Reflections on Dance

Merce Cunningham's Nearly Ninety at BAM

2009-04-17T01:08:00.011-04:00

A spaceship arrived at BAM tonight. And mysterious godly creatures danced their hearts out, roaring with commitment.

Merce Cunningham’s Nearly Ninety is an ode to his dancers. They find center and presence within the impossible. Over and over, they tilt inhuman balances until they fall backwards. They tumble through space for precarious moments to be caught, just in time, by one another. Theirs is a familiarly complex proposition. They leave, and soar, in order to return back home.

In this piece, dancers wind themselves around one another, looking for all possible ways to share weight. They really touch. And they really counterbalance. Often they are two people, preposterously balanced, completely dependent.

These are tasks completely of the body and demanding complete attention from much more than just the body. There is no second-guessing. There is no comment. There is no room for anything outside of pure human endeavor. The only meta-level is the inherent metaphysics of human effort expended so fully.

John Paul Jones, Takehisa Kosugi, and Sonic Youth play live music from an outer space satellite metal contraption complete with a stairway to heaven. Lighting and sound emphasize a relationship between the space age, man-made set made by Benedetta Tagliabue and a bubbling, gurgling, elemental video projection by Franc Aleu.

In the tension between industrial and organic, and within the relentless difficulty of the dance, brief moments of delicious personality emerge. Rashaun Mitchell’s hips feel satisfyingly (almost orgasmically) obscene as they slowly shift to the side. Andrea Weber’s fingers tingle so slightly, gently touching the air as her leg slices another direction. Silas Riener catches his jumps off guard-- a mad man risking all.

They transmit electricity generated only by a certain kind of being alive. And I imagine that they have learned much about this from the man they dance for. At 90, Merce Cunningham is still relentlessly and rigorously exploring what it means to move. Which is really the same thing as what it means to be alive.

After a packed BAM opera house gave many standing ovations, much cheering, many tears, and a happy birthday song, Merce Cunningham spoke gently from his wheelchair.

“After my first year at Cornish, my parents had a discussion. My mother didn’t see a future in dance. My father said, ‘If he didn’t have that dance game, he’d be a crook.’ I’m delighted to be here and able to tell you that story. And I’m delighted to be able to give you something you may not have seen before.”

We are delighted too.

Jerome Bel, Veronique Doisneau

2009-03-09T15:08:00.016-04:00

A woman stands onstage at the Paris Opera. She talks with a quality that is soft, open, a bit hesitant. A light pink rehearsal sweater, reminiscent of little girl dance tights, frames her 42 year-old woman’s body.

This uneasy relationship between girl and woman is one of the elements that choreographer Jerome Bel elicits so naturally and poignantly in Veronique Doisneau (both the name of the performer and the name of the performance). In his piece, seen in a film version at Baryshnikov Arts Center on Sunday, Mr. Bel literally gives voice to an artist whose primary job has been to be beautiful and quiet, not drawing attention to herself.

Ms. Doisneau discusses her life as a ballet dancer, part of that group of women who, although fully adult, are still called mesdemoiselles backstage at the Paris Opera. She shares information about her salary, her children. She reveals a mature, regular person going about her work. In a soft aside, she wonders if she wasn’t talented enough to become a star.

She speaks about Giselle and begins to dance. In a moment that is simultaneously public and intensely private, she gently hums music to accompany her own dancing. She evokes all of the little girls who perform, by themselves, in living rooms and bedrooms across the world.

Veronique Doisneau alternates between fact and fully embodied fantasy. The piece, and the woman, present the contradiction that is dance performance. In the hierarchy of the Paris Opera Ballet, Ms. Doisneau is a Sujet, a mid-level status in which she can perform corps de ballet roles as well as soloist ones. In Mr. Bel's performance she becomes the literal subject as well as a powerful narrator. And she makes clear the ways in which she is expected to be an object.

In the understated and powerful climax of Veronique Doisneau, Ms. Doisneau performs a corps de ballet role from Swan Lake, alone. She stands still in choreographed poses while perhaps the most famous and gorgeous music in ballet dances around her. Audience members who know the ballet can imagine what the principal ballerinas would be doing while Ms. Doisneau stands on the side, filling in the picture.

And yet she doesn’t just fill in the picture. In this context, her role becomes an exquisite-- and still --solo. Ms. Doisneau inhabits her poses with the breath and life of a master performer. She exhibits the depth of presence that transforms spectacle (interestingly, the French word for show) into something more metaphysical.

Ms. Doisneau’s ability to fully inhabit her body within an imaginary world is both child-like and also the most profound kind of adult activity. She finds a way to deeply engage, even in the midst of disappointment and just-missed dreams.

Mr. Bel has, once again, created a precise and moving performance that turns around and questions its own nature. He looks at, and critiques, the very particular world of dance. But he also gives his work the space to move into the most tender, and broad, and complex corners of human experience.

Disfarmer by Dan Hurlin

2009-02-06T22:32:00.008-05:00

Photo by Pavel Antonov

A man wakes up. He puts on his glasses, pulls out a tape measure and checks the size of his foot. He drinks a beer. Answers the phone. Looks for something to eat. He hits his head on the red lamp in his darkroom.

The next day the man wakes up. He puts on his glasses, pulls out a tape measure and checks the size of his foot. He drinks a beer. Answers the phone. Looks for something to eat. He almost hits his head on the red lamp in his darkroom, but ducks instead.

In his puppet portrait of a portrait photographer, Dan Hurlin looks at the non-events that make up an artist’s life. These are not dramatic, break-through moments. The artist, Mike Disfarmer, is not crazy, or particularly inspired. His is a life of tedious repetition and meticulous attention.

Disfarmer seems like someone who is not particularly likeable, and yet I like him. I watch five grown men gently handle a puppet one-fifth their size. They breathe with him and pay attention to him in a way that taps my human urge to love anything that is small. They also remind me that puppetry acknowledges, so fundamentally and satisfyingly, that we humans make worlds. We make our own worlds and try to find order and meaning in the best ways we can.

As the evening progresses, the small Disfarmer puppet gets smaller. At first the change is imperceptible but, eventually, he is miniscule. His bed swallows him up. His camera is twice his size. He is nowhere near hitting his head on the red darkroom lamp.

Like a Kafka metamorphosis, this seems like a familiar bad dream. Disfarmer is old, overwhelmed and under-equipped for simple everyday tasks. And he is an artist, small in the face of a looming passion. His is a profession in which there is no easy way to measure success or accomplishment; it is built detail by detail. He makes me think of all the tasks we set for ourselves. And the ways we achieve them, one small step at a time.

Photo by Mike Disfarmer

Guest Blog Post

2009-01-14T23:07:00.006-05:00

Check out a guest post on Marin Leggat's new blog: Danceandfaith.blogspot.com

On Freedom of Information 2008

2009-01-05T00:22:00.023-05:00

On December 31, 2001, in response to the US invasion of Afghanistan, Miguel Gutierrez did a performance/protest/ritual improvisation in which he tried to move continuously for 24 hours while blindfolded and earplugged. He wanted to do something to acknowledge the people whose lives were being disrupted by the conflict. This year, Miguel reprised the action with at least 31 different artists in 31 different states moving, blindfolded and earplugged, for the last 24 hours of 2008. Organizing Freedom of Information 2008,
his hope was to create a nationwide contemplative action of protest, reflection, and solidarity.

___________________________________________________________________________________

In her twenty-third straight hour of dancing, my friend Janice raises her arms delicately and lightly, like she is flying. She dervish-spins and crawls along a cardboard boundary delineating the ten by ten foot space in which she moves.

.....

Twenty-three hours before, at 12:01am on December 31st I turn on my computer screen. I watch live webstreams of artists on the east coast beginning to dance.

Janice Lancaster criss-crosses her ten by ten foot space. She marks her territory, or rather it marks her. She walks in orderly, linear lines, hitting one cardboard boundary and then the next. I feel claustrophobic and overwhelmed knowing she will dance in this North Carolina gallery space for the next 24 hours.

In New York, Miguel Gutierrez begins with rolling, organic movements. And while Janice appears alone, Miguel has an audience. I am glad he has support. Then, when an audience member seems to join him in a bit of a contact improvisation, I feel protective. I wonder if he wants the company.

.....

As these dancers begin their long journey, I think about turning off the computer and going to bed. I am aware that it is a luxury to choose to go to bed.

I think about my plans for tomorrow and I feel a new responsibility to use my freedom well.

.....

At 1:01am, my time, I watch Malinda Allen join the dance from Arkansas. As Janice and Miguel dig further into their solitary worlds, she joins with a completely new and beginning energy. She bounces and hops.

I am struck by the beauty and hope implicit in dancing as protest.

What is it that keeps us going?

.....

At 2:01am I send an email to all of my friends. They have to witness this event, the power of art and silence and meditation and empathy and dance. It is hard for me to contain the experience of this cross-time-zone offering.

.....

I do go to sleep. And when I wake up in the morning, I am concerned about the dancers. By now, even Hawaii has started. What if I go to the webstream and find only a black screen, or a note? I am worried about Janice. I am worried that the people I emailed will link to find some horrible remnant from an experiment gone awry.

I turn on my computer. And there is Janice in North Carolina and Miguel in New York and Greg in New Hampshire and Malinda in Arkansas and even someone in Hawaii… And they are all still dancing. The most private, individual dances take place, simultaneously, within the most public, communal performance I have experienced.

.....

I go on New Year’s Eve errands: the rehearsal studio, the video editor, the bagel store. I carry with me a magical and seemingly secret knowledge of an event taking place across the country.

I walk to a studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to watch Miguel in person. I enter during his fifteenth hour of moving and join eight other people including three children, one painter, one photographer, and one person who seems to be officially holding the space.

We sit on the window side of the room, quiet and yet not overly precious, as Miguel balances and stomps and grunts. I feel the movement of clearing out and of continuing. I am shocked by his presence and groundedness after fifteen straight hours of moving.

At one point his sounds turn to mmmmmm, maaa, maaaaa. It reminds me of that universal childhood sound of vulnerability.

.....

Eventually, at 3am, after a free person's New Year's Eve revelry, I return home.

Against the quiet protests of my husband, I turn on my computer to find recorded webstreams of Janice in her twenty-third hour of dancing. I watch as she continuously jumps (high on concentration energy?) and moves into a headstand. She curls up and also flies, a fetus and a bird, a baby learning to walk.

She crawls over her cardboard boundaries and then she begins to peel them off the floor. She pulls them off and rolls, wrapping herself in cardboard.

She is no longer linear and ordered. She is a mad and free woman rolling around in her own walls.

.....

I go to sleep knowing that Janice and Miguel have made it to the end. Hawaii still has an hour left.

This performance has exploded my sense of the time and space in which performance takes place.

What does it mean for a performance to take place in thirty-one different states, simultaneously consolidated onto my one computer screen? What is structure, beginning middle and end, in a twenty-four hour performance that spans six time zones?

What does it mean to be a witness to such a private and, I would imagine, transforming experience?

In what ways am I a witness to the private and public pain caused by war?

And is it enough to be a witness, an audience member?

On India

2008-12-28T20:15:00.018-05:00

(I planned to see Pina Bausch’s “Bamboo Blues” so I’d have an excuse to write about India; I decided I could miss the performance and simply write about India instead.)

I start with a sound. An aching, melancholy call to prayer joined by the scratch scratch of a young man sweeping the sidewalk. It is the sound of religion, and class, and dirt.
Before my husband and I arrive in Mumbai, my father’s friend who is Indian and who we have never met asks if this will be our first time. When we answer yes, he says he will be there to pick us up. We find him slightly to the side of the people pushed up against a metal gate waiting for passengers. He greets us with a restrained (and most-loveable) warmth and nods towards a waiting car.

Cigarette in hand, he points out his city as the car lurches its way to our hotel. He sees us in and I am embarrassed by how fancy and western our hotel seems. He says he will meet us in the morning, show us around.

He brings his wife and charges ahead to museums, the zoo, the restaurant. He is funny and warm (I have to use the word again) and cynical. We hear about government and history, flora and fauna, beggars and money and the US. We are jet-lagged and also swept away by his embrace and his plans.

He gives us his time in a way that I couldn’t have imagined. Eases our transition to a foreign world. Is my favorite person I have met in a very long time.

He tells us he grew up an Untouchable.

(When I checked in a few weeks ago, he said he listened for many hours to gunshots during the recent terror attacks. Housed refugees in his apartment.)
My husband and I make our way from Mumbai to Delhi. The physical chaos overtakes me now that we are on our own. The mass of people and cars and motorbikes and bicycles moves fast and furious. I am scared to cross the street.

My body remembers the dance classes I’ve taken in which we practice moving in chaos. In those classes, we learn to stay grounded in the midst of upheaval and the unknown and passionate, crazy dancing. In those classes, we look for the empty space, find ways to slide and swirl around each other, never bumping in.

When my husband and I ride a bicycle rickshaw, our western bums don’t both fit fully on the passenger seat. We half-sit and grip a metal bar. We swerve down roads with cars much faster, and heavier than us. We hit a traffic jam in the old part of Delhi, try to stay in our seats amidst rickshaws and cows and horse-drawn buggies. I notice that I am the only woman not wearing a burka. I feel a little scared. I am a visitor. I am different and I don’t know if I am welcome here. And I remember to find my center, the one that is grounded and resilient, quietly present.

I begin to see the speed and the chaos as a wild and quite functional dance. The people of the city know how to ride this rhythm, just as New Yorkers ride theirs.

In Delhi, I alternate between being timid and being engaged with the city. I walk around walls. (There are so many walls.) And I hide behind them. I walk down tiny alleyways with stray dogs and chickens getting their heads cut off. I enter an old courtyard near a mosque where an old man offers me a candy, nods to the sun. I see a very old dance form in a very new and desolate skyscraper-mall-town. I listen to an electric tabla played by a robot developed in California.

We listen to the call to prayer and the street sweeper from a hotel room in a gated area. Children, many holding children, walk into the middle of the busy smog-ridden streets to tap on the windows of our air-conditioned taxi. As we make our way to the airport, they ask for money.
We go to Varanasi. Ganges River. Hindu holy place in which to die and be cremated. A little girl sells candles to light and float on the river. 10 rupees for good Karma.

The smell of a human body burning. The price and weight of the wood with which to burn the body. Death as a part of life. Commerce as a part of death.

A fat old man and his two skinny dogs, all three barking orders to hotel workers. The white woman wandering around with her sari and bindi, seemingly unmoored and floating on her “spirituality.”

Like a picture from the guidebook, women wash colorful clothes in the river. The rhythm of dunking and twisting, laying out to dry. Sunset. Big black plastic speakers set up along the river blast the soundtrack of Varanasi.
And Calcutta. My father’s friend’s family invites us to a meal. (From Mumbai he’s given his mother instructions about what to make for us. How to welcome us in.) I am so touched, in fact overwhelmed. Again.

And my husband is sick. And I am a bit scared to go to my new friend’s family by myself. It’s something about the pain of feeling things that are so tender and giving. Someone who’s never met me cooking a whole and special meal for me. I don’t even cook for myself. I give in to my fear and cancel, try to find comfort (it isn’t possible) behind a hotel wall.

Calcutta is about realizing how overwhelmed and saturated we are. We traveled to India for my husband’s photography work. He talks about how his work is to be present and porous, to take everything in. When he is photographing, he cannot hold his breath, pull away from gravity, lower his eyes, indulge those things we do to pretend we’re safe and separate and sterile.

We have taken in a lot. And have still managed to pull away from a lot. It has been a study in culture, and contrasts, and comfort.

We are ready to go home. And yet even the concept of home has been forever dislodged and set in motion. How do we find home in our own bodies? In a foreign culture? How do we make a home? What could possibly explain the vast differences between the physical homes of the poor and the rich, in India and in the United States? What millions of factors converged to birth us into our particular families and circumstances?
.....
After 20 hours in flight, we arrive back in the US. Newark smells clean, almost alpine. New York City moves in slow motion. It is obsessively orderly. It is easy. And it is not the same.

__________

See more of Matt's photography for his project, The Global City here.

Read choreographer Jill Sigman's reflections on her trip to India, "A Postmodern Passage" here.

Some related musings and questions on Slumdog Millionaire will be coming soon.

On Garden of Earthly Delights

2008-12-06T20:21:00.044-05:00

photo by Glenn Fawcett

I bring my aesthetic-educator-visual-artist husband to Martha Clarke's Garden of Earthly Delights because I want him to tell me about Hieronymus Bosch. I want to hear his perspective on the relationship between Clarke's live work of art and the painting from which she draws inspiration. In going to see this revived (and historic) performance, I look forward to a dialogue about the history of art.

We sit in an audience that is different (more off-Broadway, more money for tickets, more shuffling around in their seats) than we are used to. We engage in a bit of dialogue and I eek out a few opinions about art based on other art. But mostly Matt and I experience a fully sensual and magical theater-going experience:

Lonely, empty wind. Dead branches.
The godly, body-articulate, Jennifer Nugent leading other performers in animalistic, barbie-footed, centaur crawls.
Writhing, twisting, circling, spiraling. tongue licking.
Shiny, reflective Dutch-painter-marley playing with light.
Human pendulums, long-hair-upside-down-people floating back and forth....
Red stick, rain stick penises.
Rolling people, ocean/boats.
Buckets of dead people rags. The plague. Ashes Ashes we all fall down.
Weighted, earthy Breugel waltz.
Blind and stupid. Clunky witch hunt potato famine.
Madrigal, gregorian, remote.
No sense of time (a dream or a painting)
Raping and killing.
Flying and spinning and cackling.
Drum God Thunder
Medusa Dogs
Orgiastic, sensual, sexual, erotic, cello stabbed in the navel. Music as an umbilical cord and death.

And suddenly a branch with green leaves. A beautiful black man floating in the air holding a living tree. An image with new significance as of November 4. It is also an image reminiscent of Waiting for Godot.

Artists and history and extremes of human experience float together on Minetta Lane.

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch; Museo del Prado, Madrid

On Sincerity (related to Trajal Harrell’s “Quartet for the End of Time”)

2008-10-21T23:57:00.015-04:00

Trajal Harrell’s new piece drew me into a quiet (though filled with music) world that often bypassed my thoughts and went straight to feeling.

As an audience member, I was challenged in the best of ways. I was trusted to find my own way into the piece. I was given time to find deeper ways to engage repetition, subtlety and presence. I felt safe to find the ways in which my experience and the art could interweave.

I hadn’t expected this. I thought I might be confronted with yet another work that screamed at me (in voice or in body) from the stage, inviting me to feel uncool for actually caring (or showing that I care) about the art and even about life.

In program notes, Harrell’s dramaturg Julie Perrin asks, “ Is sincerity on stage a new form of heroism?”

Reading this question after the performance helped me see why I had responded so strongly to the piece. (A chronically sincere and earnest person, I can’t even get my Facebook updates to have the requisite funny and ironic tone.) And it left me feeling two things: First of all, furious that the question is actually relevant. Second, hopeful that my experimental contemporary dance community could be moving out of a self-absorbed teenager phase (See Andy Horwitz on Culturebot) and into a more thoughtful and mature place. Not a staid or conservative place, but a place with a different kind of engagement.

I felt like I had seen a sincere piece, not a piece about sincerity. And this is interesting. I wonder how much I saw and responded to sincerity because that is what I am interested in seeing and hoping to see.

Harrell’s work takes its name, and some inspiration, from music written by Olivier Messiaen while interned in a prison camp during World War II.

I felt this in the honesty and presence of the piece (at least my impression of the piece). In a prison camp, in the End of Time, in our time, I don’t think there’s time for too-cool, for insincerity. The world needs more than that. When faced with atrocity and death, failed economies and global relationships, even when faced with human kindness and talent, what is the best and truest we can offer?

link to a first response poem on this piece

On Trajal Harrell's "Quartet for the End of Time"

2008-10-16T21:37:00.007-04:00

Returning
Focus
Falling
Returning

Wonder
Putting on
(a show, a cover)

Taking off
Taking care of
Releasing

Maybe
. . .

On Ivana Muller’s “While We Were Holding It Together” at the FIAF: Crossing the Line Festival

2008-09-25T00:15:00.023-04:00

I was scheduled to begin a sitting meditation retreat tonight; I went instead to Ivana Muller’s performance, While We Were Holding It Together, co-presented by DTW and FIAF as part of the Crossing the Line Festival.

Instead of practicing letting go within a monastery, I sat in a theater and watched five performers hold it together.

The five performers sustain the same positions for Muller’s entire 67 minute piece. Their eyes move. They quiver out of muscle fatigue. But it is primarily the movement of their voices and minds that we follow.

(Ivana Muller's While We Were Holding It Together)

(Sitting Meditation Retreat -Sesshin- at Zen Mountain Monastery)

From their frozen tableau, Muller’s performers talk: “I imagine we are all beggars asking for money.” “I imagine we are the last creatures on earth. We’d like to touch each other.” “I imagine I’m an oak tree, and winter is coming.”

Each time the performers make a statement, I see their shapes, their stillness, as something different. My perception of the very same picture shifts enormously. What was a hand becomes a branch or a bus pole or a microphone stand.

The performers imagine things funny, raunchy, tedious. And also big: “I imagine this body doesn’t belong to me.” “I imagine not being able to imagine anymore.”

In a blackout they leave the stage. From offstage we continue to hear them, “ Are we now only thoughts?” “No, we’re still an image…”

Muller looks at the existential questions I grappled with in an apricot tree hideaway as a kid, those same questions that bring me to Zen practice and art practice as an adult. She looks at nothing less than the nature of experience.

The last words we hear, in the black, from offstage, are these: “I imagine we are in this all together.”

And that is why I go to theater.
And that is why I will go to my meditation retreat tomorrow.

At the monastery, I’ll sit still, among other people, and watch the movement of my thoughts and emotions and fantasies. I’ll be asked to question what my body is, what death is, who there is to die.

At least that’s what I imagine I’ll do.

Link here to see a video excerpt

On Samuel Beckett's The Image as conceived by Arthur Nauzyciel at FIAF Festival

2008-09-18T23:52:00.000-04:00

There’s grass on the eighth floor covering the floor people lying on it not smoking it though it smells sweet real one man lying one woman standing facing one standing not facing us as Beckett’s short story projects onto the wall painted three shades of blue next to the wall that is windows looking into the changing sky magical pixie musician in green plays computer pipes motion sensors detecting the growth of the grass for a moment and for fifteen minutes the woman not facing faces and recites The short story en Francais high culture pretention with spit flying onto the grass dancer lying spastic showing off skill for fifteen minutes I imagine he is performing the way he would perform this piece another another or another until he becomes a dog and he’s good with his hand in his mouth barking his high spastic jumps I don’t care wasting my time he finishes and bows never coming together I am mad about the mud not even mud made to Beckett’s nine page short story made out of one long sentence called The Image.

On Falling

2008-09-07T19:02:00.005-04:00

Poet Anne Carson reading Falling at Mount Tremper Arts on August 2

She stands on the wood floor and connects the dots between a father and a helmet and falling (in war, in dance, in love).

And she reminds me how important falling is to the process of making art, how close leaping and falling are.

When we create, we leap between two seemingly unrelated words. From nothing to something. We bring our experience and skills but we don’t know exactly where or how we will land. Trying to know gets in the way.

In creating a contemporary arts center, my husband and I are learning how to support the leaps and the falls. We grow big enough to hold it all, strengthening those human muscles of excitement and fear and joy and embarrassment and…

We learn to stay present. We can’t wall off what is new or scary or different. We breathe with the process and the results, the experiences of the artists and the audience members. There is no protection. And that is how we know we're alive.

Romeo and Juliet with a Happy Ending

2008-07-14T23:16:00.000-04:00

I first heard Sergey Prokofiev’s music for the ballet Romeo and Juliet when I was about five. My dad played the record and asked me to imagine what it would be like to dance to. I imagined and, once again, scooched chairs around the living room to 5-year-old-heart-on-sleeve-style-dance.

Later that week, I put on my favorite dress and accompanied my dad to American Ballet Theater’s Romeo and Juliet at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in L.A. I remember the sweet, mysterious smell of the theater and a jar of candy that a stagehand let me dip into. The sound of the orchestra tuning up was unbearably exciting, topped only by the tapping of toe shoes getting into place before the curtain opened.

Apparently, I danced in the aisle at intermission (I don’t remember). And then I danced at the Jewish Community Center and at countless other studios (I remember) until ending up a choreographer in New York.

I didn’t dance in the aisles at Mark Morris’s Romeo & Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare at Bard’s Summerscape the other night. But the music (Prokofiev’s original score, recently unearthed by musicologist Simon Morrison) resonated in my bones. And I couldn’t help but bounce around in my seat.

The newly re-discovered music, and newly created dance, includes a happy ending. Romeo does not take his own life. The friar enters just in time. Juliet wakes up. The families are so happy they get along. The two star-crossed lovers dance a love dance within a twinkling star-filled set.

I’m not sure how I feel about a happy ending. Or about any Romeo and Juliet dance that is different (or, in this case, maybe not different enough) from the one burned into my memory 26 years ago.

But at the same time, the piece reminded me of the power and pleasure of storytelling. Romeo and Juliet (with or without the happy ending) is juicy. It hits on the biggies: family, death, love. And Morris does a sweet job catching the tenderness of young, first love. (There is a beautiful, self-conscious and sexy morning-after scene with a nearly naked Romeo and Juliet on a bed with one large red silk sheet….)

Towards the end of the piece, I liked being swept away by the romance. The gentleness and eagerness in the two lovers reminded me of my first loves. I went back to five-year old dance class. Scarf in hand, we ran around the room to delicious music. And then, years later, there was the other kind of love. Somewhat shyer and more complicated. But also delicious.

Maguy Marin Umwelt

2008-06-19T22:56:00.000-04:00

photo by Andrea Mohin for The New York Times

I just watched my life flash before my eyes. Well, many lives. In Maguy Marin’s Umwelt (at the Joyce Theater this week) dancers appear and disappear through a slatted set. We see them, for a few moments at a time, in the midst of performing mundane and sometimes unusual tasks. Nine performers move in and out of our awareness and we get glimpses of solitary and communal lives.

They move in unison while visually separated by vertical openings in the set. Three appear and take big bites out of apples. Two put on crowns. Four button shirts. A few scratch. They put on doctors' coats. Eat carrots. Carry trash. Wipe their noses. Pull their pants up. Hold a baby. Kiss. Fight. Carry a naked and lifeless body across their shoulders.

One spool of rope on the right side of the stage unwinds towards another spool on the left. It is a constant marker of time. Unceasing air from very high-powered fans blows on the dancers the entire time. The ongoing sound of the wind and the score is abrasive and driving.

As the 60 minute piece moves forward, I begin to notice patterns and relationships. The performers put on crowns, but also shower caps, sunbonnets, blue caps, and wigs. They eat apples, and big pieces of meat, cupcakes. They dress in doctors' coats, a drunkard’s housecoat, monks’ robes, sexy silk robes. A performer points a finger as if mad with the same phrasing as another pointing a flashlight or a gun. A woman jumps on a man, another woman is carried away.

Within the ceaseless and ongoing movement and imagery, I begin to find meaning. My eyes and mind search for things I have seen before and they search for differences.

Each performer takes a moment to stand still at some point during the piece. When he or she does, everything stops. In those moments, my mind returns to the image of the monks’ robes. I think of the religious practitioner, philosopher, and artist, those necessary and slippery roles. Those roles in which standing still can find patterns and meaning, but also nothing.

Read Claudia La Rocco's review (with a mention of this blog's fave, Jerome Bel)

Some info on the word Umwelt

And a video from Umwelt:

Chris Yon at DTW

2008-06-10T13:17:00.000-04:00

Diagram by Jeff Larson

Chris Yon chooses black and white design elements for his new piece, HUGO. At the same time, his dance exists mysteriously and comfortably in a grey area.

A blank, TV-sized screen on the DTW stage flickers static onto the faces of a forward gazing audience. We watch nothing together. The static becomes a silent film beautifully made by David Bagnall and featuring performers Taryn Griggs and Jeff Larson. The two inhabit stark architectural landscapes within New York: an empty park fountain, an alleyway. The screen is split. Griggs is in on the left, Larson on the right. They move in the same straightforward ways in the same locations, yet in different frames. These feel like parallel universes.

The film continues past when I think it will and I am intrigued by this shift of expectation. Maybe I have entered a dance theater to watch a silent dance film. But then Yon comes onstage and turns off the screen. Stage curtains open to reveal Griggs and Larson. They are dressed in their film costumes, black and white striped tops, black bottoms. Stripes of white tape run horizontally across the black floor.

The two perform, often in separate worlds. They move clearly in space and in controlled, precise ways. They sometimes seem like animals, kung fu cartoons, aliens in a sci-fi movie. They also obsessively gesture in a way that is both remote and quite familiar. Who are they? Where are they? The music repeats as if stuck.

Out of the midst of this driven repetition, something starts to change. Larson moves slowly. His seemingly untrained, and therefore unhidden, movement breaks my heart a little bit. Unhindered by sleek and prescribed form, he is nakedly human. Some essence has been reached. He brushes Griggs’s hair away from her face, softly and curiously grooms her. The parallel universes hesitantly touch.

Yon and another man slowly wheel a grand piano onto the stage. Nicky Paraiso begins to play. Karinne Keithley sings in a light and otherworldly way. It is a moment of transcendence in the midst of a most gentle and sensitive mundanity. Keithley sings that nothing has attached itself. She says the word “untranslatable.”

I can’t quite make sense of HUGO. And that’s ok with me. It brings me to a place that is beyond words and beyond sense. This is the place of life’s greatest questions and the most interesting dance.

Ishmael Houston-Jones Without Hope

2008-06-05T00:42:00.000-04:00

This is an experimental review I wrote during a class taught by Claudia La Rocco this spring. (See her new blog, Culturist.)

Check out our class's reviews on DTW's website.

AVMG on Tour!

2008-06-05T00:16:00.000-04:00

AVMG started traveling this year. We just returned from San Francisco where we performed at the Patricia Sweetow Gallery. Before that we taught in Sao Paulo and performed in Rio de Janeiro at the Centro Coreografico do Rio. It's been a wonderful few months! See photos below.

Djamila and Aynsley in San Francisco:
(artwork by Gale Antokal, costumes by Liz Sargent)

The Company in Rio:

Cheri, Djamila, Kristen, John, Matt, Aynsley
(clockwise left to right, with lots of fried food)

Cheri Paige Fogleman--dancer extraordinaire

Leanne Darling--musician extraordinaire. (Check out her CD release party this Friday, June 6)

Clare Byrne Mayfair

2008-05-20T15:13:00.000-04:00

Witch Night, May 9
Just in time for Mother’s Day, Clare Byrne lays out a feast of female possibilities. Her Witch Night is a weaving together of five short pieces, each of which explores wild and playful depths of femininity. Characters, costumes, and voices come and go while inviting rich questions about the nature of performance, onstage and off.

We first meet the white witch. She enters the intimate performance space and, talking in a hilariously shrill voice, sacrifices a baguette. She passes around pieces of the bread and we eat together. It is a sacrament and a thanksgiving, an acknowlegement of the community that is created within the audience of every performance.

The white witch invokes feelings of mystery, fear, and support. She implies that, this evening, we will not know what is real and what is pretend. She feeds us like a grandmother, a priest, and a prostitute.

Byrne adds other ingredients, dances and short films, into her witch’s brew. We see an MTV-type dance complete with fierce back-up-booty-dancers. Byrne performs Martha Graham’s Lamentation. She uses leaves on the floor to dance an audience member’s fortune. The white witch returns and, while speaking lyrics from Camelot, sexually squeezes white icing out of tubes and onto cupcakes. We eat again.

One of the films, Morgan, Child Goddess, stars a beautifully awkward and open young girl romping through the woods. Union of the Fishes stars a naked Byrne and Sharon Estacio. Pubic hair not concealed, they make body sounds and move close together.

Like Martha Graham, Byrne explores raw and powerful female energy in her work. It is not limited to this, but it is unusual in this. She looks at the roles that women play and the ones open to us. She also looks beyond the roles. Witch Night feels inspired by the ten-year-old girl in Morgan, Child Goddess. The evening seems to come from that age before cynicism and cool have hit. It is as if we have joined a girl’s unhindered imagination. We are free to be anything.

Will Rawls kneeling, photo by Stefan Jacobs

Kneelings, May 10
Byrne finishes her Mayfair with Kneelings. From 8:10 until 10:00 am, four dancers make their way across Manhattan’s 23rd Street. On the sidewalk, in the middle of each block, one of them kneels. They sit still while New York City walks, and drives, by. It is aesthetic and religious. (Are the two different?) Simple, grateful, gentle, subtle and bold.

Endgame (an essay)

2008-05-11T12:32:00.000-04:00

I first saw Beckett’s Endgame twelve years ago at the conservatory I was attending. I loved it.

I sat close to the stage, next to the boy I liked. I was blown away by the crafted laughter about things that, ultimately, were very serious. The play offered me intellectual and spiritual respite from technical dance training.

In the twelve years that have since passed, both of my grandmothers died. I moved five times. I got married. I was pregnant and lost the pregnancy. There have been many beginnings and endings.

In short, life has happened.

Tonight, I brought life with me to BAM and a new performance of Endgame. I connected with Beckett’s play and his characters in many new ways.

Nagg and Nell, talking from their solitary trashcans, became the nursing home patients with whom I’ve worked. Trapped and protected by their claustrophobic metal homes, they search for a way to connect. They eat dry biscuits and try to tell jokes like they used to. They itch, they fall asleep, they die.

Clov and Hamm’s stuffed dog became the teddy bear of my friend’s six year old son. The bear he put down just long enough to open his arms wide and, leading with his little chest, give me an enormous, open hug.

Hamm’s failed search for painkillers brought me to friends’ diagnoses that are unbearable -- and the raw aliveness of bearing. I felt the hopelessness of the set’s nearly windowless walls.

Tonight, Nagg and Nell, Clov and Hamm became the partnerships I have known. We stumble through repetition and annoyance, power, deception, love and need. We see one another and also avoid seeing.

Beckett, through his meticulously choreographed stage directions and script, gives me a lot to see. He points me to murky and meaningful areas of my life. Tonight, as with the first time I saw Endgame, I felt the audience around me laugh while I did not. I felt the tension, or connection, between being entertained and being real.

Support Precedes Movement

2008-04-05T14:59:00.000-04:00

I was introduced to this phrase at The School for Body Mind Centering. Lately I’ve been thinking about “Support Precedes Movement” within individual movement studies and as a way to look at the role of a choreographer.

Anatomical, physical support precedes the physical execution of a movement. If I am in touch with the deep support of my body's core muscles, I am better to able to move. I am more efficient, more powerful, more expressive. I am less prone to injury when I get out of a chair, run, dance, even when I slip and fall.

Emotional support precedes the physical execution of a movement. If I have a strong sense of internal emotional support, if I feel confident, open, resilient, I have more choices available to me when I move. I can let go of body habits and armoring that don’t serve me. I can try new ways of moving that seem different from my personality and not fear loosing myself. When the dancers I work with feel supported, feel seen and heard, they create and move with great imagination and honesty and passion.

Anatomical, physical support precedes emotional movement. When I find the support of my feet grounding into the earth, I am better able to stay present within a strong emotion. When my body feels support, I am able to allow emotions like anger and sadness to move through me.

Emotional support precedes emotional movement. When I know that I have people to talk to and tools like writing and meditation, I am better able to venture, move into new emotional territory. I know I can take risks and that I can change.

A choreographer’s own anatomical, physical, and emotional support precede the movement of a creative process. When a choreographer is grounded in her own body, her own interests, her own reasons for making art, when she has personal support and financial (imagine!) support, she can move to entirely new, deep areas. When she has support, she can support the movement of her collaborators and her audience.

It is the choreographer’s responsibility to be conscious and clear about how she chooses to support, or not support an audience. If, as an audience member, I feel supported by the choreographer and the choices she has made, I will move with her to any number of dark, confusing, chaotic, passionate, dull places. When I do not feel supported, I am unwilling to move. When I don’t feel that the choreographer has thought of me and made deliberate decisions about my experience, I don’t trust where I am being taken and I resist. I am not talking about hand-holding or making easy pieces. On the contrary, I am looking for ways to better take audiences into uneasy places, to the places where movement in the big sense of the word happens.

What is the support that allows movement within our audiences?

1. Clarity and confidence within the artistic vision.

2. Clarity and confidence in the execution of that vision.

3. Thoughtful attention given to the kinds of movement
(emotional, intellectual, kinesthetic) we hope for within our audience.

4. Thoughtful attention given to the best ways to bring this particular vision and this particular kind of movement to this particular audience.

What is the artist interested in? What is she exploring? Why is she making art and sharing it with an audience? What is her intent for the audience? How does each part of the performance-going experience support this intent? Do the aesthetic, tone, and comfort level in this performance space support this particular vision? What experience does the audience member have at the box office, in the lobby, as she walks into the performance space? Do the first moments of a piece convey confidence of artistic vision? (This is not the same as dancers walking around looking confident. The artistic vision could convey confidence by directing the dancers to look not-confident.) Is the piece structured in a way that supports its intent?

These are my thoughts so far. I’d love to hear others.

AVMG PERFORMANCES April 8, 12, 13!

2008-04-05T00:14:00.001-04:00

Tuesday, April 8 at 7pm
Dance Conversations at the Flea. Free.
41 White St. btwn. Broadway and Church.NYC.
Curated by Nina Winthrop and Taimi Strehlow. Moderated by Melinda Ring.Work by Aynsley Vandenbroucke Movement Group, Macushla Roulleau, Amber Sloan, and Roxanne Steinberg.
We're showing work in progress excerpts from a piece looking at the abstraction of words and movement...

Saturday, April 12 and Sunday, April 13 at 7:30pm
AVMG performs Full Circle at Baryshnikov Arts Center
Studio 6A, 450 W. 37th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues. NYC.
Tickets $15 reserved thru SmartTix.com, $20 at the door
Performed in the round and lit entirely by flashlights, Full Circle explores circles, cycles, perception, and community.
AVMG'sFull Circle excerpt. Videography by Jenny Holub. Live music by Leanne Darling and John Wieczorek.

Upcoming Performances
April 23-28
AVMG performs Full Circle at Centro Coreografico do Rio
in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

May 29
AVMG performs as part of an installation at Patricia Sweetow Gallery
in San Francisco, CA.

NYTimes Article on Obama Body Language

2008-03-30T15:54:00.000-04:00

Photo Steve Fenn/ABC

In a New York Times article called "Obama Communicates, Even Without Words," Alessandra Stanley makes a brief attempt to look at Barack Obama's sensitive, effective use of movement. A movement analyst could have done it better. Note his subtle Narrowing and folding of his arms and legs to attune to the women.

Ways of Seeing (Narrowing)

2008-02-22T14:59:00.000-05:00

When we name a movement, we can see it and experience it more clearly. This series explores the many names that Laban Movement Analysis (See post on LMA) offers. While these often sound like regular English words, they sometimes have slightly different meanings when used in an LMA context.

Shape Flow refers to the subtle, personal movement that underlies all movement and breath. For more information on Shape Flow, see previous post.

One element of Shape Flow is Narrowing.

Photo of woman by William Eggleston.
Man and woman by Mike Disfarmer.

In Narrowing, a Shape Flow movement condenses in towards the center within the horizontal dimension. It is the opposite of Widening. The people above are Narrowing. Their torsos seem to shrink (They are also Shortening.) Narrowing is the movement we do when we try to take up less space. When we are scared, or shy, or not breathing fully. Sometimes we Narrow so the people around us will not feel threatened.
NYC subway riders in their Narrowing dance.
Photo by Travis Ruse.

Try it: Exhale and contract your ribs in towards your center. Smoosh your shoulders and arms in towards your sides. Feel your torso Narrow. Pretend two elevator doors are closing in on your sides. Think about the times in your life when you Narrow. Is that effective for you? The next time you are on a train or bus or plane, notice the people around you. Who Narrows and who Widens? Do the opposite of what you normally do.

Ways of Seeing (Widening)

2008-01-27T16:27:00.000-05:00

When we name a movement, we can see it and experience it more clearly. This series explores the many names that Laban Movement Analysis (See post on LMA) offers. While these often sound like regular English words, they sometimes have slightly different meanings when used in an LMA context.

Shape Flow refers to the subtle, personal movement that underlies all movement and breath. For more information on Shape Flow, see previous post.

One element of Shape Flow is Widening.

Photo of boy by Nicholas Nixon.
Photo of woman by Richard Avedon.

In Widening, a Shape Flow movement expands to the right and left, in the horizontal dimension. The boy and the woman above are Widening. Their arms move out to the side, but their breath and whole bodily senses do too. Widening is expansive, open, vulnerable. It is the movement we do before we give someone a big hug. We Widen when we are proud, full of life. Also when we want to establish dominance, power.

Man, Unknown, MOMA collection.
Photo of woman by Ernest J. Bellocq.

Try it: Take a deep breath and expand your ribs out to the right and the left. Feel your chest and shoulders Widen. Allow your arms to follow the movement of your breath, imagine the whole world is yours. Think about the times in your life when you Widen. Decide on one situation in which you would like to Widen more. Think of the people you know who Widen. Do those moments excite you, irritate you? Do you trust them? Watch for the next time a dancer Widens in order to stretch out a movement, appear bigger.

What's The Egg That Needs To Be Cooked Now?

2008-01-12T00:34:00.001-05:00

That's one of the things choreographer John Jasperse wondered about during a forum called Curating Dance: Ideas and Innovation held at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) conference on Friday January, 11th. The question derives from a Thurston Moore interview in which Moore recounts someone telling him, "You should never boil an egg twice."Jasperse spoke of this as a reminder to take risks, to keep challenging ourselves within performance creation and curation. This became a theme that was articulated quite beautifully by many of the eight panelists during a three hour forum.

I was especially touched by Jasperse, Sixto Wagan of DiverseWorks in Houston, and Ken Foster of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. These three passionately and boldly spoke about the role of risk taking not only in developing the arts but, even more importantly, as a way of developing the kind of citizens we want in our communities. Foster said, "The choice to not risk is as large a statement as the choice to risk. Over time, what happens to our culture? I know it looks safe to only present comedians, but it's not. I look at our own current political situation and I hold presenters largely responsible for that." And Wagan, "How can I help redefine what culture can be...What can I do to shake things up?"

These men struck me as thinking, questioning, caring human beings interested in supporting and developing other thinking, questioning, caring human beings. In a culture in which schools (and governments) have become places for filling in multiple choice bubbles, artists and the people who present them have an even greater responsibility to offer alternatives.

Jasperse spoke about our "convenience lifestyle," and a "permeating value system that says ease is good, effort bad." He said, "A soundbite that goes with this is 'if you can't say it quickly, it's not worth it.' But poetics exist in a realm of not one point." (Nice to be reminded of this at APAP, an event that seems set up to share soundbites.)

Jasperse reminded me of Jerome Bel and "La Societe de Spectacle," with his remarks. He continued, "Entertainment is not the central component of my work. Instead of that passive model, I look at pleasure in the aesthetic experience. If that doesn't function, people will say no. The pleasure is a means to an end and that end is awakening. That is my responsibility as an artist--- awakening."

Experiment with Dancer and Lines (AVMG)

2008-01-10T16:59:00.000-05:00

Experiment with Dancer and Lines
Video made in January, 2008
Created in 2005 by Aynsley Vandenbroucke and Myra Margolin
Dancing by Aynsley Vandenbroucke
Animation by Myra Margolin
Music by J.S. Bach
(The Well Tempered Clavier performed by Glenn Gould)
Videography by Mathew Pokoik at Mt. Tremper Arts

AVMG APAP performances

2008-01-09T16:05:00.000-05:00

January 13 at 3:20pm and January 14 at 6:25pm, 2008
APAP Showcase
Jodi Kaplan & Associates / Bookingdance.com
The Ailey Citigroup Theater (405 W. 55th St. at 9th Ave.NYC.)

See Aynsley Vandenbroucke Movement Group perform excerpts from "And How Should I Begin?" inspired by T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock."
Photo by Mathew Pokoik

Ways of Seeing (Shortening)

2008-01-02T18:56:00.000-05:00

When we name a movement, we can see it and experience it more clearly. This series explores the many names that Laban Movement Analysis (See post on LMA) offers. While these often sound like regular English words, they sometimes have slightly different meanings when used in an LMA context.

Shape Flow refers to the subtle, personal movement that underlies all movement and breath. For more information on Shape Flow, see previous post.

One element of Shape Flow is Shortening.

above Tennessee by Lewis W. Hine.
right The Mother in Joy and Grief by August Sander.

In Shortening, a Shape Flow movement condenses down or up towards the center of the body. The people above are Shortening in their torsos. Shortening is a natural part of breathing and recuperating. It can be done in order to appear shorter and less imposing. We sometimes Shorten when we are in pain or feel shy or embarrassed or are cold. Shortening is the opposite of Lengthening.

above staff photo by Justin Ide/Harvard News Office.
The woman in the middle of the this photo is Shortening. Compare her with the woman on the left.

Try it: How do you respond to the people above? Who do you know who regularly Shortens? Exhale fully and feel your torso shrink. Pretend you have a very, very heavy book on your head. Does this feel natural or unusual for you? Do you Shorten while working on the computer, while at work, or with particular friends and family? Notice the next time you Shorten in order to talk with a child or connect more intimately with someone. Observe the ways that dancers use Shortening for expression or for rest.

Ways of Seeing (Lengthening)

2007-12-26T20:16:00.000-05:00

When we name a movement, we can see it and experience it more clearly. This series explores the many names that Laban Movement Analysis (See post on LMA) offers. While these often sound like regular English words, they sometimes have slightly different meanings when used in an LMA context.

Shape Flow refers to the subtle, personal movement that underlies all movement and breath. For more information on Shape Flow, see previous post.

One element of Shape Flow is Lengthening.

(Above) London Junior Ballet. (Right) New York City Ballet by Paul Kolnik.

In Lengthening, a Shape Flow movement expands up or down. The dancers above are Lengthening in their upper bodies. Lengthening is a characteristic of ballet. It helps create the impression of lightness, of floating. It supports rising up to pointe, balancing, and jumping. People also Lengthen when they are trying to look taller, more confident, when they're trying to see over someone standing in front of them. Lengthening is the opposite of Shortening.

(Left) Sculpture by Giocometti. (Right) New York City Ballet by Paul Kolnik.

Try it: How do you respond to the people above? Pretend you are very tall. Reach your head up to the ceiling. What does Lengthening feel like for you? Is it common for you or rare? What could Lengthening look like in a proud child, in a witch, in a haughty woman, in a basketball player? Extra Credit: Find your tailbone at the very bottom of your spine. Now Lengthen downward from your tailbone towards your chair or the floor. Feel that Lengthening in opposition to your head moving upward. Feel the space created along your spine.

Beth Gill & Daniel Linehan

2007-11-30T23:09:00.000-05:00

My body is buzzing. A strange electrical current runs through. I’ve seen and experienced a very full and alive evening of dance.

Beth Gill’s Eleanor & Eleanor and Daniel Linehan’s Not About Everything take me on a physical journey during their split bill performance at DTW.

In Gill’s piece, which opens the evening, I settle down. I feel quiet. I indulge in the stillness of the theater.

Four dancers clearly and simply move against a stark metal set that reminds me of repeating minarets. I shift between seeing geometry and seeing flowing, human bodies. They are quite beautiful. It is the beauty of form and pure space. I feel the presence of Merce Cunningham. The dancers make eye contact with the audience only a few times. At one point one of the dancers gently lifts another. He carries her a few steps in his arms. He lets her down. The performers continue standing, walking, sitting, lying down. They inhabit their own worlds, yet graze one another’s. The dance ends and intermission arrives. I can’t even think about leaving because I am still.

In Linehan’s piece after intermission, I can barely stay seated. My body pulses with his as he rhythmically and unceasingly spins.

He has transformed the theater. Seats form a semicircle on the stage. We are invited to sit in them or in the front rows of the theater. We surround Linehan. Narrow rolls of paper hang from the rafters down to the floor creating an even a smaller space around him. He spins and talks, almost chants, about how this piece is not about everything, or endurance or desperation or whirling or nausea or Iraq or being better than Gill or… He says, “If I were in a war zone, I don’t think I’d be spinning.” He wonders about the moral value of art and then also says “moral inclination should have no place in art.” He writes a donation check, while spinning, to be mailed to an environmental agency by an audience member. “This is me. This is you. You are free from this dance. This too will pass. This is this. Everything. This is everything.” He stops and leaves the circles. Finds grounding, twisting moves down to the floor. Touches his forehead to the floor. These seem like strange and necessary bows. He pulls the paper down from the rafters. My brain spins, dances, and frantically searches for something I can hold onto.

This is a marvelously paired evening. Linehan looks at (or adamantly does not look at) the meaning of making art. And while Linehan does a lot and seems to allude to just being, Gill’s piece is. Her piece exists in a being place. I’ll be chewing on these for a while. And trying to get Linehan’s chants to finally leave my head.

Blogging, Dance, and the Cultural Moment

2007-11-29T22:53:00.000-05:00

Carla Peterson talked about artists and the “Cultural Moment” in her toast following Beth Gill and Daniel Linehan’s performances. See Review.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. What is this Cultural Moment? And how is a cultural moment created? Does it require dialogue? Does it require private, in-depth exploration? Does it begin as a discussion, a number of adventurers? Does it begin as one person, alone, seeing things from a unique perspective? As a working, questioning artist, am I automatically part of the moment?

There is an element of cool in the cultural moment. If this cultural moment is consciously cool and radical, what then is truly radical?

Blogs and the discussions sparked by them seem to be an important part of this new cultural moment. Can they help bring art back into our daily cultural consciousness? What happens when many voices see and discuss dance? What happens when it is an informal, normal part of life to talk about art? What happens when, instead of reading an article, we engage in a living, growing discussion about this living, growing art form called dance?

Addendum
I just went to the MOMA retrospective of Martin Puryear's beautiful, touching, playful sculpture. In the notes for the exhibit, Puryear is quoted, "I think there are a number of levels at which my work can be dealt with and appreciated. It gives me great pleasure to feel there's a level that doesn't require knowledge of, or immersion in, the aesthetic of a specific time and place."

What is it that brings art beyond its "Cultural Moment?"

Ways of Seeing (Hollowing)

2007-11-28T18:53:00.000-05:00

When we name a movement, we can see it and experience it more clearly. This series explores the many names that Laban Movement Analysis (See post on LMA) offers. While these often sound like regular English words, they sometimes have slightly different meanings when used in an LMA context.

Shape Flow refers to the subtle, personal movement that underlies all movement and breath. For more information on Shape Flow, see previous post.

One element of Shape Flow is Hollowing.
Left: Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange Above: Canyon Country, Califonia by Joel Sternfeld.

In Hollowing, a Shape Flow movement condenses (often backwards) towards the center. The two parents above are both Hollowing in their torsos; their chests seem to almost cave in. In the mother, this movement quality makes me feel a despair and a kind of quiet. In the father, the Hollowing makes me feel passive weight and that he's trying to come closer to his child's height. Hollowing is also used functionally. It is the exhale to better access deep stomach muscles in a sit up. And it is a Graham contraction.

Try it: How do you respond to the parents above? When do you Hollow? Is it common for you or rare? What could Hollowing look like in a teenager, a doctor, kindergarten teacher, a lover, a ballet dancer? Exhale, feel your belly come in towards your center. Cave in your chest. How do you feel? Note the next time you see a performer Hollow.

International Exposure for AVMG

2007-11-21T13:28:00.000-05:00

(A little self-promotion)
My dance company, Aynsley Vandenbroucke Movement Group, just finalized plans to perform in Brazil this April. And my husband, Mathew Pokoik's , photographs of the company are currently featured in the Chinese fashion magazine Vision. Here are scans from the 6 page spread (you can click on the images to make them bigger):

The Republic of Jerome Bel

2007-11-12T09:48:00.001-05:00

Jerome Bel is a man after my own heart. He is a truly thinking dance-maker. And Pichet Klunchun and Myself (see review) is a delicious opportunity to hear what Bel thinks. The evening plays out like a Socratic dialogue between Bel and his performance partner, traditional Thai Kohn dancer, Pichet Klunchun:

Bel: “One day I quit dance because there was no more meaning. Instead of taking class, I read books. Two years and all the reading brought me to was standing still. I read La Societe de Spectacle. Today we are surrounded by representation so we see, but don’t live our lives. Standing still is a critique of La Societe de Spectacle because the audience is expecting dance. When I stand, I listen to the sounds- I’m not in the spectacle but in life. We are in the present time. A movie has been done before. Theater happens in the same space and same time. It’s more life than the movie. With this scene (standing still) I was reaching the essence of the theater- pretentious but I was trying to show what’s specific about theater. Time and space shared with audience. They watch me and I watch them instead of pretending I’m in the 15th Century...”

Klunchun: “Do they understand?”

Bel: “Yeah. Some of them…. The audience wants big emotions. I’m looking for something else. For example you have the leg there (points high above his head,) the audience admires the performer. I don’t want to have this relation with the audience. I try to create something equal between stage and audience. I don’t want the audience to feel dominated by the performer.”

Klunchun: “You mean it’s equal?”

Bel: “Yeah. We dance like the audience can dance.”

Klunchun: “If they can do it, why do they pay?”

Bel: “Sometimes they ask for their money back.”

Klunchun: “ You give it?”

Bel: “No. I belong to a very small community, the Contemporary Arts. In this community, there are three groups: # 1, The Artists. The artists need to create new forms and have time for research. It’s more difficult to do than to do things you already know. #2, The Government and Producers. (Bel is clearly not speaking about the US government.) They give money without knowing about what we will do. Even the artist doesn’t know what he will do, otherwise he’s not a contemporary artist. #3, The Audience of Contemporary Art. When they buy a ticket, they don’t know what they’re going to see. It’s a bet. If you want to pay to see what you want, go to Swan Lake. You’ll get swans and you’ll get lakes.”

Klunchun: “You don’t promise?”

Bel: “This community is interested in something they don’t know.”

(Bel and Klunchun move into a discussion about dying onstage. Bel shows a scene from one of his pieces. In this scene he lip-syncs to “Killing Me Softly With His Song, “ lies down, and stops lip-syncing while the song finishes. Klunchun has a tender, strong reaction; it reminds him of his paralyzed mother’s death.)

Bel: “ The song is 4 minutes 47 seconds, but I die early on. This is my strategy, to leave a lot of space for the audience. I don’t know anything more about death than the audience but I know about theater. My strategy is to give the audience space and time to go to their own ideas.”

Not only does Jerome Bel think and question, he also expects his audience to. This is not TV. This is not dictatorial school, government, or performance. This is people exploring what it means to be alive. This is theater, and life, that goes against many current trends. Can we get off of the couch long enough to rise to his challenge?

Link to New York Times article on Bel from 2005

Jerome Bel/ Pichet Klunchun and Myself

2007-11-11T21:28:00.001-05:00

Photo by R.B.

A slight man from Thailand, dressed in all black, and a slightly balding man from France, dressed in pants and a hot pink button down shirt, sit a good distance apart in chairs facing one another on DTW's stage. A conversation ensues.

It is a performance of a conversation between two men and two cultures, a live documentary on forms of dance and dance making. The men, and the performance itself, ask questions about the nature of performance and the role of art in 2007. In a time of lighting-speed global travel and media overwhelm, what does live dance performance offer?

Jerome Bel and Pichet Klunchun gently share words and movements. There is a stilted quality to their discussion, a slight awkwardness while they communicate things very close to their hearts. There is an innocence that comes from not knowing where to begin. Some of their assumptions are so fundamental it takes them a while to reach understanding, if they do at all.

Bel, the man from France, exists in the pulsing center of an exploration about what contemporary dance is. He speaks clearly and poignantly about his favorite movement, standing still, and about his reasons for not wanting to do fancy jumps and turns, for not wanting the audience to feel “dominated by the performer.” While he has trained and performed in classical Western dance forms, his work moves far away from them.

Klunchun, the man from Thailand, is, on the other hand, steeped in the technique and performance of a centuries-old traditional Thai dance form, Kohn. He is in the process of reclaiming this dance, bringing it back to the theater, away from the restaurants and tourists who have subsumed it. He shares with Bel, and with us, the precise, exquisite movements of this dance.

While the men come from different aesthetics: West/East, Contemporary/Traditional, Pedestrian/Technical, they take up remarkably similar challenges. They both search for their own truths within dance, sometimes against considerable pressure to do something else. They both speak about failure. They both work against modern audiences’ needs for something to hold onto. Ironically, by working in extremes of very new and very old, they both test the stamina of their audience.

Klunchun talks about scores of tourists collecting pictures of Kohn dances instead of experiencing them; he’s working to bring focus back to the dance. He shares that a true Kohn dance could take one full week to be performed. Bel, influenced by French philosopher Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, speaks about people living surrounded by representation so that they see, but don’t live their lives. He talks about not wanting to give them flashy dance moves precisely because that’s what they are expecting. (And people, including a well-known flashy dance choreographer, do leave the theater the night I’m there.)

About standing still, the scruffy and endearing Bel has much to say, “With this scene, I was reaching the essence of the theater- pretentious-but I was trying to show what’s specific about theater. Time and space shared with audience. They watch me and I watch them instead of pretending I’m in the 15th Century.”

Klunchun responds, “I know this from the Buddhists, ‘You must stay in the present. No future, no past.'" And then, “ Do you have something bigger than this to show me?”

I leave the theater wondering what could be bigger.

(And with much more to write about!) other writing related to this piece

Dancers Take Over Washington Square Park

2007-11-09T15:00:00.000-05:00

Movement Choir (this section choreographed by Kristi Spessard)
Photo © Jeffrey Bary

Eight groups of dancers (almost 100 people) work in different parts of the park. They move around trees, run down walkways, spiral in and out of people walking their dogs. They come together around the central fountain. It's like a scene out of Hair. I see patterns of space and effort in the dancers but also in regular people walking through the park, sitting on benches.

This event, held on Thursday, November 8, was co-sponsored by The Laban/ Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies and The Center for Architecture/American Institute of Architects, NY Chapter. Based on the Movement Choirs (massive groups of people moving together in public spaces) of Rudolf Laban, it awakened in me an awareness of the patterns of movement that always exist in this park.

And what a delight to hear unsuspecting park-goers respond! Here are some of the words I overheard:

"I thought spontaneous dancing was just for musicals, but I guess not."

"Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?"

"I've never seen that shit."

"Leave them alone, man.... Oh yeah, Alvin Ailey."

"Broadway stuff."

"They're doing exercise."

"There are like 50 of them!"

Make Art Not War: John Jasperse at BAM

2007-11-06T14:34:00.000-05:00

John Jasperse Company in Misuse Liable to Prosecution
Press Photo, photographer unknown

John Jasperse inspires me to stay in dance. He continues to make work that is thoughtful, heartfelt, and fully physical. I saw his new piece, Misuse Liable to Prosecution, at BAM and felt like running down the aisle to hug him at the end.

The stage at the Harvey Theater is filled with a delicate mobile of suspended clear plastic hangers. With this incandescent web in the background, Jasperse comes downstage in funky found object clothes. He talks to us through a makeshift microphone made out of an orange street cone.

He shares statistics about the money it takes to produce a performance, the money that dancers and choreographers make, or don’t, and the way that they use that money, or don’t. He shares the pitiful amount of money that this country sets aside for the National Endowment for the Arts each year. And he shares the larger amount of money that this country uses for war every day.

While I reel from these statistics, bizarre, beautiful dancers with dust mops strapped to their heads begin to float across the stage.

While addressing economic realities of the dance world by using only found, stolen or donated objects, Misuse poignantly looks at ecological and political realities too. The dancers create entire worlds out of found objects, make use of what already exists in abundance. They find ways to connect in the midst of chaos. They clean up after themselves.

These dancers (Michelle Boule, Levi Gonzalez, Eleanor Hullihan and Kayvon Pourazar, sometimes joined by Jasperse himself) are unparalleled. They inhabit their bodies with an honesty and beauty that perfectly serves the piece. They have the technique to do anything and yet are completely unhindered by the affected style that sometimes comes with technique.

In Misuse, they move in circles completely off-balance, they ram into an air mattress, they delicately fold material and then slash it around. They fully access their own sense of weight, of agency. They encourage me, likewise, to find my own weight, to find the things that I care about, the many ways that I want to move through this world.

Throughout the evening, John Jasperse plays the role of a tender clown. He comes back downstage towards the end of the night and shares with us ideas for the end of the piece. One of these is to line the theater with explosives. To go out with a bang. We are lucky that those of us sitting in Brooklyn that night do not live lives surrounded by explosives.

Jasperse also shares an idea, “What if the whole room just got bigger. Like the whole space breathed in and held it….”

I hold my breath and I know people around me do too. We are a collection of people, together in a theater, sharing time and space.

PORTRAIT OF A MODERN DANCE FAN: A Profile of Doug Post

2007-11-04T19:38:00.000-05:00

Doug Post with his wife Anne

The gentle, white-haired man walks into my living room and immediately starts changing into a new t-shirt. He tells me he’s preparing for our interview. The t-shirt says, “Dance is not a matter of life or death. It’s much more important than that.”

Doug Post is not a dancer, choreographer, producer, curator, or critic. He is an audience member who attends five or six New York City modern dance performances a week. He volunteers, ushers, and finds member discounts, all so that he can see more. In a time of shrinking newspaper coverage and ever shrinking budgets, Doug Post is a human, loving champion of dance....
Read the rest of this profile on DTW's website

Ways of Seeing (Bulging)

2007-11-02T16:31:00.001-04:00

When we name a movement, we can see it and experience it more clearly. This series will explore the many names that Laban Movement Analysis (See post on LMA) offers. While these often sound like regular English words, they sometimes have slightly different meanings when used in an LMA context.

Shape Flow refers to the subtle, personal movement that underlies all movement. Even in "stillness," we use Shape Flow. It is the breath. It is intimately connected with self. It is crying, laughing, sighing. It is the movement we do to make ourselves more comfortable: adjusting our sleeping position, twirling our hair, twiddling our fingers. In a skilled performer, Shape Flow supports personal, integrated, connected dancing. It is also easy to see Shape Flow in children.

One element of Shape Flow is Bulging. Photo of boy by Henri Cartier-Bresson

In Bulging, a Shape Flow movement expands either forward or backward. The two children above are both Bulging forward in their torsos. The boy is also Widening.

Try it: How do you respond to the children above? How do you feel around other people who are Bulging? What would that Bulging look like in a football player, a boss, someone who is indignant? Puff your chest out like you are proud. Breathe deeply letting your belly and your chest expand. How do you feel? Note the next time you see a performer Bulge.

Laban Movement Analysis

2007-11-02T15:48:00.000-04:00

Laban Movement Analysis deeply influences the way I experience movement. I teach LMA at The Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies and I will be exploring it within this blog so here's a little introduction:

Rudolf Laban, photo from limsonline.org

LMA is a system for observing, describing, notating, and delving deeply into movement. It looks at movement through the primary lenses of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space.

First developed by Rudolf Laban in the early 1900s and best known for its notation system, LMA is continually expanded by the people who use it. These people include anthropologists, choreographers, yoga teachers, martial artists, actors, physical therapists, psychologists, dancers and political consultants. Choreographers Mary Wigman, Kurt Jooss, Hanya Holm, Pina Bausch, and William Forsythe descend from Laban’s work.

A holistic system, LMA recognizes that the way we move both reflects and influences the way we live our lives. LMA strengthens and clarifies the work of professional movers and offers insight and movement choices to people in their daily lives.

Dressing Up

2007-10-31T09:58:00.000-04:00

"Barry & Dwayne, Danville, VA. 1970" © Emmet Gowin

My husband's friend was a pizza table for Halloween once. My brother was George Michael. Complete with fake 5 o'clock shadow, he carried a boom box on his shoulder and sang "I've got to have faith."

As children, we delight in dressing up. We pretend to be anything, anyone. We try out ways of existing in the world.

Performers get to do this too. By embodying a full range of human experience in rehearsal or onstage, we sometimes find ourselves more present in the world.

Pretty Girls Devour Akira Kasai

2007-10-27T13:04:00.000-04:00

Photo ©Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times

The white screen lifts to reveal a big white bathtub on wheels. Three-quarters of the way through Butoh America, created by Akira Kasai and performed at Japan Society, five women move to surround this tub. They seem to gather, like the witches in Macbeth, around a cauldron. They dig into the tub and remove a white bundle of material. As they unroll the material, we finally see Akira Kasai. I feel like cheering. His thin, nearly naked, aging body is painted white. He begins to dance.

In the silence, he moves like an infant. Delicate folds of skin fall over his small briefs. He is breathtaking, filled with intention and nuance. Otherworldly choral music enters the space. He continues to explore new areas. He looks like a geisha, a cat, a rave-dancer. Techno sounds float in and out, disrupting the spell.

These moments exist in stark contrast with the rest of Butoh America. While Kasai's performing resonates with my archetypal image of butoh, most of the evening does not.

Yoko Shioya, Artistic Director of Japan Society’s Performing Arts Program, looks at this possible contradiction. (Listen to interview conducted by Eva Yaa Asantewaa) In program notes she writes that, in Japanese dictionaries, the word butoh has been defined as “Western-oriented dance.” Paradoxically, in the U.S., butoh has often meant a specific Japanese-style modern dance involving white-painted, naked dancers moving slowly. Shioya explains, “In fact, much of the contemporary butoh choreography, or butoh-influenced choreography requires dancers to straighten their knees, execute quick turns and jump around in elaborate costumes." She asks, "Then what is butoh? If it can still be considered a unique form of dance, then what makes it unique? Or is butoh now returning to its original Japanese definition of Western-oriented dance?”

Kasai plays with, and doesn't answer, these questions. The five American-based (and butoh-trained) women in Butoh America use elements that I have come to think of as butoh: strong focus, use of breath, and hints of the grotesque. They also perform lots of high leg kicks and things that look like arabesques and barrel turns. They change costumes (mostly made of sexy, girly American Apparel clothes) often. They look like cheerleaders, ballet dancers, original modern dancers, figures on ancient Greek vases, Puck-like characters. Kasai notes in the program that he hopes to "introduce new butoh and dance to New York that could not have been created in Japan and Europe.” Is this what he does? Sometimes it feels like he's invoking Martha Graham or a jazz-dance competition instead.

I'm confused about Kasai's intentions and those of the performers. Kasai seems to make a distinction between the new generation of Western performers and himself. I find myself disappointed that the women seem like caricatures. Their flirtatious clothes and movements sometimes seem not quite embodied. Is this a statement? Is this the dance that can only be made in New York? Is Kasai poking fun at American sensibilities? Or is the performance of this piece not yet fully realized?

Towards the end of Akira Kasai’s brief appearance, four women bring him back towards the tub. For a moment they look like golden figures from a renaissance painting. Then they begin to eat him, devour him, as they stuff him back into the tub. His hand tries to escape one last time. The women stuff it down while they lick their lips.

Is It Dance? (PART I)

2007-10-19T15:51:00.000-04:00

I loved Map Me by Charlotte Vanden Eynde and Kurt Vandendriessche. (See recent post for review.) The piece moved me and made me think. I also feel militant in my need to love it and support it. In her New York Times review of Map Me , Roslyn Sulcas wondered if the piece is dance. I have a lot of thoughts on this subject.

The movement in Map Me did not come out of a ballet class or a modern dance class. It came out of life. It was sparse and imaginative and wacky and poignant. I cannot strongly enough state how much I believe in this approach to performance making.

Any human body that is alive is, however subtly or radically, moving. It follows, then, that a live human body moves even in “stillness.” The movement within stillness includes breath and the many subtle ways we communicate deep parts of ourselves.

Movement that is sparse or subtle requires the audience to meet it half way. It’s a question of imagination and personal responsibility. As an audience member, do I have the capacity and patience to look closely at what is onstage? Do I give myself the authority to find movement and meaning in any human being onstage?

Movement onstage helps me look closely at the movement, and impulses for movement, in my own life. Like Duchamp’s readymades or good photography, it can wake me up to something that already exists.

Recognizable “dance” vocabulary can awaken in me parts of my own embodiment. But often it feels general and clichéd. My experience of life is much too varied and nuanced to express it only within a particular vocabulary.

If dance is truly an art form, we have to move beyond this question of “Is it dance?” We have to expand our definition of dance. We are an art form of the body. The body is mysterious and wild and multi-faceted. Are we committed to the range and depth of human body experience?

To be continued…

Contained and Wild Truths: Map Me by Charlotte Vanden Eynde and Kurt Vandendriessche.

2007-10-19T15:12:00.000-04:00

To be in relationship is to be changed. And Charlotte Vanden Eynde and Kurt Vandendriessche went through many transformations during Map Me, the performance they created and performed together. At the performance I saw at DTW on September 15, they touched on experiences of merging, differentiation, tenderness, aggression, activity, stillness, seeing and being seen. A quiet, deliberate quality ran through the evening creating a contained structure within which wild truths could be explored.

Audience members walked into the theater to find two naked people lying on their sides, facing one another in stillness. Eventually the man moved to balance his body side to side on top of the woman’s. A video projector illuminated their bodies with a test screen of multi-colored rectangles like a Mondrian painting.

The geometric video images softened and deepened. They metamorphosed from views of one body part to another. The difference between video and human flesh became unclear. Video, man, and woman merged. This invited hazier views of body and connection, images of desert and caves, reflections on beginnings and endings. Slowly, the two people unfolded and stood up.

They shifted positions so that they were face to face with his back to the audience. Video images were projected onto his back. They were of her hands sculpting, massaging, penetrating clay. The experience of wanting to open someone up and get inside.

And after getting inside, there is the mess. Hand held storyboards called the next vignette “Mess Me.” The woman stood facing front while superimposed images of sock drawers opened and closed. In “Fix Me,“ the video played in rewind. A dismantled piece of wood was sawed and hammered back together while we heard grating sounds.

Subsequent vignettes moved away from video and further into the crazy depths of this partnership. In a twisted version of cat’s cradle, the two tied string from her nipples to his hands and then from his scrotum and penis to her hands. The glint of light hitting metal scissors as they eventually cut the cords.

A fusion dance ensued with masking tape entirely covering and binding their two heads together. Suffocation. The only music of the evening played. Passionate sounds while the two, stuck together, blind and unable to see, went nowhere.

Themes of developmental progression (of the earth, of a human, of a relationship) became more explicit when the two crawled to center stage and milked themselves with contraptions evoking turkey-basters. This theme continued as they began to use lipstick to draw on one another. They drew a standing person, then a baby, then a fetus. These were drawn so that one half of each drawing was on the woman and one half on the man. The images could only be known when the two connected their bodies just so.

These games and scenes were often playful and sometimes outlandish. Despite this, or probably because of this, there was a rare and tender intimacy between these two people. Performances and relationships inevitably end. At the end of this one, I left the theater a little bit changed.

Full Biography of Aynsley Vandenbroucke

2007-10-19T14:37:00.004-04:00

(Photo © Mathew Pokoik)
Aynsley Vandenbroucke grew up in Chicago and currently divides her time between New York City and the Catskill Mountains. She started dancing in ballet class and living-room-improvisations when she was very young. Her formal dance training included ballet and modern at the Ruth Page Foundation and Lou Conte Dance Studio (home of Hubbard Street) in Chicago. She spent summers studying on grants and scholarships at the Cunningham Studio, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, the American Dance Festival, and ImpulsTanz in Vienna. In 1999, she received her BFA from North Carolina School of the Arts where she studied on scholarship and was nominated for the Princess Grace Award.

When she was young, dance teachers told Aynsley that she liked to think too much to be a dancer. She thought about it and disagreed. But the supposed tension between being a thinking, creating human and being a dancer has continually inspired her to find her own way within the dance world.

While at North Carolina School of the Arts, she co-founded the Pluck Project, now an annual New York performance of graduating seniors. After NCSA, she quit dance for a while in order to get back in touch with her own reasons for dancing. She wanted to focus less on technique and success, whatever that meant. She realized the best way to find her own place within dance was to create her own company.

Her company, Aynsley Vandenbroucke Movement Group, works collaboratively using improvisation, drawing, writing, and discussion. They also do a lot of thinking. In New York City, the company has performed at Baryshnikov Arts Center, Dixon Place,Joyce SoHo, The Flea, The Brooklyn Museum, and Lincoln Center Institute’s Clark Studio Theater, among others. They also recently went on their first tours to Brazil and San Francisco.

Aynsley has created homes within the dance world in two other primary ways. She and her husband, photographer Mathew Pokoik, founded and direct Mount Tremper Arts, an arts center in the Catskill Mountains. Located near Woodstock and Phoenicia, MTA hosts an annual summer festival and serves as a center for exploration within the fields of performance and the visual arts. On wooded grounds with streams, gardens, and hiking trails, it is also a place in which to connect with the natural world.

Aynsley is also a Certified Movement Analyst on the faculty at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies. Here, she gets to question, describe, write about, and dig into all experiences of movement. She is surrounded by people from all fields and walks of life who believe in the power of movement. In Fall of 2009, she will begin teaching dance history and somatics at Lehman College in the Bronx.
Aynsley's approaches to dance and dance-viewing are influenced by her current practices of Zen Buddhism and Gabrielle Roth's 5Rhythms.

Introduction to Reflections on Dance

2007-10-19T14:31:00.000-04:00

I have always danced. And I have written since the time I could hold a crayon. I am a choreographer, a Laban Movement Analyst, and a founder and director of a budding arts center. I am particularly passionate about the places where deep body experience intersects with observation and reflection.

As I clarify my own ways of working within dance, I am finding that I have a lot to say. I end up shaking in the middle of conversations, sometimes writing in the middle of the night to get it out. I love and believe in dance and at the same time aspects of the dance world trouble me. I have many questions.

This blog will serve as a forum for engaging these questions and passions. I will add new posts approximately once a week.

Some of my current writing interests include: