Mother's Day Rehearsal

Notes May 8

Discussion with Chip prior to rehearsal.
My ideas: I am interested in seeing what happens if we craft an image, a talk/dance image that we show to the scientist, and then ask them to interpret that image (midrash) using their research as the explanation for what they saw. Basically, to make sense of what is presented to them by using their research. This is what I always do – layer two different sources and make sense of it - but it would be interesting to hear how the scientist would construct meaning.
Chip has been thinking about working through like a scientist and setting up a series of experiments. If the scientists are asking: “What is life?”, we are asking (actually have been asking along with others in the arts) “What is art?” or more specifically, “What is dance? What is music?”. The question of “what is dance” led me to the definition of dance, that as I reflect – in the process of trying to come up with a definition big enough to hold all of what is dance, was similar to the scientific search for a definition big enough to hold all of what is life. (My definition of dance: Dance is movement aware of itself practiced with intent. When working with kids I have modified that definition for 2nd graders to: In dance we use our BODIES to make choices about how (EFFORT) we move in SPACE and TIME to express ideas.) Chip was talking about intelligence. The connection between life – what is/what isn’t- and ideas of intelligence. That reflects a lot on my definition of dance – how does just something moving turn into Dance. The idea is the intention. Yes, any movement can be dance, but the “can be” is motivated by making intentional choices to shape that which it is. Chip’s music experiment idea is to play a note, play a note, etc and when does it become music?
Chip and I are both anxious to get hooked up with a scientist. Up to this point we are working off printed materials. Looking forward to talking with a scientist who is actually at work on a project around “what is life?” and the specific questions they are researching. We have three connections about to happen within the next several weeks. I will be interested to see how this changes things.

Rehearsal:
Work on the Richard Bull improvisation. The parameters are:
A timer is set for three minutes. Performers enter the space when they are ready, and engage with movement ideas. Timer goes off. Performers exit the space. Reset the timer. Performers must exactly recreate what they did. Repeat this many times.

I want us all to get very good at being able to do this improvisation. So good that it would be exciting for an audience to watch us try and do this improv structure. But also I am interested in using it as a trigger to set movements from the improv and layer text over. Which is what we did.

We did the improvisation, but also with the parameters of PICERAS as the thought overlay for our movement choices. Program, Improvisation, Compartmentalization, Regeneration, Adaptability and Seclusion. Interesting how those now all have so much more meaning to me because I have been dancing and writing with those concepts. Now I see them everywhere and feel their immense logic.

On the fourth or fifth time through I layered on top the reading of a text I created that is an intersection of some language about PICERAS, some of David Lynn’s lecture on supramolecularity and excerpts from The Magician’s Elephant. I am not exactly sure of the connection between these yet, but I feel something is there and that if I just hang with it long enough it will begin to come clear. Actually, it did become clearer and clearer as we repeated and repeated, adapted, reproduced, evolved…..

I am enjoying this particular process. The Annunciation took me six years. Four of those years were me just working with me. Then Chip and I, with Nicole worked for a year on the process that created The Prologue for my MFA thesis. And in the 6th year, the Cast Extraordinaire assembled and we all know what happened next….
So this process – to be at my usual early, early stages of development but sharing in the process with others so early on is very unusual for me. Thank you to everyone who is willing to play in the vagueness.

I have rewritten our “script” based on what happened and hearing the words actually spoken in space. Next Sunday I will step out so that I can direct some of the ideas. For people who weren’t here I want to add a layer that would form a frame for what we worked on today to take place in. My image is a high platform along the back wall, with interesting looking chairs and a tight gestural phrase that takes place in/on/under/around/through those chairs.

I also want to get back to the duet that Taylor and J created with the swimming pool ladder. I want to see if that translates into an indoor space or not.