Open Technology Project

I do like technology. There I admitted it....

But, I haven't really invited it into my dance making or performing much in the past. Last summer I created a solo for internet performance and a couple of times I've used video in performance. But, not really that much.

Next week at The PlayGround's performance of Ad Libitum 2.0 we'll be initiating a new project that embraces technology - the Open Technology Project - in which audience members will be invited to take photos and video of the performance and edit it and post it online. They will also be encouraged to Tweet, text or update their status about the performance while the performance is happening - I might even Tweet about the show while it's happening, we'll see...

My interest in doing this is to see how inviting technology into the performance space, instead of discouraging or banning it, influences the experience of the performance. I think there is an assumption it will make it less enjoyable or the audience will be distracted. That may be true, but I'm curious to do the experiment. 

I'm also curious about how different groups of people react and interact with the invitation to use their technology during the performance. Is it true that the younger people in the audience embrace this opportunity more fully or easier than the older generation - or this just an assumption? I'm curious.

We may also broadcast the performance live on the internet. We're working out the bugs. I'll let you know.

75 vs 25

This fall I taught an Open Company Class for my company, The PlayGround on Tuesday nights. One of interests with teaching this class was figuring out how you (I) might teach a company class to an improvisationaly based dance company. For most companies their company class is an advanced technique class, but that would not be appropriate, nor get to the kind of training I think is important for the dancers in The PlayGround. One of the first choices I made was to reverse the amount of new material and previous material normally taught in class. In most dance classes (at least those that I have taken), about 75 percent of the material is the same week to week - yes, it might be rearranged or slightly altered, but basically it is the same - and 25 percent is new material. This division varies for different forms, but more or less holds true. Because I am not interested in having dancers be able to achieve a specific aesthetic or movement vocabulary I don't need them to perfect or learn certain movements, instead I want dancers who are adaptive. So, I reversed this percentage and had basically 25 percent of my material repeating and 75 percent new material each week. Sometimes this would shift more or less, but, again, was basically this division each week. This took alot more time to plan class and come up with new material and it takes more time in class to teach it, but I think it was successful in allowing the dancers to pick up material faster, be ready for the unexpected and stay present with what we were doing in that class. Another outcome of this shift is the focus on teaching concepts or bodily connections instead of "steps" - I'll write more about this in a later post.

Time Line Phrase

Click to Play

I'm currently collaborating with Katie on a new duet that is based on a story from the Ellis Island archives. It is about a young Russian woman who comes to the States in 1905 to marry a man from her village - upon seeing her he decides not to marry her, leaving her stranded on Ellis Island. In developing this work Katie wrote a time line of all the important or transformative events in her life - out of these events she picked ten to which she created a short movement phrase. We took these short phrases and put them together in this longer movement phrase. We did this exercise because this young Russian women is currently at a big moment in her life and we wanted to tie them to some big moments in Katie's life. This video is a slightly edit version of the phrase. ;

Meditation and Movement

In rehearsals lately we've been exploring how different movement-based meditation practices can be framed for a performance setting. Last spring we started with sitting meditation and explored just what would develop if we took a sitting practice into a movement practice. Without trying to get too intellectual about it, we just sat and waited until we felt like moving. We tried, and continue to try, to use the same structure of simply keep coming back to your breath (if we're sitting) or our movement (if we're moving) when ever we get distracted. We have applied this to different contexts and structures including a walking meditative structure, one involving moving from one shape to another, and a duet structure in which one dancer is 'meditating' on the other.

What we've found is that when you put your attention on being attentive to the thing your doing (breathing, moving, walking) you move into a state of, what psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi calls, flow. This state can be described as single-pointedness, full immersion and operating with one's complete expanse of skills. This state of flow of course happens all the time when one is fully engaged, but by bringing in a meditative approach it seems to up the percentage of reaching such a state.

We'll be presenting this work in February at Joe's Movement Emporium in an intimate studio setting with the audience seated in the round. More details as it gets closer.

Follow and Follow and Follow

Click to Play

We've been working on a number of improvisational structures with an internal, or even meditative aspect. This exercise is about following the point of physical contact with your partner without leading nor initiating. Both dancers are trying to just, simply follow with neither leading. It is not as hard as it sound and quite a bit of movement is created. At first we stay finger tip to finger tip, but as it develops we allow the point of contact to shift to different parts of the body. This video is a short excerpt from when Katie and Carrie were allowing the point to shift around.

Dancing, Healthcare, Belfast

Ann, Jenny and I after getting interviewed by BCC Northern Island

Earlier this month I, along with colleague Ann Berhands, went to Belfast to work with Jenny Eliot exploring dance in health care settings. Ann and I both work at Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown Hospital working with cancer patients, their families, nurses, and administrative staff. We go into individual patients' rooms to get them moving, work with people in the waiting rooms, staff at their desks, I teach a weekly dance class and we direct creative projects. Jenny, in Belfast, is an artist in resident at a psychiatric hospital as well as other facilities. We were in Belfast exchanging and learning with Jenny about the potentials for dance in health care.

Jenny is an amazing artist and teacher who runs a dance company for men who have suffered traumatic brain injury, works with a group of mentally challenged adults and recently started a senior dance company whose average age is over 90 years old. She also has created a training program for health practitioners in how to integrate dance into their daily work as well as teaching special workshops to a variety of populations. While in Belfast Ann and I followed her around for a week watching, learning, participating and teaching.

It was immensely useful to work with Jenny in the different settings in which she works, but equally useful was talking with her about bringing dance, and the arts in general, into health care. She is, as Ann and I are, very clear she is not doing dance therapy. But, instead, she is a dancer and choreographer who is engaging with people so they can participate in the culture of which they are apart of. She talks about creating an atmosphere in which dance is a recognized part of what happens in these health care settings, in which people have a right to participate in their culture - both as viewers and producers - and, in which these activities are not unusual.

I look forward to moving ahead with my work at Lombardi and figuring out ways in which dance can become an accepted, assumed part of what happens at a hospital. One of the things that I have noticed is though hospitals are a place for healing the body, the people who work there are often disconnected from their own bodies. And, at the same time, people who come into the hospital have their body examined as parts and pieces without attention to the whole. Dance and dancers have something to share with hospitals and the health care world about the wholeness of one’s body. So, I am going to stage an insurgency to integrate dance into Lombardi and the Georgetown U Hospital (big announcements coming in next month or so). Wish me luck.

Evidence #2

As I mentioned in my last post, I worked with Amii LeGendre this summer on her project Evidence - a solo performance created specifically for a single audience member. Again, in my last entry, I discussed the first solo I made for a fellow performer. The second solo I created was for a person I had never met, didn't know what she looked like and all I really knew about her was what she filled out on the questionnaire. It was a challenging work to create. Luckily she turned out to be awesome and we had a great time.

When I first got the questionnaire back from S. I read searching for a place to start - a clue on where to begin. In response to the questions "Recount a recent or reoccurring dream:" S. responded by writing "sometimes I dream of running around but never getting anywhere". Another questions asks "What do you love to watch?" and S. responded with "I love to watch the water at the lake or the river". These two responses came together in my mind to trigger the place for the solo and the first section. On the UWM campus there is a large circular fountain with benches around it (see photo, I circled the bench where S. sat) - that would be the place. I asked S. to arrive and sit on the bench and wait for me. Once she sat down I ran into the plaza, ran around the fountain 3 times and finally ran up to her saying, "I'm sorry I'm late I've just been running all day...". She laughed, which was good, because it was suppose to be kind of funny.

One of the strategies Amii taught us was to take a response from the questionnaire and see if it can connect to your life or history or experience in some way. From there you use your personal story to relate to the person you're whom your making the solo. Again, the response about enjoying being around water connected to my childhood. So I told S. they sotry of how my family owned a canoe as I was growing up and how we use to go out into the middle of the lake, swim off the side and have lunch. While I was telling her this story I folded her an origami boat which I gave to her. I tried to tie this specific task of folding the boat to my story to her response.

One other aspect of these solo that Amii asked us to explore was to build in a faluire. Do something you don't think will really work very well and then see how you and the audience member deals with that failure. I was thinking of this as I read S.'s response that the thing that frustrates her is having to do something she didn't know how to do. I thought of this man in San Fransisco whom I use to see at the beach balance very large stones on one another in almost impossible ways. He was like a Zen master in that it would take him forever to balance one stone on another and it took such patience to find that balancing point. I decided I would try to balance rocks in the same way even though I have no idea how to do it. As I tried to balance the rocks I told her the story of this guy (Bill Dan, it turns out is his name, see photos here).

Making and performing the solo felt like nothing I had done before - the immediacy of making it specifically for one person and then performing it only for them. As I mentioned I never met her before I performed it for her and I haven't had any contact with her since I've performed it. It is just this simple jewel of a thing that the two of us experienced together and located only in those 20 minutes.