Sophia Levine, Dance 360, Reading Response 5

Stepping into the Unknown/ Emanation/ Mistakes and Distortions

            With my creative work this year, I have been feeling generally tense, conflicted, and uncertain. But perhaps, as the author of "Stepping into the Unknown" suggests, that is exactly what I need to be feeling to break new ground.

            He writes, "I try to open myself to their [the mediums'] influences. I become like them as I work, never knowing in advance what kind of effect they will have on me during each engagement." This is very much my relationship with my dancers in the piece I am choreographing. They are the essence of my piece, and though I go to every rehearsal with an objective, they put their individuality into each process we explore.

            This can cause problems though. Like the teachers that the author has described, my dancers are frequently asking me to tell them how. They want me to give them the final result without their having gone through the processes. I frequently find myself telling them to stop talking about it and just do it, to embody the ideas to understand them instead of analyzing the ideas to understand them. I want them to stick with the difficult situations I create for them, because they create interesting work. But sometimes it is hard to get them to understand that.

            Recently, I thought that the solution to my problem would be to be more  "in control" of the process. But after reading this article, I realized that I am in control of my process--it just happens to be a very open-ended process--and that what I really need to do is trust it. "The process is a reliable teacher," as the author says. And through being committed and relaxed within that process, my dancers will better be able to be the work.

            The author articulates this particularly well. He describes the building of a process on itself as emanation and is of the belief that the process will culminate to something if only there is "faith that the ultimate form will emerge." This is a really important idea for me as I continue my work. It will get done.