Last night I attended the last weekend of the NOW festival at RedCat in Downtown LA. The three week festival is sponsored by Cal Arts and this evening of performance was no exception to my impression of the CAl Arts performance aesthetic.
Thank God, there are still artists who are not giving in to the commercial aesthetic. I was getting worried. It was so refreshing to see two dance works that required patience, taking time for intellectual and emotional investment from the audience. To think that I have been considered "out of the box" in asking my students and dancers to do performance based pieces that border on theater as well as movement, is ludicrous in the light of where other choreographers are going. This evening, including works by Michel Kauka?? and (my favorite of the night) Victoria Marks, was conceptual yet non-pretentious and it reminded me of why I fell in love with choreography in the first place.
How had I ventured so far away from my choreographic center? Over time and through the repetition of "serving" my students with the basics of dance, I had severed my cord to new ways of moving and designing dance from the "Ursprung" (the origin). I have been creating pieces for pedagogy, sacrificing the artistry in order to give the pedagogical experience I believed in so thoroughly. But, putting the physical experience first I have been creating dances that keep the dancers' emotions at bay. I was giving them physical challenges, like an obstacle course and not getting them to connect internally first. While my heart wants to give them the emotional connection, two things stop me. First I am aware of the dancer's fear and in order to keep as many of them engaged as possible I give them more of what they want (a physical challenge) in order to give them what they need (a taste of internal connection). Second, I am scare too. I am scared of alienating the dancers or revealing more of my creative struggle when the experience is NOT about me but about them and their growth. As a result, I have become a proficient craftsman. I have proven myself effective in creating marginally entertaining and pedagogically sounds pieces of choreography. Well done! I say to myself. But, this leaves me with two concerns.
1. When do I create the dance I want and need to create?
2. How can I let go of my fear of creating new dances that surprise even me when it puts me in a vulnerable place that I have essentially trained out of myself?
I realize that my disconnect is partially due to a disconnect I feel within myself. In trying to find balance in my life and stay physically and mentally healthy, I have had to incorporate more rest into my life. This leaves little time for me to participate in physical/ dance experiences that push me both creatively and physically. In feeling so taxed I am drawn to more recuperative physical experiences, but in those situations creativity is not always invited to the party. Yoga is great example for this. It ground me and keeps me healthy, but it is a system that is meditative and recuperative rather than creative and intellectually or creatively inspiring.
So, where to go from here?
Gratitude. Thank you to these choreographers who woke me up and reminded me of my primary love of dance as an art. I will do my best not to forget again.
I am ready to tackle "Being Blue" with new eyes and a connected heart.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The Fascination with Madness
As previously mentioned in this blog, I have lived a life shadowed by the stormy cloud of depression. Starting with childhood I was always sensitive. Moving through middle school I spent most nights in tears. But it didn't really manifest until high school and then more pointedly in college. Now, it lingers only at times and is more of a nuisance than anything. I see it. I feel it. I try to get through it as painlessly as possible. And, I come out on the other side with no big revelation or deeper understanding than before. It is more like someone finally turned off the fluorescent lights and you realize then that their high pitched buzz had been grating on your this whole time. Coming out of depression feel like a relief.
I have been fortunately enough never to have had a "break with reality" or a dangerous manic period that is so common with even slight chemical imbalances. I have seen others around me suffer from those and in some ways it makes me embarrassed that all I suffer from is the occasional blues.
But, I write only of this as an introduction to something on which I have become acutely aware in the past couple years. People are fascinated with madness and for some reason people gravitate toward madness, and I wonder why exactly that is. I see it all the time in the dance world. Dancers subjugating themselves to abusive choreographers in hopes of proving themselves worthy, as if there was something noble or romantic about this path to artistry or recognition.
The movie Black Swan gives the perfect example. I hadn't seen the film when it first came out in theaters. Of course my students gasped when they heard this, amazed that I hadn't seen it even once when they had seen it four times already. Now, having seen it, I want to go back to them and say "But she is crazy!" It makes my skin crawl that only through a horrible psychotic episode can the main character access the "depth and passion" of the black swan's character and give herself completely to the role. This movie isn't about dance; it is about a young girl who is ill and is addicted to dance. She uses dance like a drug to push herself over the edge. But rather than be seen as someone who is sick (and potentially dead at the end of the ballet), she is hailed as a heroine who finally broke through her chains and became the artist she always wanted to be.
Stop! I can't believe that an artist must be crazy to be good. And yet, looking at past artists, it seems time and time again that those who go down in the history books are those who were cursed to suffer and cause others to suffer in turn because of mental instability.
Of course "Madness" is just a label with no finite edges. The human experience is so diverse and varied that normal is relative and suffering is subjective. No one can concretely identify where reality begins and ends anyway. But, those who suffer the extremes of the human condition and ride the fine line between sanity and madness have a way of drawing us in. Perhaps because we all bump up against the line every once in a while and knowing someone else has been there gives us solace or hope that we can navigate our way through it. Or conversely, we see those around us in a manic state and we mistakenly think: "I too want such incredible joy and passion for life" but in fact that state is only temporary and behind the luster of the moment hides the dark shadow waiting its turn.
Most of my students are between the ages of 18-22. And they want it all. They seek out the pain with fervor and in turn flaunt their joys for the world to see. They celebrate the emotional roller coaster that is becoming an adult with each Facebook status update and mobile upload. And we, the sentient beings we are, must respond and thus continue this fascination with extreme emotionality.
I am not devaluing the challenges and joys of life. Those exist as they do, and we must ride those waves as they come and go. But, to seek the extremes that are home to those who are ill is not where I believe we need to go. Nor should we be told (through media, the advertisements on FB nor history books) that only through becoming crazy will we be able to attain a deeper understanding of who we are or the art the we create.
I want to believe. I have to believe that being normal and mundane is quite enough. There are enough miracles and sufferings to learn and grow from. The challenge I face from my history of depression is that I can't always tell what is real joy and real sadness or what is my "adrenaline high" and the " inexplicable blues". I don't want to think that my creativity comes from my chemical or electrical anatomy. So, I write this because I am concerned. I am concerned for the health of artists and the world as we continue to celebrate madness as a key to something beyond. It seems we are all capable of going crazy if we really wanted to. But, staying grounded in the here and now of the world seems like a much greater success.
A work of art.
I have been fortunately enough never to have had a "break with reality" or a dangerous manic period that is so common with even slight chemical imbalances. I have seen others around me suffer from those and in some ways it makes me embarrassed that all I suffer from is the occasional blues.
But, I write only of this as an introduction to something on which I have become acutely aware in the past couple years. People are fascinated with madness and for some reason people gravitate toward madness, and I wonder why exactly that is. I see it all the time in the dance world. Dancers subjugating themselves to abusive choreographers in hopes of proving themselves worthy, as if there was something noble or romantic about this path to artistry or recognition.
The movie Black Swan gives the perfect example. I hadn't seen the film when it first came out in theaters. Of course my students gasped when they heard this, amazed that I hadn't seen it even once when they had seen it four times already. Now, having seen it, I want to go back to them and say "But she is crazy!" It makes my skin crawl that only through a horrible psychotic episode can the main character access the "depth and passion" of the black swan's character and give herself completely to the role. This movie isn't about dance; it is about a young girl who is ill and is addicted to dance. She uses dance like a drug to push herself over the edge. But rather than be seen as someone who is sick (and potentially dead at the end of the ballet), she is hailed as a heroine who finally broke through her chains and became the artist she always wanted to be.
Stop! I can't believe that an artist must be crazy to be good. And yet, looking at past artists, it seems time and time again that those who go down in the history books are those who were cursed to suffer and cause others to suffer in turn because of mental instability.
Of course "Madness" is just a label with no finite edges. The human experience is so diverse and varied that normal is relative and suffering is subjective. No one can concretely identify where reality begins and ends anyway. But, those who suffer the extremes of the human condition and ride the fine line between sanity and madness have a way of drawing us in. Perhaps because we all bump up against the line every once in a while and knowing someone else has been there gives us solace or hope that we can navigate our way through it. Or conversely, we see those around us in a manic state and we mistakenly think: "I too want such incredible joy and passion for life" but in fact that state is only temporary and behind the luster of the moment hides the dark shadow waiting its turn.
Most of my students are between the ages of 18-22. And they want it all. They seek out the pain with fervor and in turn flaunt their joys for the world to see. They celebrate the emotional roller coaster that is becoming an adult with each Facebook status update and mobile upload. And we, the sentient beings we are, must respond and thus continue this fascination with extreme emotionality.
I am not devaluing the challenges and joys of life. Those exist as they do, and we must ride those waves as they come and go. But, to seek the extremes that are home to those who are ill is not where I believe we need to go. Nor should we be told (through media, the advertisements on FB nor history books) that only through becoming crazy will we be able to attain a deeper understanding of who we are or the art the we create.
I want to believe. I have to believe that being normal and mundane is quite enough. There are enough miracles and sufferings to learn and grow from. The challenge I face from my history of depression is that I can't always tell what is real joy and real sadness or what is my "adrenaline high" and the " inexplicable blues". I don't want to think that my creativity comes from my chemical or electrical anatomy. So, I write this because I am concerned. I am concerned for the health of artists and the world as we continue to celebrate madness as a key to something beyond. It seems we are all capable of going crazy if we really wanted to. But, staying grounded in the here and now of the world seems like a much greater success.
A work of art.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)