Drug piece

Investigate the different effects of various narcotics on your movement qualities through controlled experiments. Maybe you can set some movement (maybe a lot of movement) and ingest (or feed the movers) the drugs over a series of controlled, repeatable experiments. (Enlist the aid of a scientist to help you design the setup.) When working with such volatile, unpredictable elements as narcotics, the greater the control has to be: the amount and type of food ingested before and after the experiments, the movement pattern, the feedback process. Create very clear guidelines on what is and isn't permissible in order to protect the movers.

Investigate sensations: how do tendons, ligaments, bony structures, organs, fluids, muscle feel under different narcotic agents? What sort of new sequencing possibilities do they produce?

Be careful of reinforcing an unhealthy kind of master-slave dynamic if you are using other dancers. This is an experiment that everyone has to agree too. If necessary, consult practitioners on BDSM for advice on how to create healthy dominant and submissive roles.

~

Get accepted for a curated dance evening. Then as your piece is about to be performed announce (to the surprise of everyone, including the curator/programmer) that the dancers are going to go on stage supremely stoned/high/drunk.... which may or may not be true.

Omnia Mutantur

Once there was a way to get back homeward
Once there was a way to get back home

- Lennon and McCartney

I lived for 10 years in British Columbia. Four of those years were spent training in dance and doing some performance. When I left Vancouver and moved back to the Philippines (and spent a month at ImPulsTanz along the way), I knew that I wasn't going to be able to do the same kind of dance work as I used to do. I knew that one day I might--just might--return to dance, but until that day I had other things on my plate that I would need to do.

So I devised Omnia Mutantur, a project that was simultaneously a way to keep in touch (however superficially) with human movement and a way I could traverse back into my history as a physical mover. It is also my private exploration of ritual, repetition... and change, because despite the Sisyphus-esque nature of this project, things do change. Through this little ritual of mine, I make daily, humble discoveries about human movement and the human condition.

Omnia mutantur, nihil interit: everything changes but nothing ever perishes.

Yeah.

Anyway, if you like the idea of this project and decide to use it as the basis some of your own work, please do. I would love to hear about it.

~
Omnia Mutantur
(suggested guidelines)

Create a movement sequence. Doesn't matter how long it is, doesn't matter what style it is, how big or how small. Make sure it is repeatable... whatever that means to you.

When you think you're ready, film yourself performing it.

Then, everyday, you must rehearse this sequence once, and only once.

One day, when you think you have an excellent reason why cannot rehearse this sequence anymore, perform this piece in public. Have this performance filmed.

Notes: It doesn't matter how long it takes before you perform this in public. What matters is that you must reach the point where you decide that it would be impossible for you to rehearse this sequence any longer, and that you need to perform this publicly.

Option 1: Everytime you rehearse the sequence, film yourself.
Option 2: Source the movement sequence from any of the other processes described on this page.

Variation 1: The day you fail to rehearse your sequence, the very next day you have to perform it in public.

Variation 2: Get other people to do the same thing. Decide what exactly this instruction means.

Variation 3: By public performance, I mean at least 5,000 people need to see it. Figure out along the way how you can do this.

Variation 4: Instead of rehearsing until you have no choice but to perform the sequence, set yourself a timeline, a minimum of 9 months. I suggest around 11 years.

Labels: fordeanna

Movement Sequences Need New Homes

Once in a while, I improvise some movement. Whether they're any good or not, I won't have any use for these sequences for a long long time. Does anyone want to find them a home? Please take them off my hands and take care of them, because I can't.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=iEtRU5lgz8M


http://youtube.com/watch?v=d7B3YX5AWt4


Here's a growing list:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7HucnnAJjeo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=P1RQiaIeIDA
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pTE831aQ4ks
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ayh21A5p1xg
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7UvKqRxcRzw

Collaborating with science

Several months ago, I came up with this hypothesis about the sacro-lumbar spine and tension.

Now, I haven't been training all that long in dance, compared to many other dancers out there, which leads to believe that the body awareness of some dancers out there must be absolutely incredible.

That said, can a dancer collaborate an evolutionary biologist to discover new theories about the evolution of the vertebrate animals? Can a dancer's kinesthetic, sensory experiences be correlated against empirical observations to come up with new theories about our ancestors?

More importantly, is this possibly a new source of funding for a talented, starving dancer somewhere out there?

Here's another thought: Laurie Anderson became NASA's first (and last) artist in residence. Can we create similar research collaborations out there? Can we have a dancer in residence at, say, the Osteopathic Medical Education Research Institute, where the dancer explores the movement possibilities sourced from properties of the skeleton? Or what about at a physics research institute? What about investigating new qualities of human movement by studying findings particle physics, or quantum mechanics, or nanotechnology?

All of these suggestions center on a practice of dance that is predicated on a love for knowledge of the physical, natural world.

What I wouldn't give to become an artist-in-residence for NASA, or the European Space Agency...

PS: Here's an interesting book about Art & Science.

Finite State Machines

A finite state machine (FSM) is "a model of behavior composed of a finite number of states, transitions between those states, and actions." (Thanks, wikipedia.)

What happens when a FSM is used to model the architecture of a movement piece?

Here is an example of an FSM (which I've created for Deanna Peters). (Click the image for a larger view):

Each rectangular node is a state. This FSM represents a system which can be in any one of 15 states at any given time. So if this system were a performer on stage, a state may represent an activity they perform on stage (for example, 1=jumping, 2=lying down, 3=running, etc.).

The arrows are transitions. Usually, each transition each labelled with a condition that indicates when a transition is allowed to take place. For instance, if the transition from state 1 to state 3 were labeled "someone in the audience coughs", then a performer who is jumping can run but only if someone in the audience coughs.

In this FSM, I've not specified the conditions for the transitions. I will leave it to the choreographers/performers to decide on how they want to use it.

This FSM can be used in a variety of ways. For instance, imagine that each node is a unit of movement (whether a single gesture or an entire movement phrase). Since the this FSM has no conditions given for any of the transitions, the choreographers may decide when to move from one state into another. In this case, the FSM acts can be used as a tool for creating long movement sequences based on shorter movement fragments.

If transitions become conditional (such as by labeling each transition with a requirement like "someone in the audience coughs"), then timing and rhythm in the transitions will be produced. Depending on how frequently the conditions are fulfilled, transitions between states may occur frequently or infrequently.

Other examples of conditions:

"Transition from state x to state y only if your partner is in state z."
"Transition from state x to state y only if your partner is on the floor."
"Transition from state x to state y only if you are about to drop dead from exhaustion."

Note the first example, which is an illustration of how this FSM can be used in a group setting.

Note that some of the transition arrows loop back. This means that a state can be repeated many times. For example, if a push-up was represented by state 7, the performer can perform any number of push-ups in a row, if they wanted to. However, if a push-up was represented by state 4, this would not be possible.

Here are some possible state values:

1 = lots of effort/very inefficient
2 = stillness
3 = little effort/somewhat efficient
4 = no effort/very efficient
etc.

1 = a movement fragment borrowed from a choreographer you like
2 = a movement fragment borrowed from yet another choreographer you like
3 = a movement fragment borrowed from a choreographer you detest
etc.

The states need not be radically different from each other. In fact, you may want to experiment with states that are almost identical to each other except for very subtle differences.

The states have been color-coded to suggest different sections in the piece. You are welcome to disregard the colors completely.

Remember that each state need not be simple. A state can last for an hour, if you want.

Notice that this structure is nothing more than that: pure structure, pure form.

Labels: fordeanna

Karaoke/Videoke

Someone should do a dance piece about karaoke. Seriously.

The Magic Mic is a portable karaoke ("videoke", as we say in the Philippines, since the song lyrics are accompanied by video and images--often completely unrelated to the song--in the background) machine. I am a proud owner of one of them, although it is currently buried in a box in a basement in Vancouver.

I recently spent a week in Palawan with an old friend of mine. We stayed at SeaDive resort, a scuba diving-oriented backpacker's hostel run by an American. Rumor has it that the owner tried to rent out several of the nearby karaoke bars in order to shut down the karaoke industry in the vicinity of the resort. I thought, "Loser." See, if you're going to do business in the Philippines, then you had better accept all the nuances of local cultures instead of trying to bend them around your Anglo vision of a good vacation. Admittedly, "nuance" isn't a term one associates with karaoke, whose practitioners range from the remarkably talented to the stupendously tone-deaf. One thing that is constant, however, is that everyone sings with full confidence.

Anyway. So a dance work incorporating karaoke. It should be done, and there shouldn't even be any apologies to it. Just pick up the mike and start singing. My personal favorites are "Moon River" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang".

At ImPulsTanz 2006, they had "dance karaoke", which is an entirely different thing. It consisted of 16 choreographers dancing looped movement sequences on video while wearing pink slippers and black gloves. Members of the audience were encouraged to pick up a number of pink slippers and black gloves and follow the choreographers in a sort of dance-along. Needless to say, this was done at a bar at the height of the evening, when everyone had reached that optimal state of tipsiness where they feel confident enough to make a fool of themselves by attempting to copy Emio Greco, but where their dancing hadn't completely degenerated into violently confused sequences of flailing limbs.

Labels: fordeanna