Finished
We completed the last of the dance. I love the students enthusiasm, not only diving into the movement but also taking the content of the movement more deeply each time they run the dance. I am really please with the dance, it is what I had hoped for, a dance of significance.
Significance
A dance of significance moves both the performers and viewers to examine life in some manner. It creates a wave of change, leaving with the dancers and viewers an impact that is not quickly forgotten because it initiates thoughts and discussions that move people deeper into an understanding about the humanness that we all share.
Costumes
Thank you to Professor Balint who released the students early from Ballet so that we could create the costumes together. We used pedestrian clothes that were from other dances, and Kenneth died them all shades of grey. Then after Ballet I taught the students how to dye-paint to achieve the effect of distressing the clothes. Each student created their own costume effect that is now an abstraction of pedestrian clothes... making the dancers appear both as people, as abstractions of people, and of a group that belongs together. In my mind, all of these characters are aspects of the dreamer, but as people observe the dance I fully expect each viewer to interpret from their own experience -as if the dance were a Rorschach Ink Block.
Music
After now 20+ hours editing the music I am pleased with the result. Each students voice is part of the soundscape, and the selection of music and sound effects that are interspursed flow together in the way that allows the dream to change scenes logically (which in a dream is sometimes illogical!). Although I always want to surprise the audience, I don;t wish to jar them, so it's a delcate process to edit so many sound bytes together gracefully!
Final Showing
At the end of the last rehearsal we decides to invite people to come witness the first run of the completed dance. The costumes were barely dry as the audience arrived. We fit about 3 dozen people into the studio to observe and the dancers completed a great run through. The audience responses were quite helpful, sharing with us in a question and aswer (we asked questions of the audience). As am I (and Kenneth has said also) they were very impressed with the passion of the dancers... the commitment to the movement... the risk. And the images they sahred with us helped the dancers understand how they have guided the audience to share in this expereince of a nightmare. I loved the audiences excitement about seeing a dance that was beautiful in it's darkness.
Accomplishment
More than learning a dance to perform, these dancers have learned through EMP how movement communicates with a viewer and then applied that to the dance to direct the nuances of what we want the audience to witness. They have demonstrated to me that they understand how the use of tension/release and time signatures of movement change the meaning in gesture and movement and how one movement can mean many things when performed in different ways. They have been courageous in the emotional and physical risk needed to accomplish our goals and have maintained a supportive enthusiastic comradery among the group members.
The Ongoing Challenge
The dance is successful in pushing the time, space and energy to extremes and thus creating a dance that walks a path that is uncommon. It is hard as a piece goes into rehearsal to hold onto the uncommoness because our human minds group things into familiar in order to remember them. These movements must remain extreme to retain the power of the piece. Now, as they take the piece to rehearse it will be important that they contunally recall:
• the core motivation for the movements (spine, head, shoulders, pelvis)
• the risk of taking the time to the extreme of slow with the intensity of bound tension
• the moments where bursts of movement surprise the viewer (quick, forceful)
• the manner of creating a guesture that appears to be motivated from outside one's own body (time signature quick to slow)
and of course, each run through should conquer any exptra steps or shifts of weight and should polish any partnering moments that have not captured complete and powerful flow.
What a please it has been to work with this company. I have to say that their director, Kenneth Balint, is training them in the manner of professionalism, open minds and strong bodies that will make these dancers ideal candidates for whatever they choose to accomplish in dance!
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
CSU Fresno Day 3
What a great group of dancers... committed, enthusiastic and courageous! And tireless!
In six hours we put together 8 minutes of dance and have only the ending to finish. We've discussed details of make-up, hair, lighting and costumes and the dancers will meet with me today to create their costumes before rehearsal.
What I have loved most about this project is that the students have faced each challenge I set for them with the utmost grace, even under these intense challenges. The risks I refer to are not just the physical athleticism and partnering, but the most difficult -the emotional risk. I am asking 12 undergraduate students to dive into the material from which horror films are made, and to access their life experience to make it real.
One might wonder, "Why would anyone do this?", "Isn't dance suppose to be pretty?".
Actually, it has taken me a while to understand my internal motivation... while I love to move and so became a dancer, I lived a very difficult childhood and had no resources with which to cope. Painting and art provided some manner of expression but not until I found dance did I find a voice that could express what I felt The depth of the emotions were too deep to be expressed literally, and dance provided a resource to express these things without naming them, analysing them or defining them. And then, when I began showing my dances to the public the most amazing thing happened. People I didn't know began writing me, so many I can't remember them all, and telling me of their experience. The most dramatic were those who told me they were suicidal until they saw my dance, which made them feel understood and less alone and more able to cope. There were those who were overwhelmed to know the were not alone in the shadow of grief, or the belief their late loved one was still with them. And those who said that they didn't think anything so beautiful as the dance could come of such a terrible experience. And the perpetrators of child abuse at a conference who cried when the watched "Sarah's Doll House", a dance that without blame or judgement portrays the Twilight-Zone-like experiences of the abused child.
Cultural Awareness
These experiences, and having lived through isolation, I have a keen desire to provide a vehicle to help people feel understood. To put our real humanness on the stage -no fairytale. Having toured to other countries, and particularly Belarus where we were sponsored by the Embassy as Cultural Ambassadors representing the USA, I have become acutely aware that our American sensibilities of social acceptance are vastly different from other countries. Somehow I had never realized that other cultures don;t place the same value on being happy that we do. My artistic mission has been to shed light on the darkness because I understood that disconnecting from those darker emotions causes a myriad of interpersonal and social problems. And not having the darker emotions understood isolates the sufferer and intensifies the darkness. When a loved one dies, for example, people say "It'll be OK" and they give a socially acceptable amount of time (about a month) to grieve but then it is suppose to go away so that you can live the American value of happily-ever-after. But when the grief/depression/anger -whatever the darker emotion is- doesn't go away, our culture provides few ways to deal with it.
Authenticity & Significance
Through dance, I have found a way to help people feel understood. Without being literal, he dances I create often dive into forbidden topics and issues (death, grief, hauntings, mental illness, suicide, child abuse, war, sleep disorders...). Through Expressive Movement Processing, presenting the dancers with the opportunity to bring subconscious material to the dance, each dance takes on the personality and characteristics of those who perform it. Even the same dance will never be performed the same way by different performers. Through the decision making process EMP brings to the dancers as they learn the dance, each dancer brings their life experience into the dance. And the process allows dancers to stretch their performance comfort zone so that they can perform intense emotions (whether funny, sad, crazy or whatever) in an authentic manner. And that's what the whole process is about: authenticity. Otherwise, the dance will not resonate with the soul of the viewer and will not achieve what I consider the highest tenets of the art of dance... significance.
And significance is what I can see happening in this dance. Taking on the topic of nightmares and bringing awareness to aspects of sleep/sleep deprivation, night terrors and through the kinetic reaction of the viewer, changing the inability to ever really share the depth of experience of a nightmare: sharing the unsharable.
In six hours we put together 8 minutes of dance and have only the ending to finish. We've discussed details of make-up, hair, lighting and costumes and the dancers will meet with me today to create their costumes before rehearsal.
What I have loved most about this project is that the students have faced each challenge I set for them with the utmost grace, even under these intense challenges. The risks I refer to are not just the physical athleticism and partnering, but the most difficult -the emotional risk. I am asking 12 undergraduate students to dive into the material from which horror films are made, and to access their life experience to make it real.
One might wonder, "Why would anyone do this?", "Isn't dance suppose to be pretty?".
Actually, it has taken me a while to understand my internal motivation... while I love to move and so became a dancer, I lived a very difficult childhood and had no resources with which to cope. Painting and art provided some manner of expression but not until I found dance did I find a voice that could express what I felt The depth of the emotions were too deep to be expressed literally, and dance provided a resource to express these things without naming them, analysing them or defining them. And then, when I began showing my dances to the public the most amazing thing happened. People I didn't know began writing me, so many I can't remember them all, and telling me of their experience. The most dramatic were those who told me they were suicidal until they saw my dance, which made them feel understood and less alone and more able to cope. There were those who were overwhelmed to know the were not alone in the shadow of grief, or the belief their late loved one was still with them. And those who said that they didn't think anything so beautiful as the dance could come of such a terrible experience. And the perpetrators of child abuse at a conference who cried when the watched "Sarah's Doll House", a dance that without blame or judgement portrays the Twilight-Zone-like experiences of the abused child.
Cultural Awareness
These experiences, and having lived through isolation, I have a keen desire to provide a vehicle to help people feel understood. To put our real humanness on the stage -no fairytale. Having toured to other countries, and particularly Belarus where we were sponsored by the Embassy as Cultural Ambassadors representing the USA, I have become acutely aware that our American sensibilities of social acceptance are vastly different from other countries. Somehow I had never realized that other cultures don;t place the same value on being happy that we do. My artistic mission has been to shed light on the darkness because I understood that disconnecting from those darker emotions causes a myriad of interpersonal and social problems. And not having the darker emotions understood isolates the sufferer and intensifies the darkness. When a loved one dies, for example, people say "It'll be OK" and they give a socially acceptable amount of time (about a month) to grieve but then it is suppose to go away so that you can live the American value of happily-ever-after. But when the grief/depression/anger -whatever the darker emotion is- doesn't go away, our culture provides few ways to deal with it.
Authenticity & Significance
Through dance, I have found a way to help people feel understood. Without being literal, he dances I create often dive into forbidden topics and issues (death, grief, hauntings, mental illness, suicide, child abuse, war, sleep disorders...). Through Expressive Movement Processing, presenting the dancers with the opportunity to bring subconscious material to the dance, each dance takes on the personality and characteristics of those who perform it. Even the same dance will never be performed the same way by different performers. Through the decision making process EMP brings to the dancers as they learn the dance, each dancer brings their life experience into the dance. And the process allows dancers to stretch their performance comfort zone so that they can perform intense emotions (whether funny, sad, crazy or whatever) in an authentic manner. And that's what the whole process is about: authenticity. Otherwise, the dance will not resonate with the soul of the viewer and will not achieve what I consider the highest tenets of the art of dance... significance.
And significance is what I can see happening in this dance. Taking on the topic of nightmares and bringing awareness to aspects of sleep/sleep deprivation, night terrors and through the kinetic reaction of the viewer, changing the inability to ever really share the depth of experience of a nightmare: sharing the unsharable.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
CSU Fresno Day 2:
Expressive Movement Processing:
This is a group of students that have just started working together this semester. As I teach them how to dive into their subconscious, a frightening thing for many to do, they readily accept the challenge to learn to be comfortable in the discomfort that can arise when one lets go of conscious control and explores internal motivators. This is seriously frightening for many dancers, yet only by learning to be comfortable letting go of control can a dancer achieve the highest tenets of performance -drawing on multiple resources to disover and portray authentic motivations of the character being portrayed, even when those are outside of one's own comfort zone. In the movement research that we have done, these dancers have turned themselves over to the process and thus the dance -the creation of absolutely original movements that are authentic in their expression of both motion and emotion- has begun to take on a life of it's own.
Partnering:
In a 6 hour rehearsal I took the dancers through the basics of partnering -a course I typically would take 10 weeks to teach. We set some absolutely beautiful, original and creative partnering sections, and developed the basic movement phrases that will be the skeleton of the piece. They quickly established a level of trust that bonded the students as a cohesive group and they responded to my nudges to dive further into the abstract emotional content of the movement without trying to convey anything in specific, but rather allowing the movement to be real and to speak the truth in the way that only the language of the body can. I really enjoyed observing their professor (Kenneth Balint) as he watched the sections of the dance and saw new potentials in the students begin to be realized.
We ate dinner at Professor Balint's house with the department chair and enjoyed creative dialogue and great food, and then returned to the hotel to spend most the night creating the music.
Music:
I had asked the dancers to recall a recurring or vivid dream and during our lunch break I recorded their voices telling the story of their dream. Back at the hotel I created a score that includes sound effects, some beautiful cello music (I love the music of Zoe Keating, and will contact her through a mutual friend to get permission for the use of sections of her work) with effected sections of the voices of the dancers. The result is a vivid, textured soundscape that sets the stage for creating the dance in rehearsal today.
Costumes:
Professor Balint and I went through the costume inventory at the school to find various items that we could put together to create a pedestrian yet unified look for the dancers. We'll try the costumes on them today, then after rehearsal go shopping to fill in the blanks, get some dye and fabric paint. Then tomorrow morning the dancers will meet with me to create the pedestrian yet abstract, dimensional, textured look that I want for this dance.
This is a group of students that have just started working together this semester. As I teach them how to dive into their subconscious, a frightening thing for many to do, they readily accept the challenge to learn to be comfortable in the discomfort that can arise when one lets go of conscious control and explores internal motivators. This is seriously frightening for many dancers, yet only by learning to be comfortable letting go of control can a dancer achieve the highest tenets of performance -drawing on multiple resources to disover and portray authentic motivations of the character being portrayed, even when those are outside of one's own comfort zone. In the movement research that we have done, these dancers have turned themselves over to the process and thus the dance -the creation of absolutely original movements that are authentic in their expression of both motion and emotion- has begun to take on a life of it's own.
Partnering:
In a 6 hour rehearsal I took the dancers through the basics of partnering -a course I typically would take 10 weeks to teach. We set some absolutely beautiful, original and creative partnering sections, and developed the basic movement phrases that will be the skeleton of the piece. They quickly established a level of trust that bonded the students as a cohesive group and they responded to my nudges to dive further into the abstract emotional content of the movement without trying to convey anything in specific, but rather allowing the movement to be real and to speak the truth in the way that only the language of the body can. I really enjoyed observing their professor (Kenneth Balint) as he watched the sections of the dance and saw new potentials in the students begin to be realized.
We ate dinner at Professor Balint's house with the department chair and enjoyed creative dialogue and great food, and then returned to the hotel to spend most the night creating the music.
Music:
I had asked the dancers to recall a recurring or vivid dream and during our lunch break I recorded their voices telling the story of their dream. Back at the hotel I created a score that includes sound effects, some beautiful cello music (I love the music of Zoe Keating, and will contact her through a mutual friend to get permission for the use of sections of her work) with effected sections of the voices of the dancers. The result is a vivid, textured soundscape that sets the stage for creating the dance in rehearsal today.
Costumes:
Professor Balint and I went through the costume inventory at the school to find various items that we could put together to create a pedestrian yet unified look for the dancers. We'll try the costumes on them today, then after rehearsal go shopping to fill in the blanks, get some dye and fabric paint. Then tomorrow morning the dancers will meet with me to create the pedestrian yet abstract, dimensional, textured look that I want for this dance.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Cal State Fresno residency Sept 24-27, 2010
Day 1
I've been looking forward to this residency even though it comes in the middle of the re-creation of a new dance on Moving Arts. Professor Kenneth Balint danced in A Ludwig Dance Co (although a few years after I did!) so it's all in the dance-family!
This is a short and quick process (4 days) so today we went through what would normally be ten weeks of material about Expressive Movement Processing in three hours AND covered the basics of partnering! And that was just the audition! Whoosh!
The students are great. Young & strong bodies, eager & open minds, they'll make the most of my time here.
We have chosen 12 dancers to work with and will create a dance for the American College Dance Festival. This will be fun.. AND we have our work cut out for us!
I've been looking forward to this residency even though it comes in the middle of the re-creation of a new dance on Moving Arts. Professor Kenneth Balint danced in A Ludwig Dance Co (although a few years after I did!) so it's all in the dance-family!
This is a short and quick process (4 days) so today we went through what would normally be ten weeks of material about Expressive Movement Processing in three hours AND covered the basics of partnering! And that was just the audition! Whoosh!
The students are great. Young & strong bodies, eager & open minds, they'll make the most of my time here.
We have chosen 12 dancers to work with and will create a dance for the American College Dance Festival. This will be fun.. AND we have our work cut out for us!
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
A new start
The keys to the warehouse (former dance center) were returned two weeks ago...
We have almost cleared out the third storage area to pare down to two (so much to get rid of!)...
This has been an amazing process.
Twenty plus years of creating and one month to dismantle.
It's great to find out how many people have turned out to support us, even with just notes or a call... all the way to those who spent their extra minutes and hours helping us!
Change is hard, but this can be a metamorphosis. Now we'll find out what greatness begins and where it will take our MAD community!
We'll perform "Whispers" in San Jose next month... looking forward to it!
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Count Down to be out!
Counting days
Counting costumes
Counting sprung wood floor pieces and rolls of Marley
Counting friends
Counting our luck
Counting those who are there for us when we need them most!
We have until Dec 31, but hope to be done earlier. We could not do this without the support of the many, many volunteers and supporters! THANK YOU.
We have organized and tomorrow the dismantling begins.
Counting breaths
heartbeats
steps...
and freely letting everyone shed the many tears that are necessary to grieve this process.
It's as if I have been raising a child... really for 30 years... with the help of Scott for the last decade... and the child has been severely ill for the last three years... we have done everything we can to keep it alive, at great personal cost... and now it's time to let go. But the soul of the child will live on in the creative work of the professional company.
Counting costumes
Counting sprung wood floor pieces and rolls of Marley
Counting friends
Counting our luck
Counting those who are there for us when we need them most!
We have until Dec 31, but hope to be done earlier. We could not do this without the support of the many, many volunteers and supporters! THANK YOU.
We have organized and tomorrow the dismantling begins.
Counting breaths
heartbeats
steps...
and freely letting everyone shed the many tears that are necessary to grieve this process.
It's as if I have been raising a child... really for 30 years... with the help of Scott for the last decade... and the child has been severely ill for the last three years... we have done everything we can to keep it alive, at great personal cost... and now it's time to let go. But the soul of the child will live on in the creative work of the professional company.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Changing Tides
Dec. 1 and our world is about to change. There's a whirlwind waiting for us.
We have a world premiere this Sat, Dec 5
Moving Arts Dance Center and School will close as of January 1.
We've put our hearts and souls into this dance center. We have loved every step, even the most difficult, because each step brought us closer to perfection in the creation of this school and theater. Now, this week marks our last performance in this wonderful location.
So now we'll find another way to make the world a better place. But we leave knowing that we have made a difference in many lives. As dance changed my life, gave me a place to call home, physical confidence and grace, and a voice with which I could speak non-verbally, so I believe we have helped many who have crossed our paths.
I will miss the school and theater so very much. I will miss seeing everyone weekly and knowing that we are all on the path together to be more gracious, sophisticated people... to creating art on the forefront of creativity in dance... to developing this creative village that we have enjoyed for too brief a time.
So, here we go... into the whirlwind of the known and unknown.
• A very difficult move awaits us. Literally. Everything goes into storage in December.
• And then, a very difficult move awaits us in January. Figuratively. Everything must be re-created into it's new form,
whatever that will be!
Here's to the future, and the steps each day to help us achieve even higher goals than we can imagine today! Keep your chins up and your spirits high. Great things await us all.
We have a world premiere this Sat, Dec 5
Moving Arts Dance Center and School will close as of January 1.
We've put our hearts and souls into this dance center. We have loved every step, even the most difficult, because each step brought us closer to perfection in the creation of this school and theater. Now, this week marks our last performance in this wonderful location.
So now we'll find another way to make the world a better place. But we leave knowing that we have made a difference in many lives. As dance changed my life, gave me a place to call home, physical confidence and grace, and a voice with which I could speak non-verbally, so I believe we have helped many who have crossed our paths.
I will miss the school and theater so very much. I will miss seeing everyone weekly and knowing that we are all on the path together to be more gracious, sophisticated people... to creating art on the forefront of creativity in dance... to developing this creative village that we have enjoyed for too brief a time.
So, here we go... into the whirlwind of the known and unknown.
• A very difficult move awaits us. Literally. Everything goes into storage in December.
• And then, a very difficult move awaits us in January. Figuratively. Everything must be re-created into it's new form,
whatever that will be!
Here's to the future, and the steps each day to help us achieve even higher goals than we can imagine today! Keep your chins up and your spirits high. Great things await us all.
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