Flow and the Evolution of Contact

Have you ever watched Magnesium? It is probably on Youtube. The seminal performance that gave us contact improvisation. If you watch it and then watch a contact jam at a festival or a weekly jam somewhere in the world, you will probably not see the connection. One is a performance with an audience and one involves performing and there are people watching but not an audience in the traditional sense. The theme of where performance has devolved to in the CI community I will not touch right now.

What I want to ramble about now is flow. The early examples of CI that I have seen on video where rather flowless – bodies bumping into each other falling, flailing, hitting the ground loudly. See contemporary contact, flow, continual contact, and ease are much more apparent. Flow and ease are constant themes of discussions, classes and workshops.

But the Tool does not have to determine the Logic.

Flow has become so paramount because it is as far as you can get from the beginnings of CI. The pendulum has swung to the flow end. And many people like it there. Flow, flow, flow, flow, flow, flow, flow, flow, flow, flow, is the name of the sensual touch junkie game. Go to a jam and get your flow on. Though on Wednesdays at K77 in Berlin that is impossible and no one seems to mind. Maybe that jam is closer to the original idea of CI.

But really, who wants to stay with the original idea of anything? Cooking…certainly not. Housing…certainly not. Living in a cave cooking rabbits over open flame?!?

Ideas evolve and improve. The need for flow grew out of a need for sustainability and easy. Bashing one’s self about as they did in Magnesium hurts, is tiring and grows old artistically quickly. So the other end of the kinetic spectrum has developed over the past 38 years. But in that last sentence, there is an inherent problem.

CI should not be viewed as having a kinetic spectrum – flow at one end and bashing at the other. The frantic energy of Magnesium can exist but with a softer body state. Or a slow tempo with a very held body state. Something I try to open people’s eyes/minds/bodies to when I teach the 4 Winds into Contact.

What I am worried about in relation to CI is that is stuck in the flow world. That flow is the Paragon of CI. And that is why so CI is hard for so many people to watch. It is the same tempo and tension the whole time. No Sturm und Drang. That and most people training in it have no performance training. Well, they might perform at contact festivals, but (uh oh) that doesn’t count.

So go out there do contact. Flow and don’t flow. Find all the flavors in between and around and amongst.

The Absence of Sequential Thought


Above is a picture of the structure of the last piece from The Absence of Sequential Thought. The piece, All Structure/No Content was constructed by arbitrarily combining one or more of the 6 performance elements – Costume, Pathway, Lighting (here listed as video), Sound, Movement (here listed as Kinesphere), and Set.

Sentimental Pussyfooting

Here is the text from the program of Sentimental Pussyfooting, Non Fiction’s ground-breaking performance from 2009 –

Sentimental Pussyfooting – a study in plagiarism
How does an idea become part of the public artistic palette? Can an idea be used
without being seen as a reference?

performed by Kelly Dalrymple, Sonshereé Giles, Sean Seward, Adam Venker, Andrew Wass.
directed by Andrew Wass

Counterpulse Theater San Francisco
Feb 29th and March 1st 2008

Imagine if all of dance consisted of a performer wearing a video projector?
Or done in 4:33 of silence? Or was 5 dancers on a diagonal line?

The way I see it dance, or most dance, has the same structure – lights go on, music and movement start and they all end together. It’s essentially the same skeleton every time. Whether it’s San Francisco Ballet or Robert Moses, the skeleton is the same. Just the meat
around the bones has changed. The costumes are different, the music is different, the
performers are different etc. But still essentially the same piece.

In this show, I am using works by Trisha Brown, John Cage, Jess Curtis, Paul Taylor,
and Yoko Ono as points of departure. Some pieces will be fairly straightforward recreations
of the structures. Other pieces are using a structure or an element from a piece to examine
or express something different from the original intention. The title of the show and all but
one title of the pieces are taken from sentences in an Iris Murdoch novel.

One of the structures used in this show comes from a piece by Trisha Brown,
called Homemade. In it she performs with a reel to reel projector attached to her back.
The video projected is of someone doing the same choreography, of faces, hands and feet.
The structure of Homemade is redone pretty faithfully. A woman is dancing with a video
projector on her back, projecting the same choreography that she is doing live. It is the same
structure/skeleton but all the variables/meat are different: the performer is different, the
costume is different, the video projector and video are different etc. So is it the same piece?

If Moses’ and San Francisco Ballet’s pieces are different, then Brown’s piece and mine
are different. The costumes are different. The people executing the movements are different.
The choreographies and videos are different. The skeleton in both cases remains the same, yet
people are more likely to say that I am repeating Brown’s piece because it is a different
enough of a skeleton from the basic dance skeleton.

No one says to ODC or Paul Taylor –
“Oh lights, movement, and music…that is So and So’s piece” Why not? Because that skeleton
is from time immemorial. And most dance I see is just repeating the same skeleton over and
over again. And dance is so rich because we keep investigating the same skeleton over and
over again. Where would dance be if people stopped making dances to music because that
had already been done?

By keeping certain structures identified with and tied to certain artists, we limit
our collective artistic investigation. By being sentimental, by saying “Oh, we can’t do that
because that is So and So’s piece”, we cut ourselves off from so many possibilities.
We need to stop pussyfooting around and appropriate/steal/use/riff on/reject performance
history. Every piece in this show that I am relating to I consider a door that was opened when
the pieces were originally made, a door for us to walk through. Those artists pointed us in new directions. It is up to us to continue in those directions and continue their investigations and
create our own skeletons/structures.

Truth in Advertising Titles

Below are the two sets of titles I created for our latest performance, Truth in Advertising. Please see the previous blog post for more information about why each piece had two titles.

1. 20 Discrete Events

2. Person with Object and Pop Song

3. Choreography Created by 6, Performed by 2
choreo by Shelley Senter, Nina Martin, Margaret Paek, Rebecca Bryant, Kelly Dalrymple-Wass, Andrew Wass

4. Contact Improvisation Duet

5. Man Grunting

6. Improvised Trio

7. Scored Contact Improvisation Duet with Sound Score

***************************************************

1. A Useful Fiction – Free will and self determination do exist. We all can choose to act but the circumstances may change before we are ready. Can we adapt to and survive in these new conditions?

2. Still/Life – love, absence, longing.

3. Homage to Elsewhere – What is memory? Is it located in the brain or the body? Can we use the experience and existence of another to trigger memories of my own?

4. Adept At Any Altitude – What is rehearsal? Do two people engaging in an improvised performance modality need to rehearse specifically with each other for a performance or are their years of practicing the form with other people their rehearsal process?

5. Distillation – This piece is a distillation of the collective human experience of cruelty – cruelty that we experience from the direct or inadvertent action of others and cruelty that we consciously or unconsciously inflict upon others.

6. Trigger Conditions – It is hot and bright in the theater lights on the empty stage. Three dancers move and gesticulate through space, time and existences. In this piece the performers grapple with the tension between theater and the spectacle of the contemporary world. It is an investigation: How do we live, how do we breath, how do we reach each other in this post capitalist period?

7. A2Zed/Nexus – Every word/action/idea is at the same time the end of a series and the beginning of new series. Whether or not these two progressions will be related or make sense can only be determined if and when the next word/action/idea is created.

Truth in Advertising Program notes

What is the function of a title? A sign to tell the people who read the program what the performance is about? Or a lens through which the audience should view the performance, creating an event that is something different than is what is happening on stage? Neither function we find satisfactory.

If the function of a title is to tell the audience what is happening, then it leaves no room for the audience to participate, for them to create the performance within themselves initiated by what is presented on stage. On the other hand, if the artist uses the title as a lens, then s/he runs the risk of being too vague, leaving all the work of creating the performance up to the audience’s imagination and perception. And if that is the case, then the audience could just as well stay home and imagine their own performance.

“Truth in Advertising” presents 7 pieces each with two titles – one a sign and one a lens.

click here for video

Going to Performances

Last night I went to see Nah Dran XXII at ada. Didn’t know anyone on the program, but it is a theater nearby AND I didn’t know anyone on the program. Off I went at 5 past 8. Took me all of 4 minutes to bike to the theater. And found parking right away.

I enjoyed about half of the performance. Most of it, if I just viewed it as cool moves in time and space with some sounds. But after reading the program about how do people connect and trust and does this character want to leave her spot…blah blah blah de#$!@blah…

Anyways that is not what I am here to talk about. Upon reading the program, I was surprised to see a friend was performing. She had been pulled into the performance a week ago due to an injury of another dancer. I enjoyed that piece. It has a fruitful structure. While she and I chatted after the performance, she asked me why I had come to the performance. Did I know anyone in the show or had I seen any of the other performers’ work. I had not, I replied. A look of what I took as surprise came over her face. Why surprise? That I would go see work of people I don’t know?

Regardless of what was going on in her head…it is important for artists to see work. Yes, we all know this, but I think that we forget it. And I would venture to say that it is more important to go see work by people we don’t know and aren’t friends with. *** Birds of a feather flock together, so your friends probably have similar interests in performance, whether in tool, aesthetic or logic (2 out of 3 at least, another ventured guess). And seeing work by people unknown to you will broaden your horizons.

I have heard several choreographers on different continents and different sub-genres of contemporary dance say that they are tired of going to see work – they don’t like what they see (so has performance been reduced to entertainment?) or they don’t have time to see other work after their rehearsals/performances and seeing their friends performances (see *** above).

In summation – go see work and a lot of it!

The Three Stages of Creation

There are three stages of conscious creation, though unconsciousness can factor into them.

They are exploration, experimentation, and execution.

I had a good description of the three written down in a notebook during a caffeine fueled frenzy after a Klein technique class at Labor Gras, but, alas, that notebook is AWOL. Here is a link to an earlier posting on the subject from ’08

Their4, I will begin again.

Exploration is the first stage. It is search before the research. It is the hearsal before the rehearsal. It is the discovery of what exists around you, whether you are in the studio or sitting on the subway thinking about your project. It is discovery/invention of what tools you will be using in your project. Also exploration is the rejection of tools. A work of art is more about what it is not than what it is. Granted all types of infinities exist some are just larger than others.

Experimentation is the second stage. Once the tools have been selected/created, their relationships can be investigated. (Uh oh, passive voice) How do the tools interact? Are you using them as tools or have they become logics or aesthetics? Experimentation is also the stage in which you can begin to figure out more in what direction your project will go.

The final stage is execution – when the work is presented before an audience.

I would say that in the choreo/impro spectrum the size of the triangle is larger towards the choreo end and approaches a dot towards the impro end. But choreo could be made as something to experiment with during the execution phase, the logic of that piece then being more improvisational.

All three phases can happen at the same time or separately. In more traditional (choreo’ed) work, there is more linear progression from exploration to experimentation to execution.

Below are two pictographs about this triumvirate. One has the three on a Cartesian co-ordinate system and the other as a simple triangle, which can be mapped on to the co-ordinate system. I find that the co-ordinate system can be a little misleading as it implies a “0” in relation to the three elements, which as I think about it now does make sense, so maybe it is not so confusing. A work of art that has no exploration, no experimentation and no execution would be not. What would something that has an infinite amount of each?

The first pictograph has the term “Sprecta of Deliberation”. I borrowed and expanded the term “Spectrum of Deliberation” from Nina Martin. I expanded it to Spectra” as I believe that there is a greater than one dimensional difference between choreo and impro.


I appreciate any thoughts and feedback on this subject.

The Rite of Spring

Has anyone ever said, “Oh, The Rite of Spring…that’s been done.”? I doubt it and if they had no one would take them seriously. But seriously…how many times has the Rite of Spring been used by various choreographers.

But when we talk about drinking one’s own urine in a performance…that’s been done. And yes, it has been done. Someone somewhere sometime drank his or her own urine on stage. Maybe it was shocking to the audience, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the urine drinker wasn’t even going for shock value. Maybe it was a metaphor for the nitrogen cycle on the earth or how everything that can be considered waste is really useful in another way or useful to someone else.

But if the original pee drinking premiere was going for shock value, s/he has not shocked me, as I have not seen the performance. Thinking about urine drinking does take the shock out of it. If in a Mark Morris Dance Company suddenly one dancer urinates in the mouth of another dancer..that would be shocking. If two performers at a venue such as CounterPulse in San Francisco performed a similar act…not as shocking. In either context, the act of drinking urine would be less shocking if the audience knew about it before hand.

Removing the idea of context based on performers, venue, or foreknowledge, the act of urophagia would still shock me. Maybe shock is not the right word…startle…surprise…But as I have never seen urophagia and never performed it myself, I would be starprised (new word, you read it here first!).

– But it’s been done. We, as the collective human consciousness, don’t need to go through that again – to paraphrase and misquote a friend of mine. If this were true, about the collective human consciousness, then as soon as a group of humans have experienced something, the rest of humanity doesn’t need to experience that something.

At what point have enough homo sapiens sapiens experienced “x” so that the rest do not need to endure/enjoy “x”?

Names

Maybe I have written about this before, maybe not. I do know that I have thought about this a lot. A parking lot full of thoughts, a parking lot at an amusement park full of thoughts. A parking lot at an amusement park next to an outlet mall full of thoughts. Though the amount of thinking doesn’t me that the transmission of these thoughts will be very clear.

Name of dance companies/collectives…More and more groups/people are using the forward slash,”/” after their name with a word or phrase to name their group. Just came across one today – Jesse Hewit/Strong Behavior. From what I have seen/heard about him Strong Behavior is an apt title.

There is also Jess Curtis/Gravity and Nir De Volff/Total Brutal. Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts also use the forward slash but in between the names of the two artists, not between the names of the artists and their company name. Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods is another example. As in her case and De Volff’s the website is only the company name whereas in the case of Curtis the website is his name followed by the company name and with Hewit the website is his name without the name of the company.

Ultima Vez/ Wim Vandekeybus might be another example. On the ImpulsTanz website, the names are written with the forward slash but on the website no such relationship could be found. This leads me to believe that the use of the forward slash on the ImpulsTanz website was a result of a decision of the Austrian dance festival and not of the Belgian choreographer.

Why use the forward slash? Is the name of the company not enough? Or is the individual better known than the company? Or is this a return to the modern, i.e. glorification of the individual? First there were “royal” dance companies, then something like the Ballet Russe, not named after an individual but no longer tied to a monarch. Then came something like the Denishawn, named after the two artistic directors, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn (great uncle of Wallace Shawn…just kidding). Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Mark Morris Dance Company, Trisha Brown Dance Company, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, etc..

Then came the format that added the dancers in the title – Sasha Waltz & Guests, Scott Wells and Dancers. This format somewhat puts the dancers and the choreographer on an even level, but still the dancers remain anonymous.

Then there came the random word/phrase format entering the post-modern, removing the hierarchy completely as choreographer/creator and performers are not indicated – Pilobolus, Goat Island, Lower Left.

Granted there is not a definite time line when one name format is used and another is no longer used. All formats exist now and companies are continually named in a varieties of formats. One company based in Seattle went from the post-modern format to the modern one – Phffft became Khambatta Dance Company. Why the change, I cannot say. Maybe the choreographer decided to go more “mainstream” with the name. Look at the names of the best funded companies in the United States.

So as asked above, is the use of the slash combining the choreographer’s name and the company title a return to the modern?

How about something like – The Andrew Wass Dance Company and Dancers Project Dance Theatre/Non Fiction?

P.S.
Why is the word “dance” in so many dance company names? How many bands have the word rock or music or band or hip hop or rap in their names?

Styles of Dance

Jazz dance has Fosse, Simonson ( the only two I know of) and I sure many more styles

Modern has Horton, Graham, Limon.

Ballet has Vaganova, Cecchetti, Russian, Danish, English styles, to just name a few.

Yoga has Vipassana, Hatha, Jivamukti, Svaroopa, Ashtanga, Bikram and…

Say Jazz, modern, ballet, or yoga and most people will have some idea of what you are talking about. Might not be exactly what you mean, but in the ballparl

Contact Improvisation, as of know, has one name. Yes, there are regional styles – West Coast, East Coast, European. But as CI is so young compared to the other movement modalities mentioned (how old is Yoga?!?), it has not been around long enough to change and become codified.

Eventually Contact Improvisation will become codified and that is just as good as it is bad. Codification can lead to clarity, but also to ossification. Codification can then also let practitioners of the form reject was has come before and discover new ground within a form. If CI does not expand and grow (some people might see this as becoming something else and the death of the form) it will stagnate.

I look forward to how many styles and flavors of CI there will be in another 38 years.