Committing to the 24 Preludes - belated notes from London

 “Committing to the 24 Preludes”

(notes from work in London)

Early on in the London rehearsal phase I decided to work with the commitment of using the 24 preludes in their entirety.  In order.  (whether or not this becomes the final decision it felt right to commit to it very fully for a couple weeks) The decision came out of a conversation with Matteo Fargion and Rahel Vonmoos on the first day about the music. 

This is the structure I’ve been working with for a long time, but I’ve been leaving the door open to the possibility of skipping tracks or using additional Chopin pieces outside of the preludes. 

It feels good to commit to the full preludes and embrace that challenge as part of the work.

The use of this particular piece of music began as an exercise: A structure to organize within, a frame to push against… At first it felt temporary – like a necessary first step in assembling an unruly amount of material, a shell I would shed at a certain point.  But I quickly became intrigued by the pieces and the specific ways they cradled, coinsided and clashed with the content of my material.   

When I show this draft to new people the music is always at the forefront of the experience and the decision to use Chopin carries weight and brings up questions. 

For the work-in-progress version I’ve been working with for a while now, I only made my way up to the 17^th prelude.  At the conclusion of my time in London I now have a draft of the full 24 preludes. 

Embracing the challenge of sticking to this structure in full and recognizing that as a key component of the dance is so far proving very helpful.  Psychologically and in practice.   

With the intentional limitation I feel like I can address more specifically the elements I do have in my control and at my disposal.

i.e. Silence (length between preludes), volume, style of the recording, source of the recording (full sound system, a radio onstage), and the relationship between my voice my movement and the music… which is a big one.

belated notes from London - a december trip

First rehearsal - Marlybone Gardens

I started the process by meeting up with Rahel VonMoos and Matteo Fargion.  I performed the 30 minute draft of the solo I’ve been working on.  We had a great chat about where it's headed, where the strenghts and problems lay, and how they might get involved over these next two weeks. 

I rehearsed at a space called Marylebone Gardens-  a pop up theater and venue created and hosted by Theatre Delicatessen.  TD is using the space that was once a BBC building and sharing the rooms to artists at very low rates.  

The set up of the space was an inspiring start to my process. 

(but with only a tiny electric heater in the corner – it was a bit chilly!)

I love this system of temporarily converting unused space in a densely populated area. 

LMCC does of great job of this in NYC – its no simple task – and the small theater company doing it here is working its tail off to keep the program going.  

Marylebone Gardens is in the heart of an upscale shopping area.  During this pre-christmas season the foot-traffic is high – and its so great to see a sign for free entrance to a photography exhibit nextdoor to a shop selling $600 shoes.

Return to London and return to solo

 

I’m back in London.

When I came for the initial workshops with Wendy Houstoun it was Spring 2011.  I didn’t know what I was going to uncover or where the work would take me. 

Its quite fitting that I’m returning in December.  The distracted attention and open excitement of spring is behind me.  There is still wonder and anticipation but also a determined focus on the road ahead. 

I’ll be here for two weeks.  I’m looking forward to several studio visits from two artists I met briefly during my initial research in 2011: Matteo Fargion and Rahel VonMoos.  I’ve invited them to come take a look at the material I’ve generated and to engage with me in conversations and explorations to deepen the process. 

But let me back up…

And give a brief overview of the last year and a half.

I put the solo aside to work on a major new work: The Garden.  

The work I did throughout DMD/DM greatly informed the ensemble work of The Garden, and several of the dancers from that process performed in The Garden.  (though I still feel like there is a dance waiting to happen – born from the material we generated during the group process of DMD/DM.  but that’s another story.)

Over the last year and and a half I revisited the draft of my solo a few times.  In December 2012 I performed a 15 minute version for the NPN conference and again during a workshop for the writers of Thinking Dance.  Both of these showings led to lively conversations with presenters and artists I respect.  During the conference I struck up a friendship with solo artist Dan Kwong, which led to a studio visit with him in March of that year. 

I love allowing this solo to be a launchpad for larger conversations about process. 

Thanks to a grant from The PCAH and an invitation from FringeArts to premiere the work, I’m now focusing my attention on turning the solo process into a fully produced performance.   (evening length performance)

This phase of producing the work begins with a two week intensive period in London with studio visits from Matteo Fargion and Rahel VonMoos, two artists I worked with briefly during my initial research visit in 2011.  In between these sessions I will work alone in the studio. 

The goal is to return to Philadelphia re-inspired by conversations from colleages and mentors about the process of making this work.  I’ll filter those conversations and focus my energy on the completion of an evening length production. 

I’ll be working with a design team in this final phase of the process, shifting what has been a long expanse of working alone with brief visits from outside eyes, to working more intimately with people who will help me see the vision to completion.  This design team is coming in fresh to the project, and it’s strange to imagine inviting them into what has so far been a very vulnerable process.  

Prior to coming to London I spent a few days with composer Troy Herion (one of the members of the design team) – introducing him to the process and the solo and inviting him to ask question and provide provocations.  I love the way Troy thinks about structure and we had a great time batting around ideas.  The more I invite people into the room with me the more I realize that I need to remain a strong filter for the process.  At this point I know the heart of the work intimately and I need to trust my instincts.  I’m also very attached to things, so the provocations from Troy and Matteo and Rahel are welcome kicks in new directions.  Its incredibly inspiring and invigorating to allow myself to try new directions, but also empowering to trust my instincts as I construct. 

So, here I am in London. 

Processing my recent work with Troy, embracing the voices of Rahel and Matteo, and spending a lot of time alone, processing, wondering, constructing, dismantling, fine tuning. 

Why do I make dances?

 

Why do I make dances? 

For a long time I couldn’t answer this.  I just do.  It’s who I am.  I tried to stop dancing a few times but it is one of the few things in my life that I’ve always gravitated toward without question.   But its important to question it. 

I started dancing for my own pleasure.  To sooth my loneliness and channel my manic energy.  Moving in unison with the other children was a ritual that lifted my spirits.  Working hard to learn new things, challenging my physical memory, working together to solve problems.  At the end of the year there was a performance.  The adrenalin rush that pumped through my veins as I prepared to step before all the people, the dizzy ease I felt once I stood on stage, the palpable exchange of energy I could feel between everyone in the room, performers and watchers, these things sealed my deep commitment to the form.  Everything about it. 

I made dances with the neighborhood kids.  I made dances in the school playground.  I made dances when I was alone.  I made dances in the living room during my parent’s grown-up parties, often to drunken applause. 

As I grew older I studied many forms of live performance,

gathering training and professional experiences that gave me a range of tools to continue expressing myself and took me further into the world of the arts. 

I started making dances to work out my own questions.  My own desires and my own fears. 

I made dances about being alone.   I made dances about discovery: of the world and of one’s self. 

I made a lot of dances that weren’t “about” anything but sprung from my awe of the complexity of human exchanges, a celebration of the absurdity and the sadness of our basic human quests and the awkwardness and beauty in our attempts to connect.

As a performer I discovered humor and reveled in the ways it highlighted the exchange between performer and the audience.  I spent a good amount of time in the training and creation of physical theater and clown work.

I then moved my dances out of the theater to give the audience more agency.  I focused significant energy on creating a world that the audience could literally step into, where the discoveries were theirs to make, sculpting a journey that they could follow and be followed by.

I opened my process to include the voices of the design collaborators at the onset of each project, reaching out to a range of artistic minds as relevant to the project at hand.  Sustained relationships with a pool of collaborators allowed each project to build on the next.  I built up the skills to helm large-scale projects and manage complex investigations (the mathematical love of organizing patterns combined with my dreamy idealistic sense of things)

After several years of focusing on the exchange between audience and performer, between collaborators and dancers, I am wondering what would I make if I returned to a less elaborate process?

With this year of research and discovery I wanted to ask myself:

What would I make if I weren’t collaborating with designers?  

What happens if I stand alone? 

Why do I make dances?  Really truly, why?

What are the questions that I myself am wrestling with and how can I share that with an audience?  How can I make those questions relevant to wider circle?  What is the cultural context that my questions sit within?  How can I play with formal structure to support the weight of personal content? 

And how do the stories of the dancers fit in with my own?

So I don’t have the answers. 

I don’t want to make dances that appear to be statements.

I want to make dances that honor the questions.  But give you a window in.

On Monday night I’ll be sharing my process as it sits thus far.  Flinging the door open to share these discussions with people other than Wendy and the dancers I’ve been working with this year. 

Come join us:
June 18th @ 7pm @ LAB space

Notes from Wendy's April Visit

 

WENDY APRIL VISIT NOTES

(warning this one is long…)

What is a mentorship?  It can take so many forms.  Wendy and I have been trying to take cues from one another and learn how the other is most comfortable working.  What are the expectations of this mentorship and how can we continue to make sure we stay on track. It was essentially a blind date mentorship so there was no telling how it would all shake out.  There have been many discussions along the way about how to define and organize our working relationship.  There have been hurt feelings and un-met expectations.  There have been break-throughs and new ways of seeing things.  Navigating our relationship has not been simple but the project has been overall rewarding and illuminating thus far.

Wendy expressed a desire for me to do the bulk of the initiations for this April visit.  She wanted my desires, questions and inspirations to guide our work sessions.  She wanted me to map out and lead our work for the week. 

Solo process: 

I opened our week discussing the main questions and observations about the process of working alone as well as the main ideas (narrative content and formal concerns) I am wrestling with and investigating in my projects.  

Why Mother why now?

as in...why am I looking at the Mother-child relationship in my process right now...
 

I am a mother. 

My memories of my mother when she was the age that I am now are very strong, potent and continually influential.

My son Simon is almost eight.

When I was eight my Mom came out to me. 

In the same breath she explained that she and my father would be getting a divorce.

She loved Lori the way she had once loved my Father.

My parents had enrolled me in catholic school a few years prior.  We never went to church and we were already considered a pretty weird family, So my mom thought it best if I not tell anyone about her sexual orientation.  So I didn’t.  I felt a little guilty when I made “best friend pacts” to tell all …but my Mom always came first so mum was the word.  But it was tricky for me: I thought her relationship with Lori was beautiful and I wanted so badly to tell everyone I knew.  I didn’t like lying when people asked why my Mom didn’t have a boyfriend. 

My mom’s fear was strong.  In general.  About a lot of things.  And it still is.

When I was eight AIDS was spreading and the general population didn’t understand what it was.

And AIDS was connected to gay.

Fear was strong.

My Mom’s partner was a nurse and they showed me several VHS movies about AIDS; making sure I understood that you can’t catch it through touch and spit.  And they made sure I knew everything there was to know about condoms.  “Guys- I’m 8!!!  Yuck.”  They made jokes about how straight I was and giggled about the guys I would be bringing home.  “Guys – I’m 8!!! Yuck.” 

My Mom and Lori found a community of closeted lesbians in our suburban neighborhood.  Many of them had kids from previous marriages… and they became good friends of mine. 

…when I was 8 years old it was 1980

Ronald Reagan was elected. 

I vividly remember my mother pacing and panting as the results of polls rolled in.

“I can’t fucking believe this.  What is wrong with people?  This man is a moron.

Nichole, the world you live in is about to change for the worse.” 

I wondered what does this mean?  Who is this man?  How could he single handedly ruin the world we knew?  What should I do to prepare?

Is this how Simon feels as we gear up for the election where Mitt Romney “battles” Barack Obama?  Simon is searching for good guys and bad guys – trying to assign the roles. 

The messy details of my parent’s divorce taught me early on that there were no such thing as good guy and bad guy.  There was only difference and complexity.  Sure, there are extreme beliefs and behaviours, but everyone has their reasons and even the most well-intentioned action can hurt others.  I learned this through the example of the relationships in front of me.  The tiny tears against my heart made it stronger bigger full of compassion.  Will Simon absorb this type of information through my words, without living through the struggle?  Is he too protected?  What is he taking in through that little lens of his?

The Memory Map:

In my solo practice I found myself referring to a mental map of my childhood home.  I lived on a street called Midway Avenue between ages 3 and 10, sometimes with my Dad and his girlfriends, sometimes with my Mom and her partners, sometimes with my parents when they were trying to work it out.  As adults came and went I was the most consistent resident. 

I find it interesting that seven years of activity are now condensed into one static picture that I can mentally walk through.  Its interesting to note what remains: for instance the christimas tree sits at the bottom of the steps even though it was only there one month a year.  Its like a time lapse photograph of sorts.  Sometimes length of stay earns a piece of furniture its place, but sometimes a brief flash of activity –if bright enough- burns its way onto the image forever. 

The Poetics of Space:  I started reading The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard and felt an immediate thrill as I read the introduction.  I couldn’t believe how perfectly it supported and illuminated the ways I’d been thinking about space and the significance of one’s memory of their childhood home.  Reading this (I’m still working through it) is deepening and expanding my thinking about this personal material and strengthening my confidence that it can indeed make its way into a work of art that others can relate to. 

Real and Borrowed images.  And the Borrowed images you can’t remove:

The dead guy:  When I was taking a mental tour of my childhood house on Midway avenue, I noticed there was a bloody dead man on the couch.  What??  There has never been a bloody dead person on that couch and I have never seen such a horror with my own eyes.  So why is he here on the couch at Midway avenue?   I realized this image arrived when I saw a play “Iron” in which the mother tells her daughter the details of a murder she committed.  As I listened to the story I was staging the murder in Midway avenue.  I often stage scenes from books or plays there if the author does not assign specific architectural details I just subconsciously stage the action at Midway avenue.  Apparently this body permanently lodged itself on my childhood couch.  As much as a try I cannot erase it from the room.  I’m stuck with this dead body. 

Now as you can imagine, when I relayed this detail to Wendy her eyes widened.  “Well, this metaphor is very strong Nichole, you need to put this stubborn obstacle on the stage with you in some way”

Ok, so what does all this have to do with performance?  Maybe nothing.  Maybe everything.  But its certainly made its way into this creative process…

And, when your own story implicates others, is it okay to tell that story?

*how this relates to my group process is detailed in “Mother and the Architecture of Memory”

photos of may workshop with group

The dance of process

 

Am I investigating process or am I making a dance?  Is this research process leading to a dance accidentally or intentionally? 

Is the dance just there so that I can look at process?  What is process when it’s separate from its product?   Does that even exist?  …Once you have a process you are conjuring something. 

I’ve seen countless dances that are about the making of the dance (and novels about writing novels etc…) Which makes sense.  Making is at the forefront of your mind while you are making especially if your process includes an awareness of the present – of the full picture.  If you are open to what is going on, that becomes a large piece of the work. 

For me the question of making is quite present right now.  But when I am alone in the studio the louder voice is the question of being. Who am I when I am alone?  What is the context?  Who am I in relationship to everything that has come before me?

 

Where this project falls in my life is significant: 

I started my dance company 7 years ago, while pregnant with my son Simon.  I essentially birthed twins: a company and a son.  For anyone who has ever run a non-profit or raised a child you know that both are things you never clock out of.  You live and breathe them.  So my relationship to self changed.  And my time alone evaporated without me realizing it.  The projects I initiated through my company were highly collaborative and included a matrix of performers and designers.  My personal decisions were made in collaboration with my husband as we began rearing this amazing being together.

So here I am seven years into this twin rearing initiating a project for myself that requires that I stand alone: Alone in the studio, alone on stage, alone in front of a group of dancers. 

I’m sitting with myself and noticing the shifts that have occurred under my feet, without me realizing it.  And then certain personal information stirs around in my brain.  Sensations that I didn’t sit still long enough to notice before.  Personal feelings that are connected to details unique to me but rooted in sensations that are universal: feelings are about motherhood and past.  We all come from a mother and we all move forward from a past: I’ve become fascinated by what we carry with us, what we discard, what we bury. (An earlier blog outlines the ways I’m investigating this a bit:  Mother and the Achitecture of Memory)

Why this project and why now?

When writing to fund this research project it seemed like a good way to push me to discover some new things: Seven years into my life as an artistic director of NCDC I wanted to shake things up and try a new way of working.  Or in some ways return to an old way of working and see what it felt like.  Adding Wendy to the process would give me an experienced voice to talk to as I came in contact with the unknown.  Adding Wendy would force me to try new things, to learn from someone outside of my community.      

 

Wendy was essentially a blind date mentor.  And I had no idea if we would get along as people.  I loved her work so it was a risk I felt worth taking.

Where I am in my life and where this project falls is a big part of the project and the process.  It is part of the struggle and the fodder for making the work.  But need it be the content for the work?  I don’t know.  When I wear it as a solo it is a bit terrifying.  When I bring it to the group of dancers I can look at it with more distance – abstract it – let it run and evolve. 

For me art and life are intertwined but that can mean so many things. The energy of the room of collaborators becomes a microcosm of ways humans relate in general and feeds the direction of the work on many levels.  

When alone in a solo my own story rises to the surface.  I want to run with that but I do wonder why would anyone need to know my story?    But at the core of my story lies the basic struggles of humanity.  And this story can lead into a research of the formal structures to carry the story… the formal structures that in a way speak volumes above the details of my days.  

Frankenphrase and whisper down the dancer

I’ve been slowly accumulating a phrase. Well accumulating may be the wrong word because it hasn’t been growing in sequence. Certain movements and moments have been traveling with me since august, determined to remain. Some disappear and resurface. Some things tag along for a while and then drop off for good. Some slowly morph into a new shape

The phrase as a whole is a concise response of sorts, born of my time alone in the studio. At times it is a comfort for me to return to. At other times its a bear I wrestle with. Why are you here? What do you mean? Why don’t you feel the way you did before?

As I spiral off into improvisational exercises, writing assignments and movement tasks, I occasionally check in with my phrase. I bring it new material, gifts for it to reject or absorb.

What am I saying with this phrase? I dare not attempt a summary as its purpose is continually shifting.

Here is a video of the phrase in its current state.

Untitled from Nichole Blog on Vimeo.

(the battery runs out at the end and it cuts off...but the phrase was almost over so its okay...)

I recently used this Franken-phrase as the starting point for a group experiment: I performed it only once for dancer #1 while the others left the room. Her task was to recreate that phrase from memory: to build a repeatable phrase of the same length coming as close to that original phrase as she could come. But instead of simplifying what she could not recall her task was to lie and fabricate the missing details. and to precisely set this new phrase.
Dancer #1 then shows Dancer #2 this new phrase. Only once.
Repeat process for Dancers 3, 4, 5, 6 in a whisper-down-the-lane type process.

In then end we have a 7 fully developed phrases. I am fascinated by: what changes, what persists, what gets dropped immediately and what replaces it. The six phrases sit together like a family portrait of sorts.

Here is a video of the six dancers performing these phrases all together: (they begin in the order in which they saw/created their phrases)

Untitled from Nichole Blog on Vimeo.

Mother and the Architecture of Memory

Notes from workshop #2 with dancers Eun Jung Choi, Jaamil Kosoko, John Luna, Scott McPheeters, Annie Wilsom, Christina Zani

I decided to name this workshop as : Mother and The Architecture of Memory.

I’m trying to find a way to work with and highlight the relationship to memory instead of the memories themselves; To embrace the dialogue between mother and child for instance, not the specific story of each mother and child. Yet the details of each person’s past needs to emerge to support this mission. I’m learning how to include the history of each dancer without weighing too strongly on any one person or event.

I am asking the dancers to trust me with their personal histories. We started with simple details and slowly started digging deeper. I am touched and impressed by their willingness and playfulness.

Embodying Mother
When investigating Mother with the group, I was struck by the visible physical struggle between child and mother as the two attempted to share the same body. As each child attempted to share their body and their mental space with an imagined version of her mother, I was able to identify a vibrant conversation within the body of each performer as they struggled to embody their mother, this person they know so intimately. I realized that I don’t necessarily need to uncover the details of these mothers per se. I am interested in the way their lives interface with the lives of their children. How those children wear that conversation on a daily basis and the ways it lives in their skin.
How “clear” does this experiment need to be? What reads to an unknowing audience? Does a title like Mother give just enough context to frame the performances? These are a few of the questions that arose as I worked with this personal material.

We initially spent some time embracing the archetype of Mother, sliding from image to image, which was a fascinating and chaotic improvisation. At a certain point I asked them to embody their own mother in whatever form that took. Those beings then interacted in a range of ways. Conversations with the dancers and my observations of their improvisations helped me to re-shape the directives and guide the explorations into both potent and playful territory.

Formal exercises. The content of the structure:
We also explored structures that examined the systems at the root of this relationship to the past. These were formal exercises that explored the notion of passing down material, handing down information, and evolution, absorption and the ways we carry something with us. Putting these notions in purely physical terms was really helpful and allowed us to generate material that could augment or sit beside the more emotional, character-driven explorations. The previous blog entry (Blur) outlines one of these experiments.

I am interested in the individual stories of each dancer. But more than that I am interested in their relationship to those stories; how and why they have carried certain details forward with them; and the conversation that occurs between their present and their past when they try to map out (or embody) those details. In organizing these studies into a performance framework I’m faced with choosing the types of memories we display and verbalize as well as the structure we use to convey them.

Through this process I learned that I am primarily interested in examining the tamber of these dancers relationships to their past. I’m curious about the structure of the re-telling; the architecture of the memory.

Here is a video of talking dance structure we are working on. It deals with the "Maps" of space and memory that we carry and accumulate. Again this is something that I was exploring as a solo at first but I enjoy the way it expands with several bodies.

>Video Here< I recently started reading "The Poetics of Space" and its blowing my mind. It relates so pointedly to the various projects that I am working on right now.  

Solo Work – the Mother of the process:
My solo practice births and feeds the group explorations. This February workshop came after several months of my solo practice. The group explorations were directly fed by curiosities and concerns that cropped up in my solo research. Figuring out how to bring these ideas to a group of bodies was a fantastic process.

When I embody my own memories and my own mother in the form of a solo it runs the risk of becoming an indulgent work about me and my life.* I don’t necessarily want to make a dance to simply tell you who I am. Instead I am interested in the ways we relate to our past. (And I am my most handy subject on that matter.) I’m curious about the way every moment is getting absorbed and reassimilated; the way our identity is shaped by those moments and our own decisions about what to keep, what to highlight and what to bury. When I bring these concerns to the group I can more easily step back and sculpt both the content and the form.

 *Here I am addressing a fear. And a challenge. I am simultaneously pursuing a solo with these themes and ideas. To combat my fear of making of a confessional narrative, my challenge is to balance structure with content, to allow the structure to become the content, to reach past my own circle of experience through acknowledgement of the personal as well as the universal, to embrace the mundane and the epic. Wendy Houstoun is coming to Philadelphia in two weeks to work with me. This will be our first time in the studio together since our intensive in London last June. I look forward to talking further with her about her experience as a solo artist now that I have spent a little time digging around in my own solo practice. I greatly admire her approach to making and performing. Her ability to stay rooted in her own personal narrative while commenting on the culture at large is what drew me to her from the start.

I'll leave you with a video of the dancers performing a short section that sits somewhere between formal exploration and emotional narrative.  A short peek into the beautiful dancers moving and sensing.

Ugliness is fear

Ugliness is just fear.
I took a workshop with John Jaspers a few months ago and he referred to Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory, by paraphrasing that the experience of ugliness is directly related to fear. And that beauty only exists as a contrast to ugly; as a response. We used this as a foundation for an exercise. The assignment was to address something we are afraid of and manifest “ugly” in relationship to that. Or more pointedly: dig in a sandbox you don’t like to dig in.

For Jasper’s assignment I listed my fears and chose a few to focus on. (listing your fears in a matter of fact fashion is a worthy exercise on its own. I highly recommend it). I focused on my fears instead of the word ugly. This seemed to be the goal of the exercise and I find it easier to locate the things I fear than to concoct an idea of ugly. It made me realize that I rarely use the term ugly. I placed my voice at the center of the exercise. And combined it with an unpunctuated movement state: un-awkward, non humorous, unpunctuated movement. I drew up a quick study in which the vocalizations and the movements did not respond to one another. They stayed on separate tracks. And when I performed it I realized it actually pointed to another set of fears: non-communication, compartmentalization and repression. We all have long lists of fears. Some we can name easily and some we can’t bear to write down, artistic and personal fears that bleed into one another. I appreciated Jasper’s push for us to create a rigorous artistic response as opposed to a simple confession.

I found this conversation and this assignment interesting.
Beauty/Ugliness is a complicated discussion point often at the center of heated debates: how we each define these things and what we do with the information. But fear is personally palpable.

If we think something is ugly – is it just triggering a fear? I can get behind that theory. When we are searching for beauty are we running from our fears? Maybe but that seems a bit cynical.

So digging in the sandbox of your fears – what does that do? I both loathe and love the challenge of doing so. But I sincerely loved watching the short studies that came from each dancer in the workshop. The dancers performances were -in my opinion- quite beautiful. Beautiful because they showed vulnerability and struggle; they were full of questions that hadn’t been worked out and they were so specific to the individual performing them. And these are things I find quite beautiful.


A few weeks later I had a voice lesson with Mike. My husband is a singer and a voice teacher. Every now and then I ask him for a lesson. “The difference between breathing without sound and breathing with sound is simply the decision to do so. The place where we make that decision (to sing or speak) is the same place in the brain that houses all our memories and all our emotions.”
I’ve never asked him how he learned that, what scientist revealed that or what study proved it. It makes perfect sense to me. I want to believe it and I know that information can really help me.

I’ve always put my body forward with abandon, studying methods of opening and releasing, yearning to perform and be seen, to make dances and share them widely. But I’ve never been quick to speak in public. I’ve learned to move through it as a teacher, but I have some blockades to dismantle as a performer. And my singing hang-ups are specific and raw. I know where they come from but it’s not easy to face it. Singing directly into these memories and these tight areas of my voice has been a fascinating process. On the other hand I do sing freely for my son. He is seven now and I’ve been singing him to sleep every night since his birth. He thinks I have a fantastic voice. To him it’s the sound of love. With him it is uncomplicated.

Finding my voice: Quite literally.

Several recent experiences are feeding and pointing to the birth of a new voice, or at least new uses for an old voice. For most of my career I’ve been primarily working as a dancer and a silent actor. It’s true I speak in the work of others – namely Headlong Dance Theater – and yes I’ve studied acting a little - but rarely do I speak in my own work and I guarantee I’ve never sung you a song from the stage. And I certainly don’t talk in public about my life experiences. But perhaps that's changing?

The primal gutterance of water
Theater and Neuroscience project with Dan Rothenberg – November 2011

The voice of my Mother
Women in Comedy project with 1812 productions – August 2011

The events and movements of my past as mixed with Xavier LeRoy’s past
Workshop with choreographer Xavier LeRoy – September 2011

“Diary dates” as prompted by Wendy Houstoun
and the many many wendy exercises - June 2011

Singing through barriers - vocal work with Michael Kiley
Vocal class with my collaborator and husband


P.S. Ideally I will give each of the workshops described above their own post at some point soon

Drawn to the Window

I’ve been rehearsing at Mascher Space co-op in Kensington and I’ve developed a warm connection to the space, a familiarity that affects the rhythm of my time there. Today I walked in and the space was different because it was set up for a performance. Black curtains blocked the mirrors and a white scrim blocked the windows. It was a sunny November day and the shadows against the white scrim created little scenes of shimmering activity. I found them utterly irresistible and spent my session dancing in relationship to this newly designed space.

I spent a long time with this window:

Midway Avenue and the Haunted House of Nostalgia

this title was stirring in my brain in the wee hours of the night. and it was halloween night i should note.

i grew up on midway avenue. and when i visit this space in my mind it is crammed full of memories. Most of them are mine but many are intruders: imagined scenes from books, movies and news stories have been staged there by my subconscious... they needed a space to unfold so i placed them in the rooms of midway avenue.

as i tour the space my own memories co-mingle with characters from novels, the gory remains from a script, or accumulated information about a friend's past. it can become difficult to parce out what is mine and what is borrowed.

midway avenue is the memory map i'm using for a structural exercise i'm exploring in my solo practice. And each time I visit I find something new.

And the title I really like is this:
Midway Avenue and the Haunted House of Indecision.

I just finished leading a weeklong intensive with a group of dancers here in Philadelphia. It was my intention to blog throughout the process but it turns out that when you are in your home-town it’s a little more difficult to carve the time for blogging!

Here is a synopsis:
I wanted to bring the solo explorations I’d been doing, and the discoveries and questions I’d uncovered in UK, to a group of dancers. I wanted to combine past obsessions with current concerns to see what arose. I wanted to disrupt my typical process of acting as performer/choreographer in order to remain on the outside without the intention of joining the ensemble. I wanted to take recent experiments with language and words and inject them into my ongoing work with non-verbal storytelling, partnering exercises, and ensemble work.

The dancers were: Eun Jung Choi, Jaamil Kosoko, John Luna, Scott McPheeters, Annie Wilson, Christina Zani. A playful and inspiring bunch mover/thinkers!

We did some dancing


We did some writing


We built some improvisational structures


We started with movement structures that I’ve been building over the years and then infused them with current concerns and questions about language, structure and delivery.

We looked at structures that brought the movement language to the forefront and asked the verbal language to keep up with that. We worked on building separate structures for the words and the movement, laying them on top of one another. Asking them to maintain autonomy yet respond and influence one another selectively, creating short dances that pushed these separate tracks toward one another, bleeding, blurring and intertwining in various ways until a third thing emerged. The goal was to avoid one track wiping out the other.

One structure in particular started to become its own little dance.
One dancer describes her memory of a room while two dancers build an accumulating movement dance, the structure builds from there.
I am endlessly fascinated by this structure; the ways in which the unfolding of the memory parallels, overlaps and blurs with the building of the movement duet. Eventually the two tracks become one…but neither track is consumed by the other… they crossfade to reveal a third thing…a track that was there all along.

As we worked for an hour or so on refining the details of the structure and the skills to inhabit we also build our ability to read the intricacies of the dance. That tricky aspect of a process in which you don’t know how much delight you are gaining due to your own intimate understanding of the structure. I am hungry to share these little studies with an audience of fresh eyes to garner its impact.

- The story is a linear river that can meander amid the forest of movement.
- It is not a spring rain of poetic words / It is not an ocean that buries the terrain
- The sensitivity of the movement duet is the beating heart of the present tense and the story is the past we carry around with us and our struggle to organize and deliver.

On Being in the Studio Alone

At first I thought: it sure is quiet in here. And then I realized: Wow its noisy and its crowded. There are eyes in the walls. I’m being watched.
My own energy was bouncing around the room with no one else to interact with it and send it back to me. No audience. No collaborators. No designers. Just me. I could feel and hear my thoughts in a new way when I was the only person in the room to focus on.

During the first few sessions I also realized that the critic sneaks in more easily when I’m alone. She sits in the corner with arms folded, paces in the distance, whispers in my ear. This can be distracting and oppressive but it can also fuel a passionate drive to press onward and to move beyond the nagging doubt. Some days she doesn’t show up at all and there is a breezy ease to letting ideas tumble, letting thoughts and movements ripple out.

The most striking thing about working alone is that there is no verbal conversation at the end of an experiment or an improvisation. Instead I sit down with my pen or lay on my back to process and to remember what just happened.

I’m heading back to Philadelphia this morning. Its been such a gift to experiment here in London with Wendy, Matteo, Greig and Rahel. The wealth of experiments and the conversations that sprung up in response to each experiment are invaluable.

At several points in the process Wendy and I tested the idea of putting a few items together or developing one or two things further but that seemed inappropriate somehow. Its so rare to have the opportunity to truly explore for the sake of discussion; for the sake of mining the form and testing the ways it functions; deciphering the things that excite and the reasons you gravitate towards one thing or another without the pressure to package it up. It seemed important to stay in that mode. It quickly became clear that this was an exciting opportunity for all of us involved. The chance to keep things open, to bounce from one exploration to the next, to pull things apart and to look at their messy insides, was illuminating.

I look forward to fleshing out some of the ideas that sprung up over the last two weeks. I look forward to bringing some of these starting points to a room of dancers. But most of all I look forward to re-entering my process with a renewed perspective. My thinking about dance making has shifted and widened and I’m excited about the ways that will influence my work.

Sokari Douglas

I met Sokari at a party in Philadelphia just before I left for London. She is a sculptor based in London, with a studio not far from where I’ve been rehearsing. I stopped by her studio / home yesterday and stayed into the evening chatting with this amazing woman. She works with metal. Most of her sculptures are larger than she is. And many of them live in her home now. Its incredible to wander around the house being eyed by the powerful energy of these works she has created. She describes sculpting a work as a conversation. I can feel that. These metal people have been spoken to, they are empowered, and they speak. Its noisy in the silence of that studio!

Perception is not reversible

We perceive and we cannot go backwards from there. Only forward. Whether or not we consciously remember what we’ve perceived it has happened. Though the moments we perceive are forever passing us by, our perception is feeding our momentum forward. We use knowledge of the past to plunge forward into the unknowable future. Rahel Vonmoos is a Body Mind Centering Practitioner. She led a warmup the other day that focused on the kidneys as a place of power and support: a place from which to motivate movement. I had the image of a motor, a soft circular belt at the base of my ribcage pushing me gently forward; the world flying past and curling around to press from behind. The day of explorations fostered a decisiveness and listening in the three of us. Starting. Restarting. Starting in the middle. Performing as if we knew what was going to happen. The rhythm of listening and deciding.

As I near the edge of my time here in London, this phase of my creative research, I think about the ways my perception has widened. I think about these new perspectives living inside my body, traveling with me forever in some way or another. It has been two weeks of listening, absorbing, deciding, waiting, repatterning. In the dance studio, on the streets of London, in the tube, the museums, the pubs, in my quiet apartment, and in the long lovely moments alone…