Open Studio

With Arvo Pärt I realize why I have a rule about practicing without music.

Music allows me to be indulgent. I dance without thinking nearly. I do compose to the music, but without continuity or the promise of performance –the creation occurs between me and the music and leaves an audience out in the cold. It remains too personal to be shared. Why does music release this intimacy?

I do not know. I am affected –as are we all– very strongly by sound perhaps because I am unable to interact with it in a productive way that would then be able to provide me with the comfort of some control. No, instead all I can do is follow –which is why music or sound lightens the burden of many a task, mostly those requiring a consistency in mood and focus. On the other hand, this is why choreographing to music is painfully difficult – because I am bound by it, unable to think or generate ideas, riding its emotions like a raft.

It’s a semi-open studio. I’m here and the chairs are out– but I’m also exhausted and cannot comment today. I suppose those days happen too.

I am republishing the guidelines for my practice both to keep them fresh in mind and to bring in a new perspective through some minor amendments. Check out the original post.

My art is fleeting and I am working in celebration of that. Here are the “rules” for my process:

Objective
Reconnect with the unique body performing.

Rehearsal practice
- rehearse weekly, but do not restrict yourself to a specific duration (a practice can last 15 minutes or several hours)
- do not video/audio/photo document these rehearsals
- practice without music
- never use a mirror
- if you can’t get studio time, use your living room
- write your thoughts during rehearsal (and post the notes here)
- put out seating for viewers (using placeholders if no chairs are available)
- open your doors to anyone and offer q+a time at the end
- perform as often as possible in as many different environments as possible
- include these notes in programs

Dancing at home. It’s my first session at home -not in the living room as anticipated, but the office, complete with carpet and cat toys.

Saturday morning and I am still in my pajamas, dancing and sweating (like crazy! no AC here) like it were an everyday thing.

I am dancing for my “audience” of two: one white chair with brightly mulit-colored cushion and one stern-looking stool. It is difficult to perform for them in part because they blend into the background, this environment I know so well. This room that shudders under each powerful shift of weight…

It’s also nearly impossible to get “serious” this morning because, of course, I am in my pajamas. And how delicious to move “simply” (instead of “seriously”), without thought or design, just to feel the flow of action in my body.

Now that the living room is free, I am going to dance there for a while, and then go get a massage.

Today, I cheated. But good things came of it, so I am allowing myself one day with broken rules.

I did not dance without music, but I did think of a great idea for my open studio visitors. Starting in September when I will officially invite everyone to come watch me practice, I will ask folks to bring in a piece of music that they know very well for me to dance to, hopefully having never heard it before, but that’s not a requirement. In the same way that I like to affect the way we experience silence when I am dancing, I would like to know how others experience something “equally” familiar through the “strangeness” of my dancing (though to many friends, my dancing is no longer an unknown, it too is something with which we can grow familiar –turning to fondness or boredom).

I was very tired in the studio today, which is why I let the music continue. I hardly warmed-up, in the traditional sense, spending instead twenty minutes “merely” sinking into the floor. This is my absolute favorite thing to do in the studio. I lie on my back in a relaxed position, arms and legs dangling straight from their sockets. My muscles and bones wrap around the floor, which I hardly even notice because all the pesky thoughts of the day and week are flooding out into my head. And I let them. It’s such a relief to take the time to notice that they’re there, and then to relax as they dissipate from my mind and I start naturally to focus on my melting body.

When I am dancing, I often come up with the “best” ideas or the most lucid thoughts or the loveliest revelations. Perhaps it is the patient clearing of the mind that allows for this; perhaps it is the pulsing flow of blood from exerting myself; or perhaps it is that these are my most successful and secure moments in life, and my inhibitions are too low to prevent the ideas and thoughts from happening.

Today, I spent the hour floating. In my head, on my feet, in my arms. It was the steady 3/4 wave of the music that kept me going.

It’s been a long break in between Open Studios –I am returning to my weekly practice (finally) hoping it will also help to ground me through the next stage of turmoil in my life. And my session today has been peaceful and fruitful. It’s the first practice in which I’ve successfully “imagined” an audience and addressed their presence in my choices. Of course, I get no adrenaline rush from empty chairs, but at least I was able to focus.
When I am dancing alone in the studio, I tend to be either “boring” (meaning traditional and following pre-existing patterns) or uncharacteristically silly –which is actually not uncharacteristic at all, I just don’t display that part of myself to many people and certainly not in “performance mode.” Being silly is a relief. It lets in new ideas without judgment or evaluation. They are all valid and real.
I am amazed at our capacity for tuning into the body — a sensitivity to movement and feeling on such a minute scale. Just listen closely and you’ll feel it. Move with careful intention slowed to a pace that lets you feel the muscles flexing and releasing, the blood flowing, and your nerves tingling with information.
It is its own kind of dance and performance, this solo improvisation I do. It’s not particularly special for being a type or genre or dance, but it’s also not to be categorized with most other dances.
I’m saying this poorly. What I mean is that *I* don’t imagine that I am creating a solo dance or a solo choreography. I am not trying to fit in and I am not trying to be different. The brilliant and exciting part is that I am trying just to connect to myself, o be genuinely inspired into action -whatever that action might be. I feel so alive in these moments, so selfishly and indulgently awake. I want others to share in my thrill without my having to give up any of it, without having to come down one step off my high. It is glorious and dangerous.
I think, in truth, I have been away from Open Studio these two months (!) because the energy from the May performance (about which I neglected to write for the same reason) was so strong that I needed to just ride it out before I could face the empty studio with only a fraction of that feeling available to me. It was overwhelming.

Delightful! Two open studios in one day! And with an audience! What a difference they make! Dancing through my nervous excitement. Trying consciously to listen to them, to “connect” and be fine –all while composing.

I do not have the innocence of just doing what I love -of “just dancing.” Ten years ago this performance would have been no less self-conscious but without such a clear expectation of entrancing my audience -though in all honestly, I think I’ve always danced with the desire that I was enchanting someone and so always with an eye on people’s attentiveness. Always aware when they stopped to watch. Blatantly and unapologetically, the bystanders watch.

Now I have the hope and desire but also the compliments in my head –and with these comes a fear of disappointment, which disturbs the honesty/genuineness of my performance. But I need to use this to get rid of it, work through my desire to delight.

Sleepy again today.

I had one really great run –but it was to music (which is against the rules). Why is it so important to practice in silence? Well, because I prefer performing in silence -largely because the energy between me and audience is so “loud” that I don’t really “hear” music during performance anyway.

In practice, however, there is only the distraction of my thoughts, and I’ve been struggling with this all month. I so wish to give in, to say the music is my audience substitute, and it is but only in one respect -it guides and directs me, but then am I giving back? Can I “hear” my own decisions through the external rhythms?