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Compare and Contrast

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pqhks1Q41g]
and
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/62056892 w=560&h=315]

granted, it could be said that we are looking at apples and oranges as one performance has audience on three sides, live music, and video.  But I would say that these two performances are more alike than they are different.  I am most interested in the spacing, placing, and pacing of the kinespheres and how they differ in the two pieces.

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A Few Thoughts on

 After Trio A
Andrea Bozic
HAU 2
19:30 7.12.12
Why did the female performer follow the male performer?
Why did she wear short sleeves and he long sleeves? Is that a reference to the phallus?
Why did she wear Nike and he Adidas?
Why did her shoe laces match her shirt, but this was not the case for the male performer?
Interpretation…always confusing…how are we supposed to know which elements to interpret?  And how? And if the piece is intended to be interpreted at all?
All that aside – The energies of the performers were quite different.  She approached the process of following a video of him following a video of Trio A danced by Rainer with much a much more task-oriented energy.  When I watched him I felt that he was performing personality more than following the process.  His energy was flying out to the audience instead of being channeled into the attempt to following the choreography.
But it is almost irrelevant, in my opinion, that the choreography from Trio A was used.  Any choreography would suffice.  As someone who is interested in the spectrum of deliberation in relation to choreography and improvisation and how a dancer responds to visual input, I am more interested in the process of instantaneous recreation than what the material is that is being recreated than the fact that Trio A was used.  The choreographer was asked to make a new work in relation to an historical piece and she chose Trio A.  Not a bad choice, I say, being a fan of the piece.  Also using such an iconic piece as a reference gives instant gravitas to this piece.

I am more interested in watching the body/mind of the dancer puzzle out the pathways in the moment, giving it the old college try and not commenting on it during it.  For this reason, for me Lito was more engaging, and truer to the spirit of Trio A, than Felix.

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Moshpit Simulation

Below is a link to an interesting simulation of a moshpit.

I can’t insert it into this WordPress site as iframes are not allowed.

http://mattbierbaum.github.io/moshpits.js/

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I hope you die soon

Well…how to begin?
During the last performance I saw at HAU 1, Les Petites Morts – i hope you die soon, I was inspired to write glib and non-glib responses to what I was seeing.  After writing them up and other thoughts about the work, I re-read it and read it to my wife.  She asked my why I wanted to write what I did.  I could have spent the time writing a grant.  
After going through the personal cathartic reasons, I articulated that I wrote it to practice articulating my responses articulately to other artists’ work. Apart from personal articulation practice, I believe that more dance/movement/performance artists should be publicly articulating their responses to each other’s work.  Maybe many are and I just don’t know the URLs.
When I still lived in the Bay Area in California, I was speaking with a friend about a mutual aquaintance and the difficulty she was having writing reviews.  My friend thought that because she, the mutual aquaintance, was also a dancer that she shouldn’t be writing reviews.  Why not?  Should opinions about work be reserved only for impartial non dancers?  Why shouldn’t we all be talking about the work?  I think this deference to outside opinions is dangerous.  I am not saying that non-makers should not have opinions about dance and performance, but they shouldn’t have the last word.
So, back to Les Petites Morts – i hope you die soon.   What did I think of it?  The performers, Angela  Schubot and Jared Gardinger, were very invested and engaged in their piece.  I really enjoyed the beginning.  It was a nice take on the typical contemporary dance beginning.  Instead of standing there and letting us see them and see that they are seeing us, they were laying down.  The small subtle movements, seemingly random, that resolved into symetrical and held (pre-determined?) shapes.  It allowed for the first step of blurrig the corporeal boundaries – moments of wondering whose limb was whose.  Hardly a new device, but enjoyable, nonetheless. 
The breathing that kicked in about 20 minutes into the piece at first made me very conscious of my own breath, but quickly became comical.  They sustained the breathing for too long and coupled with the exaggerated looks on their face, reminded me of zombies in a B movie.  Yes, I understood the representation of blurring boundaries between bodies and dissolving the self with the breathing – what I exhale you inhale and vice versa.  But they didn’t offer me any other opinion or extend the metaphor in a new way.  I can think of other more interesting ways of de-bordering bodies – 
fecal transplants, organ transplants, blood donations or attempting to become Siamese twins?
My reaction to this piece could also be my aversion to the topic itself.  Death and dying are much too grand, ubiquitos, (dare I say old-fashioned or classical?!?), and serious to deal with seriously.  I prefer Woody Allen’s movie Love and Death for these topics.  This might be kind of morbid but I could not get invested in a piece about death and dying knowing that there was no chance of an actual death.  This is also related to my issue with theater as opposed to dance.
It’s all pretend.
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Met a Four

…by using tools from schools of thought that deal in metaphor, we end up constantly looking for metaphor…

discuss

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Another definition for Contact

Con –
1. a prefix meaning “with,” “together,” “in association”
2. a verb meaning “to commit to memory” or “to study or examine closely”
3. an adverb meaning “on the negative side” or “in opposition”

4. a verb meaning “swindle”, “manipulate”, “persuade”, or “cajole”

Tact –
1.a keen sense of what to say or do to avoid giving offense; skill in dealing with difficult or delicate situations.
2.a keen sense of what is appropriate, tasteful, or aesthetically pleasing; taste; discrimination.
3.touch or the sense of touch.


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CI is like Champagne

Only bubbly white wine
that comes from the region of 
Champagne, France 
is given the name 
champagne.

Contact Improvisation, some people maintain, is more than just a physical practice. It is a political movement, a way of life, a way to interact with our fellow humans and the world. Some might even go as far as to say CI is a social modality that can change the world.

Contact Improvisation was not created in a vacuum. It arose in the United States during a time of great flux and change. It was a time of great social and political upheaval. Therefore, the environment in which CI arose is inherent in the form.

If CI is a political/social/gender/economic etc. movement then to truly understand CI one has to come from the same soil that birthed CI.

Are, then, only denizens of the United States of America fully capable of understanding CI and manifesting true corporeal self-determination in the moment?

(it could also be that all the concomitant -isms that people attribute to the physical form of CI have nothing to with it, that it is purely the physical practice and form. Yes, CI can be a tool for creating those -isms, but it is not those -isms. A hammer can be used to build a house, but it is not a house.)