Noah Julian, co-owner of Yoga Movement Sanctuary (ymsphilly.org) had me on his podcast TAOIST MANIMAL a few weeks ago. Soon after we made the 2.5 hr trip to Katonah Yoga in NY to take class from Nevine Michaan, who is...a source, the matriarch. The podcast begins with Noah talking about Nevine. In my interview we dive right into it: cultural appropriation, western systems of education, my relationship to black vernacular/folk dance, all the way to 'what is god?'
I won a writing thing.
It certainly feels nice. And PROOF (to myself) I can write short form! Easier to write short about things that are well made and unafraid. My under 500 word essay on Nora Chipaumire's "Portrait of My Father as Myself" is here on the Artblog/St. Clare.
Fringe Coverage on Culturebot
Full reviews/musings on some of the 'curated' Fringe this year over on Culturebot.org. I had a fun time gnawing on Jerome Bel, whose work makes me depressed about structures of dance funding. And my interview with Faustin Linyekula left me with a fire under my ass. He's fucking brilliant. Watching Boriz Charmatz work was basically people watching, and giving things and strangers nick names. It's all here!
Learning 'Marmatoot'
Learning Ohad Naharin’s coveted choreography is hard. The work is deeply specific and unpredictable. And when it does makes a broad stroke, it asks for accuracy about what kind of brush, how thick the paper, how wet the paint. We are learning ‘Marmatoot’ from former Batsheva dancer Chisato Ohno. The dance was made in 2003. A student said after class today, “It’s like you can hear his voice.” Ohad’s choreography can flip between minimalist and rococo within 45 degrees of a turn. This dance does. Ohad’s choreography doesn’t broadcast. You can read one sentence without seeing the next. See each moment as it is, never slurred accidently between other moments. In this way, it’s like playing exquisite corpse. And yet, the poem, revealed letter by letter, word by word, line by line, forms a shape across the page. The dancer has to train a complexity and speed of sensations to learn this choreography. This might be what makes these dances popular: they are clear to see, no matter how much or how little one ‘knows’ about concert dance. People use the word ‘animal’ to describe Ohad’s dancers/dances. Animals are very clear about when they are being watched and when they are not. Animals are doing what they are doing, or they are not. This is in Ohad’s work, a refinement of the human ability for presence. It makes it piercing to witness and powerful to learn.
Countertechnique
Countertechnique class looks a lot like figure skating. I don't mean the outfits (though that would be fun.) When our Countertechnique teacher, Elita Cannata, demonstrates an idea, she leans into geometry, slipping through space on an impossibly narrow edge. Shift the weight! Send it away! As dancers, we are invited to “see what you see” even if it’s the blurred faces way up the highest bleachers. It would be easy to mistake Countertechnique training as a personal style, legs that tail-whip around corners. But it is, thankfully, a mature and researched approach (http://www.countertechnique.com/what-it-is/).
I've said all this glittery stuff about figure skating, but in application, it hangs out at the skate park. Countertechnique class selects from a pool of authored exercises that teach the dancer to crest through air. These cumulative combinations support the needs of the contemporary concert dancer: turn out, tendues, port de bras, extension, jumps, inversions, presence, etc. But this thing is mischievous. Like it grew up with classical anatomy and then dared the whole skeleton to drop into the half pipe, to toss and delight in the weight of the arm, the skull, the leg. The pelvis goes up in Countertechnique, riding through air. The legs are in front of the trunk, spiraling down like a skateboard, timed with gravity to meet the skater as she drops from the sky. May she dance forever.
Flying Low
Flying Low. Put on some swishy pants.
Gaaaaaathering
--- passing through the body from standing upright --;
SENDING!
-- spreading fingers, toes, limbs, ribs, pelvis the floor!
Gaaaaaaathering
-- as small as possible fetal position on my side, head to knees, elbows in--;
SENDING!
-- roll under the body, tuck the skeleton past itself, ten fingers and ten toes.
[Butt splinter]
Cristiana shows us the next one. She gathers, She sends.
She says, “I gather, passing through by body, I touch my feet”
She says. “ I’m sending, I see, chin off the floor, my legs are relaxed, I am puuuuuushing into the floor!”
She says, “Check it with your partner.” I check it with my partner. Right side starts curled to the left this time? Partner is in Group 2. I am in Group 1. I will replace my partner in space. RUN.
>Google: Wild River Otters Playing! (lots of fun).
>Google: Emperor Penguins Speed Launch out of Water
Let’s go faster now. Group 1, GO:
***Baby can’t you see? I’m caaaaalllin. A guy like you, should wear a waaaaaaaaarning. It’s dangerous. I’m falling. Doo doodadoo doot dootadoot EEEEEEooooEEEEEooooo***
Group 2, GO!
She shows us the next one. I spiral. I fold. I gather. I send. I run. I pass through my body. I slide. I spiral, I send. I bring my whole pelvis at once. Or I try to.
I feel like a dolphin.
Check it with your partner. Press through your partner. Build their structure.
Do this one slowly first.
“Neeeeeeaaaaar. Faaaaaar. WhereEEEEEEEver You Are.”
It’s a sport. (But it’s not.) It’s soccer on a the vertical plane. It’s mountain climbing on the horizontal plane. It’s at the water park. It’s a mud slide. It’s martial arts for lizards. It’s Ido Portal and Breakdancing and Aikido and also it’s not. It’s a way of training. It’s a way of performing. It’s inviting. It’s for everyone. It’s for dancers. It’s a precursor, a preparation, for something else entirely. It’s creator, David Zambrano, says it’s only a chapter, not the whole book. It’s self reliant and it spits out copyright. It doesn’t need to be the author. It doesn’t hold on. How will it age? It’s sweaty and and detailed. It’s really fucking fun.
Dance Italia as Zelda
I keep thinking about the video game Zelda. I am at Dance Italia in Lucca Italy. Let me explain: Lucca is misty and medieval like the game world of Zelda. The Zelda world combines King Arthur-like quests and Never Neverland imagination. Lucca is a conglomerate of Medieval churches, a Roman amphitheater, a Renaissance defensive wall, and archival traces of everyone from the Etruscans to Ashkenazi Jews to Napoleon. Shigeru Miyamoto, one of Zelda’s inventors, cites childhood explorations of the caves and villages of rural Japan for the infusion of nature's secret wonders into the game world. Like the lands of Zelda, Northwestern Italy is a puzzle of rivers and caves and mountains and sea. Lucca’s Serchio river is a waterslide of smooth blue stones. The hills that rise and fall around Lucca like sleeping dragons.* Moreover, the deeper Zelda-ness is in the Italian, or at least Tuscan, or at least Lucchese value that being busy doesn’t make you cool or important. Taking time to linger and get lost is the way to advance to the next level and unlock some cool magic.
Dance Italia in Lucca has an Overworld, just like in Zelda. The Overworld is the zoom out, the macro. In this case, Northwestern Italy. In the Overworld, multi-directional movement is possible, the player can choose where to engage next. No one event/threat/force pushes the plot forward except for the players interest. I have to choose to enter a town, talk to a stranger, pursue a princess, read the news. Like the Overworld, I can not go wherever I want at the start of the game, my options are contingent. I have to pass through B to get from A to C. I may want to move from Florence to Pisa on the weekend, but I will need to get the right advice about the train strike that starts tonight. Zelda’s main hero Link travels via the Overworld to villages, secret places, dungeons, etc to gather critical items and experience in order to save the princess Zelda. Learn: a bottle of water and a glass of wine are equivalent in cost. Unless I can find one of the ancient marble fountains freely offering chilled drinking water. Beware: The streets are confusing as hell. I will need a map. Alert: Things close for nap time in the middle of the day. Important: I can refill my life meter by spending my gold coins on caffé. This summer, the major bosses are Countertechnique, Flying Low, and Gaga.
My superficial online research (#wikipedia) confirms the basement theories of my few video-game loving friends; Zelda pioneered many elements of today’s video game industry. Most notably is how the player thinks. To play Zelda requires a heuristic approach; learning by discovery, rather than direction. To be frank, I don’t play video games (I don’t like suspense, blood & guts, or sitting down.) But I did watch a friend demolish most of Twilight Princess. Props to Miyamoto and the game’s makers. I live my life as an artist, for better or worse, on heuristics. My experience of the artistic process and career is that it does not feed on efficiency or productivity, which makes it a less popular way to live inside of Western cultural norms of success and security. When my artistic process ‘works’ is when I hunt around, spend time with riddles, piece together, attempt and fail, change variables. This is the same of my experience learning to dance, in all of its incarnations, of finding dance in my body/mind. It’s not linear or efficient, I have to gather little bits, keys and maps and riddles, and try them in different doors, in different environments, untangle their meaning as applicable to where I'm at, my dimensions, my physics, my proprioception (handy word for awareness of one’s own body in space). This isn’t NBA Jam (the only video game I remember playing as a kid) with clear rules and a progression of instructions to follow, where specific actions have direct predictable outcomes. This is fucking Zelda: my discoveries come from my own investigations, aided by wizards, goddesses, and total weirdos along the way.
Luis Garay's Maneries at Fringe Arts
Stoked to have this post-performance writing up at Culture Bot.
http://www.culturebot.org/2016/05/25735/luis-garays-maneries-at-fringearts-philadelphia/