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.

Music

There has been so much to write that I haven't written... Make sense? Maybe.

I realized today that music holds a priviledged place in my existence. I recently lost my iPod and haven't had music to accompany me on my commute. I've been reading instead (which has been wonderful) but have not been supplementing that with music at other times. Silence can be wonderful but music is needed to tap into that elusive part of the mind and memory called joy. I haven't quite figured out why but it has to be something vibrational... Our bodies are built on movement. Music is essentially movement of our eardrums. MOVEMENT IS THE ONLY INHERENT TRUTH OF THE UNIVERSE. Nothing ever stays at rest. Anywhere. So music (it's almost movement of the mind, isn't it?) and dance (movement of the body) feel like the inherent truths of humanity.

How wonderful.

Lots

There has been much going on:
New wicked apartment
Summerworks
Much inspiration for Kinetic Convergence
Revelations on teaching

Ok, maybe it doesn't sound like much but setting up an beautiful apartment, seeing 7 plays in just over a week, planning a curriculum for the following school year and having Ame Henderson blow my mind about what I'm really thinking (how does she always know??) is slightly overwhelming... Oh, and I also found the Masters program I want to do... University of California at Berkeley Department of Folklore
http://folklore.berkeley.edu/programs/graduate.php
Also they have this
http://tdps.berkeley.edu/programs-courses/graduate-program/
The two will somehow come together in awesomeness in some future year.

So it has been an epic few weeks. I think I am mostly excited that now teaching has become a viable part of my artistic practice. It has become not just a money job but something that meshes with my beliefs as an artist and the goals that I want to reach with my work–a sense of community, collaboration, openness, joy, and acceptance. Ame made me realize that all of those things are what folk dance and folk music are. Somehow dance and music shifted from that participatory model to the "if you're not a professional you watch professionals do things on a stage" model. Bollocks. I want to put the folk back into dance. Audience participation has become such a wanted commodity but the "professional performance" part still overpowers that desire. You can't just engage an audience for 1 minute and then expect then to feel involved for the rest of the 59 minutes they are sitting as an audience not being engaged! We need to bring back the folk elements of dance and music. Find a balance between performance and community, between professional and joyful practicer, and then talk about a real sense of audience participation.

Too much

I seem to constantly be thinking about what I am as an artist, what I want to be doing, what the point of my work is, how I am affecting society, how I am affecting the trajectory of art as a subset of society, why what I am doing is important, needing to justify it, feeling embarrassed to be proud to be an artist, feeling like I should have a "real job" even though I don't want a "real job" but hearing so much about how I should have one that I almost believe it, needing to justify my work to potential landlords (emphasizing the "real job" bits), trying to fit myself into applications, trying to create statements about projects or about myself, writing bios that don't feel contrived or stuck-up, wondering if the "real world" cares about my work. Too much.

It's really hard to feel like an artist when people around you seem to think its a nice hobby but "When are you going to get a real job?" It's even harder when you add self-doubt about ability or amount of output or thinking about HOW you should be being an artist.

Should it always be this hard? Does it get better? Does it get easier to break through this overwhelming barrier and just create because it's what you need to do?

What is art?

This week, "The Grid" sent out their questions crew (for lack of knowing what these people are called) to ask people by the Art Gallery of Ontario "What is art?" As most of the answers got me either confused, offended, or just angry, I got to trying to put together what my answer would be to that question. As I continued thinking, I realized that I would not have been able to answer the question 3 years ago. I'm 24. After almost 16 years of study I would not have been able to give an answer. This led me to believe that people need exposure, experience, and openness to ALL media, as well as need to have the patience to grow into knowledge and understanding to see art for what it is. In any case, I think I'm reasonably happy with this answer at this point in my life (or at least today):

Art is a self-aware, non-utilitarian expression of ideas, emotions, or opinions.

(self-aware to eliminate children's dabbling and non-utilitarian to differentiate from craft)

Thoughts?

Fantasy

There is something so magical about fantasy... It is the ultimate in imagination. The ultimate in creativity. The ultimate art, in that sense.

To create a good fantasy is to literally create a new world. I suppose, in this case, that's what any good art should do: submerge you in a world of possibility.

Reflections of reality always seem to influence more than reality itself. People have become so jaded to actual reality–they are so submerged in news and facts and horror–that the only way to cut through the muck is with a well spun story or abstraction.

Analogies. Metaphors. Similes. Symbolism. That is what thoughts are made of. That is what our unconscious is made of. Maybe the only way to cut through to the truth in our heads is to speak its own language: fiction.

Artist Statement

I just finished up an application today and realized that I haven't written an artist statement about my work as an artist (as opposed to about a specific project) in probably two years. It was exciting. I love that writing makes you realize things about yourself that, in fact, are so easy to put into words, and only a few ones at that. All the things floating about your head easily converge and connect into a brief statement. Love it:

Although I work in many disciplines, I feel my greatest skill and greatest enjoyment is in making connections. In accordance with that facility, I feel right calling myself a collage or assemblage artist. I work in a way that feels almost scientific, striving for simplicity though my connections, looking for an artistic “Theory of Everything” (modest goals, I know). I am adamant that subject informs the medium chosen for a specific project or part of a project, and so I tend to work within multiple media. I take disparate clusters of knowledge, experience, or material that I have accumulated—usually from a variety of genres and media—and work them, over time, into a cohesive whole. To me, this is progress and, to me, progress is happiness. Seeing as, to me, happiness is the ultimate goal of life, I am consistently working on making connections and making progress. Since I also believe that art needs to continue being avant-garde (the advance guard, the front line) alongside philosophy, and needs to continue leading the world’s mental and emotional progress, I feel comfortable knowing that my striving works within that ideal as well.

My work tends to explore the concept of happiness and the effects of happiness, and I at all times hope for it to beget happiness in my viewers. I am interested in the intelligence of a room versus an individual and, so, what the possibility of collaboration and “community” can hold. I hope that working collaboratively works hand in hand with my interest of working as a collage artist, and makes connections between people’s ideas. I am interested in physical and process-based research, as well as the physical manifestation of philosophical ideals.

Go artist statement :)

Specificity

Is it too much to ask for an artist to be specific in their goals? To have a reason for doing what they are doing, exploring what they are exploring. I get so tired seeing works where I cannot see/hear/feel a purpose. Techniques are used for the sake of being used, just because that's just what is happening right now or what has been done. BAD REASON! If you cannot, as an artist, understand why you are being influenced in your choices by those around you, THINK ABOUT IT. Make choices that reflect your goals. Do not just do what is being done around you. I'm tired of getting bored when nothing is being said. Even if it is a simple statement, STATE IT PROUDLY AND CLEARLY. Just make sure you have something to say first, ok?

Flow

I think I've found my flow. All of a sudden the words are writing themselves, they sound and feel right, and they mean what I'm thinking–what a rare experience. Words like to skirt the issues floating around in your brain, too concrete to really express, too vague to really understand. And for all the dislike I have for Ayn Rand's writing, I think it snapped me into this state. It was lying in wait, concealed behind an impenetrable brick wall, and the Utopian descriptions of Galt's Gultch and its inhabitants reasons for being there opened a door that I didn't see this whole time. When she spoke of the words that have been inked on my wrist for 3 years now–truth, love, joy–and I knew that she understood them in the way that I meant them, the dam overflowed. Understanding begat my acceptance that what I am thinking about is ready to be heard...

The beginning

I never realized how much I needed to write until I was separated from my home and my notebooks–paper and pens, really. Traveling with no paper to take notes... Torture. I find myself speaking monologues that will never be written down. After being thought, I can never recall the beauty of their phrasing. That, I suppose, is why I seem to feel the need to carry paper with me at all times. But here I am, deciding that I will turn to virtual paper. I want to try and disseminate my thoughts. I never could quite get past the self-centredness of a blog but now, it just seems right. Single thoughts, articles, or novellas–I will exist without a publisher to get the monologues down and out into public. Even if no one reads them, I know that I have produced and can be happy with that.
My need to create has become so strong that I almost hate myself when nothing comes out. How am I supposed to be an artist that does not create? The urge is so strong it is almost nauseating but there is a wall–a stubborn, wall built by confusion and the need to present myself completed. I need to organize my thoughts in writing, I need to see them on the page, so here I go. Time to get started.