Am I my body?

I.
I am my body. What do I become
with every new situation?
I am everything else
other than my body, I am your body too
and the space our bodies share.
The body is relational. I am my body in
reference to what my body
is not. My body is occuring in that moment -
under those circumstances.
I am not my body that I was a moment ago.
I am my body also.

II.
Methinks that in looking at things
spiritual, we are like oysters observing the
sun through the water, and thinking
that thick water the thinnest of air.
Methinks my body is but the lees of my
better being. In fact take my body who
will, take it I say, it is not me.

Herman Melville - Mody Dick

on improvising

Improvisation bridges the space between my physical sense of
self and a physical sense of what my self is not. It is the manafest
dialogue between my edges and the worlds edges, including all people,
living things and objects within the world.
It is a language of my skin. It is a form that emerges
before i know. It is a form of me.

Pollack the movement.
The record of the movement.
The drip is the residue of the action.
The action is the conversation.

Isn’t that what we are always requiring in our
work as dancers, the attempt to crystallize a
moment of the passing stream of living. A
dancer is in the profession of living ones life in front of
people and among people. To me that is the ultimate
function of dance, to help others feel themselves by
means of acting as a surrogate channel for experience.
Our job is to place ourselves within an accessible proximity
to people and attempt to deliver a honest and direct report
of the state of ourselves, in order that we may be able to
allow others to access some range of this state within
themselves.

My mother said the other night that a dancer is a form of
being an exhibitionist, but I think what she really means
is that as a dancer I put myself - as a person in process,
one dance at a time – in front of others to communicate
through the bodies histories and languages. The language
of the body is a shared fluency, if allowed.

Given the fact that we can never not be a body is an incredible
thing. We are body, we are the drips of a Pollack painting every
moment of our lives.

Ucross Foundation 3/07

During March of 2007 my company The Foundry was in residence
at the Ucross Foundation in rural Wyoming creating Imprint.
During this period me, as well as the rest of our collaborators
took the time each day to embark on a daily practice that helped
to inspire and focus and primarily to engage with the extraordinary
landscape and history of the region. In my case, I walked in the
mornings. At a certain point within the walk I would stop, take in
the immediate snapshot of where I was and jot down quick
observations based on the near/distant. From that location I
would then count the steps back to a certain end point, often
not based on returning home, but a specified end point. Something
about measuring a distance of space within the total space of a
journey resonates with me. Spaces within spaces - distances within
distance. Measurable performances within a daily activity. Activity
as performing action, logging the action as performing memory.
This is one of my daily logs of such a walk.

Ucross Foundation, Ucross Wyoming – day 3
3/8/07

7:30am walk

up dirt road into hills across the road.

Step count on return – last portion of walk only:
547 steps – from last portion of dirt road leading to highway
to Ucross population sign posted on highway.

Observations:
*Big puddle – thin ice
*old barn new roof
*barb wire / aged wood
*frozen animal tracks
*air conditioner system mounted on bunker block

keith Jarret on Improvising

Here are a some informative quotes on the process
and sensibility of Improvising by one of the musical masters of
the form. Listening and reading the work of Jarret has inpired and
reaffirmed my own experiences about what it can mean to give
over to an unknown space, in my case through dance, into creation.


Inside out: Thoughts on free playing
by Keith Jarrett
"It really depends on whether a player ‘conceives of
nothing’ as the ‘lack of something’, or pregnant with
‘everything’. Then, further, it depends on what
‘everything’ means to that player. If it means something
limiting, if it scares him his ability as a free player will be
stunted also. We all have a structure to our bodies.
The only limit, it would seem to me, is what the body
cannot do."

"There were at least 3 people involved at a solo concert
(which was always improvised from scratch): the improviser,
the spontaneous composer, and the listener at the keyboard.
The improviser is the easiest to explain (though none in their
right mind would try to). He sits there confident in his ability
to find some musical way from a - b (although he has no idea
what b is). The spontaneous composer is a little harder to
explain, though his position is slightly above the improviser.
He ‘sends down’ material (sorry, it’s the only way I know to
say it) at the spur of the moment whenever the improviser calls
for it. He might have to create out of thin air. His job is harder
because he has to supply substantialcontent on the spur of the
moment, in case the improviser gets stuck or lost or just plain
looses his connection to ‘the zone’. The composer eggs on the
improviser (and visa versa), while the man at the key board -
monitoring the proceedings and trying not to judge too quickly
or intervene, even when he disapproves - attempts to pay attention
to it all, simultaneously (all of this is simultaneous) checking his
vital functions for any abnormalities, making sure he has no finger
or body cramps and than he has drawn a breath recently, etc."

Scattered Words
by Keith Jarrett
"All of these pieces are born of a desire to praise and contemplate
rather than a desire to “make” or “show” or “demonstrate” something
unique. they are, in a certain way, prayers that beauty will be made
acceptable despite fashions, intellect, analysis, progress, technology,
distraction, “burning issues” of the day, the un-hipness of belief or
faith, concert programming, and the unnatural “scene’” of “art”, the
market, lifestyles etc., etc... I am not attempting to be a composer,
I am trying to reveal a state I think is missing in today's world (accept,
perhaps in private): a certain state of surrender."

Casina Setartta, Puglia Italy July 2007 - Improvising for Performance Research Project lead by Kirstie Simson and a group of international dancers

Brussels Performance - Andrew Morrish, Kirstie Simson, Christian Burns

Dance Is Transportation

The body of dance is the body of

Points of body travel through trajectories

The travel mode of movement

Trans – portation

The function of transportation is to achieve the goal of moving from one location to another. The notion that the object of this action is only of a singular body is part of the potential of...

The journey of the hand is the body of a traveler

The body of the head is the body of a traveler

The memory of the knee is the body of a traveler

Each point of the body (down to the smallest measurable component) has a potential for trajectory and transportation. The idea of these individual points of the body, as being individual intelligences, that gather, experience and notate experience, is for me the most interesting and curious aspect of my dance experience these days.

How could you manage to illustrate these individual trajectories, so that the unison of their multiple directive points are seen as a weave of one fabric. Where are they going and what are they serving. Are they aware of what their work is?

Head moves around while elbow dips in counter circles and hips duck and rise. These are obvious and familiar body associations, but how about if it was more deeply drawn from, such as the specific nerve ending at the rim of the fourth vertebrae, and the inner marrow cavity of the upper left femur and the specific tonsil of the right bottom edge of the throat. A single strand of hair or a point under at toenail or line along the right heart ventricle. It can go on and on, every single molecular point of matter has its own sense of transportation, within the confine of a larger body. Not unlike the body of our planet and the minuscule movements of tiny organisms (Us for example) in combination with other organisms and flora/fauna/geology.

five choreographies / one color

moving with drawings

drawings for theater