Something refreshing in dance-film-ville

Here is short film that's been circulating Facebook-land.  Maybe you've seen it already but I wanted to leave it here because I think it's beautiful.  

Often (opinion) dance films are strangely void of, well, dance.  Possibly over half of the dance on camera I seek out seems to be comprised of hand gestures, artistic shots or pedestrian movement, but not a lot of bodies moving in athletic, intricate, choreographed ways.  The other half of the time I find myself watching a dance that has consequently been filmed, as is, for the stage, which doesn't really quality as a dance film.  

The selection below melds beautiful vigorous movement with a solid argument for being a film piece, not live work.  The choreography holds equal weight to the choices made in setting up the shots, the location, the music, the costuming, the editing.  Everything is genuine, intentional, any hand on a body (one's own or the other's) is super deliberate... refreshing.  All of the components are incredibly well balanced and actually deserve to be a semi-narrative film piece that can be categorized as a dance film. 

Valtari- Written & Directed by Christian Larson. Choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Now, is the top removal near the end a bit cliche?  Maybe.  I could very well be sick and tired of people taking off their clothes onstage in dance/theater/perf art, just for the hell of it.  Then again it's kind of nice that the pair of dancers has the naked torso skin-on-skin happening.  Doesn't it feel really lovely to lay your bare back against someone else's?  Yep.  

Also-also, does the warehouse setting remind anyone else of a post-apocalyptic version of the game Portal?

Strikes a chord

Give yourself 19 minutes and check this out. It's nice to have someone speak so accurately and eloquently about something I've been thinking about/worried about/questioning for years, though if you read this blog you probably know me too well to consider me an introvert, in fact, you probably think of me as semi-obnoxious.

The Fox

Ok.  Last Friday I was listening to a weekly music show on NPR, and they unleashed this bad boy.  I thought it was great, until I saw the video, and I fell even more madly in love with these crazy Norwegians that make songs about foxes.  If you're bored at least make it to a chorus...

Tech week anthem, anyone?  How quickly will this become annoying...

(answer: never.)

But what if you're playing video games as an outcome of distraction?

Interesting article on how to rebuild an attention span.  Unfortunately I can't find the time or focus to finish it right now so I'll have to get to it later.  If anyone gets through it and can answer the question in the subject of this blog post let me know.

Sprezzatura

Sprezzatura [sprettsaˈtura] is an Italian word originating from Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, where it is defined by the author as "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it".^[1] It is the ability of the courtier to display "an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them".^[2] Sprezzatura has also been described "as a form of defensive irony: the ability to disguise what one really desires, feels, thinks, and means or intends behind a mask of apparent reticence and nonchalance".^[3]

The word has entered the English language; the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "studied carelessness".^[4]

(definition stolen from Wikipedia after I happened upon this new world!)

Secrets & Motion duet in Plath land... it's complicated.

There is something beautiful about someone that hits the highest of highs and lowest of lows.  Maybe it's awful (first-hand) to swing through life in that manner, but it's also how to experience all that the process of living can offer.  Cue Sylvia Plath.  

I read The Bell Jar in late elementary school (before I quite understood the subject matter, though I made it my goal to explore all the same), and most recently revisited the Unabridged Journals as I tried to make my way through a new duet I'm creating for Secrets & Motion.  The duet transpires between two female dancers/characters with a very complicated relationship.  One has a secret that both know; the piece explores the brain space between the two and the mental decisions on how to reveal the secret, who reveals the secret and why.  After developing the initial concept I looked to Plath as I remembered a seed of authenticity in the following quote:

“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.” 

No, this quote doesn't donate subject matter to the duet in its action words, but more in its honest coinciding duality.  It depicts a quick moment of realization as words are tumbling out into a waiting ear, the very human quick change of opinion when it feels like you can't turn back for (self) fear of contradiction.

I began the rehearsal process with improv based on having my female dancers take turns restricting their bodies to face away from the audience.  That became stale in the duration of one rehearsal.  Fortunately (at the same time as I was rereading the Plath Journals) Luminarium was invited to a 'musing' (sort of an open rehearsal) with our dear friends at Monkeyhouse, where I presented the main ideas behind this piece as an experimental movement exercise.  The movers paired up and each duo magically found a different way to express the duet relationship.  Some used parallel movements, some translated their partner through pedestrian gestures, some brought in vocally-made sound and breath, some went in two separate directions!  How wonderful it is to have such resources...  Combine an array of Monkeyhouse/Luminarium explorations in movement with a reread of word-inspiration and I was ready to face rehearsals once more.

I won't keep elaborating on the rehearsal process, since we are only two weeks out from the show (come!) but I will speak on a few deliberate choices I've made.  I've decided not to painstakingly explain the relationship between the dancers.  This means that lots of audience members will approach me after the show eager to share their theories on the two being lovers, enemies, etc etc etc.  It is what it is, but it's also increasingly harder for two females to dance together onstage without a label of any sort!   I've also decided not to overly share the plot with the audience.  Yes, there is a secret that is dangerously on the verge of being shared against ones will, but is it for her own good?  Is the share instead catty and destructive?  To harm or to help?  Either way is it right?  The true embodiment of Facebook's "it's complicated" status (yep, I went there).  Sorry audience members, perhaps there aren't right answers or perhaps you are resolute in your solution to the danced plot... but I promise you'll be ok, even without my clarification.

--

To end, here are some quotes from the Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath that are either great reading, or that freak me out as they are intensely similar to my own life and ways of living it...  The similarities will end, however, before my head ends up in an oven.

I promise...

"Life has been some combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning. ...

I love people.  Everybody.  I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection.  Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me.  My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either.  I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person.  But I am not omniscent.  I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have.  And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time...

I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and critiicizing life and take the easy way out.  To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn; this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love. ...

I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life.  I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head."

Gray area

Day one of a multi-week employment hiatus between summer jobs and fall.  This is both the pro and con of being associated with the field of education/kids.  My biggest problem right now is finding balance.  I haven't had a day off or an actual vacation in.... I don't even know.  When I took a day off during the year it was most likely to do something else for another job!  I'm currently trying to balance being responsible/getting my house in order, four brand new pieces of choreography, producing a festival, trying to take a moment to relax, searching for a new stimulating day job, catching up on work for the multiple orgs I am committed to, and so much more.

This sounds complain-y, but it's not, exactly.  I love most of the things I am currently doing, I just don't exactly love that I have zero free time.  There are a lot of gray areas, since sometimes I consider working on choreography or a new project using free time, buttttt it's also work to an extent.

So.  Before I really start rambling, the goal is to get boring work done, get the exciting work done, and carve out a tiny chunk of time just for me over the next couple of weeks.  Additional sleep would probably be good, but we are heading into 24-Hr ChoreoFest so...

How can anyone not like a sailor musical?

Sheepish.

THIS brilliant video makes me want a goat about a thousand times more than I already wanted one, which is bad since I was already at Veruca Salt levels of want.  While supposedly the animal in the video is a sheep (really?!), nothing gets me like a sassy or semi-violent goat.

PRANCERCISE

This is my favorite video of the moment.  Props to this woman for hitting it hard.

I'm pretty sure this isn't just exercise, it's older people go-to dance repertory for weddings, checking out a concert, maybe the occasional community center mixer...

Here is a decent Prancercise article.

Then again, while I giggle at this poor entrepreneurial woman and her exercise strategy, I did invent 'mouncing time' as a child... like pouncing, just with an M.  Go figure.

What we do to stay fit... sigh.

mollusks for all of us

This is awesome... although I guess they can chew through cement and might carry meningitis, two things that are debatably not awesome.  Not sure why i have such a serious love of mollusks.

poetry schmoetry

I was on a recent kid poem kick for a random reason, and I've been filtering through a lot of Shel Silverstein. Obviously every kid is exposed to his poems through grade school, but I was never really interested in spending a lot of time reading his writings.  Anyways, found the selection below in my word wanderings, and I'm just not sure how I feel about it.  For kids, sure, but it seems overly obvious and 'life-advice-y' in a sense that if anyone questioned it, I don't think the questions could be answered. I don't like wasted words, I often question my choices and I value others' opinions as someone who often questions their choices/decisions.  

Dear Mr. Shel Silverstein,

Speaking from current and historic self-experience, what if your voice is really indecisive?  What if it has good intuition, but is vague beyond that?  I need directions to back up instincts sometimes, where do those come from, careful guesswork?  What if I like running my trickier thoughts by friends and people that every now and then just know better?  What if I am too cautious to follow these inner clues and I miss out?

This is either a waste of time or a needed procrastination device.  You decide.

All it Takes... a mental spring bloom

One callback audition with several fantastic dancers, one night full of thought post-audition, and my mind that was full of tentative half formed ideas is working like a beehive full of the world's happiest and buzziest bees.

My brain (probably other people's brains too, but who knows) is a funny place.  I am SO excited to embark on new work, my first 'real' new work since Mythos:Pathos, and my brain is literally chiseling away at four separate ideas all at the same time right now.  Yes, even as I write this blog entry.  My silly head is even trying to spark brand new ideas, outside of the four I am committing to at the start of this project.  I have never said this before, but slow down, thoughts!  I feel very grateful for my never-ending stream of inspiration... if it ever dries up, that'll be the end of me.

I am excited to start sharing some of the specifics and process behind these pieces, but I am going to wait until we have finalized casting and a rehearsal schedule.  Stay tuned, it won't be long ;)

To the gentleman in the Camaro that sounds like a landing spaceship outside my house...

...I am not impressed.  Go overcompensate elsewhere.

I could do better...

... not NEARLY as juicy as I might've hoped, but interesting.  Link.

Here we go, new inspirations ;)

Jumble

And also, I'm on a huge old-Star Wars kick.  Really I'm a huge dork and this is pure nostalgia on moody rainy days.  Pretty sure sometime after Julie Andrews (in real life not just roles) but long before Christina Hendricks (as Joan, not in real life), Carrie Fisher was one of my first girl crushes.

Wouldn't it be great if we could all do whatever we wanted all the time?  Maybe, maybe not.

I think I'm getting 'old', since now, more often than not my friends do not care to make mischief. Debauchery, getting crazy lost on foot in the city at night for kicks, lighting things on fire and doing miscellaneous experiments, making awful decisions...  Either I've got a case of Benjamin Button that's stalled at 22, or every one else is getting more mature.

I think it was a mistake for Blogger to make themselves an iPhone app, cause now I can post things like this on a whim.  Enjoy?

Ohhhhhhh no one is safe when I'm in ridiculous mode.

Life goes on but I'm about to miss the bus...

The only good thing is that the silhouette of the neighbor's cat in their kitchen window is exactly the same, untouched and unaffected. She holds very still and her ears twitch towards things invisible in the dark.

A bit of a preface, disclaimer...
I obviously am horrified that someone would do disgusting violent acts to our city.  I do think that whoever was responsible for the acts needs to be held accountable.  I drove through the city last night, I felt robbed of my personal safety, I've felt tense all week and I was confined to my house all day.  I get how bad of a situation this was.

What I hate is that there are NO positive outcomes to this situation.  Not a single one.  Plenty of innocent people lost their lives, limbs or life as they formerly knew it.  Many more people lost their peace of mind and faith in each other.  At the same time, I can't help looking at this smooth-faced curly-haired guy thats seven years my junior, and feel so sad for him.  Maybe he was of sound mind and so much hatred for Boston that he really wanted to do this.  Just for a minute, though, suppose this was not his idea?  Maybe his brother masterminded it, or he was forced into it from a larger organization that wanted to harm Boston, and he was a pawn. Now, he is the only one left to take the blame.  This guy that crawled into a boat to hide and bleed to death is wished dead and held in such powerful contempt by so many strangers.  To be completely honest, I hope he opens his mouth in a public forum or in court and spews sincere cold hatred for Boston, perhaps that is the only time we will know for certain our community hatred for him is accurately placed.

Then I think about the adorable little boy that got killed, the 20-something girl, the student from China, the young policeman last night...

(I'm not so much doubting he did it, more wondering about the circumstances?)

There is NOTHING that is 'right' here.  Especially not the 'we got him's and death wishes for this man on Facebook.  Now is the time to be glad our community is safe, and grateful to those that keep us secure, but it is also the time to be quiet, humbled and reflective.  Bloodthirst makes me queasy.

My mom said long ago I could never be a good lawyer because I could never stop seeing the position of both sides at once.  I feel this is still the case.

The biggest problem for me right now is preparing to present new art tomorrow.  I am showing my contributions for the Threading Motion project at the quilt museum tomorrow, and I am feeling so gross about it.  Art is, if anything, a statement every time it happens.  What I am showing tomorrow is done, but it's so soon after so much mental turmoil, it's not AT ALL what I want to open my choreographic mouth to say!  I'd rather keep it shut, I need to process and get past all of these jumbled ridiculous thoughts and happenings, before I make a statement with my work that is misinterpreted (or fluff).  The show must also go on.  Where does my scale balance?

Again, please don't misinterpret my musings, these bombings were WRONG and someone does need to answer for and explain the violence and destruction.  

running running

Went on my first outdoor run of the year today, it seemed somewhat fitting.  I got out of work at 2:30, home at pretty much 2:50, 24 hours after the Marathon Bombings yesterday and still the news was solely focused on this nasty event.  I'm not a serious/good runner by any means (today I did 4 miles of super uphill terrain with a walking warm-up in 45 minutes or so), but what I love about running is it is the ONLY time I can shut down my mind, or hold a single focus.  It's a beautiful thing, as an individual with an incredibly explosive brain full of thoughts.

In any case (I've gone on and on about my running struggles and endeavors) it was a really intense run as I finally found myself alone with thoughts and feelings about the bombing tragedy.  The most pressing thought is more of a curiosity of who on earth could conceive, conceptualize and carry out such a mammoth violent act.  Everyone local to this area, I am sure, can create a list of people that were affected somehow.  I, alone, had friends, family and acquaintances running the race, with friends spectating as close as 50 ft to the explosions, friends living very close to that area, and my sister/Christos in class a few blocks away.  If we can all make such a list, it doesn't matter if it 'only killed three people' (yes... I heard that statement a few times today), since the event obviously had a huge impact on a larger scale.

Anyways, I'll be interested to watch the news in coming days.  Not so much to give this sicko or group of them more glory and fuel the fire, but to see how Boston solves this mystery, and what we deem as justice.  I'm a pretty live-and-let-live person, but how will a justice system and an entire city find peace?

Shallow deep thought of the moment

What if there were no such thing as questions?!

Yikes.

motivational self speech #35524938

A(nother) missed moment today... quiet-me gets too caught up in observation and 'seeing what will happen'.  It's sometimes hard to take my certainty as an artist out of the studio/my head/thoughts and into real life, relationships, another-gimmicky-r-word-i-am-too-tired-to-think-of... but hey- there are no mistakes, only opportunities, adventures, excitement.  Forge ahead.

Word play

18 of my Newest Favorite Words...

books, thoughts, not-much-else

As I was book binging/window shopping on both Barnes&Noble and the Boston Public Library websites, I realized that I've gone through at least 25 books already this year.  Having the nook app on my iPhone certainly helps, but it seems that confining my reading time to late-late nights and time spent travelling places does nothing to deter my rate of books consumed.  On the hierarchy of life priorities, it seems sleep still takes last place.  Then again I can expect answered text messages sent to my gramma at 2am, so perhaps the whole genetics/skipping generations thing holds some weight.

This weekend I got to see my lovely friend Kelsey, who was spontaneously in from Peru, attended my first board meeting at the Armory (as a member of said board), and caught American Repertory Theater's closing performance of Glass Menagerie.

I can't even begin to summarize the thoughts exploding from all of this, in this exact moment/blog entry, and might never get back around to it.. we will see.

Notation fail.

What am I DOING??

WHAT am I doing??

WHAT am I DOING??

Not sure how I want to say this to myself right now, and then where do the eye rolls and huffy sighs work in?

Sitting on my living room floor in pajama pants and the shirt I wore to work eating sugar free jello (that I didn't want to eat cause I don't eat artificial sweeteners) with my fingers.

Home alone till Thursday! I'm an adult, I swear.

Choreographer Challenges, a contemplation

Had a solid rehearsal today for the musical I am choreographing.  This is my newest challenge as I approached it with a bit of disdain, but now it's a study in professionalism.  Long story short, my gig choreographing Chicago for a group I like working with turned into choreographing Legally Blonde, the musical.  The first is a respected show with integral movement in a style I've lived, breathed and lusted after since I turned double digits.  The second is a newer creation based on a comedic movie (yes, musical based on movie :/) with no grounding idea for movement or really plot/songs etc, with too much time spent milking humor from sorority girl, bro and harvard student stereotypes.  Since I am getting paid well and I do like the group, actors and creative team, it's been a commitment to doing as good of a job as I can with what I am given without letting the animosity towards the show itself grow.

Honestly, I am having laughs in rehearsal and at the end of the day I am enjoying my work on the show.  While the personal success and adrenaline isn't felt watching the story come together and the plot develop while seeing my work sparkle within the greater picture, I am finding feelings of success and happiness through the creation process.  Today I taught a number that involves a crazy assortment of theatre dance, colorguard/drill team movement, body music, African dance, tap and gymnastics (whaaaa?!). We went through it segment by segment, and I tried to be a good teacher in addition to choreographer.  The cast worked hard, they were proud of themselves, and they did a good job with the movement.  Each of these little sections of the bigger number is a success- teaching it, coaching it, finessing it, praising.  Process, not product.  When my dancers in another number are jumping hardcore rope in unison, to music, and feeling confident, that's a success.  

Culminating thought.  Sometimes a choreographer needs to take herself out of the picture.  This is no time for selfish.  I am being paid to do a job I love.  It IS my responsibility to create numbers that work for the show and the bigger picture.  It's my job to teach the performers what they need to know, and to coach them so that they do the movement well on stage.  This IS NOT the job where I invest myself into my work.  Is this something I deem 'my product', care about artistically, put lots of intelligent creation effort into?  No.  More importantly, that's ok.  It's ok not to try to make an artistic masterpiece out of Legally Blonde, the musical.  It's ok to take this project on (ohhhhmygooood she can't possibly be a real-life-modern-dance-artist-creator if she does an especially trivial musical?! say my invisible snarky peers in my head!), and it's ok to talk about it and enjoy it, even if it's truly meaningless, it won't diminish me as an artist (mantra). In fact, perhaps it's impressive that I can be a good choreographer in my own world and simultaneously take on an atypical project and do an equally good job over there in musical theatre land.  

Point of the story.  It's not Chicago, I'll unfortunately have to wait to Fosse it up another day.  I am being paid to choreograph a musical, and even though it's by far not my favorite I owe it to myself, my legitimacy, and the show to do the best job I can with it.  There is NOTHING wrong with choreographing a musical, whatever genre you consider yourself based in.  If you are a creator, create, like what you do, no limits.

Eh?  

High as a Kite.

The amount of song/dance in the Oscars tonight is just delightful.  Add that to the serious James Bond presence and Barbra Streisand showstopper performance, and I'm in award show euphoria.  

It also makes me regret missing Anna Karenina in theaters.  I LOVE love love the book, and from what I've seen of trailers the movie looks well done.

Quentin Tarantino is my awkward-but-totally-cool-with-ones-own-awkwardness celebrity counterpart. Pretty sure I, too, have ended a speech with a hearty "peace out".

I am PSYCHED to be coordinating a show that could put several wonderful dancers, my own choreography (and Merli's!), the musical composition talents of my sister and the same talents of a dear high school friend, and our rapidly blooming company... all on one stage.  I need to stop myself from saying any more, it's a bigger concept than anyone might guess and if this thing happens it's going to be SO different and just so great.  Cross your fingers!

Secrets & Motion (thought into words and vice versa)

Listening to Myrlie Evers-Williams speak at the Inauguration made me once again aware of why I've wanted to work with words for so long.

In planning the start of last year's season, or maybe end of the one before, I brought up working with diary pages in the context of the candid thoughts of youth, but it wasn't the right time for such a project.  At the tail end of Mythos:Pathos, really as fodder for grants and something to put on paper for the next year's marketing materials, I threw the idea of turning words into a full-length performance again, and it took root.  Moving forward with an equally motivated codirector, we decided we wanted to pursue text (both original and preexisting, anonymous and owned) and we would find it through community members and library books and other sources, and we would treat it with dance.  A solid assortment of text-turned-dance would be a shot to capture who exactly we are.

Words are so important, even if they never become words.  Words are progress.  Words document, propel, and provide narrative to history.  Words are birthed thought (yes, I'm still going!), opinion and communication.  Words are protection and unfortunately sometimes weapons.

An important idea to me, personally, is how often words are forgotten or dissolve from our brains. The fables, myths and cautionary tales we read as kids are so often forgotten or discredited with adolescence.  Advice from our parents, those things we never said we would do or allow again, our wedding vows- what falls by the wayside?    A wonderful side-effect of this project is the amount of time we will be granted to meditate on words we might otherwise just read through; selecting text will be a vital task.

While Merli and I will be creating and merging segments together to form a larger show, I think my own focus will be selecting historic and contemporary texts and comparing them to original and personal pieces to find both difference and universality.  This, as always, is bound to change and in need of specificity, but it's currently a nice way to think about time travel through words, thoughts and dance.

Funding.

How do you tell not just the world, but a small panel of critical individuals how great you truly are at what you do/are trying to do, and convince them to give you money?

I'll let you know when I figure it out!

All joking aside, it's incredibly hard as a modest individual to do just this.  At a certain point grant writing isn't about you, even, but convincing said adjudicators that you are simply capable of executing the proposed project to completion.  As someone with HUGE ideas, more often than not, how do I convey that no matter how epic the project, I will always find a way to complete it to the best of my ability?  How do I convey that sure, I'm sometimes quiet, usually awkward and silly, but I'm a creative problem solver and I don't ever give up?  Some days I feel like it's impossible to do this, and I should just apply from a perspective of someone I am not, someone serious and career-focused, but it feels so wrong.

The best successes I've had come from outside individuals taking me seriously, and putting faith in my ideas.  How do I reinvent the grant, the application, the interview.   Hmmmmm.....

Ahhrrrrrrrt (still rhymes with fart).

We've all been there.  Perhaps you've sat in the dark, trying to enjoy a dance concert or a play, while the couple a row in front of you 'tries' to stifle their constant practiced intellectual chortle at every other gesture or line of dialogue.  Maybe you've walked the halls and galleries of an art museum, dodging esteemed 'museum go-ers' glaring at others that temporarily block their view or *gasp* enjoying the art in their own way.  Spoiler alert, there are EXPERTS everywhere.  How do you tell said expert is an expert?  Don't worry, and certainly don't try too hard... they will find a way to make it known to you.

Anyways, a good friend emailed me the following link today on this very subject.  The essay paints a good picture of 'experts' and non-experts alike, though I think it misses a third group of experts that are still knowledgeable, but also similarly free-minded like our non-experts.

Calling out the sneery condescension is what resonated with me most in this piece; it is what makes our audiences dwindle and future populations feel unsafe (mentally!) in our theatre spaces, galleries, and various other forums that should stay public.

Read!  Digest!  Thoughts?

(Thanks, Kelsey!)

The Power of Non-Experts

• by Desi Gonzalez on January 3, 2013
• 19

Yves Klein directing a model (Image courtesy pacific-standard.blogspot.com)

At Billboard’s Woman of the Year award last month, pop princess Katy Perry declared, “I am not a feminist, but I do believe in the strength of women.” Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon responded with quips like “Ha! HA HA HA!” and “Let me just point out that if you believe in the strength of women, Ms. Perry … you’re soaking in feminism.” Over at Slate, Amanda Hess, along with fellow writer Nona Willis Aronowitz, discussed the phenomenon of “the feminist police” — critics like Williams who scorn women like Perry. Sarcasm and condescension has never worked, Hess and Aronowitz contend; attacking deniers just widens the chasm between self-declared feminists and the rest of the female population.

I see the same story repeated in the galleries of contemporary art. I’ve had countless people express strong feelings against modern and contemporary art, as if “art” were a dirty word. (As a more high-profile example, filmmaker Werner Herzog’s declaration of despising art comes to mind.) But equally as problematic is the art world’s mocking response to the naysayers: The unease of many people is met with “That’s because you just don’t get it.” Art insiders are guilty of alienating the public, just as feminists who “condescendingly dismiss [women] as morons” alienate a lot of women. I like witticisms just as much as the next guy, but not when snark comes at the expense of inclusion.

Installation view of Yves Klein at Hirshhorn (Image via Hirshhorn)

Turns out that if we spend less time dismissing non-experts and more time listening, we can learn something. A few years ago, I spent several months in the circular halls of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. As a part of the Interpretive Guide program, I initiated critical conversations with visitors on the exhibition Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers. I’ve never thought so deeply about the oddball French artist than I did that summer — and all from talking to the public.

Most approached the exhibition with apprehension. A listless pool of blue pigment, a video of naked woman rolling around in azure paint; the works are peculiar, even for those of us with art history degrees. But after contemplating for a bit, visitors were able to make astounding connections using their vast repertoire of personal experience. Klein’s signature electric blue reminded one visitor — who had just spent the last few months backpacking through Southeast Asia — of the precious indigo dye of India. She explained that indigo has mystical connotations in Hinduism, which makes an interesting parallel to Klein’s claim that his hypnotic monochromes represented an infinite void.

Or take the perspectives of MoMA Unadulterated, a “hacked” audio tour that interviews kids on their responses to works in the Museum of Modern Art collection. (Full disclosure: I currently work at MoMA, but MoMA Unadulterated is an independent project unaffiliated with the museum.) Their commentary is adorable, but also really astute. One kid compares De Wain Valentine’s minimalist “Triple Red Disk Metal Flake – Black Edge” to flying saucers. I’ve passed by the sculpture innumerable times without stopping to think about it, but now I can’t help of thinking about its unusual form and materials as otherworldly. At Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers’s “Belgian Lion,” consisting of an image of a lion on a frying pan, one kid wondered whether he made the pan. Another youngster gets to the heart of the concept of the “readymade” with her retort: “Why would you make a pan if you can just buy it for cheaper? … Other people are buying the piece of cardboard, they’re buying the paint, they’re buying the paintbrushes … Why not?”

(Image via kathrynyoung.wordpress.com)

There’s something to be said about grassroots perspectives on an issue, whether it’s art or feminism. Nona Willis Aronowitz drove around America with the intent to talk to women about what feminism means to them. But as it turned out, the word “feminism” hardly came up: “The main thing I learned from writing [my book]Girldrive is that the question, ‘Are you a feminist?’ is boring. We asked that question and got some generic-sounding, bullshit answer. Once we moved on and asked about women’s actual lives, we learned the real stuff.” A person can have valuable opinions about a woman’s relationship to society even if said person isn’t aware of the larger movement of feminism.

It’s the same with art. You can have a powerful and intimate response to art, without knowing that Marcel Duchamp pioneered the idea of the readymade. All too often it seems like those entrenched in the art world, myself included, are too numbed by big names and buzzwords and the weight of art history to have a fresh perspective. I dream of a world of grassroots art interpretations, that values the perceptions of a novice as much as a Ph.D.

Grassroots only works, however, with the backing of a general public. Here’s how Katy Perry can, surprisingly enough, teach us a little lesson about the art world. Perry might not know much about feminism, but let’s stop attacking how people identify with a cause — feminism, contemporary art, or otherwise — and start recognizing that these non-experts might actually have something to say.

I am not always (often) an articulate communicator, but I always communicate.

I'm going to stop this blog post before it turns long and angry, but non-communication is a huge pet peeve of mine.

I need to stop reading books with fairly dark and more than fairly gory plots located in the Midwest before bed. In any case, I just finished book #2 of the New Year. No wonder why my house is a bit of a mess...

O Christmas tree

This is the second year in a row (meaning it's a thing, now) of me wrestling down the Christmas tree at some ridiculous hour such as 3am. I get frustrated and bitter, wage some invisible war at my lack of help while fully conscious of the fact that the scenario is completely of my doing, leave the sucker on the front steps, and head to bed gruffly satisfied, sticky, and smelling of pine sap in my cute (also scented and semi-sappy) pajamas.

Next year I will break the cycle, oh-night-before-trash-day.

It's 11:30 on New Years day and I am in bed!!!! This only merits a blog post because I'm so impressed with myself. Now can I resist cracking open this brand new book on my nightstand??

Answer in the morning.