I began making this work during the Covid 19 pandemic,the circumstances of which have prompted me to reconsider the limitations and possibilities of our world, and with that every level and aspect of my creative process. Of course limitations are to be prized in that they tend to focus effort and songs without words (sww) is limited to solos, defined in part by self-exploration and self-reflection, something that feels surprisingly new to me as I have made few solos for my own performance. Now it feels as if for the first time I am truly allowing a deep listening to the emerging dance, trusting self-direction, letting go, and exploring new terrain. While the separate works of sww may one day translate to the stage, they are, for this iteration, video-recorded performance pieces, and will form a collection springing from a single creative impetus, an anthology.
Initially conceived as a trio – three women, three generations – I refashioned sww out of creative necessity at the onset of the pandemic as a vehicle for my own solo explorations. The central conceit of the work remains the presentation of the body and its movement as the expressive equivalent of song. However, where I originally imagined a single work of considerable length, sww is now a creative project of undetermined duration, the target of which is to amass an anthology of 15 to 20 short two-to-ten-minute pieces. By committing to making each of these works as distinct as it is complete and necessary, I am finding growth in my choreographic and physical expression and, importantly, discovering the dances that, at this point in my maturity, I am compelled to do.
The processes and dances of sww exist in an aesthetic relationship to other forms – theatrical, literary and visual. The most significant sources are: the poetic aesthetic of Gerard Manley Hopkins and the significance he gave to the apprehension of the inmost nature of a thing; the relationship between rhythm, image and style as explored by Mary Oliver in Rules for the Dance; the dynamism of the visual image and the inexhaustible subject of our world in the MANGA of Hokusai; the contribution of expression that escapes the burdens of meaning in Asemic The Art of Writing (Peter Schwenger); the use of time and space in theatrical performance from A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (Eugenio Barba & Nicola Savarese); and, the dance and the ideas of Kazuo Ohno (Kazuo Ohno’s World from Within & Without Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno, John Barrett translation).
Gerard Manley Hopkins defined the ideas of inscape, the distinctive design that constitutes individual identity, and instress, the act of recognition of the inscape of other beings. These were the very essence of his poetic urge and what has been called the oddness of his style.
I give weight to the musical aspect of the choreography – of the performance itself – essentially by thinking of the relationship between dance and music as that of two musics. At play is a counterpoint of rhythm, phrase length, texture, thematic duration, intensity and so on.
For this anthology I am moved specifically to explore the expressive nature of song, its connection to voice, to individual expression, to breath, to the heart, to humanity and to the other beings who sing. If I think of dancing as singing, of the body as the voice, my choreography is freed in the direction of deeper expression.
A musical thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into the inmost heart of the harmony, of coherence which is its soul, whereby it exists, and has a right to be here in this world. All inmost things, we may say, are melodious, naturally utter themselves in song.
Thomas Carlyle, Wisdom & Metaphor, Jan Zwicky
In some of the earliest sww studio explorations I was working with aria, listening carefully to the singers’ and the melodies, the rising and falling contours and variations, the departures and arrivals of phrases, the slackening and quickening of pace, the hesitations, the reiterations, the changing of tone of a single note. I was completely captivated by the virtuosity, the sheer amount of detail per note, the utterly committed luxuriant expressiveness. I see these as fruitful parallels to the dynamics and physicality of the sww dances.
The choice of musical score is another layer musical consideration. Each of the pieces must be strong works in their own rights. But they must have enough aural space to allow for the expression of the dance in all its melodious particulars. I look to the works of contemporary composers, usually small ensemble or solo pieces, those that express a complementary aesthetic to the expressive goals of sww, keeping in mind that each work in the anthology is to be distinct.
Through these webpages I hope to share in some detail the shaping of the sww anthology as it develops. I also want to encourage and highlight the responses of invited peers to all aspects of the process and its results. This critical aspect serves my own development and that of the work but my hope is that it will do much more: to give voice to multiple perspectives of dance thinking, to provide an opportunity for artistic reflection to pandemic-isolated creators and performers, and to be a modest means to continue the necessity of this exchange in the future post-pandemic world where the vitality of the support for live performance is uncertain.
I began by exploring and videoing movement trials, focusing my efforts on finding approaches to achieving consistently compelling physical performance. This initial movement research phase was only loosely contained by my reading and listening. I deliberately avoided the interpretation of any specific theme, any focus beyond the connection to the movement itself. I performed most of the trials with music, changing my selections frequently and refining my choices to suit the movement development priority. I made no attempt to make complete dances but worked to redirect my explorations in more convincing iterations by critically viewing the videos of the movement trials.
After rehearsals on a larger screen at home I viewed the videos again making more detailed direction notes. For each subsequent rehearsal I established priorities based on previous trials, sometimes minute details and sometimes significant realizations about the process itself, how it was evolving, how to stay abreast of and take advantage of what I was learning.
What interested me most was identifying and achieving a sustained communication between the dancer and viewer. I invested in whatever I felt strengthened or promised to strengthen that communication, accumulating, isolating and naming movement ideas. In this way the material content of sww slowly arose from my movement trials.
The movement trial videos from the initial movement research phase form a pool of ideas. The seeds of each solo dance that I will make in the anthology are already swimming in this pool.
From the movement research process I amassed a list of strategies in self direction. These strategies do not guarantee accomplishment but work best when held at a distance from the dancing. There is nothing shockingly new in the list but without these strategies I could not arrive at the dances of sww. Collectively they serve as my guide to deepening the connection to movement performance, establishing approaches to actions in the doing and to the accompanying state of mind, narrowing in on concepts around song, as well as avoiding habits and pitfalls.
Mind – mental/spiritual preparation and state
Camera Note:
These videos are archival documents which record the movement and design details to allow for initial critical study and eventual live reconstruction. The camera is used in an unobtrusive manner with a single framing and point of view.