Tagged with improv

state of the art

Why do I stay in this country? Why am I not an ex-pat, a foreigner, an
American abroad? Why do I continue to make art in a landscape where I am
still scraping together the money for the rapidly approaching show in order
to pay dancers and artists and personnel who are paid way too little for all
their sweat and hard work and dedication anyway? Why do I rehearse in a
studio which often has no heat? Work a day job? Lose sleep writing grants
and press copy?

Obama answered that question for me today. He reminded us all that this
country is a big work-in-progress, a big performance in the making: Pull the
microscope out. Remember where we are in our national trajectory. The US is
not a finished product.

When I was working on Pulling the Wool: An American Landscape of Truth and
Deception, I learned the Gettysburg Address. I was completely taken by
Lincoln’s words, by the articulation of this country as a grand experiment:

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent
a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all
men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure...

We have been testing this over these last 8 years. Obama’s inaugural address
was a reminder that this is an improv– that we don’t have to go off the
rails, that we shouldn’t give up hope, that we can take control and shift
the improv and enter a new phase of the experiment. That the verdict is
still out on whether a nation so conceived can long endure…

So what does this have to do with art? I make non-commercial performance,
art that falls through the cracks, that pokes at the status quo. I spent two
months in Norway this fall, where there are ample artist grants, health
care, oil money…   A year in Belgium, where dance companies are funded…
A summer in Berlin where you can live cheaply and make art without as much
struggle. Why stay here where artmaking feels so untenable, where the
equation never balances? Why not jump ship like so much of the dance
community which has already left for greener pastures?

I realized today, as I stood in Times Square, watching Obama’s inaugural
address surrounded by people of all races from all countries, that I believe
in that experiment. I believe in the improv. There is an energy to it, a
life to it, an openness that I have never felt anywhere else. In the same
way that I believe in the possibilities of artmaking, I believe in the
possibilities of this country. When we are working on a piece, I always
struggle with how much material to “set” and how much to structure
and then leave open– to leave room for life, spark, surprise, energy. To not
create something that is made, done, packaged, over. And that is what I
value about being here, and being American— that I live in a place that is
about what gets left open, not what is set.

So I pay the price of making art in the midst of a market collapse, a
society in doubt, a country that has strayed from the idea of soul. And
today, I thank Mr. Obama for reminding me why.

Gettysburg Address manuscript

Blogging as Improv

A word about this new blog. You might have noticed there are a bunch of people blogging about my work, and so far none of them have been me. It’s an experiment. I’m fascinated to see what they write, where they go… I understand this blog as a kind of group improv.

In a movement improv jam a group of people riff on related themes. They don’t decide what to do beforehand. They don’t know where they will end up. They don’t all agree to do the same thing. They don’t even agree to disagree. It’s an organic structure that unfolds. Some people work together to develop a theme. Some people introduce new ideas. Some orchestrate group movement. Someone steadfastly does their own thing around the perimeter of the space. Someone else runs through and wildly disrupts everything. That’s how I see this blog.

I guess you could say it’s “rhizomic”. Take a look at this if you want to think about rhizomes:

PROJECT CONVERGENCE

What’s interesting to me, beyond this idea of a blog as a model for movement activity, or vice versa, is how this all relates to my choreography. Sure, in one way it’s obvious. The choreography is the subject of the blog. But what are the similarities and differences between choreography and this rhizomic kind of process? While the rhizome branches and spreads in ways that don’t privilege one beginning and one end, one direction or one form, choreography (perhaps an equally messy process) still has its clear boundaries, its endpoint, its goals. In the end, there is a piece– branches get clipped, parts get privileged. In the end you can’t just grow out into all directions at once– you choose, you delineate, you decide where the work begins and ends. You set a premiere date.

I am seeing more and more how my choreographic process leads into many directions and into many media in this rhizomic way, how there is a tension between that impulse and the choreographic need to set things, to lop off branches, to pin things down, to work in one medium. So I wonder what this blog will do… the power of suggestion, the devil on my shoulder. When will the rhizomic nature of a blog start to influence the format of the choreographic work itself? And when will it/can it ever at some point just simply become part of the work?