Dance=Alternative Medicine?

We should all have the right to dance every day
We, as a society, have become so stagnant, so formalized, so static. We sit at desks, sit on transit or in our cars, stand squished like sardines on transit, wait in lines, walk in a rush, sit in front of computers or televisions or performances.
WE RARELY USE UP ALL OUR PERSONAL SPACE.
I bet you no one but a dancer knows how much space they actually need to move. Properly.
Everyone should have the right to take up as much space as they need every day. To just MOVE. To feel their bodies and muscles work. To remember that they are, in part, a body–a wonderous and complex body–that is capable of so much! Use it! Discover! Feel! Embody!
Somatic bodywork, something becoming so popular in dance these days, frankly is alternative medicine. It connects you to a part of yourself that you are not educated to connect to. This makes me think that dance is integral to our well being–mentally and physically. If we allow ourselves the right to move–yes the right, not the privilege–we can connect to our world all the more fully. The concept of energy as a connector between things and people becomes clearer. We come to recognize thought patterns. We may learn about our bones by touching, muscles by contracting. We come to recognize the part of ourselves that we rarely pay attention to. Our bodies are so intelligent and can tell us things we have not linguistically comprehended. So much is spoken about this–in consciousness research, neurobiology, Chinese and natural medicine, yoga–its time we listened.

New Ideas and Acceptance

Last week was a week full of enlightenment about my own artistic practice. I was fortunate enough to be put in touch with Sara Wookey (sarawookey.com) and got to both watch her lecture at Dancemakers "Thinking Out Loud" study group and meet her for lunch the following day. I am always astounded by established artists' generosity towards emerging ones. I have now met multiple people that have accepted my offers for coffee and a chat and been rewarded with incredible inspiration. Sara made me feel at ease with my own practice. She too questioned the act of performance, grew disillusioned with dance, and works in many media. So what was so exciting?
-Feel free to do work that embodies my struggles and questions I am asking (Of course! The process of looking for answers can be a concretely creative process in addition to being a life process)
-Do not worry about your audience and the implication of being a "viewer" (of course stay aware of the dynamic that is present but do not worry about "forcing" them to come watch you. They have chosen to take that place. They are ok with it.)
-You can be an artist in many ways and that's ok (I can call myself an artist that creates performances, teaches, and writes. I can wear many hats. If people cannot understand that there is not much I can do)

Also, hearing that a well established artist who has been working for many years still can't do a good elevator speech made me feel ok that I kind of suck at it too!
It will come.
Just because I don't have the answers now, does not mean that the questions are not worth asking.
Life and art are about PROCESS.
Life mirrors art in this respect.
Or is it that art mirrors life?

I am an artist

Sometimes I get anxious. I get so anxious and antsy and nervous and itchy and confused and scared and hopeful and nauseous. I need to create. Create something. Its like the universe just says "Hey, now is the time. You have no choice. Get it out into the world." And I have to comply. If I do not, I cry. I cry and drink and smoke cigarettes. I beat myself up. Because when I ignore the universe I am not living the life I am supposed to be living. I am an artist and I create. If I am not creating I am miserable. And if I am not creating I say "I'm trying to be an artist". And then I perpetuate a loop of non-creation.
I am an artist.
I create.
I am.
I live.
I love.
I feel.

Fantasy/Unknown Cultures

I just came back from a show that fully immersed me in a story. In a story of the unknown, of the foreign, of the fascinating, of the alien. It was called "A Fool's Life" by Ahuri Theatre.

The stories were Japanese in nature. Japanese settings, skills, families, locations. So I'm sure if I was Japanese it may have been less mystical and magical. But it got me thinking... Being immersed in a new culture's ideas, values, and stories sure feels a lot like being immersed in a fantasy world. The foreignness of the story and themes makes what is everyday to one magical to another.

In a sense, all one needs to write or create a good fantasy is to include the unknown. It could be an unknown culture, an unknown land, an unknown planet. But the unknown seems to generate the creative flow of our brains. When new pathways are being triggered, there are no conditioned responses. Emotions sneak up on you, you sit at the edge of your seat because you do NOT know the outcome! You are learning as you go. Good art should always be like this–unfolding a world in front of your eyes, keeping you IN THE MOMENT, in your feelings, in the space, in the world. Then thoughts cannot drift back to reality. That is its job, to keep your right brain active, give you reprieve from your left-brains dominance, remind you that you have another way of existing (of being and feeling), of connecting to others in your experience of the journey.

When people collectively have an experience they create a connection without meaning to–they have something to talk about, feelings can instantaneously be spoken about, deep parts of their minds get uncovered when they happen to meet in the bathroom after the show. When connected in experience people can bypass small talk, can jump straight to feelings, to preferences, to philosophies. It really is quite magical. We connect on a different level. Good art–in practice and performance–should connect people on this level. I hope to make art like this.

The Best Play I've Ever Seen

Summerworks 2011
White Rabbit, Red Rabbit
by Nassim Soleimanpour
Volcano and Necessary Angel

An Iranian playwright cannot leave his country. He did not dedicate himself to 2 years of military service, so he could not get a visa. This is how the play begins. I hesitate to even call it a "play" as Nassim destroys much of the structure that I think of when I think of the world "play". He speaks to us through his play (being thousands of miles away), through his actor. The actor is improvising, and yet strictly following a script–she has never seem it before. Pages fall from her hands and yet the words flow out like she has read them a multitude of times prior. The audience is engaged, almost forced to be a part of the play. We begin by counting ourselves, one by one, like schoolchildren on a bus, making sure we are all present. "It is important" Nassaim speaks through his actor.

The actor tells us a story about his uncle who bred rabbits. The title of the play has its basis in this story. He placed a ladder in the rabbits’ cage with a carrot on top (at this point in the play, the actor asks the audience for something to represent a carrot that she can put on top of the ladder in the space; an audience member yells “How about a carrot” and tosses one onto the stage from the lunch in her purse). The rabbit that happens up the ladder gets a carrot. Eventually, this becomes learned behaviour and Nassaim’s uncle takes away the carrot. Generations of rabbits go by. With the carrot gone, the “successful” rabbit is the only one not doused with cold water–for failing to become the “red rabbit”, all the while rabbits on the bottom of the ladder get punished. Generations of rabbits go by. When this becomes learned behaviour, the red rabbit gets attacked as he comes down the ladder to rejoin the group. Generations of rabbits go by. One step further, when the white rabbits are not doused in cold water, they still attack the red rabbit (who has no carrot and just happens up the ladder of curiosity). This learned behaviour is somehow passed down through generations and becomes the backbone of this play: follow because it is what you know or question that authority? The entire structure of the play asks that question, and when you notice it, it is surely uncomfortable.

The place where this structure of authority is most obviously and uncomfortably put into perspective is when we are brought to notice and question the existence of two “normal” glasses of water that sit on a table on the stage. They are there at the beginning of the play. Early on in the play, an audience member is asked to put a vial of “poison” into one of them while the audience watches and the actor does not. Nassaim explains though the actor that later on in the play, the actor must drink one of the glasses. It seems so innocent, innocuous, almost silly. But then the actor speaks a monologue about the 18 different way there are to kill yourself (a most uncomfortable dialogue). Then the actor asks an audience member to take notes as someone in the audience might be asked to speak at a murder trial (Nassaim’s murder trial). And then you are reminded of the Red Rabbit story by audience members forced to play out the skit as the actor narrates. So the simple idea of poison in a glass becomes more and more of a real possibility as the play goes on. The audience gets very uncomfortable. The scene comes to a head when the actor comes and sits at the front of the stage with the two glasses by her side. It has come time for her to drink. She asks the audience if anyone has anything to say before she does so. “You don’t need to drink, you have to think of your own safety. Its just a play!” More menacingly, “If you don’t drink, why have we watched this play?” This dialogue continues, the audience shouting out their worries, tension building–is it real? Could it be real? Could it really be poison? Save yourself! It’s just a play! Don’t be a rabbit, you have free will! The actor picks up the glasses and looks at them. A young man runs through the audience from a back row, asks “Can I have a look at those?”, takes the glasses to the bathroom, empties them, brings them back–empty–to place upside-down on the stage floor. The audience cheers and laughs; “Brilliant!” But the actor continues. She picks up a glass, shakes it to make a drop, and drinks it. She lies down. A new “red rabbit” has been called up to the stage from the audience and tells us that the play is over. The actor is still, lying on her back, not moving. She will not move until the audience is out of the theatre–or will she ever again?

I think I've got it...

I think I finally figured it out. Figured out why fantasy and science fiction are so appealing to me. When done well, both are searching for something other, something away from reality, something truer. They use symbolism, imagery from folklore, dreamscapes and more. They elaborate on reality, create new worlds–utopias, distopias, tell morality tales, wish, hope, show loves ability to overcome all obstacles (even space and time), are not afraid to dream. They do not feel so connected to the visual "concreteness" that is reality. Things are not always what they seem, maybe dreams have a place in reality, maybe art and science fiction are more similar than I anticipated, maybe both reach into the same parts of the psyche, maybe both are necessary to allow us space to reflect back on reality. Both can be sur-real, meditative. Good usually battles evil and the good (in what I personally consider good art) usually wins. Maybe science fiction is today's folktale.

Magic

I'm currently in the middle of "Art and Physics" by Leonard Shlain and it has got me thinking about history. I've also started watching the tv series "Merlin" and it has got me thinking about legend. What is legend or myth but folklore, folk storytelling, folktale, oral literature before the printing press, morality through art.
I generally hated history because I really can't ever remember dates (ever) and to me that seemed a very important thing. But with "Art and Physics", for some reason I started to finally make the connections between artistic movements and certain history (specifically of the sciences in the book) and it has become more about flow than dates. Sure dates become useful in grounding information but everything effects the next and you need to keep that in mind. If you can figure out that connection, that transition, you don't need to remember the dates. What and exhilarating feeling! Discovering I like history and, in fact, that I find it fascinating.
In any case, "Merlin" got me thinking about legend when I looked up King Arthur online. It has become such a massive part of our collective history that I couldn't recall what was based on fact and what was false. Its tricky because that's exactly when things started going to bits, the "Dark Ages", not many records of things, little art, destruction of classicism. And so why would there be much information about it? But then I got to thinking, what a wonderful morality tale. A saviour prince believing in equality and saving a kingdom. I'm no expert on the details but everything I recall seems to continually have good wining over evil. If this is folklore, if myth and legend are realms of folk culture as folktales, I want more. It shows the best in people; ideals unconnected to media, just pure thought spread by mouth. Storytelling. Magic.