Friday, June 29, 2007

Life Lessons with Liz

I've experienced so many shifts of brain space since last week, I don't know where to begin. I think I'll move backwards.

Liz Lerman said something today which I would like to make note of: There is nothing at the Dance Exchange that is not about expertise. That her mandate (and I'm rephrasing here) in starting the company was to have equal commitment to themselves on stage and equal commitment to the world. In other words, while yes, the Dance Exchange does a great many activities that may be considered in the realm of "community dance" and they also do work on the stage - that the two areas of dance do not need to live on a vertical spectrum. That in fact, placing things on a vertical spectrum is an impoverished way of thinking. She and the Dance Exchange have discovered and continue to propagate the idea that they can be artistically excellent and engage in the community in a horizontal, collaborative, synthesized way of being. Boundaries can be recognized, but they also need to be permeable.

We shared our dance space (the last day of Generating/Crafting Dances Institute) with 40 or so Truman Scholars today. I had no idea that the day would begin with so much insight. Having a large group of young academic achievers in our mist and being part of their experience really underlined how powerful art and physical experience can be. We began with blind lead. Liz related experiences of waiting with eyes closed for a leader to find you with the difficulties of being a follower. Hypersensitivity, desire to nurture, be clear, with the difficulties of being a leader. The desire to break the rules or perhaps change them, with the recognition that entire groups of people can function within a structure and then decide as a group when rules need to be broken, or the structure recreated in order to get to a new place. Someone observed the pleasure associated with simple touch. Again the vertical spectrum, touch has been outlawed in some places because of abuses of touch. What a disaster this is! People can go years without any form of human physical contact. Blind Lead and Sculpting (shaping someone's frozen body) allow complete strangers to engage in a form of touch that requires trust, listening, responding, and mutual respect. Someone observed that they could get ideas for movement by watching others. Liz highlighted the idea that people so often confuse creativity with originality. That in fact, copying in one of the most used forms of creativity. That it's okay to learn and experience from what others have done.

When I told people that I was coming out to intern with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, some assumed that this must mean that I was moving into the realm of "community" dance and leaving my stage pursuits behind. Not the case. So you ask why I'm here? I'm here because my world matters to me. Dance matters to me. And I want to learn how these two things can be mutually enhancing.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

dancing still

Finally I have access! I've been having trouble with my internet connection lately, I apologize. I know you're all out there waiting impatiently to hear me drag on about my experiences. This week we are doing yet another Institute, this time "Dancing Still: An Institute for Dancers over 50." What fun! Not that it wouldn't be otherwise, but it is very inspiring to share a creative space with people who have a life time of experience beyond my own. I think perhaps that some of the ladies must think that it might be uninteresting for me to explore movement creation with them, when in fact it's quite the opposite. Being a witness to how they approach the creative tasks and embody them is really an honor. If only I could figure out how to capture some of their movement experience in my own body, how fortunate I might be. I've also been noticing that they are much quicker to move to a creatively interesting place within their material - particularly with the telling of stories. For me, I feel the editing process would require more time, but somehow they just arrive there as if the creative editing was instantaneous.
In this institute we've been exploring the theme of knots. We began with the seemingly complicated task of creating from maps. We each drew visual maps (with picture, or stick figures in my case - reference points) of our creative path, aging path, family, and current events mapping of experience. We then used these to create solos based on objects, windows, interesting spatial pathways, and points of intersection or collision found within the maps.
Later we learned a duet that had been created based on the images of Celtic knots, playing with with idea of clasping and wrapping to create our own duets. We wrote postcards (to self, to someone we connected with, someone we are disconnected from) and over layered the text with the Celtic knot duet. Today we looked at images of knotted rope and used these to create spatial pathways and layered on movement "shopped" from others or movement created from direct equivalents of written descriptions of different kinds of knots (double loop, wrap around, intertwine...). We also used stories, times where we felt connected or disconnected, and layered movement with text in trios, the knotted pathway dance layered with a connected/disconnected personal story, over a narrative description of tying a knot.
Whew! And that's just two days work. (DE "tools" are in bold.)

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Time passing

Almost another week has passed since my last entry - where does time go? I just didn't feel like writing to be honest. I'd like to say that I was ridiculously busy and accomplishing all kinds of amazing feats for which you probably wouldn't know the difference, but hey, I'm better at being honest. So where did my time go? I have admittedly been making occasional use of studio space. One always complains that they don't have access to space when they need it, and then when it's there, the pressure is overwhelming, what am I to do with all this space?? (I speak of the ever intimidating empty studio). Twice, I tell you, twice I have endeavored to work on developing a solo. One I hope that will be somewhat near completion upon my departure. I'm not sure what it's about, nor why it's of interest to me, but I'm attempting to stick to the task of creating movement from impulse using the methodologies of the Dance Exchange, and not judging the result. There may be some severe editing before whatever showing I have, but I'm not there yet, so I'm trying to to let it bug me. I'm trying to stay away from ambition and stick to movement that speaks to me and remains distinctly human. This is perhaps much harder then it sounds. On the side I've been doing some admin tasks which I actually quite enjoy. In fact, it disturbs me how much I enjoy sitting at the computer accomplishing things that don't involve movement. I've mostly been researching and recruiting for teens. We need teens!! Any teens out there??? The Dance Exchange has an awesome institute for teens coming up the last week I'm here, but it's so hard to find them and get them to sign up! The things you don't think about when coming from the other direction. Another interesting aspect of simply being around the Dance Exchange is having had the chance to sit in on some meetings. No wonder everyone's so busy, they're in meetings all the time! But, how informative! It really makes me realize the importance of hashing out process with the incorporation of different perspectives. It also highlights the amount of work that goes into each and every little thing. It would seem obvious that every institute or workshop is the result of a great deal of planning, organization and brainstorming, but until you become part of that process it's hard to appreciate. The overall themes of the institutes, and how they're organized such that the participants are guranteed a full circle experience that makes sense and leaves them feeling fulfilled, is complicated but well worth while. I'm realizing that for me, and my experiences with the DE institutes (which is what brought me here in the first place), the organization around planning that goes into the week is one important aspect of what made my experiences in the DE institutes unique in comparison to other workshops I've attended. Ideally, you leave feeling like you've had an experience that reaches beyond making and exploring movement with new peeps in a workshop setting. In particular relating common warm-ups or movement exercises to conceptual ideas about the body, people, society, or relations. For example "passive/active" is a fairly well known warm-up exercise or idea that I've experienced in a variety of settings. (One partner is passive, while the other actively manipulates their partner's body to warm themselves up). But have I ever thought about how the information I'm gathering about my partners passive body or my partner moving my passive body, how I make choices around being passive or active. How I take care of myself in a passive or active role? How I meet resistence? How I deal with surprising responses? The body is a treasure chest of information, and this is only the beginning.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Personal Response Stuff

So, this is where things get interesting. I've been meaning to get to this for a while, and it seems sort of out of date now, but, well, still relevant.
Day one of the Institute with Gerri, I found myself in what was I thought a workshop, based around technique, in a room with very different movers. I found myself struggling with the notion of experience and countering it with the idea of professionalism. I kept asking: "what is my job here?" At each turn, I found a different answer, and a different challenge. I think in the end all, the easiest approach was to simplify things: my job is simply to learn from my experiences, whatever they may be. By doing that I think I opened up doors to new possibilities of learning that continue to grow.
Blind lead is always a wonderful learning tool: what strikes me the most is how people's personalities are expressed in how they choose to lead or follow. Creating movement from this experience was also enlightening - the pathways of memorable movement patterns were very clear and easy to recreate because of the aspect of touch involved, and the focus and attention directed to one's partner. Scripting a phrase and then taking that experience and placing it over the original material was an interesting way of inserting meaning, intent and familiarity into movement that had been given to you. It added possibilities of a narrative, visceral, or emotional experience to be layered onto the movement. As a result we had a brief discussion about different processes and the need for different adaptations. Different dancers scripted the same phrase very differently, resulting in very different subtexts. This process allowed room for different adaptations and learning processes to take place with different dancers (very different kinds of movers) performing the same movement phrase. At the end of the day I realized that "doing the job" never changes - regardless of who is in the room - be it young experienced movers capable of high virtuosic dancing, someone in their 4th dance class ever, or someone adapting the movement due to physical limitations. In fact, I realized in some ways the job becomes more challenging - as you become even more aware of your place and your role in such a diverse group, instead of struggling to stand out, you struggle to work at a high level while still allowing room for everyone else.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

The Farthest Earth


The show went well! I was glad to be involved, even if envious of the dancers. Not to mention that working tech is way too stressful - I'd much rather be performing. This is a photo of our most popular cast member - Madeline, waiting in the theatre for the show to start.
I will update more later.