Kinesphere

fossilized traces of worm movement

Mara — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 04:35:13 +0000

Labyrinth Walk

Mara — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 09:00:23 +0000

I did a winter solstice Labyrinth Walk at the Chadwick Arboretum at OSU.

It was dark, and the labyrinth was lit with candles in paper bags. My son wore light-up shoes which were remarkable in the darkness.

I was particularly interested in the corporate, performative aspect of this exercise – there was a whole group of strangers, and with no training, we all walked the labyrinth together. The labyrinth itself served as the simple score for our ‘performance’. There is talk that the turning motions balance the left and right brain function. So what was this shared experience of walking and turning producing for us corporately? At times, we would encounter each other headfirst going different directions on the same narrow path; there were no instructions, and we had to improvise. The system broke down; what did this breakdown offer to us as a group? Laughter, and responsiveness, and disorder, are my immediate thoughts.

Also, I kept being unsure that I was still on the path. In the dark, with the narrow twists and turns of the labyrinth, it was hard to trust that I was really “going anywhere” at times.

Interestingly, I came across another one the very next week. On Christmas eve I did this chamomile labyrinth with my son.

I’d like to learn more about these labyrinths, and maybe create one of my own.

Mara — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:27:59 +0000

This is a bulgarian group I don’t know a lot about; I’ve just been watching some of their stuff on youtube. They go by the name “The White Brotherhood” which is hopefully referring to white clothes and not race, and dance around in a field in Bulgaria.

the technical session

Mara — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:22:33 +0000

I’m at the International Council of Kinetography Laban conference in Budapest. This conference, instated after World War II to form consensus about technical variations in Laban dance notation as it had developed in isolation on both sides of the atlantic, now still has some sessions geared towards discussion of technical problems in the system–though less so than it did at first. I have attended three of these technical sessions at the conference.

The meeting has a kind of liturgical process – the paper is introduced, protocol for questions is read, and then the floor opens for questions. There is always a scribe, as well as a skype connection with Dance Notation Bureau in New York. Each person must wait for the microphone and for the scribe to be ready to ask their question. Then they have a really intense discussion about things like “what is the definition of a unit?” Heated arguments ensue.

Fascinating.

As I often write about in different ways on this blog, I feel that I have some philosophical meta-criticism or self-reflection to offer to these technical discussions. Today, I had worked out my contribution in my mind, but the session ran out of time and I coudn’t comment. Save it for the dissertation, I guess. . .

At the same time as seeming to lack a sense of reflexivity about their core discussions, the people here are also very knowledgeable and experienced in fascinating ways. They are incredibly adept at thinking in specific terms about movement, and many are very passionate. I am glad I got to come and feel invigorated at the idea of joining, and also changing, this discussion about dance notation as my work unfolds over time.

Merrygogo Site

Mara — Mon, 23 May 2011 19:12:38 +0000

An exciting choreographer and good buddy, Maree Remalia, just launched her fun new website, created in cahootz with Michael Morris and Rashana Smith.

http://www.merrygogo.com/ playfully archives Maree’s brainstorms, rehearsal processes, finished works and many forms of documentation, including some notation and writing by Rachael Riggs-Leyva and myself concerning her work for a bunch of men, “Penetrating and Permeating”. I don’t usually make recommendations, but here’s an exception. I really enjoy Maree’s work and this site, and hope you will enjoy it too.

score gaps

Mara — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:26:05 +0000

I am still frustrated by the gaps I find in the Knust score. I’m not sure I can present this research without trying harder to figure out what it all means. The things I made up to fill the holes just seem like smokescreens. As does the theory I used to explain myself; maybe all this stuff about intersubjectivity is just my way of covering for a lack of rigor either creatively or as a historian.

More Little Books

Mara — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 14:49:41 +0000

I just love tiny books!

I need to make some for the next performance event.

Today I noticed these:

Thoughts from the Mass Spectacle of 2/12

Mara — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:15:29 +0000

This past Saturday was a blast. With the help of exactly 39 others, I realized my first mass dance for a large group based on the 1930′s notation score I’ve been researching.

I’ll be sharing more pictures and video as I get them processed. Much of the information for the participants was stored at the quickly-created website for the event.

Now I’m thinking about the next event, scheduled for March 5, reflecting on what happened Saturday. I would like to reuse some of the same strategies. Such as, having an organized system for how people would move in the space, having leaders who know the system, using DIY web and graphic design to communicate something about the event, and also to intentionally obscure exactly who and what is behind the event, which for me has to do with my emerging opinions about how to do historical research.

While I want to obscure some elements, other things just need to be clearer, earlier, to facilitate such a big spectacle, than they were for this German mass dance event. Thus, I will be making more decisions ahead of time and clarifying my own expectations for the volunteers – particularly the core of people that are donating large amounts of time. Also, the German dance event was closely based on a definite score for movement – the 1930′s dance notation score. What type of scores could keep more options open? So that the ultimate performance could be highly organized, yet also indefinite and dependent on the actions of each leader?

Whereas the Feb 12 movement choir took place in the sheltered space of the OSU campus and treated the participants as the only audience, the March 5 event should take place in a public space – the location obviously needs to be kept secret until much closer to the event.

waltz notes

Mara — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:44:49 +0000

I’m listening over and over again to the recording I finally received from the record archive, trying to figure out where the dance steps go in the music, and how to find the musical markers the dancers so need to help them find their place in the dance. The template of the notation score meshes nicely with the recording in a way no other track of this ‘Faust Waltz’ has, and solves some problems that I was having with putting this dance together. But it creates new ones. This dance, a movement-choir waltz by Albrecht Knust, seems to have a really simplistic relationship to the music. The dancers move exactly in accordance with rhythmic changes. This generally should make the puzzle of the score easier to solve. However, the dance notation score is riddled with repeats. Repeats within repeats too, and lots of second and third endings for repeated sections; and all in a form of proto-notation which looks just different enough from the modern to make my head spin. But when I put the dance with the music, there is a whole vague middle section that doesn’t mesh as clearly.

Incidentally, it is the section that focuses most on formation changes; the steps the dancers do are way less important than where they do them as they travel through the space, forming spirals, giant spinning pinwheels that expand and contract, squares, little circles, and y-shapes. This section is the most important to me as far as why movement choirs were special, and different from dances for the stage, not only because of their social and cultural position, but at the choreographic level. This will allow me to talk about how it may have felt to be inside the dances.

The dance is bracketed at beginning and end by more complicated dance steps, in place. Apparently these are what I have lots of practice reading in notation; these are the types of things Laban notation adapted to make readable, and that common practice in dance notation focuses on today. But the group movements are foreign. It is the difference between focusing on dance at the level of the individual body and dance at the level of the group.

The real thoughts I wanted to jot down today though, were about my process with this vague section of the score. The process of aligning and realigning movement and music phrases was getting me nowhere. I realized I am right inside of a border space of dance notation and reconstruction practice. This dance is ephemeral, and it is gone. I have this trace, the score, to work with. This is how it has always been. As I approach the dance, I put my finger on something. I figure out a step, or a musical connection and the dance seems present again. Then, one of these holes appears, and the dance has slipped through my fingers again. The original dance has left the building.

The other day, one of the dancers suggested that in the places where there are holes, the throngs we are inviting to do this score with us should do a disco pose, or something like it. She was really on to something. I realized that since I’ve committed to bringing this dance forward with live bodies, they must have some group consensus about what it is that they are doing, at times down to the musical measure. The dance must make some kind of sense for them in space and time.

I could research more, dig into Knust’s multi-volume, three-language Dictionary of Kinetography Laban as well as other things in the archives to try to decode more of the symbols I still don’t get. I could spend my time, geek out, and dig deeper. But I have been digging for several years now. Isn’t that due diligence? Now I have these dancers, standing in front of me, ready for anything. And really, if I continue digging, I will find infinite places where there is no there, there – where the “original” again slips through my fingers.

This is, of course, one of my axes to grind; how lost past performances are is seriously contested territory for many in my field. They are very lost, people. And who tells the story of history affects what is said. Here is such a lovely opening, where I can get between the sure presence offered by the score and the confusion created by the score. What seems to be a finite dance, which can be determined down to the second, now seems to have infinite holes. To get the chance to create infinite spaces inside apparently tiny holes. . . this is what reconstruction feels like to me.

Until rehearsal starts today, I will be standing in some of these holes. I will patch them with disco steps, or something else. Often, reconstructors find the most believable looking patch they can, so that you can’t tell the hole has been patched. All I am thinking is that it would be fun to use very colorful patches. Patches that aren’t put together very well, that might fall off, that look garish, or embarrassing, or that look fun, or are inviting, drawing attention to themselves, and their function as patches. Or perhaps I could do a little of both, so that no one is sure what is going on.

One criticism against this is approach is that I’m short-circuiting the research process out of laziness. Some will argue that I’m smokescreening; they will say that I am using theory to cover my own failure to be thorough. Well, if they want to know the exact repeat structure of this “Walzer”, be my guest. The score is in the online collection of the Centre National de la Danse . Plus we have it here at Ohio State. I will share my research path with you. I am tired from my looking right now, and I want to do some making. I am looking for the answers to my questions, which is really the only thing anyone can do.

fever dreams

Mara — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 04:48:06 +0000

There is something so unique about the dreams one has when feverish. A fever dream for me is usually this insane miasma of mantras or images or imagined tasks that I have to get done. Last week i had this feverish night of “chronotopes, chronotropes, chronotopes. . . “. The words are one of several overarching themes of the performance studies class, and the “chronotope” is a new idea to me, that I was trying to get my brain around. The word kept melding and mushing and repeating in my mind, and so many things kept appearing to me that were, in my half-crazed fever state somehow either chronotopes, choronotropes, or both. While unfortunately most of the content of the dream isn’t really worth trying to make sense out of, some is; the over-sharpness of my fever-thinking turned on my recent engagement in a lot of google video chatting, and the small conversational delay which is a part of the experience of video chatting if you don’t use headphones. It was explained to me thus; if you don’t use headphones, in addition to your usual experience of your voice in the present, you are more likely to hear it delayed just a moment later coming through your friend’s speakers and back into your own system. I think I have this right. (If not, forgive me, and try googlechatting with headphones and tell me what changes) This simple little bit of extra auditory feedback doesn’t seem like it should do much, but in a conversation, it disorients me just enough to make conversation almost totally impossible.

What, O fever brain, does this have to do with chronotopes, you ask? Well, I don’t know, but I’m thinking about what that voice is, or why it catches my attention so. I’m thinking about myself in a google chat, seeing my partner, seeing the video of myself, too, and often finding myself looking at myself while I talk to him rather than at him. “What do I look like while I say that?” All this leaves the chat feeling completely unlike a usual, less-mediated face-to-face; it brings my awareness of my performance of conversation to the fore. I find myself not listening. And this brings me back to that strange “conversation” with Michael, where I was unable to make out a word he said. I guess I am thinking of the floating voice, and even my experience of my conversation partner’s virtual transmission, as chronotopes, in a way. He is haunting me with a presence that is just a beat behind, while also being with me. I am also haunting him.

The other idea I got about this in the fever dream has a little more to do with temporal agents outside of their time. I also thought as I sweated and tossed, “all sound is memory”, which is something I also know almost nothing about but have heard once or twice. So, all the time I am hearing what is said by remembering. All functioning in conversation is coming from my hearing, my memory of my own words, and of the words of my conversation partner. Even when there is no strange floating google voice separating me from what I just said and blocking my immediate hearing of my partner’s next words, there is, actually, a floating voice. The sounds don’t stop in my ear canal, but are always mediated in time, through me. So no conversation is really as immediate as I think.

It’s all a little wild-eyed, and what to make of it? Gratitude to my temporally floating google-voice that reminds me that google is not immediate, but that it is only slightly less so than “real” life. . . this works for me, for now.