Artists on Making Art  (other posts here, info/contributing here.)

This is the year when I have been attempting to articulate something about the dance process in words. I have resisted this for some time, frustrated by the daunting task of writing about dance and by the very nature of words—as limiters and reducers. There is a lot of discussion in this NYC dance community about there needing to be more discourse about dance. Is this true? How well does verbal or written language serve this form?

This quote is attributed to Martha Graham although many have said it before and since, “the body does not lie”. We must assume by this statement that words do. Is the body a more reliable source for truth than words?  I remember a New Yorker article in which the writer interviewed those in law enforcement who were adept at reading the facial and body language of suspected perpetrators and could determine whether they were in danger or not. (Malcolm Gladwell, Annals of Psychology, “The Naked Face,” The New Yorker, August 5, 2002, p. 38 .)  So--- the body is closer to our instinctual, intuitive selves and hasn’t learned as many “codes” as speech has.

But what does this mean for dance performance? There are many codes in the presentation of a dance as well. We spend years disciplining the body to be able to do various and sundry things. There are many in the dance audience who want to see exceptionally trained bodies doing exceptional things on stage while they watch from a distance. The post -modern scene has been trying to break that habit for some time now.  What is true and what is coded? All performance by its nature is not candid or unconscious. Where does honest expression begin and conscious aesthetic choice end? Even “untrained” performers can have a certain idea of what it means to be on stage.

Perhaps our verbal and written codes are more universally accepted. We have grown culturally weak at reading the body. We are out of touch with and unwilling to trust our own bodies and instincts and needs. We are less able to use the body as a site of knowledge---intuitive and illogical knowledge. The dance performance codifies this intuitive illogical studio exploration so that everyone may perceive it in its live, conscious, never fully codified form.

Unless being used for quantitative purposes (like building muscle or burning calories), the qualitative body perhaps feels too new -agey, too pseudo- scientific, too open, too relative. Words have somehow escaped this suspicion for many.  Therein lies my problem--- my fear that words have predominated culturally for so long---more valued, neater, easier to parse and disseminate and show their heavy hand in the world.  How do we teach others how to live more fully in their bodies? By using words?—or does this work against its purpose?

Carrie Ahern, who’s most recent work was called “striking and original” by The New Yorker, is an acclaimed independent dance and performance artist who has been based in New York City since 1995. She worked primarily as a freelance performer/choreographer for over a dozen dance and theater companies until fully committing her energy to her company, Carrie Ahern Dance, in 2005. She has had a number of commissions for her work including Danspace Project for the evening length The Unity of Skin (2008) presented at St. Mark’s Church and Baltimore Theatre Project. Red (2006), also evening length, was commissioned both by Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church and the Guggenheim Works-and-Process series. In 2003 Bessie award winning dancer Carolyn Hall commissioned a solo, with an original score by Grammy award winning musician Matt Darriau and Ivan Goff. Her shorter works have been presented at numerous venues in New York City: P.S.122, Dixon Place, Movement Research at Judson Church, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, the Angel Orensanz Foundation, Dance New Amsterdam, Chashama, and The Flea among others. Nationally and internationally, her work has been presented at Baltimore Theatre Project, Danceworks and Walker’s Point Arts Center in Milwaukee, Le Regard du Cygne in Paris and at the Festival OFF in Avignon, France. She was a BAX space grant artist in 2007/08 and is a recent recipient of an LMCC Swing Space grant. Upcoming projects include Covers, a collaboration with sculptor Olek, which will be on view Sept 9-25^th for evening rush hour passer-bys of the Roger Smith storefront Gallery at Lexington Ave at 47^th Street; and Sensate, her dance installation to premiere Nov 18-22 on the upstairs and downstairs floors of the Brooklyn Lyceum. www.carrieahern.com