Serious Play, Curious Investigation
Posted: April 14, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: accad, dance, improvisation technologies, laban dance notation, Laban Movement Analysis, Monster Partitur, physical practice, score, Scott DeLahunta Leave a comment »
The Forsythe workshop at Ohio State constitutes one of the deepest, broadest, and most pleasurable arcs of learning in my life so far. It was unique in its holistic combination of theory and practice. I found that the readings, viewings, discussions, and symposium fed my studio practice, which then informed further thoughts, writings and discussions about this work.
William Forsythe’s ideas and technique left their mark on my body, my conception of the study of dance technique, my approach to creative inquiry, and my perception of time.
At a young age I came to be interested in dismantling the structures that seemed to keep dance separate from the questioning in my heart. I have so identified with deconstruction as a reason and mode for making, and so stripped away at dance while trying to make dances, that it began to seem better not to make anything at all. In part, this pattern is what drew me to step outside of the making process and identify myself as a Labanotator rather than a creator. Something that irks me about the world of Labanotation is the sense notators sometimes convey of having secret knowledge that other dancers don’t, or can’t have. Perhaps I have been irritated by this because it is a strategy I’ve been using to help me hide from my disappointment with dance.
Engaging with the work of William Forsythe, with its beauty in the contrast of extreme complexity and deconstruction has given me a new sense of permission to build and make. Rather than throwing the dance baby out with the bathwater, Forsythe takes what is useful to him and regenerates, fragments, and regenerates again in a beautiful sort of alchemy. Though I admire Forsythe’s choreographic structures, and love the way his technique feels on my skin, I don’t want to make what he has made. Instead I want to imitate his posture of questioning and curiosity. At the heart, this workshop has inspired me to seek earnestly what my questions are starting now. I would like to continue to deconstruct dance when I need to, but also to not be afraid of building new and complex structures. I would like to learn to say, “I don’t know what dance is,” but not to give up on my body and its rich knowledge. I would like to build structures in symbol, movement, new media, or all three at once, and through these structures to continually engage in serious, playful investigation.
brainstorm – the osu forsythe workshop
Posted: April 4, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: meghan durham-wall, Monster Partitur, ohio state dance, Scott DeLahunta, wexner center 1 Comment »I’ve never brainstormed this publicly before. I feel naked. But here’s my thought process about the last three months or so in which I’ve taken part in many events that were part of a nebulous workshop experience that shared William Forsythe’s process and ideas with about 26-27 undergraduate and graduate students in the Dance Department at Ohio State.
William Forsythe has been incredibly generous with his ideas. We watched improvisation technologies and spent time on our own, trying the ideas on in the studio. We watched Forsythe’s solo and read Choreographic Objects. We read, talked, danced, and wrote about how these inputs made us feel and compelled us to move. We spent six weeks in Meghan Durham’s technique class together, and four weeks with Nik Haffner, choreographer, teacher and former dancer with the Forsythe company. We also helped with the installation of Monster Partitur for the Wexner center and attended events around the symposium.
This amounts to one of the largest, deepest arcs of learning of my life so far. Just the amount of time spent, and the combination of head space and kinesthetic response, and the constant allowance for play between the two that was allowed. Yes, it was a chance to stay with a group of people while doing work of the body and mind and whatever it is that is both, or is more than both, when you start to use both together.
I’m not sure right now what the goal of the workshop was. ”Forsythe Workshop” would sound as if the goal was to dance like Forsythe dancers, to get the style by the end. And in general, there were stylistic things we all learned. The very first exercise we did with Nik (after some fun, brain twisting drawing games) was Floor Brushing, in which you play with the feet on the floor, envisioning them as a japanese calligrapher’s brush, an articulate instrument. We practiced, developed, articulation of this foot-to-floor relationship with many, many possibilities for points of contact with the floor. We practiced involving and including the spine in the movement, and sensing our body’s weight as we moved in and out of the floor. We really paid attention to these feet. Like ballet dancers do. And already, stylistically, we looked a little, tiny bit more like forsythe dancers.
Also, in practicing some others of the specific improvisation technologies, we tried on some of the gestures and ways of moving specific to the forsythe style. . These were problems to be solved with movement (I think my choice to describe the technologies that way is a reference to Scott DeLahunta’s talk during the Forsythe Symposium this week.). Solving these problems gave me access to other stylistic features I see in Forsythe dancers. Crazy-articulate upper arms, spine, feet, hips – a full range of body movement. Particularly more than you ever see anyone do with their upper arms. Lots of sequencing though adjacent parts of the body, or shifting points of initiation throughout the body.
Winter 2009
Posted: March 16, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: A-Scale, collaboration, dance, group notation, improvisation technologies, joshua penrose, knust, laban dance notation, Laban Movement Analysis, Max/MSP Jitter, Monster Partitur, Movement Choirs, physical practice, Richard Maxfield, score, Space Harmony, Titan, Vivaldiana, Wii Leave a comment »Working backwards, here’s what I’ve been doing the last few months.
- Meditative tracing of skeleton sculptures for William Forsythe’s Monster Partitur in the Wexner Center Performance space.
Photo: Lindsey Caddle Lapointe
- Afferent Data, an eight-channel sound environment responsive to the small movements of respiration, with Joshua (mentioned by Bill Mayr in the Dispatch). And therefore asking. . .
Photo: Ryan Agnew
- What is it to be alive? What is it that makes me alive? Is it possible to be still? What is the smallest amount of movement? What is the essence of being alive?
- Studying Vicki Blaine’s 1978 Progression dance score with regard to Rudolf Laban’s theories of space, and thus;
- Committing Laban’s A-Scale to muscle memory
as well as. . .
- Rolling, swinging, rocking and dropping my way through some Bartenieff fundamentals.
- Gathering information on John Rodriguez’ abstract ballet Vivaldiana, reading the Labanotation score, and embodying it. This has felt like a satisfying, complex physical Sudoku. Learning that every personal story is interesting if one spends enough time with it.
- Twenty-one beautiful sessions of playful, intentional improvisation (and four ballet classes) with Nik Haffner and friends in a workshop presenting William Forsythe’s ideas at OSU’s Department of Dance.
- Batsheva, Batsheva, Batsheva at the Wex. That’s watching them, dreaming about them, and talking about them.
- Learning the differences between Labanotation in 1927 and now.
- Attempting without much success to understand the score of a movement choir from Germany in 1927. Staring with fascination at pages of Knust’s Group Notation.
- Attempting, again without success, to map data from movement into Max/MSP through the Wii remote. The idea is to make an instrument which will classify movement according to the space and effort qualities of Laban Movement Analysis.
- Reading the fantastically illuminating responses of elective students in dance to a dance concert, and thus;
- revisiting the question; what do we make things for, our audience, our research, or somewhere in between? Facing that I have not really been asking this question with honesty. Appreciating the ideas of Richard Maxfield in his Composers, Performance and Publication essay in light of all this.
