Lately, I’ve been feeling like a graceless choreographer. That’s because I’m Graceless. Grace was my Welsh Corgi, my kindred spirit, my fluffy joy, my friend. She was euthanized due to illness at the age of 13 this past July. In the wake of this I find myself inevitably heartbroken and, oddly, struggling to choreograph as I once did.
My partner and I live in a loft which is mostly a dance studio where I rehearse every day with my company. Grace was with the dancers and me almost daily for 13 years. This is basically the lifespan of my company to date. The Bang Group without Grace never occurred to me. It still doesn’t make sense.
Corgis are a herding breed. As such, Grace had much to offer a choreographer. Movement patterns aroused her, rhythm aroused her, partnering riveted her, asymmetry provoked her. She had the same fixations I had. Her insane devotion to rhythm echoed my own. When I made an intricate, rhythmic pattern Grace would plunge headlong into the fray of dancers and try to sort them, to bring them to order. Sometimes she seemed just to want to drink in the intoxicating beat. This was rather annoying to the dancers, though her intentions were benign, but it was very helpful to me. I came to rely on her responses. I’d lay something out in the space and look to her. Her eyes would roll in boredom. I’d change the tempo or dynamic or alter the intent. She’d lick her black lips and sink to the floor with a huff. I’d add smart dollops of rhythm and yank the pattern toward crookedness and she’d leap up, yelping and charging. I knew I’d hit on something good....
...I think that the way art makes change is one consciousness at a time. It forces us to stop our usual patterns of processing information sometimes through causing us confusion, sometimes through pointing us to pleasure. It is through arguing for the inherent worth of a life lived with confusion or pleasure that art makes us re-think the world we live in. Because in those moments we are revealed to ourselves and others without pretense. We want those moments but we fear them as well, so we tame them, we cloak them in formulas and focus our attention on less threatening things like income levels and social squabbles. So much for change. Our real job is to be the guardians and cultivators of those moments where ever we find them....
...However, in its place, I would like to count as necessary to art making those things that guilt proposes to negate; rest, sustenance (culinary, intellectual, spiritual), space, time, comfort, ease, attention, health, conversation, movement, freedom (from "should", from over analysis, to change one's mind ((multiple times, if necessary)), to let something brew, to be fiercely obsessive or to be unconcerned), and, perhaps the first thing that vaporizes when the call of guilt sounds its menacing horn: Pleasure....
...It's the gestation period for a dance, and its actual life in front of any audience, that seems out of whack. It disappears way too quickly. How can I facilitate a process that maximizes interactions between me and audiences both in the performer/viewer relationship, and in the relationship of peers talking about performance and the making of meaning?
...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?
... I now have a different relationship with the notion of rehearsal AS a practice. Although there is usually a presentation to prepare for and something to create, I think the “practice” element of a rehearsal should encompass these lofty intellectual and humanistic aims I held so dear when I was younger, and still do. If we look to art to inspire us to a greater humanity, in fact elevate us, what as artists should we be practicing during rehearsal? How can we truly create a practice out of rehearsal and what are we practicing?
...there is a particular phenomenon that occurs when the show is over. An accurate name might be the POOF! effect. After exorbitant amounts of work, the performances finally come and then POOF! , it all disappears. It is the most amazing and disturbing magic act ever. It is acutely unsettling to some inner compass of mine that has been pointing and guiding toward CREATE and DANCE and ART. Then POOF! and I am alone in the middle of a vast desert with the faint echoes...
One of our primary goals at Mount Tremper Arts is to facilitate dialogue between artists and audience members and also between artists and artists (both performing and visual arts). We want to talk about how and why art is made, how it is sustained....