Reading Reflections

Unraveling Habits of Dance

Dancers actively work to create a physical change through willing their bodies to create habitual patterns to actively engage muscle memory within their bodies. As an act of voluntary force, strategies promote movement technique as an attempt of corporeal change to promote transformation within the body. Becoming a part of their internal make-up habits are formed and retain their shape, which becomes reliable.

Recognition of the habitual body, we do not need to reflect upon each step we take once we have learned the foundation of dance, the movements become a part of a dancers’ structure. In Rothfield’s words, “Habits are a form of corporeal scriptwriting, a shorthand for the body...Habit’s ability to function smoothly according to routine allows the individual to focus more fully on other matters” (Rothfield 2013). This would provide for a more comprehensive array of possibilities when seeking movement potential beyond habits within the body. From dedicated practice, dancers develop corporal habits as a power beyond their consciousness which essentially allows the body to move naturally without visual imagery to guide their steps. Having a solid infrastructure in dance provides the performer to balance a variety of elements within the structure of a choreographic framework.

A hallmark in postmodern dance is its challenge of the dancers’ embodied technical experience as it incorporates its own modes of choreographic inventions. In order to unravel the habitual threads developed through the fabrication of a trained dancer requires the body to embark upon a series of reinventions. “Expansion is an impetus destined to go beyond the thinker as knower towards a body unhinged from the end gains inherent in motor intentionality” (Rothfield 2013). Preparing the body for the unknown movement of unpredictable possibilities is a slow rendering that goes against the grain of habits. Since the dancer’s aim is not to rely on what they already know, they need to embrace a process of exploring improvisational modifications to investigate new movement. The dancer has to go beyond their preconceived knowledge so the body can deliver new movement possibilities.

Choreography through a Phenomenological Perspective

Studying the structure of experiences and consciousness in dance movement is a lived experience. This perspective of dance is the intersection of when thinking about what one is arranging and creating it come together in the present moment as an embodied experience. The thinking disappears, and being completely present within the moment is happening. “It is the social and communicative exchange of working with others, which stimulates my creative process” (Barrett & Bolt 52). In this case, it is humans in the exchange with materials, creating dynamic relationships in the development of movement exploration to reconstruct the choreographic relationship. Through a Practice as Research approach I continue to explore the interconnection of this relationship through the lens of phenomenology. By questioning the relationships between bodies and objects in performance, the research aims to view dance through the philosophical lens of intersubjectivity utilizing the concept of Husserl phenomenological reduction. Philosophy seeks to explain how conscious awareness and phenomenology encourage artists to examine dance performance as an experience. Dance produces embodied ways of knowing where perception is influenced by intention allowing a dualistic language to emerge.

Dance is essentially art in constant flow, ever-changing and evolving through its lived, embodied experiences. Phenomenology examines dance studies as experiences and develops descriptions of the structures held within an experience. Through the practice and act of reflective methods, one can capture components of movement in crafting works of choreography.

The phenomenological methodology aims to capture the material of the performative nature from both movement and reflection. Sondra Fraleigh affirms, “When phenomenology is true to its intent, it never knows where it is going” (Fraleigh 1991). The choreographer relies on trust held within the experimental process to arrive at meaning. Considering phenomenology is present-centered, and while the phenomena are held within time consciousness, reverberation is held within past-present, which flows into a succession of “the now” reflection that unites a series of retentions. Maxine Sheets-Johnstone confirms the notion that “past, present and future - form distinct interrelated units...whose meaning derives from their being intrinsic to the whole” (Sheets-Johnstone 12). It is through an understanding of the process one builds a deeper relationship between experience, movement, and perception through a thoughtful process and reflective analysis of inquiry that corporal revelations develop meaning in creating works of art.

The phenomenological perspective design is to gain insightful ways we experience creating choreography and gain a deeper understanding of the nature of our experience. Max van Manen declares in his text Phenomenology of Practice, “Phenomenology is also a project that is driven by fascination being swept up in a spell of wonder, a fascination with meaning..and then infuses us, permeates us, infects us, touches us, stirs us, exercises a formative affect” (van Manen 12). It is through the imagination that visual imagery comes to life through the aesthetics of the human body. During a choreographic phenomenological investigation, the composer attempts to uncover structures through the significance of framed experiences in a rehearsal, which allows for descriptions to be formed within and through the art-making process. For instance, impressions are developed by exploring visual-kinetic imagery in the studio with dancers and not from preconceived movement representation intentions.

Phenomenological reflection interprets the relationship between passive reflection by which consciousness becomes aware of itself in the world. One cannot reflect on the lived experience while living through it before it has been appropriated by reflection. As in dance writing, through chance movements, we cannot predict the final choreographic score. Foucault expressed this well:

I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for love relationships is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don’t know what will be the end. (Foucault 1988)

In creating new choreography works and developing frameworks to explore unique modes within choreographic structures, one must be objectively receptive to individual experience when working with a group of dancers. Dance performance emerges from the body, through physical abilities, and beyond the boundaries of language.

As the choreographer, the studio becomes your laboratory as the phenomenological reflection guides the performative assessment possibilities. Through philosopher Edmund Hursell’s “Bracketing,” the reduction process takes the act of removing judgment from the choreographer’s bais out of the work and allows the practice to speak for itself. This kind of confident faith is where the choreographer gets out of the way, removing their ideas and conditions on the meaning of the artwork and allows for perceptions to emerge through the process of flow. Interpreting these meanings signifies an internal perceivedness of impressions, which Hursell suggests, “is brought to appearance in the actual momentary phase of the flow of consciousness - specifically, in its series of retentional moments -are the past phases of the flow of consciousness” (Hursell 88). It is here that we construct meaning and reveal correlations between movement and why they are presented through the kinesthetic practices.

Moving back and forth through the process includes a reflective analysis of observation, reduction, and self-reflection. Gaining transition moments during movement finds a performative quality, and transitions become realized through visual imagery within the choreography composition. The development of choreography through phenomenology is essential to challenge the aesthetics of movement as a dimension of interpretive inquiry. It makes a dance what it is, and without it, it could not be what it is. It strives to materialize its essence and describe the composition and significance of the methods in creating a choreographic score through a lived experience.

Material-Discursive Phenomena, Shared Agency, and Performativity

Agential Realism is a theory that shifts grounds in the realm of practice and brings into question ontology, materiality, and agency. Traditionally in dance, the director or choreographer would dictate the desired aesthetics of the body, shapes, movement patterns, and force of its organization through time and space. In the classical context of dance and the performative, the choreographer would hold agency or power in this process of planning. Karen Barad states, “If we follow disciplinary habits of tracing disciplinary-defined causes through to the corresponding disciplinary-defined effects, we will miss all the crucial intra-actions among these forces that fly in the face of any specific set of disciplinary concerns” (Barad 2003, p. 810). Intra-activities compose a reworking of traditional ideas of causality where multiple components become meaningful, providing conditions for the possibilities of material reconfiguration. Therefore, to study the materialization of interdisciplinary methods, it is imperative that a rethinking of the relationship between discursive practice and material phenomena seek to be understood in and through the following study.

To reframe the conventional approach of designing contemporary choreography, I have chosen to examine various entanglements with specific objects in a visual-art-making process. The permanent/fixed visual art will then inform the impermanent/improvisational movement within and through the body. In a dialogue with Karen Barad, she explains, “The map offers some suggestions of the specific entanglements of the multiple material-discursive apparatuses of bodily production and hints at how they are entangled in space and time, or rather in the materialization of spacetimemattering” (Barad 2020, p. 136 via Juelskjær). Engaging with the material sense, there is a dualism between object and subject, observer and observed, the mover and moved. A shared agency arises in both materiality of body and visual-art and the intra-action in and through the practice of making both human and non-human art.

In crafting this choreographic project, the artwork would not exist or have relevance without the dancer, nor would the dance live without the art. They are inseparable. Entangled through collaborative analysis, the body becomes a tool for thinking as it reconfigures a response to the patterns and murmurings from its artwork. The body is brought to life as it diffracts rather than reflects agency as an active participant in an on-going becoming for performance possibilities. As Haraway pointed out, “A diffraction pattern does not map where differences appear, but rather maps where the effects of differences appear” (Haraway 1992, p. 300 via Barad). The aesthetic possibilities come to life through the shared conditions of the material-discursive phenomena and diffraction optics.

Material matters, and its intra-activity is an active participant reworking and reformulating action becoming materialized through its causal relationship between one another. There is an intertwined practice of knowing for the role played in the cause and effect within the component parts of the whole. Bound to properties shared in emergent intelligibility to another, neither the visual-art nor the choreography exists without the other. They are not absolute cause or complete effect but part of an open-ended becoming of agential intra-activity in the role of performativity.

All bodies, not just human bodies, come to matter through the continual intra-action of this art-making process. Through these possibilities, marks are left on bodies, an inscription of the choreographic process allowing particular materializations for ontological reverberations. “Because agency is a matter of changes in the apparatuses of bodily production, and such changes take place through various intra-actions, some of which remake the boundaries that delineate the differential constitution of the “human” (Barad, p. 826). The knowledge acquired during the study will be transferred to dancers. In turn, they will convey the relevance of concepts learned from their body to choreography, progressing through their process, practice, teaching style, and various entangled enactments migrating into their future.

There is an apparent sense of vibrant materiality of open-ended ebb and flow of agency in the world. Within specific intra-action, phenomena come to matter through the ongoing performativity of material arrangements. Agential realism is a continuation of phenomena’ ontological inseparability, a constant giving of multiple entanglements responsive to experiences’ and liveliness. As with art and its entanglement with theory and the production of knowledge, it enables us to reveal the extent to which the invisible is visible, and the understanding of what is left to be unseen understood in the mind’s eye.

Energies in Action

Action speaks to us in colors of varying shades, while shadows of experiences are positioned in the world as transforming landscapes, shifting grounds. Art is poetry in motion, a reflection of that which reverberates energies through the whisper of pulsating beats, the echo of memories, the carving of shapes through time and space. An endless possibility of a language that is recognized as a reality and talks back to us until we have come to accept the permanence of its existence.

The mixed medium that I have recently become intrigued with is flow painting. I am especially drawn to unpredictable cells that develop on the canvas from incorporating various mixing agents in the acrylic paint. In making the of works, it is left to the force of gravity, the amount of mixing medium, and the turn of the canvas, which pushes the paint’s weight from side to side that decides how the piece will rest.

I never considered myself an artist of permanent works such as painting. I am a performance artist, a choreographer, maybe even a writer of poems. I was never educated in the techniques of drawing, color composition, or juxtaposition of visual forms. Yet it is the act of painting that calls to me, the action, the physical motion, the energy within the moment of doing and making. The movement held within the method I am engaged in throughout the transformation process as I release paint onto the canvas, bringing me to the same place as I choreography a dance. Harold Rosenberg eloquently articulates this by asserting,

A painting that is an act is inseparable from the biography of the artist. The painting itself is a “moment” in the adulterated mixture of his life-whether “moment” means the actual minutes taken up with spotting the canvas or the entire duration of a lucid drama conducted in sign language. The act-painting is of the same metaphysical substance as the artist’s existence. (Rosenberg p. 28)

Painting just to paint, in communication with the cavas to watch it come alive. Without an image or picture in mind, just self, material in hand and a diologue with another material.

I am most fascinated by Jackson Pollock’s “Drip Style” paintings. Three years before starting this style, he had been struggling with a picture on the easel. He decided to take the painting off the easel and place it on the floor, and pour paint on the surface to finish it. From that decision, a new set of creative possibilities opened up to Pollock, and he spent the next five years of his career exploring them. With the canvas on the floor, he was not in physical contact with the painting. In a video on the San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art website, he explained that being able to walk around all four sides of the canvas, he felt nearer, more a part of the painting, like the Indian sand painters of the west. Since I started to explore new methods in studying choreographic processes and linking my practice to various materials has allowed me to open up increased energies in action.

Pollock was an innovator of his time. Instead of using conventional artist brushes, he dipped, drizzled, poured, or splashed paint on the canvas below him. Painting with fluid paint, he designed in space that drawing elements would happen in the air before falling to the canvas below, sometimes thick, sometimes thin. A rhythm of poured paint would develop across the surface of the painting. He also used sand, broken glass, string, metal, or other foreign matter.

Pollock emphasized his “method of painting is a natural growth out of need” (Pollock). He wanted to express his feelings rather than illustrate them. “Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement...when I am painting, I have a general notion as to what I am about” (Pollack).

Thinking on the physical activity that went into making this dialect of painting is as if it was trance-like or hypnotic. Art Historian, Harold Rosenberg, coined this “Action Painting” because of the very idea that you would be able to imagine the actions that went into the making of the painting. Pollack’s actions, you may say, as a dancer. You could imagine his feet shuffling around the artwork, the rotations of the shoulder, elbow, and wrists as they slowly drizzled or launched paint onto the canvas below.

Performance artists are influenced by Pollock's work that was captured on film. As a choreographer exploring mixed media materials, I have been interested in investigating modalities that one can engage with to set bodies in motion by manipulating objects. How is one moved creatively? How can incorporating the dripping or brushstrokes of paint propel someone mentally, emotionally, and physically? How does the body act as a thinking tool? How is the act of painting translated into a choreographic Score?

m AN u Sc r i PT

A choreographer uses a dance score, similar to a composer using a music score, arranging a sequence of actions, developing a structure of ideas, and organizing details. The written work is formed on the page either before the work, during the process, or after its performance. It is used as a blueprint in dance, something the body can reference to read movement through time and space.

Dance scores differ in script. Words and drawings can hold multiple interpretations unless the notation is codified using specific symbols referred to as notation. Benesh Notation was developed for classical ballet, and another successful movement notation was Labanotation, developed by Rudolf Laban. Notation practices use inscribed characters that describe movement elements as a structure to preserve a work allowing for it to be revisited, re-staged, or re-worked.

Nelson Goodman addresses the question if it is theoretically possible for dance to produce a notation system. He makes clear distinctions between art forms as autographic and allographic. Autographic art is considered genuine if duplication is made or a copy of it would be inferior to the original and be considered a forgery, such as a painting, which the history of its production is essential. Allographic art can be determined by a score, independent of the history of its production. The performance of a play by score where the original version of the artwork is not different from a later version would be considered allographic. He also denotes that all arts are initially autographic, yet to transcend timelimit, a notation must be devised. He believes dance is an art that is difficult to classify as it is visual like a painting, yet temporal like music. He says it can be notated if it is allographic; this does not mean its notation can capture all performance’s movement qualities.

Goodman’s primary concern is to be able to use the choreographed work’s essential properties as the notation, substance, and identity to the movement is the crucial feature of the dance. It is the sequence of arranged actions that allow the opportunity to create a “score,” which one can refer to and identify as a dance work with the possibility to preserve it. He concludes dance is closer to being allographic rather than an autographic art. He considers notating dance to be successful and recognizes Rudolf Laban’s system of tracking spatial arrangements, movement sequences, and dynamic qualities in dance because it is unambiguous of syntactic and semantics. “All in all, Labanotation passes the theoretical tests very well – about as well as does ordinary musical notation, and perhaps as well as is compatible with practicality” (Goodman 217). Labanotation is clean, neat, and easily readable.

On the contrary, Goodman also states, “The function of a score is to specify the essential properties a performance must have to belong to the work” (Goodman via Copeland & Cohen 404). I argue that contextualizing the aesthetic function of visual art allows the score to fabricate movement and inscribe work on the body. Therefore, it is possible for multiple visual forms to function as the catalyst to apply physical intelligence and interpretation through body knowledge.

As a former educator of many academic disciplines, which includes deciphering numbers, words, symbols, chemicals, letters, events, and body language in motion, I believe that which will ignite life-long learning is considerably prominent to that which is revisited on a script for performance. Jonathan Burrows states that many dance-makers often use notes which are private and appear to one as:

Hieroglyphic that the dancer must translate directly. If a visual image is used like this to find movement, it is usually only a clue, a way to push the imagination of the performer out of habitual ways in the manner of some graphic notation for music. Any piece of choreography, any score, can work only if it enables the dancers to rediscover their own internal dance and let them take flight.

(Burrows 2000)

Is it deemed necessary for dance works to have an exact, concise scripted notational structure on paper in our current times? In the age of technology, this can be disputed, as digital documentation is more accessible with the widespread ownership of cell phones. However, it is fundamental that we preserve and respect the arts-rich history of our predecessor’s works and theories. This is essential for the evolution of dance scores and performative, choreographic acts. In the introduction to an issue of The International Journal of Performance Art and Digital Media, Johannes Birringer suggests, “we live in a changing world of dance, and the level of discourse regarding dance and choreographic practice has been raised considerably compared to the mid to late 20th century” (Biringer 8). With the use of video cameras to capture dance today, the preservation of movement scores work in a hybrid practice with dance scores.

There is not a universal dance score used as there is with music. The author of the score can develop a framework to be used as a recipe to prompt, inspire, and design work. The choreographer is an architect of sorts, drawing blueprints to make visible that what is imagined through the artist’s eye. The score can even be created without a dancing body present. As for when they meet, the experience entrusts body knowledge and breathes life into the score.

January 2021

Strands of the Medium

The architecture of our body provides a compelling site of communicative potential in exploring movement artistry. Rudolph Laban describes the body as living architecture, composed of human movement by building spatial relationships between tracing shapes in space. He believed in freedom of movement in both the body and mind and viewed steps as part of whole-body movement. Laban details, “The living architecture composed of the trace-forms of human movements have to endure other disequilibrating influences as they come from within the structure itself and not from without” (Laban 1966). These influences are the relationship existing spatially within the body and how the body responds to the senses in the process while fabricating a dance.

In my work, I propose incorporating Laban Movement Analysis as a framework to observe and map movement as a pattern of change that occurs, allowing for the potentiality of the materialization of choreographic work to manifest in designs that are lead by intention. The layering of the practice will be investigated through elements of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space and how movement correlates to the content of the work. Laban believed, “The flow of movement is strongly influenced by the order in which the parts of the body are set in motion” (Laban 1950). He communicated finding a need to combine thinking and moving to understand the effort and action of moving from the inside out.

The Body indicates the moving parts and the progression of their relationship in and through movement. Effort represents the inner attitude toward the use of energy, and Shape describes the bodily form and its changes in space. Space is determined by spatial patterns, direction, range, and where the movement is happening. As dancers apply each of these aspects as understood in terms of frameworks and self-efficacy during the research, one can begin to embrace how each interacts and illuminates the other. Ana Sanchez-Colberg suggests “that developing the emergent artist must begin by nurturing the idea of each individual’s “body image” (as defined by Merleau-Ponty) as a way of grounding their experience of themselves as subjects at an experiential level before the manipulation of movement vocabulary from an anatomical/formal perspective” (Sanchez-Colberg 1998). I agree there must be an understanding of self and one’s own body involving perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs when approaching movement tasks concerning choreographic concepts.

The transition between technique and developing choreography can be challenging for many dancers. Valerie Preston-Dunlop has developed the Choreutic Unit and Manner of Materialisation (ChU/Mm) based on Laban’s original choreutic concepts. Laban’s “choreutics aspect” is one that embraces how a dancer relates to space, both in the body and the body in space. Preston-Dunlop’s developed a method through ChU/Mm for dancers to materialize movement by designing dance material through spatial progression, body design, spatial projection, and spatial tension. Spending time on these Manners of Materialization is fundamental for conscious awareness to give rise to articulating choreographic actions. “To understand is to experience the accord between what we aim at and what is given, between the intention and the realization - and the body is our anchorage in a world” (Merleau-Ponty 146). To move with intent through time and space, one becomes present within the experience as the body navigates its way through a carving out of space.

In the quest to develop an interdisciplinary methodology that utilizes visual artwork as a Movement Score, I find it essential to include both Laban Movement Analysis and Choretuic Unit of Manner of Materialization when exploring and designing choreography. To pursue greater specificity and complexity in dancers’ movement abilities, they must be open to explore the body and space beyond multiple influences.

Space - my space - is not the context of which I constitute the ‘textuality’: instead, it is first of all my body, and then it is my body’s counterpart or ‘other’, its mirror-image or shadow: it is the shifting intersection between that which touches, penetrates, threatens or benefits my body on the one hand, and all other bodies on the other...Yet through and beyond these various effects of meaning, space is actually experienced, in its depths, as duplication, echoes and reverberations, redundancies and doublings-up which engender - and are engendered by - the strangest of contrasts. (Lefebvre 184)

The utterance of forms that bring forth a transformation of the body in space is imperative in producing choreographic material. It is here where architecture comes to life in the world, as the body becomes a sculptural site linking moving and thinking, connecting body and mind, to space and place.

Canvas

As I continue to read on space and reflect upon thoughts, theories, and queries regarding the concept of movement, making and doing, I begin to consider the position of the in-between and bringing matter into being. Thinking on that which facilitates the process of reconfiguring space, I begin to view space as a canvas. Yet this space is not an empty void; it is a place full of unforeseen possibilities.

Through body effort and senses, space is enhanced and constructed of experiences as it transforms architecture. “This space does not, indeed could not, exist prior to that activity, for material space always presents itself as an array that choreographers of whatever persuasion grasp and transform into a newly former experiential or intensive, space” (Ravn & Leena 27). Once space is reconfigured, mapped out, transformed, and organized mentally and physically, space production feels familiar and has a sense of place.

This place becomes a sense of being in the world, where knowledge emerges from practice. A new representation of space empowers spatial ability to become spatial knowledge as movements emerge from a body. “The body with the energies at its disposal, the living body, creates or produces its own space; conversely, the laws of space, which is to say the laws of discrimination in space, also govern the living body and the deployment of its energies” (Lefebvre 170). The production of space comes to life as a dancer produces vibrations through their instrument, interweaving dynamic material forms. A layering of visual, textural experiences extends through the articulation of interplay as the trajectories of tension permeates between self and others.

The constant flow of aesthetics designs this place, shifting from visible to conscious perception. Intentionally driven, this canvas holds impermanence through the moment of inception. The dance, fleeting artwork, captures its identity in-between pockets of matter and breath, connecting the process of movement, merging humans and nonhuman to one another, building worlds. “If we consider dance in this new context, then dance is neither expressive of an already existing life, nor a pure act that is self-sufficient and self-constituting. Rather dance is a confrontation with life as a plane of open and divergent becomings” (Colebrook 5). Knowing and unknowing where expression begins and where it ends allows this canvas to unfold upon the evolution of its practice and embrace the catalyst for future happenings.

Chance

The topic for this month's Transart Institute intensive is “Chance and Randomness.” In preparation for the workshop, the required readings filled my mind with endless possibilities that I could include in my work and those that already exist in my practice. As I create action paintings, it is chance that decides how the materials settle on the canvas. The final product is unpredictable until the paint is dry. In connecting visual art to a choreographic process, the painting contains agency versus codified technique. As a director, I also step back and leave it up to chance as I allow participants freedom in the interpretation of mapping their painting and apply physical thinking to their movement choices. I have been so interested in waiting to see what will happen in and through the process. This topic raises the question, how much of my personal aesthetic preference exists?

As I read John Cage’s “Composition as Process,” I continuously replace his words “sound” with “movement” and immediately begin to develop ideas I would like to apply to movement exploration methods within my study. “For nothing about the structure was determined by the materials which were to occur in it; it was conceived, in fact, so that it could be as well expressed by the absence of these materials as by their presence” (Cage 1953). As I dissect this quote and connect it to my practice, I see the “material” as being both the painting and choreography, but first and foremost the painting. The idea of merging movement exploration with an image can be structured in various chance methods. For example, I can paint the end of popsicle sticks with different colors and pull them out of a cup, allowing chance to dictate the color the participant pick that will be the impetus for them to trace in process of reading a movement Score. I can also have various body parts written on the end of sticks that can be selected after the color stick, indicating which part of the body leads the movement. Additional sticks can have several dynamics written on them to leave it up to chance as to how the action will evolve. A roll of the dice can prescribe the timing of the choreography. The possibilities of tasking the tasks through chance structures are endless. When I finally decide to call the choreography performative ready, let us look back to Cage’s quote. Did the paintings’ initial materials determine anything of the structure? It is so that the absence of the image can express the dance, yet without it, it would have never existed.

In Margaret Iversen’s book, Chance, she expresses the gap between intention and outcome is crucial to the meaning of chance in art. She asks the question, “Why should artists deliberately set up such a gap in their practice? And why should the viewer find it so engaging?” (Iversen 2010). As I see it and stated above, it is the waiting to see what will happen—the unpredictability of an experiment’s outcome. Although instructions can be controlled within the practice structure, unplanned, chance occurrences carry creative agency in generating the work. As I continue to read Iversen’s text, I began to reflect on the idea of having random variation of chance methods in an actual performance event. Where the material (physical movement) continues to evolve through the practice, bringing the art-making into the street or a public venue for site-specific performance and creating methods based on the chance of encounters within social reality. The act cannot be practiced ahead of time, only performed within the moment. The element of uncertainty, with no predetermined conditions, just a process with unpredictable happenings.

It appears there is always intention and structure held within the method of practice. It is unceasing, one contained within and through the other in the developing framework of any project I begin. It is the in-between, the gaps, the messiness, risks, and the permission to allow the work to evolve and ultimately “turn out” as it is meant to, up to chance that engrosses me in my work. I have come to realize my personal aesthetic preference exists in the entirety of my art-making process, including its documentation. It is the doing, the making, the practice itself, the process in which I relish. As the impermanence of dance is fleeting in time and space and held within memory, capturing chance moments on film hidden in the methods creates a place for them to live. It is here that I find myself most in my element, arresting the permanence of time.

Invisible Words

The transfer of knowledge from mind to body and body to mind is invisible yet relatively evident when understanding and comprehension can be expressed linguistically. What if knowledge were expressed through the body’s physicality, yet it could not be explained in words? “I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell” (Polyani 1966). We embody a considerable part of our thinking through our thought process as our body is the central instrument of our experiences. Daily operations in our life are filtered through soundless static and echo actions of involuntary reflexes. It is not something that can always be explained or put into words, but it is understood. This is better known as tacit knowledge, which is a result of tacit learning.

As I read over notes from my Ph.D. supervisor meetings, I see the words mentioned in more than one (monthly) meeting, “tacit knowledge.” The message is clear. I need to explore this topic as it applies to the trajectory of my research. During in-studio practice, movement occurs with dancers reading their painting as a Score without consciously intending action always to happen. “Einstein once said, ‘My pencil is clever than I am.’ What he meant, of course, was, that he could, by using his pencil, get results that he had not foreseen” (Popper 1996). The body reacts to a combined effect created by conditions related to the studies framework, unaware of where it is going, how it will respond, or what it will look like—a state between conscious and unconscious processing. Through violating rules held within the history of the dancing bodies movement vocabulary, one discovers possibilities intertwined while analyzing imagery so that the body becomes a problem-solving, knowledge-generating system in motion.

It is not always easy to put into words the act of one having the capacity to visually perceive, think with the body, and 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, particularly one with no words and a body reading movement patterns on a canvas. Unforeseeable shifts in landscapes are bound to practice and experience. Simultaneously, shared conceptual learned information through acts of doing. A collaborative dance, one with the other reflecting effort and space.

The learning cannot just take place through instructions or rules of the practice. Learning takes place in the process of doing and making and the ability to execute that which emerges from the methods and experiences. The body must embed knowledge from its efforts as a result of collective actions. The ability to absorb, reflect and scatter visual texture becomes tied to a specific context concerning the work. Once we dive into the depths of choreography and work through the process, we incorporate it into our bodies and come to dwell in it. Transformation occurs as tacit knowing becomes applied. Understanding that which we were once attending to is no longer something we think about but resides within the body as an extension of self.

This self becomes forever changed, forever altered in and through the lens in which it views and practices the approach to the artistic process and how it creates work. “It brings home to us that it is not by looking at things, but by dwelling in them, that we understand their joint meaning” (Popper 1996). The movement now becomes a reflection of the conditions and how it affects the context of the work and that which contributes to the process which informs the work. In concentrating on developing new methods to explore choreography and the process of discovering new movement potential in dancers, I have begun to view choreography through a new lens. I can never go back to the way I once created dances. It is not possible. My relationship with choreography has been altered and the original meaning consumed with research and hidden realities. Discovered through an abyss of questions full of compositional taskings and unexpected manifestations emerged, revealed not just for my personal study, but for future eyes and bodies to explore and discover unto themselves.

(Re)Mapping the Process

Diagrammatics, a practice in visual image mapping concerning an art practice, lends itself recontextualizing existing frameworks and drawing attention to reflect on the threads interwoven into the work. Through Dean Kenning’s Social Body Mind Maps (SBMM), one opens up thoughts to new perspectives. His teaching philosophy recognizes, “thinking and learning as a way is always a question of exploration; of seeking to understand something about our life as a productive act which alters both the sense of what we are capable of and a sense of how we are part of the world; with possibilities for articulating the problems that need addressing, rather than simply responding to pre-set questions” (Kenning 2000). Typically in an art classroom, students are given a pre-determined project and a critical assessment to learning. This practice allows students to create or invent something new, discovering what can happen or become of the making vs. what is expected. The future can work back from the present, reflecting on the past in developing what can become.

On paper, one starts their map with an image of their artwork at the center. The artwork is in question. The intention is to eliminate the subject of “me” held within the artwork and look at other strands connected to the work. Where does it come from? What senses lead to the ideas which create it, what institutions present the concepts or theories to produce the work, what materials are the work made from? These relationships to the work link to its origins and bring a discernment of opacity to the piece. “An art practice in this sense builds its own worlds and suggests the terms by which they could be approached” (O’Sullivan 2016). Influencing factors become interconnected, and ways to speak of agency become reflective of internal and external experiences.

For pedagogical purposes, diagrammatics enables students to think through their happenings and express their understanding through a visual (re)mapping of the process of their practice. This material thinking allows for an articulation of both logical and creative intelligence. The students come to know the world through the emergence of ideas, materials, methods, and practice. Insight informs the work and reveals potentials that could not otherwise be articulated in words.

As a dance artist, my question becomes, how can I do this in physical space? How can traces represent the past to connect to the present, draw lines, and form connections? Trisha Brown combines both visual and movement art in her work. Her piece, Locus, utilized a diagram, “tangible evidence of the significance of drawing’s role in her works’ development and the underlying visual structures in her choreography” (Rosenberg 2017). Her score facilitates her capacity to choreograph from a gestural vocabulary that she originated from a previous piece into movement language linked to previous experience and knowledge. The artwork is the choreography, and Brown worked backward to develop the performative nature of the final piece.

I still question as a mover, how I can explore this concept in space? How can I take diagrammatics off the page and bring the visual representation to life. As I consider this thought, I am reminded of an assignment I was asked to do in my MFA program. We were asked to put artifacts or objects in a box that connected to our practice. The thing chosen connected to what has shaped me as an artist. They took on multiple shapes with meaning representing memories which created a framework for my choreography and, throughout the decades, influenced my practice. I began to notice them as strands, like threads of a web, and started to develop ideas for future research and development. This thought again leads me backward to propel me forwards to design a physical mapping. In the past, I explored threads (yarn, string) as the impetus to examine physical thinking. I propose constructing a space with string to produce a material graph. Individuals would tape the string around a room and each point will represent an artifact and opposing points in an adjacent wall can represent a concept or memory to the object. This act would produce a large web within one’s space. Recognizing the labyrinth, one can think about how they may fit within it. It becomes an aesthetic reflection of the practice of art, and through one’s journey, you learn how to navigate through making distinct connections to (re)mapping the process.

Body as Subject and Vehicle

Marina Abramovic is a fearless performance artist who explores the relationship between performer and audience. It is easy to become lost in our thoughts; in our fast-paced lives focused on what we have to accomplish, one may question if what they are doing will support their art. As a result, we forget to live in the moment and enjoy the present. Marina discusses in an interview with Will Gompertz that when you are present in one's work, methods begin to emerge for you to adapt to your practice.

Marina’s interview On Art, Performance, Time and Nothingness resonated with me. She explains that it is essential to look at her early works as a glimpse of her work as a young artist. “As a young artist, you don’t know why you are doing them, but you have a very strong urge in doing it” (Abramovic 2014). I recall being asked in my graduate school program what my practice and process were. As an individual who never studied art in college, I found it to be a challenging question. I just had a strong urge to dance, to do it. I had a strong desire to create. I was influenced by my experiences and was driven to move, to tell a story through movement. It was not all good art, but I learned it was ok to take risks. Marina continues in the interview to say, “if you experiment, you can fail, and that failing is part of the process” (Abramovic 2014). I can relate to this with my experience with Artistic Research over the past few years. The course of my research in the summer of 2018 has completely shifted through practice. In the middle of the making, insight has shifted the trajectory of the work and lead me in a new direction. I have come to accept that it is part of my process. Allowing myself to be present in my daily life, I am inspired by ideas that alter my research. After watching the interview of Marina, I was motivated to create the following framework for tasks in my study. You never know where the impact of these influences rests.

As I have grown in my artistic process, I have learned to slow down. I have learned to become more present in the moment of creation. I have learned to become aware of what the work is telling me and others involved in creating work. As an educator, I am constantly in the studio with students. I may start with the idea for a piece of choreography, and as the doer, I am involved in the process physically, mentally, and emotionally. Working with others, I step out of the first-person role and into the third-person role of observer. The development of my methods begins to rely not only on myself but others and their experiences. The discoveries we are making collectively and the ones I am making independently through research and inquiry lead to interdisciplinary connections. “I wanted to weave the intuitive voice of the dancer into a descriptive aesthetics, slipping from first-person voice to analytical third-person theory” (Fraleigh 2000). Exploring choreography as a body-centered approach and sharing this experience with others allows sultiple meanings to emerge, adding depth and texture to the practice.

As Marina proceeded with her conversation with Gompertz and answered audience questions concerning her work entitled 512 presented at the Serpentine Gallery, she expresses how involving the public is in her work. They become the doers and part of the process. Marina explains that her audience members who participated in 512 began to support one another, and she could feel the energy of the people, which shifted the energy within themselves. In explaining this piece, she describes, ‘to change the mold is to change consciousness.’ Knowledge is gained from the very act of being present in the moment of impermanence.

Marina’s pubic works allow for a sense of both concentration and release for both herself and the audience members. “The phenomenological approach attempts to demonstrate the inter-subjectivity of place and perception” (Richards 2009). It emphasizes the collective experience and how participants and place are mutually involved in what is felt, the person feeling the place and the people within the place. Marina as artist, body, subject and vehicle influencing how space is construed and everyone within it transends and influence the perspective held within the experience. Just as dance is so much more than just moving with other people in the room, it requires critical thinking humans in exchange, creating dynamics of relationships in the development of shared ideas, emotions, body knowledge, and energy.

Learning to Listen

How do dancers truly listen to their bodies when creating a piece of choreography? What is it that they are listening to that guides their movement? As I watched Evelyn Glennie share her passion of teaching the world to listen to music on the Technology, Entertainment, and Design Talk program, I begin to formulate these questions related to choreography. Evelyn explains that with a piece of music, which is full of black dots on the page, she can read it and do as she is told. Similarly, dancers perform an action and are instructed techniques by their teachers. But one thing we first need Evelyn explains is to listen to ourselves.

Evelyn Glennie learned music in a very unique way because she is deaf. She learned it through feeling the vibration of percussion instruments. We all learn differently, whether it be music, dance, reading, writing, science, or arithmetic. Over my twenty-two years of teaching in public education, including yearly professional development, I have learned how we interpret information, internalize it and express it as a diverse means of communication.

As Evelyn was describing gripping the drumsticks too tightly causing a shock through her arm and feeling more detached from her instrument, this reminded me of how I feel when I am trying to force choreography or I am bound to an idea that is not progressing. I become stuck or blocked. She continues to explain that with letting go and letting her hand be more of a support system she has more dynamics with less effort. Of course, this is when I create my best work, when I let go. I also see a connection to the concept of Dalcroze method, when as a dancer gets beyond the brain and enters a state of ‘Flow’.

As a musician needs time with their instrument, so do dancers. My body is my instrument, and I need to listen to it, I need to fine-tune it, I need to connect to sounds, more than just through my ears, but how my entire body feels. (Or in the case of my research, need to connect to the painting and listen with my senses.) I need to let go and accept that my body creates its own unique, individual image and allow it to color the picture in which it intends within the moment in which it calls for. Movement is my daily medicine as music is for Evelyn Glennie. She said we need to really listen to each other and use our bodies as a resonating chamber. Was she talking about music or dance? She continues to say in her presentation that we need to stop the judgment, we have to give time, real-time.

I could not believe that such an amazing artist was initially not accepted to the Royal Academy of Music because of her inability to hear. So often when you have a disability people are so focused on what you are unable to do versus all the amazing abilities you do have. My disability is not one that you could see or would even know about unless I said something. I share my story with others for many reasons. In hopes that it will inspire, it will allow others to dare to dream, take risks, believe that fear of failure can be turned into faith and one day their dreams may become their reality.

Collective Practice

In 1962, James Baldwin’s article from Creative America discussed the artist’s ‘state of being alone.’ This belief is perhaps a matter of interpretation in the eyes of the reader (and the artist). The notion of practice associated with the making of art prompts the question of a relationship that is formed between artist and material. I consider this for all artistic practices, as the materiality of an instrument, canvas, painting, media, clay, etc. is just as tangible as the body itself.

Are we ever really alone when we are working with materials, non-human, objects or things? The agential realist would affirm not, and that matter, or for this discussion the artwork would be produced from an intra-action or inseparable of entanglements of materials. “Changing patterns of difference are neither pure cause nor pure effect; indeed, they are that which effects or rather enacts, a casual structure, differentiating cause and effect. Difference patterns do not merely change in time and space; spacetime is an enactment of differentness, a way of making/marking here and now” (Barad 137). I perceive the matter becomes an active, participant, contributing to a collaborative relationship with the artist.

Baldwin states, “The artist is distinguished from all other responsible actors in society--the politicians, legislators, educators and scientists--by the fact that he is his own test tube, his own laboratory.” (Kennedy & Mason 1962). This statement sounds as if the artist lives in their own little bubble creating their work, that they do not play a role in the community as mentioned above. How is it that they are not influenced by what is happening in society, education, or the sciences? In times of crisis, is it not the arts that visibly cross boundaries, questioning political uncertainty within society, and reconfigures expression globally?

Through the process of production, artists develop various methods and techniques in creating their work. Materials used may be determined by a question or social context of the work as well as economic limits. Reflection of a final product by the creator and collaborators may be read or understood very differently than by observer or spectator. Representation of art is a matter of perception.

Becoming part of the material world and realizing that observing relationships is a way of developing meaningful consequences between subject and matter enables us to reach out through our senses. Artists are never alone, they are influenced by history which they carry with them, a society that is reflected through them, and materials that speak to them.

Misbehave Beautifully

Wayne McGregor is a British choreographer and director who was inspired by a dance teacher who let him explore movement as a child and teach his peers. This allowed him to feel like he had something to say and share and encouraged him to become a choreographer. He is obsessed with the ‘technology’ of the body, he views the body as being the most ‘technologically literate’ thing that we have. He explores ways in which the body can communicate ideas to “audiences that would move them, touch them, make them think differently about things” (McGregor 2012). McGregor believes choreography is a process of physical thinking and it is just as much in the mind as it is in the body. Working with other dancers, artists, and scientists it is a collaborative process in which he engages with people who come from a variety of backgrounds bringing different knowledge to share.

In a TED Talk presentation in 2012, McGregor speaks of aspects of physical thinking and about the notion of proprioception, “the sense of my own body in the space in the real world” (McGregor 2012). His question becomes how can one use choreographic thinking to think about things more generally. He looks at how individuals take in information through physical thinking, how they use it, and how they think with it. Using stimulus as a sensory ‘evocation’, he investigates how the body of his dancers behave in particular ways. This behavior is what McGregor uses to develop choreographic works. He explains in a research video with fellow scientists, ”by giving them more of an interesting image or dialogue they have with their own imagination the richness of the thing they make is clearly more dynamic, more beautiful, more real” (McGregor 2014).

As McGregor, I am passionate about making dance, watching it, and encouraging others to make it. He believes, as well as myself, that creativity is something that can be taught and shared. Through this process, one finds out about their personal style, habits, and where curiosity exists. As a choreography scholar, I have worked with non-dancers in an exploratory arts-based research project. At the beginning of the investigation, I discovered that many of the participants felt they lacked creativity. Towards the end of the semester, they were able to embrace their individual talents and see how their unique differences added contrast, value, and layers of texture to the totality of the work.

Similar to McGregor and his collaboration with scientists, I worked with a teacher and individuals from a science class. Working with the students, I really had to analyze modes of choreographic thinking in order to provoke the individuals to use their bodies as a thinking tool. I knew I needed their body to do something. Utilizing the materiality of the body and objects, a dialogue with a stimulus was necessary to create the impetus to influence action. McGregor calls this creating “a point of departure to misbehave beautifully” (McGregor 2012). His approach to creating choreography and the methods he intertwines within his process are both inspirational and reassuring that the choices I have been making in my creative process are interconnected to the mind, body, and its environment in the act of creating artistic expression through the moving body. McGregor is a technician I plan to investigate further, as he leads me to greater insight as I move forward into the next phase of crafting my methodology and workshops.

Text{iles]ures

Anni Albers was a textile designer, writer, weaver, and printmaker. She was one of the leading pioneers in 20th-century modernism, putting weaving and textile making on the map as a form of art. In 1949 she was the first textile artist to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Anni was known for combining traditional and ancient weaving techniques with modern materials. As I learn about this artist who created textures and materials, I become inspired by the many resemblances I can identify within my art-making process.

While reading through the book Anni Albers, written by Nicholas Fox Weber, and on the Tate Modern website, I am enthralled and encouraged that I am on the proper path with my artistic research in seeking new movement possibilities. As I work with materials, I feel the object is leading the dance. “The conscientious designer does not himself design at all, but rather give the object-to-be a chance to design itself” (A. Albers 1958). Although Anni was speaking of a piece of tangible artwork and I say of that which is held within fleeting moments of the impermanence through movement, a connection to the creator’s awareness as the designer is revealed within this idea of the text.

I can adopt a significant amount of the methods written in Anni’s “Seven Life Hacks” to art and life. First, she suggests taking advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. Anni’s first application to art school was denied, as mine was 20 years ago. In the meantime, I took every opportunity to continue to grow as an artist and educator. When Anni did get into school, she did not get into the original program she wanted, but the weaving program. She made it her mission to become the best she possibly could be within this craft. The second bit of insight is to challenge the norms. While everyone was weaving pictures they had seen of flowers and landscapes, thinking deeply about the materials being used and their purpose, Anni wanted to make work that was both functional and practical. With my research, I question how the material can function within the dance-making process.

I am challenging the norms of dance by using materials for the purpose of composing choreography.

I would say that both “Hack” three and four are interwoven as they suggest traveling as much as you can and learning from the past. Anni was captivated by ancient methods of weaving. Her trips had an impact on her work as a means of visual expression and communication. It is noted that there were slowness and experimentation which characterized her work. This can be from her historical influences as opposed to modern modes of production. As a choreographer, learning from dance history and body politics allows me to examine further the connectivity of art and the origin of traditions. Through these lessons I am drawn to travel and explore deeper into the genealogy of strands connecting the threads of my entanglement to the world around me. I am coming to acknowledge there is a deeper understanding and interpretation of layers which exist within that I can observe rather than that which resides on the surface.

In the sixth facet, Anni suggests that one must get their hands dirty. She felt as if “humans had lost their sensitivity to touch.” Therefore, she wanted to create work that appealed to the sense of touch. Speaking of the senses, this would lead us to Anni’s final “Life Hack” embracing emotion. It is through the senses that one embraces emotions. I find this thought interesting because, within my research of investigating objects, when the material is presented, it is through the manipulation of movement, one finds an emotional connection. Individuals connect to their history. This connection prompts a memory which then evokes an emotion.

I would never have imagined how similar the art of weaving could be to that of choreography. They are both, of course, creating lines and shapes within space. They both desire purpose and intent with a way of communication across generations over time. Textiles, however, are created with materials that will hold shape and color, verses dance composed of the moving body that only lasts as long as it is in motion. With technology today, we can capture these moments, yet viewing it on a screen through the optic lens we lose significant strands of texture dance creates in observing it in the flesh. I read a quote from Anni Albers about her art which states, “It has to have some kind of drawing power, something that gets you back to look at it again and again” (A. Albers n.d.). If this is felt after experiencing a dance performance, a choreographer and their dancers have fulfilled their intention and aspiration.

Choreographic Objects

William Forsythe was grounded in the origin of traditional ballet and explained that he ‘derived unexpected kinds of movement from the vocabulary of the classical ballet through the development of his methods.’ (Forsythe, n.d.) Forsythe takes a body that has been trained in the origins of technical dance and attempts to manipulate their physical thinking. The core of his piece, Choreographic Objects, is an understanding of how bodies are organized and propelled through space by their surrounding matter. His method consists of setting individuals into motion through installations that explore objects within the environment generating a choreographic score. As individuals enter the environment, they must read the signals within the space as it shares in the experience with the objects and creates embodied experiences. “And so it is with the choreographic object: it is a model of potential transition from one state to another in any space imaginable” (Forsythe, n.d.).

Forsythe does not believe choreography is bound to dance. He is a practitioner I have been studying, and I felt it was essential that I seek an opportunity to embody his exhibit truly embrace the Choreographic Objects. In December 2019, I traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Massachusetts, to investigate the conditions of Forsythe’s installation. As I interacted with Forsythe’s objects, I discovered no right or wrong way to welcome the dialogue while I contriving with the particular materials. My body was manipulated in synergy within each room I entered and the specific object or situation presented to me within the enviornment. It was as if I became the object and my body a “thinking tool.” “You develop the skills to solve the challenges of centrifugal force and gravity and balance, plus fulfilling all these aesthetic criteria at the same time — it’s very, very complicated, and I liked that” (Forsyth, n.d.). Observing non-dancers engaging in the installation, I noticed how everyone had a unique experience of physical thinking and created a dance without even being aware of their movements within time and space.

William Forsythe exhibit allowed me to embrace the uncertainty of utilizing objects to be read as a Score and be the impetus to propel the body into motion. In his description of a choreographic object, he explains:

A choreographic object is not a substitute for the body, but rather an alternative site for the understanding of potential instigation and organization of action to reside. Ideally, choreographic ideas in this form would draw an attentive, diverse readership that would eventually understand and, hopefully, champion the innumerable manifestations, old and new, of choreographic thinking. (Forsythe n. d.)

Encouraged by his Choreographic Objects, I am intrigued by his work with objects to create new possibilities for movement within the body and my practice in such a way that through the evolution of my research development I have explored objects as a choreographic device.

Currently, my focus is on the manipulation of mixed materials to propel the body into motion. It is in and through the body as both a subject and an object, as a tool and a material, the creation of the choreographic processes is communicated. In doing so, dancers do not feel restricted by their conventional practices while finding new movement possibilities. Manipulating the body into action as dancers read their painting as a choreographic Score is a sense of giving up control of technical habits as one is guided into movement. Through this process and the work of William Forsythe, I am inspired to develop methods of practice in exploring and developing choreography.

The Message

In 2006, Linda Kapetanea and Jozef Frueck formed RootlessRoot. They are movement practitioners who are interested in human emotions and cultural expression and share a vision of supporting creative ideas. The structure they have created is a place their ideas could flow and change as they discover their artistic capacities. In working together they have learned that intersecting their ideas through unpredictability, leads to the transformation of their journey.

In watching the piece Europim, so many ideas and assumptions ran through my mind in relation to what the dance and props used during the piece represented. Just when I thought I had a good idea of what the movement was about, the scene shifted and again I was trying to evaluate the message. Finally, I just watched it for what it was, an expression of emotions, through movement with objects. The movers were engaged in their actions with intent and I enjoyed watching them embrace these moments on stage. Afterward, I did find directors’ notes in relation to the piece on their website and it was at that moment that I realized some works of dance can benefit from the accommodations of a brief description in the program. The audience may really appreciate this. There are so many times that I have sat in the audience of a dance performance that I personally love, respect, and appreciate and I listen to audience members say, “Now what was that all about”, or “That was really strange”.

I am sure these comments have been made in relation to my choreography at times. Moving forward I can be more conscious when putting together a program. Especially as I have been incorporating more exploratory, research-driven movement into my dances. It is easy to read between the lines of the Nutcracker, but investigating the interconnectedness between materials and how they propel the body into action is a totally different story. I may need a few lines of written explanation for the viewer to make the connection when watching a dance related to choreography for the audience to truly grasp concepts and make connections.

Im/permanence

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were powerful artists of their time who took great risks. Their work was both visually impressive and controversial. Their artworks were massive public works and they viewed their creations like an expedition. They have explained that there is no deeper meaning to their work, but to create art with joy or beauty or new ways to see familiar landscapes. Christo replied to one critic saying, “I am an artist and have to have courage, do you know that I don’t have any artworks that exist? They all go away when they are finished.” (Christo n.d.)

Much like a choreographer who paints a picture with a moving body, after the art has landed from flight, the picture vanishes. The art has been cast out into the universe for the patrons of the performance to see, and whatever is captured in their memory from that moment in time and space is what remains of its existence. “I think it takes much greater courage to create things to be gone than to create things that will remain” (Christo n.d.)

I am a creator of artwork that is fleeting, held within a moment of impermanence. I do not think I ever looked at choreography like this when I began creating. It was the form of art that called to me, even when I had walked in another direction in my life, dance found me again. The arduous work, the search for these moments of clean transition, and the acceptance that they will be gone when the performance has come to an end, none of that matters because the feeling that I capture in the creation of the art-making process far outweighs that of its void. To me, it is not an emptiness but acts as a ‘Well’ that I continue to fill. It will never overflow, although I have felt an overflowing, which just allows the ‘Well’ to grow deeper and makes more space for me to fill it up with more of these moments.

Choreography is also for the people, the people that I collaborate with, teach it to, and the people that share in the participation of the performance. The final product, the dance, on stage, or in the streets, are fleeting moments for the dancer, for some, they may never perform again. This is why I started what I called the ‘Parks Projects’ to capture these memories. I wanted to archive the dance and put it in a place they would always have it, a place they could go back to it, and show their children or grandchildren one day. Each semester we made a dance video in the local parks from choreography they learned in class. This was my gift to my students and just the beginning of my love for screendance.

Art is for the people. Just as Christo and Jeanne-Claude described their artwork was for the individuals to have a unique experience. Whether it is a dancer waltzing in an elegant dress or a building wrapped in canvas, there is a correlation between all forms of art and their creators. The desire to express a vision and share it with others faithfully and fearlessly.

Translation

The possibilities that exist within the word translation carry the weight of subjective interpretation. Potentially, a translation could be communicated objectively through the practice of one transmitting authorship through the translation of the literary text. Kate Briggs states in her book, This Little Art, “We need translations, urgently: it is through translations that we are able to reach the literature written in the languages we don’t or can’t read, from the places where we don’t or can’t live, offering us the chance of understanding as well as the necessary and instructive experience of failing to understand them, of being confused and challenged by them” (Briggs, 2018: 58). For me, it is because of the translations by philosophers such as Edmund Husserl and Michel Foucault that I question the deflection of visual art on the dancing body. It is not that these philosophers spoke or wrote so much about art, but that the power of translation has allowed me to take their words and apply them to the practice of my work.

As I examine the word ‘translation’, I consider the words of the translators, the questions I assimilate as a maker, and my interpretation. For instance, I will reflect on a quote by Foucault. He states, “Several pasts, several forms of connexion, several hierarchies of importance, several networks of determination, several teleologies (the explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes), for one and the same [art] as its present undergoes change” (Foucault, 2002: 5). Concerning Foucault’s statement, one must understand the circumstances and events surrounding the period to gain knowledge of cultural identities which contribute to moral understanding. His words have been twisted (or translated) from French to English and my perception and reflection. Studying history, the world and its events become my laboratory as I aim to examine choreography and how its past has influenced its present. As I work to assemble a mosaic of dance that constructs time, place, and culture of an art form and how it propels the moving body through space, it is the art of translation coupled with wild abandonment of the structured form of technique that I seek to investigate.

Foucault expresses a rejection of the uniform model of the discourse of history in order for its diversity to be analyzed in and through its various lenses. He does, however, stress the importance of discovering continuity in order to analyze the development of reason. Nevertheless, “and we are determined never to abandon this--that we will now pose the question of the origin, the first constitution, the teleological horizon, temporal continuity” (Foucault, 2002: 202). It is important that we are conscious of the roots which we are interpreting. History does not have to be read in a linear perspective but fragmented to fit its context in order to communicate with its content.

In examining language and its discourse, where analysis and space meet, we come into the relationship between space and language. “You surely cannot forget that it is on the basis of that language, with its slow genesis, and the obscure development that has brought it to its present state, that we can speak of other discourses in terms of structures; it is that language which has given us the possibility and the right to do so; it forms the blind spot on the basis of which things around us are arranged as we see them today” (Foucault 2002: 201). With this being stated by Foucault (or his translators), in a contempoary world, the body, and language within the world of choreography is given the freedom of speech to develop its own codified language. Based on fragments of history carried within the cultural folds of its creator, expression is left for interpretation and analysis for current artists who find inspiration as the present continues to undergo changes in designing the archives of tomorrow.

Adaptation

Create, Respond, Capture, Compose…

This has been the underscore in the development of my creative process and the nature of what I have been seeking to seize within my choreographic practice. The process is task-driven, through the making and translation of movement held within a painting - to diffract the organic vocabulary of the body's improvisational capacity. In composing my most recent work, I am starting to question, is this even a dance? I am working with a very diverse group of dancers, and their body mechanics vary both technically and physically. I want each one of them to express the physicality within their body, and they are the only ones who can fully articulate this Score.

Putting together all the pieces of the puzzle in one ‘piece’, and to answer my question, is it a dance? It is. It challenges typical concert dance. Through rethinking variations of organizational patterns and the transitional transformations I would typically design in choreography, I am learning to hold steadfast to the concept of the work and push its limits. In this piece, the body’s movement still functions as a dance. Although bodies in space may seem disorganized and not symmetrically configured, the cutting and shifting of the body carving space allows the assimilation of previous knowledge to form new ideas of how I see and understand dance.

I must rewind to explain the context to understand the concept better. The work, which I have decided to title Adaptation, was developed in conjunction with a method of translation I like to call “image interpretation.” The dancer finds five images within their painting that call to them or stand out. They then need to transfer this visual image to the physical body as a gesture. I then pulled out dice and handed one to each dancer. I had them roll one die five times and jot down the number they rolled. This would be the number of times they would repeat their gesture. Next, I had the dancer hold their painting in their hands and asked them if the dance floor was the canvas, where would they place their body in relation to the first image? Engaging the body as an architectural site to translate the image, they traveled from space to space as they read the painting as notation, mapping out the location of their following movement sequence. In each space, they would repeat the gesture as many times as the second method dictated in the Score by employing Chance from their dice roll.

The dancers were all over the place; it was organized chaos. After the first rehearsal, I left questioning my decision on this method of composition. The dancers began to feel more comfortable in their skin and newfound movement in the next rehearsal. There was a shift, and the form started to feel like a dance, and it was beautiful.

In explaining this work to a friend, she recommended I review Trisha Brown’s piece Set and Reset. Trisha Brown’s choreographic methods are refined from memorized improvisation. This work of Brown was a collaboration with visual and sound artists. There was set choreography in the piece, and the dancers were given five rules for resetting the material as they performed the work, hence the title of the work. Brown’s movement is fluid, and it is clear that her dancers strive to reach the same level of comfortability with her vocabulary within their bodies. This is the exact goal that I aspire for each of the dancers I work within this project. That they find personal voice within the vocabulary of their unique bodies movement as they read and translate their art. That the artwork they create may be the impetus to help them find this voice as they allow the habitual codified technique not to be silenced but to be amplified and guided by the power of Self.

Pedagogy

As this creative research practice has evolved over the past year and a half, I recognize that each project has not only permitted me the opportunity to embrace its methods but cultivate the pedagogical design it employs. Through the methodology design, I have grown as an educator, choreographer, and artist. This research provides a window into structuring tasks that embody an artistic practice, process, and product, allowing for enhanced student learning that removes the physical demands of a traditional dance class that invites all bodies to participate. My intent is to reflect on aspects of this study that contribute to dance pedagogical practices in our world today.

Through engaging the dancers in infusing visual art and choreography, an objective of the process has been for them to transform their mastered habits to gain new knowledge. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Dance Studies, Edward Warburton states in the chapter on Dance Pedagogy that through the goal of transformation, “The hope is that in asking young dancers to participate equally in the process of their own learning and identity development, they will recognize the ways pedagogical content knowledge support artistic practices” (Dodd, 2021, 88). The more students are challenged to explore and experience artistic choice-making, the more they will have the capacity to learn, transmit and generate meaning and movement in the world. In developing this pedagogy, Warburton suggests adopting what Shulman (2005) calls a ‘signature pedagogy.’ This teaching method prepares individuals for practice concerning their profession to maximize their own signature approaches within their field.

The educator or professional must acquire knowledge through learning an abundant amount of theory. “They must come to understand in order to act, and they must act in order to serve” (Shulman, 2005, 53). Through my decades as an educator and a student studying education, I have learned the art and complexity of teaching and learning. Since I started this project, Materialziaiton of a Choreographic Process through an Interdisciplinary Approach, I have ventured into subject matter that is scaffolded in experimentation. The work is artistic and requires the participants to deviate from the norms within their capacity to shape and understand meaning unrestricted in and through expressive systems. In designing my practice from a pedagogical perspective, it is imperative that I am able to organize, develop and implement the artistic ideas of the work.

The theory of Shulman’s signature pedagogies is framed in three types: engagement, uncertainty, and formation. Promoting active ‘engagement’ through guiding dancers/students with pedagogical methods so dancers can improvise with a set of instructions may involve the teacher actively modeling movement possibilities for them. ‘Uncertainty’ sparks curiosity and a desire to learn. This principle could lead to frustration as the method may toggle between clear articulation and vague explanation. “However, teachers must manage anxiety levels so that teaching produces learning rather than paralyzing the participants with terror” (Shulman, 2005, 57). Students will need to take risks in order for spontaneous, new movement possibilities and choreography to emerge. ‘Formation’ examines repetition to imprint the movement on muscle memory or revising composition based on self-reflection. This may be less playful than exploration but also focused on the product or outcome.

As the project progresses, I will continue to research and articulate the connection between the development of workshops and how they can benefit dance pedagogies in the act of composition and creativity. Through this practice-based research, teaching and learning transpire, enabling dancers to analyze the process of unexpected solutions and represent ways they are effective in expanding artistic intent. This allows the participants to gain confidence in expressing themselves and shared agency in the production of knowledge. Through the investigation of choreographic devices, embodied learning is achieved and creates a relationship with our bodies, art, and the world around us.

Improvisational Tasks

Trisha Brown was a choreographer and performer who hit the New York scene in the early 1960s. Her experimental, task-driven improvisational work redefined choreography as visual art. Brown was influenced by musician John Cage’s teachings, writings, lectures, and methods of compositional design. His ideas inspired Brown’s use of chance method and nonsubjective choreographic experimentation, which influenced her dancing outside existing classifications. This exploration allowed her to produce a new movement vocabulary that she used as a basis for dance-making. Brown applied tasks as a structure in creating rules to materialize movement. Within an understanding of what constitutes choreography through the lens applied to visual art, her work integrated interdisciplinary intelligence.

As I learn more about Brown’s use of improvisational tasks, I am influenced to create prompts that will facilitate the manipulation of dancers' codified technique to uncover movement potential within their bodies. Susan Rosenberg expresses in her introspection of Brown’s work that, “Task enables movements’ discovery in the act of improvisation – not by imitating already-given movement techniques or forms” (Rosenberg, 2017: 19). Tasks must be structured to not only uncover new-found movement within improvisation but to recite that found movement within the body. Improvisational dance tends to produce fleeting movements unrepeatable. In contrast, Brown contrived context-driven scores that allowed her material to be captured and replicated.

Brown discovered the dance world through the emergence of ideas, materials, methods, and practice. Material thinking allowed for an articulation of both logical and creative intellect. She combined both visual and movement art in her work. Her piece, Locus, utilized a cube diagram representing space and a coding system of numbers related to alphabet letters. She applied a personal narrative to generate the rules for ordering spacial movement. After Brown explained her work's relationship to visual art, the New York Times considered her a conceptual choreographer. Rosenberg explains that making this score public provided “tangible evidence of the significance of drawing’s role in her works’ development and the underlying visual structures in her choreography” (Rosenberg, 2017: 153). Her score facilitated her capacity to choreograph from a gestural vocabulary that she originated from a previous piece into movement language linked to prior experience and knowledge. The artwork was the choreography, and Brown worked backward to develop the performative nature of the final piece.

I studied this work with former Trisha Brown Dance Company members in the summer of 2021. Reading about Locus and then engrossing my body in the process with those who had performed the work allowed my consciousness to transpire a new level of awareness. I learned the material with my body, not my mind, what I was doing, why I was doing it, and why it mattered. As a participant in the workshop, I studied the work as a choreographic tool for devising a Score and then explored movement within the structured framework. The movement ideas came from the process of negotiating space within the cube. Not that my movement was contained, but rather expanded as I was challenged to find new ways for my body to think visually and kinesthetically. The Score facilitated a departure point and a set of location points determined by specific conditions. And I was moved…as I create a dance.

I do not want it to go unnoticed that I admire and respect all of Brown’s works spanning her fifty-year career. However, I am most attracted to Locus since I had the opportunity to embody the Score and practice. Her methods in manifesting choreography and her desire to uncover authentic movement from the body's facility are most impressive. In the text, Trisha Brown: Dance and Art in Dialogue, 1961- 2001, Deborah Jowitt remarks, “Brown developed a method of building a dance in part as if she were a chef – calling for and assembling known ingredients to produce unforeseen consequences” (Teicher, 2003: 261). She was a theoretical genius who created over a hundred dances transcending disciplinary boundaries.

Brown collaborated with other artists on several projects. Rosenberg describes the aim of her first work with visual artists Robert Rauschenberg as a “coordination of dance and set to allow each its artistic integrity in a shared visual relationship” (Rosenberg, 2017: 231). Brown was aware of the synergy between art forms and how they influenced one another. The work became a perceptual experience, co-existing elements deflecting from dancers and artists. Very seldom did Brown explain the structure of her choreographic process to audiences. She felt it put a strain on them to see something they otherwise would not.

Trisha Brown was a visual artist of both ephemeral and permeant forms. Her meticulous frameworks incorporate drawings and text Scores. They have been hung on the walls of galleries and museums. She has performed solo works, including mixed mediums using her body as an instrument to draw and paint on canvas. These works have been mass-produced into prints and sold for thousands of dollars. Her work has inspired and encouraged me to take risks and embrace the arts and my body as an instrument.

My Ph.D. research is similar to Trisha Brown’s work, as I investigate improvisational movement tasks to develop choreography. I likewise incorporate visual artwork as the impetus to find new ways the body can move and create choreography. As improvisation often becomes an open-ended activity and analysing Brown’s work, I recognize the importance of devising structured tasks for the dancers. My work differs because I am not providing a Score for my participants to embody through their movement. I am also not working with other artists to provide visual art for my project. The participants in the study will be the artists creating visual artwork, which will function as the Score.

Having notable predecessors and those who have documented and archived their work has guided my curiosity, questions, and understanding. As a result of those who came before me, I have the confidence and enthusiasm to explore new methods in designing choreography. Dance is physically fleeting, trapped in the folds of memory. Merging visual art and choreography is a partnership, a marriage, wrapped in a canvas to be hung on a wall and share with others. It is a new way to look at art, dance, and the creation of choreography.