history in the making #6:::April 12 2009

Stephanie Skura spent a day with 14 of us workshop participants, some regulars and some new. John William Johnson wrote later: “I thought it was interesting to be in a room in Portland, Oregon in 2009 and have 3 other people who had been in NYC and involved in the arts scene in the “70s.” And indeed there were overlapping histories to be explored—actually 5 of us had NYC influences from that time: Stephanie, Anet, Linda, Cydney and John.

I was grateful to re-visit, via video tape,some of Stephanie’s early work, much of which I saw in the 80s, when I started to be involved in the scene. Stephanie was an influence, “ahead” of me, already an integral part of the downtown dance world centered at Danspace, the Kitchen, PS 122 at the time I was just starting to make work. Upon being invited to visit us here, Stephanie had asked me whether she was coming to”history in the making” as an influence herself or as a teller of her own influences. She wisely did a bit of both, but what I remember now, so tardy in posting here, is how seeing her work and those of her peers opened my mind as to what performance could be, as well the kind of community that could exist around it, when I was just starting out to make work. Here’s something recently said at a PS 122 event by honoree Ishmael Houston-Jones that brought me back to that time:

“…the best thing about PS 122 was that it was not about solitary individuals. Rather, it was about forming a new kind of community, or a new kind of gathering of tribes; a new kind of family. A family that offered a new model for a home for performance. And we were so fucking pretentiously hardcore in those days, we’d only call it “performance.” Never performance art, not experimental theater, not post-modern dance. And we never referred to the space as a theater. No, we were doing “performance” in our “space” – even when our space had no heat on the weekends, the lights were clip-ons and the sound system was a boom box. We were forming a new kind of performance family to make new kinds of work.”

Anyway I enjoyed the layeredness of time-traveling back to those years and that place—PS 122 was one of the places I first saw Stephanie’s work and also performed my own work—and then coming back to the PWNW in 2009 to directly experience how Stephanie has distilled all her experiences in dance, performance, video, writing and theater into techniques that bring us in to our body and jog our minds and subconscious loose.

history in the making … an update

I wanted to let folks know that an editorial note I wrote oooohhhh…back many years ago for the Movement Reserach Performance Journal is available here online.  I co-edited an issue of this publication around the theme/issue of “fame”.

http://www.movementresearch.org/publishing/?q=node/495

In addition to the editorial note, my contribution to the issue was an interview with Yvonne Rainer done by co-editor Anya Pryor and myself. And speaking of Rainer, walked into the Museum of Modern Art in NYC a couple weeks ago and saw Trio A being projected large on a gallery wall. I had just finished learning it with Linda K. Johnson. Now I am getting our of practice again due to a re-injured knee, damn.

Also at the museum, and of interest to our group, was a Teh Ching Hsieh retrospective: posters from all of his one year performances, the cage he lived in for a year, the series of 365 photos taken of him every day during that same year, etc. I thought it funny to see all the earnest young things taking photos. Then I decided to be funny, too, and took a couple photos with my phone! Also a couple of the Trio A film.

history in the making #5 ::: March 8, 2009

I am writing this very belatedly and at the end of my stay at Watermill, collaborating with artist Caroline Woolard. So our wonderful March meeting seems a while ago! We approached the topic of choreographic transmission in a number of ways. Cydney Wilkes was guest facilitator. This will be a sketchy resume of what happened.

We started with an exercise used in Tuning Score workshops that I have done with Lisa Nelson and Karen Nelson: making up a simple short series of movements to pass on to a partner who has her eyes closed.

Then participants created and performed movement phrases “caught” in short snippets from my improvising. They were beautiful and reminded me how it’s possible to generate interesting material very quickly.

Cydney introduced us to one of Anna Halprin’s process, using the RSVP cycle, which she and her husband Lawrence developed. We looked at our Resources, Perfomed a Score C had made up, then went through a feedback which led into Valuaction, and then altered and Performed the score again.

Lastly we discussed Deborah Hay’s unique concept of choreography, her process of passing her work into other people’s bodies/minds and looked at parts of her group piece The Match, while following the corresponding written out libretto.

history in the making #4 ::: Feb. 8, 2009

Art|Life Face-off!

I should have had Emily take notes and write this. Actually a good idea would be to get a volunteer to record both activities and impressions, instead of it being me, me, me. Anyway, Emily was very forthright about how the topic of the day is a problem that she wrestles with, worries at, gnaws at.

For this day devoted to questioning art | life connections/contradictions, I chose two examples. The first was Tehching Hsieh’s year-long performances, especially the collaboration with Linda Montano in which they were tied together with a rope.  It was fascinating to learn a little bit (via interviews, etc) about how each of them thought so differently about what happened that year and what its significance was. The other exemplary project we looked at was Neil Greenberg’s Not About Aids Dance and the Disco Project, via Charles Dennis’s video of a PS 122 performance, intercut with interviews.

But back to the beginning. After introductions, we talked a little bit about the day’s theme and our interest in it. I listed a few tactics or strategies I have seen used to try to “solve” the art – life problem. We warmed up individually while listening to an internet radio interview with Hsieh and Montano. Then we did a series of 2-minute improvised duets with the interview as soundtrack. Each duo had to keep physically within 8 feet of the other while avoiding touch—two of the limitations taken on by Hseah and Montano in the year they were tied together.  It was interesting to hear Lily afterwards talk about her deliberate manipulation of the power dynamics.

We broke the already tenuous separation between home and studio by entering into the living space to watch Neil’s work. I loved seeing the dances and hearing him talk. I realized once again how a personal connection to the artist and his/her history adds a life poignancy even to the most non-narrative works. The reactions to Neil’s work were revealing. Georgiana, a non-dance person, had a hard time knowing what to “see” in the solo excerpt from Not About Aids Dance, and talked about how the extra-dance elements, which were more obvious and in what we saw of the Disco Project, plus being able to hear Neil’s interview, gave her a context for “getting” that dance more easily. I, of course, am happy to watch “pure” movement and in silence, with nothing else, depending on the kind of movement, the environment, the level of intimacy or formality. Hey I guess those are contexts, too.

Anyway, all were impressed and moved by the smart, witty yet honest (not arch) way that Neil framed his work. He  found a way to keep to his own non-narrative non-illustrative way of creating movement while letting in autobiography and social concerns (AIDS). And, this from Emily, (but in my hazy words): maybe it was the latter, the situating within social context, that helped buoy the piece out of wallowing in a more sophmoric self-indulgence.

After a break, with more talk and snacks, we all created solos in Jeff’s and my living/dining/sleeping area. We performed them for each other. It was pleasurable to see people making movement in my cramped living space, animating closets, tables, chairs, bookshelves and the spaces shaped by the furniture. Finally, we took what we had made into the studio and performed the solos in groups, 3-4 people simultaneously.

Well….it’s a BIG topic and we just touched on a couple of issues, but as in all the Sundays, all the themes will come ’round again even as we focus our attention somewhere else.

Next month: Choreographic Transmission. Cydney Wilkes as guest to lead us in Anna Halprin’s scoring ideas. Plus looking at the written out score for Deborah Hay’s The Match and watching the performance on video. Plus investigating the traditional method of making set movement on one’s own body and teaching it to another. Plus…more!

history in the making #3 :::: 12 January 2009

Yvonne Rainer || Deborah Hay

After the December session being canceled due to weather, it was great to get together with everybody again last Sunday January 12, especially since the talented and articulate Linda K. Johnson was present to share her expertise on Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A. Attending were Linda K., Linda A., Lisa, Lily, Lilly, Lois, Kathleen, Anne, Chelsea, Catherine, Emily, Meg—the ‘L’s win every time!

LONG Background—skip if you like—this writing is practice for a grant application!
I have been working on and off on a piece called “Paired Spectacular”– inspired by my direct physical and perceptual interactions with dance works by two women of the Judson generation. I learned, practiced for a year, and performed a recent solo by Deborah Hay and am again in the process — after almost a year hiatus — of learning Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A from Linda Johnson.

history in the making # 2 :::: 9 Nov 2008

Body as Material | The Materiality of the Body

I am realizing after #2 just how much of a  roaming grazing sampling experience this series really is. At least that’s how it feels to me as guide: rather than deeply delving, my preparation consists of nibbling at one idea here, taking a bite or two out of that artist over there, then wandering off to ruminate on something I did or saw in say 1985 and how it connects with an event from the 60s and or a performance I saw just last week.

Up to now, I had been thinking in terms of a snarled web metaphor: we pull and pick at different strands. We then take a strand or two and use it as the basis of an experiment here at the PWNW laboratory and beyond. We do this without following any thread as far is it will go. Nonetheless it’s comforting, illuminating and challenging all at the same time to feel the tangle of histories that surrounds past and present performance making.

Attending workshop #2 were

returnees Robert, Dana, Lily, Lisa, Emily and Linda (me)

plus new folks Lanie, Lucy, Lindsey and Anne.

After doing the intro thing and mentioning a few names—from Stelarc to Chris Burden to Carolee Schneeman to Marina Abramovic—and touching on how the sheer physicality of the body was such a strong current dance in the Judson era (still is?), and of course practices like CI—we made a list….

history in the making #1 :::: 12 Oct 2008

“…a chance to engage with me and others in active research—disentangling, investigating and putting into physical practice individual strands from the tangled web of approaches to dance and performance that are twined into my being as a choreographer through 25 years of dance-making in New York, Mexico and Portland.”

Sunday October 12, 2008 was the first session for the “history in the making” workshop at Performance Works. Linda (me), Lily, Lisa, Emily, Robert, Dana, Tahni, Lucie, Fawn, Maesie and Lois were there.

People trickled into the sun-filled space starting at 11 AM to find Linda (me) on the floor in the midst of a sprawling set of books about dance and performance. I had been looking through them the night before and decided to leave them in their scattered and seemingly random proximity—a visual representation of the web of words, ideas, histories, memories, images, aesthetic genealogies and influences that continue to weave in and out of work made today.  A pull-out poster from the last issue of BOMB magazine served as another fun visual emblem and charting of interwoven strands of influence …this specifically of the “Downtown Body,” i.e. that of New York’s Downtown avant-garde.