Philadelphia - December

Tuesday, December 8, 2009
This past week or more, I’ve been going to sleep and waking, and returning many times a day, to Red Thread. Going over the piece in my mind, running my material, trying to tease out the patterns, both in body and space, searching for the essences in what we’re doing. A few days ago, when the DVD of the NY showing arrived, and I watched it, I began to consider what it is that we’re doing in this piece. Yes, there’s some dancing, but not a lot; yes, there are some intriguing images, but how compelling are they? In the end I decided that what this piece is about, that doesn’t really show on a video, is relationship, our relationship, and the elusive ingredient that livens performance when it’s present, and adds the necessary juice to even simple material, but that’s so difficult to capture with a still camera that’s recording merely for memory.



We began today by looking at the piece as we had left it in NY, our basic framework, trying to feel out which sections might accept all of us, 3 + 3, and which would work with which of the three other dancers we’ll be introducing during this 2 week work period – a conceptual exercise, but useful in helping us see how to structure our rehearsals most effectively. It was a relief to move after lunch, and begin to remember the piece physically. Once again, we were surprised by how quickly the material returns, even though none of us had spent much time with it during the interim – life, with all its myriad complexities, taking precedence over our intentions to work with it daily, Lisa doing most of the simmering in her twice weekly rehearsals with Meg. It feels good to be back in the studio with these women. We have grown even closer through this process of making, familiarity and ease with each other, knowing how to draw out the most constructive ideas, when to give support, how to challenge. We have a lot of work ahead of us, not just in making structural decisions, but also design choices. It’s a touch overwhelming, but stimulating and exciting as well.




Wednesday, December 9
Excitement builds. We spend the morning continuing to bring the piece back for ourselves. We clean the yarn section, the ‘kitchen duet’, and watch Lisa’s solo. Feelings of satisfaction at being back with, and in, the material, as well as questions, fill the air. We brainstorm over lunch about what we want to tackle first with the other dancers.

In the afternoon they arrive. Introductions over, we begin with the walking phrases. They learn fast. That, after all, is one of the skills young dancers have. Useful, when we have only these few days to both teach and develop material. There’s some jostling with too many ideas from too many choreographers, but Lisa reminds us that this is part of our process, that it took time for the three of us to learn how to work with it, but as rehearsal continues, when the new builds are introduced into our walking pattern, we’re all exhilarated by the complexity that happens in space, and with material and relationships. We end the afternoon teaching our solos – Lisa to Gabi, Vicky to Meg, and me to Michelle. Thrilling to see the young dancers embrace our material so fully, with so much individuality and commitment.

Lisa, Vicky and I are also thinking about costumes, colors, props. We find a color palette we like in the book ‘Earth from Above’, jumping off of Mimi Gross’ suggestion of earth and colorful. Lisa and Vicky are enthusiastic about making clothing decisions, Lisa sketches ideas, we speak about what we can buy or make. Time seems short again. There’s so much to do. During dinner, a communal chopping and cooking event, Lisa’s eyes begin to close and I realize she’s dozing while I’m telling her a particularly interesting story. Yes, we’re tired, but as we comment before heading off to bed, there’s nothing we enjoy more than being in the studio, in process, playing, exploring, making creative decisions. This is where we are in our element. Delicious.

NY

Four months after our April showing at Swarthmore, we’ve settled into a new pattern - 2 weeks of work, 7 weeks off, 2 weeks of work, 6 weeks off, 2 weeks of work – Arnhem, NY, Philadelphia - then another three months later, the performances. On Monday, our first day together here, in NY, we bemoan the fact that we never have a good long chunk of time, say 6 or 8 weeks, in order to be able to really let things evolve, since at the end of each 2 weeks of intense preoccupation with the piece, we always feel we could go on and regret reaching the end. Yet, each time we meet, our shared history, and the accumulating material, has sunk deeper, and we pick up the threads and get into the swing of things faster and faster. Past history has become present absorption. So by Tuesday, at this second 2 week meeting, we’re well into it, revisiting our phrases, putting our clusters back together, adjusting details, clarifying intentions. We’re now asking questions about the whole, we’re back to long talks about content, form, purpose, significance – we’re in the thick of it.

Day #9 (Eva)

My turn for a difficult day today. This week has brought a whole gamut of emotions. I’ve felt challenged, satisfied, frustrated, excited. Today I’m feeling doubtful about all kinds of things.

Continuing with Saturday’s cluster idea, we’re now shaping longer sequences that make compositional and conceptual sense. Frameworks from my score that at first seemed too wide to me are proving to be useful containers - ‘a time of unpacking, ‘a time of beauty’, ‘a time of domestic disintegration’, are holding a number of scenes and seem to create coherent entities. But I’m questioning whether, after years of working improvisationally, I’ll be able to remember patterns and counting, or reproduce movement material that, after numerous repetitions, begins to feel dull and lifeless. Lisa urges me on, reminding me of how movement that enters one’s muscles and bloodstream, becomes tuned to the nervous system and deeply embedded in the subconscious yields liveliness and lucidity. Vicky suggests we work on a more open section and we return to Lisa’s marathon, trying different versions, eventually altering it, and combining it with sitting/watching (as in the ‘charades’) and a round-robin form. Lisa adds her super articulated phrase that she does with Meg, we replace each other and dance wildly to energetic hip-hop music, and I feel the juice return to my body and spirit. Lovely how we hold each other’s uncertainties in check. Our generosity towards each other has been honed through parenting children and parents, navigating relationships, years of watching and thinking and working, experiencing the ups and downs of life. All this we bring with us into the studio.

Between us, we have lived 172 years. As Vick might say - Geez!!!!

More on Friday's growing pains

The past couple of days I’ve been submerged by domestic events so haven’t followed through on our aim to write, even if only a little, every day. So now, on Sunday, I’m thinking back to Friday.

First thing Friday morning, Lisa and Vicky go to the market to buy fabric for an idea we want to try and I arrive at the studio early. The chairs, screen and table we used the day before are still in the space, and inspired by work I’ve been doing with visual artist Chris Crickmay (most recently 3 four hour long performances at the Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry, England, with composer Sylvia Hallett) I arrange, add, and rearrange, so when Lisa and Vicky arrive, they enter a different space than the one we left the day before, and when we begin Lisa’s marathon structure, we’re located in and among an installation that includes furniture, colored yarn and cloth. I enjoy moving with the objects, relating to the others, considering our accumulating tasks - this day’s included: it’s ok to be pedestrian. However, later in the day, during one of our many discussions, Lisa mentions how, during the morning’s marathon, she had determined to consciously hold herself to her original 'heightened energy' score because she felt that we were shifting away from the physicality of dancing ‘in an active and expanded way’, and getting too involved in other activities. I’m reminded of Jonathan Burrows, when he observed, during his recent ‘3 x 3’ workshop at Findhorn, that we get virtuosic very quickly, urging participants to remain focused on the material in order to prevent ‘getting carried away by excitement’.

In the afternoon, driven by the desire to see how what we have might begin to fit together, we decide to make scores - three of them - so we each take pen and paper, settle ourselves in the space, and work alone for some time. Not surprisingly, our scores are as different as the way we move. Lisa’s score, devised through chance procedure (another homage to Cunningham?), and using the elements of task, people and music, produces some recurring activities, sometimes with different ‘casts’; Vicky’s score looks at what could work with what, how transitions could happen gracefully, and attends to detail and subtlety; my score has few limitations and holds unlimited possibilities. Our run of Lisa’s score is messy and unsatisfying, but we all agree that it was a useful exercise.

Log from Day Two (Eva)

Wednesday August 12, 2009
A different studio today, one with light and air, and a wooden floor, on the upper level of the building as opposed to deep down, underground. A white screen, 3 blue chairs and some balls of yarn are our props and inspiration today.
We busy ourselves the whole day, exploring ideas – one from each of us - elaborating, distilling, working through to a place of satisfaction.
Vicky’s idea of moving in front of the white screen, as if made of a thousand parts, becomes, with the added element of yesterday’s unpacking and arranging, a duet. We search for the important elements in an idea I have about moving with yarn through the space, leaving traces. Clothing becomes elaborate hats heaped high on heads in a walking idea from Lisa. Metaphors abound. We finish the day with 20 minutes of moving together, feeling exhilarated.

Day One (Eva)

Tuesday, Aug 11
We’re meeting on my home turf this time, so, like Lisa and Vicky during our previous meetings, I’m the one juggling home and work. It’s a challenge we’re all trying to meet. Red Thread as a way of bringing together the creative and domestic, and our on-going discussions about our desire for on-goingness in our practice, has prompted me to ask everyone to bring scraps of material gathered from around the house to this meeting. Lisa calls them domestic scraps or in the home moves.

A year ago I wrote:
After I get home, and shift into a world that’s other than the single focus world I lived at Swarthmore where we spent long hours in the studio, I notice more acutely how in this, my every day world, I leap from laundry and shopping, to cooking and cleaning, working in the garden, visiting my mother, doing the bills, running to teach . . . . . I think of crazy quilts, with their odd shapes and many colors, scattering wildly across the quilt surface. I also remember the Gee’s Bend women, and how they combine their quilt making with their daily life.

Again, the question, “what are our practices, what do we do? How do we keep dancing, even when we don’t always have access to space or enough time?”

Deborah Hay, whose presence, like Trisha’s, surfaced often as we worked, comes to mind, and the commitment she asks from her Solo Commissioning Project participants, to practice their solo each day, and inspired by this, I resolve, for a period of time, to sustain a practice of dancing each day.

This is a slightly different kind of dancing to the kind we three naturally do all the time. While we worked, we watched each other as we spoke, making gestures, using our whole bodies to tell stories. We are, after all, dancers through and through. Like Vicky’s story of when her then young son, exasperated with her constant moving, asked her, ‘wherever you are, do you always have to be dancing?’ But this dancing I’m starting to do is different. It comes from the need I feel to spend time in ‘dancing state’, even when I don’t have a daily studio I can go to. This is not the unconscious response of a body trained to respond in movement, but a conscious focusing of attention, watching with compositional eyes the unfolding of movement as I slip between the table and chair and pick up on a shift of weight that sends me towards the left, then work it further as I explore where this particular displacement can go, or repeat, reverse, minimize or maximize the reach to place a plate on the shelf . . . . . . This moving comes from the need to do my dancing no matter what, because without it I feel un-centered, at loose ends, not knowing what to do with myself, manic, sometimes, to the point of desperation. We are, after all, dancers through and through.


Today, a year later, we begin by showing each other the scraps we’ve brought. Since I didn’t specify more than ‘make them in your house/apartment’, we’ve all, of course, interpreted the task differently. Lisa’s scraps have a theatrical edge, are to do with a domestic image that then comes to life in movement; one of Vicky’s scraps is an homage to Cunningham, made in her apartment; I’ve moved around my kitchen and furniture, abstracting and setting the moves I make while cooking or cleaning. Curiously, Lisa’s circling scrap has similarities to my stirring pasta. Or perhaps not so curiously. We’re finding that we now fall into an easy familiarity, picking up threads from our previous meetings. There’s recent history being built, adding on to our shared past, that we now return to when we work.