Pr20t 302

NIGHTSWIMMING Submission January 16, 2012 Gail Lotenberg/LINK Dance, p. 1 BACKGROUND For just over a decade, I have been the artistic director of LINK Dance, initially a Yukon-­‐based dance company that moved its operations to Vancouver in 2006. My focus and that of the company, is to create dance productions inspired by cross-­‐disciplinary dialogue. For example, over the past decade we have collaborated with scientists, restorative justice professionals, legal scholars, and the public (through the critically-­‐acclaimed Breakfast Dance series) to make dances within a dialogical context.

The collaborators in previous projects have been co-­‐creative partners, primarily in the role of instigator or provocateur for the dancer artists. The discourse that unfolds between or among us reflects LINK’s fascination with how ideas generated by people outside the world of dance, can be expanded, translated, and made more universal through the language of the body. Developing performances for both stage and site-­‐specific environments, LINK Dance has been chipping away at how a dialectical process can generate art, especially in the least literate or verbal of art forms—dance.

But the weakness of the work lately is that, while the dialogues are getting more and more rich and textured, the performance work is failing to capture that richness. I think I have become afraid of highlighting the discourse itself (like recording it and playing it back as the sound design of the show or having it happen live on stage as a parallel development in the theatrical unfolding) because it feels too literal. My reluctance comes from an uncertainty of how to capture the dialogue and make it a strong theatrical element. I am working from a fear place and I can see that. I am shying away from a fear that the dialogue revealed will be cumbersome and “too much about process”, but I need to experiment with ways to work towards an interesting frame from the dialogue, to allow it to become a context of sorts for performance. Fear is getting in the way of me fulfilling my vision.

THE QUESTION/S How close can I get to exposing dialogue in the performative context of a piece, and where does the inner workings of the dialogue (the one that initially generated the choreographic material), support the audience’s depth of experience, and where does it get in the way of their ability to enjoy the artistry?

When I began this journey of using dialogue to feed creative process, it was in a series known as the Breakfast Dance. At that point in my development as a choreographer, I was a neophyte and not afraid of exposing the inner workings of dialogue in the performance context. And it was this naivety that made the project successful. People left a Breakfast Dance thrilled at having seen their impressions shift the creative underpinnings of work, and feeling empowered as creative beings through their role as interpreter. Now, I want to explore how to tackle a slightly more sophisticated approach to exposing dialogue in the performative context but I need an injection of pure research (aka Nightswimming) and a big dosage of fearlessness to see the opportunities rather than the obstacles in following this trajectory.

THE PROPOSAL What I would like to do is to work for three days in June with three dancers from LINK Dance, namely Cara Siu, Darcy McMurray, and Marvin Vergara, plus one male dancers with strong theatrical skills—

NIGHTSWIMMING Submission January 16, 2012 Gail Lotenberg/LINK Dance, p. 2 this performer is still to be determined and could be a student from SFU, plus one technical person with video and sound editing skills) and also to work with LINK’s current creative collaborators from the field of Restorative Justice. Together we will experiment with the role of dialogue in the performance of dance.

I want to quickly mention that in 2011, the Restorative Justice Community in BC and LINK Dance formed a partnership with a goal of eventually creating a dance piece together that expresses the underlying humanity of justice, when it attends to healing rather than punishment. The Restorative Justice Community in BC is made up of a network of more than 60 grassroots organizations, dedicated to promoting Restorative Justice. Each community participant who has joined this collaboration so far brings deep commitment and an array of stories and insights that offer a remarkable impact and image-­‐pool for creativity. The point person leading the community participation in the project is Professor Brenda Morrison from Simon Fraser University who is internationally recognized for her work in advocating for Restorative Justice. She is also an animated and enthusiastic leader.

The experiment that I would like to bring into a dramaturgical process begins with some preparation.

Because we have already instigated this project and held dialogues in the form of Circle Proceedings (which is the elemental form of a Restorative Justice Procedure), the dance artists have subject matter to refer to in creating this movement material. That dialogue is even on film. We would meet ahead of time to prepare some choreography that responds to the dialogue previously undertaken. That material will be brought to the dramaturgical process as a useful building block.

The experiment we would undertake looks at the performance of that piece of choreography in at least 5 different treatment effects (a term used typically in scientific experimentation) 1. We will look at the choreography performed alone, without any context provided.

2. We will look at the choreography in the context of hearing an overdub of the previously undertaken discouse that was used to generate the choreography, then we will try seeing it projected 3. Then we will start experimenting with a live dialogue. We will hold a dialogue that involves collaborators from the Restorative Justice Community, dance artists and possibly some people from an invited audience to happen in the research room; it will serve as a context that the dance takes place around and within.

4. We will repeat step 3 but have the dancers have the ability to move fluidly from participation in the dialogue and the dancing floor, which is on all sides of the circle and possibly even within the space of the circle. (We will likely need to stay on this step for quite some time, looking at options that are not disruptive to the dialogue but somehow allow it to unfold naturally.)

5. We may also want to look at how dancing rather than words can be incorporated into the dialogical process, and thereby serve as a bridge in and out of movement-­‐centered vocabulary.

THE REQUIRMENTS A large’ish dance studio, a sound system with computer inputs, a video projector, a lot of chairs.