discourse
on beginnings
When I was at the beginning of studying choreography, I worked with a teacher who would tell our class these confounding aphorisms that at first, didn’t make sense. Things like: “The worst thing for a new project is a good idea.” (…what?) But, pretty much ever since then, I remind myself of that statement whenever I start a new project.
It’s less that it’s a bad idea to have ideas.
It’s more that it’s actually perfectly okay to not have any idea.
In fact, in the realm of performance, this might be preferable, lest you get too attached to your really brilliant, yet right now, very imaginary idea.
Most of the work of making a dance or performance is going to the studio and the ritual of getting to the studio. This sounds ridiculous, but I find it true. There’s a method to being in a process. Which, what does that mean? It’s permission to give yourself authority to take time and use free time to let your mind wander about making – be it a dance, a song, a film.
Because no one will ever tell you or give you permission to make. You have to convince yourself it’s a good idea to be making anything at all. Or, maybe it’s more reverse psychology – you have to convince yourself that it’s not a bad idea. And by you here, I mean me. Let’s be honest: I have to convince myself it’s a good idea. That’s half the work right there.
It would be nice to think that this gets easier. But, so far in my experience – which to be fair, may still be limited – this does not get easier, only more familiar.
Once I start, there is something to work with. And, then you can convince yourself that you’re still not making anything at all – you’re just playing with something or kind of doodling, or improvising, or changing, or editing. You get kind of curious about it and then you’re on a roll.
My convincing myself it’s a good idea involves:
very long warm-ups
I love warming up…I could spend an entire rehearsal warming up. Sometimes I realize this is an elaborate mode of procrastination. But, sometimes the procrastination serves an odd purpose: you start breathing, you’re a bit less distracted, you feel the back of your body that you’ve been ignoring all day, and weird ideas come into view. You get curious and you start.
collaborating with other people
You’re obligated to show up, because they showed up.
going for walks
This could just be around the block or through the park, but mostly to disrupt the usual routine and to allow my mind to wander.
switching mediums to something I know nothing about
Sometimes I write or jot down things I see in the world and pretend I’m a writer. The notes eventually become lists. The lists become writing, or scores. The less I know about the medium I’m working in the better – because then it’s okay that it’s terrible.
weird rituals
There’s a lot of ritual to making – elaborate set-ups to get yourself to start (see also: warming up).
short daily acts
Take a particular photo or write every day in response to a prompt.
improvising
I video myself improvising and then watch the improvisations and then teach myself the improvisations. I find it difficult so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this. I usually only manage to learn a little. But, I really only need a little.
showing up
especially when you don’t feel like it.
In other words, I find making is a lot about getting out of the way. Sort of in a stubborn way. Convincing the parts of you that want to procrastinate and the part that thinks your ideas aren’t very good – to tell them to just slowly step back. And, you keep going despite them, while they’re there waiting in the background.
Then once you have something – that’s usually kind of terrible – you at least have something which is certainly better than nothing. And then you start to negotiate with it and then get weirdly into it and wonder about it and expand it, change it, or manipulate it and multiply it, or teach it to a friend, and get them to change it into something better. And then, you start having strong opinions about it – that it needs to be a certain way and you’re not really sure why but you’re fairly convinced of it.
And then, the project has somehow become bigger than you and you’re just following its lead.
And you’re still not sure if you’re worthy – or your ideas are any good, but you do it anyway for some reason. It’s weirdly addictive.
And despite it all – you realize that what’s beautiful about this is that you can make something without really much of anything at all. There are dances waiting to be made, photos waiting to be taken with your phone, your dollar-store notebook waiting to be written in, music waiting to inspire. Your art is as worthy as anyone else’s and we certainly need it. More is more. You might not believe quite how abundant you are, but that would be a mistake. Because you are.
ON RECENT PROJECTS
Absence
ab·sence/ˈabsəns/
Noun:
The state of being away from a place or person.
An occasion or period of being away from a place or person.
Presence
pres·ence/ˈprezəns/
Noun:
The state or fact of existing, occurring, or being present in a place or thing.
A person or thing that exists or is present in a place but is not seen:
"The monks became aware of a strange presence.”
“Performance…occurs in the suspension between the ‘real’ physical matter of the ‘performing body’ and the psychic experience of what it is to be em-bodied. Like a rackety bridge swaying under too much weight, performance keeps one anchor on the side of the corporeal (the body Real) and one on the side of the psychic Real. Performance boldly and precariously declares that Being is performed (and made temporarily visible) in that suspended in-between.”
Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, page 167
In The Distance Between You and Me, I inscribe and erase texts from the transcriptions of voicemail messages that were left for me by a series of friends. I write them on a wall covered with black paper using thick, white chalk. As the chalk slowly disintegrates into dust over the two-hour durational performance, the remaining written fragments become a visual metaphor for the ‘texts’ – movements and experiences – inscribed in our bodies. While I slowly move through a set of gestures, a video mysteriously appears on my torso. A phantom arm caresses me. A camera tracks my movements so that as I back away from the paper, wherever I travel, this virtual body appears as well, touching me, leaving some virtual trace. The video references the memory of touch, gesture, and experiences written into the body in a play on the relationship between language and movement – where choreography becomes a literal writing of the body.
In The Distance Between You and Me, I pose a question about where the body exists and how we negotiate digital media and contemporary communication. Instead of seeing a ‘wired’ world as some power struggle between us and our machines, I wonder how we embody our humanity and our relationships to one another through these ‘new media.’ In other words, I ask where the body exists in a ‘post-human’ world, and whether we want to really get rid of our humanity in our romance with, and anxiety about, new technology. Instead of seeing technology as somehow separate from ourselves, in this piece, I aim to integrate the use of video, projection, voicemail texts, as aspects of ourselves, and as a way to communicate our relationships to one another. I display the texts and words of people far away who stay with me, so that the virtual doesn’t form a delay from some ‘real’ self, but a ‘text’ and a mode of communicating, that exist with and through our bodies. At the same time, it also asks about the import of ‘being there’ – truly present to an event – and what exactly ‘presence’ means. A body labors to write and erase, relying on what might be becoming an archaic mode of communication. Perhaps, indeed, the actual physicality of the body still matters.
A recent interview with La Ribot
my classmate and colleague Hannah Verrill and I sat down with the performance artist La Ribot for an interview when she was in Chicago for the US premiere of Laughing Hole on her way to LACMA in LA for a west coast performance of the piece too...
Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People – And lose the name of action
Interview on Bad at Sports
In Janurary 2013, I sat down with Miguel Gutierrez to chat a bit about his upcoming Chicago premiere of And lose the name of action, which featured a striking cast of note-worthy performers – Michelle Boulé, Hilary Clark, Luke George, Miguel Gutierrez, K.J. Holmes, and Ishmael Houston-Jones. Our conversation was published on Bad at Sports...
http://badatsports.com/2013/miguel-gutierrez-and-the-powerful-people-and-lose-the-name-of-action/