| catch up |
[Feb. 23rd, 2009|08:30 am] |
It has been ages since I've posted... it has been a busy and creative time. 'Showed several new pieces and a new version of "Hocket" at "Squint" - a concert with Brian Crabtree...
and then quickly turned around and started working on my performance solos.
All went well... exciting, exhausting, but very fulfilling. I feel stronger as a result. So many people really opened their hearts to me and my work. I can't ask for more than that.
And now I am back to process... beloved process. I have been waiting for the time to write music, and now I am doing so at a slightly manic pace. Whitney's printing press seems to be pulling new images out of me as well... and I am finding that the concrete and weighted nature of applying ink, dropping paper, settling the felt and then rolling and pressing the image is a very grounding process. It is keeping me connected to the parts of my work that go deeper than words.
I am hoping to connect with Joe Hensley to record some of these new songs.
And there is also a Looping project afoot.... a new commission for the Boston Cyber Arts Festival - a new work that springboards from Merce Cunningham's "Loops"... a gorgeous old piece in which MC has choreographed loops of movement for his fingers, hands and arms. The process with which this became cyber is so heady that I have to literally sit down in order to not get dizzy... but the concept is fascinating, and when I know better how to explain it, I will post it.
And lastly, Doug and Antonio and I are going to start working next week. Ahhh.... physical theater. So great, so daunting, such amazing potential. I have been pouring through the various Galeano texts to pull out ideas and images. This one I love:
"This woman from Oslo had on an enormous dress dotted all over with pockets. She would pull slips of paper out of her pockets one by one, each with its story to tell, stories tried and true of people who wished to come back to life through witchcraft. And so she raised the dead and the forgotten, and from the depths of her dress sprang the odysseys and loves of the human animal who goes on living, who goes on speaking." |
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| Slogging... and breathing |
[Nov. 30th, 2008|02:43 pm] |
I recently read an article about old folks (like me) doing their blogging in an old-fashioned way... slowly. They call themselves "Slow Bloggers." It is nice to know that I am not alone. Even though these slow bloggers deemed themselves turtle-like because they blog in complete sentences (which I usually don't) and sometimes blog as infrequently as two times a month (I am lucky if I post my once-a-month goal), I do feel a bit less ridiculous in using the blog situation to write essays about art and art making. And, like most other slow bloggers, I do acknowledge that I am really blogging for myself... to clarify my thoughts. Maybe fast bloggers are really doing this as well... I don't really know.
So I am a slogger. It keeps me writing, keeps me engaged in my artwork, keeps me looking for connections.
This month's slog: I want to write about a great breakthrough I had during a voice lesson. I have been working with Jonathan Hart Makwaia down in NYC... and he is a generous and thoughtful teacher. Coaxing me along... not too pushy... allowing me to work with my instincts and discover much through my own vocal tunneling. So far, it has been a wonderful journey. In my lessons, Jonathan has been encouraging me to find the connection between inhalation and exhalation... and this seems obvious enough. But with vocalizing, it really isn't. In yoga or in dance, we constantly work with this. In yoga, my teachers are often reminding me to find a seamless transition from the in-breath to the out-breath. But in vocalizing, even though the in-breath is stressed as important, the out-breath is usually when you make your glorious sounds. And even if you are not stressing one over the other, you usually have them in different camps - maybe inhalation is preparation (this is most common, I think) and exhalation is the sound. Maybe inhalation is recovery... and then exhalation is more sound. Whatever the definition, there is always a transition... or at least there was for me. And there was a mental break during this transition... a time when I stopped singing (or sounding) and did the other thing, the inhalation. This was most noticeable (mentally) when I was improvising. So, in my last lesson, I tried to not drop the train of sound, the images I was working with, the energy I was working with while in exhalation... and I tried to keep these things moving during inhalation. And it was an incredible experience. It kept me in the flow of the work in a way I have never experienced. And it made me realize how much I was prioritizing this exhale time. If I connected the inhalation and the exhalation into one larger experience, I had a deeper experience... and I discovered more, travelled further.
And this brings me back to blogging. What is blogging... but a lot of exhalation? And if everyone is blogging so fast and furiously, we are not really spending much time inhaling... taking things in. Our culture spends an awful lot of time spewing things out... and as part of a capitalist system we are constantly encouraged (or pressured) to produce. Too much exhaling. Not enough inhaling.
I am still working with this concept. As often happens, I found it easy to apply in the safety and controlled environment of a voice lesson. Trying to apply this in my own studio has proved to be much harder. And trying to apply it to other things in life (relationships, how I spend my time, work situations) is proving to be very challenging. But I am fascinated with this idea... and I want to keep challenging myself in this way.
Slog out. |
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| tape players and physical theater |
[Oct. 21st, 2008|10:55 am] |
I have become obsessed with two things: tape players and physical theater. Both are not new obsessions... but for some reason they are both wanting fresh attention from me lately.
Sometime last year, I started using tape players as a live sound source to layer voice on top of. I liked the scratchy quality of the sound... and the way that live vocals mixed into the sound without competing for space. The two sources seem to lay down their waves on a slightly different plane. It works for me. I have really been enjoying working with voice and recorded music... a fairly new thing for me. Over the past several years, I have been insistent on live sound only, but recently I have discovered that the recorded sounds give a great sense of past tense, history, and nostalgia. There is a wistful sound that comes from tape players.
So... cassette tapes and tape players...
But there is a problem with this obsession. Cassette tapes and tape players are quickly becoming a thing of the past. I have two old players which I love very much... and I just purchased a back up because I fear that soon I will not be able to find any at all. I visited a wretched giant box-like store two days ago in search of tape players and they had none. NONE. This is a mammoth store, with more musical and technical goods than any store has a right to display under one gargantuan roof... and they had no cassette players. And I thought "why do I need tapes? Maybe I should just transition to CDs. More practical." But I know that I love the kinesthetic grounding of tape. I learned how to edit with reel-to-reel. "Cut and splice" were real physical things you did... not just another key to press on a keyboard. So I feel committed to tape. But I really was questioning it.
I have been watching clips of various physical theater companies (DV8... and Fabulous Beast) on YouTube... and that kind of work really gets my blood churning (in a good way). I have been in conversations with a theater colleague of mine, and I am all fired up to create a physical theater version of "The Body Artist" by Don DeLillo (one of my all time favorite books). I have been reading and re-reading the book, jotting down ideas, writing music... jumping into the process. And then I realized that a key part of the story has to do with this tape recorder... dealing with past and present through recording and listening and dissecting voice and meaning and time.
And now I know that I am not crazy for either of these obsessions. They are suddenly, beautifully interwoven. |
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| A bloggy blog |
[Sep. 7th, 2008|10:54 am] |
Well, it has been 14 weeks since my last entry. Summer has come and gone. And it is time for me to finally write a bloggy blog - choppy, gramatically incorrect... the kind of blog that is really a blog and not an essay (as all of my former blogs have been). Time for me to join the present. If millions of 20 somethings can do it, so can a 42 year old.
So... what I did over my summer vacation:
Jed and I showed the latest version of Hocket:
after scary medical conditions, crazy schedules, technical nightmares... and lots of other stuff... we did pull off a few performances of Hocket at Mobius... and I was pleased. Still am. I haven't really processed the work. I haven't even been able to watch the video footage... because, I think, my experience of performing the piece was very powerful. I was able to step away from the position of choreographer, composer, collaborator (with Jed Speare)... and really experience the piece as a performer. And it was meaningful to me. The intensity and repetitions of the piece allowed for some kind of transformation to occur... and for time to alter in a beautiful way.
I went to France (again... lucky me). I got "hired" to cook for the Art Teacher's Workshop at Les Tapies in the Ardeche region of France. It was incredible. Whitney and I had a blast cooking, our eaters loved what we served, we both made a lot of art (Whitney - prints, photos, paintings... Me - video and photography). We sang into the wee hours at an old castle near St. Pierreville (John Smalley on viola, Leo the cook on guitar, Bill on guitar, me and Whit and others on mouth). Magical. Les Tapies, for me, had hints of Black Mountain College - collective living, incessant art, great conversion, inspiring people, insane pace, beautiful environment. Exciting.
Also got to visit Barcelona... and was inspired by the Gaudi works, Las Meninas (a large, later work by Picasso) and the Tapas - my ideal food. Small quantities of the best food ever. My favorite food city so far.
Came home from Europe to Art Camp - a very informal gathering of a few artists to make work together. I made a ton of prints and really enjoyed working with the press.
I swam strokes inspired by Michael Phelps. That underwater footage has helped me to swim even faster, I swear it's true!
I played and swam and laughed and hiked with nieces and nephews (and other family members).
I bought a ukulele... and fell in love with it! 'Great instrument. Great with my alto voice... it is like my little, kid brother who I never had. The tuning is crazy and it falls out of tune constantly... but still... I have to hold myself back because I would play all day long. The first day I had it, I did play all day long. The second day I had it, I spent all day making a one-of-a-kind case for it out of old fabric and cardboard (it looks better than that sounds). The third day I had it I spent the whole morning downloading ukulele songs off of the internet and practicing finger picking with "Pineapple Pete" on some weird website. I had to pace myself because I was becoming a bit manic... and Whitney was starting to look at me in a strange and concerned way.
I performed a Brian Crabtree duet at Camp Camp up in Maine. We performed a recent duet on a tiny stage (maybe 15 ft. x 12 ft.?) at the Talent/No Talent show on a gorgeous night in the lakes region of Maine. Other acts of note: the Ukulele Ensemble playing "Knock Three Times" and the Broadway Dance Class' versions of hits from "Mama Mia." All of the acts were heart-felt, honest, generous. 'Would that all performances were as beautiful in spirit.
I started getting back into shape for fall performances.
And that is where I am now - reworking old solos (My Spammy Heart, Crash, Inside/Out, Brine) and creating a new one (Il Lupo). The new one is kicking my butt... but three weeks before performance, that is entirely appropriate. I am having a blast working on rebuilding the costumes with Anna Zamarripa. The old ones were eaten by squirrels (no joke). Whitney and I starting to look at images for slides which will be shown in between the solos.
I am dancing with Caitlin Corbett and we are working hard to get her show in shape for two weeks from now. I love dancing her choreography. Very lush and complex. This piece (Tom's Wealth) is also a butt buster. Literally. I have been dipping very heavily into my Tiger Balm. |
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| Deborah Hay practice slays the ego... |
[May. 30th, 2008|11:36 am] |
…or at least gives the ego so much to think about that it has no room to press for its petty need of approval.
In the fall of 2007, a new friend and colleague, Karl Cronin, sent me an email. He had just returned from doing the SPCP with Deborah Hay in Scotland. SCPC stands for “Solo Performance Commissioning Project”, and in these project/workshops, the participants learn a solo created by Deborah Hay. Karl was really excited about the work and wanted to perform his solo in Boston with me. I was part of an SPCP in 2000, and I learned the solo “Boom Boom Boom.” I said yes to Karl, and he and I raved in emails about Deborah’s brilliance and how challenging and fulfilling her work is. Deep in my heart, however, I felt panic. I had not performed my solo in about seven years… and the work is hard… really hard. Deborah’s choreography is unlike anyone else’s – she choreographs the consciousness of the performer by giving a practice to each piece and then building form around the practice. The practice of my solo is:
“Three principles guide the practice of Boom Boom Boom.
- Imagine the whole body at once has the potential to perceive a magical here and now, rather than a prescribed here and now.
- One cannot do it.
- Practice with loyalty and disinterestedness at the same time.
So there was that. Yikes.
And then there was the form. Could I remember the form? Could I find my notes from August 2000? Currently, Deborah gives each SPCP participant a small manual that includes the practice and form of the solos. In my project, we got a copy of the practice, but the form (specific instructions and stage directions to follow that give the solos their shape and identity) was given orally and written down in notebooks. Where the heck was that notebook? I poured through boxes of old journals without luck, and decided to postpone the whole thing until winter.
About four months ago, I finally found the notes. But to my dismay, the notes I had taken were cryptic and seemed to have been written in an altered state of mind. For example, here is the first direction:
“Boom Boom Boom
Stage L to Stage R, pathway deceptive.”
What? I started rewriting my directions, trying to make sense of the whole thing. Most of the notebook was filled with Deborah’s feedback of our attempts of the solo (“Grace – water bottle rattle, predictable symmetry, can kill the interest -do it this side, do it that side, don’t ever go back!”) and entry after entry of how frustrated I was.
My panic increased. How could I pull this off? In my previous experiences of executing and witnessing her work, my sense was that, if done very well, it could be brilliant. And I had really only seen Deborah herself perform the work at that level. If done all right, the work looks kind of crazy. And if done poorly, it is torture to everyone involved (performer and audience). I had no hopes of doing the work very well, so it seemed that my options were crazy or wretched… and I didn’t like those choices. I started worrying about what my future audience would think of the work… and of me. And so my ego got involved – big time.
I worked on the solo a few times a week – trying to make some sense of the form through my scribbles. I came up with elaborate set and costume ideas (in hopes, I think, of hiding from this imaginary audience… of distracting them, maybe, from the fact that I couldn’t really do this dance at all). I changed the text. And always, always… I felt like I was being watched. I was so scared of disapproval. In one of my sessions, I again started looking for old notes and I came upon some of Deborah Hay’s writings from 2002. There was a section in there about “Boom Boom Boom,” She wrote:
“An example of the paradox in action is in my newest solo Boom Boom Boom, the third dance in a trilogy, also titled Boom Boom Boom. It is a 21st century earth dance. My question was ‘If I were to perform an earth dance today, as a fairly austere, somewhat cynical New York bred experimental artist, how would it manifest?’
What I learned from the question was that I could take this personal evocation seriously if I examined it through the lens, what if every cell in my body at once has the potential to perceive magic-in-ordinary-reality? During the first eight months of this meditation-like exercise my attention was on a 72-trillion-celled monster’s real and/or imagined response to seeing magic. Magic was crystallized through incidences of color, texture, perspective, coincidence, other dancers with whom I was working, my own spontaneous feelings of awe. Personally, my attention translated somewhat like being a kid at the circus. Then something altered dramatically, and my field of vision was filled to capacity with ordinary reality, which had previously been the background for seeing the magic. Ordinary reality, which I named floor, lights, other dancers, windows, walls, became the foreground once I could presume the presence of magic. I could presume the presence of magic because, after eight months of reconditioning, I was able to identify the sensual, somatic response to my experience of magic. Magic became not the object of my seeing, but the sensual experience of my perception.”
Wow.
There was no mention of the form. It was all about the practice… and practicing the practice. I had forgotten the practice! The beautiful practice of trying to perceive magic-in-ordinary-reality! And I remembered that this part, this gem, was the heart of the work… and was also the thing that excited me so when I worked with Deborah in 2000. I stopped remembering the frustration and started remembering the ah-ha moments, the break-throughs, the instances of total freedom in movement and expectations. And then I stopped remembering and just started doing. I dropped the form and just worked on the practice. I dropped my fancy costumes and elaborate sets. When I was ready, I went back to the original text. And I loved it. I started practicing every day. My joy grew, and my invisible and critical audience disappeared into the dust particles playing in the sunbeams. My ego also began to disappear. And then I was ready for the form again… and the piece just flowed. Each direction that felt like a stumbling block before now became a fresh opportunity to explore. The dreaded text came alive as my mouth created sounds and released it. What a pleasure. And what a gift Deborah Hay had given me…a gift that was eight years old and now was being appreciated as if brand new.
Karl arrived on a Sunday in early May. We talked and talked about the work. And then we danced our practices side by side. We practiced in my little studio; we practiced on a rock in the orchard as the apple blossoms fell. And we shared our solos with each other. It was exhausting work, but so gratifying. And then we performed our solos in Cambridge to a wonderfully appreciative audience. |
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| Settling |
[Mar. 30th, 2008|11:51 am] |
Settling – streams of consciousness 11
From one world to another – Spirit of Uganda to Laurie Anderson. Here at the Opera House – waiting for Laurie Anderson – everyone looks like me. I even ran into David Miller – had a brief chat about Cage. Dinner with Rebecca beforehand. A clearinghouse of insecurities and inspirations. She tells me I am “settling” – artistically – and I agree. I feel like I had a lot of talent and I just don’t know how to step ahead. I began to talk about how exciting the Ugandan dance and music was – how integrated they were – and Rebecca asked me how it worked… so I explained how everybody did everything, but some were featured on some parts more - singers in the back were miked, dancers up front sang, but were not miked. I kept coming up with ideas for why it wouldn’t work for me – she kept challenging my excuses (talent, rehearsal space, time, etc.)… and she talked about her love of layering. Me too. I love the layers, the collage. This discussion excites and inspires me.
Later – Laurie Anderson had moments of brilliance – her text work, her braveness and clarity. Her music, though, her voice – they seemed stuck in the past. And I go back to what Rebecca said – that I am settling. I have two responses: one – that settling is a beautiful state, acceptance, peace, a time and process of porous ness – allowing ebb and flow between internal and external. A real admittance that I have nothing to say and a thousand ways to say that nothingness. I sit in the sun and watch my dog sleep. Occasionally, I go into the studio and dance and record what I am doing. Occasionally I write some music. Is this bad? Is this settling bad? The other response is frustration, impatience, anger, attention seeking. And some other word that describes a child who feels wronged… but I can’t remember that word. This response sounds bad and wrong, and yet it fuels my going forward. It is the only thing that keeps me from settling completely. And here I realize that I am spouting un-truths. There is another motivator in me – one of excitement and one that craves beauty, that sits with mouth open and smiling while watching talented young people from Uganda spin and pound and sing and fill my viscera with rhythm and connection. This last response to settling… it is like the spring – insistent, naïve, hopeful, and wordlessly beautiful. I need to listen to this. |
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| My 20-minute break with Andre |
[Mar. 9th, 2008|11:40 pm] |
My 20-minute break with Andre (Streams of Consciousness 10)
On Friday, I had 20 minutes to eat and have time to myself in between classes. We are currently involved in exploring some simple stage combat, so the energy in classes has been high and laced with adrenaline. I forgot to bring a book with me and I wanted to read something, so I pulled My Dinner With Andre off of my bookshelf. It is my dad’s old copy, and I was hoping that his need for copious underlining in pen would not impede my experience of the screenplay. I had never read it, or even seen the movie.
I started out by reading Andre Gregory’s introduction… and was amazed at how perfectly his words reached out to soothe my current artistic raw spots. Here is what I read:
"…your early years, say your twenties, should be all about learning – learning how to do it, how to say it, learning to master the tools of your craft; having learned the techniques, then your next several years, say your thirties, should be all about telling the world with passion the conviction everything that you think you know about your life and your art. Meanwhile, though, if you have any sense, you’ll begin to realize that you don’t know very much – you don’t know enough. And so the next many, many years should be all about questions, only questions, and that if you can totally give up your life and your work to questioning, then perhaps somewhere in your mid-fifties you may find some very small answers to share with others in your work."
What a balm. These sentiments match exactly where I am at artistically. It is amazing to me that we (as artists, as humans) seem to hit these milestones (or sometimes the milestones hit us) at the same points in our lives. I am in that stage of “many, many years” in which I can question. And I guess that Gregory’s writing has given me some permission to do just that. It is my instinct at this point to question… to build problem sets for myself. And now I feel that it can be an opportunity, a privilege even, to fall into the beauty of questions and experiments. I am trained in various techniques, but it is time to test them, to stretch them. And because I am at a stage in my life where my lack of knowledge is so obvious to me, I don’t feel ready to “say” anything. I just need to practice my craft and explore, explore, explore. “Hocket” is giving me the opportunity to do this. I learn with each rehearsal. I am applying new solutions to the problems of phrasing, counting, layering… and other issues. It feels like a graduate seminar class in which Jed and I are the teachers and the students. So interesting. And I am building little, tiny pieces on my own: a duet with Jess Newman (original music by me… really challenging counterpoint and movement and the ever-present conundrum of how to sing and dance at the same time without throwing up or looking or sounding horrible), a brand new series of voice (and movement?) duets for a small camp of wind-up music boxes and me, and a revisitation of a 2000 solo taught to me by Deborah Hay.
So thank you, Andre. I am questioning. |
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| Creative Boredom |
[Mar. 9th, 2008|11:16 pm] |
Creative Boredom (Streams of Consciousness 9)
I just spend two wonderful hours letting the brilliance of Peter Serkin’s musical abilities permeate my ears, skin, pulse, lungs, etc. He played a huge program: Wuorinen, Messiaen, Brahams, Bach… and then more Brahams. At some moments I was riveted. At others, I scribbled musically induced inspirations for new pieces of my own in the margins of my program. I closed my eyes and felt the music. I opened my eyes and watched Serkin pound away, possessed with Brahams and birds. Twice I fell asleep… one time so thoroughly that my neck snapped back in that recognizable dream drop of concertgoers and commuters. The tiny nap was a moment in heaven. I felt no shame in falling asleep. In fact, that kind of dreamy, inspired time is so good for me as an artist. I think that it is a state of creative activity… one that is hard to describe. And maybe even one that might not give birth to the most brilliant of ideas, but it is valuable nonetheless.
About a year ago, I read a dance review/preview in Time Out New York in which a choreographer described this above-described state as “boredom.” I don’t necessarily think this is the best term for it… but I knew what he was talking about. He was hoping to create a dance performance in which his audience could find this place. I am not sure that dance is really the place to do this. Dance is so visual and the eyes are so important in receiving the work fully. Personally, I cannot find my “creative boredom” without the freedom of closing my eyes. But maybe I should allow myself to close my eyes at dance performances… allow the piece to slip in and out of my vision. Maybe it might even help the work. I saw Merce Cunningham’s work at Dia:Beacon recently… and the piece was designed so that the viewers could not see the whole piece. Part of the dance was always obstructed. This did not bother me at all. In fact, I was thrilled with the work. I was completely engaged. At Dia:Beacon, the obstruction was a wall. If I allow this to happen at any dance concert, the obstruction would be my closed eyelids. But perhaps this could free me to find as much inspiration in dance as I do in music. |
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| no secret key |
[Jan. 9th, 2008|12:50 pm] |
Streams of consciousness 8 (12/28)
As artists, I think we are often looking for the secret key or keys that will open some mystical door that leads to artistic fulfillment. The more work I do, the longer I live, the more I read, the more work I see and experience… it all points to the same truth: art making is both wonderful and incredibly difficult. Sometimes I think you need to be rich, like Bryce Marden, and then you can focus only on your art. But then I’ll think you need to be poor, like Warhol, because then you will have drive. Or maybe you need a patron, or maybe you need to live in NYC, or really Europe is the place to be because they have funding, and… on and on it goes. And it is all BS because there is no key because there is no door. Art making is hard to do. And it is engaging and exciting like nothing else. My work is my work, and while I often get inspiration from seeing or reading about other artists’ work, the path is my own; and the tools for my journey are inside of me. I can’t find them externally, or buy them somewhere. This is both encouraging and distressing. Encouraging because I don’t need to reach outside of myself for answers. Distressing because this all requires a certain mature detachment and objectivity. And when it comes to viewing and dissecting my own work, detachment is difficult. |
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| Steve Reich... and balance |
[Jan. 9th, 2008|12:49 pm] |
Streams of consciousness 7 (12/2/07)
Most exciting art event of recent times – Steve Reich concerts – esp. the Wed. PM version of “Music for 18 Musicians.” I was blown away. Those bass clarinets, so amazing. The texture, the waves, the math, the bending of time and space in such a simple and yet complex manner. It really inspired me.
Going back to my solos has been interesting… interesting in that they are not interesting enough. They feel dated, and working on them feels like a task. Not enough spark. Definitely not enough flow. Since art making needs to be for myself, it has to be fulfilling, challenging, exciting. I need to get obsessed, to pull from many sources, to lose time when I work. The creative part of building work needs to be so process-driven that the product is happenstance. All of the work – the text writing, music writing, image thinking, movement generating – all (or most) of that work happens alone. So I have to enjoy it. No one is coaxing me, or often even paying me, to do this work. And that takes pressure off; and, interestingly enough, it has also made it clear that the solos, going back into the solos, were driven by a need to perform. A need to perform is not a strong enough motivator for me to log in all the studio hours required.
After seeing the Reich concert, I got very excited about composition again. And after several years of working on keyboards and electric pianos, I have a real piano again. It is a joy to work on a real piano. So I am excited about composition and I want to build a series of short studies – most likely group pieces… but we’ll see…
And I am excited to finally have the time to revisit “Hocket” (collaborative project with Jed Speare). There are so many sections (Ceza, Jim’s part… and others) that were little sketches just thrown together and now I have time for them. I dove into the Ceza part so enthusiastically that I had to break few times due to dizziness. That is exciting studio time for me.
I have always had this split between my composer self and my performer self. Even though these parts of me work in the same media (movement, text and music), they feed me differently. Performance is more visceral and kinesthetic and composition is more intellectual and spiritual. Both can be very passionate. I have returned to dancing for other choreographers (Caitlin Corbett… and soon I will join up with Brian Crabtree). This has been tremendously satisfying to me. I feel physically satiated after rehearsals, and I really enjoy the dance company camaraderie. And… I love not being in charge. Just dancing. A missing piece for me is where and how my vocal work fits into all of this. When I was working with Schaub (Christopher Schaub, lute player and singer) I was singing and dancing equally. That is hard to find. It is a constant search for balance. I think that much of life is about this search (which I am not sure will ever be concluded… seeing that we are all ever-changing)… and maybe finding peace with the searching. |
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| Feeding the hungy voice... |
[Sep. 27th, 2007|12:37 pm] |
Feeding the hungry voice…
I am in a rich and troubling time artistically. I am both lost and found. My vocal studies at Malerargues (The Roy Hart Theatre’s center in So. France) predictably stirred things up for me; and as I struggle to re-enter my US life (complete with teaching, house projects, art projects, art training, family and friends) I find that I am dangerously but deliciously off-center. It became clear to me in France that my skills as a performer (vocally and movement-wise) are much stronger than my abilities as an art-maker. I worked with two songs in France, and one of them, Kurt Weill’s “Solomon’s Song”, is so beautifully written that I grew each time that I sang it. Great work can elevate the performer*, and after being elevated, it is a disappointment to come back down.
And so I came home in search of challenging material. My current projects (“L’Anima” and “Hocket”) continue to push me creatively… and I am committed to working on them. I am making some great strides choreographically and compositionally… and yet this voice of mine wants more. More range, more direct and immediate challenge. My choreographic and compositional self is older, more mature, and somewhat patient. I know it takes as lifetime to master these skills. My vocal self, however, is needy, greedy, terribly impatient, living in the now, now, now.
And in the midst of all of this instability, I think I have found the material to please this precocious vocal identity. (And let me clarify for a moment. It is the hunger and the drive that feels so young and forward leaning. My voice has actually been developing into a mature and flexible instrument.) In any case…. the material I found turned out, ironically, to be my own. In the mid and late 1990’s, I created a slew of performance solos. It was probably the most fruitful and exciting time I have had as an art-maker. The work just flew out of my, no questions asked. Many of the pieces emerged complete and whole, and required little or not editing.
And now, ten years later, I have been revisiting these solos. I can appreciate the material with more objectivity because I am so different from the young woman who made them. And my voice is in a whole different place. The Roy Hart work has expanded my range, my palate of textures and tone, and my confidence. Just two days ago, I sounded in a five-octave range. It’s true that I warmed up slowly with yoga and breathing, and also that those very, very high notes were only achieved by crouching like a cat on the floor and pressing my forehead into the floor… but still. Five octaves. A day to remember.
These performance solos are quite challenging. The music has great range and possibility. I am finding moments in the work that I had previously overlooked. The works are vocally sound, but underdeveloped choreographically. And so I am thinking of actually asking for help with them. I have friends and colleagues who are choreographers and directors, and it is finally time for me to get some help. These solos have the potential to kick my butt as a performer… and shame on me if I don’t work them, or myself, to full potential.
Last night’s full moon kept me tossing and turning like the animal that I am. The characters and songs of my old performance solos accompanied me until the sun came up.
*This is a stolen piece of The Fabulous Beast’s manifesto…. check them out… I think they are at www.fabulousbeast.net… or google them. They are a really interesting Dance Theater company from Dublin. |
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| Who defines the work? |
[Jul. 8th, 2007|05:09 pm] |
Streams of Consciousness 6
Who Defines the Work?
I just finished reading Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje. I soaked it up in two days – thoroughly enjoying the multiple story lines, non-linear sequencing and image collages. I am trying to challenge myself to work in a less linear way, and reading his work inspired my to find the nugget of each story (or movement) and let the work build without worrying where it goes to next. I tend to over-plan, so I am working on letting my own work approach me and define itself as I stumble along – all of this in hopes of finding these subtle emotional islands that get washed away by too much linear narrative and by my being such a control freak. So the Ondaatje novel was perfect for me and my own artistic ruminations. I had seen a review of Divisadero in the “New Yorker”, and as always, decided to read it after I read the book. The reviewer seemed to find fault in all the things I loved: the wanderings, the non-linear approach, the poetic descriptions of nature and time passing. He kept comparing Ondaatje unfavorably with Hemmingway…. Which seemed pretty irrelevant. Two completely different authors doing two completely different things. The reviewer’s favorite part was my least. And I finished the review so thankful I had had my own experience of the book before I read that article. And all of this makes me investigate “Who defines the work?”.
I have been exceedingly lucky in that many dance critics (Debra Cash, Marcia B. Siegel, Thea Singer, Theodore Bale) have written very favorable reviews and seem to respect and understand what I am trying to do (even though what I am trying to do often changes with each project). And yet, I do let reviews re-shape the experience of my performances. It is difficult to not find fault or beauty once the ink has seeped into the fibers of paper. There is something so tangible about a review. It reminds me of how memories are enhanced or even changed by photographs. Or how the private experience of loving a movie can be dashed by a few critical comments during coffee afterwards. Watching video footage of performance is almost always disappointing to me – the live element, the energy of performers and audiences are rarely captured; and even if the work looks beautiful, it feels flat. To really capture the feelings and impact of a fulfilling work, it seems almost necessary to create another piece of artwork in response. And if it is my own work that I am trying to define…?
Maybe there is no point in that. Maybe the work needs to define itself. All experiences of the work (of performers, creators, critics, audience, friends, family, people reading about the work of seeing/hearing it through documentation) are valid. But maybe the true essence of performance is tucked inside the performance itself, an energy that opens only in the moment. Once completed, nothing or no one can define the work without applying layers of filters… and so the real work is over. These responses become mini works of their own – ripples from the original splash. No less valid, but not the same. |
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| streams of consciousness, 5 |
[May. 10th, 2007|11:40 am] |
Streams of Consciousness 5:
More and more I feel like a composer as opposed to a choreographer. I am definitely a dancer and a singer… but I struggle more with what my pieces should be called and what my role is in creating them. And the truth is, I always think about music or text first… never movement first. I think in terms of sound (spoken text, vocal music, instrumental music, vocal noise/sound) and how to arrange the sound in time; how to build texture and harmony, complexity, simplicity; where to work abstractly, where narratively. The choreography comes in later. The movement assists the text, the body escorts the music. And the moving body grounds these sounds, gives them an animal weightedness… and it also opens my pieces into space. I love opening work into spaces, finding depth, exploring walls. I love the simple rules of perspective… and how a person looks smaller if they are further away. That excites me. But my instincts start with the sound. So, for today at least, I will call myself a composer. Dance critic, Marcia B. Siegel called my last piece a “musical adventure.” Not a dance. And I think this is right. In response to this piece, “L’Anima,” most people have commented on the music, the text, and some of the simple body placement choices (like crawling in a line with bells on our backs). I think that these “body placements” and simple movements are maybe not choreography. And maybe I can stop being all apologetic for not having more “dance” in my pieces. It is just not how I put work together. What confuses matters is that I am a dancer, and I rehearse in dance spaces, dance critics review me, I employ other dancers (and musicians also) to join me in performing my pieces. But I think my pieces are not dances. |
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| In the cracks |
[Feb. 23rd, 2007|03:14 pm] |
In the cracks…
Recommence… wreck commence… time to begin again, time to begin to make a mess. The L’Anima show at Brookline Tai Chi reminded me that I love performing, I hate self-producing, my work is set but improvised, dance but not-dance, performance art but not steeped in the action art or visual art traditions, etc.
In short, I feel that once again I am falling in between the cracks. Maybe this is an interesting place to be. Dirt and spit and trash and cigarettes and dog poop and paper and seeds… so much gets caught in between the cracks… and these things co-mingle, break down and begin life anew (recommence)… sometimes even sprouting into grass or other weeks. The cracks in between my front walk bricks are constantly growing dandelions or moss or other fun green and yellow things. Right now, in winter, there is no growth… just breaking down. And I guess that is where I am too. I have dozens of ideas for new work whirling in my heard… none of them ready to start growing or maybe even to see the light. I’m trying to be patient, again, and let them whirl, break down, rearrange… do whatever it is they need to do.
I am working on a piece, in my head mostly, that is related to this “in the cracks” thing. I am interested in invisibility – the things we can’t see. I read a wonderful article by David Abram about how, as humans, we are convinced we know so much, and yet there are worlds of information that are invisible to us. Beyond the horizon, behind our backs, in between particles… we cannot see these things. And then I saw a movie called “Rare Bird.” The bird referred to is the Cahow, a Bermudian gull that was thought to be extinct for nearly 300 years. ‘Turns out, it was just invisible. In an effort to survive extinction (early settlers were slaughtering them en masse for food), the Cahow very quickly adapted. They became nocturnal and lived and breeded in the treacherous, craggy, mini rock-islands off of the main island. They survived by living in the cracks of daylight and the landscape. |
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| Watching four horses |
[Jan. 12th, 2007|06:32 pm] |
Stream of consciousness: Watching four horses
I am watching four horses from a window in Vermont. It is snowing lightly. I am also listening to recorded music by John Cage (“From a Landscape” CD). This is the best art I have seen in a long time. The slow and completely unpredictable movements of the horses create choreography so smart and challenging that I am in awe. The dancer/horses are perfection in their movements and physical beauty. The whirling snow changes direction and density in a way that causes my eyes to see it alternatingly as background or primary visual focus. And Cage’s music is brilliant accompaniment. It allows me to sit in a warm room and still enjoy this visual masterpiece to unfold with my ears open. Occasionally, the cucumber or pretzel that I eat adds to the soundscape with insistent loudness.
Art equals life? Life equals art? Kind of… but it is the Cage music, really, that enables me to shift my awareness and take in my visual landscape as art.
I think of how much goes into making dances these days. Too much. And often, when I see dances, they are too much. There is no room for entry. As choreographers, we work with time and space in a visual channel. As a composer, I also try to work in an auditory channel. Can we work in these channels in a way that opens perception for our audiences? In a way that allows people enough room to connect the work with themselves and our collective experience?
Today, John Cage’s recorded music allowed me to have an enjoyable and maybe even enlightening visual experience. Can choreographers work to open auditory channels? And if we work in visual and auditory channels (this applies to most choreographers), how can we keep the material open enough to allow our audiences the room they need?
Nothing can be more beautiful, refreshing and unpredictable as the world as it is. How can we utilize our skills to connect us all in the experience of life?
“The real world is beyond our thoughts and ideas; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do, for the net is full of holes.”
Sri Nisargadatta
Perhaps, as artists, it is our job to try and weave the loosest net possible. |
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| Streams of consciousness, II. |
[Nov. 12th, 2006|10:18 pm] |
Streams of consciousness
II. How I made this piece (L’Anima)
In June, 2004, I had an amazing opportunity to take a year off from work. My partner, Whitney, had been granted a sabbatical and I asked for a leave of absence from my teaching job. I have had a job since I was 12, so the thought of going a whole year without the pressure of a job was abstract, but very exciting. I started to envision how many performances I could squeeze into that time and soon I felt as much pressure about my art as I used to about my job. At this same time, I happened to read an article by Pema Chodron. She had recently been granted a sabbatical and chose to use the time to reflect and write. A whole year to reflect and write. That sounded good to me.
Whitney and I rented out our house to a friend and built a schedule around who we could stay with for free. We also planned a trip to Italy for the fall. In addition to her sabbatical, Whitney had been given a grant to go to Italy. I had recently been awarded a Tanne Foundation Award, so I could afford to go as well.
I decided not to plan any projects at all. To just see what came up. This was terrifying for me. I had always worked project to project (ever since I started choreographing in college at age 20)... a new idea was always percolating underneath what I was working on. And now I had no new ideas. Maybe nothing would come.
Over the summer, I started writing poetry... just for fun. We were staying in NH, and my mom had some books about writing metrical verse. Most of my pieces were pretty bad or unfinished, but I didn’t care.
That fall, we went to Italy. I was taken in with the small medieval villages, their beauty and their dark history. One day, we decided to take a “tiddly pom” (little road trip) to a village in Umbria called Gubbio. The house we were staying in had a pile of old guide books so I looked up Gubbio. In every book, there was mention of the myth of “the wolf of Gubbio.” Apparently, in medieval times, the town was plagued by a viscous wolf and then saved when St. Francis visited, spoke with the wolf and brokered a deal between wolf and villagers. If the town left food out for the wolf, the wolf would promise to stop killing people. The promises were kept and the wolf (“Il Lupo” in Italian) lived a long life and became a great friend of the town. I loved this story. We went to Gubbio and I could easily sense how the fear of what is outside could easily build inside a walled city. When we returned from this day trip, I sat down and wrote the poem “Il Lupo”, which comprises a large section of L’Anima. The words came pouring out, the meter came easily... I knew I was onto something. After our trip to Gubbio I started seeing images of St. Francis and the wolf everywhere - sculptures, statues, books, paintings, crests above doorways. It is an important story in Italy.
A bit later, we took a day trip to Rome and another wolf story came to the forefront - the story of Romulus and Remus. Again, I read the story in a guide book and then had the story unfold in visiting the region and seeing numerous depictions of the she-wolf nursing her adopted “cubs,” Romulus and Remus. Recently, one of my best friends had lost her six month old baby, and I couldn’t help but to think of the pain the wolf must have felt in losing her real cubs and then her adopted human children. I went home and wrote “Song of the Wolf” - a telling of Romulus and Remus from the wolf’s point of view.
And one more thing had a big impact on me in Italy. I loved the sound of the church bells ringing through these old walled towns. Sometimes they made me sad and nostalgic. Othertimes the sound was pure joy. I wanted to work with this as well... but I wasn’t sure how.
Wolves and bells. I became obsessed with wolves and bells. And then it was time to leave Italy.
Later in the fall, we stayed with Whit’s Aunt and Uncle up in Vermont. The weather was starting to get colder, so we loaded up on root vegetables, knitting yarn and classical music. I felt the urge to write music, so unquestioningly obliged. I’ll write music about those bells, I thought. Que bella, que amaro (how lovely, how bitter). Que simple, que complicata (how simple, how complicated). Every day, for about 6 weeks, I woke up, had breakfast, and then moved into a guest bedroom where I had plunked my keyboard on a bed. The view was of a series of sweeping hillsides and their changing fall colors. I wrote music for hours and hours every day. I don’t know where that music came from or if I could ever do it again. I just wrote and tried not to think too much. I have never studied composition. At the end of 6 weeks, I had written 50 minutes of music... written on the piano for several voices and possibly double bass. And then we left Vermont.
In the winter, we drove out to Santa Fe, NM where we had a free cabin to in on Whitney’s mom’s land. I was done writing music. Done writing poetry. I wanted to dance, but I didn’t really have space in the little cabin. I tried pushing furniture to the sides, but nothing much happened... so I hiked and explored the outdoors instead. In March, Whit and I dog-sat for her mom and Will (mom’s partner) and we moved into their house. They have a large living room and I finally saw my chance for a dance studio. I pushed the furniture into the corners and started dancing every day. And things did finally happen. I started building movement for different musical sections, or just movement that felt deeply connected to me. I also starting building “practices” - very structured improvisations in which the mindframe of the dancer affects the quality and choice of movement.
So I had poetry, I had music, I had movement... and I knew I wouldn’t have dancers to work with until the next fall. So I tucked away my notes and writings, and tried again not to worry...
This whole piece has come from tucking worry and panic away... and allowing fresh ideas to come from the present moments as they happen and as I am inspired. Thankfully, I had the time and space to break old habits and allow things to occur organically. |
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| streams of consciousness, I. |
[Oct. 4th, 2006|02:07 pm] |
My good friend and publicist, Mary, told me to start writing even more about my work. She said to just write and then worry about the editing later. So.... here is the first installment. Thanks, Mary.
Streams of consciousness:
I. to sound and move simultaneously
When people are touched by voice (singing, speaking... and music sometimes as well), they often remark that they felt “moved.” “It was moving.” This choice of words is no accident. The voice does literally “move” us. The bones in our ears vibrate, the water in our body ripples (at least 60% of every person is water)... and those are deep movements. We feel them deep in our bodies. And there is something else as well, and I think it has to do with the fact that the voice is not just a part of us. It is us. It is the connector between body, mind and spirit - which I think of as the soul. When someone sings to us, for us... it is their soul communicating with our soul. It makes us feel something that is difficult to explain. And I think when singing used to be more of our culture, when we used to sing together in a full and honest way, it was like glue for communities. There are examples of this all throughout history. And when people used to sing to connect and overcome great obstacles they achieved great things. The music that was sung during American slavery and also in the fight against Apartheid - this is tremendously moving music. It is the voicing of the soul. We also use the phrase “touching” - “I was touched by the music.” “It was touching” ... this is gentler... for sweet songs, lullabies... but still physical, still having to do with the body.
And I have been working with sound (mostly vocal) and movement (mostly modern dance related movement) for years... and trying to figure out how to sing and dance at the same time. I felt there was a problem in the abdomen. Dancers are trained to keep the abdominal muscles very held and tight (or to play with tension and release from this region). If you can control your “center” (higher for ballet... a little lower for modern... but in the abdomen for both) then you could control your dancing. For singing, on the other hand, you need to work with the breath (we are wind instruments) and this often requires something called diaphragmatic breathing. When the diaphragm contracts, it pushes the abdomen out in order to make more room in the thoracic cavity for the lungs to expand. So... here was the problem... so I thought. Dance requires a controlled and contracted abdomen. Singing requires a relaxed and flexible abdomen. How can you work with both at the same time?
Well... if you could (and I’m not sure you can) it would be a very superficial and technical solution to this problem. And it would give you a very technical and superficial kind of art. No one would be moved, because there would be no soul activity in this. Sadly, I think this is often true with our takes on dance and singing. Too much technique, too little soul, no one cares. And why should an audience care if they are not touched or moved? We are not really communicating anything to them other than “Look at me. Listen to me. See my technique. Hear my technique.”
And this “problem” of singing and dancing at the same time is not really a problem at all. Humans have been instinctively doing it for thousands of years, in ritual, in religious ceremonies, in acts of rebellion and revolution - in situations where our souls are involved. And at some point, we separated art from these soul activities. We put art on a pedestal and we removed its soul. And as artists we constantly complain. No one cares. Why should they? There is no soul in the art.
So this is where I am. Trying to find the deep places inside of myself and my dancers so that we can sing and move simultaneously. We need to find where the voice moves the body and the body moves the voice. This is not easy, but it does happen... it can happen. The voice is not neck-up and the dance neck-down. And it is also not a problem of the abdomen. These are too superficial. The connection needs to be made in a deeper place. The voice lives in the whole body and the dance makes sound. If we deny them that partnership, neither is truly complete. |
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| Ulrik's Advice |
[Sep. 13th, 2006|09:33 am] |
Since my last blog, I had the amazing opportunity to go to France and study with members of the Roy Hart Theatre at their headquarters in Malerargues. For those who don't know, Roy Hart Theatre work is an intense exploration of the voice and body in a theatre context.
On the final day of my "Vocal Intensive" workshop, all of the participants were requested to perform in front of the group. We all came to Malerargues with a song (or text) to work on and had used this chosen piece as source material for various improvisations and private lessons. I had fallen in and out of love with my song several times by this time, and was more confused than ever about how (or even if) I wished to approach singing it. I think that many others shared my sentiments. So... this performance was a bit daunting. How could it be possible to sum up my profound experiences in working with my voice at Malerargues in the singing of just one song?
Before we began these "showings", Ulrik (one of the teachers) decided to give us a little advice. Ulrik said, "Don't think about presenting your song. Present yourself. Present yourself with your song."
It was magical advice. We all breathed a full breath after this... and proceeded to share ourselves and our work one by one.
The performances were amazing. I saw my classmates take risks and continue to challenge themselves and their material. In my experience, "final showings" usually pale in comparison with process work that has occurred earlier. I was astounded to see the growth in these renditions. And for me, I just presented myself with my song. I felt no fear, no regrets. I felt accepting of where I was on that day and of my voice and my song at that moment. |
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| Neediness in performance |
[Jul. 22nd, 2006|09:01 am] |
"Look at the magicians who appear in nightclubs; they are so anxious to be loved, to have everybody think 'What a funny fellow,' instead of 'What a brilliant fellow, what a mysterious fellow.' That is the disease of all entertainment: love me, pet me, 'pat my head."
This quote is from Robertson Davies' book, "Fifth Business".... and it resonated with me because I have been thinking quite a lot about this very same thing in dance. This past year, I went to a lot of dance performances and was struck with how needy many of the performers were. At times, it seemed that the performers almost wanted the audience to take them and hold them and tell them that they are indeed loved. I am sure I have been guilty of this as well. We all make ourselves terribly vulnerable in performance, and it is natural to want to be "held" by an audience. But I think that we side-step our job in doing this. Performance needs to be an offering, a gift to those who are generous and take time away from their lives to see live art (and this audience is dwindling... so we need to appreciate them even more!). The neediness of the performer is deep-rooted. So I think the answer is deep-rooted as well. I have been trying to let the movement and the singing take care of my personal needs so that I can be more open and generous with the audience. It seems to be working. And I have spoken of this with my L'Anima gang, and the strategy appears to be working for them as well. The last few times I have performed have been very fulfilling for me. If I approach my performance as a gift, there is no way to fail... and I don't have that empty feeling after a show. I luxuriate in the physical sensation of performance and let the vibrations of voice and movement satiate my present needs. I then have something to give and it all feels very straight forward. |
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