Dancing and Thinking

In the studio. ADF. A hot day in June.
So when I work I love the interplay between thinking and dancing, dancing through thinking and thinking through dancing. it’s the dancing that informs the thinking, the thinking that informs the dancing. Which is on my mind (body) (how come things are “on our minds” but “in our bodies” and can also be “in my mind” but “on my body” is entirely different)
But. And.
Butt
I’m thinking about our most recent reading assigned by Tommy DeFrantz for our History and Theory class. The reading (Human Rights – Not like a Document, Like a Dance” by Lisa Doolittle and Anne Flynn) discusses the ever fretful dualism of mind/body – and I am really intrigued by their reference to Gilbert Ryle’s “Concept of Mind”: “Why are people so strongly drawn to believe, in the face of their owndaily experience, that the intelligent execution of an operations must embody two processes, one of doing and another of theorizing?”

– but let’s cut to the chase –

Here is what is grabbing me right now.
In the studio
As I work on the transitions between the moments of “being inside the ahhhh sound of annunciation” and then the pulling out of them to ask for definitions. As in being in the body of understanding is somehow not valid and must be validated by the “dictionary”, the Authority. (of course this is part of what I am playing with between the three voices – my own personal trinity:

The narrator – who can only speak through definitions
Gabriel – who rehearses his words
Mary – who has an alphabet that spills from her mouth, and can gesture/but not speak the “no”.

(thank you to the students and teachers at monument mountain regional high school who watched the piece last Spring, and engaged in a lengthy discussion out of which this thinking came)

And of course there is the “me” in there, who is the container of the performance. Who storytells as biased observer, observer who “must” tell the story for her own “annunciation salvation”. Maybe like my Snow White piece there is some reclamation that I am doing here. When I wrote last about can’t get beyond the “rape” – and it bothered me to place rape in quotations, and yet I felt I wouldn’t be as clearly understood if I didn’t… hmmmm

But back to how the dance gives me the information!
So I am working out the technicality of I have certain movements that I want to “interrupt” to get to another idea/movement. And I am working on how to interupt those movements. Nicole and I worked with this a lot (thanks Nicole). So I can be inside a movement and
- just drop it. Pedestrian. Step out of it.
- I can use one body part to push the rest of the body into a transition. Push, entice, yank, coerce, extract….
- I can practice what I was practicing in the Costa Rica jungle. To just stay in a position until the something happened that would alter that position. But to not “think” through that moment. To just be in the moment. Let all the jokes be the why.
- I can “pull myself together” which is what I just tried. It was interesting. It led me to think about the safety of the definition section that always follows.
Words as safety. Its easier to talk about somethings than to do them (I’m thinking about righting wrongs)

Words as authority. The power of the one with the words, the “right” words, the most intellectual words, or the most cynical words.

“You’re out of control.” “Pull yourself together”. “You’re being hysterical” “Hysteria is a woman’s disease” (1950 American Medical system). “Calm down, just tell me what happened.”

It should be a beautiful thing. To be announced to. By an Angel. A loving angel. “fear not” it whispers, wrapping you in soft wings of protection. “fear not”.

“Yeah, right. “Fear not” – I’ve heard that line before….” Mumbles Mary’s mother in the other room.

Okay.
Back to dancing.
I was momentarily distracted by the page and now I’ve lost my choo choo train of thought.

If you want an assignment. Here is one.
Find yourself in a luscious movement opening, that by physical limitations must come to an end. some of you may have bodies young enough that "end" never happens -but you can try...
When you get to the end. Find a reason to transition into the "dropping" of that movement, and the entering into a direct face to face with (whoever) your audience is. (Maybe your dog or cat is watching, or the bird outside your window.) Figure out different ways to make that transition. Tell me what you discover.


(If you are reading this and are very confused…. Look at one of the rehearsal videos. I am working on the first transition between the big “AHhhhh” and the first definition of Annunciation. This informs how each subsequent break between being “in” the moment and stepping out of the moment to define the words is being developed.)