Response to A dance of identity and The Anthropological Approach (9)--

Ishamel is a character. I so enjoyed working with him this summer. I’d love to incorporate some of the movement and text-based exercises in my next piece because what he does really gets you into that uncomfortable realm of dance and politics. There are certain sticky issues I have avoided like the plague in this duet, but mostly I avoided them because I feel that at this young age, there are few politically stimulating events that I feel passionate about to want to speak out about. I guess there is the climate change solo I made in Nature and Creativity that is pushing me into that directions, but even with that, there is such a level of disease that I hold when it comes to incorporating text. There is something gut-wrenching about trying to put your beliefs out there on stage that the thought of pushing my opinions even further into text seems like a challenge I’d love to meet next semester. And although I had difficulty with the other anthropological text, I think it was valuable in highlighting how art is inextricably bound to culture. This was also valuable in its delineation of complex social methods of self-organizing like tribes and kingdoms to full-fledged societies and civilizations. This article also pointed to how cultural values define what constitutes art made in that particular society. The glossary is an incredible new resource as well.

Response to Human Perception (8):

“Perception must…retain an autonomous, individual, creative view of the world and to maintain a consensual view of reality that can be shared among all members of a culture.”

I really think this idea of the personal as a lens for the universal is one that keeps resounding in these articles. In my piece I am trying to maintain my sense of timing and rhythm of how I see the relationship between Alena and Jo unfolds. It’s my timing, but anyone can insert or overlay their personal narratives onto the piece. The subtext is what can be shared while the essence is, in my opinion, idiosyncratic and personal only to me.

“The tendency to simplify leads to a kind of leveling out of properties of a sensation.”

I have been working a lot with improvisation with my dancers, and they come up with beautiful phrases that I then set, but what’s interesting is how repetition deadens the initial freshness of the improvised moment. What I have been working against is this ‘leveling’ out of detail by inserting and creating narratives for the dancers to embody while they are dancing so they can really recapture the energy of moment. Precision in the physical body and in inner-thought are keys to clarifying the dance’s message.

Response to Intellectual and Expressive Blocks—

This article was filled with interesting exercises that I found helpful in identifying my mental patterns of conscious and unconscious thinking. I’m definitely going to keep the ‘Strategy Notebook’ in mind as I continue on. What has been helpful in the creative process for this duet has been the visualization boards and also my own personal visualization scores of what I see or would like to see happen. Having something tactile available to me during the movement generating process is so helpful. It puts off some of the pressure to always feel like I have to remember every single new movement perfectly because there are images and words cues that lead me back to the sensation of what I was working on. I think this week as I begin to set the improvised material I will continue using these tactile cues to help my dancers remember their material and to understand the underlying emotional thread that is carrying them through this piece.
I found the detail about becoming one’s own ‘facilitator’ wonderful. In the Authentic Movement practice that we’ve been embarking upon in Nature and Creativity what I’m learning to cultivate is my own non-judgmental inner-witness. During the showing, as I stood squirming around trying to watch my duet, I went back to this state of ‘witnessing.’ Witnessing with full intention without judgment gives me a greater sense of clarity and hence, greater facility to edit and modify my own creative process. We’ll see how this practice works for this week now that I have all of the critique sheets back!

Response to Three Chapters by an unknown source—

Currently, I think I am in the creative process state of worry. Is this right? Are my dancers happy? Does this make sense? Is this interesting enough? Am I doing enough? And honestly, despite all of these worries I do feel a sense of confidence in the way I have been running rehearsals. I have equal parts of setting my material on my dancers, having them improvise and then setting interesting phrases from that all the while allowing them a say in the process. Finding a moment of inspiration come from a ‘mistake’ has yet to come so maybe it will or maybe it wont. I do feel that when I enter the studio there is a sort of offering up of myself to the inevitable energies that govern, but how do I know if I am really being open to an organic unfolding of the creative process? How do I know if I am being daring enough? All of this is heading towards a tiresome and overly meta approach to these articles so I’m just going to get to it. What I got out of these articles was to keep trucking. In the words of Dori from Finding Nemo, ‘Just keep swimming!’ While I think there is validity in my worries, what’s more important right now is to keep riding the momentum of creative energy that is sourced from within myself and from my dancers. Life is simple like that.

Lighting Moments 5 and 6--

More Cloud Envy--
There is something wonderfully magical about the sky in Vermont, particularly the sky during sunset. The clouds are so dramatic, the lighting so stark and piercing yet warm. There is no denying the sense of sentimentality surrounding a sunset and its metaphor for a loss of vitality and aging. And while there remains a certain stigma around Nature being overly sentimental and too romantic to the point of cheesiness, for me these sunsets embody a daring-ness and devil may care attitude. Today, there was the most gorgeous sunset. Above the blue-hued mountains was a deep caverness slice of golden orange and right above it was a thick blanket of grey-blue clouds. Highlighting the heavy cloud cover were subtle dustings of rosy pink. It literally looked like the clouds had applied blush. The stark contrast of the piercing golden orangy light peeking through the grave clouds and being framed by the mountains was just so intensely gratifying. It calls to the smallness of human perception but also reminds us of the expansive and transformative power of our imagination.

Opera Moment—
I recently saw a production by the Met Opera of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin in which I found the opening scene very pithy. A silhouetted figure set in center stage is plucking the petals off of a flower and once the last petal is shed, a mass of autumnal leaves fall from the sky. The whole set is very plain. There are three massive walls and a floor covered fully with leaves. The light is again a warm golden orange/amber—very evocative of fall in the most traditional sense. I loved the simplicity of this lighting and how beautifully elegant those leaves looked as they fell swiftly to the ground. The Romantic period is really striking my fancy as you can see.

Response to 'Dimensional Thinking' and 'the Art of Space Arrangement'—

Well, after our showings last Friday I was definitely feeling the doldrums of creativity but after reading these articles I feel the slate has been wiped clean again. I feel I can go back into my work with fresh eyes with the help of the spatial awareness qualities cited in these articles. The concept of time is at the top of my artistic vision for my duet and seeing my rhythm section on stage was very disappointing because its flatness. I’m glad that it’s so markedly different than the other movement qualities, but as we do live in a “very small window of time” I think it’s important that I try and embody with my dancers the concept of scale (214). The image of car turning-blinkers in heavy traffic, each going off at their own time and then synching up briefly, and then dissipating back into their own rhythms is something I am still trying to explore with my dancers. Time Mappings might also be a useful thing for me to do with my piece (217).

The Rodowicz article was also helpful in illuminating theatrical concepts of revelation and reflection. Demarcating spaces of the stage of where I wish to show change, development and personality I think will be helpful in organizing my ideas and making them more spatially dynamic. As an actor must learn how to relate his lines to his relation to the stage and his fellow actors, so must my dancers enter on a journey of experiencing my movement qualities and feelings of time into their inner psychological and physical experiences of the space and relationship with each another. That is a lot of information, but as Andrea says, “Don’t be precious with your work! Just do it!”

Lighting Moments (4)

The shadows that were being cast through the shades in 109 were very angular. The shapes were elongated parallelograms and as the clouds past by the shapes would appear then disappear. As the light returned the edges softened and became fuzzy and then all of sudden very clear and sharp. It would be interesting to light a dance work like passing clouds so that you would only be able to see sections of the dance. Only certain sections would appear really clearly, the other parts in a shady light and some in complete darkness.

Response to Body Thinking—

This article speaks a lot to my beliefs in understanding through embodiment. During the Clifford Symposium I heard a talk given by Daniel Dennett, a renowned philosopher on Darwin who spoke of the process of Natural Selection as being ‘competence without comprehension.’ As very analytical beings, this statement seems very counterintuitive, but like the example in the article, Chimpanzees don’t understand the reasons and impulses to get a banana; they simply do. These processes are developed senses of reason that have evolved within our species. But since we are humans, we are to a certain extent able to recognize and develop our skills of proprioception. This development can then lead us to more spacious and fully realized concepts and perceptions of the world around us.
William Wordsworth stated that ‘poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.’ Although Wordsworth is speaking of his own medium of poetry, the statement reveals the universality of all art making in that it begins with an impulse from the gut, from our visceral body, which carries itself through to the medium of the artist. Of course, this is a very Romantic-era style of thought, but one I find rich with possibility.

Response to Experimental Art—

Ok, so I really am going to try and keep an open mind to this article. I think with the past two articles I might have jumped onto concepts I agreed with and disagreed with too quickly. So in keeping with the spirit of the 60’s why not take the plunge?
Ok, step one. “Detachment of cultural experimenters from the body of culture.” I’m not sure how to go about this because I’m definitely heading towards playing with theme and variation of concepts that have already been seen in the dance world, but adding my own voice to it.
Next stepping stone. Trying to understand innocence as “an intellectual invention, which we are forever in danger of losing as soon as we seem to attain it.” This interests me because I am reading William Blake who in his poetry tries to destroy the dichotomous relationship between experience and innocence by showing how the two are in fact, inextricably bound. I hate to always bring up my literature studies to these readings, but currently movement and language are the two lenses through which I seem to be viewing the world, which brings me to another point of departure.
“Violate” my beliefs of art. Although I don’t have an internal checklist for what I think makes Art art, I am willing to become aware of what my beliefs might lean towards and think about ways to violate them. Hm, that sounds a little dirty.
This has been a really philosophical week with the culmination of the readings in our discussion and with Marciela’s residency. I very willingly take in and absorb all this information, but I also recognize there does come a point where I just like to let everything go and WORK! I will follow my intuition as far as my body knows how to return.