The Night Before

The night before a show is always an in between time.  All the choreography is done, the lights have been set, tech and dress rehearsal have come and gone.  If the tech/dress has gone well, you go home with excitement and expectation.  If there are problems, you go home with dread and anxiety.  But it's really out of my hands now, it's up to the dancers to work their magic and make the choreography come alive, to the lighting designer to add his expertise and make the space sizzle and to the musicians to smash the atoms of sound to create a sonic wonderland.   It's a lesson in giving up control and trusting that all the hours of rehearsal will carry everyone along in a groundswell that builds into a tidal wave of perfect wonder and awesome power.  I have experienced performances like this, both as a performer and an audience member, and this is what I crave when I go to see live performance.  Something that takes me out of myself or conversely something that brings me deep inside,  that connects me with a force or energy, that touches my heart and stimulates my intellect.  Tonight when I watched the dancers in dress rehearsal, they transcended their everyday personas and became archetypal, a fascinating transformation that is possible in performance.  This is what we all want to give to an audience - a moment in time that encapsulates timelessness, that unites everyone in a shared adventure, that speaks of the human experience and leaves one hungering for more.  More art, more life, more, more, more.  So that's what I'm left with, the hope that this work will touch both the audience and the performers and leave them with something more than when they first sat down in their seats before the curtain rises.     

The Changing Nature of Memory

We think that our memories remain unchanged, that they are permanently engraved in our brains.  However neuroscientists have shown that our memories are constantly remodeled, changing with new circumstances and events.  In order to change, memories have to be conscious and become the focus of our conscious attention.  During rehearsal, when the dancers consciously recall past circumstances and we focus on them as inspirational material for the dance, this presents opportunities for change. 

The neural connections in the brain can be rewired as a result of working with old memories, old connections can be weakened and new ones made, resulting in new ways of responding to certain circumstances.  Besides the memories existing in the brain, I believe that we store our memories in the muscles and cells of our bodies also, and working through old memories with movement provides a powerful catalyst for change and healing.   This is one way that the process of making art becomes transformational for the artist and one reason that the process is both difficult and rewarding.  Artists often talk about the process itself being more important than the final product.  I have found that the process has its own direction and logic and that the more I try and impose a direction the harder it gets. 

At some point I have to release control and let it go where it wants to, and I have to be comfortable feeling like I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going a good part of the time.  This doesn't mean that I don't plan and think about my projects, I do a lot of preparation before beginning a project and during the project itself, but at some point I always seem to have to let go and follow some kind of intuition that is often not conscious on my part.  On good days the dance makes itself and I step out of the way.  It sounds very mystical and mysterious, but it doesn't feel like that when it happens, it just feels like everything clicks into place and the source of inspiration and ideas keep flowing.  Then of course there are the days when nothing seems to come and my mind is a blank slate.  That's when I have to push and plow and struggle.  Sometimes the dancers want to know where we're heading in the dance, and I have to tell them that I don't know but by working it will eventually become clear. 

Not surprisingly, imagination can also change the structure of the brain.  Every thought we have alters the physical state of our brain synapses at a microscopic level.  While it's not yet understood exactly how thoughts change the brain structure, it is now known that they do, which has both positive and negative potential.  Could it be that the spiritual mystics and gurus were right all along when they stressed the importance of each thought and the effects that they have on each one of us?

Homeostasis

Homeostasis usually refers to the physiological state whereby the body seeks to maintain an internal stability or balance and will work hard to return that state if something brings it out of balance.  I think there is also a desire for emotional homeostasis wherein we seek emotional equilibrium and are very uncomfortable when a situation threatens to disrupt our balance.  This presents a dilemma when delving into the psyche for material for a dance. 

How do we explore personal topics that are potential emotional minefields to get at the material that can be transformed into something that speaks to an audience?  This problem presented itself during our recent rehearsals for our new work on perception/memory.  In mining their pasts for material, the dancers found it painful to continually return to emotionally charged memories when rehearsing and it negatively affected their feelings about the rehearsals themselves.

 However isn't it possible to use the past to come up with initial material, and then let the kinesthetics of the movement itself become the point of attention in subsequent rehearsals rather than the original memories?  The movement then becomes imbued with emotional intensity and honesty as the dancer hones and works on it, so that each movement has an emotional resonance.   And what about holding a state of uncomfortableness while continuing to work and not having that state negatively impact you?  We're called on in life to endure feeling uncomfortable and to learn how to function while in that state.

 It requires that we be able to be in the state of unease and at the same time maintain a certain detachment, not denying what we are feeling, but at the same time not immersing ourselves in the feeling.  I think a lot of learning can happen in that kind of situation and that ultimately it is a tool for growth.           

Dancers Input

My method of working with dancers has changed a lot over the years.  Coming out of dancing professionally for several companies I was used to the choreographer making up all the steps and teaching them to us, the dancers.  This is how I worked for many years, with occasional but brief forays into improvisation.  I found that when I did ask the dancers to improvise, they were by and large uncomfortable with the process and often resistant to it.  I am always searching for new ways of moving and of exploring how the body can communicate through movement and at some point found that I felt restricted relying solely on my own movement.

  I started devising more and more improvisation exercises for the dancers, developing their own unique movement vocabulary and embellishing it with mine, creating a hybrid of sorts that was fresh and new.  I found this more and more exciting because it gave me so many options and enlarged the movement vocabulary, and now I use improvisation liberally in the creation of new work.  I believe that the dancers also feel more invested in the work when they are part of its creation and are more attentive to the intent and execution of the movement. 

Of course a lot of this depends on the dancers themselves.  Many dancers are not trained in improvisation and don't have a lot of experience in it, I didn't when I first began dancing professionally.  I am continually learning with the dancers how to devise exercises that address specifically what I am trying to examine, be it in movement or feeling.  If the dancers are open and interested in exploring new terrain they will embrace the experience, but if they are uncomfortable in new and unknown situations they really dislike it.  Fortunately for me I now have a group of dancers who are able and willing to explore not only movement but their own inner depths and in the creation of this work on perception and memory it has enabled us to get into some powerful territory that is personal but also resonates on a broader scale.  

What exactly is perception?

Perception is generally defined as the process by which a person assimilates and makes use of sensory data.  Behavior is based on what people perceive, hence its importance.  There are a multitude of factors that affect perception, from what we select from the cornucopia of sensory stimuli that we are bombarded with to how we organize and interpret this stimuli.  There is so much information coming in that we can't pay attention to all of it, and we end up selecting what is meaningful to us and ignore the rest.

  Our selection process is based on what we need, want and expect, so in effect much of what we perceive responds to our physical, mental and emotional condition.  The organization of the stimuli we receive involves forming positive or negative responses to it, which in turn is affected by our assumptions and beliefs.

 In the interpretation of the data we receive our beliefs, values, attitudes, past learning and experiences combine to form a mental filter through which our perceptions are interpreted and evaluated.  With this in mind, it is evident that perception is highly individualistic which accounts for differing interpretations of the same incident.  Communication becomes imperative, or our interpersonal relationships can become minefields of discordance.  Do we know how to talk to each other, taking into account the importance that perception plays?  

So now the dancers and I approach a piece about this vast topic of perception.  Where and how do we start?  The best way I can think of is to start personally, having the dancers write about their feelings and memories attached to certain important events in their lives.  This becomes the starting point of our creative process and requires a certain fearlessness and courage to mine the depths of who we are and how we have become what we are.  

Choreographing Perception

The project I’m working on now is about perception and memory.  When I was doing research for my work on quantum physics I came across a statement in one of the books I was reading that perhaps as much as 50% of what we “see” is in actuality not visual information that is conveyed to the brain through the optic nerve but based on our expectations.  What?  I was flabbergasted by this.  If our sense of reality is largely informed by our expectations, which are in themselves influenced by our memories, how in the world do we come to a consensus about what is real?  Is there such as thing as a collective reality, and if so, how can it be explained?  There is of course a lot of evidence that we perceive events differently – try and find eyewitness testimony that is consistent amongst several people. 

But there is a great deal of agreement also – the earthquake and tsunami in Japan really did happen on March 11, despite what my expectations are I see the destruction in pictures and video.  My own research on this topic has unearthed scores of examples of brain malfunctions that affect both perception and memory, but these are anomalies, not the norm. 

I visit galleries whenever I can, and found an artist, Gwen Samuels, who I knew I wanted to work with at some point.  Gwen’s work examines clothing as identity and I thought it would be perfect for this dance because we have so many associations with clothing affecting both our perception and memory.  My first caveat then is that costuming will affect how an audience perceives and interprets the movement and the dancers.


 If a woman in a slinky nightgown does distorted, percussive movement, does it color how an audience sees it?  If gender clothing is switched but a scenario of a man abusing a woman is played out, does the clothing influence how the scene is interpreted?  If a movement sequence is performed with the dancers fully clothed and then performed again with the dancers almost nude does that change how the movement is read?        

Dance and Science?

I was not a science geek in school, so no one was more surprised than me when my choreographic interests turned to science themes.  Once I started on this path I unleashed the flood waters of what at this point seems an endless fascination with a myriad of science themes.  Ideas come tumbling into my head and thankfully they continue to flow into my consciousness.  My appetite seems voracious.  My mind reaches to grasp scientific concepts and I revel in the effort, even as I struggle to understand complex principles that by a layperson’s standards seem impossible. 

I gather books around me and plow through them – quantum physics, parallel universes, celestial mechanics, the brain, perception and memory, botany – all of them intriguing.  I often have the thrill of meeting with scientists, questioning and discussing the themes I'm dealing with.  Then comes the real challenge – how do I as an artist interpret the themes in a way that isn’t a science lesson but a work of art, that doesn’t try to spell out the science but instead offers a different perspective, one that is more often than not abstract. 

Can I communicate the essence of the science through non linear, non narrative ways, through kinetic movement, through feelings and visceral experiences?  I attempt to solve this puzzle with each new work that I tackle.  Dance and science are scary - people shy away from them because they're afraid that they don't understand them.  But if we can let all of that go, the marriage of the two has the potential to captivate the mind, senses and emotions - what could be more fulfilling?