CANVAS

Canvas is a composition process of shared artistic agency. From the conceptual idea to the moment the paint hit the canvas, to the unpredictable movement of materials, gravity, and choice-making individual artists played in the making of their painting.  Towards the phenomena of the entangled material practice, physical thinking, knowing, and becoming emerge through the interwoven intra-actions of bodily production.  This is the materialization of a choreographic process through an interdisciplinary approach.  Investigating the fullness of materiality of both visual art and bodies.  Reconfiguring the possibilities of what “can be” through discursive practice engaging in an agential realist approach.    

I see this work as the painting, coming to life, the dancers as paint, shifting grounds on the canvas, and then finding a place to settle in the end.  Having the ability to manipulate the color, texture, and angles of the actual film, allowed me as the editor to show the audience pieces of the in-between.  At times I may have altered the audience's view when they did not want it to be displaced from the sunrise, there may have been moments that opacity was distracting, this was editorial choice making.  In the end, the dancers settle on the screen, just as paint does on the canvas. 

I relished the entire process from beginning to end.  Making the paintings, reflecting on them, developing movement in relation to the painting, expanding upon that movement, and then sculpting it together in ensemble work.  It was truly a Practice as Research journey, not knowing where the destination was going.  I thought we were going to film in a studio with masks on due to Covid.  One of the dancers suggested sunrise, and it was beautiful to capture the movement during this time as the colors of dawn are ever-shifting, just as a flow painting.  We only had one shot facing the beach.  Under the circumstances of Covid and dancers being quarantined, the only day everyone was in the studio the same day was the day we made the paintings.  Filming the work on the beach, was the first time the dancers danced together through the entire process.  In retrospect, I would have liked to have more rehearsals, in reality, this was the day the universe had arranged for the materialization of our spacetimemattering.   

Patchwork

My work is processual in nature, where the making of the art feeds the methods in crafting the choreography, and through the making inspires a site-specific location to capture the performative nature of the work on a film.  The painting, Patchwork, reminded me of the many experiences from both nature and nurture that influence us and create markings on our Being.  The impetus in choosing this site was devised with the dancers as we discussed how the pulse of humanity influences the decisions we make in our lives and that we become an extension of threads that design the fabric within our environment.    

Humanity influences the decisions we make in our lives, as the painting influences the choreography.  How we reflect, react, and respond resonates with us and reverberates through us.  The idea of filming just two dancers in the streets versus a group allowed for the dancers to perform in a space where they faded in with natural elements within society, and stand out for brief moments at a time to those passing by.  Had this been a big group of dancers it would have looked like a show we were putting on in the streets. 

In addition, the dance, the act of making and movement during filming adds a layer to the dance where it shifts from a space where these dancers are typically on a stage with an audience sitting and watching them perform to spectators in the streets, with no intention of watching a performance.  This produces a new level of awareness for those both performing and watching.  I found it interesting how people went on with their daily business and did not stop to watch.  For filming purposes, this was just what I wanted.  I did not have to tell anyone except for one group of people to continue on as they were (because they were waving at the camera).

The film editing explored an extension of choreographic possibilities and the aesthetic composition between materiality emerging through modes of articulation.  The bridge that connects the painting to the investigation of Score reading and improvisational tasks led to the development of movement and the discussion of diffracting mediums from both human and non-human participants.  The merging of materials in motion shared a dialogue that would not have been spoken without the other, yet often communicated in silence, speechless until diction is called upon to deliver the manifestation of intention.

ThROUghLiNE

The development of ThROUghLiNE has allowed me the opportunity to bring this choreographic process to life using thought, translation, interpretation, collaboration, making, film, representation, and reflection.  Through creative practice, spontaneous shifts occurred as the dancer allowed the painting to diffract visual-kinetic forms and allowed her body to speak back to the image as it spoke to her.  Through highly developed awareness of the body, she was able to exert her body to the influences of the painting and act upon the complexity of every shifting texture, movement, and motion contained within the context of the work.     

One of my personal questions, when I started working with this individual, was, will she be able to flesh out codified movement.  Being a professional, classical ballet dancer, I wondered how much of her technique would appear through the tasks as it was something she practiced daily and held within the history of her body.  I was surprised that in her ability to execute the tasks, she could fully implement the instructions and avoid this movement.  Her movement fulfilled the purpose in which I was seeking and was genuinely organic in nature.

Interwoven with various forms of knowledge, the physical skills expressed reflective, analytical practices captured within the creative process.  Through the theoretical concept of agency, improvised actions captured through structured frameworks developed this choreographic composition.  Some people asked if the piece was entirely improvised; it was not. The choreography was set.  In creating the film, the First Draft (open attachment) showcases the choreography clearly as the dance was captured in its entirety in 3 different shots and locations.  The practice and process were from a constant dialogue developed and relationship of give and take...such like that of a musician who studies their sheet music...the dancer studied her painting.  It is through the Practice-led investigation and bodily implementation embedded in the practice we developed a ThROUghLiNE.

The Impetus

The Impetus was created with an ensemble of eight college dancers.  When I first started working with the dancers, I was under the impression they all knew one another and had worked with each other before. However, I came to find out towards the end of rehearsals that for most of them, pouring paint on the canvas was the first collaborative act they experienced together.  This created a sense of trust amongst the participants throughout the process.  

I witnessed this work as a pedagogical tool for the students to enhance their ability to define their perceptions in forming relationships with their bodies.  Developing single movement between moments and complex relations of elements occurred as time and variations among phrases and sections in the dance contributed to interpretive reflections of reading their paintings which illustrated choreographic design.  The music and timing became something that was layered over the top of the dance, not an element that reflected or affected the movement but enhanced the development of the video.  Creating the dance film before the performance added a layer to see exactly what I did and did not want to exist between dancers in space and dancers and the audience on the stage.

In the final performance, I showed the film on an overhead projector as the dancers were performing.  As the director of the piece and individual with the creative concept, I know what I was personally watching during the show, the dance.  I had already filmed, edited, and watched the film repeatedly.  I wanted to hear an outsider’s opinion looking in, so I had a conversation with an audience member.  I choose a visual artist and the chair of the college’s Visual and Performing Art Department.  

The interviewee, named Annie, explained to me how the dance professor at the college had brought her students to view paintings in a gallery in the past and had her dancers respond to them physically.  She pointed out the difference with my work was that the dancers had become the artists of the work that they fleshed out through their movement.  She recognized the movement quality in the dance being inspired by the paintings as there was a lot of action in the pictures to create the dance.  Annie pointed out that the integration of the movement in the making of the painting affects the actual image and how it reacts on the surface of the canvas.  She felt as if she was watching a live performance that had already been taped, and one influenced the other as if it had become a backdrop to a backdrop which she describes as a story within a story within a story and she explains that it was highly effective for the audience.    

What stood out to me most during our conversation was Annie pointing out that one does not have to be classically trained to Make, Create or Respond.  She said the method to this art-making is very freeing, you will never have one picture that looks exactly the same and the dance depends on your body’s movement…there is a nice synergy between visual artmaking.  The fact is that you don’t need to be a classically trained visual artist just as if you don’t need to be a technically trained dancer to work with these methods.  This work does not have to have expectations, it can be open to everyone.  I like the idea, that anyone, everyone can explore these methods of making. 

Tunneling

Dancers Reflection

"Dawn and I cultivated a friendship during our two-year intensive MFA at Jacksonville University. It was there that I saw the birth of Dawn’s current study. I’ve had the privilege of witnessing Dawn’s research evolve and recently applied her current choreographic method to my process. We started by examining an existing painting that I painted by using my body as the vessel. The work investigates two principles, that of dance as ephermally existent and the embodied understanding of the quantum principle called Tunneling. The choreographed phrase built by attending to the sensations of the body during theoretical discourse was captured on canvas by applying paint to my hands and feet and performing the phrase repeatedly. The final product is a visual representation of the quantum principle, tunneling. 

Working under Dawn’s guidance, I reimagined my relationship with the painting. Instead of regarding the painting as something that emerged from my body, I viewed the painting as a separate entity and allowed its movement to dictate my movement responses. This was extremely challenging because I have an embodied memory of the existing choreography. Dawn guided me through improvisational exercises that used the painting as a blueprint to assist in the development of unexpected movement. Following the paint strokes on canvas, I outlined movement by creating a visual map, attending to the journey of my eyes on the painting, and embodying the journey in my pelvis, then rib cage, then legs, and finally the port de bras. 

Dawn then prompted me to identify 5 pictures in the painting and give bodily shape to their illustration. I inserted those shapes into the score-based choreographic phrase. To manipulate further, Dawn asked me to identify the intention behind the 5 pictures. For example, is the paint thick and bold? Is the paint applied stroke-by-stroke to create the picture? Is the picture splattered and are the remnants of the splatter on the canvas? The questions influenced dynamic shifts in the choreographic phrase. During this part of the process, I was challenged by Dawn. Based on my discomfort in the manipulated movement, I fell back on safe movement choices which created familiar choreographic phrasing. Dawn very gently guided me through my difficulty in the uncovered movement possibilities and together we trained my body to accept new movement responses. The process is ironic because I am a dancer trained extensively in codified techniques. In Dawn’s process, I was asked to shed familiar technical languages and instead trust the organic response of my body. Through this process, Dawn helped me to uncover an unrealized movement vocabulary, one that exclusively belongs to my body. 

This was an extremely challenging process that took me out of my comfort zone. This method is unique because there was no regard for my existing technical vocabulary. Instead, the process required honesty and trust of my own personal movement choices based on the visual stimulation of the painting. As a professional dancer, I so often feel the need to abandon individuality and adopt the aesthetic of my director or choreographer. Dawn’s method reminded me of the vast wealth of movement possibilities that I so often overlook. She helped me to investigate the phenomenological impulses of my body and exhaust the investigation to the depth of the movement. I see so much value in this method because through it I developed a choreographic phrase that is deviant from much of my choreographic accomplishments. Dawn’s method is a reminder to me to look within to access the creative well that is uniquely my own." (Montijo 3/2022)

Staining the Score

Staining the Score is a culminating project crafted from a Score devised from movements associated with the choreographic experiments the dancers were introduced to and explored this semester.  The dancers and I collaboratively generated and conceptualized artistic ideas using various sources as inspiration. Then, transforming the concepts and ideas into the movement for creative expression, they responded to the stimuli (objects-canvas and paint) not just as individual movers, but as a collective.  

These dancers came together from various backgrounds and experiences with a particular perspective on dance and its appearance.  Through the artistic engagement process, they learned that it is not necessarily based on historically determined explicitly, but creative contributions to choreography can be developed through playful thinking. This becomes a multiple-authored work, cutting and mixing materials. Shared agency empowers contributors and transforms personal philosophy.

It is not always easy to put into words the act of one having the capacity to perceive visually, think with the body, internalize and process action to be transported externally.  It is the making of movement material in conjunction with components and conditions of artistic agency.  A composition process is shared with a painting, a canvas.  Unforeseeable shifts in landscapes are bound to practice and experience.  Simultaneously, shared conceptual learned information through acts of doing.  A collaborative dance, where learning takes place through the process of doing and making, and the ability to execute that which emerges from the methods and practice.     

Carousel

Carousel is a choreographic collaboration with a group of professional dancers from the tri-state area.  When I reflected on this work, it was exceptional how the participants took the reigns on the project.  Developing movement inventions and new dynamic forms, the dancers used their bodies as thinking tools through intra-active efforts.  Reorganizing the body's movement potential through the lens of shared choreographic agency with images on a canvas, diffract translations intersected with visual art matter to materialize into physical movement.  

I find it appropriate to discuss the title of the piece as the dance was filmed outside of an old carousel, this was the first word that came to mind, but I sought to have a deeper meaning than just a word that describes the specific location of the performance.  What does it feel like to ride a carousel?  I started to think of the experience of riding a carousel and make connections to this practice.  They all look similar in shape and form.  Once you step onto a carousel, you are in a whimsical place.  They all have various animals or creatures on them which serve a purpose of amusement and a seat for a ride.  No one knows when it will end, which direction you will face when you stop, or what landscape you will look at when you step off the ride.

In comparison to the project and practice.  Each project works with bodies similar in shape and form.  Once the participants create a painting, they are in awe at how the colors blend.  Each painting serves a purpose, to guide the dancers on a ride.  For each project, I have continued giving the groups of participants the same descriptive movement tasks.  They have a formula that allows them to have an experience.  I am not the one setting choreography on their bodies.  They are making the choices and decisions between the self and painting to decide, and they have the agency to decide how it is produced in their body.  I go into each project not knowing how it will end, not knowing which creature or animal the participant will sit on for the ride, and not sure what landscape I will be looking at when the carousel finishes the ride.  I do not know what the final product of the dance will look like.  Yet the ride keeps going round and round as I keep giving each group these little containers full of mixed mediums, canvases, and prompts to develop movement material that leads to a dance.