Flow and Shift

Lately I’ve been facilitating a practice with the cast of Reluctant Light that we call “impulse river.” This is a continuum practice—a practice of flow and ongoingness. This is, in the words of one of the dancers, different than “just moving.” In our impulse practice, the goal is to make choices—fire off initiations—more quickly than in a default dancing state.  In order to create the experience/look of ongoingness, you need to constantly re-initiate movement in the body, rather than allow it to resolve or neutralize.  Although it is a corny title, “impulse river” evokes the particular quality I’m trying to “create” (for the purposes of a particular moment in performance). I’m interested in the difference between our continuum practice and a “shift” practice along the lines of Nina Martin’s “fussy” dance.  Namely, I’m interested in a practice wherein the dancer does not neutralize movement, as opposed to a start/stop effect.  What is at stake if we don’t neutralize movement in the body?  What do you need to surrender? Your orientation? Sense of self? Habit? Control? Verticality?

Deconstructing dance

I had the privilege recently to observe Elizabeth Streb mentoring a group of choreographers through CHIME (Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange), a program of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.  In Streb’s aesthetic, action comes first.  Emotion follows.  Streb aims to connect viscerally with the audience through action itself, rather than through movement that is narrative, emotive, or gestural.  She wants to “do something to the audience, to cause a physical reaction so strong that [the audience] feel[s] that some of the moves have literally happened to them.”[i]  Streb is interested in movement that is stripped down to archetypal purity: the flip, the fall, the climb, the balance.  Streb herself says “I’m action, not dance.”

Watching Streb made me curious about the difference between action and dance.

In some ways, Streb is soul sisters with Trisha Brown, whose aesthetic values “pure movement.”  In Brown’s famous words:

“Pure movement is movement that has no other connotations. It is not functional or pantomimic. Mechanical body actions like bending, straightening, or rotating would qualify as pure movement providing the context was neutral. I use pure movements, a kind of breakdown of the body’s capabilities.”[ii]

Where, when and how does action become dance?  Where, when and how does dance become action? If jumping through a pane of glass is the epitome of action, what is the most “dancerly” of movement?  Or do we need to re-define our terms?  Are the answers to these questions different if we are talking about the experience of doing the work (does it feel like dancing?) versus watching the work (does it look like dancing?).

I’ll deal with the experiential angle first.  When does pure movement cross the line from post-modern or athletic task into something that feels like dancing? I auditioned for Streb for three days in 1998, after which I felt like I had been in a car accident. The work was exhilarating, but I didn’t feel like it was “dancing.” Why not? Because, based on my training, I have a certain somatic idea of what “dancing” is supposed to feel like? As a point of comparison, when I was dancing for Trisha Brown, I did feel like I was dancing. (Usually. The role of the standing man in Brown’s For M.G.: The Movie requires the dancer to stand still for the entire piece, which lasts 30 minutes. I tried to feel like I was doing Paxton’s “small dance” the entire time, but it was a challenge.)  Brown’s work definitely exists in the realm of “pure” movement. What then, differentiates Brown’s work from Streb’s?

Perhaps examining the issue from the perspective of the audience will help. Does action look different than dance?  Here are two hypotheses, both of which are easily countered:

1. Transitions
Argument: Action is about the event, and if transitions are present, they exist only to make the next event happen.  Dance is as much about transition as it is about physical event. Counterargument:  Dribbling is as much a part of basketball as shooting a basket.  Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A is certainly a dance. And there are no transitions.

2. Beauty
Argument:  Action is not trying to be beautiful, whereas dance has aesthetic goals.  Streb has called her work “ugly children.” The runner is simply trying to win the race. Counterargument: Diving. Gymnastics. Some people find NASCAR beautiful.  Are there choreographers uninterested in aesthetics?

Right now I am making the end of my new work, Reluctant Light, and trying to build a section where there are two types of bodies on stage—pedestrian and dancerly.  One trio tosses 4-foot long boxes made of PVC pipe back and forth while moving in the space.  The other trio improvises in response to somatic impulse.  The first time I juxtaposed the trios, there were clearly two different kinds of bodies moving in the space:  (1) bodies performing tasks/actions and (2) dancing bodies.  But here’s the interesting part: The more the dancers repeat this material, the more their bodies look the same.  The box-tossing movers have become more dancerly.  Whereas they began with a very rectilinear and efficient approach to tossing the boxes to each other, increasingly their pathways in space have become more curved, and they handle the box in inefficient, but more beautiful ways.  And the dancers performing the dancerly open score have taken on the kinetic charge and energetic dynamic of the box tossers.

As long as we’re talking about pure movement–movement without connotations–I have a hard time distinguishing dance from action.

Finally, let’s consider the work of Merce Cunningham through the action/dance lens. I wouldn’t call his work pure movement because it is not free from the ballet lexicon nor from connotation.  I don’t believe Cunningham was trying to deconstruct the dance canon in the same way that Streb and Brown have. Cunningham’s brand of brilliance comes not from a reductive approach, but rather one of re-creation. He took the dance lexicon—a lexicon full of connotations–and reconstituted its use of rhythm, weight, spatial orientation, and the spine, to create something wholly new. Many of his dances (especially his duets) have sprinklings of gestures that are decidedly full of connotation.  And so it seems easy to place his work in the category of dance, not action.

The action/dance inquiry seems to be a useful tool for thinking about dance and its lineage, assumptions, and aesthetic goals.

Post-writing realization: Perhaps the only thing differentiating dance from action is pleasure.

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[i]  All Streb quotes herein are from “Interview with Elizabeth Streb by A.M. Homes,” Bomb Magazine,  Bomb 112, Summer 2010, http://bombsite.com/issues/112/articles/3525

[ii] Trisha Brown: Dance and Dialogue (2002), p. 87.

Let the form do the work

“Let the form do the work,” a friend said when he came to rehearsal. The moments that ring less true are those in which the dancers are trying to do too much of the work for the audience—moments where they are trying to layer theatricality on top of the movement, to impose a narrative. And so we are going back to material made from a place of feeling and trying to stylize it in the direction of formalism. Such fragile territory—the place between telling too much and not saying enough. Movement that is evocative but ambiguous. How do you get there? What is the relationship between container and contents?

Collaborating with dancers

What kind of choreographic process is most conducive to encouraging dancer creativity? For some choreographers, dancer creativity is not integral to the creative process. In what I’ll call the “old-school genius” model (e.g. Merce), the opportunity for creativity falls almost exclusively to the choreographer. Dancers partner with the choreographer to shape movement, but not to make such decisions like where movement happens in space or how to achieve the overarching vision for a work. That is increasingly an outdated approach. (Whether this trend is related to the increasing predominance of concept over vocabulary in modern dance is a topic for another day). Instead, modern dance choreographers now typically rely heavily on the dancers with whom they work not only to generate vocabulary, but also to problem-solve at every point in the creative process. Indeed, everyone in the dance world now “collaborates” and everyone is a “collaborator.” But not all collaboration is created equal.

Two recent press articles bring fresh perspective to the issue in non-dance settings:

“The New Groupthink,” Susan Cain, New York Times, Jan. 13, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=the%20new%20groupthink&st=cse
(“Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption.”)

and this:

“Groupthink: The Brainstorming Myth,” Jonah Lehrer, The New Yorker, Jan. 30, 2012
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lehrer
(“Debate and criticism do not inhibit ideas but, rather, stimulate them relative to every other condition.”)

Lehrer’s article in particular attacks the central assumption behind brainstorming—namely, the importance of having a nonjudgmental environment. It seems, instead, that creativity thrives under a bit of stress. When ideas are challenged, rather than just simply noted without comment, creativity benefits.

(What would Liz Lehrman think of this? Isn’t her feedback model predicated on containing judgment?)

Since reading these two articles, I have been thinking about what makes collaboration with dancers unique. What is unique about the choreographer/dancer relationship? And what factors support creativity in the unique setting of the dance studio? I say unique meaning different than a corporate or office or other artistic environment.

First, there is a higher level of vulnerability within the choreographer/dancer relationship than in other settings. Why? Because we are dealing with the body. We are processing ideas through the body. When you dance in front of another person, you are exposing yourself in a different way than if you simply voice an idea.

Perhaps then it is therefore even more important in the choreographic environment to give dancers enough time and space to work independently on problems/tasks before they are seen and evaluated. Every dancer is different—some need more privacy to create than others.

Part of the choreographer’s job then is to evaluate what each dancer needs in order to be most creative. More challenge and resistance to their ideas or more privacy and independence? More solitary creative time or more time being live coached and challenged on the spot? This is a subtle but crucial form of leadership in the studio—mediating relationships and process so each person in the room feels safe and productive.

In the business world, perhaps these conditions go without saying. Not so in the dance world. I’m interested in improving my toolbox in this department. Dancers out there–any opinions on what conditions facilitate your creativity when in the studio with a choreographer?

Replay

by HMD company member Katharine Hawthorne
www.khawthorne.net

We start rehearsing for Reluctant Light again tomorrow, after a month long break. Part of coming back to a rehearsal process after a break is remembering — remembering the physical structure of the piece, your place in it, and your working relationships with all the collaborators.

I recently did a several day Tuning Scores workshop with Karen Nelson in which we worked with ‘replay,’ a score in which an initial improvised experience is repeated. There were several different versions of the score: one person performed two gestures and the group repeated it back; we worked on a duet and then replayed our experience for our partner; we danced an extended solo and had it repeated back to us.

Replay is a score in which a faithful ‘realistic’ memory is not only unnecessary, but potentially hinders an intuitive response. It is more meaningful to have the feeling and emotional tone of an experience reflected than the precise sequence of steps. I am fascinated by this tension — how faithful repetition is actually not as satisfying as repetition that takes liberties and expands on the personal dimensions of one’s experience. I have been blessed with a near perfect memory for recalling steps, directions, and movement mechanics — but I am often frustrated by the resulting limitations of verbatim recall.

So, as we return to the studio tomorrow, I hope not only to bring my memory of the work done thus far, but to also allow for it to open and grow. Let’s replay.

Tools for the practice of presence

What tools will help me to be more present to the choreographic moment?

In the hopes of undermining habits of my frontal cortex that seem to get in the way of a more responsive creative process, I am going back into rehearsal tomorrow with some new tools. Usually, I have a plan for rehearsal, and bring my notebook into the room. Trouble is, I tend to get lost in my notebook. One day I saw myself from the outside, looking in: sitting, hunched over my notebook, back turned to the dancers, brow furrowed. Here I was, ostensibly creating a piece about intimacy (with self and others), but my posture was entirely closed, and I was not in my own body. I wanted to be more present in the room. So for tomorrow I have limited my reliance on language as an anchor for process by allowing myself to only use huge pieces of paper that I will post on the back wall. On these sheets I can write only what is essential. Another tool that disconnects me from the creative moment is reliance on video. I tend to video process and respond later—again, a barrier to presence in the moment. So tomorrow I will not sit behind the camera. Yes, I will set up a camera, but will simply let it run on a tripod in the corner.

Tomorrow we will begin with an improvisation score designed to point the way to: fire, desire, pleasure and play—antidotes themselves to the rather abstract, formal and cool landscape we have already created. And on another sheet, a set of live coaching cues I will use to guide the action:

Stay with it
Stay with the feelings
Deepen the breath
Find a rhythm to the action
Repeat/Rewind and repeat
Color the action with [inset emotion]
Allow the image to develop
Amplify
Act on instinct
Clear the space/exit

The above are cues for individual dancers.
On another list, a set of cues for relationships in the space:

Enter
Relate
Mirror with body or box (we are working with a set of boxes as props)
Pick up the image (and/or develop)
Support what’s developing (“Yes, and”)
Amplify
Join
Obstruct with body or box
Make or break contact
Exit

Readers, what helps you be more responsive to a creative moment? What is your experience with tools in the studio, or the cues listed above? Of course, here I am writing about everything. Language surrounds and permeates the process, even as I try to contain it. Stay tuned to how the above tools influence process and outcome.

Interview with Dušan Týnek

Photo by Julie Lemberger

Dušan Týnek is a choreographer and the artistic director of Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre (dusantynek.org). Týnek is also Hope Mohr Dance’s 2012 Bridge Project artist. Hope Mohr Dance’s Bridge Project brings notable choreographers to the Bay Area. As part of its 5th home season performances March 22-24 at Z Space in San Francisco, Hope Mohr Dance will present Týnek’s company, Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre. Mohr and Týnek met in 1997 while both studying on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham studio in New York. They also performed together in the company of Lucinda Childs. Hope recently caught up with Dušan in advance of his arrival in San Francisco.

How do you begin to make a dance?

Most of the time, I begin with a tiny idea flickering somewhere on the periphery of my mind and from there I begin developing movement in my living room, while listening to a lot of different music and frantically researching anything that may pertain to the particular seed of an idea. By the time I get into the studio with my dancers, I usually know what I am striving for. It’s a long and arduous and in the end extremely gratifying process, and I imagine it does feel like giving birth sometimes.

What are some of your choreographic habits or tools?

A lot of my spatial and time related organization of movement is quite complex. It would be extremely time consuming to work those out with my dancers, so I often sketch these in the form of drawings and charts at home. In this respect, my dance notebooks resemble work of a mad scientist. I guess it’s a leftover from my previous studies as a biologist.

Your work is highly musical. How do you go about creating movement in relationship to music?

I was born into a musical family and studied music since I was a child, so it’s kind of inherent to me. Choreography is very close to writing music with the major difference that your instruments are the dancers’ bodies and the score is the movement. I believe good dance has a rhythm that does not have to be obvious but as an audience member one perceives it subconsciously. I try to be musical and create movement that works with a particular score or create my own unique score without parroting what’s already obvious in the music. I’m not interested in explaining or paraphrasing music with movement. I use music to support the dance and hopefully enhance it in some way.

How has your approach to dancemaking changed over time?

I have become definitely more efficient as a dance maker and it’s easier now for me to translate ideas into movement. Also I am much more comfortable with making choreographic decisions on the spot even though I still do a lot of preparation before a rehearsal. I do let myself be more spontaneous nowadays and usually succeed in refraining from editing my work too soon.

You worked as a member of the Merce Cunningham RUGS (Repertory Understudy Program). What did you learn from Merce and how has his work influenced you?

No kind of movement is worse or better than other. Musicality and stillness in dance are essential.
Space is multidimensional and therefore dance can be seen/experienced from an infinite number of points.
One should try to keep challenging oneself and not settle for the easy or the obvious.
If you believe in what you do and do it well, the audience will eventually come to you.

You also danced with Lucinda Childs for several years. What did you learn from her work?

Beauty and power often result in simplicity.

When you watch choreography, what do you value most as an audience member?

Intelligence, logic, invention and skill.

What questions do you have right now as an artist?

What’s next?