Session 2.0 Notes

MMW Session 2.0

Saturday September 12, 2009 at Intersection

Erika's Topic: Likes and Dislikes

I. Check-ins, other projects you're involved in?

II. Likes and Dislikes from the last session

Kegan: The sooner the homework is done, the better. I want to get my thoughts out right after it happened. Aim for getting the homework for the next session up on blog a week ahead at least.

Jessica: I felt freedom in the process, like Jen was guiding but not forcing.

Erika: I like that we got to “massage each other’s brains.” I didn’t walk away with a thesis statement, but a process to brainstorm. We talked about it, discussed and then played around in the studio.

Requests for future sessions:

Jen: I wanted to talk in smaller groups, but didn’t get to it. It doesn’t always have to be one big group, but can have more dissemination.

Erika: Clarity when we were in the sessions as opposed to clarity when we were talking about the sessions. I like doing check-ins.

III. Homework from the blog: Likes of two works (one from the past and one more recent).

Erika: I believe we have been trained to not like/dislike art or works. I want your strong opinions, so I want us to be really bold and opinionated and not judge each other in these likes and dislikes. I know we have worked together, I’m not sure if I want to get into my work, or experiences that we have participated in with each other. We can check in before launching in, if it does pertain to someone in the room.

Kegan: RECENT: The hula show, Patrick Makuakane, recent one that I had such a pleasurable experience. Also I liked the Pichet Klunchen/Jerome Bel, I was part of co-presenting it, found it engaging. OLD: DV8’s Strange Fish, I totally adored and was excited by.

Jorge: OLD: Ballet Fokloriko, main Mexican dance person, very famous. I was in high school, and was doing Folklorico, was excuse to dance, and also excuse for me to be Mexican. The energy of the performance built so much and I cried, was beautiful and happy, was joyous and celebratory. It was great to see how technically amazing they are, and seeing it now I might not see the same, but they were so technically sound that they could actually have fun and just go and enjoy the dance, be vibrant. RECENT: Tempest Fugi, dance theater, Nachs TheateR. Also, Inspirari, Sara Shelton Mann, I felt like she penetrated everything, it all dissolved. It was like she could see me and see through me, I thought yes, we’re guilty, I was floored. The work is like her, a force that I’m scared of, so it’s not a like, but it’s powerful.

Peter: I don’t see a lot of dance. OLD: I saw the Joffrey Ballet do a Prince Night. It was amazing to watch their banana feet try to dance. RECENT: I really enjoyed Stick (Jorge’s). I identified with it.

Erin: OLD: Contraband piece. When I started seeing dance in the Bay Area, it had heart and incredible energy and technical aspects all coming together. RECENT:, the Shenway dance arts, Butoh influenced. Also recently Miguel Gutierrez show.

Jen: OLD: In high school, in love with Revelations, video and live. Emotional, elements of narrative, funky and refined simultaneously, hot bods, sense of ensemble, looked like it was good to dance to, good melding of dance and music. RECENT: Mo’s solo, faux real, intimate both spatially and thematically, real faux brilliant, fast moving, audience allowed in participation, high brow and low brow simultaneously, pretty to look at, funny, smart, self aware, hot bods, present performers, artifice that we’re all in on, not ashamed to be entertaining, sense of generosity in full-on ego confidence.

Erika: RECENT: Jerome Bel show, simple and complicated, performed and not-performed, yet highly crafted without being aware. It all tumbled out in such an organic way. I’m interested in that real v. not real, when is it structured and when it is not. OLD: Contraband, when I first started dancing, was around ’97. They did a performance at UC Santa Cruz and it was so fun. I didn’t have a lot of dance experience and they were wearing combat boots and stomping. It was punky and aggressive, and I was so shy that it made me feel like it brought me into my own body. Sara Shelton Mann’s career is so interesting to talking about in terms of likes and dislikes. Especially her trajectory, and how work changes.

Jessica: OLD: ‘95/6 the White Oak Dance Project, Baryshnikov by Terry Sendgraf, he was wearing a doll house. Wall sconces in the house that he could turn on and off, his theatricality was amazing. I was ready to believe everything in that moment. His technique did not obstruct the performance. At one point he went all the way into the audience and coughed (because everyone in the audience had the flu and kept coughing).

RECENT: David Dorfman piece with light bulbs. Beautiful, and I’m not sure what he meant it to be about, but it didn’t matter. It made me think of death, like our lights at some point go out. But the dancers are so beautiful, capable and bonded with each other and were so enveloped in the movement. I loved seeing his body, could’ve been someone one the street.

IV. What about our “likes” conversation created “ah-ha” moments

Erika: Emotionality. I personally like stuff that’s emotional but I am scared to be too emotional. We want it to be but don’t want to. Also feeling uprooted. I’ve never thought about that as an intention about my own work. I love that feeling, but never thought about that in terms of my creation.

Jen: I get annoyed when it seems like things are trying to uproot me, but love if it just happens.

Erika: How then do we work with that. Do others share this goal?

Kegan: It was a goal of mine at some point. But I’ve come away from that.

Jorge (what does it mean to be uprooted): I took Sara Shelton Mann’s workshop, it’s built as a choreography, she is trying to give us tools to go into ourselves and change/shift something in us from the cellular level. So we have a new sensibility and lens, and now everything is shaded and new and we have a different way of evaluating things. With that work, in a stream of consciousness space, it’s like they way she layers in her performance, bodies, sounds, visuals, it’s overwhelmed. Back to Kegan, on wanting to uproot, now I’m thinking I want to change things, and make things happen, and now I’m thinking I don’t always have to be uprooting, maybe I could be healing. Uprooting is not everything to me, but it’s definitely a thing!

Erika: It’s the feeling that anything is possible, or maybe expectations being broken. For me, it’s about breaking expectations.

Erin: Also making you question your assumptions. It actually makes you slightly upset. After shows I wouldn’t want to talk with people, and depress me in ways. Because it’s like they are bringing up another way to function. So I left thinking, I’ve been making art the wrong way, or not seeing things how I know want to.

Peter: Uprooting for me can be like a sledge hammer in your face. What I’ve found that when people feel uprooted, it’s because you do something really honest. Ethier they shut down, like they don’t have any footing, and things are taken out from under you.

Jessica: The difference between controlling the audience, rather than just creating what you’re creating. You can’t predict what someone is going to feel. Can have a tragedy that has moments of levity, and it’s going to hit everyone different. Control over what you do v. control over what they’re reaction is.

Erin: But I do think that approaching it like creating a different state for an audience.

Jessica: You can’t feel solid when the ground is shaking, but you don’t know how someone is going to react.

Erika: I’m interested in intention, shaping considering the experience you want your audience to have. We can’t control what the audience is going to think, but we can have the intention of changing their mind. How do you take into consideration, the audience?

Erin: My desire is not so much to shake things up, but to have something that the audience can connect to. I think about it first in terms of myself.

Jen: I’d rather break my own expectations, rather than shaking up the audience’s expectations of me. To have something that is generous is open, also like how I teach, I don’t have more knowledge, but I try to create a space that people can have an experience. I can create the container, that’s where my knowledge lies.

Jessica: I think as if I’m inviting the audience into my home, when I’m making work. It could be happy or a funeral, it’s like a party. If I didn’t care what people think about my work, then I would just dance in my living room. Like some people say they don’t care what other people think of their work. I think you want to create an environment with lights and sound.

Erin: That’s what SHAME! was trying to do. I was really interested in SHAME!, that it was clearly not just being entertained, it was aggressive, in your face. You don’t do something like that without reason. But I don’t like things that don’t seem to have any reason, but I did come away that I’m not totally sure what Nathaniel was wanting us to come away with. It made me question intention towards the audience.

Jorge: A buffoon is a specific form with a specific sensibility, it’s super aggressive to get to the soft spot of the audience and play with that. Ideal you have a strong intention, and go to that, but the show isn’t perfect. You might sense the heartbeat, but it’s not perfect. It’s challenging because the show isn’t necessarily. Let follow the art, rather than trying to control the art. Like birthing a kid and you can’t totally control it, but can guide it.

V. Dislikes…

Kegan: Self indulgence. Felt like the performance wasn’t for me, or for the audience, but it was a way for the artist to deal with their ego and self. In another, I had clear expectations of what I wanted to see, and it didn’t fulfill the expectations that I felt it set up, by the language of how the work was talked about in advance, but also the trajectory of the show. I didn’t feel that the performers were utilized the best.

Jorge: Didn’t like the cheesy and sugary context. In another, I felt it was safe, put up projections of “smart, cool, hip” images, but the heart and vulnerability was missing, so didn’t connect to me. Like the artist tried to think a way out of the piece. Didn’t feel like the people on stage really cared. They seemed closed off to the people who were there to watch.

Peter: Trying to make a story about crap. Don’t like self indulgence, when I don’t feel let in, when it’s surface-y, or when you know that the artist has latched onto something that they know sells, and keep doing that.

Erin: Cheesy and bad. Boring, unflattering costumes, overly obvious (gesturing to a voice over).

Jen: Overly precious, boring story, non-integrated, too-dance-y, gratuitous nudity, dancers seemed self involved, the audience was expendable, tried my patience, too-long.

Erika: Characters felt fake, environment was greater than performance. When we talk about work, we have the same priorities, but just because you share the same words about work doesn’t mean anything in practice. Felt like the same piece had already been done. The line between indicating v. experiencing, the piece was so literal, which I feel we are past that. The emotionality of the characters seems trite and not grounded.

[Broad question: Why then are there classical music pieces that stand the test of time? Because music is so much more abstract and was thought to be the highest form of art. But dance is seen as low, because in the body, appearance based, costuming, is more directly felt and connected to by the audience, because people can relate to bodies in motion.]

Erika: I felt like this person was creating an artifact.

Jessica: Drove me to drink: dancers expressions, can’t help but look at them, and only them. Drove me to donuts: muscular dancers, but didn’t seem to care or be connected.

[Broad question: How do we turn this from a gripe session into something productive. Like saying, I don’t like this so I’m not going to do this. What’s the point?]

Erika: What I want to do is often flirting with things I don’t like. Often seems risky and compelling. Like when people are talking about self indulgent, I don’t like seeing that, but there are certain things that I’m working on right now, that are flirting with that.

Erin: there are things that are close to things I don’t like, like shows that have a sense of a really big ego.

Kegan: The really unsuccessful things, are also, stuff that really bothers me because it gets under my skin, which in the end is better than just plain boring. There is energy in the pull between likes and dislikes, which is still compelling.

VI. Mini battles and comments on liking the same piece someone with similar taste dislikes:

Jen: Can deal with arrogance when I respect the person’s intelligence, and let the ego go for the moment.

Erin: It’s ok if it’s laid out first, that I know I’m going to an exhibitionist show.

Jorge: Can deal with the spectacle if it digs into something, but not if it’s just surface spectacle. When there is potential, it’s not successful. Art can be provoking but there is a responsibility in that.

Kegan: But if it’s not shaped, and crafted, is too much to deal with. Don’t like it if trying to uproot me, but I’m not going to uproot myself unless I see where else I want to root myself.

Erika: Likes and dislikes not related to value. When the work serves as a valuable tool to our own priorities.

Erin: How big is what you like and don’t like in what you create. John cage tried to take out all things he liked and doesn’t like.

VII. Process that you’ve been in, like and dislike

Peter: Like: Very organized, laid out sturcture, open to everyone’s ideas. They had a structure of what they wanted it to be, but were also very open to others’ ideas. Character work, that we built on starting from the beginning. First experience of ensemble, everyone was very together. Dislike: Not well organized, not much support for it. What made the ensembles not work was feeling taking advantage of, compromising artists’ work for the overall production of it all.

Jen: When things are laid out clearly from the beginning, contractually or talked about, is the most successful. Whoever is leading, needs to come out and say it, here is how I am going to use your contributions, and this is what I’m asking of you and how I’m coming at this project and how I’d like you to come to it. It comes back to assumptions and expectations. When there is a dryness to it, that doesn’t work. And when working with a small group is hard because human nature pops up. If there are two people, it can be 50/50, but it’s not necessarily. But to come out and clarify what each rehearsal will be. Even though the movement became very connected, keeping the collaborators and director roles separate and clear is very important.

Erika: I love working with people who are really bossy. When the director is really bossy. I think I’m afraid to be bossy. The things that I like when I’m inside of a work feel very different than what I’m wanting to create. Right now I’m wanting to facilitate collaboration.

Erin: My feelings about process have a very direct role to the product. It’s difficult to not trust where the work is going. Feeling like I was doing all the work, yet it wasn’t my work. I love when people are really there to work, and try hard, who are nice. Helps when the others are lovely, caring people.

Jessica: Disliked: Was asked to make dance for pre-scripted, composed and set show. It was a struggle to get the intentions and information before creating, and what I created I was proud of, but then felt taken advantage when it wasn’t fully realized. Liked: Making my own, could build the space that I wanted to and not get taken advantage of.

Jorge: I like collaboration when I’m compelled by the aesthetic and I am moved by a force, body and energy. Then there is already a cool element, but it’s also interesting because the director will give us tasks or sees qualities in us and makes something out of it. Dislike: My own process needs work. Also when it’s not about the work, but about the people, making sure that the people are cool. But it’s helpful to work with those who are really there to work.

Jen: This all makes me think of corporate team building. Like if the dancers aren’t having a great time, can go out and get drinks and refresh the fun part of being together. Dislike when I feel like I have to clandestinely socialize, like I’m being watched and have to always prove that I’m working.

Advice for being in the middle of the process: Ask what does the work as of you? What is your responsibility to it. Is it about reigning in structure and time, or is it about being low key. Video rehearsals. Asking outside eyes to watch and give good feedback.

Rollover:

Watching our likes and dislikes together, to better talk about them.

Self direction, how to apply work to yourself.

Trajectory of a body of work, development as an artist, expectations.

Surfing between playing ourselves or being ourselves in performance, other choices: being a character; theater side of dance theater, theatrical aspects of dance theater

Open Process Event:

Frame questions for the day?

Top of the night, everbody together in discussion, as an intro. Then can use more specific questions and break up in smaller groups. We can all be facilitators in the small groups. Also should have jobs such as time keeper, having a bell for time.

What do we want out of these small groups. To share a nugget from small group and have conversation with larger group. Have a reporter. Reporter would be someone from the group, or if no one is willing then facilitator can step up.

Bill T Jones tickets: Jessica will investigate.