inspirations: Doug Varone

In response to Chapters from a Broken Novel, performed at the Joyce Theater, March 20, 2011, 8pm.

-the beauty of individual variations within a unison part of a dance

-audible breath as a signature of work

-paradox of slow movement during a fast tempo song and vice versa

-the insinuation of impending doom garnered from continuous movement

-the allowance of sound, per chance.

***The bravery of sticking with a certain idea, motif, notion, for much, much, much, longer than expected. Allowing the work to develop itself because it must, rather than because the choreographer shies away from exploring an idea to its infinite limit.

in the aftermath

soldier victim

perpetrator perpetrator

amputated gone from birth

capability disability

eternal youtheternal dependence

isolation

integration

vocation

i wake in the wake of air passing through me

possessed by the phantom of my grandfather's inhale

on a night when mist weighed more than corpses

and footfalls ran faster than blood.

i wake in the parting of clouds by sound

the storming of houses by wind

lick-washed clean

and warmed in a blanket of asphyxiation

i wake in the calm surrender of crops at my feet

falling witness to life,

evanescent in the liminal silence

where no bomb has fallen.

relief gone to seed in my pores.

rehearsal 3: washing

Investigated the futility of washing with contaminated water.

The paradox inherent in trying to cleanse yourself in

the very material you are trying to rid yourself of.

How to purge a chemical that is

invisible, odorless, and tasteless?

How to live with a disease dormant in you

that doesn't die with your last breath

but instead is exacerbated in the birth of your child--

and theirs--

and theirs--

I saw a documentary short recently where the narrator said that the only way for a woman to get rid of her dioxin levels, because it is a lipophilic chemical, is to pass it on to her child.

I don't know for sure if this is true,

but if so, the moral implications of giving birth to a child

just became much more complicated.

rehearsal two.

Was choreographing at Chez Bushwick and was

influenced by the ceiling fans

and the notion of how soldiers will have flashbacks

of helicopters due to PTSD in the presence of fans.

I then began ruminating about the ambivalent nature

of helicopters

as a signifier of both

salvation and

destruction,

nourishment

and decay.

As helicopters became the new face of calvary units

they were both the carriers of c-rations

and the undertakers of corpses.

This ambivalence is examined in a film I saw at the MOMA

by Dinh Q Le

about how a family that used to be sprayed with defoliants

are now in the business of making helicopters

as their foray into the technologically driven world.

Thus, I began investigating the

serene, calm, and quiet-

the relief and the awe associated with the first

glimpses of a helicopter over the horizon;

this is manifested in a gestural series

of that progression

from awe to...

Dance Movement Therapy at Maimonides

Last Thursday, I observed and participated in a Dance Movement Therapy session at Maimonides Hospital in south Brooklyn under the guidance of Patricia Capello, and her Pratt intern, Lisa. It was a 50 minute session in the in-patient unit of the Psychiatric wing. Capello believes in performing the session in a public space so that patients can decide when to join or remove themselves with their own volition. This small choice helps to build a patient's self efficacy, as well as sense of control and safety in the process. Because the unit is a short-stay facility, the group members change each session, and it is important that each session is a complete experience, which is rare for most DMT groups.

It was important for me to view first hand the DMT process, after researching it peripherally as an undergraduate, and taking a short weekend workshop with David Alan Harris. While the session proceeded, more or less, as I expected it would, I was still impressed by my own corporeal experience of the session and the sense of group development I felt during the short 50 minutes.

Capello outlines 5 main sections of the session:

1. warm up: welcome into space, safety

2. release: build energy of the group, explore space, interact with one another

3. theme: explore main ideas that evolve

4. centering: prepare for ending of session, grounding

5. closure: say goodbye, terminate and reflect on session

The use of TOUCH as a tool of connection was particularly effective in developing relationships with the patients.

Most strikingly, I remember a patient, M, whose eyes lit up after the dance therapist adapted a movement he was doing and allowed that movement to be the one that the group shared. For a man who otherwise smiled little, and made little eye contact, it was evident that the appropriation of his movement for the group's experience was a huge boost in his sense of efficacy and confidence.

aesthetics2

Helicopter-- awe, relief, fear, resent.

gestural series:

circling the ear

swallowed

tracing down the throat

wrist circle at heart

umbilical cord

Running:

in circles

parallel to the floor

held in the air

"How the sound of the gunshot arrives ten years later"

c-rations

panty hose

a bible.

ammunition rounds

photos

memory.

Trudging through the sludge

Inhaling the shit

Tasting the crust of the earth in your nasal passages

Stagnancy of a rice paddy

How it is affirming when you die in a river of shit

Nihilism

Shit to begin with reaffirmed by experiencing it.

Existentialism.

Chance.

Happenstance.

Depending on which side of the coin you’re on

Heads or tails

Great for you that your luckiness is their unluckiness

connections.

Met with Ann Nguyen for coffee the other day in NYC.

She is a college student whose high school senior project named Make Agent Orange History inspired an organization by the same name. So far, it's the most comprehensive (and most legible) website about this topic that I've been able to find.

Go to www.makeagentorangehistory.org for more background information, resources, and future plans regarding Agent Orange.

fear

I have an admission to make:

This project scares me.

As I read stories of war, disability, history

I become inundated in the images

I have both seen

and created for myself in my mind

As Tim O'brien admits

the truth becomes skewed when viewed through the convex mirror of storytelling.

It is part truth and part story.

Part creation.

As an artist creating a work

I have not the tools that a therapist possesses

and as such

I am partially afraid that I will, too,

inherit a war and a disability I have not lived

or owned.

That was partially my intention.

To begin to know

To cope

To recover.

That does not mean it still doesn't scare me.

ashes to ashes, dust to DUST.

Went to see Dust performed by the Paul Taylor Dance Company on Saturday night at New York City Center. One of the dancers who I am collaborating with suggested it because there is a section of the dance where a dancer performs an "amputee" solo where her left arm is held to her chest.

The dance was...beautiful.

It was narrative. It was illustrative.

It told the story of a flock of organisms with some sort of un-ability

The malady shifted and morphed as the sections progressed: a broken arm, blindness.

It was synchronous with the harpsichord/clavichord (?) instrumentation in the background.

But like any novice creative writer will relay, a story is better shown, not told.

The movement echoed the swells of emotion in the music to tell the story of burden. At one point, a dancer was tossed like a knapsack (or a koala?) between other dancers emphasizing the weight and burden that propagated through the community. However, despite this use of weight to represent restraint, the entire piece lacked any genuine struggle!

The dancers were complete, whole, able-body dancers. In fact, they were hyper-anthropomophic-ballet-aesthetic-ideal bodies (with long torsos), that were too beautiful to communicate any felt sense of struggle, restraint, or pain. I was ultimately unable to suspend my disbelief long enough to extract any sense of sympathy or empathy even, for the dancers who were pretending to be otherwise affected. Moreover, the dance ends with a tableau that suggests the evolutionary development of the afflicted man, from a woman who crawls without the use of legs to a woman who stands, upright, while expanding her arms like the wings of a crane.

Forgive me, because though I acknowledge the beauty in a stage that is side lit by a single column of light on stage right, and the constructed shadows that reflect the haunting of our other selves, I simply did not see the light at the end of the tunnel, because there was no struggle to begin with.

Perhaps I am a dancer/choreographer with a masochistic dimension who longs for effort and struggle to be exhibited voyeuristically on stage. This is probably true. I am, however, not interested in playing pretend gimp, and alluding to any false hope that a person born without an arm can suddenly become an erect emaciated ballet dancer. Mostly, I find the notion that a community of disabled bodies should somehow aim to assimilate into abled body life absurd, offensive even--it assumes that the construct of abled/disabled is one worth recognizing in the first place.

Elements I did take away:

• weight as indicative of burden
• notion of blindness not just congenitally but as hysterical blindness as it relates to Khmer Rouge and PTSD
• the form of an amputated arm--what does it look like? congenital or accident?
• contraction with leg hold--limp.
• shadows of us that are bigger than ourselves (literally and metaphorically)
• people who create the context--used as space holders in defining relationship and space between dancers

I also saw Cloven Kingdom and Three Dubious Memories. They were both fine.

*NOTE: I still find myself struggling with the notion of disability and using that particular word to describe the phenomenon that I am interested in. It seems detached, colonistic, and mostly it just feels wrong between my lips. To be continued...explored...problematized...I suppose.