This Body This Earth

Essay on “Dancing in a New Place” by Andrea Olsen.

“Dancing in a New Place” by Andrea Olsen is an article published in Contact Quarterly in 2006. Contact Quarterly is a biannual journal created in the 1970’s to share movement ideas between artists. Olsen speaks about the mind body connection, humans’ relationship to place, and how we, as dancers, have a unique opportunity to share this connection, this interconnectedness, with the rest of the world.

Olsen is a professor of dance at Middlebury College. She has taught anatomy and kinesiology since 1972 in workshops and colleges, and is the author of two books, Bodystories and Body and Earth. She is also a choreographer and has created over 80 works. Body and Earth, An Experiential Guide, explores the many ways in which our relationship to our bodies affects our attitudes toward the world around us. This idea makes me think about the connection between the way we as humans treat our own bodies and the way human beings are treating the earth. As a culture are we listening to our bodies? Are we listening to our earth?

In this article Olsen speaks eloquently about how dancers are in favorable position to share their innate understanding of the connection between their bodies and their minds. I think about how I’ve spent my entire life teaching and training my body to be clear, sensitive, and spontaneous; learning specific techniques requiring my brain to first understand the technique, and then teaching the body to implement the technique. Memorizing dance phrase after dance phrase until my body knows the phrase without the brain having to think about it, or teaching the body to be open to the flow of creativity that expresses its self in choreography or improvisation; this is what I call body intelligence. Olsen, in this article, speaks about how just a century ago dualistic ideas of body and mind were prevalent and still are in many parts of the world. She refers to the whole being, being greater than the sum of its parts. This idea reminds me of Stephen Nachmanovitch’s ideas about the danger of monoculture. He explains in his book Free Play, Improvisation in Life, how an open field has hundreds of different kinds of plants and animal species existing in one place. Having this variety within this field creates safety in its flexibility. If one species were to die than there would be others to continue the health of the field. In contrast, he continues to explain how our culture is based on the idea of monoculture. Monoculture teaches us to choose a couple of these species that are useful for us, getting rid of the other species in the field, breeding out diversity and flexibility. If in our culture we only focus on mental brain power then we are breeding out the intelligence and sensitivity that the body intelligence has to offer. Olsen is asking us to consider the human body and mind as a whole, approaching the human existence as a holistic being, not to be separated into parts. I believe the continuation of our human species depends on this holistic view point.

Olsen also speaks about the human connection to the idea of "Place" where place being somewhere comfortable, safe, and “home”, versus the idea of "Space" as freedom, or unexplored territory. “Place” takes time, time for the body to assimilate to and to be sensitive; the body needs time to open up to its new environment. Space is always the new horizon, which after time and repetition becomes “Place”.

I have had a number of experiences that are examples of the importance of the human connection to the idea of “Place.” For example, in a graduate summer course I found it very important for me to sit in the same chair each day. I found I needed that physical grounding, my “Place,” because mentally I knew my mind would be challenged with new ideas, soaring into new “Spaces.”

Another example was my experience with the importance of “Place” in looking for a husband. Before I got married I knew I would find a husband if I just looked in the right place. When I was living in NYC, I knew I was not going to find my husband; I was not connected to that city as a place to build a home. I was able though, to think of two cities where I would find a husband. These two cities were places where I felt connected and where could consider building a home. Because my relationship to the place was strong I knew instinctively that I could find someone else who also had a strong connection to that place and from there we could build a life together.

Olsen then goes onto explain interconnectedness as the way "humans feel the reciprocity and vitality that comes from opening ourselves to the natural systems," as an example of this she offers the example of, “The stream you enjoy after a dance class is inside of you, resonant with the blood coursing through your veins-not as a metaphor but as material/substance/matter.” I was also able to relate this idea to a personal experience of mine. When I was at the North Carolina School of the Arts and was told to put my body into Martha Graham contractions, over and over again, my joy was waning and my body was aching. It wasn't until another teacher told me to dance as if I was outside, imagining the expansive fields and feeling the wind on my face that I found the support I needed to accomplish this movement. I needed to feel this connection with the natural world in order to be able to move my body through these foreign forms of movement. As a kid I spent most of my free time when not in the dance studios, outside finding comfort in my natural world. Camping, making forts, playing in stream beds, these activities are so important for children. Childhood is a time when humans have the time to connect with their natural environment. If they aren’t given this opportunity as children, then often later as adults the natural world seems further away because they lack a sense of interconnectedness.

Olsen ends by saying, "Where we focus our attention affects what we perceive." There’s an old Native American story about two wolves. "One can either feed the good wolf or feed the bad wolf. Which wolf wins? The one you feed.” Imagine a world without violent media, instead media filled with discussions about deep passions and intuitive creativity? Imagine a world without sugar coated cereal boxes inside super mega department stores. But instead farmer markets on the street corners where fresh food and meats are sold daily. I have chosen to raise my family out in the countryside, connected to the earth, surrounded by the animals and vegetables we raise and then eat respectfully. It’s very important to me for my children to have a strong sense of interconnectedness. I believe the future health of our planet depends on humans’ feelings of connection to our earth.

"Experiential knowledge of the body is essential in this time of disembodied rhetoric and environmental destruction," Olsen warns. Dancers who have worked in the experimental dance fields, release techniques, yoga, and authentic movement have a heightened sensitivity to themselves and an equally heightened sensitivity to their environment, our earth. At first, Olsen says, this awareness of what is happening to our earth might be overwhelming and depressing especially if you feel alone in this perception. But sharing and deepening our sensitivities, and connecting into our global dancer community at large, can move our grief into action. In writing this, she is asking us as dancers to take our place in the world, to be proud of the knowledge that we have spent our life work doing, and to create a structure that enables us to share this unique mind body connection with the rest of the world.

In this article, Olsen has shown me how I can bring together my two main passions, my environmental activist work and my dance work in a way I had not thought possible. By sharing my authentic dance expressions with the world this creates a place of comfort in our society. A time and a place for humans to take a moment to reconnect with their own bodies and breath, remembering their own streams of energy that run through them, reconnecting themselves to the natural world.

Anna Halprin- Artist Profile

Anna Halprin isn’t afraid. When she needed somewhere to dance, her husband built her a huge outdoor deck close to her home. When she needed dancers, she enlisted her children. When she needed a way to train her children in improvisation, she created an afterschool dance program at her house. When she needed to save her life from the cancer growing inside, she paid attention and exorcised the disease with dance.

So why hadn’t I ever heard of Anna Halprin, the grandmother of postmodern dance? Why, while I was attending the North Carolina School of the Arts and Virginia Commonwealth University was her name never mentioned in the modern dance choreographers’ time line? Why did it take me 35 years of dancing to finally hear about her in a graduate program at George Washington University when a professor recommended I watch her movie, “Breath Made Visible?” Was it because she spent the bulk of her career on the West Coast? Was it because she didn’t have a codified technique? Was it because what she did was considered dance therapy? All of my life I’ve been looking for a hero. After watching this documentary about her life I found one, Anna Halprin. She was a Jewish girl with kinky hair, the number one reason she said Martha Graham would never hire her. As a child her mother rescued her from being ridiculed at her local ballet school and instead put her in creative movement classes. She had a talent for comedy and made her way into musical theatre on Broadway.

When her high school sweetheart accepted a job in California they moved across the continent. In California Halprin began improvising with the Pacific Ocean, moving in concert with the water, the sand, the rocks. The earth became her partner. By following the sensations her body exchanged with the physical landscapes, her choreographic work evolved. At this juncture in her career, her work simplified into non-dancer pedestrian actions that came from within each individual person, rather than structured dance phrases. The dancers or people she worked with, because they weren’t necessarily dancers, were asked to accomplish tasks, such as lifting a piece of driftwood together as a group and carrying it across the sand, or pushing their faces against a large boulder. She was interested in the natural movement of the human body. How does a person move through life? How is their natural movement, their own experience of moving, different from the phrasing dance techniques of ballet or the emotionally tense formalism of Graham?

Halprin’s work was similar to Isadora Duncan’s work in that they both explored the natural joy of movement itself. Neither of these artists was interested in placing external techniques on their bodies. But the difference between these two artists was that Halprin developed an emphasis on working with a task perspective, which created a sense of structure, always going back to the pedestrian form, picking up sticks etc. This kept her work in the “here and now,” working with real people and their real timing. Duncan’s work, although it was focusing on natural movement, had a romantic sense of fluidity and relationship to space. Therefore, as an audience member, one felt it was more aligned with the ballet rather than reality. Halprin’s works were kinetic but not dancey. Her task oriented movement choices were echoing the approaches of Futurism and perhaps were being drawn out of her as a result of her close relationship with her husband, an architect who had a strong sense of structure and form.

Halprin’s explorations were open for dancers across the dance community. Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, and Simone Forti all found their way to Halprin’s deck and took back with them to NYC this new approach of working from the inside and letting movement flow out naturally, with the added task perspective. Breaking down the structures of codified dance technique, Halprin’s ideas opened the doors for the Judson Church Era including Merce Cunningham, encouraging exploration of the human body as an intelligent moving body with its own innate reactions to its environment in time and space.

During the 1960’s riots in Las Angeles, Halprin was invited to work with a racially mixed group of students at a performing arts high school. This was risky political intervention work and she met it with strength and creativity. She had the students do a lot of what would now be called contact improvisation work: physical trust exercises, sharing weight between partners, rolling over each other. This was at a time when the racial split was becoming dangerous and here she was requesting these students to confront their differences directly through the body. This more ritualistic way of working and healing a population had a profound effect on her career. She no longer wanted to just make dances; she wanted to know why she was making them. She was doing this kind of work because it was healing.

Halprin began focusing on ritual, leading large populations of people through simple movements where, no matter what age or facility, they could connect to an inward expression of their hearts. In Halprin’s 50’s she drew a self-portrait. In this picture she drew a black mass in her pelvis. She later learned this was cancer, a cancer that was going to take her life. Months later she drew another picture representing the light and dark sides of herself. She performed a dance inspired by what she drew, not meant for an audience, of moaning, writhing and pulling this cancer out of her. The doctors said a year later her cancer was completely gone. Can dance become a form of therapy? Absolutely!

As an artist I’ve always believed art is to make an audience feel. Anna Halprin accomplished this time and time again. Fearless in regards to what she should or shouldn’t do, Anna Halprin just did. Unlike many of the Judson Church artists who I feel emptied themselves of their emotional content while transforming their bodies into organisms of natural task accomplishers, Halprin never lost her emotional connection. She kept herself truly embodied, not being afraid to shed a tear on stage. Not being afraid to share with an audience her horror at watching her husband die in a hospital bed. Not being afraid to share all of herself. Halprin didn’t hide behind the movement of the body as a form, but instead she allowed her authentic human self to be expressed naturally, physically, through the movement, healing herself in the process as well as all the world brave enough to witness her work through these years. She is still teaching and leading ritual healing improvisation workshops on her deck in California at the age of 91. She and her daughter Daria Halprin founded Tamalpa Institute in 1978. Tamalpa Institute offers classes and workshops for the public throughout the year and a comprehensive training program in movement-based expressive arts education and therapy for people who wish to incorporate embodied creativity through the arts into their personal lives and professional practices as an artist.[1] I take from her a reminder to be passionate and brave. To trust that if I need and love dance as a vehicle to express my inner desires and concerns about humanity, then other people in my community will love and appreciate it too.

[1] www.tamalpa.org

Meredith Monk- Artist Profile

Errrrkkk, BBRRRRrrrr, lalalalalalalalaLaLaLaLALALA, LOOOOOooooooo….

How often in life do we remember not only the images but also the sounds of a performance that took place 20 years earlier? Meredith Monk, whose work defies categorization, left a deep imprint on my memory. She’s a composer, singer, director, choreographer and creator of new opera, music theater works, films and installations. In the early 1990s I saw excerpts of her own creation “Education of a Girlchild” in a small New York City downtown theatre. I remember sitting on the floor as this very small woman with long braids and moccasins tied up to her knees, entered the room. As stunning as the visual experience was, it was the acoustic landscape that left me reeling. Never before had I witnessed such sounds and exaggerations, these mumblings with complete conviction, these “out-of-the-world” audible sensations. I was mesmerized.

Thirty years before my encounter with “Education of a Girlchild,” Monk attended Sarah Lawrence College and studied under the legendary Bessie Shöenberg. In an excerpt from her Sarah Lawrence commencement address delivered on May 24, 1985 Monk said “The first thing Bessie Shöenberg taught me was not to take myself so seriously…To not have a preconceived notion of what a body is, a dance is, a song is, a play is.”[1] In her address, Monk encourages artists to be open to new possibilities rather than falling back on the conventional. She believes this is the way to creativity, through this opened door of curiosity. This has been a guiding principle in Monk’s career.

It seems that Monk wasn’t worried about being wrong or producing uninteresting work. She opened herself to a flow of ideas and discovered beauty and mystery along the way. During an interview Monk speaks about how she was insulted that text was the primary way to express the voice in today’s theatre performances[2]. For Monk, exploring the sounds that are created before or after text expresses the emotional content of a moment, as much as, or more powerfully, than words. Her belief in the spectrum of sound could be compared to presenting only the high leg kicks in dance performances without sharing all the transitions that bring the dancers’ legs to those heights.

When I was growing up training my body as a dancer, I never focused on my breath. It wasn’t until my yoga study that I began to make connections between inhales, exhales, and physical motion. Many dancers are uncomfortable speaking and avoid moments when they must sing or make sounds. What is it about the dance form that negates connection with our throats and lungs? Why have dancers for the most part been hushed into silence? Dance is a visual art form and many choreographers leave the acoustic elements of a performance to the musicians.

What I find fascinating about Monk’s career is that she never felt intimidated by this tradition. She was part of a dance program but devoted to her idea that the voice is part of the dancing body. Hence she allowed the exploration of the voice to begin by not closing herself off to being a silent visual within the dance making process. Possibly spring boarding off of John’s Cage’s acceptance of sound as music, Monk has been developing what she calls “extended vocal technique” for over 30 years. As her website explains: “Monk creates works that thrive at the intersection of music and movement, image and object, light and sound in an effort to discover and weave together new modes of perception. Her groundbreaking exploration of the voice as an instrument, as an eloquent language in and of itself, expands the boundaries of musical composition, creating landscapes of sound that unearth feelings, energies, and memories for which we have no words.”[3]

As inspired as I am by Monk’s persistence and creativity, her career also leaves me confused: why, like Anna Halprin, was she left out of my Dance History courses? Was it because my training at the North Carolina School of the Arts was mainly modern dance technique with little interdisciplinary crossover, which forms the crux of Monk’s work? Why was it only in reading Roselee Goldberg's Performance Live Art Since 1960 that I found Monk included in a textbook? Perhaps the dance history scholars and authors need to take themselves less seriously, as Monk advises, in order to see the full spectrum of work that is not only pure-movement-dance but also multi-disciplinary.

I’ll admit that, as an audience member who was only 20 years old and straight out of the North Carolina School of the Arts, I was initially uncomfortable at Monk’s performance at PS 122. I remember squirming while watching this grown woman make baby-like nonsensical chatter. But the more I listened, the more my body intuitively opened up to these somehow familiar sounds. It was almost as if her sounds were coming from within me. Monk’s power lies in her ability to connect our modes of communication, discovering a common ground that is clear and potent.

Monk’s career shows how important it is to nurture creativity. These days dancers and musicians are selected at young ages and handed lines to sing or moves to dance without much attention given to the development of the individual. Many of our arts courses for young people seem focused on technical knowhow and shallow entertainment. Fortunately Bessie Shöenberg was there for Monk, giving her the tools to discover the creator within. Opera companies and music festivals have since embraced Monk’s creations and recognized her achievements with numerous awards and commissions.

It is strange how marginalized the voice remains in the dance world. Although some choreographers have taken Monk’s path and integrated text and sounds creatively (thinking here about Bill T. Jones and Joe Goode) most choreographers and dance schools train dancers to be visual instruments. Through my international travels I have seen how important vocal communication can be to a creative process. In Moscow, while on tour with the Maida Withers Dance Construction Company, I was asked to create a dance work with eight Russian speaking dancers. For three weeks we sounded and squealed and communicated our intentions by using our shared body language and sounding language to create a piece of art that transcended words. Thinking back on this time I am reminded of the Futurists who played with text distortion on stage in the 1930s. What would they think if they attended one of Monk’s performances in the 1960s or 1970s? Like the Futurists, she ushered in an entirely new art form celebrating the voice, the body and their shared ability to express the inexpressible.

Monk has devoted herself to this explorative quest for 50 years. It is one that she sees as an essential part of being human. During her address to students of Sarah Lawrence in 1985 Monk reminded them: "To know that we have the right to experience the magic of the theatre (either as a performer, creator or member of the audience), that it is a part of our human legacy."[4]

[1] Jowitt, Deborah, Meredith Monk, JHU Press, 1997, 127.

[2] Meredith Monk - 1/8 You Tube Documentary Directed by Peter Greenaway, part of the "Four American Composers" series (1983).

[3] www.meredithmonk.org/monk/index.html

[4] Jowitt, Deborah, Meredith Monk, JHU Press, 1997, 127.

This Body This Earth

Monday, December 3, 2012

Mission Statement

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Identity Project

Andrea Olsen, Anna Halprin, Meredith Monk Papers