Sonnambula: Blog

Sunday night we had a great post-show chat w/ Laure Dougul about scent and the live arts. Toward the end of the discussion it was fabulous to hear from the audience directly about their  experiences, and it made me think that I'd love to hear any and all reactions from you out there who have seen the show. Not only doesn Sonnambula play a lot with perspective and sensation, but every night's performance is so different, and every seat in the small house is presents a different vantage point.

If you've seen the show in the last few days, just comment on this blog post with thoughts / memories / reactions / frustrations / excitements / tangents... I'd love to hear them. Thanks, michael

Well, it's come down to it... Sonnambula is unfurling in under 2 weeks. But before the show takes off, we are still in critical needs of some patching of the wings. Nothing un-attainable, but we need to raise $2,700 before the show premiers. Whether you are a fan of mine, an ardent art supporter, or just someone cruising HERE's website to see what is going on, this is what I want you to consider:

SUPPORT THE STRANGE STUFF!

Not necessarily strange art, just strange budget lines in exciting, fresh, ambitious performance. In this world of dance, puppetry, and interdisciplinary arts; and this tradition of non-profit resourcefullness; and this climate in the country; EVERY LITTLE BIT GOES SO FAR!

SO I AM SEEKING MICRO-SPONSORS FOR THE ODD AND INTERESTING STUFF THAT MAKES THIS SHOW HAPPEN, AND MAKES THIS SHOW DIFFERENT.

Kneepad sponsor: $28

Spring Steel Sponsor:  $32

Epoxy Sponsor: $42 (we use a lot of epoxy)

Cedar Plank sponsor: $80

Puppet Head Painter Sponsor: $125

Synthetic Lawn sponsor: $220

JUST CLICK HERE AND NOW TO SUPPORT SONNAMBULA. Donate at any of the odd above-listed levels, and voila! We will know you are a sponsor, and you will have made that part of the project possible. (you'll also get recognized as you wish, and a nice tax-deduction letter in the mail!).

Of course, Sonnambula would happen no matter what, donations or not, residency or not. But it would be a different project: less ambitious, less evolved, and less sustainable. As you contribute to these strange items in our budget, consider the amazing resourcefulness and generosity that also goes into making new work. In our case: years of subsidized staff-time, rehearsal space and developmental opportunities contributed by HERE; hundreds of dollars worth of free building supplies from Materials for the Arts; and most recently a slew of otherwise unaffordable radio spots donated by WQXR. Most importantly there is the value of time and talents donated by the exceptional cast and design team, who will have worked for several hunded cumulative hours at what amounts to a few bucks an hour!

Your contribution, in these critical final moments before we open the doors, feeds into this other stream of generous people, organizations and institutions that want to ensure that artists stay in the field, push the field and create culture.

THANK YOU SO MUCH! 

Michael

So thrilled that Laure Drogoul will be joining us for a post-performance discussion on smell and the sensorium in live arts. It'll be on Sunday Nov 13th following the 7pm show. She's a wild artist. Words cannot describe. More here: http://www.cultofmarms.org/. I found her through a comment on my last post, so thanks!

My recent trip to Southern France, while for "pleasure" (although the boundaries between life/work/art have wear ever thinner), intersected with Sonnambula in myriad ways. Conscious and un-. Most directly, we reconnected with ex-HERE intern, Tristan in his element (see photo below). We were also asked to reccuperate a bottle of lavender oil for a friend. She had brought her pounds of lavendar to a local distillery, which produced several gallons of eau as well as a very rich, expensive transparent oil. We almost lost it to customs on the return flight. I have no clue the use of the oil, but I did spend some time with the dried lavender stalks, which will certainly find their way into Sonnambula. Finally there were the fields of deseccated sunflowers, ready to be mowed for harvest. Nothing more to say about that photo aside from it's obviously drama. Southern France is, actually one possible location of the opera La Sonnambula, although originally set in a "Swiss village", many productions pop it around to other bucolic settings: Southern France, Italy etc.

Well we've got November 17th cornered, according to New York Magazine's Fall Guide. Right beside Taylor Swift! Of course, I wouldn't call the puppets "creepy", but I guess to some people, all puppets are creepy. Part of a long history of puritan campaigns against animism.

So I'm starting to work on my olfactory map for Sonnambula. Being in the cozy Dorothy B Williams Theater at HERE, and working on an opera where the lead character has her eyes shut for a third of the story, it seemed only natural to bust the piece into other senses (of course it being an opera with a live violist means that we have "hearing" pretty well covered). Now there's nothing so innovative about this, as smell pops up in tons of religious performances, the crazy experiments by the Italian Futurists, and tons of "performance art", but I am wondering what memories any of you have of smell being used productively in a performance? Consider it fodder for my olfactory map...

For me the two noteworthy ones are at one of Ivy Baldwin's dances where she and another dancer peeled and ate clementines. That smell brought me right next to them. The other is the much-hyped "bacon sizzling" at the end of Our Town (at Cherry Lane). That  odor was worth the hype. It smelled like "memory"...

Any experiences or ideas?

 

I finished my MFA down at the American Dance Festival, where I was continuing work on Dance And Other Archives. Voila the video: http://www.vimeo.com/27734673 It was wonderful to create an exuberent, expansive dance on a 50ft white marley, but I'm also thrilled to dive back into the intimate world of sensation and live strings in Sonnambula. This week is more work on the score with composer and live violist, Malina Raushenfeld; and next week will puppet re-designs with Lindsey Abohmaitis-Smith.

We've been discussing art, labor, how  live arts  can be ascribed value, and how live arts makers can gain leverage in our capitalist system.  Very interesting thread here on this arts admin blog, scroll down to my tyrade!

http://bit.ly/e0qSRR

All this is interesting in the context of Guiditta Pasta, the soprano at the center of Sonnambula who premiered Bellini's piece in 1831. She was paid $25,000 for her Milan season that year. It helps that La Scala was supported by 90 rich Milanese dudes; I wonder if BAM has 90 rich New York dudes donating comparably.

Casey Cole & I are pumped to enlist the talents of Malina Rauschenfels. She is a composer, cellist & violist, who will arrange (and perform) a live violist part that accompanies Casey. The viola will weave together Bellini's arias, but also as Casey falls deeper into the character of Guiditta Pasta the viola will integrate with vintage recordings of La Sonnambula from the 30's & 40's.

Check out her compositions.
and her performing at MassMoca as part of Bang on a Can

Two people who have been rocking my world (and by that I mean, informing my creative process). 1) the documentary/experimental film-maker and more, Trinh Minha 2) the French art critic & theorist Nicolas Bourriaud. Both can sound pretentious at times, but the thing is, both are so smart and have unique ways of taking a step back in their conceptions of art, art-making, performance & society. This quote by Minha  below really taught me what this project is about; it captures the relationship that I want to have to Bellini's opera, music, and the operatic tradition.

Tinh Minha:
I don't talk about, only next to.

Then this concept is interesting as I conceive of the relationships between my performers, the viewers, and the subject matter, and how that actually might be vital to the structure of the actual performance.

Nicolas Bourriaud (talking about artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres:

The role of the artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist

 

 

This Town Meeting was for any and all artists who had past or current affiliations with HERE. The event was part of TCG's field-wide national effort to instigate conversation to improve relations between artists and arts organizations, and HERE was happy to continue to do its part in this ongoing dialog: it is important that the voice of hybrid artists be in the mix of this national conversation.

At the meeting we discussed ways to improve how we work together and build successful and sustainable collaborations. The conversations that took place last week were lively and productive, with a great range of artist, directors, producers, musicians, and thinkers contributing to the dialog. We also hosted an online livstream and chat for HERE affiliates to join the conversation even if they were hundreds of miles away. You can still tune into the conversation by checking out our audio documentation and reading the text from our online chat!

The site hosting our livestream chat actually cut off the beginning of our online conversation–BUMMER! But before starting in medias res, here's a sense of the discussion:

We began by working through a question of word choice. Contributor imb from Boston, MA proposed a helpful distinction between "ownership" and "belonging". imb proposed that when addressing the issue of intellectual property rights in artistic collaborations, the term "belonging" (i.e. to whom the rights of the work belong) tends towards dialog as opposed to the rigid structure of distribution that "ownership" suggests. After working through this differentation, we quickly began a discussion of the relevance of social media in working through issues of belonging via community building, discussing successful examples/experiments at the intersection of theatre and social media...

HEREarts: Is 2am Theater a constant conversation ? I love those
HEREarts: Is the New Play TV channel on the 2am site? Or is that another link?
imb: Oh, 2amt is great. It's a website that serves as a non-geographically restrictive community, and it's a twitter hashtag used by people who want to be part of the conversations.
imb: Hold on, I'll get you the link for NewPlayTV.
HEREarts: Brilliant! Thnx, much.
HEREarts: It's really an extraordinary time we're living in: we have the potentials of communities not restricted by geography. Amazing
imb: NewPlayTV has archived its streams from the new play convening at arena stage here: http://www.livestream.com/newplay
imb: On twitter, check out the #newplay tag for conversations on those topics
HEREarts: Ah! I recognize this logo. HERE follows them on Twitter. I'm very excited to check this out.
HEREarts: Interesting legal discussion at play.
HEREarts: The real tricky question is what to do when a work or artist crosses media and, therefore, crosses into a copyright gray area.
imb: Yes, the live room is spot on.
imb: We feel wierd about making contracts with friends, and then we're ***.
imb: (Sorry, livestream doesn't like it when I swear apparently)
imb: Does anyone know how 3LD handles these cross-media issues?
HEREarts: Yeah. There's a great TED talk on "the third man", just an entity that always functions as a third person in conflict resolution.
imb: (http://www.3ldnyc.org/)
HEREarts: Anyone out there know off of the top of your head? I'll look into it. Was it something that was brought up in the group?
imb: No one brought up 3LD, I was just thinking of org's that would probably tend to face the cross-disciplinary-contract issues.
HEREarts: Was it just me who brought up the contract gray areas? If so, I'll raise it to the group.
imb: (Is the TED talk you're referring to this one w/William Ury? http://www.ted.com/talks/william_ury.html )
HEREarts: I do believe so!
HEREarts: Yes it is!
HEREarts: So
HEREarts: just to be sure that everyone's aware.
imb: They're talking about non-traditional commissions. I used to commission pwrites to come to the theatre twice a month and talk w/each other about their works in process. No product required.

HEREarts: In terms of non-traditional commissions, what are some visions about how to bring new works that defy media-specific parameters into fruition.
imb: Fractured Atlas offers insurance to members.
HEREarts: Good to know . I'll be sure to circulate that!
imb: In fact, everything they're talking about is part of Fractured Atlas

imb: www.fracturedatlas.org/
HEREarts: Everyone's now on the same page with Fractured Atlas .
HEREarts: Hooray.
Jason: You have to pay for insurance at fractured atlas seperately, but it is rather inexpensive.
HEREarts: Are there cheaper options that people know about?
Jason: *separately
imb: There's a cool cross-disciplinary artist collective called Triiibe that marries visual art, performace art, music, etc: http://www.triiibe.com/
imb: I bring them up because as a collective, they don't even really acknowldge when they're working across disciplines. I look at them as a model for what I strive for.
imb: Of course, they work together all the time. The challenge (as articulated by the live room) seems to be how to create those collaborations from scratch & make them work.
HEREarts: Triiibe looks so compelling! Thanks for the link! And what more do you find more exemplary in their practice?
HEREarts: And how do they make their collaborations work in your opinion ?
Peony: re: live discussion, sometimes multiple disciplines wreak havoc with grants or other support
Peony: they have rigid guidelines
HEREarts: In what way exactly? In the way that they kind of evade categorization?
imb: To be perfectly homest, it has to do with how my students respond to seeing this cross-disciplinary work. It thrills them almost more than anything else they see. I draw conclusions about how that...
HEREarts: Ah! There is it in the live discussion
HEREarts: Kristin just brought it up
imb: ...kind of work plays to the avergae audience member. It's exciting, unexpected, invigoating.
imb: Peony: so true.
HEREarts: Exciting, unexpected, invigorating, yet accessible. Do you have a sense of what makes this work particularly accessible?
HEREarts: I'm curious...
HEREarts: how have you all, as practitioners resolved those interdisciplinary issues? With grants, etc.
imb: It's unpretentious. I also think of experiential theatre like what Punchdrunk does (sleep no more, etc). It surpises the audience.
imb: ...and can surprise the aritsts, too.
Peony: actually, i'm frustrated about funders with rigid old-fashioned rules
HEREarts: Did you see Punchdrunk in Boston, then!? Was there. Amazing show. It does indeed surprise the artists...I've heard stories.
HEREarts: How do you think that could be improved, Peony?
imb: Peony: it's like artists are constantly dragging the conservatism of funders into the new wave. kicking and screaming.
HEREarts: This is true. It's almost as if there are three audiences to cater to, no?
imb: (Punchdrunk in boston: yes. And I already havr my tix for the NYC show next month.)
HEREarts: Public audience, audience of peers, and an audience of funders that need more hand-holding?
imb: Good point re: the facebook friends.
HEREarts: (I need to get my tix to Sleep No More here in NYC)
HEREarts: ...wait, there are people you can't friend...?
Peony ban: they'd have to hear from many constituents about the same complaint, however, places like NYSCA seem carved in stone
HEREarts: Do you think that with social networking tools, that one could actually build a very politically active community around a particular medium or project?
HEREarts: Yes, scene creation.
imb: Live room comment on people being shut out of conversations: technology is great because otherwise all 6 of us online would have been shut out of this discussion b/c of geography.
imb: Trevor, re: your Q on politically active communities: Man, just look at the Belarus Free Theatre, which has used facebook amazingly for political/artistic ends. After their Under the Radar residency..
Peony: the web has made unifying concerns easier, helped our "lobbying" efforts
HEREarts: I'm very excited about this right now .

imb: ...they've been invited to thetares all over the country to peform, since they can't go back to Belarus. They use fbook to collect a community around them who would otherwise not know re the politics
HEREarts: That's an amazing case study.
Peony: well the revolution in Egypt was sparked by facebook
HEREarts: Yes; what's happening and has happened in Egypt and the Middle East has been extraordinary. Has it showed the world the power of social networking, again?
imb: Here's the Belarus Free Theatre fbook site: http://on.fb.me/h8HNMN
HEREarts: Thank you :-D!
HEREarts: And how are the events in Egypt related to community building in the arts? If at all?
imb: I think what it shows is the power of people in collaboration. Technology makes it possible to collaborate across borders in new ways.
HEREarts: Are viral videos analagous to what happened in Egypt? The difference being that the political movement went viral (and necessitated organization and participation) as opposed to a single work.
PST: P.s just saw the punchdrunk thread...sleep no more was great
HEREarts: Both are memes.
HEREarts: Another chat win for Punchdrunk . I would definitely recommend it.
imb: Rude Mechs for the win! (Live room)
imb: Nature Theatre of Oklahoma is similar.
HEREarts: Next time, I'm going to work this out so that I can tweet all these links. Just not used to this interface yet.
imb: (Trevor: you could get a partner and tag-team it. One person moderating the chat, one person tweeting. The new play convening at arena stage did this & it worked well)
HEREarts: Ah! Thanks for the suggestion! I'll put that into practice next time around.
imb: They're talking about cross-discipliary stuff, and how it's hard to find venues. That's true. Wish we had more places in Boston outfitted for multi-media shows. Very few are.
imb: I can think of like, 2.
HEREarts: What's usually missing from those other venues? Technical capabilities, etc?
PST: True. I also work in new opera works, and a lot of places are acoustically disasters. Add to that projection needs and you're screwed. Regarding community engagement...I'm for the first time dealin
imb: Yes, tech capabilities.
PST: with family programming and I'm excited about convening a conversation group of audience member/parents
HEREarts: Perhaps there should be a guerilla guide to pop-up mixed media pieces
PST: when you do programming for kids, you have this split where the parents are the buyers but kids are the audience
imb: Before the Institute of Contemporary Arts moved to its new space, and before ArtsEmerson got started this year, if you wanted to see multi-media stuff, you had to go up to Dartmouth's Hop Center.
Jason: The guerilla guide would be great.
HEREarts: ah, yes; that's very interesting (the split)
Jason: Mixed media spaces too.
PST: ArtsEmerson is awesome
imb: (PST: true!)
PST: Boston is still dominated by universities. My most successful multimedia piece was in a non public/non commercial space at Harvard...they still have some of the best outfits in the city but it's so i
PST: insulated
HEREarts: I'll see if I can put the guerilla guide on my to-do list . Collaborative endeavor all the way. WOW! You had to go all the way to Dartmouth to see multimedia work!?
PST: I'm sure people do work at BU too, but it's off the radar
PST: There's a big performance art community in the south end
PST: but they aren't so much on the radar
imb: Oh, PST: yes, Harvard's multi-media capabilites are great. I forgot about them. I'm at BU, and we're not so well endowed.
PST: the ART does work too
PST: ahh, fair
HEREarts: What are some names from the south end? I always was looking for stuff, but never found much.
imb: Speaking of multimedia and the A.R.T., the current pdxn of AJAX, directed by SoHo Rep's Sarah Benson, uses multimedia to create the chorus in innovative ways...
HEREarts: Hmm...there's something interesting going on here in this chat...
imb: ...but even so, she told me she was hamstrung somewhat between the artistic idea, and the fruition of that idea that was achievable w/ the resources.
imb: ...Not b/c ART was unhelpful, but b/c of all the standard problems that come with technology.
HEREarts: NYC, of course, has tons and tons of arts organizations that push innovation, etc. Where can artists in other cities look? Are universities the organizations that are responsible for providing these r
HEREarts: *resources
Peony: Trevor, what was the "money-making" idea Kristin wants to try?
imb: Well, from my vantage point, what I can tell you is our dept has zero $$, but we do have space. And students. But that's kind of it.
PST: I like the idea of seeing works in progress framed as works in progress
HEREarts: I'm not sure. I'll make a note to ask her about it and get back to you.
imb: They live room is right: audiences do love to see work in progress. Are they talking about the Rude Mechs selling tix to their work in progress?
Peony: Thx
imb: Interesting ideas in the live room.
PST: I also like the meaning of that in terms of activism. I think the role of theatre is to create action
PST: in a microcosm
HEREarts: Not sure if it's Rude Mechs specific. Yeah; the live room seems to have a great energy right now
PST: and engagement with the audience around what an action should be in a situation is huge
PST: whether it's derived from an aesthetic concern or a content concern
HEREarts: Is it the creation of action or creating a representation of possible action?
imb: (stupid ad!)
HEREarts: Yeah, I really don't like the ads :_(
HEREarts: Theatre of the Oppressed?
imb: This thing about they dynamism of the audience/artist relationship is so important.
imb: (God, my spelling sucks)
imb: (Trevor: what time is this event scheduled to go until?)
HEREarts: Can you go deeper into this issue of the dynamic relationship between audience and artist?
imb: Yes... hold on... I'll try to be coherent...
HEREarts: It's scheduled until 9, but I'm not sure when the conversation will wrap up.
HEREarts: ...I have some matzo ball soup that's waiting for me.
imb: Paula Vogel once said that the thing about the actor & audience is that the art is new every night, because the people in the room are new every night, and thus the work by necessity CHANGES. Unless..
HEREarts: National Football League was the most recent professional organization reference (and it's relation to the play Lombardi)
imb: Unless, of course, it *doesn't* - and when it doesn't, it loses its dynamism and life. But plays are often so "set" after even only a few perf's, that it seems taboo to
imb: ...shift and change depending on who's in the room. Instead, the actors try mightily to force the play to remain steady, on pace, etc.
HEREarts: Yes; the question of how to break open a show to have room to breathe new life into it.
imb: One of the things I think gets lost in most programming is some acknowledgement of how to nurture that dynamism.
HEREarts: I think that's why stuff like Punchdrunk is so intriguing (using architecture to bring new potentials into the text )
imb: For example, season programming...
imb: How do you nurture your audiences with you on a dynamic journey that lasts several seasons, rather than just programming the next thing to get butts in seats?
HEREarts: Yes to the nurturing dynamism comment
HEREarts: Also how to express the dynamism of a career and how to join that artist's journey
HEREarts: we've all come together now
Jason: I can't hear Kristen...
HEREarts: to have summaries of all the discussions.
imb: (Good luck!)
Jason: She's too far away now
HEREarts: We'll go into summaries from the groups.
imb: The mic is working well, thanks
Jason: yes
HEREarts: I'm going to try to comb through all our text to give summaries. A bit overwhelming, but I'll try my best!
HEREarts: Again, both of these transcripts are going to be posted on HERE's blog and open for comment and conversation.
HEREarts: Actually, does anyone have things that they would like to share with the group? I think that would be productive as opposed to me just summarizing!
imb: uh... I defer to you.
HEREarts: Haha. Oh, boy.
Jason: Trickle down = Watered down
Peony: i'm not sure we should leave our email addresses on the blog -- could those be removed?
HEREarts: Is that a comment to share? I'd just send them to me. I think that this chat can be deleted (though saved elsewhere). I'll get rid of the e-mail addresses.
Jason: No need to share. thx
HEREarts: I thought it was pretty acurate.
Peony: Thank you Trevor.
Jason: use at your discretion
HEREarts: Noted
PST: imb...what are you up to in Boston? We should follow up. You're on BU faculty?
imb: (PST: yup. Would love to connect. I have your email address from earlier in the chat -- I'll send you a note outside of this chat.)
PST: thx
Peony: way to go Trevor
imb: Thanks Trevor
PST: Yay trevor!
HEREarts: Thanks for the support . I know I missed alot, but all of your ideas will be posted on the blog, etc.
HEREarts: There's a ton of text here. This is great!
imb: Sadly, I have to take off, you guys, but it's been fun chatting with you, and being a subsidiay part of this conversation at HERE.
Peony: can't hear them now
PST: ok guys, I have to run...thanks for the awesomness. Thanks!
HEREarts: So, we'll wind down the online discussion now (matzo for me!).
HEREarts: (Quiet time is still going on for the show downstairs)

HEREarts: Just as a note to myself, to possibly write up for you all on a blog post, is that the discussion taking place right now is super important–it's about access, knowing the rules of the game...
HEREarts: what happens when the curtain goes up and goes down
HEREarts: questions of accessibility, questions of being trained to view a performance, ethics of that, cultural conditioning, etc.
HEREarts: the question of whether all of that is relevant
Jason: Thanks so much for hosting this event.

 

It's quite obvious to me why Baseball can't be like Dance (nor hold a candle to it). But I've been thinking about the role of Dance in our contemporary society. How far it has been removed from days of communal (spiritual, social, expressive) engagement, and how fully it has been resituated in our marketplace economy competing with tv, film, sports, and other stuff-you-pay-for. More importantly, Dance has fallen in the camp of stuff-you-watch-but-do-not-do. We don't see each other moving expressively, and therefore we can't imagine ourselves communicating with our bodies in the most basic, essential way.

"So you think you can dance?" A question posed in the negative. A heckle. A concept of exclusion that is so easy to subsribe to... "Wow, look at Momix, Lyon Ballet, Cirque de Soleil... Elizabeth Streb! Look at those dancers! I could never do that." And therefore. "I could never dance". But what about sports?

I can't dunk. And yet, after I watch a basketball game, I want to go out an try. Or at least shoot around a bit. How many family & friend touch-football games happen on Sunday evening after Sunday morning footbal games are over? You can't throw a fastball 95 mph, and yet, watching a pitcher in the World series, makes you want to at least toss around the ball in the park. If not attempt your own 60mph pitch.This is the tell-tale indication of our own inseperable connection to our bodies, what Foucault means when he refers to "the place without recourse to which I am condemned" but also "his utopia". It is not just adrenaline we feel when we witnesss another body moving (dancin, or throwing), but the firing of mirror neurons. When Lebron James dunks the ball. A small part of me is dunking the ball.

And yet here is my problem. Why isn't Dance like Baseball?  Why, after a virtuosic show at BAM,  might an audience member think "I can't do that" and feel entirely excluded from the participating. Soem might even feel alienated from their own bodies. The circle of the artform shrinks and turns inward.

Why isn't the reaction like that to sports? "Damn straight I can't throw a 90 mph fastball, but hey, wanna go play catch?"

Casey has been auditioning, performing, and living in Europe the last few months, and was able to visit La Scala, the legendary Milan operahouse, where La Sonnambula premiered in 1831. There she snapped these two photos of a bust and painting of Guiditta Pasta they have on display. An odd painting for an odd woman. In "The Glorious Ones", an opera history book by Harold Shonburg he's a bit rough on her looks...

“Pasta must have been a rather thrilling figure on stage even though she was a rather dumpy, unglamorous woman with one leg shorter than the other.”

I don't think she looks so bad in this painting, though. Either way, we are thinking of using a replica of this painting in the set for our project, which includes a faux dressing room, where Pasta prepares for her debut.

I'm back following a summer in hot hot Durham at The American Dance Festival working on my MFA.

Summary:

Lot's of reading and (re)writing American Dance history in Tommy DeFrantz's class (Highlights: Barbara Browning's book Samba; Priya Srivinasan on Ruth St. Denis, and Susan Leaigh Foster on downtown dance), and theorizing in Jen Boyle's Media & Aesthetics class in which we read the amazingly interesting compilation Sensorium that I would reccomend to any visual/installation/performing artist (with articles short enough that you can read on the toilet).

Explorations in somatics, mirror neurons, and muscle memory in Contemporary Body Practices. Memorable performances by Kate Weare, Eiko + Koma & Shen Wei. Forgettable performances by Monica Bill Barnes, Pilobolus & Paul Taylor.

I also was dancing lot's myself, a daunting challenge: taking classes with Ming Long Yang (release technique) and the phenomenal Jesse Zarrit, who teaches some combination of Shen Wei's spiraling wildness crossed with Deborah Hay's millions-of-molecules philosophies.

And lot's of solo time in the studio.  Now time to readjust to life in the city...

I'm developing a new dance work with two of the dancers from Sonnambula, Cheri Paige Fogleman & Hannah Lundeen. Here is a showing that we had a couple of weeks ago a part of the DanceNOW Festival at Tisch. The first minute is a duet that spun off from a section in Sonnambula where the sleepwalker, Amina is crossing over a rickety bridge.

In exploring the creation of Bellini's original opera, La Sonnambula, my collaborator Casey Cole and I were drawn to the soprano who premiered the role, Guiditta Pasta. As famous and charismatic as she was, many accounts reported her looks as haggard and her voice as being wildly out-of-control at times. We wanted to share some of this meta-information with the audience as they heard and saw our deconstruction of the opera. So we settled on integrating the research into the supertitles along with the original Italian & English translations. We handed the text over to Hannah Wasileski, who designed the projections for our Culturemart showing in January 2010. This slideshow presents what was projected on the front of the proscenium.