Good Questions

Recently, after reading some of my previous blog entries, I was asked some great questions by "Shems" about this work. So, I'm going to take a moment to respond to them. Here is part of her response,

"It sounds like a fairly demanding project you are working on. As an artist, I can't help but ask, how do you keep from getting lost in the abstactness of the practice of making your art? Also do you ever have moments when you suddenly can't take yourself seriously? and not to be too inquisitive, although it seems too late for that, do you ever feel obligated to include some kind of hook to sell the project to the public? I ask this last question, because if I understood the description correctly, you will be performing your piece, every hour on the hour for 24 hours and I'm wondering why you would want to do that? What does it add in value to the artistic merit of the project?"

Yea, she certainly goes right to the heart of the matter. I'm not going to answer them in the order she asked, but will jump around alittle bit.

Firstly, I don't really think of a "hook" to sell the project to the public when beginning a new work. The idea for doing the work for 24 hours came directly out of the exploration of what this work is exploring - pushing ourselves in new direction, to new edges, to new discoveries. For a couple of years I've been interested in doing a 24 hour performance as an exploration in endurance and how that can lead to transformation. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to go for the 24 hours because the work seems to welcome it as does the venue and context - being in the Capital Fringe Festival. It feels like a good fit. Now, saying that, yea, it is a good "hook" and it is the one that pops out at everyone. Most people respond by saying something to the effect like, "are you nuts?" It gets them thinking, and wondering why the hell we'd want to do that. Hopefully at that point it will bring them into the performance and see that the 24 hours is not the main focus of our exploration, but a by-product, if you will, of this journey. I do think we could do this work without doing it so many times in a row, but it does add a sense of commitment to being in this performance/world in a significant way.

In regard to the abstractness of the work, I would say that that is a concern, but not a major concern. When Jonathan and I take the time to focus on what we are doing - and this includes the structure - the inner life of the work is present. We do work with different source material (words, phrases, photos) to cultivate connection between us and a larger context outside the parameters of the piece. I think both Jonathan and I work from structure alot of time, so it feels very natural. For many people this seems too abstract and they want to focus on the "personal" or "emotional" connection in the work. I experience structure as both personal and emotional. By establishing a clear structure I am more able to let go into my emotional/intuitive self without going into an indulgent or self-centered performance mode. At the same time we have been working with asking ourselves the question, "What's next?", as a way to keep pushing ourselves further and deeper into the work. I think this is an acknowledgement of our desire to stay, or even increase, that connection to the emotional/intuitive, maybe even, spiritual self. I would say that structure and discussions about structure are not a means to abstract the work, but a way to find the space for the personal selves to have more room, to be safe to expose oneself, to be vulnerable.

And, I would say, that Jonathan and I rarely take ourselves very seriously. But, we do take our work seriously. It is the way we make sense of the world, the way we communicate with our community, the way we delve into ourselves and our potential. And, we have a pretty good sense of humor regarding just how odd most people find what we do.

A Light Grasp

It was a couple of days ago that Jonathan and I last rehearsed. We rehearsed in a much smaller dance studio than we had been and I think that's good since our stage isn't going to be very big. Jonathan said he liked it because there was less pressure to move around the space as much - he was somewhat able to let go of worrying about using space because there was less of it. If you've been reading this blog at all you'll know that we've been working on linking structure to content. We've been curious as to the role of structure in defining meaning and how content (in the form of ideas, images, word phrases) can support structure. This week we also began to layer, what we're calling, characteristics on top of our structure/content. Meaning, we're pre-deciding some facet of a certain section - for example, before we begin a run of the work we know that when we get to Jonathan's solo it will be very minimal, or when we are both playing the guitar it will be a call & response form. Some of the characteristics we worked with are:
- call & response
- minimal
- shifting intensities
- soft dynamics (sustained, light, indirect)
- high density
- simultaneous independence

This creates a certain problem, as it limits the ongoing flow of development that we are working with. The challenge of it is that in a certain run of the work we establish a specific rhythm or relationship; when we then come to a section that has a pre-decided characteristic that is not congruent with what we are doing, what do we do? How do we keep what we've set up and been working on, but also shift into this new landscape? I think this goes a lot to intention and awareness. If we hold that our intention is to stay with what we are doing, without holding on too tight, we can open to the possibility of the new characteristic. It is as if we have a light grasp on what we are doing - not holding so tight it can't change, mutate, or evolve, but not so loose that we just drop it as soon as we're distracted. If is almost a cliche�© of improvisational performance that it is almost distractingly a stream of conscious type of performing. While this is ok in some/many instances, I think it is actually quite lazy in many cases. It is difficult to remember the past, be clear with your inspiration (meaning/content), stay within the boundaries of the structure and fully be awake in the present moment of performing. Obviously, sometimes you can't be in all of that at once, sometimes you're more in one or the other, but, overall, you need to have access to all those elements to create focused, provocative performances. This is our challenge, and even more so with this piece I think because Jonathan and I are breaking apart our normal roles and learning what each other does as well. So, in some ways I think these pre-determined characteristics are helpful in jolting us into the present moment, to remind us to keep coming back, again and again, to exploring this new territory that we're climbing through.

Structure finding content

Today Jonathan and I started with some movement improvisation structures that I learned earlier this week in a workshop with Chris Aiken (he was in town working with the Dance Exchange and I got an opportunity to join for part of it). The structure is very much like the game "statue" - where one person moves the other person into a position. But, in this exercise the person being moved reacts to the movement initiations on a scale from 0 - 10. Responding at level 0 would mean that when the person is moved they stop when the manipulation stops. And, at the other end of the scale, the person takes the initiation and lets that lead them into a longer phrase of movement. The exercise is really a practice of different ways to respond to someone touching and moving you. I think it was very useful for Jonathan and I as it gave us another way to be in contact with one another. Hence, extending our range of partner dancing.

We then returned to our exploration of form/structure for "unmapped". The first random order of sections was very challenging and was not really fulfilling. We started in the space passing the guitar back and forth and that proved to be difficult. Starting that way didn't really supply a reason why we were passing the guitar - it seemed completely out of the blue, unconnected. As we went on through the improvisation we found more material and the improv felt stronger, but it still wasn't fully satisfying. The second run we did - with a different random order of sections - we added a starting point, an initiation. I have a book of photography of the body, from medical photos to athletes to erotica - and we used a photo from that book. It was a picture of two hands kind of wrapped around each other - I believe they were an older woman's hands - very wrinkled, almost narled. The photo is intimate, intense, somewhat disturbing. The improv we created from that image was, I think, also very intense. It also seemed intimate - lots of close dancing, kind of rough with one another at times. We ended up doing lots of hand gestures, repetition and in contact a fair amount - including some partnering similar to our earlier exercise. It was so much more satisfying, as it felt like there was depth and an inner life to the work.

In our first run of the work being in each section was challenging, but transitions between sections was also challenging. During the second run the sections made more sense since we had a context that they all related to. Just having that simple image to keep coming back to was a very powerful organizing point. In the past we had used words or phrases, so it was also nice that we did it without words. It, again, feels like it pushed us into new territory, into new discoveries.

Structure, Structure, Structure

Yesterday in rehearsal Jonathan and I discussed how to structure our duet. I think this gets to a central question in creating art - especially, maybe mostly, improvisational work. How do you decide on a structure? What does "structure" even mean? Is it important? There is certainly a case to be made to have a set structure for every work. This would mean that even though we are not setting particulars there is a place where we always begin, move through and end. For example, we could set that we always start at the back of the stage with both of us playing the guitar, this slowly transitions into both of us moving around the stage and then ends with Jonathan playing the guitar and me dancing. The other extreme of this is to set nothing - really just both choose where to start as we're walking on stage and then begin and see what happens. Yesterday we discussed something in between - that for each performance we would randomly choose the order of the sections, but we would go through those sections in a particular order for that performance. The next question that comes up out of this discussion is, how does the order of the section effect the meaning of the performance - for both us as performers and, certainly, the audience. If you set the structure than you can be sure of a certain flow of the piece, but if you leave it open, or change it each time, that changes the arc. In fact it calls into question the whole idea of the dramatic arc.

Most times when seeing a performance - especially dance or theater - we are use to following a dramatic arc. Usually something happens, something changes from the beginning to the end. We have conflict, or development, or some kind of progression. We also know, either consciously or intuitively, that that arc was chosen and set by the creator of the work. We can trust that the structure was intentional and specific. But, if there is no predetermined structure, or the structure is determined for each performance by chance, what does that imply to meaning? This is an age-old post-modern question, but we're in the mix of it right now and trying to wrestle with these options. During this last rehearsal we randomly created a structure (using a computer) and tried it and was quite satisfied with the structure. But, what happens if the computer creates a structure that we don't "like", or feels "inorganic"? We will continue to explore random generated structure for the next couple of rehearsals and see what happens.

Rehearsal 5/24

Yesterday Jonathan and I had rehearsal for "unmapped" in the afternoon. Once we had all the equipment set up we began with a long improv session. We started in our, what you might call, traditional roles - he playing the guitar, me dancing. We had not been starting this way for a while - we've both been playing the guitar to start. It was very interesting starting that way again, almost a relief in a way. I really enjoyed just "dancing" by myself for a while. I did alot of big movement, moving through space, kind of complicated gestural stuff. I also think that Jonathan really enjoyed playing the guitar without me - he didn't have to deal with my limitations as a musician, or the choice I make when we're playing together (I may be wrong about this - I may be projecting...).
We also began to notice and record some of our habitual choices. For example, when we are both moving together we tend to imitate each other's movement choices. When we are passing the guitar back and forth, as Jonathan noted, we tend to do this fake-out move where we almost take/give the guitar, but then we don't. By naming these habits I hope we can notice when we are doing them as we're improvising and then find different choices. I don't mean to totally throw out the habits we recognize, but to increase the number of options we have available to us as we're improvising.
We also made a list of the number of possible groupings between Jonathan, I and the guitar. They were:
1. Jonathan playing the guitar, Daniel dancing
2. Both playing the guitar
3. Both dancing
4. Daniel playing the guitar, Jonathan dancing
5. creating a repetitive sequence on the guitar (using an echo/looping devise) that gradually fades to silence
There were a number of sub-options for each of these, but that is the general gist of it. We then practiced just doing one of these options - instead of switching back and forth. I think we both thought this was a great practice to deepen each one of these possibilities. We have been worried, or working on, the whole length of the piece (40 minutes) and have set aside the details alittle bit. I think we need to go back and dig alittle deeper.
When making a work - whether it is set or improvised - I think you are constantly going back and forth between pushing the edges wider, and digging deeper. You want to make sure it is encompassing the whole of what it is, though it can't encompass everything. You don't want to be too narrow, yet you don't want to be so shallow that it has no meaning. So, you go back and forth between exploring the work's width and depth.

Newest Work - unmapped

I have been developing a new improvisational based work with a musician - Jonathan Matis - to be performed as part of the first Capital Fringe Festival this July - and we will be performing the work on the hour, every hour, for 24 hours - (yikes!). The work - "unmapped" - is an exploration of blurring the lines between dance and music and dancer and musician. Jonathan and I begin both playing a prepared guitar that is running through a computer. We begin by creating a sound score with the computer repeating what we play and then layering over those sounds. We play the guitar with an assortment of low tech objects - chop sticks, paint brush, metal slide, vibrator - to create a very percussive dense sound. From this beginning we begin to add movement by responding to each other, moving out into space, using the guitar as a prop - passing it back and forth - so that sometimes we are both moving, sometimes one is moving and the other is playing, and sometimes we are both playing. All of the music and movement is improvised, but we do have some structures and some sourcing material. We know we start out playing the guitar together, then we take it into movement, then we go into our more traditional roles - Jonathan playing and I'm moving. We've also been working with word phrases as a beginning place to improvise from. Most of the phrases have been randomly chosen from books - the idea being to get us out of our habitual patterns. It has been interesting and challenging as many of the phrases have not been places we would have normally started from. Phrases such as "blades of fire", or "side of the wealthy", or "globe men" are a challenge to find music and movement from. We've also been surprising ourselves with what comes out of working with these phrases. This is going to continue to be a very interesting work to explore - in rehearsal, and certainly once we get to performance.