I would like to make something that requires a different kind of looking than most of my dances require. i want to make something beautiful, but not new agey. i want to just shift the way we see so that we feel like we are looking at something we have not seen before. Right now, i'm thinking that i could work on the "imprints" section of the dance with more extreme focusing of pressure. how to turn my ordinary expectations of the body moving into discovery? i'm wondering. how to make the body seem like new territory for human subjectivity or experience?
I think nearly all art comes down to making sense of our finiteness. the fact that we will die. i would like to do that here. (not die!) and also not fall into cliches. dan said he was noticing the "surprises" in the choreography. the interruptions in his expectations? when these interruptions or changes in the "program" occurred, i wonder the nature of these interruptions? i mean, were they ruptures that made sense, that increased the size of the frame, that productively or confusingly messed with the sense of intention of the work? when the dancers suddenly look out at the audience, what is the effect of that moment? does the experience that it catalyzes relate to other moments later in the dance?
when i made this, i was not thinking about surprises. i was feeling my own need for consistency and also new information. i had early on thought about interruptions, but i had let it go, (I thought), not knowing how to do it.
I am asking myself, what can i be doing to deepen my own choreographic practice? Not 'what new thing can i try,' but where is my next step in my relationship to my work. What did "dancing to music" do that i have been afraid to do? what conventions of "what a dance is" am i being too obedient to? what would be brave to do, and also true for me?
I also wonder about the video. you (Dan) seemed to think the tree image, the leaves, was fairly cliched? the pots and pans seemed like a non-sequitur? the dad, also a non-sequitur? the frame? the projection worked well on the wall, but that's because it was also responding to Pieter's room-ness. A theater has only theater ness. how to project in the theater? i was thinking that we could make a movie and stream it on people's smart phones. but among other things, there is very little phone reception at REDCAT. i remember mark told me that. (but wouldn't it be cool to make a piece that both happened onstage and also people watched on their smart phones, and that it 'talked' productively back and forth? like close-ups, like reminders to look at the stage, like commentary, description...). another idea for this dance: have many framed images projected in one single video image on the back wall. inside different frames, different movies play. one frame could have the movie, with the tree. another frame could have a newsreel montage. another frame could have Robbie's dad, who would now and then talk. another frame could have a flipbook of presidents. another frame could have messy kitchens, one picture after another. cut to a rear view mirror and the road receding, behind. cut to the edited clips of the vets doing their combat play. or maybe the back wall, no matter what, is too conventional in the theater. it is the place where we hang our set ideas. I think about the audience's smart phones again. i remember that there is no reception in REDCAT. i think about televisions that go on and off, sitting on various levels of tables and stools on the downstage edge. i remember that the AWARD show probably won't let me have a set. what to do with video at REDCAT?
in any case...
i am thinking that the choreography could go further. the way we think about the bodies moving could do more to explore the idea of presence, or absence. why DO the dancers look at the audience. or more, why are they not beginning by looking at the audience? first, it seems like the dance is inviting the viewer to look at the dancers who seem to be inhabiting some "state" some sort of internal experience. then those dancers shift their focus, to us. but they have always known we are there. so why look then?
I am wondering if maybe each dancer should pick one person from the audience who they know, who will "walk them up to the stage, to the downstage edge," and leave them there. then, the dancers could all be looking back out at the person who brought them up there, as they return to the audience, the dancers could begin by looking at the audience. Then, the dancers would only turn around, to begin their imprints on the stage. skip the way it began on wednesday (the dancers standing in a clump in their internal state). maybe that could come later, if at all.
maybe the dance wants to say: i know you are watching. we are not pretending otherwise. but we are also going to go places inside ourselves, to tell you about something.
i think my idea of beauty has to do with giving a gift, that was unexpected, but becomes precious. so what is a gift like that? some idea like: how lovely another person's lips feel on your neck, or the pressure of another person's weight... how lovely the ecstatic, sexy dance that we do, in public places, with someone, alone... when we know that our time is finite. we are not here forever. in life, there is not a moment of arrival, of satiation, or conclusion. we do not say, "aha. this is what the whole thing was about, or this is what i was living for." so how about a dance that is a reminder that we are in our best moments now. uncomfortable, tired, whatever. and about a dance that doesn't cozily provide a nice ABA structure, but sputters or doesn't finish when it is time for it to be over?
how to make a dance like that?
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