"The Point"

After a week's worth of process I performed it at the Judson Church as a part of Movement Research's works in progress series 1/12/09
Process/Performance notes

So, the talk with the audience about the tiny inter-human affections that manage to save our lives felt very warm, like hanging out with a large group of intimate new friends, like I got to hold each of their hands. There was something very satisfying in that. The movement aspect has been the biggest struggle so far--stalking in and out of the studio, beginning some physical search for a search, and throwing it all away mumbling and cursing to myself "What's the point? Goddamnit, what the hell is the point." Around the same time I started laying around often with a kittenish new person, and appreciating those little things. After one of those mumbled questions to myself I had a flashback to a kiss on the forehead and figured that that answered something, though it illuminated nothing about the movement that I sense is becoming somewhat impatient waiting for me to find it.

So, on stage I burped out little bits of movement, excused myself and carried on a monologue which was very much an energetic exchange with the audience, about loving gestures, interspersed with the breath patterns of dying, crying, laughing, and ordinary respiration. This is my first time feeling that it was absolutely necessary to finish a draft of the sound score before fully being able to conceptualize the action. So I made a draft of a sound score, something I've done but never in my dancemaking practice, and found the performance from there.

What next? Maybe time to watch the video. Maybe not before more ruminating and possibly more action to do with the self argumentative digging for movement.

Dance: Hah! Good God, man! What is it good for? Absoluely nothin? Hmm

So what's there to say about contemporary dance that possibly makes any difference to anyone? Does contemporary dance make any difference to anyone besides the people making it and their friends who are also making it? As someone who makes dance, becomes cynical about the whole world of it, walks away, and repeatedly finds myself coming back to make more, I have a kind of bias. It isn't a gooey sweet unconditional love, but something in me. For better or worse it's a need. Compulsions aren't easily explained, and there's no reason for me to try. What I really want to look at is the thing I feel compelled to participate in.

First, contemporary dance is an evolving art form. I often wonder if art truly bears any function at all in today's US consumerist culture, particularly something so ephemeral as witnessing a performance, something that cannot truly be bought or sold. The thing is, despite the capitalist paradigm in which the US currently operates, at the crux, we're human beings. There are certain basic things that, unless we are damaged, we value; affirmation, affection, fellowship, trust, touch, discovery, freedom. We have the tools, as a species, to make these central to our experience. The fact of war as a current reality, after multiple millions of years of so called progress, and enough resources on earth to go around, signals a misplacement of our priorities. If we got the world's top psychologists to examine the deep human tendency towards hierarchical social structures, they might come up with a way to correct the widespread syndrome so we could move past killing each other. All we really want is to live free and joyful lives together. War is an extreme manifestation of the lethal side of the human contradiction. The fact that we haven't naturally bread it out over time suggests we're going to have to use the unique gift of human intellect to accomplish a more highly evolved species. Let me repeat, we're going to have to use the unique gift of human intellect to accomplish a more highly evolved species.

Here's where the contemporary notion of art comes in. In my estimation, the most essential ingredient in any successful piece of contemporary art (as opposed to traditional world art forms which have various other practical and social functions) is it's ability to shift the perception of the witness. A successful work of art causes the audience to perceive some aspect of the world differently than s/he did before exposure to the piece. The ability to perceive and re-perceive is crucial to human progress. It is the stuff of revolutions--to see possibilities where none are apparent. To re-imagine the world through a visionary lens is essential to shifting the extant paradigm and creating something more suitable for peaceful and happy existence. (I'm looking forward to my first visit to Cuba in the coming months, a wonderful opportunity to see the fruits of such paradigm shifting :) The current system in the US is such that a thing has to have a monetary pull in order to survive here. Art education is one of the first things to go when public school students don't do well in standardized tests. People are growing up here with sub par critical thinking skills. Society consistently undervalues art, creating a hostile environment in which to grow it. Despite all this, art germinates and manages to live on. Art is a crucial practice in human perception. The transformative experience that constitutes art consumption--a word I use as a symptom of my society--is a necessary exercise for our muscle of perceptive evolution. Just as working out refines the body, consuming art refines the mind.

The thing that brings me back to dance again and again is deep down in it's DNA. Dance can be framed, and reframed, deconstructed and reconstructed in all sorts of ways that may touch the perceptive habits of some, shake others', and leave yet others' quite unmoved. When it comes down to it, the dance that is most affective--smart or not--dives into the ancient and original purpose of the form. The most affective dance work has a shamanistic element. By shaman I am not specifically referring to Mongolian traditional healers. Shaman here refers to traditions throughout the indigenous world of creating and crossing bridges to the spirit realm, communing with ancestors and other guides, and bringing insights back to the physical world often used for various types of healing. This old practice bears a similar function to contemporary art. It grows us. The dance performances that have moved me the most, from Cunningham to an unknown club dancer, have all had some of this. The dancer has a part of her/himself that opens up and crosses over into a realm beyond the mundane, a realm of the spirit. The dancer became the bridge that connects this world and the other. The dancer/bridge then activates something inside the audience--our own crossing over. That is the stuff of a dance that moves somebody. Sometimes it's built in to the choreography. Sometimes it's the way that the individual dancer is oriented to find something divine in the movement. Sometimes the crossing is accidental and fleeting. Once a dancer experiences it, s/he is hungry to return. Once an audience member does, s/he understands the value of concert dance.

Now, if a choreographer ventures to construct the material of the dance such that the bones and marrow and organelles of the work all contain that shamanistic bridge, then it will be there in whatever form the work is ultimately presented. Take that material and deconstruct and reconstruct and decontextualize and recontextualize it in all the ways that make it a satisfying work of contemporary performance, of performance that challenges and shifts the perception of the witness, and you have a yourself a vital evolutionary spiral. You have an art form that moves the spirit to grow the mind to move the spirit to grow the mind to move the spirit to evolve the consciousness!

Dance: Hah! Good God, man! What is it good for? Absolutely Somethin!