Contently unsettled

It's late, but not as late as it's been on many other late nights.

I'm tired, but too wired to sleep.

After a full day of painting and hip related appointments and moments I declared myself free of both things, flinging myself on the couch to read after rehearsal, and yet now I'm upstairs painting with a sore hip. 

Too much symmetry that's not symmetrical at all.

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."