers. There is a cyclical exchange between the foreground and the background (that which is seen and that which is “unseen” that allows the “seen” to become visible), between subject and object, and it is in the cycle of this exchange (I may go so far as to relate this to spanda) that distinction becomes blurred and the fundamental unity across disparity is enacted/recognized. There is also something in the act of offering . . . I haven’t figured out the implications of this yet, but I feel like there is something to be theorized in the act of giving performances and attention to one another, the erotic spaciousness in a generous observation/attention/gaze.
Need to get back to reading. Going to see Pandora Boxx perform at Union tonight; seeing the show with family.
Happy Sunday.
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.
Filed under: art, creative process | Tags: bodies that matter, chakra, eco-sexuality, ecosexuality, femina potens, henry sayre, judith butler, love art lab, san francisco, sex, sex positive, sexecology, sexual epistemology, sexuality, Synchronous Objects, the body, Yoga
Ever since I returned from San Francisco a week ago, I have been hesitant to write about my experience of the work that I saw. There is so much to say . . . and yet with plans for writing a formal paper/article about Love Art Lab, the concept of “sexecology” and “ecosexuality,” and the integration of life and art in their work, for whatever reason, I have resisted authoring anything informal here. And yet on some level that is the purpose of this blog, to publish the creative process, the unfinished product, the journey that develops into that which I am making. I also think it would be helpful for me to get some of these ideas moving in a public arena, situate them in a larger context, and see how they grow in this space.
So, what follows are my relatively raw responses to this work.
What brought me to San Francisco was primarily the exhibit “Sexecology: Making Love With the Earth, Sky and Sea” being presented at Femina Potens Art Gallery. I was interested in this potential entry point into Love Art Lab’s work, how this exhibit invites the viewer into the ephemera of their performance work alongside new collaborative art objects (collages, prints, etc.). I also used this trip as an opportunity to meet Beth and Annie and interview them about their work. I left completely overwhelmed and saturated with new ideas, concepts, and considerations. I am currently in the process of transcribing the interview audio footage, so what I’m sharing here is primarily my response to the work itself:
It seems to be a show heavy in relationship to memory. A bulk of what is in the gallery is ephemera from the Green and Blue weddings: costumes, jewelry, photos, videos, paper ephemera, etc., as if walking through their wedding album(s). The large prints of the sea and sky also seem to reference that which previously occurred. I’m not sure I’ll ever look at photography the same again after reading Henry Sayre’s The Object of Performance. These photographs give me the opportunity to look and see with Beth’s eyes, her way of looking, seeing what she saw. They are even some photographs that describe “familiar” sky/sea-scapes (Louisiana clouds, for instance), but look at those scapes with the eyes of a sexecologist. The text in most of the collages references previous occurrences, memories, and descriptions of self in the past. This sense of history/memory is reinforced by the use of vintage images (photos and children’s book images). This is even further reinforced by the interactive element in the show, the visitor survey, asking first to rank one’s perception of the degree of one’s own ecosexuality, then asking for a re-telling of a memory that might be identified as eco-sexual.
It seems to be a large implication of the show that this [Sexecology? Ecosexuality?] is something that has existed for a while, something implemented in the past, part of the personal histories of the artists, but also perhaps part of the landscape of our country. The retrospective quality of the work has a sense almost like “revisionist history,” retelling a history that went untold thus far.
Of course there is a sense in which any gallery show of objects might be perceived as a testimony of memory, a trace of actions, the implication of previous action. Yet I feel that this quality is fore-grounded by the materials of the show, the text, the images, etc.
I wonder to what degree sexuality might be considered a description of action . . . ways of relating between individuals via sex. Is sex an action or a dynamic or a state of being? What is the relationship between “sex” and “sexuality?” Suddenly Judith Butler’s Bodies That Matter seems incredibly relevant to these questions. I may have to make an effort to get through that book, as a way of informing my relationship to this work, to Love Art Lab.
Another major “theme” in the show for me has to do with geography. The foundations for the collages being exhibited are “Geological Survey” maps. The specific states represented are: Kentucky, Indiana (three collages), Arkansas, and Florida. These all strike me as sexually conservative places. Part of the impetus for Love Art Lab was the anti-gay rights movement. To see descriptions and drawings and collages of ecosexuality on these “conservative” landscapes seems to be a political act . . . the relationship between the maps and the added elements seems to say, “It’s there if you look for it. Yes, even here, where sexuality is so narrowly understood/defined.” It’s a nice through-line to recognize in the work, to consider that this political impetus might still be present in this shift into “sexecology.”
Statistics from the Human Rights Campaign relating to the laws addressing sexuality in those states:
Kentucky: no marriage rights (constitutional prohibition), no adoption rights, hate crimes prohibited
Indiana: no marriage rights (restricted by law as man/woman), CAN jointly petition for adoption, no hate crime legislation
Arkansas: no marriage rights (constitutional prohibition), prohibited from adopting, no hate crimes legislation
Florida: no marriage rights (constitutional prohibition), prohibited from adopting, hate crimes prohibited
I think there is also a theme of sex(uality) as exchange: exchanging vows, pollination, bees and flowers and trees and honey and body, exchange from exterior to interior . . . again, exchange is an action. Is sex an action or a state of being? A form? I think in this work sex is all of these things, action of the body, morphology of the bodily, a way of interacting, maybe even a way of knowing? Sex as a way of knowing . . . more on this later.
At the heart of my inquiry into this work is the presence of the body and the implications that this work/perspective holds for perspectives of the body and body cultures. “Where is the body?” In the collages especially, there seems to be the implication that the body is everywhere. Correlations or similarities are drawn between images of the body and the imagistic descriptions of the various landscapes. Maybe there’s something being said about how we represent, and thus think about or recognize, geology or landscape? Or maybe there can be the choice to make these correlations? It seems to say that natural forms are sexy, maybe even that there is an interchangeable/transposisitonal quality to natural forms and the body? Does a delta imply a vagina? Do redwoods suggest phalluses? What might it mean to see the natural world as representations of the human body? When we look for “sexy” in nature, what are we looking for? Sensation? Resemblance to the human form? Fleshiness and wetness and hardness and opening and crevasses, etc.
I’m also thinking about the foundational perspective of my paper on Synchronous Objects, that the body is implicit in ways of understanding that emerge from our embodied condition. If part of how landscape, geology, and the natural world becomes relevant within our experience is its resemblance to the human form, then the body is implicit (perhaps) in the natural world.
What if our bodies extend beyond our skin? What if our understanding of “the body” extends beyond our corporeal forms into the way in which we know and that which we know. This brings to mind again the quote by Abinavagupta, that perception is not separate from the perceiver, thus the perceived world is only the perceiver. Perception, according to Alva Noë, is rooted in sensorimotor experience; it is essentially embodied. Taken together, one might conclude that given the perceiver’s embodiment, perception, an action of the body, is not separate from the body of the perceiver, thus that which is perceived (the perceived world) is not separate from the body of the perceiver.
Is this radical?
It relates to my yoga practice/philosophy as well. In recognizing the universe as created from consciousness and perception and recognizing perception as an action/condition of the body, then the universe that we perceive is not separate from the body. Finding nature sexy is, in a sense, finding the body itself, or one’s understanding of the body, a site of sexual content. This doesn’t seem so huge of a stretch. If we look to the body as the site and source of pleasure in the universe, is it so difficult to look back out into the world and find that [bodily] pleasure there as well?
And what might it have to do with dance?
To what degree is sex or sexuality already a component of our pervasive understanding of situation? And in recognizing the possibility that sex/sexuality is already actively contributing to/shaping/affecting our understanding of the world around us, to what degree is the world around us, the natural world, the Earth already a participant in our sexuality? If we are never simply “subject” but only ever “subject-in-environment,” then perhaps realizing that the environment is never separate from who we are is a step towards recognizing that our environment is always implicit in our sexuality, in sex. Maybe an additional question becomes how we feel about that . . . does it turn us on? Is it erotic to consider that sex includes environment?
So, as I walk around outside, I keep thinking about ecosexuality, looking for the body beyond the prescribed boundaries of the body: the succulent fleshiness of plants, the roughness of tree bark and cold blasting wind, tlong tendrils of leaves and branches, the bush of grass and moss, the wetness of the sea, the way it drips, the oozing of tree sap, the phallic quality of tree trunks and stems and stamens, the soft openness of flower blossoms, the swelling of fruit . . . There’s something about the experience of the body adding morphological meaning to the natural world beyond the prescribed boundaries of the body. It’s like a kind of anthropomorphization . . . but perhaps less directly . . . something like our familiarity with the body offering a kind of legibility to the world around us.
Beth talked about ecosexuality as being more about a pulse of sensation, a pulse between how the Earth/Sky/Sea makes her feel and how she makes the Earth/Sky/Sea feel. This pulse makes me thing of spanda, the creative pulsation, again a strong, perhaps implicit, relationship to yogic philosophy. The pulse between recognizing both one’s individual distinction and Absolute Oneness of the universe in consciousness. If the universe is One (and I think it is), it is so in/as Consciousness, which is situated in/as the body. This pulse sees pleasure in the body, then looks from there to see pleasure in the universe/natural world.
This connection to yogic philosophy or a yogic perspective of the body is a fundamental aspect of the Love Art Lab. The very organization of their project is the chakra system, an energetic network distilled from centuries of bodily experience. I feel that maybe as I try to write about this material, it might be appropriate to bring in a substantial amount of Tantric philosophy and its terms and perspectives as a way of engaging with the work. It feels appropriate.
I realize that my terms are getting muddy, conflated . . . sex, sexuality, the body, pleasure . . . maybe it’s all the same? Or at least maybe it is enough to say that none of these occur apart from [an understanding of?] one another? I suppose it’s a good thing that I’m trudging through Judith Butler’s Bodies That Matter right now to problematize and destabilize such assumptions . . .
Another relevant question seems to be “Why?” Why look for sex/sexuality/the body beyond the body in the natural world? I suppose the most practical answer is in order to change the way we treat the Earth, Sky, and Sea. It is somewhat of an anthropomorphilogical metaphor, but one that is constructive in altering behavior.
But in a larger sense, I think it has to do with the kind of world in which one wants to live. It emanates from a “sex-positive” perspective, I think, that sex, pleasure, even love, are HEALTHY and GOOD. By expanding those ideas/perceptions/concepts/boundaries, we create a universe that actively contributes to and participates in that health and goodness. Does it have to invoke “sex?” Perhaps not. I think the yogic philosophy of grace achieves a similar ends, perceiving the role of the universe, its nature, as contributing to and participating in our own goodness. By invoking sex, there is an invocation of a certain promiscuity, a boundless sexuality, perhaps even a boundless sexual generosity. In this boundlessness of sex/the body, what room is there for boundaries? Immediately I think that it has to do with trust. I can trust nature, I can believe in Her goodness. I may not be able to extend that same trust to everyone. Thus, the same sort of generosity that I have, or may have, as an “ecosexual” may not translate into boundless promiscuity with people . . .
This “sex-positive” perspective was prevalent throughout my experience of San Francisco, Femina Potens, Love Art Lab, the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, stores like Good Vibrations, etc. Interestingly (and adjacent to this discussion), it has sparked a new interest in exploring how sexuality or sexology might provide relevant terms of analysis and methodologies for quantification and organization for research. In a conversation with my dear friend CoCo, we were discussing what currently constitutes my potential dissertation interests, namely the body as the site of identity, movement material generated by the body as constitutive of an extension of identity, the choreographic process as an intimate exchange by which identity is synthesized/co-constructed, etc. CoCo noted the sexual quality that my language around this project possessed, and it opened my mind to the possibility that what I was describing suggests a kind of “sexual epistemology,” and rather than resist it, embrace what it might bring to or provide for the work. This quality of “sexual epistemology” seems to be at the heart of “sexecology” and “ecosexuality.”
And that’s all the scattered words and ideas that I have as of now. I hope that in the weeks to come that I can begin to formulate these ideas into a more cohesive structure, and over time produce some sort of text that discusses this provocative and relevant work. For now, I invite you to peruse and discuss these ideas, in their raw forms.
Oh, and here are some images to accompany the ideas:
Costumes and ephemera from Green and Blue Weddings
photographs by Elizabeth Stephens
collage by Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, with Camille Norton
collage by Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, with Camille Norton
collage by Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, with Camille Norton
finding the sexy, wet and fleshy
Filed under: art, creative process, yoga | Tags: annie sprinkle, blue wedding, chakra, eco-sexuality, ecosexuality, elizabeth stephens, love art lab, sexecology, sexuality, throat chakra, venice, Yoga
The Love Art Lab (Elizabeth M. Stephens and Annie M. Sprinkle) just announced the details of their 28 August Blue Wedding in Venice. I immediately checked flights, and everything is out of my price range. This couple has become so iconic and important to my work/ideas/life this year, I dream of being a part of one of their weddings. The focus of this wedding is eco-sexuality (or sexecology) and communication, the Throat Chakra. It is a Blue Wedding in which the couple will marry the sea. I want to share an excerpt from their invitation:
“For our seventh wedding, and in our Blue Year, we will marry the Sea. We are passionately in love with her and desire to take care of her in order to help save her. We are eco-sexuals, meaning that we find nature incredibly romantic, extraordinarily sensual, and an exquisite lover. Additionally, we are “sexecologists,” who combine sexology and ecology, and we intend to make the environmental movement a little sexier.
Why marry the sea in Venice? During the Renaissance, the Doge (chief magistrate) de-
creed that, “Venice must marry the sea as a man marries a women and thus become her Lord.” So each year the Doge would go out on a boat and drop a ring into the water. But can people really Lord over the Sea? What is perfectly clear is that people do have the power to destroy her, and are rapidly doing so. We will follow the tradition of marrying the Sea in Venice — as two women who have moved beyond the dominant-male and submissive-female dynamic, as seductive eco-sexual artists, and as global citizens who care deeply about the welfare of our planet.”
With the invitation also came a call for collaborators, to be a part of the wedding, either the ceremony, the reception, the production team, etc. etc. etc. The weddings are always an amazing collection of eclectic presentations and performances. I would love to contribute creatively to the Blue Wedding. That’s when I came across this paragraph on the “call for collaborators” sheet:
“You don’t have to be in attendance to collaborate. For example, Geoffrey Hendricks does a ritual headstand each year, Angela Ellsworth makes our bridal bouquet sculptures, Veronica Vera takes a special vow of her own. Participate in your own way and send us the documentation to add to ours.”
I began dreaming up a long-distance collaboration/participation in the Blue Wedding. Here are ideas that immediately occurred to me:
A Blue Throat Dance
A Blue Party celebrating Communication
A Communication Ritual for opening/energizing the Throat Chakra
A ritual yoga class emphasizing matsyasana (the fish pose), which embodies a creature of the sea and is a powerful throat opening. This could segue into backbends for continuing to open the throat and more powerfully opening the heart.
Some sort of ritual at the Mirror Lake on OSU campus, our local “sea”; or maybe the “lake” in Goodale Park
Chanting of some kind. Maybe “ham” (the sound associated with the throat chakra, pronounced “haumng“). Or maybe something like have each person write a chant of something that they have been afraid to say, afraid to express, and chant all of them together, opening the Throat Chakra by unblocking what we will let ourselves say.
So is something synthesizing here? Maybe a kind of workshop/yoga class/ritual . . . in which we come in and begin by reflecting on our communication, our throat chakras, and what it is we might be afraid to express. We could then write our chants, and set them aside. Begin our yoga class by chanting “ham,” then move through surya namaskar, into a series of gentle back bends, matsyasana, and deeper backbends, directing our energy and attention to opening and energizing our throat and heart chakras, opening our communication and our ability to take action with love. At the end of class, after savasana, we return to the chants we wrote that express what it is we are afraid to say, approaching them with the energy we have cultivated in our practice, and (optionally) chant those things we are afraid to say in unison. Maybe followed by a Blue Party back at my apartment. August 28 is a Friday. Maybe an afternoon workshop/yoga class/ritual followed by an evening Blue Party.
Even if this just lives here on this blog as a fantasy, I am already in love with it. Thought I think I’ll begin to explore its viability . . .
Filed under: Grad School, creative process, yoga, inspiration | Tags: coco loupe, Yoga, karen eliot, ballet, matt morris, consciousness, aeqai, the splendor of recognition, amy bloom, swami shantananda, the yoga tradition, georg feuerstein, normal, transexuality, in treatment, jay brannan
I feel as if a new post is dreadfully overdue, but I’ll be honest: I am absorbing a lot of information right now; it hasn’t really had time to synthesize into my own thoughts. So I thought I might just offer a list of what I am taking in right now as inspirations and source materials:
Ballet technique classes with Karen Eliot three days per week. It is amazing to have been practicing this technique for almost ten years now and still have moments of total tidal shifts in my understanding of what it is that I’m doing. Karen is an exceptional teacher.
Reading The Splendor of Recognition: And Exploration of the Pratyabhijna-hrdayam, a Text on the Ancient Science of the Soul by Swami Shantananda. I’m swimming in thoughts of Consciousness (citi) as the creator and substance of the entire universe, the creative pulsation (spanda) of creation, sustainment, and dissolution, the nature of subject and object, knowledge, and the mind. One quote for today (and understand that several terms in this quote are specialized; most importantly, identification of Siva as a specific deity is symbolic, and in fact refers to the Supreme Consciousness out of which all Reality emerges):
“Wherever the ind goes, whether toward the exterior or toward the interior, everywhere there is the state of Siva. Since Siva is omnipresent, where can the mind go to avoid him?”
Reading The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy, and Practice by Georg Feuerstein. I am only a chapter into this, but it is an exhaustively precise description of the historic evolution of this complex system of thought/practice.
Reading Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude by Amy Bloom. This is Bloom’s only non-fiction, and it is lovely. It is truly queer in that it is completely undermining my concepts of normality, gender, sexuality, social roles, relationships, etc. It is written in an easy fashion on subjects that are less easy to contemplate. For all my support of transsexuals, it is not easy to read about phalloplasty and metoidioplasty female-to-male surgeries. These are complicated, invasive and painful surgeries that are offered as part of an FTM transition. It isn’t easy to read about the tension in relationships between heterosexual male crossdressers and their wives. Etc. And yet I think it is contributing positively to broaden my perspective of identity and society and self-perception/presentation/performance.
Reading Matt Morris’ genius writings on Aeqai: A Journal for Writing on the Visual Arts in the Greater Cincinnati Region. Matt (who is my twin brother) is writing an excellent series concerned with sculpture in public spaces. In them he has touched on concepts of the private/public dichotomy, the relationship between social, psychological, energetic, and geographic space, the relationship between art and identity, etc. They are truly brilliant and worth your time to read.
First installment.
Second installment.
Watching HBO’s In Treatment. This series is GENIUS. I am completely addicted. It follows a psychoanalyst and his progress through the cases of five patients and himself week by week. The episodes are short, generally limited to the content of his sessions. The acting is superb, the writing even better, the filming excellent, etc. Everything I want in a television show.
Listening to Jay Brannan‘s new cd In Living Cover. Jay Brannan is probably best known for his role in the John Cameron Mitchell film Shortbus, but makes beautiful music as well. I loved his first album, and this week he released an album of covers, including Joni Mitchell’s “All I Want” and the Cranberries “Zombies,” among others. Great listening for this week.
Dancing in a new project with CoCo Loupe, Eric Falck, and Jeff Fouch tentatively titled “3 Boys and an Old Prophetess.” No idea where this project is going, but you can read more about it on CoCo’s blog here.
finishing my Elementary Labanotation Certification exam
I have a lengthy to-do list for the summer and I am slowly making my way through it, absorbing and continuing to move and thrive and live. These are pieces of that process.
All come highly recommended.
Filed under: Dance, creative process, culture, research, inspiration, art | Tags: coco loupe, Yoga, gender, sexuality, identity, consciousness, jonathan bollen, queer kinesthesia, corporeal identity, the splendor of recognition, kashmir saivism, spanda, judith butler, mardi gras, amy bloom
The summer is offering a little bit more space for ideas to sink in and saturate and synthesize into new ideas. I’m taking in a lot of material right now, mainly through physical practices of ballet and yoga, but supplemented with readings (some of which were described in my previous post). Currently I am reading The Splendor of Recognition: An Exploration of the Pratyabijna-hrdayam, a Text on the Ancient Science of the Soul. It is an essential text of Kashmir Saivism, and has been influential in the philosophy of Siddha yoga. In a truly fundamental description of my experience with it thus far, I would say that it is a reflection on/exploration of the nature of existence, consciousness, and highest reality. It explores the nature of the Self and its relationship to all things. I won’t transcribe the text here (for this type of reading, context is essential; I highly recommend the book if you are interested in exploring some of these ideas), but I will offer two quotes and one idea that have stayed with me throughout the week.
The first is by Baba Muktananda addressing himself as if speaking to a seeker: ”Because of your existence, Creation exists. If You do not exist, nothing exists. Muktananda, first know your Self. What are you looking for east and west, north and south, above and below? Muktananda, the whole universe you alone are, you alone are, you alone are.”
Out of context, this perhaps seems bleak or irrational, but it follows a discussion of spanda, the divine creative pulsation by which the universe is constantly in a state of creation and destruction. It situates the subject (the individual) as the origin of the universe, because the universe as he or she knows it arises completely out of his or her consciousness of it, and that consciousness is in a constant state of fluctuation (the creative pulsation). In each moment, as we perceive and become conscious of ourselves and the world around us, we are creating that world for ourselves and our own understanding/knowledge out of our consciousness. The world as we knew it previously is gone; in each moment it is created anew within our consciousness. This is the creative pulsation, and this is how the universe only exist because you the seeker exists. It, the universe (or more specifically perhaps, the universe as you know it, the universe in which you live) arises out of your consciousness, and thus its existence is contingent on your own.
The second quote I would like to share is a simple phrase that has been something of a mantra for me this week. I won’t analyze it here, just offer it for contemplation: ”I am a mirror, and my life is nothing but a reflection of my Consciousness.”
The next amazing thing I read this week was an article called “Queer Kinesthesia: Performativity on the Dance Floor” by Jonathan Bollen. This was perhaps one of the best articles that I have read this year as it specifically relates the understanding and presentation of identity to physical/dance practices, which is essentially where I am interested in my research developing. This article was basically an analysis of gay and lesbian dance parties at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival in Australia. It is an amazing read that I also highly recommend (it is part of an anthology by Jane Desmond entitled Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities On and Off the Stage). It has some ideas that might be more easily extracted from the article. It’s theoretical inquiries create a dialogue with Judith Butler’s performative theory or gender. Butler offers, “Gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts.” This leads Bollen to a discussion of the difference and tension between an enactment of gender as a kinesthetic stylization and the materialization of gender as a morphological process. It is the difference between an indication of form and an indication of action or motion. He explores a fission between the the morphology of the body and the potentially queer kinesthesia with which the body takes actions. Two queer kinesthesias that he addresses are the “girly poofter” (gay men dancing in a demonstratively feminine manner; think show girls and drag queens, lots of arms and torso and hips, light shifts of weight, etc.) and the “cool dyke” (lesbian women dancing in a way that might generally be associated with straight men, heavier weight, grounded stance, less mobile arms, a sort of hunch of the upper torso, etc.). He states that these are hardly the only ways in which gay men and lesbians dance, nor is it the only way to organize an analysis of movement material presented on a dance floor, but were more like kinesthetic stylizations that might be sourced on the dance floor. These are examples of indications of where kinesthetic gender departs from morphological gender; this constitutes queer, the subjugation of the normative, the accepted or expected, in which a body behaves in a way differently than expected from its form. It adds complexity to both a reading of gender and of sexuality.
Another exciting discussion in this article pertains to dance floor practices in general. Bollen discusses the dance floor as the site for not only an unfolding performance (and choreography), but also of training and rehearsal. It is on the dance floor that one learns how to dance on the dance floor, and it is there that one “practices” or “rehearses” those ways of moving, in the process of performance. I find that fascinating, and I am sure that I will never be able to experience a dance floor setting the same way again. He also discusses the dance floor experience in a way that I have been contemplating for a while now, as a sort of emergent choreography, a collective or communal negotiation of space, tempo, temporal synchronization and counterpoint, and movement vocabulary (which tends to emerge through a process of borrowing, appropriating, mirroring, or abstracting gestures from others on the dance floor). I find this fascinating. And it sparks another contemplation: if the way in which we move our bodies is indicative of our perception and/or presentation of our identity (I consider this to be a kind of choreography), then this process of integrating movement derived from the movements of others into the way in which one moves transforms the dance floor into a site for the evolution of identity, literally creating/recreating who we are through the way that we move. I think it also raises some interesting questions about the sourcing of other people’s movement/presentation of identities as material with which to construct one’s own choreographed identity. Clearly this article is blowing my mind.
I am also dreaming up a potential collaborative project with my friend/colleague CoCo Loupe. I’m not yet sure of the details of how it might all work out, but I wanted to share some of the earliest musings on what form this piece might take. This is raw, scattered brainstorming, but part of the function of this blog is to give entry points to my creative process and my dancing life. Everything you read here is a part of that, from political observations, to posts of inspirations, descriptions of course work, etc. I cannot emphasize enough how much all of that goes into the making of the work. But this is a more rare opportunity to share quite literally the earliest ideas for a new piece of choreography. It involves a list of things that I am thinking about (notice its relationship to my tag cloud), pieces of inspiration, and a rough sketch of how I am currently mapping the piece. It may not make perfect sense, and it is hardly a detailed description, but it is how I am thinking about the piece, and that’s what I want to share:
Thinking of things that might inform a new piece.
Transgressing gender boundaries. Me in a dress. CoCo in a dress too? That story from Come to Me about the woman and her transvestite hairdresser friend . . .
queer politics. subverting the normative. how do you subvert the normativity of a dance performance situation? venue? Audience relationship? making it into something unfamiliar, or transforming into something familiar from another setting?
A Wedding? Wedding as performance.
Les Noces? Love Art Lab?
This is moving around an idea . . . how to make it not comic. A wedding touches a poignant political issue for me.
Integration with life. What would that look like? Yoga. Dance floor experience. Lady Gaga. Observing solitude. Secret single behavior. red monster.
Vignettes, moving fluidly from one thing to the next, solos, duets, different ideas suggesting themselves as other things. What is it and what else might it be?
Methods of translation/transformation. Notation/motif/metaphorical description . . .
“I am a mirror, and my life is nothing but a reflection of my Consciousness.”
Cuddle performance (Love Art Lab)
KNOW(TOUCH)ME(YOU)(MY/YOUR BODY) (the piece I developed in the Embodied Knowledge Ensemble with Ann Hamilton and Michael Mercil)
danger. risk. violence. the solo I was making for Betsy.
pulling in to the midline. being invisible. squatting. throwing body back through space. hitting the floor. dropping. falling. catching. fighting. struggling.
Les Noces.
austerity of Les Noces. contrasted against the gaiety of Les Biches.
Loving the earth. Making love to the earth.
Making art into love and love into art.
Nicole Cassivio “Many Feathers” duet/group piece.
performance art/service aesthetics.
public/private. bringing the private into public. making the personal universal. May Sarton. Erik Erikson.
“Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing.”
Contributing to the queer history of dance.
TRIO A. TRIO A. TRIO A.
Forsythe principles. choreographic objects. improvisational technologies.
CoCo stands near center facing Michael wearing a dress and high platform boots
Michael begins in underwear and starts by putting on dress. Maybe doing hair into a big Gibson girl wave sort of thing?
Michael meets CoCo at center stage. Turn to face upstage, and perform a kind of wedding march. Michael keeps collapsing/falling, CoCo keeps stabilizing him. This might become a bit more stylized into some sort of partnering or might stay very literal.
Reach “altar” . . . maybe some sort of ‘wedding dance’? Maybe ‘writing’ vows with some part of the body (in a Forsythian manner). Turn to face one another. Maybe some sort of enactment of the KNOW(TOUCH)ME(YOU)(MY/YOUR BODY) piece . . . Michael places CoCo’s hand on his chest, leans in and awkwardly kisses CoCo’s cheek. CoCo gently pushes him away, then put his hand on her chest. Fumbling to negotiate arms for a waltz; fumbling continues as the feet negotiate who is leading and who is following.
Waltz carries them to tiny dance floor space (maybe described by a lighting special, maybe not), music changes to Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance;” bust into club style dancing. Coco starts collapsing/falling (escaping?) as Michael did in wedding march, with Michael now catching/stabilizing her. Eventually she hits the floor and begins ‘violent solo’ (struggling in the floor, thrashing, throwing body/limbs into the floor, etc.). Michael begins by pulling intensely into midline, legs falling open, trying to walk. Walk becomes labored by the muscular action, incorporate lowering to squat. Eventually throw back in space and begin violent solo (same movement sequence as CoCo). CoCo at some point has softened to gaze at Michael. As the violent solo builds, she builds in involvement/vicious jeering as if ringside at a fight. As Michael eventually softens in the violent solo, CoCo stands and begins a strip tease (which means she needs to have layers . . .), perhaps moving around the space (ref. Judson). As the strip builds, Michael builds in vicious jeering (also as if ringside at a fight or a scary strip club). CoCo’s stripping becomes angrier, culminating in throwing her shoes (maybe at Michael?). This starts a physical “shouting match/knife fight” sort of thing with distance between the figures.
Both (or one person) begins to get tired, weak, exhausted, sick, etc.
I don’t know if it makes more sense for each to continue in the “fighting dance” as the other gets weaker, or for one or both to show concern . . . but I think this is how the piece ends, whether in some reflection of compassion or continued animosity. . .
In the list of inspirations for this piece, I mentioned Amy Bloom’s short story “Only You.’ This is an amazing little story that I have loved and contemplated for years now. I think it completely relates to whatever it is I might be investigating in this new choreography, and I thought I would share it with you. It can be read here, and it’s a pretty quick read. I hope you enjoy it.
Finally, also related to the evolving new piece is this fascination with violent action. This is not a new interest. I can see it in my work as far back as . . . well, the first thing I choreographed, really. To be clear, rarely is it an interest in interpersonal violence, but in intense, almost uncontrolled action of the individual. I think the sense of violence comes from the sense of impact in which I am interested: bodies hitting the floor, falling, throwing, swinging with a terminating impact, etc. I am also interested in the fact that this sort of action cannot be faked. There is a tangibility and a reality to it that can be felt. I am currently questioning the nature of presentation, of staged dance works (as opposed to dance as it is experienced by the dancer, a kinesthetic experience rather than a visual). The value I can currently still find in the visual presentation of a dance work is the way that seeing might be related to feeling, how a viewer might relate their visual experience of the dance taking place to their own corporeal and kinesthetic experience, a kind of kinesthetic sympathy. I find this sort of “violent” movement to be much more evocative sympathetically. We tend to feel it when we see it; we cringe, we pull away, sometimes we hold our breath. It evokes almost a sense of terror . . . and I don’t mean that it is my interest to terrorize my audience, only that if my interest in presentation is to evoke this kind of kinesthetic sympathy in the viewer, this sort of violence lends itself powerfully to that kind of experience. I am also interested in the irrevocability, the irreversibility of this kind of movement, unlike the slow, almost meditative quality that my work can sometimes tend to demonstrate. This violent action is one that cannot be faked, and it cannot be taken back. This is true of all movement, but this quality is emphasized in this type of action. So in the description of this new work that I am contemplating, this is what I mean when I say “violent.”
Those are my thoughts this Sunday afternoon.
Filed under: art, culture, Dance, inspiration, yoga | Tags: annie sprinkle, blue wedding, choreography, columbus pride 2009, elizabeth stephens, ethan philbrick, gender, karen eliot, labanotation, labanotation teacher certification course, lady gaga, sarah ainslie, transgender, Yoga
Yesterday was the last day of my Labanotation Teacher Certification Course. As soon as I turn in my final project, I will be certified through the Dance Notation Bureau to teach Elementary Labanotation. My head is swimming with symbols and theory and integrated class/course designs. My final project is a course that I developing entitled “Choreographic Knowledge: Integrated Repertory, Composition and Movement Notation.” I am fairly excited about it, but also just exhausted.
Today starts my summer quarter, which will be mainly a mix of ballet and yoga in varying degrees. Ballet three days a week with Karen Eliot. Then a larger research investigation of yoga history, theory, philosophy, and practice that will involve a survey of literature (reading list below) that either describes the history/theory/philosophy of yoga or was/is an important philosophical/sacred text that was responsible for an evolution in the system. This study will then be integrated into my own yoga practice (five day a week asana practice, meditation, pranayama, etc.). This research is intended to deepen my own understanding of this system/practice, both for my own personal development and growth, but also as a preparation for teaching yoga in the fall. I am also finding some of the readings relevant to my larger research interests of the integration of life/art, the relationship of the bodily experience to identity, and the choreography of identity.
Here is the reading list, if you’re interested:
Shantananda, Swami. Splendor of Recognition: An Exploration of the ‘Pratyabhijna-hrdayam’, A Text on the Ancient Science of the Soul.
Feuerstein, Georg. The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy, and Practice.
Iyengar, BKS. Light on Yoga.
Iyengar, BKS. Light on Pranayama.
Muler-Ortega, Paul Eduardo. The Triadic Heart of Siva: Kaula Tantricism of Abhinavagupta in the Non-Dual Shaivism of Kashmir.
Singh, Jaideva. Spanda-Karikas: The Divine Creative Pulsation.
Kirk, Martin. Hatha Yoga Illustrated.
Friend, John. Anusara Yoga Teacher Training Manual.
Only a little daunting . . . I have until the end of August to read/synthesize that information into my practice.
I also wanted to share some scattered inspirations right now. I am contemplating my making, what comes next, what to create (too many ideas in too many directions), whether to continue work on “Red Monster” or leave it for a while. My creative activity might take on the form of notating my piece About. I am interested in that, and also how preservation is a creative activity. But other than those interests, here are things that are “sticking” with me, for various reasons. Mostly they are fun, but all have deeper points of interest as well:
Photographs by SARAH AINSLIE of Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens’ Blue Wedding:
Columbus Pride 2009 (photos various from Flickr):
http://ethandancesinpublic.blogspot.com/
Ethan is an artist working out of Cincinnati. I think his projects are sort of amazing for lots of reasons, not the least of which being that they take dance into public, into uncontrolled spaces, inserting a trangressive body into society/culture/architecture/etc. The dancing body is one which moves outside the boundaries of the social strictures for bodies. It is safe and sanitized when it is removed or remote on a stage space, or on dance floors (which can function as in-between spaces, where rules are subverted, and bodies explore alternative roles/identities), but on sidewalks and parking lots and city streets, it is in violation. That is exciting to me.
Ethan did this amazing project exploring perception of the gendered body. The video is above. The post describing it can be viewed here. Ethan wrote in a January post on his blog, “The thrill of transgressing normal in public space is like a drug. It’s much clearer to me now how oppressive normal can be sometimes.” I feel that way when I am viewing the work. I hope you do too.
So, carrying with me Lady Gaga, Love Art Lab, Columbus Pride 2009, and Ethan Philbrick, I am off to ballet, yoga, reading reading reading, then likely going out tonight. Boys night at Wallstreet.
Filed under: art, culture, inspiration, yoga | Tags: annie sprinkle, anodea judith, bacKspace, chakra, elizabeth stephens, love art lab, osu, rave, same-sex marriage, Yoga
I’ve been reading about chakras lately. I am preparing a guided experience for my somatics survey class as well as deepening my knowledge/experience of yoga (both for my own journey in the form, as well as in preparation to begin teaching yoga for the Department of Dance at OSU in the fall). I am mainly reading from Anodea Judith’s Wheels of Life: A User’s Guide to the Chakra System. The energetic or subtle body has been a focus of my yoga practice for some time, but this is the first time that I have delved very deeply into this system of understanding of the body/human experience.
Judith calls chakras “organizing centers for the reception, assimilation, and transmission of life energies.” The seven main chakras are as follows:
Chakra One (Muladhara): Located at the base of the spine, associated with survival. Its element is earth.
Charka Two (Swadhisthana): Located in the lower abdomen is associated with emotions and sexuality. Its element is water.
Chakra Three (Manipura): Located in the solar plexis, associated with personal power, will, and self-esteem. Its element is fire.
Chakra Four (Anahata): Located over the sternum, associated with love. Its element is air.
Chakra Five (Vissudha): Located in the throat, associated with communication and creativity. Its element is sound.
Chakra Six (Ajna): Located in the center of the forehead, associated with clairvoyance, intuition, and imagination. Its element is light.
Chakra Seven (Sahasrara): Located at the top of the head, associated with knowledge, understanding, and transcendent consciousness. Its element is thought. (Judith 25)
As I have been dipping into this study, it has revitalized me a bit after a week of disappointment and anger surrounding the state of equal rights in this country. As I have incorporated these ideas into my meditation practice, I have brought more wholeness and connectivity to my daily experience.
And I’ve made some other connections between chakras and same-sex marriage, mainly through the beautiful work of the Love Art Lab.
Here is how the Love Art Lab introduces themselves:
“We, Elizabeth M. Stephens and Annie M. Sprinkle, are an artist couple committed to doing projects that explore, generate, and celebrate love. We utilize visual art, installation, theater pieces, interventions, live-art, exhibitions, lectures, printed matter and activism. Each year we orchestrate one or more interactive performance art weddings in collaboration with various national and international communities, then display the ephemera in art galleries. Our projects incorporate the colors and themes of the chakras, a structure inspired by Linda M. Montano’s 14 Years of Living Art.
“The Love Art Laboratory grew out of our response to the violence of war, the anti-gay marriage movement, and our prevailing culture of greed. Our projects are symbolic gestures intended to help make the world a more tolerant, sustainable, and peaceful place.”
Every time I visit their website, I leave inspired (and not only because I am greeted with a flow of “We love you”s). In Annie and Beth’s work, I see an elegant and provocative synthesis of living, loving, and art-making. There is something beautifully balanced in their work, a way of addressing a more complete way of living and being in their practice. I love that their weddings are organized around the chakra system. I love that their material is both personal and universal. I love how queer it is, how subversive to normativity, and yet joyously so. Their work carries intense personal and political weight, and yet it is full of light and love and fun. It sometimes involves risk and vulnerability, and yet it seems to demonstrate that risk and vulnerability are okay, they are a part of living, and a BIG part of loving. I think I want to share some of their work with you as a counter-balance to the anger of my previous post. It isn’t that I’m not still angry and fed up of the voices that discuss homosexuality and same-sex marriage in the terms detailed in my last post; but in addition to anger, I also want to honor love and balance and connection. I want to relate the beautiful elegant system of the chakras to holistic, healthy living and loving. And I want to honor same-sex marriages that exist, whether or not they are recognized by the government. That’s a crux in this debate surrounding same-sex marriage: it isn’t whether or not anyone has any say as to the existence of same-sex marriage; it’s about civil rights. But for now, I hope you are as inspired by the beauty and joy of the Love Art Lab as I am:
(all materials are from the Love Art Lab website)
“25 Ways To Make Love With The Earth:
1. Tell the Earth, “I love you. I can’t live without you.”
2. At first you may feel embarrassed to be lovers with the Earth. Let it go. It’s OK.
3. Spend time with her.
4. Ask her what she likes, wants, and needs– then try to give it to her.
5. Massage the Earth with your feet.
6. Admire her views often.
7. Circulate erotic energy with her.
8. Smell her.
9. Taste her.
10. Touch all her all over.
11. Hug and stroke her trees.
12. Talk dirty to her plants.
13. Swim naked in her waters.
14. Lay on top of her, or let her get on top of you.
15. Do a nude dance for her.
16. Sing to her.
17. Kiss and lick her.
18. Bury parts of your body deep inside her soil.
19. Plant your seeds in her.
20. Love her unconditionally even when she’s angry or cruel.
21. Keep her clean. Please recycle.
22. Work for peace. Bombs hurt.
23. If you see her being abused, raped, exploited, protect her as best you can.
24. Protect her mountains. Stop mountaintop removal mining.
25. Vow to love, honor and cherish the Earth until death brings you closer together forever.”
Now they are into their Blue year with two exciting weddings planned and other art events already taking place:
So I know just scrolling through these images (and following links to more image galleries and videos) I am thoroughly inspired, to live and love and create. I hope you are too.
I’m off to see RAVE, the newest BacKspace show here in Columbus. Should be a blast.
Filed under: art, creative process, Dance, Grad School, inspiration, research | Tags: love art lab, mark johnson, qi'gon, somatics, violence, Yoga
Life seems too busy for any sort of formal exploration of a single idea. So I think this post is going to be yet another scattered list of the ideas that are playing around in my mind right now.
Spring is here in Ohio, and it has carried me into a week of bliss. Mornings of yoga and Qi’Gong in the grass facing the sun, afternoons reading on a blanket in the park, strawberries, and the negotiation of getting work done and surrounding myself with pleasant company. I feel happy, and it makes me think of something my dear friend Laurel once said to me: in a year in which their seemed to be a direct conflict between nurturing my art/my creative self and my larger life happiness, she offered that perhaps it was also a service to my art/creative self to be happy. That maybe being happy would also serve to produce “better” art. So in the blossoming weeks of spring and flowers and friends and sleeping with the windows open, I am again negotiating those poles (that probably overlap quite a bit): the pressures of graduate school and this intensive investment in my art/creative self/education, and the more holistic happiness of living life.
This addressing a speculation concerning the line between art and life (this is not a new paradox). Where does the line between the two lie, if in fact there is a line. This was a frequent theme in the class I took last quarter with Ann Hamilton and Michael Mercil, that of the intersection of art and life. How might the activities of our daily life be considered an art experience? How might the activities that we generally relegate to art be considered in the larger scope of our living (this is applicable for viewers of art, but even more so for creative artists)? If we distinguish between these, “Art” and “The Remainder of Life,” why do we make the distinction? Particularly in dance, which unfolds/progresses over time and space, is it “separate” because of the time/space in which we demarcate it? This is more simple when we speak of a specific dance work. Or maybe not. I know my piece “About” because of it’s beginning and it’s ending. But in another sense, it also contains the months of conceptualization, the months of rehearsal, and continues to live on in the bodies and memories of those who encountered it, either as dancer or viewer. The “work” or “About” continues into the “remainder of life.” Is that continuation still an “art experience?”
There is also this quality I have encountered in other dancers in which that which occurs within a specific piece is something like acting, pretend, or not real. And I don’t understand that. If you are playing a particular “role,” perhaps the distinction is more clear. If I were to dance in Les Noces, clearly I am not actually “The Bridegroom.” But is that the dance? Is the name the art, or is it the physical experience, the way the piece lives within the body? In which case, that “role” is a part of who I am, part of “real life.” Embodied experience cannot be “faked” or “acted.” It simply is, and as such, is for me part of the larger continuum of “real life.”
These are some of the ideas I’m thinking about.
On the subject of the collapse of Art/Life categories: This inspires me; I wish I could be there. An excellent example of art and life completely getting lost in one another:
Wedding as expression of relational love between two (queer) people. Wedding as performance art, as socio-ecological statement. The lines are blurry. The wedding is real, it is a wedding between these two women, their fifth actually, and it is also their art. And their art is their love. And their love is their art. I love this.
Other creative quandries:
I have a question about violence. I find that increasingly the subject matter of my work is the physical experiences themselves. Sometimes they exist loosely as a metaphor for larger existential experience, but even in those instances, my subject, my emphasis, is on the corporeal nature of that experience. How might those ideas live in the body, etc. Right now I seem to be thinking in reverse. This has come largely out of Mark Johnson’s The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. He proposes the notion that meaning emerges from embodied experience, and it is in fact that experience that is the substance of what we know. For example, he discusses doubt or shame. These are feelings, pervasive sensations of emotion and the body that synthesize as an experience we might call “doubt.” He tries t describe the physical experience of doubt, the slight tension in the body, the effect on the breath, the hesitancy that enters into action and respiration. He proposes that these physical experiences do not “accompany” doubt, they ARE doubt. They are the experiences by which we “know” the thing we call doubt.
My interest right now is engaging with specific physical experiences, and allowing that which we feel/know/understand of its “meaning” emerge from the physicality. And right now there is an extremity to this interest, bordering on violence. Such as intense pulling in of the musculature towards the midline to the point of literal physical exhaustion. Or explosively launching from a squatting position up and back into space, as far as you can. These border on destructive, but they hold my interest because I think in them lies a specificity of experience that relates to larger existential topics. I am interested in the capacity of these specific physical experiences to reveal something . . . more. Something about what it means to exist. We’ll see where it goes . . . the connection is that these experiences, in all their brutality, are real, they are part of life. How do we live with them? How do I ask a dancer to live with them? I can articulate what I see as their value, and I do believe that risk can be part of what makes good art, but what about the lasting affects?
Which segues into another speculation, that of choreographing identity. I am interested in how these real physical experiences, that cannot be separated from “real life” are absorbed and retained in the body, and thus in identity. By engaging in specific actions, through the choices we make in the body, we are contributing to what our body is, its consistency, its memory, and thus who we are. It seems to add a gravity to what we do as dancers, as choreographers, the roles we take on, the classes in which we participate, etc. And I am also thinking about the “non-dancer population.” I am teaching a modern dance class to non-dance majors tonight. How am I contributing to their identities through the physical experiences through which I plan to guide them?
Somatics is playing a big role in these research interests as well. In almost every branch or field of somatics, the body and mind are conceived of as inseparable, a unit, a soma. Memory, then, might exist in the muscles, the skeleton, the blood. Feelings and emotions have chemical foundations within the body, and those are experienced and retained. Thought is grounded in the brain, but extends into the body as well, which is why as one directs thought to certain subjects, the way the body feels/is held/is experienced changes. Etc. etc. etc. This is where I see my research developing.
That’s all I have time for today. Those are my scattered thoughts, ideas, and inspirations.
