Losing Center

Three weeks into the semester, I have determined I am doing too much. Something has to give. But how, when I am fascinated by so much, excited about new ideas and opportunities.

There are a few qualities in common among the things I want to be doing:

• spending time with children as we discuss what they are thinking, learning, playing, and imagining.
• listening to my husband talk with great brilliance about Shakespeare’s plays or new books he is reviewing and sharing jokes about anything and everything
• discussing creative processes and organization of habits with sophisticated students ready for deep reaching dialogue
• offering insight to younger students with great potential and the smarts to stop engaging in drama long enough to listen and explore themselves through the lens of dance
• problem-solving interesting puzzles relating to parenting, art, teaching….people
• continuing the self-care I harvested over the summer through Bikram Yoga and other means

The common denominator: Thinking and moving in honesty

There are a few qualities in common among the things I don’t want to be doing:

• others’ lack of acknowledgement of great change being necessary and the courage to make it
• the cleaning up of others’ messes before I can begin my own work
• having the variables of my environment be imposed upon me rather than a natural response to the needs of the work
• trying to figure out how I can appear on paper as dynamic as I am in the classroom
• worrying about decisions I want to make or anticipate making. As Brené Brown puts it in her brilliant TED talk about the Gifts of Imperfection, “making the uncertain certain”.

The common denominator: Feeling I am being asked not to think but to sell and/or do and following through

I am finding that in response to a specific vulnerability, I am trying to do more in order to be more and appear more worthy in specific segments of my life in which I want to invite change.

 

I am finding it goes forcefully against all the progress I made over the last year in terms of opening my mind and practices in teaching, in art-making, and in my self-care.

Today, I take pause to rethink how I am trying to stockpile experience under the guise of marketability and robbing myself of quality experience and most importantly, the time to make connections.

Beyond the Body

Recently, I wrote about the struggle of explaining to new people what it is I do in a way that speaks the breadth and depth of my experiences and the field of dance. This morning via Facebook, this article by Shawn Lent came across my phone and my wheels have been turning ever since.

I have before written about the “Underdogs”- those that find the unconventional paths in dance and how we can rally and support each other. Now, though, my mind further turns to education- the environments that teach about dance but often short change the potential for dance in terms broader than stage and studio.

I realize much of one’s purpose in life isn’t taught or directed in a classroom. In theory, it is the content, the experiences, and the interactions that lead to what my grandmother would call, “all part of life’s rich pattern”. But there are threads and stitches that can be at the very least, made visible for those ready to admire or those not ready to at least know they exist.

Choreographers in college programs are often encouraged to work in liberation of how dance has been made in the past but this usually deals with form and structure, maybe content, not usually function, purpose, and social potential.  We are always asking for innovation in choreographic terms, but what about in dance theory courses. And does it really make for these experiences to be taught in isolation of each other anyway?

When do we put the “how” down for a while and get back to the “why” of art-making?

A few years ago, while directing the dance minor program at a liberal arts college, I taught at a festival for high school students. An MFA candidate from my alma mater was also there and asked if I wished I was teaching dance majors. My response was easy- no. I explained my philosophy of dance and how I feel compelled to educate everyone on how dance serves their lives, their studies, and their relationships. I liked that dance minors weren’t all “dancers” but committed to applying dance to their other areas of studies and were taking risks in the studio and in the community through dance. The MFA candidate’s response was that he thought that was very “responsible” of me.

Maybe.

But where should the responsibility be placed to bring new pathways to dance students?

And what is the responsibility of art in the first place?

Maybe it is because of the guest teaching I have been doing this summer and the fact I have been blurring lines between coaching performance, teaching technique, and introducing composition to teen dancers. We are working in sophisticated ways out of the typical teen-dance norm. And they have been brilliant.

But it leads me to think…..

• Why are most guest artists technicians or choreographers….why not include more dance theorists, experts in pedagogy, community engagement (for real), thinkers, do-ers, writers,…..practitioners.
• Or, instead of having these people come in and talk or lecture, put them into practice. Give practical examples of what their work is like.
• Why not partner with other departments? Treat arts departments like humanities and explore communication and human experience through artistic disciplines. Collaborate with non-arts departments to examine how the same problem could be solved or examined through two or more lenses. Compare and contrast the outcomes.

There are so many possibilities beyond and including the stage and studio. I am bored with the labels, the singular visions, the bottom line to determining value being how to neatly describe something in a couple words, so that the funding will come and the product can be showcased.

I don’t know….

Let’s just go blur some more lines.

Changing the Variables

Something powerful happens when we take dance out of the studio. Or out of a theatre. Or out of dance clothes. Or out of trained dancer bodies.

I experienced this as a student but more so when I was living in NYC and other cities- seeing movement of all kinds in Central Park, in installations around the city, site specific works in L.A., and rubbing elbows with elite ballet dancers at a church on the Upper West Side.

Dance took on a whole new meaning. And the means for these experiences depended on changing the expectations of dance- where, when, how, and dressed in what. I felt the freedom of the experience yet it didn’t really start to impact my own work or teaching until I was directing the dance program at a liberal arts college and teaching a dance history/appreciation course that contained dance minors and general education students.

As we moved through time within that course, I offered practical dance experiences to give the students a sense of feeling for what we were talking about. They had technique class samplers in ballet, modern, and jazz. We had comparison sessions of dance styles within single genres. We had a rehearsal in which I staged a musical theatre work. We did a slow walk across campus and they had site specific composition studies that offered us a tour of campus.

Their final exam included creating a dance on paper. Some chose to notate in narrative form or a symbol system, some drew, some created origami, some collaged,…..it was fascinating and some were very good and explaining their thought process and creative decisions. Those that weren’t, were often able to admit, in the heat of the moment, with complete honesty and ownership that their work wasn’t informed by a process or much thought. They were “caught” but I didn’t do the catching, they did. For many of “those” students, that moment seemed real. They realized it wasn’t a joke. I felt that was just as valuable as those that had elaborate explanations for their choices, the meaning, and the product they created.  We were able to have a constructive conversation about what they would do differently or we talked about the things that were holding them back. And yes, for some, I let it go. I could see they simply weren’t ready. (This could relate to a portion of my Dance Advantage article, “Your Words and Shaping Healthy Dancers).

While I would approach many of these experiences differently now, with sage wisdom, it was a good start. I think it made an impression. I think the students were more invested and took the work more seriously, even though many of them were having fun. This approach is harder in K-12, particularly K-8. We do this a little with the clothing for dance class, which I will be writing about in August for Dance Advantage but my thinking cap is on, ready to take me further from the norm.

In a NYTimes article about Mark Dendy’s new work Ritual Cyclical, dancer Michael Figueroa said in reference to dancing outside with Dendy in a site specific work staged several years ago, “I ended up rolling all over the cement — the most crazy experience ever,” he said. “I had no idea that dance could be anywhere and could be anything.”

Sounds like a pretty powerful revelation to me.