Journal #6

April 26, 2010

The making of this performance is a multilogue . . . is that a word? . . . a conversation between many, using body, text, sound or gestures that fail to express the miraculous, but are extraordinary in their attempt. We move our way into the unknown and believe that it is new. We have created a way of being with each other and an audience in the time and place of the theater.

Early in the process of making this work, we began nurturing a collection of solos that were based on images that the individual company members had seen. The image solos have an otherworldly quality. They communicate curious we’ve-never-been-here, how-did-we-get-here qualities because they don't depend on the conventions of traditional choreography. They depend solely on the individual performance skills, bodies and imaginations of the dancers themselves. They are singular, specific and unique to the narrative or visual image that sourced the material. When we add other dancers or group choreographic structures to these solos, they become familiar and perhaps more digestible, they have more entertainment value, they give us a comfortable rhythm to hook onto. But in doing that they generalize. They begin to look like the previous group sections we made earlier and they lose their specificity.

The problem we have is a structural one. How can we show these seven solos in a way that doesn't become (as Phil Martini said yesterday) “the predictable string of solos section”? The working rule of I haven't gone there is for us as a traveling company of performers to not go back to where we were before. We suddenly find ourselves at a dead end or lost in a strange land structurally. It is the last section of the performance. It is now time to collaboratively work together to draw the map that shows how to navigate this place. Maybe its better to think architecturally than cartographically. We need a blueprint to design the way we will be together in this new room since we will stay here together till the end. This blueprint uses only the individual skills of the performers/collaborators and the material of their image solos.

A description of the work we are creating cannot be separated from the qualities and characters of the dancers. Perhaps if I describe their qualities as performers and artists I can give you a sense of the miraculous adventure that this work is becoming.

Emma Draves’ dancing being is a gift to time and space. She is a sojourner that thoughtfully places landmarks through the performance. She venerates moments with transcendence. She understands stillness.

Meghann Wilkinson punches holes into the other world and lets it leak into the performance. She is comfortable with the liminal contamination that her arrhythmic and astructural perversions heap onto dance. This is also known as intelligence. We will follow her curiosity.

Adriana Marcial is an iconic dancing presence. Her movement quality addresses the internal concerns of spirit and psyche. She moves under a fully rounded spell cast by a working evolution of ideas and technique. Her technique is complimented by the comprehension of ideas. This is performed as a matter of fact.

Leigh Ann Boatman offers the essential opposite as the perfect solution to inquiry. She proposes the qualities of youth and contrary openness. She moves with lightning sharp angularity and brevity. She works in smart, rogue anarchist territory that refreshes the drone of elegance and beauty.

Anna Normann moves toward lucidity from a clear perception of source. Her movement has an intuitive signature that originates from the non-logic of feeling and sympathetic understanding of image. Her instinct is richly complicated by knowledgeable choice. She embodies fluidity in concept and action. She is an enabler and brings joyful creative energy to the stage from unexpected places.

Natalia Negron approaches this work with enthusiasm and a commanding, patience. She moves with an attentive, listening density. She employs a sense of playfulness with her technical sensibilities that alter the rigid formal structures with accessibility.

Mark Duthu brings laughter. He is an entertainer and understands in body and soul the power of dance to fulfill our needs. He is instantaneous creativity. His movement amplifies our consciousness and delight of exteriority and thus admits the present moment into the air we breathe.

Shirley Mordine is the seer seeing sideways moving forward with us. She is our critical eye, our captain, our storyteller. Her years of experience hunger for the infinite unmakeable dance. These dances are at her door.

Those are the tools and materials we will use in the next rehearsal to build our ending dance.