There is a problem with language.

There is a problem with language. In finding the right words and ways of describing the work we are doing. The problem is that there is so much language being used that it has been rendered almost meaningless.

Part of my job is to write about the work, and to write about it while it’s being made – to write about it for media, for email blasts and Facebook events. To find ways of describing, hinting and enticing. To use the limited space to tell the reader something that will make them curious, excited enough to come out to the show.

I don’t have any problem with the persuasive nature of this writing – I want to be able to articulate what excites me and the people I work with. This articulation is crucial for contemporary and conceptual work, since there is much resistance and fear that surrounds work that to me is completely about a connection with and respect for the audience. And I want people to see the work, because I think it’s important. And I know that if people don’t come it’s harder to do the work. The box office is by no means the end-all here, the art is (that’s why I like working here), but it needs to be reckoned with. A dance company is not the cheapest thing to keep going.

All that to say, I don’t mind writing with responsibility to entice.

But it has become very difficult to find words that have any meaning left.

A few months ago I was riding in a truck with Trevor Schwellnus, a dear friend (and scenographer for Double Bill #1) and he was wondering about the point at which we would give up on the English language since every word would have been used as a lie. (He blogs about the conversations here.)

So, this sentence, from the Facebook event: “Double Bill #1 is a daring confrontation with the unknown from two of Toronto’s most exciting and innovative choreographers.”

I think it’s true. Michael has made programming choices that bring the company face to face with “I don’t know” – which is where art making should come from, but is brave and rare in a cultural climate of scarcity (more I think on this climate later.) And I get excited about seeing a new show by both Michael and Ame – and they are both, with all their differences, innovating in their processes and relationship with the form of dance.

But when I read the sentence and especially imagine others reading it, it feels full of words that everybody uses and so have become empty and meaningless.

It was replaced for the email blast with: “Double Bill #1 pushes at convention and brings risk, innovation and serious play to the Premiere Dance Theatre. A performance event not to be missed.”

Which I also like, and says many of the same things and some new things while avoiding a few of the clichés (“two of Toronto’s most…”)

I’m not sure there’s a single solution for this. Having work live up to its publicity might do something to bring meaning back to the language we use to talk about it seems like a first step.

Also longer form writing (e.g. this blog) in which idea’s can be teased out seem like another aspect of helping. I think a lot about what has happened with music blogs, where critics and committed audience have an active relationship of talking about the music they love. See Carl Wilson’s Zoilus for a great example. Recently performance maker and writer Chris Dupius has started writing on line and Kelly Nestruck, now the theatre critic for the Globe has a blog here.

I hope that with in these longer forms, less restrained by the history of the blurb and lies of repetition, we can find ways of talking about the work that are not empty and meaningless – both the work and the audience deserve it. Read Full Post...

About the music for Double Bill #1

Eric Chenaux makes music with many collaborators in many configurations – one of them is the Reveries.

The Reveries only do covers. And they only cover love ballads - American song book standards to Willie Nelson and Sade. They cover these love ballads through waterproof cell phone microphones they hold in their mouths.

Choreographers Michael Trent and Ame Henderson asked Chenaux what he thought he would like to do with the Reveries for Double Bill #1. He proposed Trent and Henderson work with 6 CD's of love ballads the Reveries might cover, that there would be a home stereo on stage and the dancers could pick the songs they wanted to listen to while they danced. Then, as late in the process as possible, the "originals" would be replaced by covers as done by the Reveries.

Trent and Henderson agreed.

The Reveries are:
Eric Chenaux (vocals, guitar, mouth-speaker)
Ryan Driver (vocals, quasi-ruler bass, thumbreeds, mouth-speaker)
Doug Tielli (vocals, guitar, saw, mouth-speaker)

“The current title-holder of Weirdest Band in Town, The Reveries.”
-Carl Wilson, Globe and Mail

“The Reveries' music is really very pretty. In its woozy, Ella-on-Quaaludes way, it reveres and revives the original tunes, but reels them back to the body, amid all its ungainly, embarassing excesses. The beauty may even be heightened by the impediments, levitated out of the songs into pure, messy abstraction.”
-Carl Wilson, Globe and Mail

Link (label)
and link (myspace) Read Full Post...

thoughts while watching - Michael

Watching rehearsals, I am also beginning to write - not necessarily "about" what I'm seeing, but more on what I'm thinking about while I'm watching. I'll try to post some more of these "thoughts while watching" - at the moment we're working on Double Bill #1, with Michael and Ame Henderson.

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From last week:

Variation as an antidote to tyranny – not that we all must be variant all the time – but that there is a capacity to move between – to be the same and to move apart. To place authority in many places. “Collaboration” (or “anti-tyranny) is not a lack of authority – it is an understanding that authority is fluid and consensual – that it is based on agreement that all can share and read.

Obviously bodies are different and so is movement – it is tyranny to remove difference. Tyranny as the enforced lie of sameness. (Stepping together being the public display of tyranny – being punished for being out of line.)

And this is also about the eyes – the tyrannized should no longer need to see (says the tyrant) – in fact it is discouraged. Read Full Post...

"I can give no answer to the question 'what is contemporary dance dramaturgy?'"

More quotes from Austria

“Dramaturgy in contemporary dance is a hybrid construct to which dance theory and practice ascribes the most widely varying responsibilities and areas of competence. The often implicit structural division into a text-based, effect-oriented dramaturgy and a shaping, movement-technique choreography is unsustainable, neither in a historiography of dance nor in the contemporary staging and performative practices of contemporary art. The theatrical “as if” and the performative “how” have been circulating since the Renaissance around the (re)presentation of dance in all historical formations in variations and various constellations. I can give no answer to the question “what is contemporary dance dramaturgy?” Long, combined research and rehearsal processes with choreographers such as João Fiadeiro, Vera Mantero or Milli Bitterli have a different intensity and energy than my selective, focused meetings with creators of dance in projects such as the Factory Season Denkmal. Both are of equal value in my analysis of contemporary dance, as both point to different function areas of dance dramaturgy. In the second phase of the dramaturgy seminar I do not want and cannot give any “guidelines for action”, but rather seek to discuss production-dramaturgical methods and composition techniques during and/or after rehearsal processes with interested choreographers and dancers. It will not be me setting the rules of the rehearsal-acting to which I will be invited by the choreographers. I see myself as a guest (not as a voyeur, critic or third eye) who brings and contributes experiences, associations and advice.”
-Nicole Haitzinger

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"Close Enough" - from Steirischer Herbst

Found this is searching around for models and inspiration for contemporary performance dramaturgy:

"Close enough" describes a dynamic state, a moment in time: Being close enough - that is yearning, movement towards and away from each other. In love, in all relationships: Never close enough and then again too close. In geopolitics: Europe that is growing closer together, Africa that is drawing closer, the economic closeness of the globalised world. And in art: Art touches us when it repels or holds us, but also when it throws us back on ourselves, on a moment, a memory, a repressed occurrence perhaps. A fleeting sense of closeness. Or, on the other hand, abstract realisation, a premonition of clarity, sudden comprehension.
This too much and too little, this never being right, this paradox that is at the same time the driving force of interpersonal, political, artistic and performative force and motivation, is the leitmotif of steirischer herbst, the central thread that runs through the festival without wanting to be ostentatious.
You will find this leitmotif - sometimes more obvious, sometimes more concealed - in the numerous festival productions that, again this year, are almost all productions or co-productions of steirischer herbst. This is not without risk - after all, you never know in advance where the artistic process will take you. But it is important to uphold this tradition: to enable and not just present art. Once again, this gives rise to numerous works that will subsequently be on show around Europe and beyond.

- Veronica Kaup-Hasler - Steirischer Herbst, Graz

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