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. 

Process for creating a work Part II

From an interview with dancer and dance writer Emmaly Weiderholt for her recently launched new blog Stance on Dance.

EW: How do you determine when to set movement versus when to improvise?

CB: Firstly I will be faced with very mundane practical/logistic constraints; how much time is available and how experienced are the dancers. The more time and experience equals the more possibility for improvisation. An improvisational approach takes up many hours of a process because the dancer has to not just learn new vocabulary, but a whole new way of thinking and thinking as a composer. Ultimately the dancer who is being trained to improvise is really being trained to choreograph as well. If I know I have a very short amount of time to make a piece, I will likely come in with a lot of set material and make a traditionally constructed piece of choreography.

Secondly, I always look to find new challenges in the way I make things and do things, therefore every other piece I make usually has a different proportion of set versa open movement.

For me improvising offers the greatest challenge; how can I make a dance that has no steps? (I know its a paradox but it really is how I feel about it.) Its is the most difficult dance form to do well, and its therefore for me, the most dangerous. Its also the closest thing you can get to to diminishing the gap between the real-life-self and the art-self. There is nothing more satisfying than to see the moments in a piece where true synergy is happening with the dancers in the moment and knowing my own finger prints are not in it. Its just the performers pure experience that finds form through movement.

I often dont want to see my own movement on others, it feels like looking at a distorted reflection of myself in the mirror. I want to see people as they actually are. I want to be inspired, and to see a dance emerge out of the unknown is an amazing thing to witness. When I look at work, I am not looking so much at the formal vocabulary as I am the pulse of the piece. Also as I get older, I feel less and less interested in 'pushing the limits' of set choreography and more and more interested in illuminating this quality of human connection. I strive to drive towards an energy and a pulse, I think I make dances much more similar to an abstract painter or maybe sound designer. The 'beginning, middle and end' thing is tough for me.

Lastly its a philosophical issue; I need to know that people are acting freely with a sense of self-determination. Not the illusion of it, or the representation of it, but actually it. I cant really explain yet why that is so powerfully important to me, but its my primary requirement. (It goes without saying that I have endless appreciation and admiration for anybody who takes on making or performing set material, as I have done that a fare amount of my own career and know its joys first hand.)

I still from time to time make pieces that are completely set and get great satisfaction from it, so its not as though I am speaking in fundamentalist terms regarding improvisation. I don’t have a political agenda around it, but I have big lingering philosophical questions having to do with the nature of being alive, and how we choose to express the mystery of what it means to be alive. I think its very scary to face the fact that there is so little we really have control of, and instead of focusing on forcing external control onto an art work, improvisation allows me to practice a self-control that comes from a different intention. Improvisation reminds us that the one thing we all have complete command over is our own actions, that through experience the dancer becomes clearer, more defined, articulate, complex and unbridled. So to me improvisation is an issue of living in a certain way. 

Process for creating a work Part I

From an interview with dancer and dance writer Emmaly Weiderholt for her recently launched new blog Stance on Dance

EW: What is your process like when you create work, particularly when you create an improvised piece? 

CB: When I create a piece through improvisation I generally have a sense of what I want to learn from the work. I always start with questions about topics that are important to me and determine how improvising might illuminate those topics. Sometimes I will start with a question that has no literal answer, but comes from a philosophical location. For example my last work asked, “What does gratitude look like?” I never intended to portray gratitude in a literal way; I wanted to pursue an expression of the energy of gratitude. For this work the dancing became tinted by this inquiry. When I feel clear I am going to pursue an improvised work I begin a training program based on some of those initial questions. The training becomes the ‘practice’ and the practice trains the mind and the body to align. The hope is to refine an ability to observe (physical/emotional, immediate surroundings, imagination) and then respond to those observations. Only through observation can the performer orient themself within the situation and begin to make choices. In this sense improvisation reflects real-life (we perceive what is happening and we respond accordingly) and the practice becomes the choreography. I refer to the literal translation of the word choreography of ‘dance writing’ – the performer has to author, edit and enact their dancing spontaneously.

There exists a popular assumption that rehearsing an improvised piece is an oxymoron. Since improvisation suggests spontaneous expression, the question is argued, ‘Wouldn’t spontaneity cease to exist if it were rehearsed?’ Everything we know about how to think or behave we have learned and therefore rehearsed. Improvisation is not about creating something that didn’t previously exist; it’s about a way of expressing ideas. To make a parallel, I could say it’s due to my thirty-eight years of practicing the English language that I am able to spontaneously form complex concepts into language out of thoughts or physical perceptions. I can express spontaneously while utilizing my experience from rehearsing how to read and write English. This might sound like a cliché, but the truth of the matter is that we are in a state of spontaneous expression every waking moment of our lives. So to me, creating with improvisation is very natural.

This process of making an improvised piece takes an enormous amount of patience and persistence. You have to keep practicing and developing how to become a more and more effective choreographer, editor and dancer all in one package. The improvised process can be very challenging because it requires one to confront a lot of barriers within oneself. But that’s what it’s about. That’s precisely what can be so beautiful about it, as well as dangerous. You create the language, context, intention and even aspirations of the piece and then have to sit back and let the dancers (or yourself) find their way through. To see a dance actually occur in front of your eyes, knowing that they are creating it on a tissue of support, is a powerful thing to see.

new dance TODAY dance new

seeing the messenger

Technique - virtuosity / application / costume

Medium - delivery method / container

Creator - messenger / vessel

Content - the experience

Concept - the thought

Execution - the body


The connection between the artist – the messenger, and the execution of their physical experience, dictates their work, their mind, their thought process, their everything. The work itself, a disembodied object, the artifact, acts as the concentrate from a string of moments expressed through physical action, to become thought/feeling made tangible.

Do we want to understand the object of the art or do we want to understand the person behind the object of art. When does the expression of a creative act, in and of itself, become the topic/subject matter of the work, in and of itself?

More simply put – does the object of artwork, or the deliverer of the work resonate more, and if so in what ways? For me, this question has a torn answer, as somebody who completely loathes the cultural obsession of personality over content; I reject the notion that the artist as personality is remotely relevant. However, I do believe the artist as facilitator of the work – deliverer of the work, is in fact utterly more important. I feel the act of expression is, in and of itself, the work. We/humanity/artists are the work. We are artwork. Our physical effort to capture and give form to our thoughts and our fleeting perceptions is the base level of the creative act.

Seen through the lens of an improviser, one does not execute finality, but one practices how to execute decision. Many choices will inevitably be the wrong choice within the context of a certain flow structure, but it is within the delivery of the choice that holds the subject matter of the choice. I am not looking to appreciate the deliberation of choices but the activation of choices. How one behaves not how one thinks.

I want to see the mark of the person. I want to see emotion. We are emotion. I want to see thought as action. I am not interested in seeing science as art. I am not interested in a logical rational art. I am interested in a messy, convoluted, questing, uneven, uncertain or clear expression. I want to see the act of creation, not the polished idea made manifest by technical virtuosity framed by months of deliberation. I don’t want to dominate the output of the work by my minds will. I want to see the work act as the record, the tablet that the word is written upon. I want to see work that is, in and of itself, the record of the messengers experience.

selfmap list

( Mobius Strip, Gilles Jobin)

Selfmap List 2006

Maps as a guide to the self
Maps as a guide to the property of the self
The self as a property object as a location
The self as a location as a landscape
The self as a landscape to be studied and measured
The self as a landscape to be walked and traveled
The self as a landscape of boundaries and markers
The self as boundary’s to be marked for transportation
The self as a road system and curbs to walk
The self as freeway covered in tar
Our selves our freeways we drive on and on and on

Marrow and Dancing, 2005

At night I climb into your skin and

Rest

I breath

your bones

marrow and dancing

performing... in my mind

This is a fantastic group from Wales. Their work is generally sit-specific, collaborative and improvisational. In this particular durational performance, I was struck by their ability to navigate the barrier of the forth wall and engage the audience, it was in a word "sublime".
I have a lot to learn from this group.

on or off

i have been on a rest finally, after a non-stop year of travel, work and research. while on my break i am starting to feel the absence of my daily practice of dancing. the practice of letting my thinking (skull based) brain to share a communion with the much deeper body based brain.
i have got to get into a groove for myself soon.
below is a posting from another conversation with a couple of friends whom i shared a two month-long daily practice with.
as i currently find myself in a physical limbo, swilling around in my mind wondering how to return to the reality of my body, i thought this entry was an appropriate reflection.



on or off.

i am here in a far off location trying to remember my experience of the daily practice. obviously not the formal framework of it, that has been clearly articulated by j and l. but the rest of it - the physiological dimension. the memory dimension. the body fleshy dimension. the experience of coming clean with the truth of a particular moment or three minutes of moments strung together, our theater and performance.

were we on, within the experience of expressing a period of our lives. at times we succeeded and were real with one another and at times fell short and hid, perhaps just a little behind clever moves. going to the silent place of dance - as known territory, veiled in exploration. and many more times, beautifully articulating the raw state of ‘egg on face’. dont know what to do - AND - am not going to try to pretend i do - BUT - staying with you. the vulnerability can be palpable and then in an instant, complete recognition of the obsurdity of all of it. hysterical laughter. i loved those moments. not knowing and communicating not knowing. but i observed, and experienced, that only by doing that do you really have any control. and then something occures that tickles the soul dimension.

because really, its all over in an instant anyway. like a great photojournalist who can capture that one passing instant on film, we as performers also do the same - we read our environment - and monitor our sensations - and report on our experience, in an instant - many instants in a row until times up. thats it.

having spent years perfecting my acting skills of illustrating being in control (often in white tights or sleek ass shorts as a classical/contemporary dancer), i see i am still a student at living within a certain dimension of my work.

the performer practices saying - I DONT HAVE A CLUE (when they really dont have a clue). but in that admission, is everything. that admission is truth, in most cases, but it is precisely that admission that is culturally denied, especially in presentational dance.

this two month long period of daily practice with j and l, was a form of ‘articulating’ the ‘i dont know’ - and celebrating that.

its weird even to say it that way - “articulating not knowing”.

vaudeville & stepping

I can’t really explain it any better: all I want is to make dances that have no steps.

I think that there is something fundamental in this inquiry. The presence of steps makes me aware of a creator of steps. I am looking at the origin of the material as though the dance maker where upstage under a spot light – in my mind, always keeping me at arms length from the experience of the event.

I was having dinner last night with a friend, a very accomplished dance maker – one of his reflections this year were that he wanted to feel greater connections with the performers within a dance – a human desire to be connected. This is an internationally recognized choreographer, and he, above all, wanted to FEEL a closeness with the performers, rather than the craft of step-smithing.

My experience as a performer currently is that I must acknowledge the audience when I perform. In some way I must do this. I don’t have to literally look at them and wink, but, I energetically must acknowledge that “here we are together in this room”. You are looking at me and I am up here doing things to try to be appreciated by you. But underlying that is an essential requirement to acknowledge one another. That is really what an audience member wants. This is what I imagine what the pre-cinema vaudeville culture delivered – performers connecting in a very raw direct way with people.

[This line of thought in performance, always begins to get close to contradicting everything I believe in - a desire to deliver authenticity in within the performative environment, but within the right context, I at least imagine, that those early vaudeville shows were hysterical and at moments heart breaking.]

I wonder in those early performances, probably in basic spaces placed in neighborhoods for workers, if there was a focus on an investigation of step making, or on making people laugh, or scream or cry or to simply take a trip within the energy of the performers.

SFCD - choice/authorship/illusion

Artistically and philosophically I am uninteresting in being the sole decider of the choreography. I am interested in facilitating to a dancer a developed skill set for which they can learn how to make their own choices for their dancing, to give them the experience of what it feels like to have to take responsibility for their dance, their choices, their actions.

[I also frame this passage with the assumption that the dancer/dance maker is already clear that with this sense of responsibility for make their own choices, that they respond to the responsibility of their audience. I believe there is an underlying assumption, with few exceptions, that a performer is working toward connecting to their audience, to actually have an intention to transmit some kind of information – not to fall prey to egotistical self-indulgence. Part of this exploration is to articulate this space where within the context of communication, in some way, freedom meets responsibility.]

I am not currently interested in giving value to the content of the actions (what one does), but rather, that the action of the choice itself becomes the subject matter. The timing of choices, the placement of choices, the engagement of formal or anarchistic composition, the continuity of the development or subversion an ongoing set of ideas – how the choices moves the ideas along, like in a conversation. This is what I am interested in, in terms of choreographic material. Given that of course, the content of a choice affects an enormous amount onto the dance, but the content is often what is only seen - its context of placement and relating-ness is often deprived of investigation.
We watch the choice making AS choreography. Impulse, judgment, decision and then action - is choreography. And implies much more.

I want to expose my students to the premise that as a dancer (one who creates through the body), they have autonomy and choice. I want this also to be interesting and fun to them. Sometimes this is an issue that comes up late in the dancers development, since when a dancer is younger there is still an emphasis on wanting to be told what to do and to receive affirmation from the one who gave the orders.
This is a huge step from conventional models of dance expression, where the dancers are the ‘fulfiller’ of the choreographic desires of an external source. Choreography by its literal definition is ‘body writing’. The act of dancing suggests this SENSE of self-authorship.
My interest choreographically, is to pass the baton of authorship onto the dancers themselves. It is only when a dancer is given this space to make choices within the dance, that the dance can transcend from the space of the illusion of something real, to something that is real. All choreographers worth a grain of salt are after the same thing – a dance that feels as through its actually happening for the first time, right there in front of you, a human experience occurring.

Why not actually train that way?

My opinion is that the experience of a living dance cannot be duplicated or controlled no matter how skilled at illusion the performer or director may be.

Thinking Motion - teaching notes from San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, summer program 2008

Energy is real.
Energy is language.

“Asking Motion” “Thinking Motion”

How can we re-illuminate the real –ness of energy in dance? How can we recognize physical intention or physical actions with the same level of clarity that we recognize choreographic steps?

(In Dance)
What we see is not so much the physical steps and sequences of steps, as building blocks that exist separate from the body – instead we see the human being as their true selves, in ‘thought motion’. The bodies movements can be seen as residual effects of choice making and intention. The body becomes a medium to the content – similar to how linseed oil carries the raw pigment for a painting.
Rather than objectify dance as something that is outside the human being which must be mastered, we instead witness the state of a human being living within the moments of the dance context. In this sense, dance becomes the record of the human experience. We become the vessels, to and for, our own expression.

(For Performance)
We practice physical and mental skills that enable us to negotiate the variables of an ever shifting circumstance. We work with an expressed intention of articulating our experience that is only relative to our capacity to perceive through our senses. We work with developing our awareness of inner perception, such as being conscious of our ever shifting impulses to move, and practice exercising free will to either respond or not respond to these impulses. We are also working with perceiving the immediate external environment that we choose to perform within, as well as any conceptual -criteria that we deem to work with.
The performer is applying all that is perceived from their life and history, their desires, prejudices, fears, tastes, intentions, aesthetics and abilities - smacked up against the moment of the now. Also, taking into account the responsibility of the performer toward their audience. With a greater range of freedom of expression, comes greater responsibility to be sensitive to the use of that freedom. Remembering always about being a host to your guests – assuming that there is a conscious desire to communicate and not abuse.
If a performer is interested in connecting to their audience, the audience needs to know what the parameters are and what is expected of them. This is basic psychology, if you want somebody to trust you and follow you, you have to make the feel comfortable. This has nothing to do with content, but everything to do with communication. Otherwise you end up with a passive audience feeling bewildered, objectifying the performers in a state of confusion and distrust. Which unfortunately is an all to common experience in dance today.

How do we continue to further this language of communication within the performance environment – human to human in real time and in real space.

unintended performers, toronto international airport, may 24, 2008

there is something fun about watching people in the world
and deciding to observe them in the framework of the performance
context. their personal, subtle movements and actions executed in the
framework of their environments. intricate timings occure, unintended, and
no less beautiful than any crafted piece of choreography. they are
the unintended performers. and i realize we are all unintended performers
for somebody else at some point. as professional performers we work
towards showing our work, being conscious about our delivery - striving for
an authenticity. therefore if we are lucky, our performance
presence is not a lot different than being an unexpected performer
beyond the confines of the theatrical environment.

watching gravity

watching paint dry on a canvas is literally as satisfying as watching
the most intimate transitioning in a dance. i wait for the moments
when the pull of gravity forces the collecting edge of wet paint to
break and small valleys open up and the paint drips down. it is beautiful
to observe where the drip stops. i can only partially estimate how that
will work out based on degrees of solubility and viscosity. in this form, the
dance is making the mark by pushing the paint across the surface, and
then stepping back and watching. i control where the paint starts, but i
cant contol where the paint stops. THAT is what i love to engage in.
i want to have a conversation with the act, not dominance over it.
this is how i see dance making. i make the dance and the dance makes
itself. i assert my intention in the form of a phrase and then i step aside
and see where this phrase wants to settle into.
i practice being the performer and the audience to this process.

mid painting process

painting again after ten years. been drawing consistently but
painting is a new addition again. curious to see how much more
will come this time around. i have done thirty two paintings so
far this year. all created in ann arbor michigan.

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.