Notes from the 3C's

Some dance and other things on the internet

2010-02-13T10:16:00.001-05:00

I made this for EDAP last summer and thought I should post it here. It is in no way exhaustive, the world and the internet are very large places. The internet, however, is more easily searchable.

Some general goodness:

John Berger -Ways of Seeing

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=7C3ECA9027898EB2&search_query=ways+of+seeing+john+berger

Ira Glass - from This American Life

On Taste: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE&feature=related (talking about radio and TV, but I think it applies)

Amazing conversations: http://www.siobhandavies.com/relay/parallel-voices-2007/events.html

Great Sites

Sarma - a great site of dance criticism from Europe

[It can be a bit tricky to find things, oddly. I’ve found stumbling around to be the way to go - just following curiosity (as in many things.) Here’s some that I’ve bookmarked:]
– Lepeki - The American Tradition
– Jeroen Peeters - Living together on Stage
– Lepeki: The body in difference
– Ramsay Burt - Undoing postmodern dance history
– Springdance conversations
– Other Matters
– Unfolding the Critical
– All of the Critics
[This lists the critics - if you click on the one you want, and then on “texts” you’ll get everything that’s on the site for that author. For example:]
All of Lepeki
All of Myriam van Imschoot
[The letters on dramaturgy are particularly good.]
– Sarma Links

Artists:

Martha Graham (New York, 1894 – 1991)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFNsKeMbW20&feature=related

Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) (New York)

Channels/Inserts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35kPfQbn7IU&feature=related

Yvonne Rainer (New York, Current- but most active as choreographer in 60's / 70's)

Trio A: http://www.youtube.com/watchv=Ikaj6QFLZnU&feature=PlayList&p=BCDD36DA9248CB3C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=4

Podcast conversation: http://www.siobhandavies.com/relay/parallel-voices-2008/season-of-events/the-conceptual-in-choreography.html

Pina Baush (Germany, 1940 – 2009)

Le Sacre Du Printemps (Wuppertal Dance Theater)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXVuVQuMvgA

Meg Stuart (Brussels, Current)

Blessed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKuUJ5tWCmE

Alibi: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1rb9k_alibi-meg-stuart-damaged-goods_creation

Interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIFihaGZ_Co

website: http://www.damagedgoods.be/

Jerome Bel, (France, current)

huge amount of video of work and him talking about work: http://www.catalogueraisonne-jeromebel.com/ (kind like directors commentary)
writing: http://82.238.77.78/jeromebel/eng/jeromebel.asp?m=4

some hightlights:

Veronique Doisneau pt 1:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIuWY5PInFs

pt 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjPcRRH_4CM&feature=related

About "Last Performance"

1:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGpsTArU82Y&feature=channel

2:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iFzmKtJYTk&feature=channel

3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPZO6whbCuI&feature=channel

4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzEVZYhtpoM&feature=channel

Sasha Waltz andd Guests (Berlin, Current)

Nobody: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YppQxZyH5_k

Insideout (installation) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4641871563174995916

Dave St Pierre (Quebec, current)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x280y3_dave-st-pierre-la-pornographie-des_music

Ame Henderson/Public Recordings (Toronto, Current - Double Bill #1 collaborator)

website: http://www.publicrecordings.org

/Dance/Songs/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwBrdOYFy0k

kg Guttman (Montreal, current, Double Bill #2 collaborator)

http://www.gogogutt.org/main.html

Jonathan Burrows (UK.Brussels, current)

http://www.londondance.com/content.asp?CategoryID=178

Forced Entertainment:

website:http://www.forcedentertainment.com/

video: http://video.google.ca/videosearch?hl=en&rlz=1C1CHMI_enCA326CA326&q=forced+entertainment&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=Is1pSoCWEoewMNLX6M8M&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4#

Other places to find interesting work:

Festival TransAmerique - Montreal Festival: http://www.fta.qc.ca/en/home

Impulstanz - Vienna Festival: http://www.impulstanz.com/

TanzimAugust - Berlin Festival: http://www.tanzimaugust.de/

KunstenFest: http://kunstenfestivaldesarts.be/0910/

Jacob's Pillow (upstate new york): http://www.jacobspillow.org/

Canada Dance Festival: http://www.canadadance.ca/english/index.cfm

for many more Canadian go here:

Candance Network: http://www.candance.ca/

dance IMMERSION

FIREHALL ARTS CENTRE

GUELPH CONTEMPORARY DANCE FESTIVAL

HARBOURFRONT CENTRE

PETERBOROUGH NEW DANCE

STUDIO 303

YUKON ARTS CENTRE

B-chronicles
[I haven’t much all of this (recent find), but it looks exciting.]

Dance-tech
[Just found thing recently, but looks like an attempt at some of the things we were talking about]

A lot of very good things

2010-02-11T15:04:00.001-05:00

Ok - we've got a lot going on in the next month that I want to make sure you know about. So there's a lot going on in this post - but here is a short summery.

1. Festival
2. Lunch conversations
3. Classes and workshops
4. Study group

Click through and follow links for more information.

See you soon I hope (oh and Rhubarb is on and company member Kate Hilliard has a show coming up)

1- Dancemakers Presents TWOBYTHREE: a festival of duets - an amazing line-up of work. Every show a must see. Passes available and volunteers needed.

February 23-25 Mélanie Demers (Canada) and Laïla Diallo (UK)
Sauver sa Peau (Sense of Self)

February 27-March 1 Ame Henderson (Canada) and Matija Ferlin (Croatia)
The Most Together We've Ever Been

March 4-6 Jonathan Burrows (UK) and Matteo Fargion (Italy)
Both Sitting Duet on March 4
The Quiet Dance, Speaking Dance on March 5
Cheap Lecture and A Not Very Subtle Representation of Resilience through Dance on March 6

2 - Talking Dancing - a lunch-time series of conversations at the Centre for Social Innovation (215 Spadina Ave) and Theatre Passe Muraille (16 Ryerson Ave) Each conversation brings together artists from the festival with a local artist from a different field to talk about their influences and curiosities.

Wednesday February 17 :: 1-2pm @Centre for Social Innovation :: Ame Henderson (Toronto) with writer and theatre performer Evan Webber

Wednesday February 24 :: 1-2pm @Theatre Passe Muraille :: Mélanie Demers (Montreal) and Laïla Diallo (UK) with theatre and opera director, Guillaume Bernardi

Wednesday March 3 :: 1-2pm @Centre for Social Innovation ::
Jonathon Burrows (UK) and Matteo Fargion (Italy) with composer and performer Juliet Palmer

3 - Masterclasses and a workshops: As part of the festival we're offering some masterclasses and a workshop taught by festival artists. These are great opportunities to meet the artists and their work directly.

February 25th - Master class: Strategies in Movement invention with Mélanie Demers and Laïla Diallo

March 5-7 - Writing Dancing: A workshop with Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion

March 15-19 - Master class with Matija Ferlin

For more information and to register - call 416-367-1800 or email info@dancemakers.org

Master class:
Strategies in Movement invention
with Mélanie Demers and Laïla Diallo
Thursday, February 25 | 10-12 | $12
Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation
Register now by clicking here

Led by both Mélanie Demers (bio) and Laïla Diallo (bio), this workshop will be an exploration of strategies, systems and creative process to generate material. Movement becomes the pretext to focus on the importance of the individual responsibility of each dancer to discover the power of their own dance. Through a problem solving process, the artist is engaged in the rich discovery of having to find highly creative solutions to simple problems.

Writing Dancing
A workshop with Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion
March 5-7 | 11-5 | Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation
$180 | Register now by clicking here (this is an amazing chance to work with two great makers)

Choreographer Jonathan Burrows (bio) and composer Matteo Fargion (bio) lead a workshop focussing on discussion leading to practical work in the studio. Emphasis will be towards investigating choreographic and compositional process, performance and philosophies, questioning how a dance can be made and what it can communicate to someone watching. Practical work will concentrate on short task-based exercises looking at how to find material and work with time, to hold the attention of an audience and make them care what happens next. Days will be punctuated also with viewpoints on other mediums and ways of working, asking all the time what dance can do and what it can't do.
This workshop is for dance and other performance artists with experience of performing and making, who are interested in re-examining and extending their own process and practice.

Master class with Matija Ferlin
March 15-19 | 10 - 11:45 | $12/class |
Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation
| Register now by clicking here (Matija's classes fill up quickly)

Matija Ferlin’s (bio)training encompasses Release Technique and Muscle & Bone training. His classes begin with exercises sourced from Pilates work with the aim to strengthen the abdominals in order to release the rest. The class continues with floor work that includes exercises and combinations that focus on the isolation of different body parts and joints. Trying to organize the body through its own musicality and importing exercises from Muscle and Bone training, the work involves negotiating with stamina in order to introduce at the end of the class, a dynamic dance sequence that revisits the tools from the beginning of the class.

4 - For the March 2 Thinking Out Loud study group -

We'll return to WE: Collectivities, Mutualities, and Participations by Irit Rogoff for the first half.

After the break, we'll take a pause in our readings to spend some time with Youtube and questions of "amateur" production and aesthetics.
We'll reference An anthropological introduction to YouTube and Margaux Williamson's video Dance Dance Revolutions Co. / Tomboyfriend's End of Poverty, made mostly from clips of teenagers dancing in their basements. Feel free to add links of "amauteur" performance in the comments section of the blog.

Study group meets at 6:30 at Dancemakers. In March we'll be in the office.

(it's true that conversations are better if you've read the readings or watched the videos, just gives us something solid to talk about...)

nice thing to think about

2009-10-28T19:42:00.000-04:00

From Vancouver choreographer Lee Su-Fe of battery opera:

I suppose that the function of minimalism (say, in dance) is to call up my imagination and my attention. And the function of maximalism - I borrow this term from Cornelius - is to blast me into nothingness. (full post)

Other good (or at least good response to bad thing) things from battery opera: A pricing scheme to reflect the BC Arts cuts.

researchLAB

2009-10-15T14:38:00.000-04:00

What happens when John Travolta & Hema Malini's love child teaches herself to choreograph in a basement in Scarborough?
Dancemakers researchLAB with
Nova Bhattacharya
public showing
October 21, 2009
7pm | $10

DANCEMAKERS CENTRE FOR CREATION
55 Mill Street, Building 58
The Cannery, Studio 313
BOX OFFICE: 416-367-1800
dancemakers.org
Dancemakers and Nova Bhattacharya come together in the name of research.

The Dancemakers researchLAB is a space for a choreographer to work with the Dancemakers company for three weeks. researchLAB is a chance to explore, experiment and engage with contemporary dance. Without the pressure of full production, the LAB is a rare and important opportunity to play and grow; for the choreographer, the company and the form.

At the end of the three weeks Dancemakers holds an open showing for the public. This is a rare chance to get an intimate look at the process of making dance and making dance better.

Nova Bhattacharya is a well known Bharatanatyam performer and as a choreographer who brings together western contemporary dance and traditions from India.

Thinking Out Loud October 19 update

2009-10-15T11:00:00.000-04:00

Looking forward to the second study group on Monday.

The last one was great - a set of wonderful but radically incomplete notes are posted on the brand spanking new Thinking Out Loud blog - you're source for notes, updates and discussions surrounding the reading group. I'll flag new post here for a while, but add the new one to your RSS or Google Reader.

Rereading the What is the contemporary? article – I want to acknowledge that it’s pretty dense and there is a lot of language that requires second (or more) readings and liberal use of a dictionary. But this excites me. And it excites me in relationship to last weeks reading of The Act of Study. I’ve been thinking about marking the ideas or sentences that flash or pop out to me and connect with my preoccupations. We’ll work through the ideas and writing together through our own responses, a process I’m looking forward to. So, no fear, we're in it together.

I also wanted to link to another article that, I think, addresses some of the same issues with an explicit tie in to practice, specifically Martha Graham. We’ll focus on What is the contemporary? But the other two will be a tie in to dance practice.

To access the new article, just click here: How modern is modernism? The Relevance of Reconstruction. An Essay by André Lepecki about the Martha Graham Retrospective. As always, this new article is available in hard copy at the Dancemakers office.
We’ll still be looking at Reconstructing Dance: Taking an Active Interest in the Legacy of Dance: a short essay/website from the Goethe-Institut website.

Your RSVP’s and thoughts are more than welcome.

Next Thinking Out Loud October 19

2009-10-06T12:02:00.003-04:00

Our inaugural Thinking Out Loud – the Study Group session last Tuesday was fantastic. Thanks to everyone who came.

If you weren't there, we hope you can make it out to the next one, so we can share ideas and pretzels with you, too.

We will be posting our “notes” from the first session online in case you’re interested in checking out where our discussion ventured.

The next meeting will take place on Monday October 19th at 6:30pm. We will once again be gathering in the studio at Dancermakers’ Centre for Creation (click here for a map/directions) on the 3rd floor.

All you need to do is RSVP and show up (with some spare change for a beer or a glass of wine). Feel free to bring some dinner with you to eat during our discussion, or on the break we promise we will take around 7:45pm

We will be discussing Giorgio Agamben article What is the contemporary? which can be found on the a.aaaarg.org website by clicking here (you will need to register for the website in order to access the pdf – do it.)

We’ll also look at Reconstructing Dance: Taking an Active Interest in the Legacy of Dance: a short essay/website from the Goethe-Institut website.

Alternatively, swing by the Dancemakers office if you’d rather pick up a hard copy of both articles.

It’s a bit more challenging read – but we think worth it and good for conversation.

Although this next meeting is on a Monday, future dates for Thinking Out Loud are all Tuesdays:

December 1, January 5, February 2, March 2, March 30, and April 27.

Please continue to spread the word to friends, colleagues, teachers, and so on, if you think this might tickle their fancy.

We look forward to another stimulating exchange!
Jacob, Megan, Kari and Leora
Dancemakers & The Dance Current

AGNÈS VARDA just because

2009-10-05T16:35:00.000-04:00

From a Believer interview:

Je résiste. I’m still fighting. I don’t know how much longer, but I’m still fighting a struggle, which is to make cinema alive and not just make another film, you know?

The act of printing The Act of Study

2009-09-21T11:10:00.001-04:00

A printable version of the Act of Study in now online.

For those without printers, copies available at the reference library and at Dancemakers

Thanks everyone for their help - see you Monday the 29th.

Thinking Out Loud – the Study Group launches

2009-09-17T11:16:00.001-04:00

Dancemakers and The Dance Current invite you to

Thinking Out Loud – the Study Group, launching at 6:30pm, Tuesday September 29 at the Dancemakers’ Centre for Creation with an introductory meeting and discussion of Paulo Freire's The Act of Study. (see below for information on getting the article)

Thinking Out Loud responds to our desire to read and talk together. To create a space in Toronto for a meeting between contemporary dance and contemporary thinking in an open, casual and critically supportive environment. An environment that includes snacks and beverages of varying types.

The mostly monthly meetings will each introduce a topic through a close reading of one or two articles and their relation to a specific artist and their practice. Articles will be announced a month before and available online or at Dancemakers.

We encourage any and all to join us, regardless of experience level or background. We like people from other fields (art, social sciences etc…) and we know that for many people this could be a very new thing. We will try to keep all of this in mind. All we ask for is a curiosity and willingness to read and participate.

Please join us on the 29^th to learn more.
And if you're coming- can you let us know? So we can have the right number of cookies?

If you are interested but unable to come on the 29^th – send me an email and I’ll keep you in the loop.

The full selection of topics and articles is still in development - and participant input will be important.

Information on the article for the 29^th below,

Hope to hear from you soon!

Jacob Zimmer, Dancemakers
and Megan Andrews, The Dance Current

Paulo Freire's The Act of Study from:
Freire, Paulo. The politics of education : culture, power, and liberation. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey, 1985.

Hard copies will be available at the Dancemakers office after Thursday September 17^th

The book is also at the Toronto Reference Library -

and available online here* – unfortunately you can’t print it.

*signing up for an a.aaaarg.org is required to get the pdf - and is a very good idea anyways - we may continue to use it as a way of sharing texts - and there are lots of great texts there

Open classes start soon

2009-09-16T12:21:00.002-04:00

Open company classes begin 10am Monday September 28 with Artistic Director Michael Trent - for the full fall schedule, go here.

history can do funny things

2009-08-24T15:03:00.003-04:00

How do we deal with our histories?
It's a very tricky question that I think a lot about these days.
What do we rebel against? What must we know in order to move on?
What influences do we accept, which do we deny?
And - and this might be the rub for me at the moment - when and why do we change our minds about the answers above?
-
This comes up today as I look up Yvonne Rainer's "No Manifesto" and find this:

corpus: When you refer to your NO-manifesto from 1965, where you asked for a lot of clarification, do you think this need for clarification asks for hybridization after a while?

Rainer: The NO-manifesto is brought up over and over again. I wish it could be buried ... I came to it at the end of an essay about a particular work, "Parts of Some Sextets", which was a piece for ten people and twelve mattresses in 1965, I never meant for the manifesto to be prescriptive. Manifestos are meant to clear the air and challenge, and then their usefulness is over. I myself haven't abided by that manifesto, and I don't expect anyone else to, either. But it's always brought up, I don't know ... It's no longer useful - or maybe it is. Someone else should write a manifesto about what's going on now.

corpus: A young Danish choreographer, Mette Ingvartsen, wrote a YES-manifesto about two years ago.

on the rewriting there is also this:

Maybe to spectacle. Maybe to virtuosity. Maybe to transformations and magic and make believe. Maybe to glamour and transcendency of the star image. . . . Maybe to moving or being moved.
from Artforum

Which all made me go back to a discussion from 2004 about the same Rainer quote in which I replaced "no" with "not quite"

All of which makes me wonder about how to look back on our own histories...

I don't have answers (or maybe even complete thoughts) -
please feel free to comment

A Perfect Ending

2009-08-10T17:20:00.001-04:00

By Kassandra Prus

So the 3 weeks are over and I don’t know where the time went! The last week just flew by and began with Linda Garneau’s jazz classes. Her way of looking at movement as conversation sparked a major artistic realization that I now need to write about. Her bubbling positive attitude and strong viewpoint on the realness of movement just blew me away as well, never mind her stunning choreography.
Tanya Evidente’s ballet classes were probably the fastest paced of the bunch. Since I haven’t done ballet in a while, it was cause for a little bit of hilarity, which could have become embarrassment if the group hadn’t become so positive and cohesive by the third week. I suppose floundering is good once in a while.
Darryl Tracy’s circuit training was brilliant as well. There’s nothing quite like a group of people sweating it out together with Darryl watching over us, his whistle blowing and his “Eat It, Bitch” shirt staring us down.
By the end of it all though, our diverse group had become quite a cohesive bunch and the showing was just stellar. Kim’s lighting talents lent a beautiful finish to the pieces we somehow managed to complete in 20 hours (I can’t believe I made a 15 minute piece in 20 hours!) and the title An evening of four of the things we’ve been working on just seemed so right. With everyone running off to their different ends of the city and country (and some back down to the States), it feels a bit strange not coming back to the space we all got so accustomed to. It always amazes me how quickly you can become so comfortable moving with people when you share your learning and experimenting experiences. Although I’ve been ill and it’s been a bit tough at times, people were so understanding and supportive, there were too many inspiring moments to count and I couldn’t be any more thankful for the experience. Thank you so much to all the teachers, accompanists, Kim, Michael and Jacob for all their shared knowledge, inspiration and passion. I won’t ever forget it.

Ending EDAP for 2009

2009-08-10T14:44:00.004-04:00

Thanks so much to everyone who participated. More reflection soon.

Photo by Ömer Yükseker

Guest Post: EDAP Week 2

2009-08-02T18:54:00.000-04:00

By Kassandra Prus

This incredibly inspiring week began with Darryl Tracy’s full mind and body working classes. Ever fascinating, the wonderful accompaniment by Jeff made the days even more beautiful, while Darryl’s Wednesday birthday was cause for a fantastic skirt and dress filled class.
The week also contained my introduction to Skinner Release. Julia Sasso presents such a calm and inspiring yet incredibly logical way of looking at movement. The imagery and techniques used made me feel more grounded than I have felt in a long time, made me see how to move my limbs in a different way, gave me more relaxed mobility in all my joints, showed me where I held my tension, taught me how to effectively use my breath in a way that does not interfere or take energy away from my movement, and brought such a calm beauty into my improvisations. In a total of 4 hours! I told you it was good.

The beginning of the choreographic process has also been a joy. I couldn’t be happier with how the dancers have responded to my concepts and have helped me push them farther in just a few hours than I could have in months of deep contemplation. Their availability for discussion and improvisation have inspired me deeply, and have made me realize that part of my frustration with the world of the static arts is its inability to give back like a human mind and body can. Also, making a piece about happiness is the best decision anyone could make, as I walk out of those rehearsals walking on a cloud!

Being part of another choreographer’s process has also taught me a lot. Witnessing a thought process evolve from concept into movement has been at times confusing but important for me to see what it is probably like for others watching my own process. Being able to see such a thing gives me an opportunity to think on how I can be the most clear, efficient, and inspiring choreographer I can be. On to week three!

Dramaturge/Animateur Intern wanted

2009-07-30T10:58:00.003-04:00

Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation is looking for a
Dramaturge/Animateur Intern (1 position)

About Dancemakers:
Driven by the vision of Artistic Director Michael Trent, Dancemakers draws on the diverse talents and individual strengths of its artists to create and present works that provoke and entertain.

At our core is the desire to promote new works rooted in contemporary aesthetics, cross-disciplinary dialogues and collaborative engagement.

About the Position:
Working closely with Resident Dramaturge/Animateur Jacob Zimmer the Dramaturge/Animateur Intern will be focused primarily on implementing, coordinating and developing Dancemakers Animateur programming, eg: Dancemakers Study Group and ancillary activities during the Duets Festival (February 22-March 6, 2010) for the public and dance community.

There will also be opportunities to observe rehearsals (as appropriate) of the ResearchLAB and Double Bill #2 (Choreographers: Michael Trent and kg guttman) and mentorship with Zimmer.
...continued...

Requirements:
• Interest in contemporary performance practices.
• Interest and skills in reading, writing and talking about contemporary performance practices.
• Knowledge of Toronto dance community and audience an asset
• Post secondary education or equivalent that includes some art (including dance) history.
• Excellent organizational, communication, written, and administrative skills
• Interest and/or experience in event planning
• Ability to work independently and as a member of a team.
• Strong computer skills, experience with Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook

Time Commitment:
1 or 2 days a week in office. (to be negotiated)
Rehearsal observation as arranged.
September 15, 2009 - May 19, 2010 (ideally)

Small honorarium provided
Please submit resume and letter of interest by August 15, 2009

Contact:
Jacob Zimmer, Resident Dramaturge and Animateur
jacob@dancemakers.org

Web: www.dancemakers.org
Blog: dancemakers.blogspot.com

Guest Post: First Week Reflection

2009-07-26T23:15:00.004-04:00

by Kassandra Prus

So it’s the end of a completely exhausting, utterly inspiring and wonderfully emotional week for me. My first week at EDAP started with a bit of trepidation (I’m never very good at new social situations) but a surprisingly effective name game on the first day, as well as an immediate focus on feeling, watching, and sharing with the group made me feel at ease with 16 other wonderful dancers.

Darryl Tracy’s conditioning at the beginning of the day made me find muscles I forgot I had (though I still can’t figure out how to do baby finger ‘push-ups’), and I was so happy to see Michael and Jacob right there with us.
Bonnie Kim’s technique classes were incredibly inspiring and made me feel alive right from the beginning of class. Her impetus for us to open our eyes and just dance our barre with the same personal interpretation and energy as combinations across the floor permanently changed the way I see class.
The idea of Jerome Bobb’s hip-hop classes terrified me from the beginning but I surprised myself with my ability to (eventually) pick up the entirely foreign to me, yet strangely empowering movement style. I’m very thankful that there are no mirrors in the theatre space though…

The afternoons with Michael and Jacob were brilliant. Part of my recently completed undergrad thesis detailed my opinion about the importance of using the distinctive qualities of your fine art medium to unconsciously affect your audience—to put your audience in a specific space (literally and figuratively) that affects them in a certain way because of how they must approach and experience the medium. This belief made me wonder why I was moving, what turned inspiration into choreographed movement, what the distinctive qualities of dance were, and what forced me to take that first step in an improv. These questions were confronted in our first afternoon together and I was ecstatic!

Other than articulating concepts to myself, I found a few ideas presented resonated powerfully and changed how I saw performance and movement; the search into knowing when to hold onto an idea tightly and when to let go lightly; how our awareness in a task can change our behaviour (amazing to feel in your body); to really notice our own personal habits and comfort zones, as well as our western society’s comfort zones of 3-6 (in distance between people, time spent doing tasks, effort required to do said tasks, etc) and to try to break out of them; to not think ahead and really trust other people and your own gut reactions; seeing how dramatically music, entrances, exits, stillness, and Ann Bogart’s ‘Viewpoints’ affected our movement and ‘groupness’; the idea of looking at world as most beautiful piece of choreography ever and seeing how that changes how we see movement.

These ideas and more, as well as the readings, make me so incredibly thankful of having this opportunity. Can’t wait until next week to start working on choreography!

Good, hard days

2009-07-23T10:40:00.007-04:00

There is sometimes something useful about exhaustion. Not the kind of "stressed out, unable to finish anything" exhaustion, but the "I need to take a nap at lunch because I've been working so hard and will be working that hard again in 10 minutes"

When we're the good exhausted we can get past our assumptions (which we are simply to tired to hold on to) we need all our energy to be present, and so don't waste it on distractions.

In just 3 days we've got a lot done. We're tired, but that will pass and the simple act of walking through space with others is now richer - both to do and to watch. Our understandings of space, time and how we move through and share them has deepened.

I had a really great conversation with the four choreographers yesterday while Micheal worked with the performers. Wonderful questions and desire. Next week we start making some dances. Fun. Good, hard fun.

Rest

EDAP Day 1

2009-07-21T10:47:00.004-04:00

First off, it is nice to move - but moving hurts. One of the downsides of having wandered away from performing, is missing the experience of working and moving together with an ensemble. It's a pleasure to be back doing it.

photo by Omer Yukseker. More here

With 17 bright lights we went through some of the ensemble building strategies borrowed and adapted from Anne Bogart's Viewpoints. It's great work to move out an individual understanding of performing / improvising into a broader, more open awareness of what is going on on-stage and how our choices create change and meaning. And for moving the core of the body around and shrinking the distance between thinking and doing.

We ended the day with a great discussion laying out some thoughts and assumptions about the nature of dance, about the roles of dancers, choreographers and audience - you know, those little questions.

There is so much to build on and work with - I look forward to the coming weeks.
And hope I will become less sore.

Rest

Other Unconference like things

2009-07-20T11:07:00.001-04:00

cross-posted with Small Wooden Shoe

As we are very close to posting the notes from the Unconference, I came across this: It's the discussion board for Devoted and Disgruntled, an on-going Open Space program done by Improbable Theatre in the UK (Phelim McDermott facilitated a very good Open Sapce a couple years back at PuSH

We are already planning next years Unconference

(not anything official, but maybe think of keeping April 24th, 2010 clear)

and
I'm also wondering about a regular event like Devoted and Disgruntled.

Is there any interest?

First days

2009-07-20T09:37:00.002-04:00

We start the Emerging Dance Artist Project (EDAP) today - very exciting to suddenly have the studio full of 17, well, emerging dance artists.

We will get the blog going with what we're doing and working on. We're focusing ways to be a part of making collaborative, contemporary dance work - looking at improvisation and coompositional strategies as well as morning technique and conditioning classes.

More very soon.

Study group part 2

2009-07-09T12:21:00.001-04:00

Following up on the Dancemakers study group (original call for interest)

On some technical things: The consensus seems to be for something once a month – which seems right. Mostly likely a weekday evening.

On a broader level I’d like to get some ideas of what areas people might be interested in studying.

While dance will be the frame for the group, I would like it to be a interdisciplinary approach to that. Not only between disciplines of art practice, but also of fields outside of art-making (social sciences etc…)

Some things I’ve thought of - they are broad and somewhat theoretical, please feel free to comment on areas of focus too – and really – I want this to be lead by the curiosities of the group, so please add your own.

The nature of “performance” – including performance studies and gender theory background. The first chapter of Diana Taylor’s book for example.

Some things about words we (especially at Dancemakers use): Contemporary (what do we mean? what do others mean?) Collaborative (how, why)

Aesthetics (how people talk, think about aesthetics) – Dave Hickey’s Invisible Dragon, a book on beauty in art comes to mind.

Any the of these subjects could be a year in themselves, but I imagine a series of shorted readings, articles and chapters rather than books.

Ancillary field trips could also be planned…

thoughts?

also, please send this on to anyone else might be interested.

"Do a show that is meaningful to you and share why it is meaningful"

2009-07-09T10:20:00.004-04:00

From Culturebot- probably the first theatre/performance blog I started reading, and still going strong -

Do something passionate and engaged that you care about – something you would do if you weren’t worried about money. Pretend like money is not an issue, let go and do what you really care about. Do a show that is meaningful to you and share why it is meaningful. Don’t try and trick people with a line of hooey. We see through you. Don’t tell us what to think, don’t try and second-guess. Just do what you do with honesty and intention and share the process. If you care, we’ll care.
- read the whole thing

Some on the "best time to be alive" stuff worries me a little - worries me in that we still really (really) need to be able to critique and propose alternatives, and that there is huge amounts to learn from the other pasts and other, less digital, places.

But the attitude and and honesty parts I think are on the nose.

Rhubard submissions

2009-06-26T17:16:00.003-04:00

The good folks at Buddies asked us to pass this along - dance submissions very welcome.

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre seeks submissions for THE 31^st RHUBARB FESTIVAL

Feb 10 - 28, 2010
Festival Director Erika Hennebury

Call for Submissions for 2010
DEADLINE: 5PM, Friday July 31, 2009

For over 30 years The Rhubarb Festival has offered Toronto artists a critic-free environment to experiment with new theatrical explorations. First produced by Buddies in 1979, Rhubarb is more than a festival; it is a commentary on theatre - on how we create it, on how we present it, and on how we experience it. Here we allow the artist and the idea to be the centre of attention. The trappings of traditional theatre are purged in favour of a stripped-down approach, where inspiration and invention are genesis. Rhubarb encourages established artists to take new risks and emerging artists to explore the medium of performance creation in a safe, inspired space. Buddies in Bad Times Theatre is currently seeking submissions of new, original, contemporary theatre, performance and dance for our 31^st Rhubarb Festival.

The Rhubarb Festival has acted as a seeding ground for exciting new work from a host of groundbreaking Canadian artists, including Sky Gilbert, Daniel MacIvor, Daniel Brooks, Guillermo Verdecchia, Don McKellar, Diane Flacks, Gavin Crawford, Sonja Mills, Darren O’Donnell, Damien Atkins, Atom Egoyan, Jacob Wren, Ann-Marie MacDonald (and many more). The Toronto Star has called it an “annual tonic of fresh and exciting theatre that invigorates Toronto”.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Submissions delivered by or post-marked up to July 31, 2009 will be accepted
Proposed performances may be no longer than 25 minutes in length
Works submitted must be new, never previously produced and original

Submissions must submitted in hard copy only and must be accompanied by and 2009 Rhubarb Festival Application Form (available online at www.artsexy.ca )
Fax or email submissions will not be accepted
late submissions may not be considered

Please mail or drop off submissions to:

Erika Hennebury, Rhubarb Festival Director
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
12 Alexander Street, Toronto ON M4Y 1B4

For further information please contact :
Erika Hennebury, 416-975-9130 x40 erika@artsexy.ca

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre

12 Alexander Street, Toronto, Canada M4Y 1B4

Box Office 416-975-8555 Admin 416-975-9130

info@artsexy.ca www.artsexy.ca

After Unconference

2009-06-23T09:22:00.002-04:00

Crossposted with the Small Wooden Shoe blog

Misha Glouberman on the Canadian Stage. Photo by Amanda Lynne Ballard

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Unconference. It was a full and exciting day for me (and I think for others.)

Met some new people, had good conversations with people I knew but had never had a good conversation with.
The first goal was for those things to happen (and not just for me, despite Misha's jokes.)

My hope now is that there will be some momentum, interpersonally and organizationally, to continue those conversations and transforming them into more better performance in Toronto.

We're getting the notes compiled and already talking about next year.

Once there are notes and I get a bit of time I will post some more thoughts.

For people who came, what would be the next step and what would you like to see happen next year?

Also - if there was a second day of Open Space, would you come back? (say if it were Friday / Saturday?)

Party Tonight!

2009-06-19T11:22:00.001-04:00

A message from Caitlin:

So here we are on Friday, June 19th and in approximately 9 hours there is going to be one raucous party happening in the Dancemakers Studio. That’s right people…its party time…not any party but the Dancemakers Jump into Summer fundraiser and its TONIGHT!

Michael and the interns are off at Soma picking up the chocolate for the fountain, the Canon digital camera is sitting in front of my desk begging me to bid on it tonight and my dancing shoes are on my feet just itching to get moving….

but I needed to take the one, and probably only quiet minute I would get today to share a secret with you

We were holding a bunch of tickets to be sold at the door tonight but I’m feeling generous and I’m offering 5 pairs for free on a first come first served basis. Just call me before 3pm at 416.367.1800 and say “Willie Wonka likes to dance”.

If you’ve bought your tickets already see you tonight!

P.S. the door prize for a trip to Stratford with tickets to West Side Story will be drawn between 10:30 and 11pm

Caitlin

Dance party June 19

2009-06-12T08:41:00.001-04:00

Dancemakers invites you to a dance party in support of our Youth Outreach Programs.

June 19, 2009
Doors open at 8

$20 in advance (6 for $100)
$25 at the door

Every ticket* has a chance to WIN A STRATFORD THEATRE FESTIVAL GETAWAY (including accommodation and tickets to West Side Story)

Join us for a rocking dance party hosted by STEPHEN GUY-MCGRATH (Soulpepper 2009) and featuring live music by CPR,Cawthra Park’s own rock ensemble.

SILENT AUCTION AND DELECTABLE TREATS

Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation
55 Mill Street, Building 58, Studio 313

For tickets call 416-367-1800

*ticket holdersmust be present at the time of the draw to be eligible to win

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/event.php?eid=100992840944&ref=nf

Unconference June 20

2009-06-11T10:45:00.001-04:00

On Saturday June 20, from 10am - 6 pm, I think something can start.

For few years I've imagined a big meeting of people involved in performance in Toronto. I imagined this meeting because I don't really know many of you (no matter what Facebook says), and I especially don't know what problems you have that I might be able to help with and which problems of mine you solved years ago or at least might have some words of advice for me. Or what good times we might have if we spent some time together. I want to get out of the silos that I too frequently find myself in – I imagined a meeting because I suspected I wasn't alone in feeling this.

And I'm tired of panels and professional meetings that, while important and useful, don't feel nearly as lively as the people attending them.

So it is with great pleasure and hope that I'm writing to invite you to the first Un-Conference on the Future(s) of Toronto Performance

This is a chance for theatre, dance and performance-based artists, administrators and supporters to set the agenda and have the conversations that matter most to you. A chance to meet, in a meaningful way, new people and actually talk with the people you might see all the time but never actually sit down with.

It is a potential space for something special to happen – to get together and meet. And meeting helps.

Space is limited so please RSVP to festival@canstage.com.

Below the fold is some more writing on the event.

Also – if you forward this post to the people you also think should be there – that would be great. There are people I don't know, who you do, and I'd like to meet them and hear what they, and you, have to say about the future(s) of Toronto performance.

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments

Right Here, Right Now: an Un-Conference on The Future(s) of Toronto Performance

Saturday, June 20, 2009, 10 a.m.- 6 p.m., $10 including lunch - Reception to Follow

A one day meeting of Toronto's groundbreaking professional artists, arts workers and arts leaders to talk about the future(s) of performance practice and our city's stages. Facilitated by Trampoline Hall's Misha Glouberman using techniques drawing from open-space technology and world cafes (the "Un-" denotes a conference with no panels, guest-speakers or pre-determined outcomes), the agenda is crafted by participants and the issues on the table are the ones you want to talk about. All who have stake in the evolution of performance are encouraged to attend to strategize, explore and identify what we can do right now to address our most challenging and exciting opportunities.

To attend: download and fill out the registration form HERE and email it to festival@canstage.com. Space is limited. Sign up today.

Want to know more?
What is an Un-Conference anyway?

This is what it is:

A one day “un-conference” to talk about the future(s) (as many as we want).

On a first name basis, with an agenda proposed and finalized when we arrive, anything anyone cares enough about will be up for discussion in groups large and small, records will be kept and distributed, lunch and maybe a drink or two will be had. It will all be facilitated by the wonderful Misha Glouberman, using “un-Conference” methods and approaches that are changing the way people gather and make change in the technology sector and, now, far beyond.

On this day, we will gather to speak as individuals and artists who care and take responsibility for the forms we work in, without the pressure of representing the organizations we may work for or work with. To speak in order to help each other solve problems. Big problems (the ethics of contemporary performance) or smaller problems (best place to buy good cheap paint.)

To look at big problems by solving small ones. Not to complain about the things we spend so much time complaining about but taking a proactive approach to conversation that focuses on what we can do right here, right now.

Where and when?
Saturday June 20, 2009
10 am - 6 pm (with evening celebrations)
$10 (lunch included)
The Canadian Stage Company - Berkeley Street Theatre -26 Berkeley Street
Part of the Canadian Stage Company’s Festival of Ideas and Creation<
In association with Dancemakers and Small Wooden Shoe.

Who?
You.
Those who care about the future(s) of Toronto performance. Artists, Arts Workers, Arts Advocates.

We want this to be big and broad. To move past lip service to the diversity of Toronto’s performance scene. To be in a room and look around and be rocked by the meeting of difference.

The agenda is set by those who are present, by the people who care and take responsibility. So its really important that YOU are in the room.

As well – tell us who should we make sure is there, or invite them yourself by forwarding this email!

Why the future?
By focusing on the future we look to what we, in the room, can change. What is possible next, if we do something different now. Where might we want to go – as artists, as people who care about performance. What questions can we ask, and answer when we’re all in the same room. What problems can we solve by talking together.

It’s perhaps too easy to get caught in old separations or past perceived indiscretions. And they are important to acknowledge – to discuss so that they don’t happen again in the future. But it is the future we look to.

Why performance?
Performance is a broad term. And that’s important. It’s important to know that for all our needed and valuable differences, there are some things that could get better if we talked, some things we might have to learn from each other. Things that performance artists have to talk about with theatre folk and stuff they both want to chat about with dancers.

And because, with the economic crisis and etc etc, it’s rare that we get to meet and talk about performance itself, and the creative decisions, structures and opportunities we have to expand our practice and our methods. And that meeting and talking could be very important.

Why Toronto?
Toronto is a big city. This is so obvious as not to need to be said.
Except it does.
Because we think it’s a small world.

Especially for those of us who make performances of any kind.<
It is a very very small world. And yet it’s a big city.
And so, in a small world in a big city,
We don’t meet each other.

We find ourselves, despite ourselves, in silos.*
And it’s not malevolent or even intentional.
Toronto is a big city. And it’s a busy city.

But perhaps this is not the way to look forward.
Looking forward might need many people in one room talking about the things they care most about.
So it would be good to meet.
Good to take one day to come together.
And talk about the futures of performance, as a form, not an industry, in Toronto.
To try and help and be helped by sharing space and time.

Why a meeting?
Meeting each other and talking can be an end in and of itself. We need to meet those we don’t yet know, and talk again with those we think we know well. To break assumptions and find what we can offer each other. We meet to bring together communities that don’t often share space, despite sharing so many concerns. The potential for creative chemistry is vast when people come together in the same room to share curiosity, passion and responsibility. And by looking at problems we are striving to solve, we think we will find new perspectives and new solutions. And, at the very least – you’ll know more about what’s going on in the places you are sometimes to busy to go to, or perhaps have never really been to at all.

*”Since, for example, I work mostly through Buddies, Theatre Passe Muraille and the Theatre Centre, I don’t know what’s going on at Factory, fu-gen, Soulpepper, Obsidian and on and on. Since I work at Dancemakers, I don’t know Pro Arte Danza. And I don’t think I’m alone in this.” says Jacob Zimmer. And we think he is right.

To attend: download and fill out the registration form HERE and email it to festival@canstage.com
Space is limited. Sign up today

Misha Glouberman is a facilitator and designer of highly participatory events. He’s hosted panels, discussions, and events with health care workers, transit activists, professional dancers, homeless parents, Open Source software advocates, graffiti artists, Copyright experts, and Star Trek fans, to name just a few.

His approach to conference design draws especially on Open Space Technology, and the UnConference approach, both methods of conference design meant to get people talking to each other and sharing ideas quickly and effectively, in a highly decentralized model. His working style combines analytic rigour (he worked for many years as a database designer, and has a degree in philosophy from Harvard College) with a creative people-centered approach (he has taught classes in improvised music and theatre for many years).

Misha’s interest in how people connect with each other also extends into work he does as a performer and artist. He hosts “The Trampoline Hall Lectures”, an interactive show popular with the arts and literary set in Toronto and New York, as well as “Terrible Noises for Beautiful People”, a series of participatory sound events for non-musicians, among other projects. He believes himself to be Canada’s foremost charades instructor, a claim which has thus far gone unchallenged.

Reading group input wanted

2009-05-01T11:11:00.001-04:00

Request for interest / feedback
Study Group – but in a good way

Dancemakers is interested in starting and facilitating some kind of on-going peer-to-peer discussion / reading / learning group.

It might include assigned readings, discussions of those readings, special guests, field trips, show and tells and other things.

We’d like it to be broad – visual art, architecture, games, social theory, performance criticism, gardening, radio, what ever our curiosity finds – all relating back to making and performing dances and other things in the early days of the century.

This is a response to the lack of structured group learning after (or maybe even during) our formal training.

We’d like to make sure it stays fun (even if sometimes in the “hard fun” sense) open to lots of experience levels while developing a high level of conversation, thinking and doing – so suggestions on that would be great.

Basically, at this point we’d like to know if anyone would be interested in such a thing, and what kind of thing would be most interesting.

For example:
How often? (every 2 weeks, monthly?)
Day / Time (Monday nights etc…)
How long?
What subjects?
(What) Would you be able / willing to pay?
What might make you more interested?
Would you commit to a series?

You can leave thoughts in the comments or email jacob@dancemakers.org

Thanks very much
Jacob

Envy...

2009-04-29T13:59:00.004-04:00

Over at Zoilus, Carl Wilson is blogging about the Pop Conference in Seattle.
Every year he does this I am struck with envy - and while I generally have tried to move past my music envy (so much cooler, more popular, more fun blah blah), Carl's description of the event always brings it back.

It’s a kind of weekend retreat where journalists, authors, historians, musicologists, DJs, theorists and, yes, musicians experiment with ways to talk about popular music that might do justice to its value as human experience, its often troubled and troubling place in cultural exchange, and its never-ceasing novelty, invention and frequent blatant absurdity as a kind of moving-parts plasticene model for how to mobilize feeling usefully in a painfully pleasurable world.

This quixotic spirit has bred its own sub-genres of presentations: They’re performative, even competitively so, ... and while dense, knotty thinking is fine (at least by most of us), mere deconstructive games seldom get traction — there’s a collective conscience that’s listening for a socially productive reassessment or challenging ethical core." - Full post

and if you haven't got his book about Celine Dion and taste, you should. It's remarkable. You can get it at local bookstores like Pages and This ain't the Rosedale Library.

Call for submission

2009-04-28T13:32:00.005-04:00

2 open calls for contemporary dance and performance.

In a desire to meet new people and hear from different voices, Dancemakers is sending out 2 Calls for Submission

Please share widely!

1 :: research LAB :: October 1 to October 21, 2009
2 :: Dancemakers Presents: Duet Festival :: February 22 to March 6, 2010

Driven by the vision of Artistic Director Michael Trent, Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation does three things: creates and presents contemporary dance, develops artists and engages publics.

As with all of our projects, we are specifically interested in work and artists that respond to one or more of the “3C’s”: contemporary aesthetics, cross-disciplinary dialogues and collaborative engagement. Applications to both programs should address a relationship with these values.

Application deadline for both calls is May 25, 2009 (postmarked)

Details after the fold...

1 :: research LAB – October 1 to October 21, 2009

The research LAB is a three-week opportunity for a Toronto-based choreographer to explore their practice with the five company dancers and the Dancemakers creative team (Michael Trent, Bonnie Kim and Jacob Zimmer). Proposals can include pure research and exploratory questions.

The research LAB:
> is for Toronto-based artists
> provides time + space + performers + audience response
> includes 3 weeks of monitored research
> offers a small honorarium

We are also able to support choreographers in the application for funding, but please note that at this time we can only provide a small honorarium.

Past participants include: Benjamin Kamino, Alanna Kraaijeveld, Jacob Wren, Kate Hilliard, Sasha Ivanochko, Yvonne Ng, Susanna Hood, Claudia Moore and Peter Chin.

Applications should include:
A DVD of past work
A current CV and artistic statement with a short proposal of the research that you wish to undertake.

2 :: Dancemakers Presents: Duets – a mini festival of contemporary dance
Festival Dates: Feb 22 – March 6, 2010

Dancemakers Presents is a curated series of three contemporary Canadian choreographers and companies that embraces both voices we know and those new to Toronto. The selected artists share a creative approach that startles the boundaries of conventional forms.

In 2009-2010, the thematic-driven series will be presented as a festival over a two-week period with a focus on the duet. Applicants should show an engaging exploration of this theme through form and/or content.

Dancemakers Presents:
> is for Canadian artists
> provides full presentation
> includes 3 performances
> offers a guaranteed fee

Applications should include:
A DVD of the work to be presented
A letter of interest and intent
A current CV of the choreographer (and/or lead collaborators)

We look forward to hearing from you.

Please mail applications to:
DANCEMAKERS
55 Mill Street, Building 74
Case Goods Warehouse, Studio 306
Toronto, ON M5A 3C4

Tel 416.367.1800
Fax 416.367.1870
Email: caitlin@dancemakers.org
Web: dancemakers.org

Dramaturgy conversation @ TDT May 18

2009-04-28T13:15:00.002-04:00

As the title suggests, I will be participating in a talk about contemporary dance dramaturgy @ TDT - it's part of their Berlin/Toronto project.

Monday May 18th • 7pm
Discussion: On Dramaturgy-of-the-Body, with German dramaturge and scholar Susanne Foellmer, dramaturges Guy Cools and Jacob Zimmer, and choreographers Ame Henderson, Christopher House, Felix Marchand and Christoph Winkler
FREE - Open to everyone

the rest of the workshops and and talks after the jump.

In support of the upcoming Berlin/Toronto Project performances (May 21st-23rd and 27th-30th), Toronto Dance Theatre is proud to present a series of activities made possible in part by the Goethe-Institut Toronto and the Canadian Embassy in Berlin.

All events take place at the Winchester Street Theatre.

Saturday May 9th • 11am-2pm
Workshop: Tuning with Felix Marchand
$25 (or both workshops for $40)
Open to all dancers
Pre-registration is required – please call Rachel at 416-967-1365

Sunday May 10th • 11am-3pm
Workshop: Perspectives on Dance/Theatre with Christoph Winkler
$25 (or both workshops for $40)
Open to all dancers
Pre-registration is required – please call Rachel at 416-967-1365

Monday May 11th • 7pm
The Process Revealed: A behind-the-scenes look at upcoming world premieres from Felix Marchand and Christoph Winkler
FREE - Open to everyone

Monday May 18th • 7pm
Discussion: On Dramaturgy-of-the-Body, with German dramaturge and scholar Susanne Foellmer, dramaturges Guy Cools and Jacob Zimmer, and choreographers Ame Henderson, Christopher House, Felix Marchand and Christoph Winkler
FREE - Open to everyone

Tuesday May 19th • 7pm
Lecture: Dance in Berlin, with Susanne Foellmer
FREE - Open to everyone

Friday May 22nd • 9:30pm
Post-performance discussion: On the works of Felix Marchand and Christoph Winkler, with Suzanne Foellmer
FREE - Open to everyone

3 points to dramaturgy defintition

2009-04-25T10:01:00.004-04:00

From the description of Peter Stamer's Coaching Project at ImpulsTanz

On Dramaturgy And Other Artistic Practices

Dramaturgy deals with 3 main questions:
1. How does the artist transform his/her concept into practice?
2. What aesthetic strategies does the artist make use of in the art work?
3. How does the art work communicate to the audience?

I think that's a very solid reduction that I might steal.

Also very good, from Jeroen Peeters & Martin Nachbar's Coaching project description:

Physical dramaturgy seeks to explore and exhaust the realm of meaning triggered by moving bodies on stage: it insists on analysing one’s own practice and stimulating an awareness of the underpinnings and contexts of one’s work.

I like the articulation of "stimulating an awareness of the underpinnings" - this is something I think a lot about and often times feel is lacking in performance I watch in Toronto (probably other places too - but most I see things in Toronto.)

Thanks Ben for asking me to look at the ImPulsTanz site this year.

Residency Showing

2009-04-22T14:38:00.002-04:00

Every year Dancemakers gives our space to an artist to reside for a week. A chance to work in the space with production elements, the residencies are part of our desire to help.

This year we invited Jenn Goodwin into the space to work on her new show, Accidents for Every Occasion

And every year we invite you, and people you might bring, to join us for a studio showing and discussion surrounding the work with Jenn, Michael Trent and Jacob Zimmer. And you.

Dancemakers Residency Showing
Jenn Goodwin
Accidents for Every Occasion

Friday April 24, 2009
7 pm

Dancemakers Centre for Creation
55 Mill Street, Building 58
The Cannery, Studios 313
DIRECTIONS

Then see the premiere at Harbourfront Centre, along with Dancemakers alumn Susie Burpee:

DanceWorks - DW176 - Double Bill - Jenn Goodwin & Susie Burpee

Accidents for Every Occasion
Jenn Goodwin (Toronto)
+
Mischance and Fair Fortune
Susie Burpee (Toronto)

April 30, May 1, 2nd. 8pm
@ Enwave Theatre

416 973 4000 for tickets

Accidents for Every Occasion is Jenn Goodwin's heartfelt and playful exploration of the consequences of our daily mishaps in all their beauty, barbarity and banality. Cross a street three seconds later and avoid being hit by a bus. A typo completely changes your identity. Turn to the left at a crowded party and you miss meeting the love of your life. With humour, beauty and edgy, restless movement, Goodwin creates work that is immediately relevant and highly accessible.

"Pulled together by intelligence and humour... [Goodwin's work] confounds expectations about what modern dance is."
(Rebecca Todd, EYE Weekly)

"Her choreographic penchant seems to be the expression of real-life concerns, and thus, her use of pedestrian physicality and commonplace gestures is the perfect vehicle to convey her message...[with] both pathos and humour. "
(Paula Citron, The Globe & Mail)

Back at work.

2009-04-20T10:58:00.001-04:00

Cross posted from the Theatre Centre

What to discuss these days? There just seems like so much to talk about. So much that needs to be worked out. And I think conversation is one of the ways to help. So much desire to meet and yet so much fatigue. So much desire just to talk about anything but what we always talk about. Such a need to get past myself and the things I hear myself saying over and over again. To be able, maybe, just to reach near the end of a thought instead of these constant half starts and blips. Something needs to give. We can’t (I can’t) continue at this pace - the work will suffer, and that’s the point right? The work. And my life. My life is suffering...and that’s the point too.

To have space to reflect, in a deep back of the brain kind of way. The kind of reflection that happens from playing in park, in actually reading some of the books I buy, in letting mind wander in a way that doesn’t just mean hitting the refresh button. These seem to be uneasy times and maybe Toronto is an uneasy city. Or at least the way I’m dealing with it is.

But it is sunny when I look past my computer monitor. And yet, here I am, inside, wearing jogging pants and a hoody, complaining about being busy and overwhelmed.

I’m stepping away from the computer. To see if that helps.

So - there are many things to discuss. Let’s do it in the streets, in the theatre, and in the bars. Let’s do it in person.

I hope to see you soon.

For the record: Program Notes

2009-02-13T16:21:00.002-05:00

So really breaking the rules of long blog posts, here are all the program notes from It's about time
Starting with

A Note about notes

Program notes are tricky things. At Dancemakers we’re trying to share our thoughts and feelings about our work and to start dialogue. We also think there needs to more writing about contemporary dance and that while tricky, program notes have something to offer to the experience of attending dance performance.

But a few other thoughts on notes: First of all, you don’t have to read them. You especially don’t need to read them before the show. You can – we work hard to make sure they don’t give away anything – but you don’t have to in order to “get” anything. Also, they are not definitive. They are our thoughts at this point in time. The ideas, questions and emotions that are evoked you have while watching the performance are equally valid.

And finally, we want your notes too. Please send them to jacob@dancemakers.org or michael@dancemakers.org – Thanks, Jacob Zimmer.

The rest after the jump

Artistic Director’s Notes – Michael Trent

We do three things at Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation. We make and present contemporary dance performance. We develop artists. And we develop a relationship with publics. When deciding what specific projects to do, we measure proposals against a trio of values: contemporaneity, cross-disciplinarity and collaboration.

Although we think about these values every day, it’s the third one, collaboration, which has taken up a lot of our focus this year.

“Collaboration” is one of those 21st century terms that is used a lot, just as “actualization of the individual” was in the 70s and “acceptance of the other” in the 90s. But saying these things and actually doing them are quite different things. And the latter is much harder than one thinks.
As we diligently work it out in the studio, the office and with our colleagues, neighbours and audiences, our attempts at collaboration call upon us to have an enormous generosity of spirit, an openness to hearing things that are sometimes difficult and as Anne Bogart says, the need to hold on tightly and let go loosely.

Real collaboration takes time. It demands an enormous amount of trust in order to succeed. And trust can’t be demanded, it must be earned. And that takes time, too.
I wrote at the beginning of the year that I insist on surrounding myself with people who inspire me because, simply, it makes the work better. I can now safely add that inspiring people make the collaborative process better, too.

So thanks to the smart and curious dancers for their patience and goodwill. And to Jacob and Bonnie for forcing me to be clearer and calmer every day. To Richard and Caitlin and the board for supporting the creative efforts with insight, care and boundless energy. A special thanks to Philip Sung for his many years of leadership as board chair.

And finally to the group of individuals who answered the call to contribute to the creation of tonight’s show by recording a minute, and to our 60 for $60 sponsors who have also contributed to our collaborative conversation. We extend to all of them our deepest thanks.

Choreographer’s note – Michael Trent

Following a showing of the work last week, a colleague asked me why time was so important to me. Important enough for me to make a dance about it. Important enough for me to take all the time and energy to make something for the public.

It was a good and fair question.

For most of my adult life, I have been trying to reconcile two sides of myself, the empirical scientist and the perceptive artist. At one point I had aspirations of becoming a doctor but realized that smelly things trigger a pretty nasty gag reflex in me and that I wasn’t driven enough to make it through medical school. This impulse meant, though, that my university training was mostly predicated on the scientific method and its insistence on pointing to an inscrutable truth. Dance making for me is nothing like this. There is no single truth I am trying to reach because, in most matters that count, I don’t think there is one. In this process of making art, I find myself in a constant state of destabilization, of disequilibrium in the face of uncertainty. And it is a wonderful place to be because it allows me to have a conversation that is dynamic, open and fluid.

For many years now, I have been concerned with what I see as a common cultural imperative towards the most banal (least threatening?) answers to our collective questions. We want them to be expressed as either yes or no. Or see them as either black or white. A binary world-view, if you like, of how we operate socially and morally.

I think it’s more complex than that.

To frame it differently, it is about the relationship between the absolute (or fixed) and the perceived (or fluid). I seem to be suspicious of the absolute: it says that things cannot be both right and wrong, black and white, yes and no. I think most things are. And I am quite glad about that.

The next thing to figure out was a way or a frame in which to make a performance about this. ‘Time’ seemed to be a good place to start because it is something we share in common and think of as being pretty absolute. We quickly found not only that the definition of a second has changed considerably over time (most recently updated in 1997 in France) but that our perception of time has enormous latitude. So time is not this or that but a little bit of both at the same time.

So by working on how we perceive and experience time, on how it works and works on us, on what happens when it contracts, expands or stays the same, I am addressing my discomfort with absolutism.

And like most good questions, others follow. Like: Why do we do what we do? What is the value of the arts and how do we address issues of meaning, relevance and impact? All of these from a simple question about why the subject matter meant so much to me.

A critic recently commented that my work grew from a place of ‘thematic intellectualism’ and I took it as a complement. They also said I was a curious fellow, which I also take as a complement.

But I mention this because in addition to all the rigour (intellectual, physical, social) we apply to our work, what matters most is the experience we create for you. We have spent a lot of time considering the viewer. Because without you, without a relationship with a public, we are working in a void and that doesn’t seem worth the time.

And for me, time matters.
Thank you for sharing some of yours with us.

If you have any comments or questions, I’d love to talk about it.
michael@dancemakers.org

Composer’s note – Josh Thorpe

Gertrude Stein said, “the whole business of living [is] to go on so they will not know that time is passing, that is why they get drunk that is why they like to go to war….” How we treat time is bound up in ethics, aesthetics, psychology, everything. As far as we know, time is required for activity, sense perception, consciousness. Actually, scientists figure there is a full half-second delay between stimulus and consciousness. In any case, time is quite a mystery.

It seemed like if we were going to make a piece about time, I didn’t want to make music that would try to demonstrate time’s measurement or to represent different psychological registers of time. I didn’t want to attempt to elucidate, neither to romanticize time’s mystery; time will always be confusing.

So I proposed a very literal approach. The music for this piece is a collection of sixty field recordings, and a short piece performed live on guitars, harmonicas, and drums. Dancemakers and I asked sixty people to each make a recording about a minute long. We asked recordists to find a situation rather than to author one (aware, of course, that some people would cheat just a bit) and to treat this approximate minute as “time out” to listen, an excuse for a break. We asked recordists not to measure the minute but to guess it. The reason for this was partly out of interest in what the subjective, sensed minute might be, but more important, as a way to soften the minute – to introduce irregularity for the listener and openness for the recordists.

Field recordings are lovely things. Acoustic information is very useful in everyday life; it tells us a lot about our position in space-time, it warns us of danger, it allows us to achieve goals, to make better use of our time. A field recording presented for the sake of listening doesn’t have much use, so it becomes an object for perceptual or aesthetic attention. This is quite another way of spending time.

I like that these recordings are not only involved in the time frame of a minute and an hour, but also in the time frame of months. We collected the recordings from November to February, a temporarily forgotten past most of us don’t yet think of as history.

The short composition I’ve written is also very straight ahead. I have used the bare-bones of music: attack and decay, repetition and difference, simultaneity (and its impossibility), and passages from A to B and back again. It’s written so almost anyone could play it, and with a flexible approach to duration. I’m very pleased with how the musicians have treated it.

Dramaturge’s note – Jacob Zimmer

Time is everywhere of course – there are endless discussions about how to manage it, of its nature, of our relationship to it. There is the practical time that marches on, thought of as an arrow in one direction, absolute and the same for all of us. It is what we measure with clocks and calendars.

There is also a time that is relative – that you feel differently then I do, that changes if I’m having a good time or waiting. When we lose time or it drags, there becomes a gap between our perception and the measurements we use.

We sometimes want to slow down or speed up time, to move backwards instead of forwards. To shift time.

Art has often had an element of this time shifting – paintings, books, sound recordings and most certainly film and photography all contain strong elements of time shifting.

In live performance it is trickier. We might be doing an old dance, singing a standard or telling a well-known story, but we are doing it now. No matter what we do, there is at least one beginning, middle and end. The audience arrives, the performance happens, the audience leaves.
So, given that, how does performance address this question of reconciling perception to the measurement of time?

Arguably dance is in a very special position to address these questions. Focused on the body in time and in relationship to other bodies, we can see our capacity to change time. We can see the physical, emotional and social impacts that changing time can make.

And what does this problem, in dance, say about our daily lives? It is, after all, a problem that is most acute in the real time of the day to day:
Whether things happen at the same time, how long they take – the pressure to get it done, the endurance to take the time it takes.

These are negotiations and agreements between individuals, their desires and time. And the desires and time of others. In the day to day it is hard to slow down to see this clearly, we are too involved in it ourselves, too busy trying to keep up. The treat, the importance of performance then might be as a space where we, watching, can witness, reflect on and feel these negotiations as they occur – a process rare and vital.

Thursday night times

2009-02-13T14:15:00.003-05:00

They're really very good these performers we are blessed with. And the thing is, the task has not being "getting it right" for a while. Rather an interest in the difference, in the attention we can pay to changes and how we might be able to track that. The time sheets are not to be prescriptive or disciplinary, but rather some system of difference noticing, of attention to when things happen. But still, within a minute over an hour of largely feeling the time is pretty amazing.

Radio transcripts

2009-02-13T12:06:00.001-05:00

Transcripts Michael Crabb on CBC:

CBC RADIO HERE & NOW
THURSDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2009 @ 15:50 APPROX
ITEM: DANCEMAKERS – IT’S ABOUT TIME: SIXTY DANCES IN SIXTY MINUTES
GUEST: MICHAEL CRABB
_______________________________________________________

MATT: When you work on live radio like I do you’re very aware of time … and there never seems to be enough of it.

But what is this thing we call time? Does it actually exist or is it just something we’ve invented to bring order and sense to our lives?

That’s what Toronto’s Dancemakers is asking this week in a new work called It’s about time: sixty dances in sixty minutes.

Read full transcript after the jump

Michael Crabb, Here & Now’s dance critic was at Harbourfront Centre for last night’s premiere and joins me now to tell us about it.

Hi Michael.

MATT: As titles go, this latest offering from Dancemakers seems pretty clear about its intentions. But how exactly do you make a dance about time?

MICHAEL: In a way you could argue that all dances are about time – bodies moving in time and space.

But generally, time as a concept is not the primary subject of a dance. Time and space are simply the elements, however you want to name them, in which dance happens.

What Dancemakers is trying to do is make time the actual subject.

They want us, I think, to recognize how our experience of time is something different from what you might call absolute time – the kind that’s reading out by the second on that clock on the studio wall; the time that will run out if I don’t keep moving along.

MATT: So, to keep moving along, how does this new dance focus our awareness of time?

MICHAEL: As the title says, there are sixty dances – I didn’t actually count but I’ll take Dancemakers word for it – and they happen in roughly the passage of an hour.

But these are not dances in the way most people would describe a dance.

For one thing, there’s virtually no music, just an atmospheric sound-scape assembled from recordings of every day things – kitchen noise, traffic, train horns, voices chattering. It’s like time rolling aimlessly by.

It would be more helpful to describe It’s about time as physical theatre. The whole affair has more the feel of an “event” or “happening” than your routine dance concert.

There’s lots of walking, running, jumping, crawling, sitting, lifting and general careening about the open space of the Enwave Theatre stage … and in some cases the galleries surrounding it.

Occasionally the dancers disappear altogether, leaving us to endure the empty time until they return.

Counting is a big item.

In a repeated passage the three men in the company line up at the front of the stage, cover their ears, close their eyes and count to sixty out loud. And, of course, not in sync. Meanwhile, one of the two women holds the other in her arms.

We are aware of several things happening at once --- in both absolute time and relative time.

We know holding someone takes physical endurance and you can only do it for so long.

We also know that it’s very difficult for most folk to count accurately.

And as we watch all this, our own perception of the time it’s taking for the dancers to do these things is also different for each individual observer.

MATT: Michael, I gotta tell you this all sounds rather theoretical and egg-heady. Is it really dance … or theatre for that matter?

MICHAEL: Yes, in the broad sense it is. For one thing it is not just a random happening. It is choreographed and theatrically produced and it’s not somber.

In fact some of it is outright funny.

MATT: Such as?

MICHAEL: There’s a another repeated sequence in which one of the dancers will sit in a chair and try to count up to sixty but then two other dancers will start tickling him … or her. Suddenly this activity intensifies our interest, causes a kinesthetic response – most of us know what being tickled feels like – and somehow compresses the actual time that is passing.

Then there’s this other passage, also repeated, in which Steeve Paquet recites a one-minute recipe for shepherd’s pie; sometimes in short form, other times in over elaborate detail. It’s absurd and funny and while he’s deadpanning his recipe other dancers are hurling themselves around the stage.

There’s a lot to take in at once.

MATT: So you’d say it’s entertaining?

MICHAEL: I’d say it’s mostly engaging, often entertaining and consistently well performed. Dancemakers five members are what I call committed performers. Without their intensity and focus

I don’t this would work at all.

For example, carrying a fairly large, fish-tank full of water across a stage might sound a pretty inconsequential thing, but dancer Robert Abubo turns it into a mini-epic of human endurance.

And because it looks as if he might drop the tank at any moment, the time it takes before he finally gets it safely on the ground seems stretched to breaking point.

MATT: So It’s about time does actually make you more aware of time?

MICHAEL: It reminds us that time can be friend or enemy; help or hindrance and that we have, perhaps, just a little control over how far it governs our everyday lives because a lot time is just in our head.

###

MATT: Thanks for telling about it Michael.

Michael Crabb is Here & Now's dance critic.

Dancemakers will continue to perform It’s about time until Saturday at the Enwave Theatre at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto.

[Runs 5:15 approx including intro and extro but excluding music.]

3 more shows and press

2009-02-13T11:39:00.004-05:00

Only 3 shows left - Tonight at 8, Saturday at 3pm and 8pm

buy your tickets now

Facebook Event

What the press has been saying:

"This Dancemakers occasion is about delight and joining in the fun." - The Toronto Star

"audacious in artistic ambition... five fearless dancers." - The National Post

"sly and deliciously droll... both intriguing and downright funny... Whether you choose to look deeply into the piece, or see it as a simple exercise, It's about time is a very entertaining way to spend exactly one hour." - The Globe and Mail

Student Matinee

2009-02-12T17:22:00.002-05:00

Good show, great audience.
Sorry we didn't get to everyone's questions -
really do feel free to ask them here.

Times for Opening

2009-02-12T15:50:00.006-05:00

Posting these time is proving a little hard for my brain. Here is a jpeg.
I have it on Google Docs too. Surely there is an easier way? I do the export from google and it's not very blogger friendly... any tips?

but the important thing - opening night was spot on for time (ok 9 miliseconds off, but really.)

Toronto Star article hit the streets and interweb this morning.

A survey

2009-02-11T15:53:00.002-05:00

Jessica Cattaneo made a survey for us. It's in the program for the show and functions as a set of program notes.

For those that are out of town, yuo can
click here to take the online version

For those that aren't out of town, you should come see the show and fill out the survey there.

A tease before opening

2009-02-11T15:17:00.001-05:00

We open tonight. We are ready for it - needing it even. There comes a point where what performance needs is an audience and we're at that point.

25 things in... well, the time it takes you to read them.

2009-02-10T11:28:00.003-05:00

25 almost random things about It’s about time.

So the official program notes are done, but I felt there should be a Facebook specific note, and well, I got tagged in a few of these last week so, call this one of my answers. I realize I’m a bit late on the virus but it’s been a busy time.

I'll post the full program notes a little later

1. Yes, the show is actually 60 minutes.

2. There are some members of the company who are very very ticklish.

3. We spent a great deal of time doing things over and over. Even more then usual in a rehearsal process.

4. Possibly as a result of #3, performers have reported an increase in incidences of déjà vu.

5. There is a pool in the middle of Enwave Theatre. It is not of water.

6. There is water in the show.

7. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60

8. I am bad at doing things like taking video every day.

9. Things we think you might be able to do in a minute: take a piss, brush your teeth, peel a Clementine, orange but not a grapefruit and definitely not a pomelo, check your voice mail, wake up, read your horoscope, reheat a cup of coffee in the microwave, fry an egg, pour a shot and drink it, do 40 sit-ups, do 51 push-ups (or so Rob claims), make our bed, render someone some unconscious, let your dog out in the winter to pee and pooh, phone a friend, sort your e-mail, watch two 30-second commercials, roll a joint, make a piece of toast, boil a one-minute egg, set-up the coffee machine, shave your armpits, wash your hair, make a sandwich, get a man undressed and aroused, listen to Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane play “Abide with me”, spend $3.99 on the phone, get off, order take-out, run a quarter of a mile, read an obituary or wedding announcement, read a postcard, read a book jacket, withdraw money from a bank machine, pack your knapsack, curl your eyelashes, apply mascara and powder your face, down a beer, stretch one side of your body, determine that you don’t like a television show, apply the first coat of nail polish on one hand, do two sets of bicep curls, go through a check-out, eat a small bag of gummy bears, get it up again, make someone feel really special or really horrible, tell a lie, loose yourself, get lost, fall in love, fall out of love or think about it, change your mind, change someone else’s mind, chop an onion, chop four mushrooms, take a trip from Keele to Dundas west on the subway, determine your pulse, pay you bills online, bite off the fingernails on both hands. Amongst others.

10. There will be an official timer at each show recording the times. We will post them in the lobby and on the Internet.

11. It is very difficult not to notice all the time metaphors once you start making a show about time.

12. It is even harder not to use them when talking about the show. I’ve had to embrace this.

13. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

14. What we need now is an audience.

15. Not all dances are a minute and not all dances involve everybody.

16. The Egyptians used to assign 12 hours to daylight and 12 hours to darkness, so the length of an hour would change through-out the year. I feel this strategy would be exciting in Canada, though understand why it was developed in a country closer to the Equator.

17. 60 is very divisible: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60. Numaric systems based on 60 are called sexagesimal.

18. We talked a lot about agreement and convergence and unison. About how agreement doesn’t mean unison and convergence is just one kind of reaching an agreement. These conversations may not be explicit in the show, but that’s ok.

19. Robert Abubo’s new nickname is “Fish tank.” Spread the word.

20. It was very hard to pick which dances, which minutes.

21. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180

22. Broader definitions of dances and minutes are more fun.

23. There is a difference between how long or arduous a task is if you are doing it or watching it. Neither is more “reliable.”

24. The show provokes a lot of empathy. And some sympathy.

25. Yes, there are 60 dances.

It's about time: 60 dances in 60 minutes
New work from Michael Trent and Dancemakers
with composer Josh Thorpe

February 11-14, Enwave Theatre 231 Queen's Quay W
February 11-13 8 PM, February 14 3pm & 8pm
$20 - $38
Box Office: 416-973-4000 or http://www.harbourfrontcentre.com/nextsteps/
Info: http://www.dancemakers.org
Created by Artistic Director Michael Trent in collaboration with the Dancemakers performers (Robert Abubo, Kate Hilliard, Kate Holden, Benjamin Kamino, Steeve Paquet), Dramaturge Jacob Zimmer and Associate Director Bonnie Kim. The music by Josh Thorpe uses 60 field recordings made by people involved with the company - each asked to record a place they like to sit for a minute.

very good things are happening

2009-02-04T12:53:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone-

There is a huge amount of great performance coming up. Like a shocking amount. Some of which I'm involved with and some not.
but I wanted to send a heads up to some of it.

The new show with Dancemakers is It's about time: 60 dances in 60 minutes.
It's really good. Actually and hugely. It is simple and big; fragile
and solid; magic and completely practical. It is so clear and makes so
much sense as a thing dance can do. Smart and brave with sections that
make me cry with laughter every time.
I am very proud to be part of it and hope you can come see what we've been doing.

It runs February 11 to 14 at 8pm.
with a 3pm performance on Saturday the 14th (great for those that are "Rhubarb! involved")
at the Enwave Theatre at Harbourfront Centre. Buy tickets here.
if you can't make any of those - there is an in-studio preview at our place in the Distillery on Saturday (Feb 7) at 7pm - seating is very limited though, so if it's your only option, email Caitlin now.

The thing I am most sad to be missing is Saturday February 7 – No Name Dance - Aimée Dawn Robinson doing improvised music and dance with guests Eric Chenaux, Jennifer Castle, Nick Fraser and Allison Cameron - 8:00pm at the Music Gallery
Very very good things.

But before that Rhubarb! starts and Bluemouth Inc is at Harbourfront and World Stage

The Bluemouth show - an interactive dance marathon has me very curious and looking forward to it.

Rhubarb! this year is absurd - I'm in a very busy period of time and yet am going to have to go back twice every week.
These are good problems to have. That being said I wanted to highlight a few shows (nothing against the others)

Read all about it after the jump.

Amos Latteier
does a great lecture demo - I saw him talk about ants in Halifax.
Smart, curious and interested in what the lecture can do, this is one of the things that I was surprised and delighted to see in Rhubarb!. History of Cages is in Week one at 8pm in the Chamber.

Chad Dembski (Wet Dream) and Evan Webber (Moon Mission 3) both have shows in Week two . Both artists I love (and work with) and think everyone should see the work.

Week three there is Ame Henderson and Public Recordings with /Dance/Songs/ and it's so lovely that it's back in Toronto.

There's also long time friend, collaborator and Haligonian art star Dustin Harvey and Another City Another Life
And Matija Ferlin is doing the Friday late night (10:30) with Sad Sam.
All worth braving the cold.
also very curious about THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS: PART ONE and LENI RIEFENSTAHL VS THE 20TH CENTURY and looking forward to, well, the entire program. And TALKING TO CHRIS DUPUIS.

A little further away is Dancemakers Presents: Antonija Livingstone – The Part. February 26, 27 and 28 at 8pm. I'm so happy this is coming to Toronto.

And of course end of March I have a show with Small Wooden Shoe at Buddies.

See I said it was absurd the amount of work. It's exciting and important and makes me happy.
hope to see you at some of it.
Jacob

oh, and I'm going to see the great folks at Praxis tonight
and there's a trampoline hall coming up. yeesh

Photo's from Ömer

2009-02-02T11:40:00.004-05:00

Ömer Yükseker takes great photos of our processes – a delight to have in the room, his images are important documentation of what we do.

Here are the most recent images from a run of It's about time

And some other great images of Dancemakers at work are here and here

And his whole gallery is worth checking out too.

Thanks Ömer.

More catching up

2009-02-02T11:09:00.005-05:00

Things have been busy and very good, and as a result, the minutes have been less constant. In the next week I'm going to re-dedicate myself to them - but shake it up a little by releasing the time (1pm) requirement.

I would have been more diligent if I had known an entire dance program would be watching – Hello Eastview Secondary School in Barrie, Ontario. Questions and thoughts are more than welcome.

Monday January 19 - Working out a one minute phrase.

One of things is, often, and importantly - that we work on something like this for quite a while - days of looking, at moving it around in the structure, and in the end (or at least as of right now) it no longer appears in the work. This ability and need of working things and being able to abandon them is so important if hard to do.

Here's an extra thirty seconds of them working on it

Wednesday January 21 - Working on the phrase
and my ability to make the camera focus.

Monday January 26 - Phrase again
By this point I think we were all starting to feel good about the show - but the phrase was still sticking out as not quite right.

Tuesday January 27 - What replaced the phrase.
We call it "Knee burn." This is the first morning of working it and is still in the show.

We now are into our residency week and so the lighting will begin to change. More soon.

On writing in and of rehearsal

2009-01-26T13:13:00.004-05:00

To make work is a slow building, a building that is simultaneously design (there are few blueprints) - and it's cumulative, but not in a tower way, but in the way we accumulate things for our house over the years.

This imperfect metaphor (mangled from Jonathan Burrows and Lorraine Daston) is then hard to write about.

It is messy, half unpacked - there are starting places but no known goal, no known outcome towards which to write - no end that can be used to organize a sequence.
All of which is right, since it is the way we all experience making the work. Writing should not be outside of that.

It is not magic or unspeakable, but it does contain so much unknown, so much fragility and not-yet-articulatable.

But now, as we move closer to performance, I begin to write in rehearsal. As the work is formed I am able to form sentences around it. Ideas come back over and over and language forms around them.

I'll be posting more of those snippets over the next 2 weeks.

Rest

It's about time - 1 minute from 60

2009-01-19T17:12:00.000-05:00

They do something for ten minutes, then again for two and half, then thirty, then ten again. This is from that, though with seconds instead of minutes

Minutes - Week of January 12th

2009-01-19T13:28:00.002-05:00

It is now, it feels getting close - we spent the week using the same structure, with more or less the same base vocabulary - we are into the details and the big ideas all at once. I was away Monday and missed Friday. Sorry. Sometimes I miss the time.

Minute 20 Tuesday January 13 - Notes and talking about how to "How to"

Tuesday January 13 Extra Minute 1 - Moments from the 10 minute base improvisation

Tuesday January 13 Extra Minute 2 - Moments from the 10 minute base improvisation

Minute 21 Wednesday January 14 - Waiting, setting up, talking about rehab

Minute 22 Thursday January 15 - Costume day.

Many minutes have passed - First week back

2009-01-15T12:04:00.005-05:00

So I am not a regular blogger...
But maybe these go better in bunches anyway.
The first week back was good - well rested and with some of the clarity that brings. By the end of the week we had defined some terms and had some common language that we could use to both talk and do.

Then I went to hang out with Tedd Robinson and his new puppy at his place outside of Ottawa. More on those conversations soon.

Now on to the minutes:

Minute 16 - January 5

January 6 Extra (pre-minute) Minute - Working out abbreviation

Minute 17 - January 6 - Talking about working out abbreviation

Minute 18 - January 7 - Looking at costumes, running out of memory

Minute 19 - January 8 - Talking about the spatial relationship of the sensitizations

Catching up - Minutes 12-15

2008-12-15T12:31:00.003-05:00

So I got a little behind the times. It was a busy week with Sasha's show and Thinking Out Loud (both of which went great) and general madness. So rather than clog your RSS feed, I'm putting some minutes together.

Minute 12 - December 9th
Michael Trent makes a guest appearance in an improvisation.

Minute 13 - December 10th
In an improvisation Kate Hilliard passed her cell phone to us - on it Robbie was reading a list.

Extra Minute Fifty-five from December 10th
We repeat a 15 minute improv in 10 minutes. We've begun playing with this structure - of doing an improv and then repeating it - once longer, once shorter. Find what this does to time - how we might understand that better through repetition.

There was no Minute 14. I blew it.Sorry, but I didn't want to lie.

Minute 15 - December 12
Still one of m favorite things to watch is them sensitizing themselves to a minute. A task that will most likely be part of the performance. The pop music during, less likely - though enjoyable.

Minute a Day #11

2008-12-09T16:08:00.002-05:00

"The most self-conscious minute we've ever made"

Discussing photo shoots. Which is always necessary and always a bit tricky - deciding how to represent a show long before it's open, long in fact before there is a "show." And those images can mean so much.

Minute a Day #10

2008-12-09T15:18:00.002-05:00

More talking, this time in smaller groups. Steeve, Kate Hilliard, Bonnie and I talking through the things we'd done so far in the process. In this 1:53 (yikes - I'm bad at judging time in conversation - though this is a trend we've notice, so I'm not alone) we're talking about the difficulty of bringing in dance vocabulary into improvisations that are largely pedestrian. For the record, my suggestion for "high lifts and barrel rolls" is because those are things Michael, well, hates.

Questions to think out loud about

2008-12-08T11:57:00.003-05:00

Leading up to Dancemakers Presents: The future memory heartbreak junction, a blackandblue dance projects world premiere, choreographed and performed by Sasha Ivanochko (December 11-13)

– I’ve got a few questions about habits or doing things over and over.

I’m curious about the way we think about habits – and how that might be different in different areas of our lives.

I’m also curious about the relationship between habits and repetition and if there’s a difference between what we call “habits” and what we do over and over,

So, trying to turn those into clearer questions (though feel free to speak to the general curiosities):

Do you find yourself trying to build habits or trying to break them?

How do you (or do you) tell the difference between being in a rut and useful repetition?

I would still love to hear also from people who work in other fields – that maybe don't make "art" but do all the other interesting and important things.

Thinking Out Loud happens before the first Friday performance at Dancemakers (which means one is coming this Friday – November 12th.)

Thinking out loud usually starts with me talking for a couple of minutes about historical contexts and other people’s thoughts on the question, and I want to have some ideas from our more immediate surroundings. And have it start from conversation.

By way of extra incentive (beyond participating in lively discussion - it's own reward), anyone who answers (with a little more then "yes" or "no") can get the reduced ticket price for Dancemakers Presents: The future memory heartbreak junction, (December 11-13)

See the answers from the last time we did this.

Minute a Day #9

2008-12-05T10:29:00.002-05:00

So in this show about time - I seem to be having time management issues. So these have been off. But more soon.

Minute a Day #8

2008-12-04T13:55:00.001-05:00

Re: A Question about making things

2008-12-03T14:54:00.007-05:00

Before the Thinking Out Loud for Bloodletting and Other Pleasant Things, I sent out an email asking a question about making things and how people thought about it.

I got some really amazing and thoughtful responses. So much so that this is going to be part of the format for Thinking Out Loud now.

And so much so that I really wanted to share the responses. And so despite break all the blog post length laws (I thought the internet was good because we had no word counts) - many of the responses are below. I haven't edited them (except to take out personal corrispondence, since I am fond of them as emails, sent at various times in various conditions.

Clicking on the persons name will take you to their response. Clicking on "top" will bring you here.

The question, Claudia Fancello, Sasha Kovacs, Tasha Auls, Cathy Gordon. Stacy Hannah, Evan Webber, Megan Andrews, Alex McLean, George Stamos, Josh Thorpe, Ian MacKenzie, Claire Pfeiffer

A question for you about making stuff

I have a question (it might be more than one):

When you make something (whatever you make) - are you thinking out something that impacts other aspects of your life?

or another way, are you using that activity to work on personal, social, political or other understandings of the world?

and when you are seeing or using something someone else has made, do you think about what they might have been working on or thinking about when they made it?

All of this is because we've been doing these pre-show conversations called Thinking Out Loud before the first Friday performance at Dancemakers (which means one is coming tomorrow at 7. And by tomorrow I mean Friday October 24th.)

And Tony Chong and I have been talking about the relationship between what we do (which happens to be making performances) and what we think about on a day to day basis. We talked about the many forms that can take and also about the times where it's not so clearly true.

And while it is a question that can get very big or seem too easy, I'm really curious about the very practical, day-to-day manifestations of the relationship what we think about and what we make.

Also I would love to hear also from people who work in other fields and produce things that maybe don't make "art" but make other interesting and important things.

thanks very much

jacob

Claudia Fancello – Public Recordings | PME-Art

hi Jacob

just in the thick of a new creation
one thing i have been thinking about is how my perspective changes so drastically during creation.
how life seems to make more sense (maybe that`s why i am so addicted to the creative process)

all is perceived differently
i walk down the street and notice interractions that i would might not notice
for instance, coming out of ame`s last little process with all that interviewing, i seemed to notice everytime i asked someone a question. what kind of information was i interested in receiving

the power dynamics between asking questions and answering them
at the moment with pme, we are deep in discussion on individualism vs. collectivity

i look for stories, theories everywhere

pick up inspiration from small conversations with my coffee guy, with friends, what i read, what i listen to.

connectivity to the practice and the everyday is what i live for.
big ups to you, signor
will be seeing you sooner than later
c

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Sasha Kovacs

When you make something? Are you thinking out something that impacts other parts of your life?
It’s mostly a process that includes f thinking about my family, and thinking about how language plays such a vital role within that unit. I went back to school to do my master’s this year to make new thoughts. To try to make, or perhaps more accurately ‘propose’ more ideas; To try to talk back to those ideas more, and also collide with ideas in a room. And I think that process of ‘making’- and specifically the venue for my making (the university) has been influenced by a desire to legitimize my inability to effectively communicate within the language of the people I love, and to propose some sort of alternative.

My father speaks 4 languages and a very broken English. I speak just English. I think when I make things I contemplate this anxiety. My inability to communicate with my father extends into what I write about, what I continue to be interested in- translation. So more and more perhaps what I make, all of my writing, speaks to a desire to think about the impact that my limited knowledge of language has in communication with the people who are most important to me. And I guess I think about that because as a first generation Canadian who attended an education system that very effectively assimilated me into anglo-white Canadian culture, I have never been able to communicate with my own father in a language he understands. And it has always affected our relationship. And it makes me think about blood, and if words have the power to beat it. And if in fact they do, if we ought to treat them with more rigorous attention.

And I guess this very thing explains why I want to make theatre. Because more and more it seems that something more comprehensible- something more ‘universal’(that’s not right but I can’t find the alternative word) lives in the body- can’t exist just on the paper or in casual conversation- but has to happen alive in motion, and depends on the knowledge of someone else being there. So when I make words, when I construct sentences, when I talk about ideas, lately more and more I want to have the time to develop and translate them into more physical phrases. That’s why increasingly what I make, what I want to make, has to do with the body- because that is something that maybe my father can understand. Because don’t we all seem to have an acute kinesthetic sense? And as I write this on his 77th birthday I feel an immediacy- I’d like for him to understand what I do.

And that insistence on the body as a site for clarity in understanding, in communicating, relates to sport- to what I teach people to make in golf. For a long time I played competitive golf as a child and teen. I finally picked up my own sticks again this summer after a 5 year hiatus. I considered 4 hours of walking in solitude to intensely contemplate form an immense opportunity. I stopped teaching, and just wanted to play again. As a young adult, I read a lot about golf in an attempt to really master it. When I play now, I have internalized that form so much so that I can finally focus on the target. I never think about the ball, I only focus on where it is going. So surprisingly, it finally goes there. There is a freedom in the development of that perspective that has greatly affected my performance in this sport, so much so that my handicap has never been lower. I remember times when directing or performing that this very same maturity (I think I’ll call it that) reared its head. It’s not about hitting the ball, it’s about sending it somewhere else. What or who that target is, I think for theatre artists, is really up to negotiation- I’d like to think it’s the audience, but it might be an idea, an image, a politic; really so many things, I think, that are equally legitimate. No, important.

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Tasha Auls – Her webiste

These are good and interesting questions.
Yes - what i make always impacts other aspects of my life - and vice versa. Mostly this has to do with how making things requires you to think about things in a different way so that you can make the damn thing that keeps eluding you in the first place.

Making is both the compass giving direction -straight into the unknown hinterland of the meeting place where imagination meets the material world.

(As you can see, i am a romantic at heart.)

The problem with making things is that it feels so selfish - in my case, the things i make, paintings - have so small an impact. They reach so few people, and even when they are seen they may not "do" very much.

I am currently painting portraits. Of my collegues, who graciously come for a tea and a sit down in my studio. This is in the time they are there - about relationships -between myself and the model. But when I work on the painting when they are no longer present - the work and the making of the work moves of into a different set of relationship between myself, paint, and thinking about images that have had an impact on me.

The spending time together in painting - we are engaging in a slightly different way then in the other times of our lives. It feels like a special timeless time together. I think that the model may get something out of this as much as I do, so perhaps here i have finally found a way to make art while really taking someone else into consideration.

Sadly, I do not often think of what other people were thinking of when they made the things/tools that i use in every day life.

But I do get curious about what motivated the people i know to make what they make (or why they choose not to make), and i do get very exited and curious about people who make things that are especially innovative, or delicious to eat, or when people

And I am curious: What happens when you start thinking of those unknown and faceless people who have made every single thing that you use on a day to day basis. Would you feel gratitude, a kind of empathy, would you feel guilty about the life you live based on other people making things in shitty conditions for even shittier pay?

Would you take care of that thing better - out of respect for the maker?
Would you need to buy less and have the urge to make more?

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Cathy Gordon – her website

When you make something (whatever you make) - are you thinking out something that impacts other aspects of your life?

Yes and no. "Thinking out" implies a mental starting point when in my case, most of what I make begins from an intuitive place -- a place that indeed wants to impact other aspect of my life for the better. Our bodies know better than our minds how to heal - or to use another term - return to a complete state.

And yes, I use art as one my tools for personal growth which I believe is an ongoing process throughout our lives. Another word for "personal growth" is transformation. And I think that good art includes transformation. And in return the sharing of this transformation -- or the witnessing of transformation -- is many times itself transforming -- be it the first time I saw a caterpillar become a butterfly or I saw Danny Darko.

And in the most basic simple terms - my healing is my real way of healing the world. As I am able to deal more and more with the issues of my sister's suicide, I know I will have more and more energy to help others deal with the same kinds of things. This happens all the time. Some loses a leg or loses a loved one and then they suddenly have more energy than ever before in their lives to give back.

or another way, are you using that activity to work on personal, social, political or other understandings of the world?

yes.
it is an old writing saying that "the more personal you get, the more universal the story becomes" -- and that has been my own experience.

when I am not honest about my own relationship to the work, then that work is going to suffer. something can be 100% fluff but still great as long as I am honest with myself and the audience about it. I mean, fluff some pretty deep issues can addressed -- & I could use Cute With Chris as an example of that.

Since everything we do has political implications it is up to us whether or not we want to delve deeper into that aspect or not. As long as the motivation is clear to yourself (myself) and it is true to what I need to do or say then the message will be heard. But, personally, if I try to "be political" or have a "political agenda" that won't work. It will come across as contrived since politics is not my true passion. When I put the things that matter to me first then the implicit political nature becomes clear without any effort on my part to make it obvious (e.g. the crawl)
and when you are seeing or using something someone else has made, do you think about what they might have been working on or thinking about when they made it?

yes
context and motivation are essential components to understanding
let's use the documentary Sharkwater for example. Many elements of that doc are really hoaky. He does not have a very good narrative voice. However -- his motivation for doing that work is 100% sincere + the context is very real = the planet is dying, if we kill all the sharks, the oceans will be fucked and we will die.... it makes the doc a lot more compelling than if this happened 50 years ago & Jacques Costeau said the exact same thing -- only then, we didn't understand that the planet was really dying under our feet.

When I see visual art, it is usually very helpful to to have context & motivation.
For example, at MOCCA - the mural outside is from the CONTACT photo exhibition
(the original photo was inside). The photo has immediate drama because it's of a factory being demolished... there is the tension created by the crowd watching.. who are they? oh, they are past employees... oh this man has a Kodak shirt on... oh this is a digital photograph of the demise of Kodac film made obsolete by digital film which is now recording this particular moment in photography history. At first glance I only see the surface drama but something within that compels me to look closer to discover the context and motivation -- at which point the narrative is revealed. I become transformed. Before then, I never thought or felt too much about the machinations of photography - only the subjects within the photos -- but now, when the subject is about industry itself, it becomes symbolic of something even more grand then that. I am now aware on visceral level that industries are dying as we as a society transform into something else... something has to die for something else to live... in ourselves, in our world.

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Stacy Hannah

Good question(s).
Always.
When I make things it isn't currently for public consumption. But what I am aware of, is the curiosity I have is what shapes my understanding of myself. This forms my world, and to a larger extent, what I am comfortable putting in it - from private to public.

I do weird things that satisfy my own love of making small worlds. And if the idea moves from thought to some kind of realization, I must have really needed to see the thing in a more tangible way to get it out of my head. Making stuff does act like an internal barometer, moving me from place to place, answers to questions and back again. When something is much more involved it begins to take a shape outside of just me, and now I am more open to what my perceptions do in a wider sense. Perhaps politically, although admittedly rarely. Usually in the context of some type of conversation. The hypothetical "what if....."

I have always felt that all of those pools we dip in, political, social, and personal, are very small pools indeed; regardless of how far we swim out. The overlap is actually far more interesting.
If I were to use something made by another, I feel it is a good idea to ask why I am using it, and am I actually enriching the original, or just usurping good ideas from elsewhere. I do wonder about thoughts behind the original conception, that knowledge can push or guide the focus of work and conversation. It's the same as history informing the future. You just can't escape it.
I believe anything we make impacts other aspects of our lives. If you think enough of something to put it out for all and sundry, then you are aware that you need to be prepared for what comes back. A seesaw of perspective.

Making things is a way of taking something out of me to a space where I can just look at it. Hopefully not make it more or less, just understand it better. And unlike some conversations, creation can be durable, you may change how you feel about it, it may loose relevance, it may just become one hell of a pain in the ass. But; there it is, with all the baggage it does or does not deserve.

I like these questions though, they endure because they have a classic applicability over time. I wonder what you will sift out from the responses. I wonder if you'll come up with some form of an answer for yourself. And I do wonder if that answer will become different in the coming months. It is the start of winter. No fucking shortage of time to think sitting in the deep freeze.

S.

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Evan Webber – Time and Space Magazine

When I'm making something, it's sort of like making a model of the world, so that I can get a sense of how certain particulars work on me and on the other participants or creators. This sounds like faux-science, but I think it's functional and useful when the focus remains squarely on the an examination of qualities of being - questions suitable to performance and writing, I think - as opposed to, say, figuring out what type of bridge is best for frieght trains, or whatever. So yes, I'm trying to figure out how to exist in the world by examining different elements of reality. I try to do that as much as possible, to be a concious person - the art is a way of sharing this reflection on being, a kind of report on reality - always useful to me, and possibly to others.
Things that are questionable, inconsistent, beautiful or strange - things that inconsistent with my understanding or aspirations of reality go into, and begin the process of the making the things I make, or help other people make them. But I think that if I were a dentist or auto mechanic I'd feel the same way.

When I see another piece of art or design or public policy, the first question is: Is this explaining or feeding into my understanding of reality? To the degree that it is, I might consider it truthful, or if it's a new reflecion, challenging. If it's both, it becomes something essential - and I'm essential to it because my opinion could be said to bear on its adoption. If I just recognize my own questions without seeing a new proposal, I sometimes feel less alone, but sometimes I feel more alone, because I see my own delusions exposed, and I feel part of a community of suckers.

If something feels under-considered however, it makes me mad or sad, in that I think it's doing something bad to the world and I want it to go away. I'm often afraid of art for this reason, and I want to stay home, even though the potential for failure is an essential environmental factor.

Hope it's a good talk.

EW

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Megan Andrews - The Dance Current

Hi Jacob:

I'm hoping to come to the show tomorrow so I'll miss your talk tonight. If things can shift, I'll try to come out tonight but not sure yet.

In terms of your questions, yes, when I'm making something I definitely think about how it impacts other aspects of my life. In fact, everything I do seems so completely interwoven, each affecting the other, including my own personal actions and interactions on a social, interpersonal level.

I feel like you're asking a number of things so here's another way to say this: Yes, my makings, whatever they happen to be, from the curating/editing of the magazine to my own writing, to dancing, to teaching, to personal creative projects that are not public, are all ways of thinking through questions I have about the world, my place in it, my relationships with others in the world. Sometimes, I get tangled up in the thinking through and then reflecting on, and I feel like I need a "cleansing of the palette" somehow.

That leads me to other people's makings, which often provide this for me, or perhaps not necessarily a cleansing but they enable/offer/inspire shifts of perspective, new angles on old topics, old angles on new topics... and so, to answer your final question, yes, I do consider what other makers might have been working on and working out in their makings also.
So, there you have it. Good stuff to ponder.

Best on the talk if I'm not there.
Cheers.
Megan

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Alex McLean – Zuppa Circus

Hey Jacob,
I think this is an interesting question and my answer is, indeed: yes, yes and yes. I find it impossible to think about more than one thing at once, so what I end up doing is shifting the focus of my thought regularly. I think about one thing for a while (sometimes only minutes) and then, in a flash, switch streams to something else.

I tend to start and end with the personal, I think, though I can't be certain because of its connection to social and political understandings of the world. But it is the case that the things I see as I walk to work, the things I've read, encounters I have had with people, inevitably influence decisions I make in the rehearsal hall. More and more, my understanding of shows I work on is influenced by things that happen in my non-work hours.

I have only recently realized (as I think we spoke about a few months ago) that I believe in the notion of "drama" as a force of good in the world. For me the term encompasses a greater amount of artistic activity than it does for many, I think, but I am intrigued by the traditions that precede me. I wonder what others thought about on nights like this and what events -- large and small -- affected their acts. I wonder about the effect of my daily tinkering on the communities around me and its impact on a broader cultural discussion. Generally, I don't know quite where I fit, and I think the shows I work on carry at least a trace of that unease.

Cheers,
Alex

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George Stamos

Hi Jacob.
In reading your questions, I questioned the separation of the personal from the universal?
Personal, social, political or understandings of the world are all things that impact the many aspects of life?

I point this out because it is the focus on the interconnectedness of things that is my reply to your overall question.

I think we sometimes have far too 'set in stone' concepts about what is normal, bizarre, personal or all encompassing.

The brain I am told, does not work like a filing cabinet. Its more like an imense spider web with shooting currants following intricate and sometimes indirect pathways in this mega web.
Because I see my art making as mining and mapping the brains in the room and "the brain of the piece that becomes its own thing with its own logic" its helpful and freeing for me to realize this web-brain idea.

Maybe that feeds the conversation somehow??
George

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Josh Thorpe

That's a very complicated question! My short answer would be....
Yes and no.

Making a mark is making a mark. A smudge of colour is a smudge of colour.

Ethical, political, psychological, epistemological, and ontological interests run parallel to the making of the work. They live not in the material itself, but in the socialized constellation of moments in which the material is apprehended. These moments can precede, coincide with, and follow the working and the work itself. The best part of a work is sharing it.
Of course there are other ways that occur to me to answer this question.

Like: Making art is like buying books.

Best,
Josh

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Ian MacKenzie – Theatre is Territory

hi Jacob,
Good questions.
Your questions, then my answers.

1) When you make something (whatever you make) - are you thinking out something that impacts other aspects of your life?

Ideally, yes. I work on a broad range of creative projects in a relatively broad range of media, from writing Honda ads, to ad campaign development, to op/ed writing, to photography, to original musical recordings . . . etc. Whatever I'm doing, the best work seems to be the work that most cleanly relates back to other parts of my life or my work, or that in some way most eloquently captures and expresses some of the beauty in the major or minor events of my world. The adage "Write what you know" grows truer for me as I grow as a writer.

The topic of my Grandmother, for example, has come up a lot lately in improv music sessions. It surprises me. Shouldn't I be writing about the alienation of urbanity or covering some other such street-credible territory? No, it seems. I should be writing about my grandmother because that's obviously what's on my mind right now.

2) Are you using that activity to work on personal, social, political or other understandings of the world?

Yes. And I think that's exactly what draws me to art making of all kinds. I don't trust that I will ever fully understand my life or the world around it through science, or academia, or religion, or journalism - but I have a sense that my best bet for really "knowing" is through art. It's what makes me know I'm an artist: I have faith in the power of art to communicate truth.

3) When you are seeing or using something someone else has made, do you think about what they might have been working on or thinking about when they made it?

Sometimes. I mean what were the artists in One Reed's "(never underestimate) The Power" at this Year's SummerWorks working through? I raise that example because on one hand that piece was so full of local signifiers that I almost felt the piece was about me, my world. And it was in a way. And I imagine the artists were drawing on their experience of a similar world to mine (psychogeographically speaking, anyway). But on the other hand, it played like a fiction . . . so what are they working on up there? What are they trying to say? I wonder - and it felt true to me. But I'm not able to put my finger on exactly what.

The short answer to this question is that while I do wonder, it's highly speculative to think that I have anything more than the vaguest clue about what the motivation is behind their work.
Hope this helps.

Thanks,
Ian

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Claire Pfeiffer

Hi Jacob,
Making things by hand is very important to me, and of course plays an important part in my ethics. I make clothing and other sewn and knitted objects. When I make the things I make, I am always thinking about, in a nutshell:

• My dreams and inspiration
• The meaning of work and practice
• The environmental processes of materials manufacturing
• Industrialization and its effects on our society
• Armageddon and whether or not I will get through it by using my tailoring skills

I am a first-generation urbanite and know-how is very important in my family. The qualitative differences between know-how and information is always at the top of my mind when I am making things.

Making things takes time--more time than it would to buy the same things. Through spending time making things I am practicing patience, which is something that I try and extend throughout the rest of my existence.
Hope that makes sense.

Claire

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Minute a Day #7

2008-12-03T12:16:00.003-05:00

From 26 convergences last week we picked 13 to work on and develop. Not with a set goal yet of how or if they will appear (will they be recognizable_, but because we need some material to work with. Some things to do in time.

This is much like a writing process that way - editing, re-writing and shaping is where the "thing", the work emerges - and so it seems might choreography.

Not sure why the picture is fuzzy.

Video: Converging - "Can't get no..."

2008-12-02T09:17:00.002-05:00

Here are four videos towards a convergence last Friday. Yesterday it was named "Can't get no..." since some people found it less satisfying as a phrase - but I think the process is worth seeing. Videos after the jump.

1

2

3

4

Minute a Day #6

2008-12-01T17:52:00.004-05:00

Monday's minute - remembering the end results of last week convergances towards some shared vocabulary.

oh, and 1:03... when watching it seems easier to "feel" time then in conversation - this seems right, distraction is, well, distracting.

Minute a Day #5

2008-11-30T11:14:00.002-05:00

Once again 1pm finds us talking. It was a week of talking and doing, foing and talking. And talking through some tricky things that are the core of how we all make choices - and sometime that can get a little tense.

My reaction here is more abrupt then I might like it - but it speaks to something that I want write about. I think many arts forms - and maybe especially dance with the focus on the body - are prone to unconsidered uses of words like "natural" and "organic" and too broad ideas about interesting.

More on it soon - thoughts welcome.

Weekend Minutes - Someone else's video of people dancing and not dancing

2008-11-29T15:36:00.002-05:00

Friday's minutes will be up Monday, but I wanted to post another video which is, right now, my favorite thing. Thanks Margaux for making it and to the kids for dancing and the band for singing.

Extra Minute re:minute #4

2008-11-27T18:08:00.004-05:00

This is an example of the process that is being discussed in Minute #4. The two dancers start with their own movement and move towards an agreement. Something neither would have come up with on their own.

Thanks to Misha - this is an activity inspired by some of the voice work he did with us a few weeks back.

Apparently I'm better at the minute while watching people improvise.

Minute a Day #4

2008-11-27T18:00:00.003-05:00

There is a lot of conversation in the making of work. A lot of time spent trying to clarify what we're doing and what we respond to.

Apparently I'm less good at judging a minute when there's a conversation that I have to follow.

Minute a Day #3

2008-11-27T10:56:00.003-05:00

Listening to a field recording.

What does it take to fill a minute?
I feel, in making these little videos, that question as very present. I notice the temptation to make it a "good" minute - to make it exciting or interesting - and all of those thoughts bringing my own judgements and assumptions to the foreground.

But instead I try and stay on task - when my watch hits 1pm, I record what I think is a minute. Whatever happens in that minute goes here. It clearly fills a minute - since, you know, it did.

Some minutes are better than others only if we agree on what "better" means. This seems true. But also seems to slither out of questions of context and focus. Still thinkings - your thought more than welcome.

As are actually, your minutes. If you want to play along, I'd happily post them here. Maybe our minutes can be seen best in the relation to each others.

A Minute a Day 2 (a MaD)

2008-11-25T17:35:00.003-05:00

Second minute. Working on a divided minute. Each performer doing 12 sec of the minute, but silently with eyes closed, so their cuing is personal. It ends up being the last person who is responsible for the minute - but the gaps and overlaps produce an awareness of the different perceptions of time.

oh, and I'm pretty happy with my 1:07 minute, since I'm not counting. We'll see if I get better.

A Minute a Day 1 (a MaD)

2008-11-24T16:49:00.003-05:00

While in rehearsal for 60 dances in 60 Minutes (working title), we will record 1 minute of rehearsal at 1pm (more or less). The minute will be variable. No watches or timers allowed. I start the camera, and stop when I think a minute is gone by.

Today is the first.

We have been trying to both train and disrupt our sense of a minute. Many tasks that end when the performer thinks a minute has passed. Today at 1pm we were in the middle of doing laps at different intervals and agreeing when a minute passed.

Maybe tomorrow I will use the high quality setting on the camera (we are just using a still digital.)

Jacob Wren, World Stage, Letters of Nomination

2008-11-18T08:50:00.009-05:00

Jacob Wren (who did a Dancemakers Lab last year) and PME (including Double Bill #1 costume designer and stunning performer Claudia Fancello) are in town.

Their newest work, Hospitality 3: How Individualism was a Mistake opens tomorrow (Wednesday the 19th) at Harbourfront as part of World Stage.

Please see this work – Wren and PME are working so clearly and precisely on the state of the world and the state of performance.

I do want to say so much about this, it means such a great deal to me that this work exists and is supported (Thank you Harbourfront.)

Below is most of the letter I wrote a couple of years ago to nominate Jacob for the Siminovitch award for directing. It is a letter of nomination, so it is pretty one sided. But maybe that's ok right now.

-----

Something uncommon is going to happen. Something is different from the moment I enter the room – this is a different theatre. Beyond the careful, if cluttered, placement of daily objects, there is a feeling in the air – a stillness and depth that prompts me to care for my fellow audience members even as I take my seat. I am, before the beginning, at a kind of peace. A peace that is also excitement and expectation.

Something uncommon is going to happen. The performers enter or make themselves known – and they seem to share this peace/excitement. They are engaged in remarkable yet simple dialogues and situations. They play music and sometimes dance. They perform tasks that are gentle or sharp, but always possessed with a radical beauty in their humanity. There is laughter, both onstage and in the house – and it is honest, un-coerced laughter.

Something uncommon is going to happen. What is being talked about matters. To me, to them. They are talking about families or about the difficulty of talking or about the future. They are talking as if what they say might cause change in themselves and in us. All with a sublime casualness that draws me towards them as they ask us, the audience, to be with them. To risk changing with them.

Something uncommon is going to happen. A space is created. A space in which theatre matters. In which the way we (artists, audience) come together is consequent. Consequent not just in the moment of watching or doing, but also in the history of ideas and culture.

It is due to his dedication to this uncommon space and his ability to create it that I write to nominate Jacob Wren for the Siminovitch Award for directing.

For 17 years, Jacob Wren has put forth uncompromising and deeply considered productions that have been performed across Canada, in the USA, Asia, Australia and toured extensively in Europe. Beginning with his work with Candid Stammer, a company he founded in 1988 in Toronto, through his current work with PME, STO Union and others, Wren’s work has operated as an antidote to the status quo. Bold and decisive in both approach and material, his productions stand as beacons of contemporary Canadian performance.

With En français comme en anglais, it's easy to criticize in 1998, Wren entered a new stage in his work. Working within the French, Montreal-based theatre company PME for the first time he created a bilingual performance that addressed, in form and content, the problems of translation and language. Wren does not speak or understand French. The decision to create and direct work in languages he doesn’t understand [...] should be seen as part of continued dedication to challenging himself and the theatre he works in to ask fundamental questions about meaning and freedom. Concerned with the autonomy of both the performer and audience from the coercion of the director/author, Wren seeks out strategies to disrupt and distance his own authority in his work. Continually searching for a way to be in the world that is more humane, his work is as invested and rigorous with its ethics as its aesthetic. It invites us to imagine a better world, a more truly democratic way of organizing ourselves. A world where people, languages and cultures stand beside each other in mutual struggle for something more. Wren’s work could be, to paraphrase Foucault on Deleuze – a primer for anti-fascist living.
[...]
Look through the archives of Toronto’s vibrant independent theatre scene of the early nineties and Wren is there [...] With collaborators including Nadia Ross, Tracy Wright, Daniel Brooks, Darren O’Donnell and Paul Bettis, Wren helped define emergent and vital performance at the Theatre Centre, Buddies in Bad Times and Theatre Passe Muraille. While the conservatism of the Harris years scattered some of the energies of the time, Wren is part of an important legacy and through-line that can be seen in Toronto in the current work of O’Donnell and Brooks, younger artists such as Emergency Exit, Erika Hennebury, Ame Henderson, Chad Dembski and myself as well as the continued influence and importance of the Theatre Centre, Rhubarb! Festival and other theatres Wren worked with.

Wren’s impact in Montreal and Quebec, where he has been solely based for the last five years, has been equally important. The casual style of performance and the relational aesthetics brought in a radical way by Wren to Quebec as early as 1996 has influenced many young artists in dance (working around Tangente and Studio 303), theatre, as well as collectives run by mid-career artists. Artists he has collaborated with and supported include Martin Bélanger, Chanti Wadge, Le Théâtre du Grand Jour and Système Kangourou to name just a few.

For emerging performance makers, Wren represents an alternative path – offering the potential of a life in art and the theatre that is principled and possible (if at times difficult.) His continuing growth and desire to challenge and destabilize himself before all else is an inspiration and call to duty for all artists.

While working with PME, Jacob has continued to make work with Nadia Ross and STO Union, to create performance projects with new collaborators and to write about art for C Magazine and others. His connection and concern for visual art and music serves as an important bridge between contemporary practices in those forms and theatre - a bridge too often ignored. It stands as testament to his belief that theatre must hold a place in the development of arts and culture in the broadest sense.

Wren’s vision transcends what a play might look like to encompass what a theatre might look like and reflects a deep inquiry into what a society might look like. It is a unique and important vision that I believe deserves our full support and celebration as it continues to create uncommon theatre that matters.

Conversation = collaboration

2008-11-10T10:34:00.002-05:00

I've been reading and thinking about collaboration for a long time, and recently have been interested in how other areas articulate aspects of collaboration, specifically people who organize meetings and facilitate conversations.

While sometimes I am nervous about a level of corporate speak, or things wander to far into "fuzzy warm feeling places" for my taste, often there is a refreshing practicality and a removal of some of the mysticism ("the unspeakable creative force") that some in the arts can bring to the discussion.

And today this appeared in my feed:
"guidelines for dialogue" from facilitator Judy Brown by way of the Artful Manager:

Speak from the heart and the moment, and from your own experience; listen from the community, from the collective;
Listen without thinking about responding;
Listen for information, not confirmation;
Begin thinking in terms of "I wonder..." or "Where I am on this issue now is...;"
Allow for silence; it may mean people are thinking, considering;
Suspend assumptions and consider alternatives ones that might be just as useful;
Assume that the ideas and observations of others come from a desire to contribute;
Expect that ideas build upon each other even if they don't link logically one to the other;
Remember that difference of opinion can be helpful, because it sharpens our understanding;
Move away from conclusions and toward observations; notice what you are noticing, and what meaning you are making of it;
Sometimes in communication, less is better, and slowly is fine.
from Learning Organizations: Developing Cultures for Tomorrow's Workplace, essay entitled ''Dialogue: Capacities and Stories" by Judy Brown.

And Misha starts today – which is very exciting and a pretty great way to think about how people work together.

Making the Muck Matter

2008-11-06T17:49:00.004-05:00

On the always worth thinking about Vancouver theatre blog The Next Stage there has been a discussion of the need for better marketing and articulation in contemporary/indie theatre. Most recently in a link to another blog on artists unwilling to be involved in the "muck" of marketing / networking - getting out the vote as it were.

And maybe a day of talking and thinking about my Animateur work, but I rambled in response and thought I should cross post.

For me the "muck" is the struggle to articulate and make clear what we do and why we do it - how to connect that with all the publics that it might connect with.

It's not about making/showing work you don't like (since then you are lying when you say "come see the show, it's great" and nobody likes a liar.)

but about working hard on finding ways to share why you like the work and therefore what other people might like about it.

If I want people to understand why the art is important, Step One will always be: make sure the art is important.

Step Two and forward is the other muck (there is also muck in making important work) – trying to let people know about it. Trying to excite people to come despite all the other things to do, despite all the bad and unimportant art they've seen, despite the cost of ticket, despite all the difficulty and disappointment is hard. It's impossible if I don't believe what I'm saying.

We are not that special or select, what excites us, will excite others.

And maybe not the same others that have bought season tickets at the road house regional for the past 50 years.

So that is the work behind the rhetoric of new audiences.
The work behind being passionate about why something matters (always making sure it does matter.)

And yes, there is something off with the balance when we work very hard to make something that matters and don't have the time / energy / tactics to articulate what matters about it.

Just as there is something deeply out of balance when there is much work and much money put into to convincing people that something matters, when, actually, it doesn't. This is too common, and makes it harder to do the first thing, since all the language has been co-opted.

So yes, how do we find the language for the audiences for our work? I've been trying to start with talking about what is exciting to me, since excitement is contagious.

On how not to not improvise.

2008-10-30T14:02:00.004-04:00

The thing about Misha Gloubermans improv workshops is that they seem to get around so many problems with improvisation.

In the Viewpoints workshop Michael and I ran last year, we had a lot of discussions about some of the common traps of group improv – the slow build to big final climax, the dominance of rhythm, the difficulty of following or coming to agreement about complex things, trying (unsuccessfully or too hard) to avoid personal habits. I think a lot about Aimée Dawn Robinson asking for "more middle" in improv.

In Misha's workshops (I took one last year at Array Music) we make noise. Mostly with our mouths. The noises are not expert noises (these are not "voice" or "how to make better noises" workshops) they are noises anyone can make. Misha says this is so that there is no need for expertise in an instrument or form.

He also (rightly I think) says that many times, when we are learning "improvisation" we are actually learning the form (eg Viewpoints teaches ways of making performance) and with the noises we are working on improvisation - on how we make choices, when we step forward, when we follow, how a group comes (or doesn't) to togetherness and how it moves apart.

And in the apparent absurdity of making all these noises and going through the forms Misha lays out, I learned some very real and useful things about improvisation and performance. And not only in the "understanding in my head" way of learning, but also the "we actually did that" way.

After the workshop, which was attended by mostly people who don't perform, I began wondering about one of these workshops at Dancemakers. About what the performers and our guests could learn, and what would it be like if it was a week of afternoons.

Luckily Misha and Michael joined in that wondering, and so now we're a week and a bit from it happening.

And I'm really looking forward to it. Hope to see some of you there.

Click here for details and registration.

And in these places for videos of previous Terrible Noises for Beautiful People editions:

Cobra Edition
Nuit Blanche Edition
Birthday Party Edition

Which might be nothing like the Dancemakers one - but are good watching.

Bloodletting and Dancemakers on interweb

2008-10-30T12:13:00.001-04:00

Bloodletting YouTube Video Preview

Graceful as the Online Chat Room
National Post : Review by Michael Crabb

Following anger's dangerous path
Globe and Mail : Review by Paula Citron

Bloodletting and Other Pleasant Things
Now Weekly : Review by Glenn Sumi

No bloodletting, but dancers evoke emotions of fear and anger
Toronto Star : Review by Susan Walker

Bloodletting and Other Pleasant Things
BlogTO Review by Matthew Hayles

Toronto Theatre – Defining the Landscape
Theatre is Territory post by MK Piatkowski with Dancemakers mention.

Program Notes for Bloodletting and Other Pleasant Things

2008-10-23T16:46:00.002-04:00

A Quick Note on Notes
As an audience member, I have a complicated relationship with program notes.

I want to like them. But sometimes it’s hard. I want them to tell me some things but not others – to open doors, but allow for the space of personal interpretation that I so treasure in contemporary art. I want some context for the work I’m about to see or just saw (sometimes I like to leave the reading until after), some sense of how we all arrived here and maybe some things to think about in relation to my experience.

These notes are curiosities that have been brought up through working with Tony, Bonnie and the performers on Bloodletting and Other Pleasant Things.

I hope that these notes might be useful to you – but please, don’t feel obligated. You are more than qualified to write your own.

Any thoughts on the notes or the work are more than welcome – jacob@dancemakers.org
I hope you enjoy your evening.
– Jacob

Bloodletting and Other Pleasant Things
Tony told me he had questions about anger, about how it was expressed and where it came from. I also had questions about it. Or rather assumptions. A bias, not about feeling anger, but certainly against many ways of expressing it. Questions about how anger is contagious, about where it comes from and whether it was an aggressive cover for other, less sure, less absolute, emotions.

As is usually the case, working on a performance has changed my questions. Not answered, but shifted, complicated and challenged them.

Common Expression
Right now, there are two common expressions of anger that stand out for me.

The first is that anger (and other emotions) are experienced as living things inside of us, specifically as seeds. “Plant a seed of anger” “seeds of doubt” and so on. That emotions, especially the less pleasant ones, are present but small, ready for the conditions to arise. They are sowed, planted, they are watered, grown and harvested.

What strikes me about this metaphor is the way it deals with the even more common notions that anger and aggression is “just human nature” and “we all have a dark side.”

This idea (and most that begin with “we all”) has always been a bit of a problem for me. Often used to justify bad behavior or the continuation of ways of life and policies that need changing, “human nature” is so often used as a free pass. When something is turned into a universal truth we can’t make change.

The seed story complicates that universalism some. It acknowledges potential, but also the impact of external conditions, of conscious and therefore changeable decisions and choices made by the individual and those around her.

The second is that the language we use for anger is so often visceral, painful, and well, about the body.
Our blood boils, we are wracked, pulled apart, torn up, tortured by anger.
We froth, are rabid, we see red. We writhe in anger, we lash out, we are twisted up. We are blinded by and explode in anger.

Anger and its common expressions change our bodies. It is unrefined and not quite in our control. Anger grips us and consumes us. We are not ourselves.

Anger is not alone in this – guilt also wracks, love blinds and lust may boil the blood. These extreme and less public emotions are expressed in our bodies – overwhelming normal filters of control. They are shared with the more intimate of our relations in intimate settings (as I write this I acknowledge I have a very cliché WASP-y Canadian understanding of the expression of emotion.)

There are, though, public releases - sports (both the watching and the doing,) roller coaster rides and haunted houses, dancing all night – places and times where extreme expression is permitted, even encouraged.

And art too – art has for a long time and in many different ways been a place and time where extremes of all sorts are explored, acted out and witnessed. It has served as a possible bloodletting: a release so that something else might rush in.

Town hall/ Department of Culture

2008-09-02T16:58:00.002-04:00

There is a Town hall tomorrow in Toronto about mobilizing the arts community for the election and around the recent cuts.

Wednesday September 3
7pm, The Theatre Centre.

The Department of Culture can tell you more.

A list of things

2008-09-02T16:36:00.003-04:00

So, we're back.

While the office has continued all summer, today, with the return of the dancers, Bonnie, company class and myself to full time, there is the typical first day of school feeling.

One of the things I want to do is write here more often, to find a way to use this blog as a forum of ideas and questions about contemporary dance (and performance in a wider sense.)

Lists are a blog cliché, and so lets start with that. (I've always been a fan of going to what a form does well)

A list of upcoming topics.
(if you have ones you're specifically interested, please say so in the comments, and that will help to kick my ass a bit and start the conversations)

Text and Dance (Vienna workshop)

Distance - Irony, "meaning it" and intimacy

Limits and rules and why they might be good and important

"Public" or "Audience": how do these words matter

Professionalism - types, importance.

Arbitrary choices. How they might not be (arbitrary) and how to avoid nihilism

Ok. That's a start of the list. Questions are also welcome. Just put them in the comments (we like comments.)
jz

Letter to the Committee

2008-08-26T15:24:00.007-04:00

I have a lot of writing to do and will be posting regularly starting next week - but I thought I'd start with the letter I just sent to the members of the Heritage Committee regarding the cuts to programs announced in the past few weeks. Join Facebook group here.

It's a little long, but I'm trying to work through some thoughts about articulating the value of art in relation to larger world. Thoughts and comments more than welcome...

To Heritage Committee members:

I understand that you met today to discuss the cuts in the Department of Heritage.

As a citizen and artist I wish to write to you with some thoughts on these policy changes.

In recent days the government has implied that the cut programs will be replaced with others. I encourage the announcement of such programs as soon as possible, so that as we approach an election, Canadians can look at the proposals of all parties and decide which reflect the country they wish to create.

The other announcement, that a Conservative government will "redirect all savings" from the cuts to arts programs to support Vancouver Olympic programs and bilingualism sets up an unnecessary and harmful dichotomy.

There is no need for an either/or relationship. The promotion of such a relationship by the Canadian government damages the success of both vital areas. As an artist who loves watching all levels of sports and participates in a recreational way, I am all too aware of the societal split and it's unfortunate consequences. When artists and their public turn away from or become resentful of sport, and athletes and sport fans are unaware of or even hostile to the arts, both fields suffer from a continuation of a cliché, high school understanding of each other. The continuation of the “jocks” and “artsies” understanding stunts our engagement with the world and the people in it.

Coming off of the summer Olympics and moving towards 2010 in Vancouver, I can understand the political pressures and benefits in increasing the funds to sporting. While I don’t know the details of the planned increase, I do support it in principle. As an artist in Canada, I acutely empathize with the frustration of the athletes who feel unable to reach the top of there fields due to lack of societal and governmental support, or with people with reduced income who can not access sporting due to prohibitive costs. These problems are common in the arts as well - artists falling short of their ideals because of funds and the cost of participation increasing to make up funding shortfalls. These are real problems that should be addressed for the health of our country. However, an increase in support to one field does not require the cutting of another - this mindset only increases the gaps in participation and excellence.

I believe government can and should take a role in closing these gaps. By promoting and encouraging involvement on levels from recreational (pick up soccer / community art projects) to international excellence (Olympics / PromArts) we have the chance to understand and celebrate the work, passion and pursuit of those who represent Canada through their efforts, and those who wish to enrich their lives through taking part in sports and art.

I also recognize the ease of taking some potentially controversial artists and using them to dismiss the programs that support them. There are many traps in this ease that I believe government, as a leading force in our society, must avoid.

The first is a belief that to “promote Canada” is to promote an ideology or set of values. This outlook positions international arts presentations as straight advertising for a national agenda. I believe we would be hard pressed to find a majority of Canadians able to agree on an ideological national agenda – we do, after all, have a minority government.

We don’t all love or even enjoy all sports; we don’t all love or even enjoy all music or all writers. This isn’t surprising and isn’t new. It’s also a very very good thing.

What PromArts or Trade Routes or other “promotional” programs promote is the diversity and rigour of excellence. They promote Canada as a place of multiple views, views that are not only “tolerated” but celebrated. Within the democratic framework that we claim to uphold and promote, this celebration and encouragement of difference is vital to avoid embarrassing hypocrisy.

Linked to this is the notion that art has a clean and simple relation to societal norms – that it must follow these norms in order to be of use to the public.

Art can be and do many things, and one of those is to lead through questioning. In a society so often beset with the following of trends and the continuation of “just the way things are,” art can provide an example of a considered and questioning life. We may not agree with all the questions or the paths considered, but a society without such questioning is one that, I fear, brings little forward into the future of those who live in it.

Capacity for doubt, challenge, hope and curiosity is as vital for a nation as it is for a writer, a physicist, a politician, an athletics coach or a medical researcher. None of these fields should by tied to a single simple “majority rules” moral ideology. (This is not to say that there are not conversations of ethics that are crucial to address in all these fields.)

Because such curiosity, challenge and hope can be temporarily unpopular or shocking (history is often the story of such cases,) it comes to the government as leaders and representatives of the public to support and celebrate excellence – even when, and possibly especially when, that excellence is oppositional to “just the way things are.”

Largely this argument supports the creation of artworks. The importance of international touring and influence has often, recently, been separated as a different issue. It shouldn’t be. Art, like all fields in this time, is an international field. Ideas and excellence are not confined by nation states. I will end this letter with two stories from a recent trip. (I was fortunate enough to travel to Austria and Germany to attend workshops in my field.)

1.
Max, a German student asks me about the popularity of sound art in Canada. He imagines that it must be very successful and played on the radio. I am confused for a moment and have to tell him that, no that’s not really true, at least not on most radio or when anyone is awake. I ask him why he would think that. He told me that when he thinks of sound art, he thinks of Canada. He thinks of R. Murray Schaffer and Janet Cardiff, John Oswald and the Sound Symposium. (All these artists and events have had important funding from all levels of government.) He talks about the way Canadians have led the field and changed the way sound art is made and thought about. Big historical changes that will be important for a long time. In this moment of talking with a German, I feel a pride and a pleasure at being from a country that not only supports but also promotes its artists abroad. My only wish is that we could do as well at home.

2.
I have a meeting with the curator at a performance space in Germany. A space that has a history of presenting Canadian work. They really like it – there is something in the way we approach dance and theatre that they are curious about and speaks to them. I am talking to the curator about bringing work to Europe. This kind of touring is vital for the continuation of my artistic practice. Shows take a long time to develop, (good ideas can take awhile), and when a show is finished, we want to perform it for more than the two week run in one city usual for a first presentation. We also need partnerships and co-producers from inside of Canada and (we hope someday) across the world. This is simply part of the art world now. Ideas want to and need to travel. But Canada is far away from Europe and flights are expensive.

So, the curator said, usually they try to arrange more than one city at a time in Europe so that the flights are worth it. And while many presenters will pay for travel inside of Europe, even if they decided to present the work (depending on it’s artistic excellence) they cannot afford to pay for the international flight for a company of eight. That’s ok I think, literally a day before the announced cuts, we would apply for PromArts funding to support such a tour. A tour of work that is considered good enough to receive funding at home to make, good enough to tour within Canada. A tour of a work that could bring us to the “global stage.” A tour that might only need airfare from Canada to Europe. A tour that could increase the capacity for doubt, challenge, hope and curiosity for us and our public and for them and their public.

I leave the meeting feeling good. Nothing has been decided but based on one trip I have the conversation about the next. Because the country I live in believes that excellence in the arts are important and worth sharing. (As do many other nations, including even the current US government.)

Two days later I see him again and tell him about the cuts, about how I hope that they won’t come to pass, about how I hope they don’t mark a turn in Canadian policy away from celebrating achievement and difference towards enforcing ideology and limiting access.

I still hope that this is true. That these programs are reinstated or ones that serve the same purpose and have the same ideological openness are created. That funds are even increased in an understanding that arts – like amateur sport, research and business – has always been supported by government in order that excellence might be sought and shared.

I hope that to promote Canada still could be to promote the capacity for doubt, challenge, hope, curiosity and excellence.

I hope that you consider these thoughts as you move forward shaping how Canada is seen in the world and at home.

Sincerely,

Jacob Zimmer

Dramaturge and Animateur - Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation
Artistic Director - Small Wooden Shoe

Improbable

2008-07-04T11:31:00.002-04:00

Just came across this -
Improbable Principles

Phelim McDermott (one of the directors of Improbable) was the keynote and facilitator at the Push Festival this year. Very good and interesting.

Also always interesting to feel such solidarity with a group who makes work that looks so different from what usually excites me.

jz

2008-06-20T21:33:00.002-04:00

There are many things I am thinking about these days. The CDA (Canadian Dance Assembly) conference in Ottawa, the FTA (Festival TransAmeriques) in Montreal and the CDF (Canada Dance Festival) in Ottawa. Two weeks of seeing over 25 shows, conversing with colleagues from across Canada and a few places beyond our borders, engaging with people who may or may not buy our work. Exhausting late days that begin early in the morning. I love it. Ours is a large country that rarely allows our small communities to meet face to face, so that you can touch the artist, see their body language, hear the timbre of their voices . All the Web 2.0 in the world pales in comparison to the flesh to flesh encounters.

I think community is a word that needs attention. Blurry ideas about what it is.

Institutions are feared because they appear to grab the lion's share of resources and are blind to the core workers in the field. How can we build new models that simultaneous support the big and small ideas through the filter of a lead-artist's eye?

Post-mortems are good. They remind us of the reasons why and re-kindle language lost since the doing of the thing they remind us of. They re-generate energy.

Holidays are also good and I am about to embark on one. If the spirit moves me (which Vancouver has a tendency of doing) then more to come.

2008-06-18T13:03:00.002-04:00

I'm going to do some workshops in Europe this summer and will try to blog from there - but I also thought I'd put up some links before hand.

Stop 1- Vienna
Impulstanz - major festival with great training component. I've applied to take a Coaching Project on creative writing and dance with Jonathan Burrows (and more) and Adrian Heathfield.

Stop 2- Frankfurt
Tanzlabor_21 - International Summer Lab - Taking a workshop with Hooman Sharifi (more) and Bojana Kunst.

See also:
Maska - an arts organization in Slovenia that has a very compelling mix of production, seminars and publication. Bojana Kunst, one of the workshop co-leaders in Frankfurt is a frequent collaborator.
Unbound - an online store for books, dvds, and limited editions. All in pounds, but appear to ship to Canada.

Dance and Writing

2008-06-10T15:14:00.006-04:00

From If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution.
André Lepecki reads 'Bodies of the text,' a collection of essays on dance, the body and feminism by Jaques Derrida, Susan Foster and others."
First published in:Ballet-Tanz, August 1995

Thus, the currently and broadly-accepted notion shared by dancers and choreographers, but also by scholars and critics alike, that the art of dance is essentially one that has a privileged and mysterious relationship with the unspoken, the un-utterable, which what is beyond or before language, is historically deconstructed by Foster. Dance was not always the art of what cannot be spoken, and the radical implication of Foster's essay is that this recent divorce between dance and meaning (the gestural and the verbal) also shaped the current relationship between the dance writer, the dance critic, with its object of study. [Emphasis mine]

A couple times at the CDA and other places recently, I feel like I see the edge of the (often sublimated) belief that dance is the "art of what cannot be spoke" and therefore also what can not be spoken about, something I just don't believe. It seems also related to the "dance is universal" – which I also have trouble with.

Yes, dance is about the body and how they move through and occupy space – and yes we all have bodies, but the way we understand and move them is largely constructed by our histories and influences.

And - that's totally fine. It's good even. "Universal" is too often code for "dominant" and "un-utterable" for "don't think so much."

And it's hard to talk and write about dance, but not impossible. And the trying is very important, since it's a part of moving any form forward.

It always good to find that some of the idea's that we take for "always have been that way", weren't always that way. That there was a kind of social decision to make them that way. It means there can be a kind of social decision to make them another way. Or 8 other ways.

CDA - Internet / Technology 1

2008-06-10T14:35:00.006-04:00

In this post: | Writing / Copyright /Internet | RSS | Good Sites |

All of this is a little off topic in some way, but I also feel is connected. Maybe that part of contemporary means paying attention to current tools and making choices about which ones are right for what you're doing. Not that we all have to be cutting edge internet strategists, but that change is happening, there is an event that we are wrapped in and we have to take account of it.

At the conference I felt like an internet cheerleader, and in some ways I am, but I’m also suspicious and don’t think it saves us in any way - the work still has to be good and rigorous. But it really is doing interesting things to distribution systems. And I don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but it is a change.

How much time are we willing to spend on this? Does it distract from or help the making of the work? Beyond marketing, what can these tools do for the making of the art?

And how does live performance (and all artists) deal with the change in power and authority made possible by the internet. (Francis Ford Coppola in 1991 predicts Youtube, and now is on Youtube.)

Thanks to Allyson (Allyson, what's the company site that you mentioned at the panel?) and Ella.

And please add thoughts or further links in the comments section.

Writing / Copyright / Internet

Cory Doctorow
[A name I mentioned a bunch as someone who gives large chunks of their writing away, and has made a career of it.]
– Article about “Artist rights” -
[Includes some very good comments that make the other side of the argument as well.]

Lawrence Lessig – Creator of Creative Commons:
– TED Talks

Clay Shirky: Looking for the Mouse
– And the whole blog is good. I found this after the conference (my friend Tim blogged about it on his blog about making computer game that is actually just a good blog about ideas and creativity)
– If you like video check out Shirky speaking.
– Favorite quote from video “The group gets better together”

Seth Godin.
[Good blog on internet marketing. I'm a little disturbed by my interest in some of this stuff - that one one the things I like about live performance is that it is hard for capitalism to co-opt (just so inefficient.) And yet the good marketers are just talking about how to reach people in an honest way. But then I worry that tools may not be ethically neutral. Thoughts on that?]

RSS Readers
About RSS:
This is the clearest description I could find.
Which News reader? Lifehacker's top 5

Good web sites
Sarma
[It can be a bit tricky to find things, oddly. I’ve found stumbling around to be the way to go - just following curiosity (as in many things.) Here’s some that I’ve bookmarked:]
– Lepeki - The American Tradition
– Jeroen Peeters - Living together on Stage
– Lepeki: The body in difference
– Ramsay Burt - Undoing postmodern dance history
– Springdance conversations
– Other Matters
– Unfolding the Critical
– All of the Critics
[This lists the critics - if you click on the one you want, and then on “texts” you’ll get everything that’s on the site for that author. For example:]
All of Lepeki
All of Myriam van Imschoot
[The letters on dramaturgy are particularly good.]
– Sarma Links

B-chronicles
[I haven’t much all of this (recent find), but it looks exciting.]

ArtsJournal Daily

Artful Manager

Dance Theatre Workshop

Culturebot
[The blog of PS 122 – good links]

Dance-tech
[Just found thing today, but looks like an attempt at some of the things we were talking about]

All for now - please add in the comments

"You all do a lot of talking"

2008-06-04T10:55:00.002-04:00

I want to write more about this, but quickly and to put it out there.

At the last Thinking Out Loud (for Melanie Demars) we ended up talking about how and how much to articulate to an audience. The room was mostly people directly involved in art making with a few interested audience members.

And it was a good discussion, but something one the of "interested audience members" said has stuck with me - a woman who none of us knew, though suspected was a regular dance viewer, who hadn't said anything up to this point.

[an attempt at a close paraphrase]

"When I see shows, it feels like you all did a lot of talking to make the show, but then stop when I get there."

That seems rude. And a very clear articulation of of something that seems true and problematic.

As I said, I want to think and write more on this - comments and thoughts are welcome.

It will I think, come up in the panel I'm part of at the CDA
this weekend in Ottawa. Michael, Bonnie and I and I think both of the Kate's are going to be there. I'm looking forward to it, cracked rib (soccer) and all.

Jacob's PCC Keynote

2008-05-21T14:52:00.002-04:00

On May 9th I gave the keynote at Performance Creation Canada Halifax – I've posted my notes on the Small Wooden Shoe and thought I'd link to them here as well. Comments more then welcome.

I want to talk today about why I think this event matters. And why I think that Performance Creation matters. I'm going to define some terms, then start with the thing that matters most, and move on to 3 good things and one bad, I'll try to be clear about some things in the middle of that and I'll try to link everything back to actual art making process. And I'll end with some proposals.

Link

FTR: 5 not unrelated things (Notes 3)

2008-04-15T10:23:00.002-04:00

5 not unrelated things

1
Toronto designer Lewis Nicholson asks his students to do what seems not that hard: To bring in five unrelated objects. It is, of course, impossible. The moment I hold an object up to another, I make connections between them. Since learning this exercise, I think of it often when I need cheering up. We (and our objects) are all related.

2
It is tyranny to remove difference. Tyranny as the accepted lie of sameness. Stepping together being a public display of tyranny – as is being punished for being out of line.

Variation might be an antidote to tyranny – not that we all must be variant all the time – but that there is a capacity to shift. To be the same or to move apart or maybe even both.

Perhaps “not tyranny” isn’t a lack of authority but an understanding that authority is fluid and consensual. But this will require some work on everyone’s part.

And this is also about the eyes – the tyrannized should no longer need to see, says the tyrant. So to keep looking. To keep seeing.

3
It was when I started looking. This seems obvious. But of course it was when I started looking. They couldn’t actually keep it going – I mean clearly they were trying and they were close. Maybe closer then I’d ever seen or wanted to. But still he was taller than her. And different hair. Maybe that was it – that their hair refused to participate. Though he had tried. A lot of product. He had tried – but even if he had succeeded in controlling his hair, which he hadn’t – their hair was different. And their nails too. I am fairly certain their pupils dilated at different rates – even when I shone the light on them both.

4
Repetition is hard. Hard because there can be too much with too little attention. I rush towards the new, not noticing that I do the same things over and over. It’s not the repetition that’s a problem – I hardly think I’m alone in that – it’s the not noticing.

Doing something again might be a claim. A claim that it is worth it. That there are things worth doing over.

In digital, I can talk about “lossless” copying. That we are not digital is important and really very good.

Redoing is an opportunity, a chance for change. Nothing can be done twice.

5
I could see it in the lean of his body. He had thought about it four times before – his body had tilted forward as if he were going to get up – but then he didn’t – maybe he thought better of it. Then he saw something – the getting-up was not from the inside, but from something else, maybe a pigeon taking off or the way that gentlemen stooped to pick something off the ground. Whatever it was, it pushed him over the limit and he stood up from the bench. After he took three steps he slowed – as if realizing at that moment that he had stood up. And maybe he couldn’t remember what had inspired such a clear exit from the bench. He couldn’t remember the pigeon or the stooping gentleman – but I think he suspected he had not made the decision alone.

FTR: The story so far (Notes 2)

2008-04-15T10:19:00.003-04:00

The story so far

Michael Trent has an idea to make a series of double bills – intimate collaborations with another artist – not necessarily another choreographer, but possibly another choreographer. He wishes to meet other artists in a way that can only happen by making a show.

In November of 2006 he sees /Dance/Songs/, Ame Henderson’s recent piece with her company Public Recordings. He decides he would like to ask Ame to be the other artist for Double Bill #1.

She agrees.

They want to deepen their own work by meeting the other. Not necessarily move towards the other, but to respond.

They decide each will make a piece and that they will share the same collaborators.

They agree to work with scenographer Trevor Schwellnus, who had designed /Dance/Songs/ and many other shows in the Toronto theatre scene. He creates worlds of real objects re-visioned on stage.

For the music they talk to Eric Chenaux. Eric Chenaux makes music with many collaborators in many configurations – one of them is The Reveries with Doug Tielli and Ryan Driver. The Reveries only do covers. And they only cover love ballads – American songbook standards to Willie Nelson and Sade. The Reveries cover these love ballads with waterproof cell phone speakers in their mouths.

They ask Chenaux what he thinks he would like to do with The Reveries for Double Bill #1. He proposes the company work with five 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.
Ame and Michael agree.

They work for a week in December – testing ideas, playing with possibilities.
In February they come back to the work.

A week ago they switched to the music of The Reveries.

On Monday they moved to the theatre.

And now you are here.

Thanks for coming.

FTR: A Note on Notes & Places to Start (Notes 1)

2008-04-15T10:13:00.007-04:00

The program notes from Double Bill #1 - For the record.

A Note on Notes
As an audience member, I have a complicated relationship with program notes.

I want to like them. But sometimes it’s hard. I want them to tell me some things but not others – to open doors, but allow for the space of personal interpretation that I so treasure in contemporary art. I want some context for the work I’m about to see or just saw (sometimes I like to leave the reading until after), some sense of how we all arrived here and maybe some things to think about in relation to my experience.
With these notes, I’ve tried to do that by providing three of the ways that I relate to the works in tonight’s show: first, starting places, then how we got here, and finally five not unrelated thoughts that I’ve had while working on this project.
I hope that these notes might be useful to you – but please, don’t feel obligated. You are more than qualified to write your own.

Any thoughts on the notes or the work are more than welcome - jacob@dancemakers.org

I hope you enjoy your evening.
– Jacob

Places to start
It Was a Nice Party.
Ame Henderson wants to reconstruct a chaotic event by sampling and covering. To reinvent and replay sources, to find a surprising authenticity in the face of the constructed image. She is interested in finding out what happens when cinema’s edits and angles are translated onto the body.

It started with bank robberies and attacking birds – but it was a party that stuck.

In a room that is itself a cover, the dancers don’t move until the film does.

And The Rest.
Michael Trent wonders about tyranny – the large and the small, the self-imposed, the political and the rest. Addressed with moving, breathing bodies, the work questions affinities, methods of control and the dynamics of making choices.

Starting with a huge roll of paper, the company writes tyrannies, alphabetically. There are hundreds. They aren’t necessarily all so bad. Except when they can’t change.

So they work on difference and change.

Three things as we get close.

2008-04-05T11:09:00.002-04:00

a reminder about Double Bill #1, an announcement of Thinking Out Loud, and a very good music show tonight (Saturday) - not in that order.

We are close now – Double Bill #1 is just a few days from opening (details below) – and things are going really very well – a run of both pieces yesterday with tech and costume and hair at the Dancemakers studio – the works are, I think, rare and wonderful. The pieces are very different and yet the connections are some of the best parts. The dancers are so generous, invested and present that I could watch them all day and just be happy with that.

And the music. The music is astounding and beautiful. It's performed (not live - for that, see below - but the recordings are magic) by The Reveries - The Reveries play sweet-jazz standards and the music of artists Nick Cave, Willie Nelson and Sade (to date). They perform with small, adapted cell-phone speakers inside their mouths. The speaker signal is filtered in a wild array of wah-wah effects caused by the changing shape of their mouth cavity. The mouth speakers also re-route the sounds of one another’s instruments. For example, Eric’s guitar is heard through Doug’s mouth and Ryan’s thumb reeds/vocals are heard through Eric’s mouth.

They will break your heart if you let them.

And you have a chance to do that tonight - The Reveries are releasing their third album on the Rat-drifting label: Matchmakers Volume 1: The Music Of Willie Nelson tonight at the Tranzac. Doors at 9:30 (Details below.) There will be a reggae dance party after.

And then Friday - at 7 pm at the theatre, we (myself, Micheal Trent and Ame Henderson) will be doing a Double Bill version of Thinking Out Loud - a series of conversations about dance and ideas that Dancemakers is doing around all our shows. Because we feel we don't talk about the art enough, and that it's hard to move forward without talking about what you're doing. These conversations will be about some of the bigger ideas contained in the work - not to explain away, or tell you what you're about to see, but to place the art in context and generate discussion about the form itself and it's place in art and social history. And it would be better if you were there. It doesn't matter if you see the show that night, you can come to the event anyways, even if you saw the show Wednesday and then were going to see it again on Saturday, you could come Friday to think out loud.

ok. Time to finish the programs.

hope to see you at least once this week.
and if you feel inclined to pass this along, we'd like that too.
thanks
Jacob

____

New from Dancemakers
Double Bill #1

New dances by Ame Henderson (It Was A Nice Party) and Michael Trent (And The Rest)

Created with and Performed by: Clinton Draper, Kate Hilliard, Kate Holden,
Benjamin Kamino and Steeve Paquet

Music performed by: The Reveries
Scenographer: Trevor Schwellnus
Rehearsal Director: Bonnie Kim
Dramaturge: Jacob Zimmer
Costume Designer: Claudia Fancello

April 9-12 at 8pm & April 12 at 3pm
Premiere Dance Theatre, part of Harbourfront Centre’s NextSteps series;
Harbourfront Centre, 207 Queens Quay West

PLUS!
April 11 from 7-7:45 pm, all ticket purchasers are invited to a special edition of Thinking Out Loud - our new series of conversations about art and ideas, animated by Michael Trent, Ame Henderson and Dancemakers Dramaturge/Animateur Jacob Zimmer.

Tickets: Regular: $22-$38; Students/Seniors/CADA:$20-$33
Call/Click: 416.973.4000 or www.harbourfrontcentre.com

A little more information:
Dancemakers website: http://www.dancemakers.org
Dancemakers blog: http://www.blogspot.dancemakers.com
Public Recordings/Ame Henderson website: http://www.publicrecordings.org
Reveries website: http://www.rat-drifting.com/
Reveries Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/thereveriesoftoronto

---

The Reveries are pleased to announce the release of their third album on the Rat-drifting label:
Matchmakers Volume 1: The Music Of Willie Nelson

The Reveries use mouthspeakers, saws, streetsweeper bristles, voices, guitars, pieces of balloons, hamonicas, drum machine, drums, and tangled wires to recapture the essence of popular love songs.
The Reveries are Eric Chenaux, Ryan Driver, Doug Tielli, and Jean Martin.
This is their first CD dedicated to the music of a single songwriter, one for whom we should all have a very special place in our hearts.

"If a songbird flew into his mouth and opened cans of cooing Pepsi cola in the depths, Willie Nelson's lungs would be two blustering nests buzzing with the sonorous voices of buried chirp and indigestion. The Reveries play the music of Willie Nelson half way between dyspepsy and marble-mouth on the instruments they've given their breath to hallow."

~Andrew Zukerman

Chris Harper will be the spinning fine reggae music following the Reveries' performance!

Saturday April 5th
at Tranzac Main Hall (292 Brunswick Avenue)
9:30 pm
$10

Please come!

There is a problem with language.

2008-03-26T11:26:00.004-04:00

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.

About the music for Double Bill #1

2008-03-10T11:18:00.002-04:00

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)

thoughts while watching - Michael

2008-03-10T11:02:00.003-04:00

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.

---
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.

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

2008-03-06T10:11:00.001-05:00

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

Link

"Close Enough" - from Steirischer Herbst

2008-03-05T12:42:00.000-05:00

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

Link

What's up with elitism?

2008-01-24T09:41:00.000-05:00

I recently returned from an amazing professional development opportunity in the UK, a Rural Retreat for Emerging Artistic Directors and Producers in Dance. I have lots to share about the experience and will do so in the next few weeks, but for now I want to talk about elitism, or rather, ask a question. This morning I came across a quote about elitism from the late Richard Bradshaw of the COC. Elitism was a hot topic of conversation at the retreat. Bradshaw was quoted as saying:" The essence of the collective ritual, wether it's religion, sport or art, is to bring people to the highest point of excellence to create an elite to which people aspire - and then open up the elite so that it is accessible to everyone. That is the opposite of settling for the lowest common denominator." Is this true or a justification for support of the high arts? What do you think?

Acting as the first viewer

2007-11-14T08:47:00.000-05:00

My best new friend these days - in a time otherwise fraught with real and anticipated loneliness - is my Panasonic RR-US450 digital voice recorder. It's sleek and compact and fits into my front pocket. It wouldn't win a beauty contest against the likes of an iPod, but it fairly blends form and function in a way that lends me street cred as a techno-hipster. Tonight we open things in between. Over the last six days, all of us on the collaborative team - the dancers, rehearsal director, video artist, lighting designer, production manager, stage manager, countless crew and some invited guests - have come together in the true spirit of collaboration with the goal of making the work resonate as deeply as possible. At Dancemakers, we are very fortunate to have the resources of a fully-equipped theatre at our disposal; this six-days of in-house residency then, allows us to not simply paste the lighting and video work on top of a 'finished' dance but to invest in a true dialogue between all of these elements where each is allowed the time and space to listen and respond. My job now, despite how difficult it may be, is to assume the role of the audience, to bring a fresh set of eyes to the work in anticipation of tonight and the next two weeks of performances. At the dress rehearsal last night, I had to build a new narrative for myself as viewer. I entered the space as if for the first time through the front doors at 7:50pm, not through the backstage door. I got a beer from the bar and chatted with friends who were there. I tried to instinctually understand the pre-show environment and discover what I was suppose to do with it, how it was designed to guide my experience...was it clear and engaging, did it get my energy up or enliven my sense of curiosity? I took my seat on the West side (there are two banks of audiences facing each other) in a place with a perspective I hadn't seen before. I look around and witness/experience as if for the first time. And out comes my best new friend. I have always had difficulty with the note taking process during a run. Taking my eyes off of the environment to write down an idea or thought or correction built frustration for the potential of missing something else but more importantly for loosing the kinesthetic and emotional flow of the experience. So Mr. Panasonic helps me to record the idea, thought or correction with my voice in the moment without loosing sight of what's going on. It's working. Efficiency is building and I can act as that first viewer with greater ease.
I define collaboration as a process in which the participants' active contributions build ownership of the final product. If the work is viewed as a success then it follows that the success is shared equally. But what happens if the work is not successful? Is that shared too? Or is it mine to experience alone?

Make-out session #2

2007-11-02T22:21:00.000-04:00

A week-long residency begins in three days. The dancers have just embarked on a well-deserved two days off following another week of pushing and pulling, of turning the kaleidoscope a few more notches to the right (and maybe one or two to the left) as we strive to find the dance's resonant soul in time for opening. Whoever said artists know nothing of the bottom line fail to recognize that the most unforgiving of bottom lines is opening night. Nello and McDaniel remind us that the critics and the audience are in their seats at 8pm. The work better be there, too. "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience. The choreographer and dancers are working out a few things and will be with you in a moment. Or not. We trust you are OK with that." As if.
As the dancers rest, the creative and production collaborators shift into high gear. The theater's brick wall, a long-debated bone of contention among us regarding its appropriateness to the work - do we expose it or cover it up - will receive a fresh coat of paint tomorrow morning. Although the topic of wall painting may seem inconsequential to the big picture, the conversations it generated and the listening skills it asked of us, underlie the very nature of a collaborative process. It is but one of many creative elements that we discuss on a daily basis. Someone said (I am quoting from an article by dramaturge Guy Cools) that a group is always smarter that the smartest person in the group. We force ourselves to not only hear but to listen to what is said. From my perspective, this challenges my natural-born instincts as a know-it-all. I love the inner battle that this way of working stirs up in me.
The making of the dance began without a script. It had no known narrative, no characters, no moral imperative. We started from nothing except for a vaguely articulated desire on my part to look at the conventions of the proscenium arch and to deal with curiosities around the value of human interaction in a world view where boundaries, and the comfort they instill, are dissolving at an alarmingly rapid rate. Anne Bogart calls this process 'building a universe from scratch'. It asks that everyone willingly buys-in to collaborative engagement. In less than two weeks, our collective musings, kaleidoscopic manipulations and hours of listening will meet the bottom line. You.

Making it with the dancers

2007-10-23T23:41:00.000-04:00

The dancer/choreographer relationship I grew up with- there are a few notable exceptions - exists on the vertical plane. The choreographer sits on top and the dancers toil beneath him/her. Movement vocabulary is created by the choreographer, then learned by the dancer, and then molded by the originator, much like a piece of malleable clay. The clay, depending on temperature, its constituent properties, its relative humidity and any number of other properties, has something to say about the final product, but not much, and certainly not in any original and personal way. The creation model that excites me the most these days places the choreographer and dancer on the same horizontal plane. Ideas, responses, vocabulary, dynamics, intuitions, impulses...any and all of these are valued as potential sites for making the form and content of a dance from nothing. Anne Bogart talks about this in her Viewpoints work. This 'lead collaboration' invites multiple voices into the room. The participants, given space to engage in numerous ways, find ownership in the final product. This translates to authentic performances more readily accessible to the viewer. Communication is immediate and profound.
Some days I loose track of these insights and flip back to the vertical plane. I can't help it. Many factors come into play: the pressure of multiple deadlines, self-doubt, fatigue, ill-preparedness, grumpiness, a sore toe, not enough lunch. The sensitive and ever-vigilant dancers take note of my tangential wanderings and gently bring me back. Just do the work.

Notes from the 3C's

Some dance and other things on the internet

A lot of very good things

nice thing to think about

researchLAB

Thinking Out Loud October 19 update

Next Thinking Out Loud October 19

AGNÈS VARDA just because

The act of printing The Act of Study

Thinking Out Loud – the Study Group launches

Open classes start soon

history can do funny things

A Perfect Ending

Ending EDAP for 2009

Guest Post: EDAP Week 2

Dramaturge/Animateur Intern wanted

Guest Post: First Week Reflection

Good, hard days

EDAP Day 1

Other Unconference like things

cross-posted with Small Wooden Shoe

(not anything official, but maybe think of keeping April 24th, 2010 clear)

First days

Study group part 2

"Do a show that is meaningful to you and share why it is meaningful"

Rhubard submissions

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre seeks submissions for THE 31st RHUBARB FESTIVAL

For further information please contact :Erika Hennebury, 416-975-9130 x40 erika@artsexy.ca

After Unconference

Party Tonight!

Dance party June 19

Unconference June 20

Reading group input wanted

Envy...

Call for submission

2 open calls for contemporary dance and performance.

Dramaturgy conversation @ TDT May 18

3 points to dramaturgy defintition

Residency Showing

Back at work.

For the record: Program Notes

Thursday night times

Radio transcripts

3 more shows and press

Student Matinee

Times for Opening

A survey

A tease before opening

25 things in... well, the time it takes you to read them.

very good things are happening

Photo's from Ömer

More catching up

On writing in and of rehearsal

It's about time - 1 minute from 60

Minutes - Week of January 12th

Many minutes have passed - First week back

Catching up - Minutes 12-15

Minute a Day #11

Minute a Day #10

Questions to think out loud about

Minute a Day #9

Minute a Day #8

Re: A Question about making things

Minute a Day #7

Video: Converging - "Can't get no..."

Minute a Day #6

Minute a Day #5

Weekend Minutes - Someone else's video of people dancing and not dancing

Extra Minute re:minute #4

Minute a Day #4

Minute a Day #3

A Minute a Day 2 (a MaD)

A Minute a Day 1 (a MaD)

Jacob Wren, World Stage, Letters of Nomination

Conversation = collaboration

Making the Muck Matter

On how not to not improvise.

Bloodletting and Dancemakers on interweb

Program Notes for Bloodletting and Other Pleasant Things

Town hall/ Department of Culture

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre seeks submissions for THE 31^st RHUBARB FESTIVAL

For further information please contact :
Erika Hennebury, 416-975-9130 x40 erika@artsexy.ca