In a recent talkback, someone familiar with the company commented that they had never seen the disabled dancers move so much.
That compliment caught my attention.
The piece in question is very different from anything else in our rep. We break a sweat, yes. But I am not racing around, pulling extreme wheelchair moves. I'm not exactly grounded, but I am dancing in the much more spatially limited context of my new props. So, the first thing that caught my ear was my default assumption that movement -- the moving of any part of my body -- was sort of bound up with mobility -- my ability to traverse space both while moving parts of my body other than those parts necessary to push my chair and/or simply moving my chair. Movement and mobility are not necessarily the same. You'd think that I might have figured that out a while ago. But apparently not.
As dancers, we are always seeking new movement. We train in different sets of movements and create new vocabularies of movement as we work in different settings, with different people, on different pieces. So, of course, working with props enables us to create new movement vocabularies. That's exactly the point. Thinking as a dancer, though, confused me. For a moment, I had forgotten that I was a disabled dancer and that for us things often have second and third layers of meaning that come along with people's understandings of disability.
But even landing on this nuance didn't really help me understand what the commenter was seeing. What drew their attention so much, what compelled them so much that they spoke out?
Talking with another dancer, a best guess was that the piece has us working out of our wheelchairs for most of the time. Just being out of a chair renders more of our flesh bodies visible to the audience. And, of course, as dancers, we are using those bodies fully. The commenter was simply responding to seeing new lines, new shapes, new movement vocabulary as we worked outside our chairs.
That's a neutral guess. But I wonder about the disability value of this. What do people see when they see us dancing in chairs? Do they think that the chairs compensate for our legs and therewith unintentionally erase our legs? Do they have images of us as flexible flesh upper bodies and rigid rubber and metal lower bodies? (Laurel's been really helpful in thinking about this one: here, for example.) Thus, when the commenter saw us moving around outside our wheelchairs, they saw, perhaps for the first time in their conscious mind, the full potential of our flesh bodies.
I'm really sensitive on this point. Is it possible that in other pieces, our hybrid metal and flesh bodies have become props? When the choreography is weak, the dance tends to feature a lot of moments when the non-disabled dancers jump on us, use our bodies and chairs as furniture, points of leverage that they can use to do something fantastic and eye catching. Meanwhile, we sit there. When the choreography is strong, we get to dance into moments of shared fantasticness -- moves where we are as active as they are. When I heard the commenter speak, I began to review other works that they might have seen. Have I felt like a prop? Do I look like one?
As I finish my review of five years of rep, I find myself overcome with a little cynicism. I'm betting that there's some wheelchair-boundedness going on here. If you start with the idea that because we are strapped in to our chairs (necessary to do the cartwheels and rolls and things that we do), we are bound to our chairs in a societally conventional wheelchair bound kind of way, it makes sense to think of us moving more now that we are moving with props (link to some of my posts on wheelchair-bound). No, we are not flying around stage, but we are liberated from those nasty binding little wheelchair things. And now, suddenly, we are free. You can see our full fleshly bodies at work.
The post-show talkbacks are really difficult for me to be in. But you can be sure that I am listening. Attentively. I learn a lot from you about what I do.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Staging Beauty
You can tell a new show with a new piece is close: I'm thinking about what people will think. How will it go over? What will people think!!
Enjoying the beauty of the movement is one of the most accessible ways to appreciate a performance. As different as we all may be, we all have some sense of beauty, and a dance performance is likely to feed and challenge that sense. Even if you don't know much about dance, can't figure out what it means, and/or don't know why you like it, the bodies you see can touch you deep down. I remember going to my first dance performance and just crying (silently) throughout the whole thing. I had no idea why. Most recently, I had the same response to a performance of the Nederlands Dans Theater. This time, I knew why, but I kept crying nonetheless.
Dancers are regularly in contact with ideas and realizations of beauty. It's not the repeated applications of makeup that make us beautiful, though; it's the sweat and the work in the studio. Barely a day goes by without one of us calling the other beautiful as we rehearse. If we are not noting the beauty in ourselves, we are talking about a beautiful performance we've seen. Somehow, even though it is a much-used way to respond, calling something beautiful is still a meaningful response.
But beauty also has its underside when it is seen as a necessary precursor for professional success. I want to thank Eva Yaa Asantewaa at Infinite Body for unknowingly helping me frame my ideas and for connecting me to some important parts of the conversation.
A while ago, there was a large debate in dance and feminist circles about whether it was fair game to comment on a dancer's body. I didn't write a full post on it, but my observations about how, in dance critic Alistair Macaulay's eyes, arm fat suddenly became connected to disability can be found here. Dance Magazine has a 2008 piece on the role of the critic (the piece under discussion at Infinite Body), but buried even in that conversation is the question of beauty in a dancer -- and whether a critic can/should comment upon it. There's a reference to the John Rockwell piece in which he discusses the virtues of technique and beauty -- dancers should be physically beautiful as well as have astounding technique (NYT: subscription only). There's also another example of Macaulay's obsession with physical perfection with this reference to Lynn Seymour, a ballerina who is euphemistically said to have had weight issues.
In the Dance Magazine essay, the more accepting voice is that of Deborah Jowitt, dance critic for the Village Voice: "Jowitt cites the example of dancers Larry Goldhuber and Alexandra Beller, who use their ample size to their advantage. “It is less useful,” she says, “to talk about a person’s body than about the way he or she uses that body."" (That said, the DM author, Joseph Carman, seems snide: "ample size" is wholly unnecessary and highly prejudiced.)
The way in which a dancer uses a body is I think a useful way of undermining the discourse of beauty because it challenges how we understand dance and opens our understandings of who can dance. From this perspective, you can find beauty where someone focused on tradition and so-called perfection will see only flaw.
There's a caveat, though -- one that stems from disability. Dancing disabled bodies are beautiful. There's no doubt about that. Some of that beauty is unexpected; you see something, something that can only happen because of disability. Some of that might be you -- you never anticipated that you could find beauty in something that tends to occupy such a socially stigmatized place. Some of that beauty comes from the dancers' themselves. You can be conventionally attractive and disabled. Some of that beauty comes from the non-conventional bodies themselves. If you haven't been to a physically integrated performance -- go. GO and discover new beauty for yourself.
But beware: don't fall into the trap of thinking that the dancers are overcoming their disabilities. I'm going to generalize here for a second and tag this as a non-disabled viewer's response. There is a related response from disabled viewers, but it tends to be a little different. This overcoming idea (and, for that matter, other stereotypical ideas about disabled bodies) is at the heart of the riskiness of relying on how a dancer uses her body as a guide to beauty. Too often, I find the response to an integrated performance comes from the viewers' understanding of disability as a limitation. Then, when they come and see amazing, unexpected, and beautiful stuff, they unload that prejudicial understanding back onto the dancers. We are overcoming (or inspiring). It's a well-meant response -- one intended to communicate to the dancers that the viewer has appreciated the performance -- but, as I've talked about all over the place, I end up frustrated every time I hear it.
There's another side. I don't encounter this often, but when I do it is more shocking to me than the overcoming stuff. The beauty of integrated dance and disabled bodies can negatively jolt even those with disabilities. I suppose I think of it as a problem of familiarity and overgeneralization. You happen to be in a wheelchair with a certain body. You know what it can do, and you know how your wheelchair works. But that doesn't mean that it is the same for everyone who uses a chair or who shares your diagnosis. For these people, I think a moment of beauty that is also shocking registers as hostility towards the dancer -- I know that I have certainly encountered it that way: you can't be ....
So, perhaps, if you are using beauty as a way to interpret art -- any kind of art -- I would recommend transforming that lens into a mirror and asking what does it say about me that I respond to beauty in this way.
Enjoying the beauty of the movement is one of the most accessible ways to appreciate a performance. As different as we all may be, we all have some sense of beauty, and a dance performance is likely to feed and challenge that sense. Even if you don't know much about dance, can't figure out what it means, and/or don't know why you like it, the bodies you see can touch you deep down. I remember going to my first dance performance and just crying (silently) throughout the whole thing. I had no idea why. Most recently, I had the same response to a performance of the Nederlands Dans Theater. This time, I knew why, but I kept crying nonetheless.
Dancers are regularly in contact with ideas and realizations of beauty. It's not the repeated applications of makeup that make us beautiful, though; it's the sweat and the work in the studio. Barely a day goes by without one of us calling the other beautiful as we rehearse. If we are not noting the beauty in ourselves, we are talking about a beautiful performance we've seen. Somehow, even though it is a much-used way to respond, calling something beautiful is still a meaningful response.
But beauty also has its underside when it is seen as a necessary precursor for professional success. I want to thank Eva Yaa Asantewaa at Infinite Body for unknowingly helping me frame my ideas and for connecting me to some important parts of the conversation.
A while ago, there was a large debate in dance and feminist circles about whether it was fair game to comment on a dancer's body. I didn't write a full post on it, but my observations about how, in dance critic Alistair Macaulay's eyes, arm fat suddenly became connected to disability can be found here. Dance Magazine has a 2008 piece on the role of the critic (the piece under discussion at Infinite Body), but buried even in that conversation is the question of beauty in a dancer -- and whether a critic can/should comment upon it. There's a reference to the John Rockwell piece in which he discusses the virtues of technique and beauty -- dancers should be physically beautiful as well as have astounding technique (NYT: subscription only). There's also another example of Macaulay's obsession with physical perfection with this reference to Lynn Seymour, a ballerina who is euphemistically said to have had weight issues.
In the Dance Magazine essay, the more accepting voice is that of Deborah Jowitt, dance critic for the Village Voice: "Jowitt cites the example of dancers Larry Goldhuber and Alexandra Beller, who use their ample size to their advantage. “It is less useful,” she says, “to talk about a person’s body than about the way he or she uses that body."" (That said, the DM author, Joseph Carman, seems snide: "ample size" is wholly unnecessary and highly prejudiced.)
The way in which a dancer uses a body is I think a useful way of undermining the discourse of beauty because it challenges how we understand dance and opens our understandings of who can dance. From this perspective, you can find beauty where someone focused on tradition and so-called perfection will see only flaw.
There's a caveat, though -- one that stems from disability. Dancing disabled bodies are beautiful. There's no doubt about that. Some of that beauty is unexpected; you see something, something that can only happen because of disability. Some of that might be you -- you never anticipated that you could find beauty in something that tends to occupy such a socially stigmatized place. Some of that beauty comes from the dancers' themselves. You can be conventionally attractive and disabled. Some of that beauty comes from the non-conventional bodies themselves. If you haven't been to a physically integrated performance -- go. GO and discover new beauty for yourself.
But beware: don't fall into the trap of thinking that the dancers are overcoming their disabilities. I'm going to generalize here for a second and tag this as a non-disabled viewer's response. There is a related response from disabled viewers, but it tends to be a little different. This overcoming idea (and, for that matter, other stereotypical ideas about disabled bodies) is at the heart of the riskiness of relying on how a dancer uses her body as a guide to beauty. Too often, I find the response to an integrated performance comes from the viewers' understanding of disability as a limitation. Then, when they come and see amazing, unexpected, and beautiful stuff, they unload that prejudicial understanding back onto the dancers. We are overcoming (or inspiring). It's a well-meant response -- one intended to communicate to the dancers that the viewer has appreciated the performance -- but, as I've talked about all over the place, I end up frustrated every time I hear it.
There's another side. I don't encounter this often, but when I do it is more shocking to me than the overcoming stuff. The beauty of integrated dance and disabled bodies can negatively jolt even those with disabilities. I suppose I think of it as a problem of familiarity and overgeneralization. You happen to be in a wheelchair with a certain body. You know what it can do, and you know how your wheelchair works. But that doesn't mean that it is the same for everyone who uses a chair or who shares your diagnosis. For these people, I think a moment of beauty that is also shocking registers as hostility towards the dancer -- I know that I have certainly encountered it that way: you can't be ....
So, perhaps, if you are using beauty as a way to interpret art -- any kind of art -- I would recommend transforming that lens into a mirror and asking what does it say about me that I respond to beauty in this way.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Music Dance Music Dance Music Dance Music....
Often at post show talk-backs, we are asked about the relationship between movement and music. Most frequently, people want to know which came first. Then, they want to know if all of the movement is choreographed "to" the music, i.e., is everything we do connected to a particular beat or whether it's felt timing that just "happens" to end when the music does.
I'm really bad at talkbacks... but the Wizard reminds me that understanding this question is important: the answers provide a way of understanding or at least accessing much of what happens on stage. Opera: libretto vs music? Musical: words vs music? Films: audio, visual, script, acting? All of these ask how the different creative processes that go into complex artistic production relate to each other.
The answers range from "yes, all of the above" to "no, not quite any of the above" and sometimes include "yeah/no .... little bits of some of the above." Different people work in different ways. Sometimes, a choreographer comes in with music; then, the company has to get permission for the rights. How the music becomes a part of the work is then entirely dependent on the choreographer. Sometimes, everything happens to or on an explicit beat, and there is a clear correlation between music and dance -- one might express the other. Sometimes, not so much -- for either the beat or the interpretation. I've done pieces where the music is slow and sad and the dancing fast and furious. I've done stuff with an action for every beat. And stuff where we have "markers" by which we know whether or not we are late or not. If we end early, the music fades. In one piece, I like it when the music fades and there are a couple of seconds of dance in silence. In yet another, the fading of the music is a cue for the improvised movement to end. Variations are limitless.
Sometimes, a choreographer gets to collaborate with a composer. I like this process most of all. It's absolutely fabulous to watch how choreography and music grow together. Again, though, how this works depends on everyone involved. I've been in a process where the music arrived a week before; it was made at a distance from rehearsal video. It was FABULOUS (but unnerving). My favourite way is when the composer and choreographer spend time together during rehearsal. That way, we dancers get to hear and observe a little bit of the collaborative process and learn more of what the choreographer is thinking. From hearing about what the composer sees, we learn something of what the piece conveys.
I continue to think of the thing as a whole, though -- even though dance can happen in silence. I need to. It makes no sense for me to be thinking of dancing "to" the music. I know this isn't a musical performance -- no one has come for the music specifically -- but keeping my ear (and eye) on the piece as a multi-stranded work of art in which music and dance are intertwined. It's a rich and complex feast.
I'm really bad at talkbacks... but the Wizard reminds me that understanding this question is important: the answers provide a way of understanding or at least accessing much of what happens on stage. Opera: libretto vs music? Musical: words vs music? Films: audio, visual, script, acting? All of these ask how the different creative processes that go into complex artistic production relate to each other.
The answers range from "yes, all of the above" to "no, not quite any of the above" and sometimes include "yeah/no .... little bits of some of the above." Different people work in different ways. Sometimes, a choreographer comes in with music; then, the company has to get permission for the rights. How the music becomes a part of the work is then entirely dependent on the choreographer. Sometimes, everything happens to or on an explicit beat, and there is a clear correlation between music and dance -- one might express the other. Sometimes, not so much -- for either the beat or the interpretation. I've done pieces where the music is slow and sad and the dancing fast and furious. I've done stuff with an action for every beat. And stuff where we have "markers" by which we know whether or not we are late or not. If we end early, the music fades. In one piece, I like it when the music fades and there are a couple of seconds of dance in silence. In yet another, the fading of the music is a cue for the improvised movement to end. Variations are limitless.
Sometimes, a choreographer gets to collaborate with a composer. I like this process most of all. It's absolutely fabulous to watch how choreography and music grow together. Again, though, how this works depends on everyone involved. I've been in a process where the music arrived a week before; it was made at a distance from rehearsal video. It was FABULOUS (but unnerving). My favourite way is when the composer and choreographer spend time together during rehearsal. That way, we dancers get to hear and observe a little bit of the collaborative process and learn more of what the choreographer is thinking. From hearing about what the composer sees, we learn something of what the piece conveys.
I continue to think of the thing as a whole, though -- even though dance can happen in silence. I need to. It makes no sense for me to be thinking of dancing "to" the music. I know this isn't a musical performance -- no one has come for the music specifically -- but keeping my ear (and eye) on the piece as a multi-stranded work of art in which music and dance are intertwined. It's a rich and complex feast.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Parking Police
As I pulled into a spot, yesterday, I was policed. By another person with a placard. I didn't move. I was there first. Disabled parking at this particular grocery store happens not to be closest to the entry. It's close, yes, but there are other parking spaces much nearer; the lady with a placard took one of these. I could see she wasn't happy not to have got designated parking.
The encounter got me thinking -- must be parking weekend; Bad Cripple also wrote about disabled parking this weekend. Anyway.
The people who set up accessible parking have to balance a number of considerations, the most important of which probably are space (for ramps and to get a wheelchair out of a car/van) and proximity to the destination. People who have placards have them for very different medical reasons. Unwittingly, though, we become part of the planners' calculations about where to put the spaces and how many spaces there should be. (Legislation for this is, I believe, set by the state.) Whatever the law, the practice is that in my parts of California at least there are never enough spaces. And with scarcity begins the zero-sum game and the policing of who gets the spots.
Yeah, I know there's abuse of the placards, but I tend not to see that or I don't know that I am seeing that. I don't think that encouraging and enforcing hierarchizing principles of access help members of the disabled community. When I look at sites like this one -- download an iphone app so you can report a fraudster, I feel really cross. Disability is not always visible. Even though we know there are abusers of the system, I think we do better to trust that people displaying placards need those placards . And I believe that those who need the placards will do better if we recognize that we are all in this together.
I am concerned with how we treat each other. I hate the way that we who have legitimate placards and need the spots turn on each other -- even if all that happens are comments and/or looks. I don't know how we decide that we need these spots more than anyone else, but we do. It's frustrating not to be able to get the parking, yes. But designated spaces are only that: designated. They are not a personal entitlement. If the place goes to someone else with a plate or a placard, that's it. You can't give that person a dirty look or try to get them to hurry up. I think it is permissible to check (once that person has gone) that they have a placard, but I also think that checking, if they DO have a placard, can come across as policing.
Policing is no understatement. A delicate and tactful enquiry about whether they need disabled parking is one thing -- asking them to produce their placard (which is what happened to me today) is another. I've been on both sides of it. I have asked someone if they need the space -- that's my way of getting around the "are you REALLY disabled" question. I'm literally asking about the space -- I need room for my chair. Sometimes, the space user is a disabled person who gets it. Sometimes, the question comes across as policing, and they get upset (with some justification.) Sometimes, though, I just get ticketed like everyone else who parks in more than one space at a time.
And speaking of policing, there's also the question of law enforcement. Friday was International Parking Day -- the idea being to turn parking places into, well, parks! I didn't do anything. I'd love to see that take a firm hold. But I also recognize that in places where public transit is poorly constructed and para transit poorly organized, cars are a necessity. So, again, I feel pushed to trade my desire for a green world against my desire for an accessible world. If we could work on this, perhaps the pressure around abuse and fraud could be reduced. Effective July 1st, the fine for placard abuse is $935. Is that money going back to the disabled community -- the ones most materially affected by the abuse? Hell, no. It's going to a cash-strapped city. This kind of policing should help us more than it does. Places like San Francisco and Berkeley simply don't have enough accessible spaces. Reducing fraud is part of the problem. Rethinking the system is another.
In the meantime, I'm going to try and trust that the placard user needs that space.
Yeah, I know there's abuse of the placards, but I tend not to see that or I don't know that I am seeing that. I don't think that encouraging and enforcing hierarchizing principles of access help members of the disabled community. When I look at sites like this one -- download an iphone app so you can report a fraudster, I feel really cross. Disability is not always visible. Even though we know there are abusers of the system, I think we do better to trust that people displaying placards need those placards . And I believe that those who need the placards will do better if we recognize that we are all in this together.
I am concerned with how we treat each other. I hate the way that we who have legitimate placards and need the spots turn on each other -- even if all that happens are comments and/or looks. I don't know how we decide that we need these spots more than anyone else, but we do. It's frustrating not to be able to get the parking, yes. But designated spaces are only that: designated. They are not a personal entitlement. If the place goes to someone else with a plate or a placard, that's it. You can't give that person a dirty look or try to get them to hurry up. I think it is permissible to check (once that person has gone) that they have a placard, but I also think that checking, if they DO have a placard, can come across as policing.
Policing is no understatement. A delicate and tactful enquiry about whether they need disabled parking is one thing -- asking them to produce their placard (which is what happened to me today) is another. I've been on both sides of it. I have asked someone if they need the space -- that's my way of getting around the "are you REALLY disabled" question. I'm literally asking about the space -- I need room for my chair. Sometimes, the space user is a disabled person who gets it. Sometimes, the question comes across as policing, and they get upset (with some justification.) Sometimes, though, I just get ticketed like everyone else who parks in more than one space at a time.
And speaking of policing, there's also the question of law enforcement. Friday was International Parking Day -- the idea being to turn parking places into, well, parks! I didn't do anything. I'd love to see that take a firm hold. But I also recognize that in places where public transit is poorly constructed and para transit poorly organized, cars are a necessity. So, again, I feel pushed to trade my desire for a green world against my desire for an accessible world. If we could work on this, perhaps the pressure around abuse and fraud could be reduced. Effective July 1st, the fine for placard abuse is $935. Is that money going back to the disabled community -- the ones most materially affected by the abuse? Hell, no. It's going to a cash-strapped city. This kind of policing should help us more than it does. Places like San Francisco and Berkeley simply don't have enough accessible spaces. Reducing fraud is part of the problem. Rethinking the system is another.
In the meantime, I'm going to try and trust that the placard user needs that space.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Whither Disability Art?
The question of the function and/or purpose of art is already vexed; I usually don't go there with people. But I was curious about this particular take on the direction of art produced by disabled people. It's from an interesting report from London by Liz Porter about Liberty 2011: London's Disability Arts Festival. You can find an excerpt from her report here, and from there, you can download a word document of the full report.
In my circles, rights-based art tends to be made primarily be non-professional artists (oh, god, the contradictions of professionalism and art). That might be because "professional" artists can't gain funding for what would be seen as making the same piece over and over again. What? You want equal rights again? Still? We paid for that 3 years ago. It might also be because the pressures of professionalism and acceptance as a professional sometimes require distance from explicit political messages: the nuance of a disabled body might be a sufficient political statement in itself -- particularly if the piece has, say, sexual overtones. Further, the art of professional artists is often expected to be multi-valent -- its meaning varies depending on who and how, where and when. It is not usually an expression of self, but an articulation of self and something beyond. It is not just a political statement, but it is an activist manifesto and beyond.
None of this would have to be the case. Funding and notions of professionalism do, however, make it difficult to survive if you challenge the status quo too much. We do wrong if we leave behind our political roots, but we also disadvantage ourselves if we don't grow and change.
Quality is a tough one. Did someone out there think that explicitly political work wasn't, ahem, quality? Professional and quality don't necessarily go hand-in hand. The technique of a professional is likely to be better than that of a non-professional. But that doesn't mean that the work isn't quality. Professional artists can turn in crappy work, and when they do, it is every bit as spectacular as the crappy work of community artists -- perhaps even more so. Quality is not objective, but neither is it purely subjective. It might be, say, better quality for a festival to present a full range of disabled artistic production than to present only what it deems quality work. It's a question all presenters and curators should grapple with.
I find myself mostly sympathetic to Ms. Porter's questioning, but with one exception. I'm not sure the work of disability arts and culture movements and the rights movement roll easily together. Take these lyrics by Ian Stanton (source: his obituary by Tom Shakespeare)
When it seems life’s getting harder I remember Douglas Bader
Cos that’s what my doctor said to do.
Said ‘overcome those negative feelings
You will find yourself revealing
Sides of you you never even knew’.
OR
I am sad, yes I’m pathetic,
I’m a fan of Oldham Athletic…
OR
You feel a rumblin’, It’s comin’ thru the land
You get to feel your time is comin’
You can touch it with your hand.
We are advancing, dancing on the way.
Politically powerful and persuasive. But what an artistic nightmare.
What struck me this year is that Liberty has moved into being an inclusive outside arts festival with quality work being shown, professionally staged and virtually all family friendly - very appealing to a wider diverse audience and funders. I think this is appropriate and realistic to a degree particularly as festivals are popular and many disabled artists want to be a part of this scene. Yet I ponder what this means for the disability arts with a ‘rights or political slant’ – definitely missing this year.
...
Where would the disability rights movement be now if we hadn’t had the voices of Johnny Cres[c]endo and Ian Stanton who spread the messages for choices and rights for freedom from oppression. Such expressions must not be lost.It's a hard question. Must art always be political? Is art political anyway, even it isn't explicitly about, say, the interests of a particular group -- even abstraction is political in a certain context? I wasn't at the show. But here are the lines of tension that interest me: Inclusive/quality/professional/family-friendly.
In my circles, rights-based art tends to be made primarily be non-professional artists (oh, god, the contradictions of professionalism and art). That might be because "professional" artists can't gain funding for what would be seen as making the same piece over and over again. What? You want equal rights again? Still? We paid for that 3 years ago. It might also be because the pressures of professionalism and acceptance as a professional sometimes require distance from explicit political messages: the nuance of a disabled body might be a sufficient political statement in itself -- particularly if the piece has, say, sexual overtones. Further, the art of professional artists is often expected to be multi-valent -- its meaning varies depending on who and how, where and when. It is not usually an expression of self, but an articulation of self and something beyond. It is not just a political statement, but it is an activist manifesto and beyond.
None of this would have to be the case. Funding and notions of professionalism do, however, make it difficult to survive if you challenge the status quo too much. We do wrong if we leave behind our political roots, but we also disadvantage ourselves if we don't grow and change.
Quality is a tough one. Did someone out there think that explicitly political work wasn't, ahem, quality? Professional and quality don't necessarily go hand-in hand. The technique of a professional is likely to be better than that of a non-professional. But that doesn't mean that the work isn't quality. Professional artists can turn in crappy work, and when they do, it is every bit as spectacular as the crappy work of community artists -- perhaps even more so. Quality is not objective, but neither is it purely subjective. It might be, say, better quality for a festival to present a full range of disabled artistic production than to present only what it deems quality work. It's a question all presenters and curators should grapple with.
I find myself mostly sympathetic to Ms. Porter's questioning, but with one exception. I'm not sure the work of disability arts and culture movements and the rights movement roll easily together. Take these lyrics by Ian Stanton (source: his obituary by Tom Shakespeare)
When it seems life’s getting harder I remember Douglas Bader
Cos that’s what my doctor said to do.
Said ‘overcome those negative feelings
You will find yourself revealing
Sides of you you never even knew’.
OR
I am sad, yes I’m pathetic,
I’m a fan of Oldham Athletic…
OR
You feel a rumblin’, It’s comin’ thru the land
You get to feel your time is comin’
You can touch it with your hand.
We are advancing, dancing on the way.
Politically powerful and persuasive. But what an artistic nightmare.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Reading Movement
As we investigate the new choreographer and ourselves, I am finding that I have a new body. All that injury and all that physical therapy and extra training has made a new me. I am stronger in some places. Much stronger than I have been in 6 years. I also have some losses. And some new compensation strategies. I am trying not to call them tricks -- that makes me feel less real and less responsible. Strategies seem more planned. More careful.
I knew that I was different, but I am intrigued by how it is playing out in the studio. I now have a massively trained, massively stable core. It's like a tree trunk; yes, there are some bends, but the overall structure is solid. And yet, it can flex. It can even flex into extreme ranges without spasming -- most of the time. But what I notice is that I can now rely more on my core stability for movement than on my arms. And that changes how I dance.
More and more this week, I have noticed that I am trying to dance on momentum rather than strength (where strength equals arm strength and momentum equals the ride of the wheel). I am still doing more or less the same things, but the impulse comes from a different place. And the movement feels different.
That phrase I talked about yesterday. Well, we met it again today. But this time differently. Our instruction was something like "take the phrase into your body." We find ourselves spaces in the studio. I like to pick a spot where the sunshine makes odd shadow shapes. I review the original phrase. I watch the others do it a couple of times. I do it again and again myself. How to explain? It's like, well, it's like doing literary criticism -- each reading of the poem deepens your understanding of the text. You come to know what it means and better understand how it speaks to you. For a dancer, that process of reading is more a process of movement creation: to understand a movement phrase, you have to create a movement phrase.
In my corner, I repeat the phrase, all the while listening carefully for resonances in my body; I'm trying to sense where and how the movement falls. You can't impose upon a phrase; you can only discern what it and your body tell you. As I go over it again and again, I notice more that my head tilts that way, that I want to move my wheels, bend, arch, curl .... my arm slides up and out ... Soon, I have my own phrase.
We perform individually for the choreographer; he makes developments, changes, suggestions. We perform for each other -- seeing what we have each done, helps me understand the language of the phrase. I try some of the moves that I've seen, feeling out the meaning of each interpretation. It's rich, soft, subtle; I like this phrase. But then, just as I'm feeling comfortable with what I've seen and done, the choreographer asks for another version. A new "reading."
I wheel off to my sunlit space; the shadows have changed their orientation; I put my back to the light and start again.
I knew that I was different, but I am intrigued by how it is playing out in the studio. I now have a massively trained, massively stable core. It's like a tree trunk; yes, there are some bends, but the overall structure is solid. And yet, it can flex. It can even flex into extreme ranges without spasming -- most of the time. But what I notice is that I can now rely more on my core stability for movement than on my arms. And that changes how I dance.
More and more this week, I have noticed that I am trying to dance on momentum rather than strength (where strength equals arm strength and momentum equals the ride of the wheel). I am still doing more or less the same things, but the impulse comes from a different place. And the movement feels different.
That phrase I talked about yesterday. Well, we met it again today. But this time differently. Our instruction was something like "take the phrase into your body." We find ourselves spaces in the studio. I like to pick a spot where the sunshine makes odd shadow shapes. I review the original phrase. I watch the others do it a couple of times. I do it again and again myself. How to explain? It's like, well, it's like doing literary criticism -- each reading of the poem deepens your understanding of the text. You come to know what it means and better understand how it speaks to you. For a dancer, that process of reading is more a process of movement creation: to understand a movement phrase, you have to create a movement phrase.
In my corner, I repeat the phrase, all the while listening carefully for resonances in my body; I'm trying to sense where and how the movement falls. You can't impose upon a phrase; you can only discern what it and your body tell you. As I go over it again and again, I notice more that my head tilts that way, that I want to move my wheels, bend, arch, curl .... my arm slides up and out ... Soon, I have my own phrase.
We perform individually for the choreographer; he makes developments, changes, suggestions. We perform for each other -- seeing what we have each done, helps me understand the language of the phrase. I try some of the moves that I've seen, feeling out the meaning of each interpretation. It's rich, soft, subtle; I like this phrase. But then, just as I'm feeling comfortable with what I've seen and done, the choreographer asks for another version. A new "reading."
I wheel off to my sunlit space; the shadows have changed their orientation; I put my back to the light and start again.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
In Process
I've stopped writing because my head has been empty. Or perhaps I should say it has been too full. I'm in an intense rehearsal process. 7 hours a day, plus drive time. There are breaks, of course, but it turns out that we practice in the breaks and/or we can't keep stuff out of our heads. This is the most intense period of work I've ever done. It is also, perhaps, the most fruitful. I am growing.
I'm going to commit to blogging -- about dance, yes, -- but also about other things during this process. I cannot let myself become a dance machine. The last time we made a piece, I lost my sense of who I was; it sounds dramatic, I know, but I think this time, I will need to blog in order to maintain a non-dancing sense of the world.
For the record, then, here's how I've been living. We have rehearsal from 11:30 to 6, Monday to Friday. Some of that time is company class: we warm up together, work on things together, develop skills, relationships, trust, techniques, etc -- the things that enable us to do what we do. Then, we have 30 minutes to rest. We start again at 12:30 and go until 3? We have another break of 30 minutes... sometimes 45. Then, we work until 6.
Prior to that, I do what I need to do. Sometimes, that's physical therapy. Sometimes, it's bodywork. I've pared down my extra classes: now, I do less gyro, pilates and swimming than I would like, but the days are long and hard. I need to conserve my energy. My drive of 34 miles can take a sweet 45 minutes; that's good NPR time, music time, or personal silence time. It can also take 90 minutes; then, it's either utter angry hell or it's my time to focus on being a cog in the commute traffic wheel (here, for example).
When I get home, I don't feel real. I need to eat, stretch, heat, ice, bathe, EAT and sleep. So, I do. And I let my friends and my writing fall by the wayside.
So, perhaps, an insider's look at the way we work? How we create a piece depends on the choreographer, but here's an example of an actual moment from last week.
The five of us lined up in front of our floor to ceiling mirror; we looked intently not at ourselves, but at the choreographer. He danced a phrase. Then, he broke it down and taught it to us. Learning from a mirror helps get rid of the opposition-effect you have when you try to learn from someone infront of you: When they raise their right arm, do you raise your right arm or do you raise your left -- because that's what the mind sees? But learning from a mirror "flattens" the three dimensionality of the phrase. So, you have to keep flipping between the mirror, the choreographer, and the rest of the group.
"Going on..." When I hear that, I usually have to suppress a little moment of panic: I don't have it yet; I'm never ready. "Going on. " The phrase continues. I pick up a chunk here and there. "From the beginning..." "So, ...." And we begin to ask questions. We look at each other, trying to figure out what we've missed. We ask him to go over sections. We practice. I'm really bad at this; there's often detail that I don't quite get the first or second or even third time around -- particularly when it's fast. Others in the company seem to get it immediately: I feel a little more panic. The choreographer watches. Demonstrates some more. Gives personal instructions. I'm still stuck; I can see that there's a flip, but I have no idea how to make my hands do that. Eventually, we all have it.
The five of us line up in front of the mirror; he counts; we all do. It's satisfying. I've got it. It's beautiful.
I'm going to commit to blogging -- about dance, yes, -- but also about other things during this process. I cannot let myself become a dance machine. The last time we made a piece, I lost my sense of who I was; it sounds dramatic, I know, but I think this time, I will need to blog in order to maintain a non-dancing sense of the world.
For the record, then, here's how I've been living. We have rehearsal from 11:30 to 6, Monday to Friday. Some of that time is company class: we warm up together, work on things together, develop skills, relationships, trust, techniques, etc -- the things that enable us to do what we do. Then, we have 30 minutes to rest. We start again at 12:30 and go until 3? We have another break of 30 minutes... sometimes 45. Then, we work until 6.
Prior to that, I do what I need to do. Sometimes, that's physical therapy. Sometimes, it's bodywork. I've pared down my extra classes: now, I do less gyro, pilates and swimming than I would like, but the days are long and hard. I need to conserve my energy. My drive of 34 miles can take a sweet 45 minutes; that's good NPR time, music time, or personal silence time. It can also take 90 minutes; then, it's either utter angry hell or it's my time to focus on being a cog in the commute traffic wheel (here, for example).
When I get home, I don't feel real. I need to eat, stretch, heat, ice, bathe, EAT and sleep. So, I do. And I let my friends and my writing fall by the wayside.
So, perhaps, an insider's look at the way we work? How we create a piece depends on the choreographer, but here's an example of an actual moment from last week.
The five of us lined up in front of our floor to ceiling mirror; we looked intently not at ourselves, but at the choreographer. He danced a phrase. Then, he broke it down and taught it to us. Learning from a mirror helps get rid of the opposition-effect you have when you try to learn from someone infront of you: When they raise their right arm, do you raise your right arm or do you raise your left -- because that's what the mind sees? But learning from a mirror "flattens" the three dimensionality of the phrase. So, you have to keep flipping between the mirror, the choreographer, and the rest of the group.
"Going on..." When I hear that, I usually have to suppress a little moment of panic: I don't have it yet; I'm never ready. "Going on. " The phrase continues. I pick up a chunk here and there. "From the beginning..." "So, ...." And we begin to ask questions. We look at each other, trying to figure out what we've missed. We ask him to go over sections. We practice. I'm really bad at this; there's often detail that I don't quite get the first or second or even third time around -- particularly when it's fast. Others in the company seem to get it immediately: I feel a little more panic. The choreographer watches. Demonstrates some more. Gives personal instructions. I'm still stuck; I can see that there's a flip, but I have no idea how to make my hands do that. Eventually, we all have it.
The five of us line up in front of the mirror; he counts; we all do. It's satisfying. I've got it. It's beautiful.
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