Outside of the rehearsal process, I think that teaching dance has also made me hyper-aware of energy.  Students constantly depend on their teachers as their feed of energy.  I would even say that it is one of my responsibilities and a priority to give out a positive energy.  That being said, I have to make my energy appropriate to the group I am with, based on age, ability, location, etc.  Because of this, I think that I have found ways to transform my energy to the place it needs to be- no matter where I am coming from or what happens/is happening before or after I am teaching.  This change happens subconsciously for me, but as I think about energy, I am more attuned to the shift.

What creates energy?  For me it’s:  moving, dancing, fresh air, people, yoga, water, light, color, smiles, music, eyes, breath, grass, cats, shoes… for everyone it’s different- but it’s nice to identify at times.

Energy is different from attitude… energy can shape attitude, but they are not the same. For me, energy has a deeper root… I can feel it from the core – but this may also be different from person to person.

Are dancers more aware of energy?  Are teachers more aware of energy?  Are some people more aware of energy?  We all have different energy… and there are ways for energy to shift, through both external and internal causes and motivations.

- Amy

There are some reasons why watching documentaries like “The Cove” and “Food, Inc.” and reading about global warming, drug cartel violence, genocide, and other horrendous things that humans are doing to the planet and to one another, is worth the unpleasantness.  First, and most obviously, it is a call to action.  I might not go out and take a job with Greenpeace tomorrow, but I sure as heck am renewed in my commitment to be a more conscious and less harmful consumer, a civically active individual, and, when at all possible, to donate to organizations that help put an end to these atrocities.   Another good reason is that it puts things in perspective.  Suddenly, the very minor annoyances of my day, which had been the cause of so much stress for me earlier, are put into place.

What does this have to do with dance? I’m sure if you’ve read this far (and holy cow, thanks!) you are wondering.  I’m wondering the same thing.  As I work on the second in a series of three comprehensive exam papers required for my MFA degree— a paper that focuses rather myopically on one historical and rarely-performed ballet and how I’m going to go about creating a new version— a BIG question keeps coming to mind: Does it matter?   Does my work matter?  When our planet is sick, and injustice is everywhere, most dance works (and theoretical inquiry) can feel like a public act of masturbation (sort of like …well… blogging).

Art, in the broad scheme of things, definitely matters.  I could back that up but I know I’m preaching to the choir.  Art challenges us, opens us up, magnifies our humanity.  It entertains us, and we need entertainment.

I am wondering how I can make work that matters.   Apart from the obvious: making a piece that is “about” dolphin slaughter (which could turn out either cheesy or just plain awful), how do I make dance works that make the world a better place?  Is it possible to make a compelling, intelligent work that moves people to change the world? Even in small ways? (I initially think of Joos’ The Green Table as a good example, or perhaps, more controversially, Bill T.’s Still/Here) Or is dance for dance’s sake enough? I ask this not just out of my own guilt that I am not out there  cleaning oil off of pelicans or empowering journalists in Rwanda like some of my friends, but because I want the dance world (particularly the world of dance academia) to do a little less navel-gazing and a little more to shake people up, one way or another. ..

- Betsy

p.s. in the spirit of making a difference, here are some links I recommend (they are also embedded in the text above):

The Tiziano Project: tizianoproject.org

Oceanic Preservation Society: www.opsociety.org

Farm Forward: www.farmforward.org

There was recently an op-ed blog post in the NY Times that argued that creative science courses in education will achieve the same results in young learners that exposure to the performing and visual arts will help them to achieve (http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/american-creativity-in-decline/). I say, of course they will! Creative problem solving is creative problem solving, no matter the framework for teaching it. But why are we making a vehement argument against the integration of arts into our educational system? It’s not as though the arts are directly responsible for a suffering state of science affairs in our country’s public schools (though perhaps the arts and science are duking it out in the race for  funding). Anyhow, I wonder, is it useful for everyone in a society to be a scientist? Or for everyone to be an artist? No, in my opinion, these single-minded solutions will only turn out to be as useful as valuing the pursuit of money above all else and churning out a culture of corporate assholes. I think the fundamental issue being expressed on the Times blog, is a desire to address an educational system that is not geared to nurture creative thinkers (innovators, inventors, even dissenters, etc), and beyond this, to question a society and culture that does not value creative thinking. The fear of the arts that comes across in the maelstrom though, to me, is frightening.

I expect this probably has to do with discomfort and fear of things that aren’t concrete and cannot be controlled. Scientific experiments are typically dreamed up in a controlled environment and are ultimately bound by the laws of nature (though of course human ingenuity and technological evolution have stretched these boundaries far beyond our wildest imaginations). Art, by definition (if it has one), belongs to an abstract plane. It doesn’t have to be graspable or tangible. It sometimes cannot be defined by just one characterization; it is open to multiple interpretations and therefore, can never truly be pinned down. It’s also difficult to determine arts’ monetary value since it’s not, by nature, a commodity (see Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift,” for more on this train of thought). Art (including dance) belongs to the people; those who create it, the ones who dance it, the public who sees it, and of course, those individuals who inspire it. Art enriches the community that brings it forth and helps set a tone for the times. It gives a public voice to its creators and those they are representing.  Art is powerful.

With all this said, I’m thinking, what can I do to demystify the merits of exposing students to the arts? Well, I can relay the very specific gains I observed in young learners (ages 12-23), following their participation in Dancing to Connect 2010 (DTC). DTC is a cultural exchange project (7 intensive days long) that engages international youth in creativity and team-building through the American art form of modern dance. I am one of the teaching artists who lead annual DTC workshops in Germany. Following are some clear, non-emotional, DTC deliverables reported by DTC teaching artists (from Aviva Geismar’s Drastic Action and the Battery Dance Company), participating German students and their school teachers who observed (and sometimes partook) in the activities.

• A spike in confidence
• Heightened imaginative activity and abstract reasoning skills
• Improved ability to work comfortably and cooperate with peers
• Growth in appreciation and respect for the ideas of others and the unfamiliar
• A recognition that there is no single “right” way to do things
• Increased ability to brainstorm
• MUSKELKATER: muscle soreness
• Improved ability to concentrate and to work on one’s own
• Increased interest in viewing or participating in creative projects in school and in the future
• Improved audience behavior and listening skills

Teachers have told us that for students, the experience of working through a medium of non-verbal expression (even just for a week), has often boosted underachieving students’ classroom participation, sometimes improved their level of academic accomplishment, and most impactfully, extended to them a renewed invitation into an academic process that they may have felt detached from or not smart enough to bother participating in. What’s more, many school teachers have relayed (often emotionally) that the experience of watching their students realize themselves (physically, creatively, imaginatively) has inspired them to see potential where they may have dismissed it.

These kinds of deliverables are easily transferred to other areas in school and/or life. For example, an ability to envision multiple ways forward increases the chance that a student will have an optimistic outlook regarding his/her future. That student then has a better chance of imagining different possibilities for him/herself and is therefore less likely to get stuck in a personal or professional rut. That’s just one oversimplified example from my humble perspective, and of course I must state, it is not scientifically proven.

Maybe this, in and of itself, is exactly what’s so scary about integrating creative thought into our public school curriculum; An educational system that produces thinkers and innovators might also create an abundance of poets, painters, philosophers and scientific tinkerers; a culture prone to reverie with lucid imaginative lives; an uncooperative workforce that is more concerned with process than production; people who want to enjoy their lives rather than squeeze them for every penny they’re worth, toiling in offices 60+ hours a week rather than investing in relationships, and seeking connections through social networks instead of “seeing” each other and the world around them, the way the Navi people do in Avatar. Well this might be the case, but we’d be hard pressed to ignore the clear cut and practical achievements of creative minds: Edison’s light bulb, the Doric columns of the Athenian Parthenon, Gutenberg’s original printing press, and even modern day Dyson vacuum cleaners… a narrow sampling of an epic historical laundry list.

My point: I support an educational system that cultivates innovation, promotes ongoing reflective contemplation, and encourages the process of trial and error. I also firmly believe that as well as other, more scientifically geared avenues, exposure to the arts (visual and performing) is capable of achieving these effects.

To learn more about DTC check out www.batterydance.org and search Dancing to Connect 2010 on youtube.

-Cara

Photo Credit, Ina Debald

One aspect of that project I particularly enjoyed was designing and creating the costumes.  I am fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of great resources here at OSU, including the Department of Dance’s in-house Costume Designer, Mary McMullen.  Mary patiently mentored me throughout the challenging process in a year-long independent study project.  I certainly have a new-found respect for costume designers— the hours and hard work they put into the design and manufacture of costumes, and the particular demands for dance (durability, movement, etc) make them truly unsung heroes.

For the past two weeks I have had the pleasure of participating in the Doug Varone and Dancers Summer Workshop.  Varone’s fluid and resilient style have always attracted me as dancer, and I attended the Company’s summer workshops in 2004 and 2005.   I was particularly interested in approaching this year’s workshop with a pedagogical focus: how can I pass on information given to me as a student to my own students about this stylistic approach to movement which I find so satisfying, both on a kinesthetic and aesthetic level.  In addition to being phenomenal dancers and performers, members of Varone’s company are fantastic teachers.  Each class was a wonderful challenge for both the mind and body.  I have also had the opportunity to see the Company in open rehearsals.  As a choreographer, it’s so informative to watch choreographers who you admire amidst their own processes.  Doug Varone and Dancers will be performing this weekend in Akron, Ohio a a free summer dance concert series. If you are in the area, make sure you check it out: http://akrondancefestival.org. They’ll be performing Castles and Lux, which are two of Varone’s enchanting and powerful full-company works.  They will leave you in awe.

Next week, I travel to the Bates Dance Festival in Lewiston, Maine, for some more wonderful dancing and dance-viewing. The Varone Company will also be in residence, so it looks to be a summer full of satisfying movement experiences.

-Betsy

A few weeks ago  I decided to take some Martial Arts lessons- something I’ve been longing to do for awhile, but never really had the time or the nerve to.  I found it such a challenge to walk into a class as a complete beginner.  I realized the rituals within a dance class that I had become so accustomed to and how these rituals could seem so foreign to a newcomer.  In Martial Arts I was a clear newcomer, quickly trying to adhere to new patterns and teach my body a new way of moving– it was great to feel so new!

I used to think that to be a dancer I should take as many classes as possible and focus on dance and solely dance.  However, I have realized that having other interests and ‘time away’ also give a refreshing outlook.  I am sure that my secondary list of goals will continue to grow, and I am happy to welcome the challenges and freshness that it brings my way.

Amy

Cara Liguori in Aviva Geismar's, "Draw Breath," 2009.

I recently participated in a really intense, Grotowski-based physical theater workshop. The work we were doing each day had to do with opening up in order to respond to impulses.  Now, this is something I feel fairly comfortable with in terms of dance improvisation and authentic movement practice; listening and moving according to the flow of my breath or moving based on a set improvisational score or simply what my body feels like doing, or to music, or even based on going against my body’s patterns and impulses.  But this was different…. rather than tuning into internal, physical impulses, I was being asked to OPEN, to engage and externalize with all of the energy in the room and all of the people, and to react authentically while maintaining an awareness and a connection with everything and everyone in the space.  It was exhausting, completely out of my comfort zone, and incredibly frustrating.  It made me aware that a lot of my personal movement and improvisational practice is actually a process of tuning out, diving deep into myself to disconnect from all that surrounds me. This realization threw me for a loop. Part of the reason I’d wanted to take this workshop was to make an effort to better integrate my singing/speaking self with my moving/dancing self; and even more specifically, to improve my ability to tell a story while singing and speaking by connecting emotions and meaning to words. I guess I went into this experience expecting to find the meaning of the words somewhere deep inside me, something I could tune into by tuning out and self-connecting. I think to an extent, this is true, in terms of finding personal experiences to relate to the words, but words feel so much more needy than movement. You can’t just feel them out, let them resound in the space, I mean you can, but to me it felt like they needed to be directed somewhere, spoken to someone. They needed to land, to be received. Words are a tool for communication after all.  So I learned something about words that is super useful in terms of distinguishing what words can do and what dance can do and how I choose to use them in my work in the future.

At the same time as I was participating in this workshop, I was performing a movement-work, “Learning to Fall,” created by Kathy Wasik. For this piece, I was to convey a completely internal journey (the total opposite of what I was being asked to do in the workshop), while slowly opening different parts of my body and then closing them again. In the dance I kept my focus completely internal establishing a clear disconnect from the audience, until the final moment, when I confronted, looked into and walked towards members of the audience. As a performer, this was like a purely energetic experiment in terms of communicating with an audience, like, “can I affect their energy without even looking at them, and without exerting a ton of physical energy/movement, just by “being” in the space; completing a simple, clear movement task, and by keeping an internal dialogue alive over time.” Actually, Kathy barely even used words to direct me for this dance. I learned the improvisational structure from having watched her do it, and with a few simple suggestions, it then became mine to try on and perform.

After the final evening’s performance, an audience member approached me and told me that for him, the dance was a totally disturbing and intense experience. He said, the entire time he watched it, (about 25 minutes) he was reminded of his brother who is partially paralyzed and in a wheelchair. He said that the movements were identical to his brother’s and that at the end of the dance, when I stood up, it was bone-chilling. Hearing his experience was an incredible gift for me as a performer. It felt like the perfect validation of pure dance/movement as a medium of art, I’m talking dance that doesn’t purport to be theater or have elements of mixed-media. This idea of physical paralysis which Kathy never brought up, and which I never entertained as part of my internal performance dialogue (at least in a literal sense), was communicated with intense clarity to this audience member. For him the piece had a distinct subject matter, for the person sitting next to him, it could have been a completely different story, and now that the dance is over….they can’t go back and check themselves, all they have is the ephemeral experience of what they witnessed onstage and how they perceived it in the moment.

Dance is not words and for that, I am grateful. -Cara

Frozen Diva

Although I am now living and working outside of the dance mecca of New York City, where we sort of take for granted that dance work is everywhere, I am finding that here in Columbus, I am saturated in rich dance experience, as a viewer, teacher, and maker.  Last weekend I attended Ten Tiny Dances on the OSU campus, which was comprised of 10 short works in a 4′x4′ space. The works ranged from heart-wrenchingly poignant to laugh-till-you-snort hysterical, and all were created and performed by Columbus-based dance artists, including Karl Rogers, Noelle Chun, Shawn Hove, Meghan Durham, Coco Loupe, and Paige Phillips. In February, I enjoyed teaching open modern technique classes for members of the local professional dance community at Columbus Dance Theatre. I also got to see the Merce Cunningham’s first performance of their legacy tour here at the Wexner Center. Last month, I premiered a new solo, Frozen Diva, at CDT’s “Dancing Alone” event, and created a solo for fellow graduate student Lindsay Caddle LaPointe’s MFA thesis project, which she performed in an arts gallery downtown as the live component of a videodance installation. I am currently working on two other pieces, El Otro Lado/The Other Side, which I previously blogged about, and which will finally be performed this May at OSU, as well as a sextet called Cloudburst, a choreographic collaboration with Erik Abbot-Main that will be performed in May with a 55-member collegiate winds ensemble!  To top it all off, I have begun research for my MFA project, a contemporary re-contextualization of the 1917 ballet, Parade. The research will culminate in a performance in February 2011. More to come on that later!  In short, we are dancing up a storm here in the Midwest.

-Betsy

As dancers, we spend countless hours in rehearsal learning movement, creating phrases, deconstructing content, and playing with ideas.  We work to develop muscle memory and consistency of patterns, sound, and relationships.  However, it seems that no matter how many rehearsals take place, the biggest moment of change and development is always on the stage!!  For me, I guess its part of the ‘whole picture’- the surrounding of the lights and amplified music allow me to fall into the mood of the piece and my ‘story’ can fall into place: it is almost as if I am no longer reading the book, but have finally jumped inside.  And, with an audience, I feel like an extra energy surges through the space.

I think this incredible burst of development is thrilling, but often wasted, as many pieces are performed just a few times and then dropped..(not always because that is what id desired, but more because of time, energy, opportunity, and funding).  I love when I perform a piece, leave it, and then come back to it several months later– I feel more clarity; I feel deeper inside of it.  I also think this ‘performance development’ also relates to Ani’s “Moves She”…. she has talked quite a bit about taking time and stepping away, and has also been able to watch it performed in many venues.

I guess that there is really no way to capture the amazing essence that performance brings to a piece (or a dancer within the piece) before it actually happens… but we can continue to enjoy it and grow from it.

Amy