Tendu

Part III from Notes on Solo Improvisation

*More Performance Considerations

Working with a sense of play. Acting with a directness of intention.

Two scenarios come to mind: 1. A documentary film whose subject is itself asking what it is as it’s being made – discovery and presentation occurring in the same moment. 2. A skydiver jumps out of a plane, then must construct their own parachute with the materials at hand – a ‘no going back’ commitment to finding a solution and a safe landing.

The tensions arising from contradictory desires between the dancer and the dance all mix up in the soup of Past – Future – Then – Now – What Might be – What Hopefully Will Be – What Was – What Will – What Is – Is Now – Is Now...

Creation is unruly and wants what it wants. An impulse a choice a decision doesn’t know what it is until its emerged. This is the improviser’s psychological challenge; over riding the ‘need to know an outcome’ before we commit to the action, when in fact there never is a ‘right choice outcome’, a choice that works is an action that’s committed to. The completeness of ones decisions, absent of any hesitation or doubt defines the decisions effectiveness. The doing of the thing trumps the thing itself.

Basic performance ingredients: a human doing / a human noticing / a location they share / a beginning and an end.

Part II from Notes on Solo Improvisation

*Actions & Imprints

Given enough time, I inevitably return to the subject matter of Abstract Expressionism and its inherent connection to body, movement, improvisation and motion’s elusive ability to be documented. Action painting (Abstract Expressionism) becomes a function for choreographic thought. Specifically, with regards to Time, the means through which we perceive our actions in the present and the ways we can revisit those moments of action in the past through documentation. Jackson Pollock in particular opened up a new way of seeing the body in motion, a preserved performance of unconscious decision-making, gestural movement and rhythm. Dance is ephemeral. It asks of us to remain in-the-moment with it – that’s the true gift of live performance - but how we document choreographic information after the fact is elusive. Video and written notation are key tools for remembering dance, but rarely does the feeling of dance and its direct force of physicality and sensual play translate through video documentation or Labanotation. Painting does this much better.

My mind wanders to images of fossilized footprints, a hand print left on a cave wall, the foundation of an ancient dwelling peering up through soil, human artifacts whose physical materials cover the spectrum from stone to wood to the new ephemera of digital media.

The painters accumulated brush strokes, dabs, jabs, pouring, scraping, slapping, piling, cutting, and smearing of paint on a surface, becomes a type of imprint or cast that acts as the document of that persons thoughts and body for that period of time, much the way fossil records do. The painting captures; position and location to the surface, anatomic regions of gestural movement and timing, the type and size of tool used to transfer the paint onto its surface, whether they were left or right handed, emotion, pressure, friction and weight applied the surface, or pulled away from it, how much time occurred between marks, the change of color or medium, questions thoughts and interests all suspended at the surface in fields of hardened liquid pigment. A Body gesture’s entire arch of motion is captured from initiation to follow-through (a brush loaded with new paint leaves a more prominent mark and then thins out as is it leaving more of its content on the surface). We can see when concentration is sharp or wanes, we can see the shape of thoughts as they emerge and fade in the pendulum between conscious and unconscious decisions. As visible as physical gesture, we can see where the beginning of one idea emerges and how it resolves naturally or is intersected and re-directed in mid-gesture by a new counterpointed trajectory. The painting holds a history of choices and is the record of its own creation, a tactile documentation - ‘liquid thought’ as James Elkin mentions in his book What Painting Is.

Dance is ‘motion thought.’

This is the first of several postings reporting from within my performance practice. 

What: 8x8x8 curated by Randee Paufve

Where: The Uptown, Oakland, CA

When: January 21, 2014 8:30pm

What I created:

Christian Burns - Solo Improvisation

Duration – 7 min.

Music/Sound – Keith Jarrett (one track from recording Carnegie Hall)

Variables – No props, non-costume (tee shirt & pants, bare feet), wood floor inside of a rock music venue

Introduction/thematic initiation: I shared a story about how my father introduced me to abstract art, in particular a Robert Motherwell painting which I saw many times in my hometown local Art Museum at Smith College. At the age of nine, on one occassion he taught me how to look at a work closely and with as many views of detail possible, and simply describe what I noticed – this cleared up the 'what does it mean' question that can stump people when feeling intimidated by abstraction. Observe carefully, be open to noticing physical or metaphoric connections and describe back - there the meaning will be.  I dedicated the evenings piece to my dad.

*My program statement:

my painting is direct. i usually paint on the floor. i feel more at home, more at ease in a big area. having the canvas on the floor i feel nearer more a part of the painting. this way i can walk around it work from all four sides and be in the painting. a method of painting is a natural growth out of a need. i want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them. when i am painting i have a general notion as to what i am about. i can control the flow of the paint, there is not accident just as there is no beginning or no end. sometimes i loose a painting. but i have no fear of changes, of destroying the image, because the painting has a life of its own i try to let it live.

-Jackson Pollack 1951 (an edited list of text from Hans Namuth film)

This statement captures how I approach the act-of-dance. This improvisation is neither accidental or random, it is a practiced explanation of who and what I am about, right now.

*Performance Goals/Intentions/Aspirations:

Hi-def clarity of the moment movement initiation occurs. Hi-def clarity of when movements complete. Increasing ability to maintain continuity of ‘being in the moment’ while figuring out and assessing next choices to make – especially when lost or in a gap. No gaps while thinking - no gaps of concentration or lapses of confidence.  Everything, every moment must be ‘in the dance’.

Compositionally, emphasizing the shaping of time through physical exertion. Wanting to be total and complete with each individual beat of time (for this one, not prioritizing spatial/graphic composition - focus was on time & timing), creating a pressure and friction based pallet through which to enact visceral textures and complexly layered phrase-work. Approaching the dance as making a painting – the act of painting, of moving paint, of scraping paint, of dragging and dabbing, throwing, erasing, rubbing, molding paint on a surface. Visceral - attempting through body-surface with floor-surface,  intuitive decisions and mindful recognition of those choices, to conjure a constellation of outcomes that may capture a sense of direct interaction, meaning, music and structure. The more real the act of painting can become for me the more impact the experience may become for the audience.

Next posts will include: *preparation, *artistic considerations, *direct report from inside the dance, *compositional notes.