Productive Instability: the art of fragmentation, coordination and creativity

In rehearsal with Sara Coffin and Mocean Dancers: J. Armstrong, R. Baker, S.Rozee

I am in the last leg of rehearsals with Mocean Dance as we prepare for the USA premiere/MFA Thesis Concert presentation of my new work entitled Body Abandoned at Smith College in Northampton, MA. The new trio will premiere on the Theatre 14 stage February 6-8, 2014 at the college. Then ten weeks later we will grace the Halifax stage April 24-26 at the Dunn Theatre with Live Art Dance’s closing show for the 2013-14 season.

  

Two-weeks after that the whole project will come to close/full fruition for me, when I defend the written portion of my thesis and I will be able to walk away with the letters M. F. A. following my trail!

…..I need to lay down …just by catching you the reader up on the logistical flow of the piece makes my head spin….. and I haven’t even got to sharing the content or the process yet.

Dancers Jacinte Armstrong and Rhonda Baker

But the fruits of this work is a real marker for all involved, this project encompasses a lot for both the company and for me personally. I am grateful for the commitment and the support that the new work and I have received from both sides of the border during its creation.

The content of the work is inspired by what I have been coining as my “blue period” – Picasso stuck with his monochrome tones, me, I am sticking with VGA cables and projectors! However, I think I have finally gotten to the essence of my ideological question, one that focus on our existence and the posthuman-machine connection. I may have come to my end point in the interrogation of the body’s relationship to technology, but I am happy, really happy with the product of my research.

 

The dancers: Jacinte Armstrong, Rhonda Baker and Mocean-founder Sarah Rozee have been real star troopers during the creation. I feel so blessed for the depth of research, commitment and literally the distance they have traveled with me during my inquiry.

Dancer Sarah Rozee

Wearing the two hats of graduate student and commissioned choreographer has been an interesting challenge in this beast of a production. However, I feel that a part of my MFA research and study have filtered through the process in an osmosis fashion and a bit of my experience has definitely been shared by all.

In our first working period, Mocean Dance was fortunate enough to host Smith Faculty members Chris Aiken and Angie Hauser for four days in June. During this time they offered master classes and workshops for the community while mentoring me in the studio.

Swell Contact Improvisation Intensive and Eco-Poetic Approach to Performance workshop participants.

June 2013

with Chris Aiken and Angie Hauser

MFA Advisor Chris Aiken in session "working the work"

    

During the second phase of creation Mocean Dance joined me in Northampton and we worked in an empty theatre all to ourselves for a week! Meanwhile my American cohorts were off relaxing on the American Thanksgiving break.

In this phase of creation multimedia collaborator Andrew Hawryshkewich and I worked remotely, sharing files back and forth, and I stayed up late for technical coaching on skype from the west coast.

The dancers were able to test drive the performance space and the sense of the bigger picture or the 'ness' of the piece started to sink in for both me and the dancers. Like the regular star troopers that J, R and S are, the dancers patiently waited and diligently kept working as I tracked the five components: the action/movement, the mediated image, the space, the music and the gestalt of it all.  

  

Now - here in the third leg of creation, back in Halifax, all the hard work is really resonating and vibrating in the studio. We ran part of the piece on Friday and I was in awe and touched by the how far the dancers continue to stretch themselves.

In preparation for the Smith MFA Thesis concert my fellow grads and I have selected a quote from the book: A Choreographic Mind by SusanRehorst, one that really highlights our state of research:

“One has to know and not know, prefer and not prefer, empty oneself and acknowledge one’s fullness, be passive and charged.  It has to happen to you and from you.  It has to be too fast for you to take in, and done in baby steps, one leaking into the other.”

In the process of this work, I have interrogated my tendencies, embraced my strengths, questioned my doubts, sought new perspectives, and now my skin is raw but my heart is strong. Within the disorientation and bewilderment of my growing pains a new clarity has surfaced, one that I can feel resonating straight from the core of my bones.

Theatre 14 Technical Residency at Smith College

In the last 100 meter dash before the curtain rises and the dancers take the stage I am filled with much anticipation and a giant check list.

I coordinate stop watches and emails as I finish the final music and multimedia adjustments (via online communication and file sharing) with my remote collaborators; Phil Thomson and Andrew Hawryshkewich respectively.

I keep an watchful eye on the post, as the costumes are arriving by mail from Smith College... and I am watching the snow report praying for clear driving days.

Choreographer's Musings: My point of depature

I feel fragmented, sped-up and simultaneously a float. I feel decentralized, in which I exist in a disheveled hyper-dream state, continually pulled from my once grounded corporeal self I am positioned in a parallel existence of me and my other.

My sense of otherness is growing as the digital traces of my life, my virtual in-between self, follows me around.

I increasingly notice the separation of my inwardness of experience from the outwardness of my action. The two are constantly separated from what is felt and what is (re)represented in our mediated culture. 

I am caught in questioning of the affects of not actually ‘thinking about the body’ when positioning the body amidst the digitized, a culture that exists in temporalized space and spatialized time. A place that fosters the new modality of the “always on” existing in the in-between spaces of neither here nor there, instead encouraging the product of “both-and.”

As I reflect upon this sate of being, I ask what would the vanishing “thinking body” lead to, and more so, what does the vanishing edges of the corporeal self mixed with the digital self create?

I start from this sense of the forthcoming posthuman, in which the extreme perception of self is stretched so thin the very edges of corporeality start to dissolve. Reflecting on the changing ecological field of relationships between flesh and virtual, and self and other, I aim to create a dance reflecting the sensation and consequences of our in-between and multimodal existence.

To do so, I begin with what I know, my own phenomenological experiences and interrogate my own personal modes of experience. I begin with the body. My research serves as both a reflection of this new bodiless state and a source of inspiration to construct from.

I venture into the spaces of formlessness and the unknown. My corporeal edges are thinning and I prepare for what the Body Abandoned might look like.

Process Log #4: Peer Reviewing and Feeling Too Close

In a sense I feel I am returning to the my initial idea of the "micro" as I work to refine and make my small (but hopefully legible) adjustments.   I also mourn the loss of my initial idea and wonder if I really fulfilled  the question of "What is micro?"

-The cliffs edges and facings are more defined.
-I experiment with different type of ambient sound and try to discern which little tune could lighten my serious abstract dance.
-I try to tighten my timing to fit the piece into one track. However, I give up and let my breath dictate the pacing and come up with a fall back sound plan.
-I lay on the floor for hours finding the perfect balance of facts within poetics as I refine my text.

But mostly I struggle because my universality and goat metaphor are now way to close to home. Rehearsal has become more therapeutic, with less focus on crafting. This is problematic, but I also throw my hands to what I can control at the moment.

Experimenting with revealing my state of mind has now backfired in full force due to my personal circumstances.

Yet I am reassured by my peers that the piece is still legible and valid in its own right, even with my derailment.

Narrowing to expand, Expansion to Narrow: Process Log #3

Smith Graduate Seminar: Creative Process

Narrowing to the body, Narrowing to the space. In this narrowing to expand and expansion to narrow much information is revealed.

On my pursuit to localize and map the space more specifically a specific “new” world opened up to me. I immediately fall into a narrative of sorts, one that is slightly odd and slightly obvious. But the foothold involving fear, furthering and the goat offers much potential and provides an anchor for me to hang onto that is worth developing.

Pairing the detailed local choreography with the localization of the space offers a new layer and brings my abstract formalness to a place of porousness and permeability that I wasn’t expecting but gladly welcome!

There are still some sticky moments in my use of space where the map needs to be more clearly defined. I want to interrogate the centre and really consider how and when I cross this valley. I also noticed in my performance that now considering the space and falling into the easefulness of the narrative some of the local choreography felt blurry.  This is a habit or an edge I want to avoid.

I am also thrilled that in my placeness of space and adding moments of breaking the tension that I have to go back to the localization of me and really observe the moments before and after: the scream, the hello, and the goat text. What is my permeability in these places? How does the space collapse, how do I collapse in these moments?

In observing my rise and fall and in and out of the floor motif, this repetition/action now has more meaning for me and it is not just a change of level. I would like to consider each of these moments more.

My new sound choices are helping to broaden my understanding of a previous comment – how can I help the audience to know what to feel when and how do I shade the choreography in the peaks and valleys of the movement?  The unintended ambient sound could also become intentional and I am excited about crafting more distance and localization through such use of sound. 

I would have never imagined the telescoping effect that is occurring in my attention during this process. Although it now seems obvious that such an effect could take place, especially since my leaping point was scale. I think I am just enjoying the fact that the telescoping is bubbling from the bottom up and I am observing that I don't have to exert so much control on the macro from the top down. My attention is going to where it is needed, when it is needed and the legibility of my colours are slowly being revealed.

Thank God!

Process Log #2

Getting it into the body is the hardest task especially in this disjointed, distracted…. yet highly focused situation that I have place myself in. I am exhausted just writing this sentence.

The deadline of a showing is such a relief and a pain in the ass. I know what I must accomplish and I am reaffirmed where I lie in the trajectory of my choice making. But without such deadlines I am sure my field would remain happily open.

It is has been an interesting process for me to draw from material that already exists, re-working material that is concept base and into something that may (or should) have a life of its own. I see the threads of the material’s origins are still present even in this most recent feedback.  

Spreading horizontally, oscillating, offering negative space – check, check and check! It is comforting to hear such descriptions knowing this is my intention in the source material.

However such feedback also restates a question for myself. Is this a sister piece and in the same family or do I continue to re-craft/re-create an entirely new sub-child/piece?

 ……. In typical fashion I do both.

In such a dual process (or my inability to detach from the original source) this recent feedback has offered new windows for attack to the very problems that I face in my thesis material.  

Where is the tension missing? – It is in the lack of frontal gaze: cutting through the space with the focus is just as effective as the body that cuts through space.

So now with this community feedback I am directed two fold. I am grateful for this question/positioning that will narrow the lens on the gaps and concerns that I am currently experiencing in my thesis project.

Onward to the present project I will direct myself forward based on the comments of localization. Ironic that in my interest in localized choreography - concentrated predominately on the body, the audience notices my use of space is the lacking or less considered element. An element that has been left in a broader undefined field. A fitting comment perfectly inline with my personal trajectory of the piece’s development.

A few other mappings can finally be considered or pulled out now that I know the movement initiations and the order of sequence. I am curious about the comments on shading the choreography: when am I super charged and when should I turn the lights down? I feel I have moments of this already but I haven't had time to really consider their compositional placement and how this colours the whole map. I am also a bit confounded but curious in the suggestion to map or direct the audience to feel and when. This seems a little heavy handed and not an aesthetic trigger that I gravitate too easily. I need to unpack this comment some more. I am reassured that being in as deep of abstraction that I am a little heavy handedness or obvious directing will come as a relief for the audience.

- feedback comments for digital archive and trace notes--

Shimmy is against DNA, a mutation = relief (this is at the very end.. do I need some sooner)

Shaping space as substance, Tracking thickness of space, audience wants to tune to this
Reads as density of space

Want to feel directed by hand gestures, are they set/conscious as much as your spine?
Gestures lighten the space.

Repetition reads as a motif, see images repeating not actual movement What is punctuation or is it all a waterfall effect?
Going to the “x” spot on the floor is clear- otherwise field is open for a very long time

Pouring, Holding curves, Dense -Invitation to go along with the ride is present Motif reoccurring, reads as a Journey for the audience, Letting us ride with you.

Porous on reoccurring motif

**Shading/choreography bright light or less bright? Bright light reads in the spine

I felt as though there was a totally different task happening on the inside, I felt it but didn’t need to know what it was. There was a clear navigation of the internal to external and I could see this happening, without needing to know every detail.
I see labyrinth- going deeper into it, levels in the body
 

Spreading horizontally, oscillating, Offering negative space

Where is tension missing? Frontal gaze, Cutting through space with focus, just as when body cuts through space

Suggestion: Put material in a very small frame
Map of whole world unclear, try localizing

Do you go back to same spot in time, in space, in time-space?

I see measuring/scientific/calculated Proportions?

Place of change- when does something change, use change as nodes, rhythm of change

There is a motif of keep going into the floor- this seems important, an orientation, but why?
The spin to floor 2^nd time there is a change, you are stiff- resistant

What is my attitude about the movement?, How is it occurring in the body? Tone, mechanisms, texture

Can you direct the audience how to feel? Map that, map how you turn the corner - be obvious I am already in thick abstraction

A line is cast, a solo begins

Entry # 1: Oct 1, 2014

To begin… usually this the biggest question and the biggest hurdle in any process.

So I start by casting a few lines...
	weighing my options
		and I am still waiting for the bite.

Waiting for my own intentions to bite and dig in that is.

In our community sharing, I quickly appreciate the sourcing of this initial feedback as it has helped me to frame my evaluation of the path to travel.

In accordance to my (1^st draft) proposal I source from material that is already available to me. I take the time to re-learn and reacquaint with the some-what familiar. This motivation serves me two-fold: partly to prepare for the intensive yet to come/improve my directorial articulation and partly to pull apart patterns, push my own edges and force myself into a refined intentionality (i.e.-go deeper).

Through the powers of video I stare at bodies that are not my own. I am confounded by the what is. I had a heavy hand in the making this material. In fact it is my process, my material. I adapt- where does this material fit on my body?

 (I panic, have I picked an uninspiring task to pursue? I breathe - you have only watched two videos. Relax.)

… the line is still cast, I can still retreat quickly and find a new cove for entry.

I breathe..


In my presentation of material I presented two sets. They are not connected, for referential purposes I will differentiate the two by labeling them 1^st Set and 2^nd Set.

The 1^st Set was as close to the origin as I could muster, including the initial creation source and the adaptations to present. (This information is beyond this posting, but if you are interested I would be happy to fill in the sub-text, just leave a comment indicating so).

The 2^nd Set was a re-approach, a listening. Cryptic I know. But I used my text of perception, listening, and sensing as my first filter in adapting the movement.  

An evaluation:
In the 1^st set I am drawn to the process of specified initiation and carving/following the path of travel or phrasing through the body. Although I am disenchanted with something slightly familiar to this performitivty or approach to moving. Can I challenge myself to stick to the local specificity of initiation and follow-through and not throw it away to the general sense like I always do?

The tone of the 2^nd Set is more unfamiliar to me and less defined. The wavering of time (matter of factness to physical surge) and the scale of performativity could be played, pulled apart, and structured in a way to develop and understand this more seemingly unknown place to me. Through the use of text and addressing the public the line between inviting and intimidating the audience is one not yet- but should be considered. I like this point and now personal challenge.

The question I posed at the end of the community sharing was to solicit verbalization in how to compare the differentiation or legibility of the two… if one was even present that is.  
If you, my community had your choice: which of the two sets should I pursue? Or what qualities from each set read as new challenges for me to pursue? 
 

-for digital archive and trace notes-

Feedback Notes:

1st Set: -Searching -Shape/Face -Long-stretched time -Syncopated -Intentionality in an interesting way -Initiations -Recognized may be hard to sustain

2nd Set: -Experiencing -Matter of fact in experience of -Bounce -Long -Not as complex in shape of body -Surging -Acceleration that was interesting but didn’t last - peaked interest than kicked the audience to the side of the road. -

Comments/Observations:

Crossing the mid-line
Beginning had an intentional use of time - sustained
(This was) Lost in the rotations (floor)- I need/use time of physics for thrust to resolve
Initiation of body parts- sometimes overlapping which read as a differentiation from the base line (4^th position pivot)
Vertical rotation with looking a thematic repetition
Unexpected weird chicken walk- strange but engaging (Jacinte’s pelvis articulation)
Talking style is reporting, which took place in the talking corner (DSR)
Movement coordinated with text
Shortly after reporting of facts turned into…. Oh this is about dancing (O2 reference)
Viewers gaped out in between surges (Crawl walk on floor to run in circle –was gap)

Pelvis play
Expansion- reach
 Back Space was very noticeable- this drew the viewer in
Articulation
Speed noticeable- slow down/rev up
The use of gaze created a knowing/unknowing spectrum.

Retreating sense of space- using the vertical up and down
Clear directions of focus but were many spots- didn’t know where audience was suppose to be lead, they got lost.
Describing and experiencing
Talking was simultaneously inviting and intimidating – it was a fine line and the audience was confused which side to live on.

A Project Proposal: Interior Details

I am interested in articulating subtle interior details so that I may
 broaden my exterior’s edge. This question and subsequent inquiry will
challenge me both as a choreographer and a performer.

I am approaching subtlety through the inquiry of the mirco scale. By
investigating the question “what is the micro scale?” I hope to make
apparent the intention within specific movement locale. Through the use
of such specified intention(s) I am interested in focusing on crafting
the local choreography, the choreography of the body itself. Can the
play of plasticity and breath within the body become a sub-dance to
support the exterior frame?

By paying attention to subtlety and differentiation I hope to access a
 new range of compositional choices. I am excited by the possibility of
expanding my path of travel within the body (and in turn through the
space) by constructing a detailed map of movement initiations and to
re-consider the use of phrasing from a more minute perspective.

I will also challenge my choreographic mind and performative self by
devising multiple micro scores that are performed in density or with
simplistic sparsity positioned intentionally within the work.  Through
this research, I ultimately want to challenge my permeability as a
performer and find new uncharted ground in my use of tone and control.

As a choreographer I gravitate to the macro structure and large
compositional strokes of my creative work. Through the scope of the
performance project I aim to address this edge and will strive to work
in a more simplistic manner. I want to pare back on my go to
compositional seductions, such as the use of concept as main
choreographic driver, or the use of thrust and power in my movement
invention. By avoiding such former tendencies I hope to find greater
nuance within clear intentions that will affect the micro scale of my
compositional choices, this in turn will feed and create the yet to be
determined macro structure of this new solo work.

Failing Resliency

 
2nd Year! I continue to dig, reflect and interrogate... and as I do so I am failing at my own assignments.   Luckily some of my work has paid off and I can more easily track and identify my creative habits now. Moving forward my challenge is to be in relationship with such familiar paths and try to veer from my typical approach. 

I easily gravitate to the macro structure and I am easily distracted by the thrust of my power. I search for resiliency and have managed to keep my pelvis in a perfectly horizontal plane. I lost my swing, buoyancy and hang on to the levity of my upper body as a disguise. 

I need to go back into the lab and hit re-set.  How can I twist my habits on their edge to access a new road? Further research is needed.

ps- Thanks to Cory Bowles for his supportive tunes, playing in the video is a piece original composed for SiNS dance in the work "Hungry Like the Wolf"

Tenderness, Nobility and Tools

Here I am embarking on my usual procrastination strategy.... fill the blog!


Although lucky for me I am not procrastinating on anything academic, in fact I wish I could bend time for a momentarily pause in all this research of duration, so that in fact I could sort out and digest the many concepts in my presence. I dodge the big G word, G.R.A.N.T -wishing that I can hold my time for reflection more closely and telescoped in and out to many forms, not crammed into this one posting.

My workshop door is open and I see a million tools I could pick up and sharpen, hold, discover, re-order/organize, craft to make something new. This thought is invigorating and overwhelming.

A sun dial  aligned with Halifax time and not daylight savings adjustments.

The moment of attention is by far the most important tool. This is the one I am currently picking up, dropping, hanging on to, and noting to come back to. It is not repetition but a stretch of time, time expanded (although extremely dense) in order to begin to gain the capacity to simply notice.

The delicate task of looking and not overdoing is a difficult one and I am reminded of the tenderness concept.  I have the utmost reverence for all the gifts of research around me, I am floored every day with the questions that are presented and that I get to ask. I feel simultaneously noble and a hot mess in my quest to learn, to face, to interrogate.

duration, non-eraser, risky weight, finishing, dominant/sub-dominate, hot mess, muscle/bone/fascia, go to the place you want to dance, subordinate, merge and separate in a parallel universe. These are my tools to discover.....

A hot mess of ideas in the studio and two very willing bodies on the quest.

Arranging things in Choreography and Design with my colleagues and Chris Aiken!

Research in the Studio

an idea in research: Parallel Universe/Merge and Separate