Journal Entry #4 by Bryan Saner

This is the fourth entry in a series of commentaries written by Bryan Saner, the Associate Artistic Director of Mordine & Co. about the rehearsal process for "I Haven't Gone There."


April 5, 2010

There are days when everything seems possible. We accept them with the same gratitude we extent to the days that are impossible.

This is the nature of work. The lesson I learned from the recently departed activist Gene Stolzfus is that when we are doing what we want to do, no matter how passionate or committed we are to the profession or how much we enjoy the work, there are days when it is simply just that. It is work and it is not necessarily enjoyable anymore. There are other days of completion, joy and accomplishment but its best not to attach a value of good or bad to any of it. Shirley described it once to me as a “witness by people who are in practice and daily ritual.” The word witness here is crucial in its gerund form; both to be present actively and to be the watcher.

Anna Normann and Natalia Negron have stepped up from their intern positions into performing positions.
David Gerber, Sean Tomerlin and Dmitri Peskov have come and gone through the company.

Meghann Wilkinson created a duet with David for I Havent Gone There. When david left she taught it to Sean. When Sean left she taught it to Dmitri. When Dmitri left she taught it to Mark Duthu. “Im going to teach a workshop on how to teach this duet.” She said. Mark learned it in 45 minutes. A combination of a good day, a good teacher, a good dancer, time spend with the material, hope that the material finally settles in someone’s body and faith in the slow moving toward and culminating in that one good day and that one body of a good dancer.

Shirley pushes hard against limits. She doesn’t accept them easily. She compounds the moments of rehearsal by demanding that the dancers perform at the same time they are learning/creating the material. The layering of expectations challenges the dancers. They are learning new material, creating new material, remembering the movement in their bodies, remembering the placement of their bodies in time and space relative to angles, physics, gravity, motion and weight, coordinating timing and transitions with the other dancers bodies, engaging three dimensional sensing (seeing and listening with the entire body), going from internal to external, and polishing the movement all at the same time.

She described her work to me as “Making something possible for someone else that they can’t do by themselves.” I see this struggle between Shirley and the dancers often. The dancers are working something out from the inside. Shirley sees their external manifestation. . . the thing their bodies do on the outside. The inside and the outside seldom mirror each other adequately. The creative place is the liminal gap between what the dancers are working on from the inside out and what Shirley is working on from the outside in.

It demands much from everyone. It demands a comfortability with the awkward positions we find our bodies and emotions in and not correcting this awkwardness but going with it to see where it goes, to maintain it, to flow with it, to allow it to become a new species, to mutually become other and more than we were.