Today I broke my own rule. I video taped! I wanted to share. On that note, I should come clean that I haven’t really paid much attention to any of the rules of late. I am working on dancing with alignment awareness as taught by the Alexander technique and thus that’s the main focus of my studio time on Sundays. Can you tell that I’m doing better? Well, you may never have seen video of me before, but I can tell. Most of the old habits are still there, but my shoulders are looking better – “easier” – and over all my step is more confident.

Enjoy the sharing. See you next week. emp.

open studio. 13. from Esther m Palmer on Vimeo.

p.s. the sunday morning studio is still open to all! sundays @ 11am. email me (esthermpalmer [at] gmail) or send me a direct message on twitter the morning that you want to visit.

Injury has long kept me away from Open Studio, but I can see the light of recovery and will be back to my weekly sessions starting in July (after the GREs! That’s right my friends, I’m preparing to go back to school, again, this time for a PhD in Performance Studies). I invite you to drop in and see my improvisation at work just as the summer really heats up -you’ll find me in air-conditioned spaces or possibly outside, in the parks of Astoria.

Email me at esther [at] seenperformance.org to find out when and where my next session will be, or check back here for the schedule.

As always, thanks for watching!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?