for those who came before:

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity this weekend to meet Ben Quick, in person, after having exchanged many emails, phone calls, and notes about one another's work. I could tell that we understood each other on an aesthetic level, and I was happy to share the creative space with an artist who is working towards a similar end.

I also had the opportunity to share dinner with Heather Bowsher, Merle Ratner of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign, Ngo Thanh Nhan macroactivist for Vietnam, and several other inspiring individuals who have paved the way when it comes to activism and legislation related to Agent Orange. These were the movers and the shakers of the decade. I was extremely humbled by the extent of work that had already been accomplished (much of which before I was born!) and I am excited by the potential of my involvement in the development of this work in my own avenue of change: movement and performance.

As such, I engaged in a brief discussion with Heather about the problematics and politics involved with engaging individuals with disabilities in a staged performance. She shared with me her hesitation about the sometimes exploitative nature of exhibiting disabled bodies on stage. Though we did not have the chance to delve much deeper into this topic, I am motivated to continue to explore how individuals can exist on stage as individuals rather than bodies as referents to some other message or agenda. Though we will continue to read visual labels onto the bodies we see, as we have become an increasingly visually-dependent culture and our heuristics for understanding the world can only do so much to articulate the nuances of our experience, I am interested in creating an experience that summons the idea of Agent Orange, while still remaining true to my knowledge and experience of the topic.

I think the key to doing this is to return to elemental and sensorial concepts void of imposed external narrative:

weight

light

energy exchange

fear

futility

gaze

memory

paradox

inheritance

touch

thirst

loss

With this return to elements, we are continuing to explore basic sensorial experience again: touch, taste, smell, sight. I asked my dancers this week to review the material and structure we had created, but to try and experience each moment newly, in the present.

We explored:

Space

finding the negative space

filling the holes in energy

seeking out energy and attaching yourself to it

Energy exchange--

Moving from external sources of energy to illuminate internal sources

imagining rays of light as heat and energy entering the body and propelling the work

Pacing

indulging in a moment, experiencing only a moment of a phrase and

"throwing the rest away"

Contagion

how pacing of others around us affect our work

how we the contrast in tempos between dancers causes a change in energy

exchange