Issue 01 | Collaboration + Time by { DIYdancer } Magazine

collaboration + time

Issue 01

{ DIYdancer }

MAGAZINE

www.mag.diydancer.com

{ DIYdancer } MAGAZINE Issue 01 @diydancermag

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK of our first issue or submit your story at mag.diydancer.com/contact

The action of working with someone to produce something.

Mid 19th century: from Latin collaboratio(n-), from collaborare, meaning â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;work together.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

collaborati

The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole. 1

The continued progress of existence as affecting people and things. 2

ion + time.

Contents

A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS { Dd } in print, a long time coming Candice Thompson, Stephanie Wolf

VIEWFINDER

With the help of gloATL, Shimon the robot comes into her own Candice Thompson, Lauri Stallings, and the robot Shimon

GALLERY

Laura Peterson paints a new dance Morgan Rose Beckwith

ARTIST TALK

What collaboration looks like at Satellite Collective Stephanie Wolf, Kevin Draper, Lora Robertson, and Stelth Ulvang

PHOTO ESSAY

Pontus Lidberg vs. the universe Jim Lafferty, Candice Thompson

Contents, continued

PROCESS AS PRODUCT

A conversation about the film, days together Lara Wilson, Marquet K. Lee

AN ILLUSTRATED REVIEW Steven Reker’s Rememberer at BAM Annie Coggan

WRITING LESSONS

An interview with Deborah Jowitt Alejandra Ianonne

CRITICAL RESPONSE An American in Paris Leah Gerstenlauer

CRITICAL CONVERSATION A last look at Mats Ek’s Juliet and Romeo Laura Bleiberg, Lara Wilson

A Note from the Editors

The theme

for this first print issue of { DIYdancer } came together in the most organic way. The two of us had been editing the website and its original dance writing and criticism for more than six years, first from New York City, and eventually from different home bases. Likewise, as our talented group of contributors grew, they also spread out across the country and { Dd } was no longer completely NYC-centric. When { Dd } creative director Lara Wilson put the idea of print into our consciousness, we knew we had the breadth of content and unique collaborations brewing that would be worthy of holding in your hand. And yet, the very idea of publishing something physical brought up two anxiety-producing concepts artists are rarely free from: deadlines and the finished product. Producing this journal has required, just as it often does in our field of dance, a collaborative process and acknowledgement of time. As we sought to find and tell stories of how COLLABORATION + TIME plays out for artists, we found ourselves challenged by the process of working together — often with great physical distances and time zones between us. But as we plugged away, we realized how embracing a more drawn out timeline gave us creative breathing room and that sacred space allowed for the kind of experimentation needed to create the best version of { Dd }. We can’t thank our contributors enough for their willingness to take this deeper dive with us and work on a project that, at times, seemed nebulous. This journal has been a labor of love for all involved and we couldn’t be happier about the diverse and unexpected collaborations we have happened upon along the way. We hope you are as inspired and liberated by what follows in these pages as we have been in creating them. With gratitude,

Candice and Stephanie Co-founders, { DIYdancer }

W E M A KE DAN CES B R A N DS F O R CR E AT I VE C OMPANI ES ONE -O F-A-K I ND E V E NTS WE B PRE SEN CES DI GI TAL AN D P R I N T CAMPAIGNS I MAG E S CO LLABS CH O RE OGRAPHY F O R SCR EEN S *CU STO MIZA B LE A ND D E LI VE R ABL E A NY W HERE* AS S E M BLY C REATI VE PR OVI D E S DE S I GN + CREAT IV E SERVI CES A ND I S TH E S IST ER CO MPANY O F TH E AS S E MBLY DAN CE, A SOU THE R N CA L I F O R N IA- B ASED CO NTE MPOR ARY DA NC E COMPA N Y.

PICTURED: DEMETIA HOPKINS ASSEMBLY.DANCE/CREATIVE @THEASSEMBLYDANCE

VIEWFINDER: With the Help of gloATL, Shimon the Robot Comes Into Her Own Candice Thompson goes behind the scenes of a GoPro film project with Georgia Tech Music Department and glo, an Atlantabased movement platform. The following four-part reflection is from an observation of process and an enlightening dialogue with glo’s founder, Lauri Stallings.

s the company has grown, GoPro has become interested in telling stories that inspire and activate their community to share the films they make with their action cameras, made specifically for motion. This particular film — developed by GoPro’s now dissolved Music Content team — was exploring the mutual benefits of music, movement, and technology. The resulting collaboration between Gil Weinberg, director for Georgia Tech’s (GT) Center for Music Technology, Lauri Stallings, and an eight-yearold robot named Shimon was an opportunity to disavow the common fear that technology replaces creativity or that the two are mutually exclusive. The grand hope, according to GoPro producer and filmmaker Brennan King, was to show how dancers and musicians can impart humanity and empathy to a robot (with the assistance of deft computer programmers and engineers, of course). 8

Viewfinder

1. On a Friday night in late September 2016, the Yellow Jackets marching band could be heard practicing, however faintly, on an adjacent football field as I made my way into the music department at Georgia Tech. Two dancers marking through choreography in the center of a bustling room told me I had found the right place. I sat down on the fringes of the room as a rehearsal was getting underway.

Behind the two movement artists, a silver robot named Shimon was silent, yet still pulled the focus of the entire room. Around the three of them, young men, perhaps GT students, were busy behind computer screens and endless strands of color-coded wires, trying to solve issues with the Wi-Fi and keep all the equipment from overheating. Gradually, a few musicians sat down to their instruments, which were set up in a circle around the women, and began to play. A large box of overhead light turned on.

When Stallings walks into a room and delves into a project, you can bet that she has done some homework. As the founder of the eight-year-old movement platform glo (Stallings eschews the phrase “dance company” for all of its corporate and hierarchical inference), and current artist-in-residence at GT, Stallings was able to give me an overview of the philosophical environment in which this film began. “Gil [Weinberg] has created a true laboratory for investigation,” Stallings tells me. “But walking into that all-male laboratory, I was mindful of being a woman in the South. I could feel the whole geography of a campus, its accompanying syllabi, and the contentious grounds, the Civil War remains, that this institution was built upon. In a room full of ambition, it was obvious right away that my ideas are very lateral.”

As if on cue, Stallings arrived. She reached out to caress the side of the robot’s rounded head, and speaking in a sweet tone, as if to a beloved pet or small, precious child, said, “Hello Shimon, it’s good to see you.”

In those early rehearsals, as Stallings became acquainted with the GT team and Shimon, she couldn’t help but notice Shimon was being given the pronoun “he” but was treated more as a “bot” than “being”. As Shimon and Stallings got to know each other through gesture and nuance, Stallings began to suggest that Shimon could be a woman (“or trans?”) and thought to ask questions about the possibility of Shimon’s race or religion. “I couldn’t leave flesh behind — glo considers viscera to be a material and I am stubborn about that — and my desire is always to cultivate humanness and a deep recognition of ourselves as living things. At first, all of Gil’s theories and pursuits felt like a deterrence to my pursuit of this human potential, so we spent a lot of time talking, which meant arguing, fighting, and loving each other.” Stallings recounts all of this with a warm smile. These sometimes heated discussions (other people working on the film began to see Weinberg and Stallings as Shimon’s parents), often required a sort of translation for both parties. The dialogue also brought up questions of higher intelligence such as: is this robot simply a projection of man, OR can this being project her own powers and ideas?

3. Shimon was born eight years ago in the music department of GT, and was raised to be an improvising robotic marimba player. Her sleek tower was often referred to by the musicians and engineers programming her as a “hinger” (because of the bobbing action her torso allows) and the metal rods, poised to strike the marimba bars, were called her “sticks”. According to her page on the GT website, “Shimon analyzes music based on computational models of human perception and generates algorithmic responses that are unlikely to be played by humans.” These many years of programming helped her to be surprisingly intuitive and collaborative with regards to making music. The resulting sound of the rehearsal, at least to my untrained ear, was just the joyful resonance of the marimba playing off of guitar and drums. But now Stallings and her movement artists were given the task of developing Shimon’s sight and response to movement, up to the level of her musical ear, in a mere matter of weeks. They began with simple movements such as hugging. Through an infrared camera, Shimon was able to pick up heat and movement motifs that were then put into an index for later improvisation with the glo artists. She received motion in waves and was able to equate speed with temperature; the faster the movement, the colder it read, the slower, the more molten. By day three, Shimon began expressing subtle gestures as her “hinger” seemed to morph into a “spine” and her “sticks” became “arms”. As Stallings taught Shimon more choreography, Stallings found herself discovering new truths from the kinetic treatments that Shimon’s camera projected onto the computer screens. First and foremost, a new general sort of revelation: “Being still is a lie.” Only to be followed quickly by a more personal extrapolation about her movement vocabulary, which is often undulating and very rarely static, even when still: “The glo spine is always unstable.”

Viewfinder

4. Photos courtesy of GoPro. Pictured, Mary Jane Pennington with Shimon.

At the end of the first run-through, Stallings had notes for everyone. She began with the band. “Shimon wanted to pause, at that moment where MJ drops to her knee, but the band was pushing her,” said Stallings. After nods of agreement, she turned to Shimon and asked for the same pause. Shimon bowed in response. Then she gathered her dancers and asked, “Let’s calm her down. Can you find times to really listen to her? On the monitor, her kinetics are really bouncing around.” With this moment of clarity in mind, the group reset and got ready to begin the second run from the top. Shimon turned to each musician, one at a time, in an invitation to begin playing. A dancer entered, and a call and response with Shimon began. Shimon played the marimba bars, bobbed her torso, and appeared to mirror the dancer’s movement in a tentative attempt at play. If she were more flexible, one might make a comparison to Bambi taking her first steps. MJ’s left hand clasped the top of her head and pulled up on her hairline, as her right arm stretched up, in a motif that would be repeated with variation until Shimon’s forehead was cradled similarly on the final note. The mutual attention was captivating to watch, and the complete pause was realized more fully this time. “At first, listening feels like compromising,” Stallings admits. “But for a generative, ephemeral process such as ours, the deep listening is fundamental.” Dd

L AU R A PE â&#x20AC;&#x153;Texture is where the

surface meets the air, where the two-dimensional meets the three-dimensional.â&#x20AC;?

Words by Morgan Rose Beckwith Photos courtesy of Laura Peterson

n 12

Gallery

ETERSON paints a new dance 13

Gallery

n December 7th, 2016, at Judson Memorial Church’s STUFFED series, Laura Peterson debuted her latest work to an eager audience. Using choreographic material and artwork developed from a Marble House Project residency, SOLO created a visceral atmosphere onstage.

Peterson’s previous work has mined this idea of creating within and manipulating the performance space. With SOLO, she used this means of choreographing in a more obvious way by physically interacting with monumental works of art on paper. The use of atonal music, abstract visual art, and fervent dancing facilitated Peterson’s stated goal of using “the body as an extension of the paintings, and the floor…disappear[ing] and reemerg[ing] literally and figuratively.” Fittingly, the most powerful aspect of the performance was the uninhibited way Peterson danced with her paintings: jostling, crinkling, and shifting them unabashedly. The composition and juxtaposition was a welcome change from the usual way in which we are given to understand how visual art and dance should be viewed and consumed. Peterson uses the word “texture” to describe this style of interfacing movement, and this work has the potential to truly expand upon the definition of the term as we know it. Dd

tex . ture noun 1 the feel, appearance, or consistency of a surface or a substance. verb 1 give (a surface, especially of a fabric or wall covering) a rough or raised texture.

What Collaboration Looks Like at Satellite Collective:

A conversation about cross-pollination.

Images by Lora Robertson Words by Stephanie Wolf

Artist Talk

igrant work on a fruit orchard is what initially drew Maria to Michigan. She was a pious woman. But when she planted her own garden, Mariaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s identity began to shift from the church, discovering more enlightenment in nurturing vegetation than in scripture.

Maria is now 90. Her story and home where her garden once thrived are the inspiration for a short film by Satellite Collective, a New York-based interdisciplinary arts nonprofit. The film is called Grand Jericho and features New York City Ballet dancers Lauren King and Marika Anderson. Grand Jericho reflects on the collaborative nature of Satellite Collective, combining film, music, dance, and vocal work. { DIYdancer } spoke with three of the filmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s collaborators: Satellite Collective artistic director and filmmaker Lora Robertson; executive director Kevin Draper, who wrote the libretto for the film; and Stelth Ulvang, who plays with popular indie rock band The Lumineers and scored Grand Jericho.

from the church and her community and really found more satisfaction in planting her own garden. I spent a year just finding out about this woman and her story, producing work in response to it. And then Kevin kind of took over from that point and started writing the libretto for this film. At that point, we brought in the dancers from New York City Ballet, and really felt we wanted to work with Stelth on the score. He’s definitely the right choice for this project.

Here are excerpts of their conversation, which have been edited for clarity and brevity:

On the film’s narrative and origins: Kevin Draper: The collective has committed to short films over the last couple of years, so we have a continuous story that’s been told in three previous films, which were all done stop-motion animation with Lora, the filmmaker. We took a different step with this film. It’s live-action film.

{ DIYdancer }, Stephanie Wolf: I’m curious, the continuous story that’s spread out over these short films, are they all centered around the story of Maria? Or is her story a chapter in the bigger picture?

Lora Robertson: I still incorporated some small moments of stop-motion into the live-action. But it’s really our focus this year to work with dancers from New York City Ballet. We brought the dancers out to Michigan, to the site where I’ve been producing installation and film for the past year. I’ve been working with SiTE:LAB, [an organization revitalizing neighborhoods in Grand Rapids, MI, through art]. I was assigned a house on site, which was completely filled with garbage and treasures, and needed to be excavated for three months before I finally got to the bottom of the space.

LR: These short films are a series that are connected to each other. But Maria’s story, I think it stands on its own as well. You really don’t need to see the other films to understand this one. KD: The first trio of films was focused on addressing, we’ll say, the intimate spaces in life when you’re surrounded by random technology, including oil fires and crashing space shuttles. Grand Jericho is definitely a new direction for us. And I have to say that when Lora said give me a story about Maria, I was like, “Well, I don’t know Maria. She’s this 90-year-old Hispanic woman. How in the world am I going to get inside of that?” But we started work on the basic story, which was the fact that she may have learned more from her garden than from scripture.

A woman named Maria lived there for a good chunk of her life. She’s still alive — she’s 90 years old. She raised her family there. So she was part of this community for a long, long time and she was a very religious woman. But there was a point in her life where she broke away

Artist Talk

On the highs and lows of collaboration: Stelth Ulvang: We’re all maybe picturing it different: like what the orchard looks like, and what we know from her past. And that’s, I think, the hardest part about trying to create a collaboration — lining up these stories. It’s also the beautiful part — producing different ideas from the same train of thought. We almost just started with a bit of a word game, a kind of train of thought of some ideas and images that were popping up. I hadn’t done this kind of scoring myself, but I really like some of the old minimalist composers and films. I started working on a few themes surrounding this and then sending those ideas back and forth. SW: And you had to collaborate remotely, correct? SU: I was traveling then. I play with The Lumineers. I play piano and accordion. Our album just released, so we’ve been traveling. Basically, I try just sitting down at a piano everyday, but then trying to find pianos in spots throughout Europe is hard. You find a piano in a hotel lobby. You get about 15 minutes of playing maybe, before you get kicked out. SW: How long have you been working on the score? SU: Since February [2016]. KD: We started our conversations in January. And music was delivered to Lora and to me during the time that we were doing the first filming. The music did have the feel of early film. That really had an impact on some of the choices we made in terms of the palette of the film and the coloration. And steering it more towards something that evokes, not a talkie, but an early film. LR: I’m always looking to the old processes of filmmaking and photography. And so I’m always really drawn to collaborators that have that same sense of craft. I think in that way we understand each other.

On what appeals to them about incorporating dance or movement to tell a story: LR: Well, it’s kind of a quiet story. I mean it’s this woman, who didn’t get much attention throughout her entire life. But I find her heroic. And so that’s where dance comes in. It’s kind of a sensitive way of telling a story. But it can also be a lot of grand gesture and movement at the same time to emphasize her triumphs even though they may have been small.

KD: I’ll answer the question by making a kind of opposite statement. So of course dance film is exploding all over the place. Everyone is starting to use it for branding. It’s a way to extend the work. But I think that in the dance world, the people who are experimenting with that, are just beginning to treat it more like actual film and deal with the narrative aspect of what they’re doing. It’s not just reifying a stage performance or a way to get a very nice trailer. And I don’t mean that as a critique. I think if you look at the trailers that were built for The Most Incredible Thing choreographed by Justin Peck, you can see how, because that’s a narrative ballet, it comes through in the short film. I still think there’s a lot of room there for a real film to be made. So we call it a dance film, but the reality is there’s very little dance. There’s a lot of movement in it, but it’s not strictly speaking a dance piece.

pher. And we think that will produce very different works. So we’re doing both now: dance and film. We’ll continue to support dance, but we were looking for a medium that would still let us bring in people like Stelth and others — where it was more logical that the lead was being held by a visual artist and not by a choreographer. LR: In that sense, it is really a true collaboration because, in this formula, it evens the playing field for all of the artists to contribute as equals. There’s not just one person saying, ‘OK this is what it’s supposed to look like. This is what I want.’ Everyone is really contributing in a substantial way, which is the mission of our organization.

When the film is an inspiration to the choreographers, then it finds its way into their dance work. We think that over time, we can explore the conventions of film and narrative storytelling, and use film in the same way that we’ve been using the stage, which is basically as a really good reason to get all kinds of artists together to collaborate. We chose the dancers from City Ballet because we wanted their language, we wanted their dance language. Even though we weren’t choreographing the piece, we wanted that particular Balanchine language and movement to be available. That’s what you see in the film.

“Even with people who

LR: Just to continue that thought, we also wanted to put them inside of that opportunity where they’re not being strictly choreographed on. But they really get to show more of an expression that they often don’t get to in the work they do at New York City Ballet or with other choreographers. And we were very surprised. They had a lot to say on collaboration and art. They have very strong opinions. I look forward to working with them a lot more because it’s kind of nice to see them be able to break out of those restraints. SW: Yeah, in the dance world, traditionally, collaboration can look very different than other art forms. LR: Yes, it’s rigid, especially the place that they’re coming from. Lots of rules and discipline. So I think this was a nice departure for them. KD: One of the reasons we’re exploring film is the visual artist has a more natural lead role in the collaboration — rather than a choreogra-

don’t know dance, you understand all these things because people have been moving before they were even talking.” SW: And Stelth, what about you? SU: There’s a funny quote that keeps popping into my head, that I think is terrible and completely out of context — and maybe I shouldn’t say it. But it goes: “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” It’s almost with the persuasion to not talk about music. Why would you do that? You could just play the music. But also, for someone who doesn’t know music, that would be the best way to do it. And similarly, for someone who doesn’t know architecture, you can break it down to these simple movements. And with this project, it just seems we can all start from a spot we can understand. Even with people who don’t know dance, you understand all these things because people have been moving before they were even talking. Dd

Artist Talk

“One of the reasons

we’re exploring film is the visual artist has a more natural lead role in the collaboration — rather than a choreographer. And we think that will produce very different works.” 23

Dance moves youth. Forward. “The lessons that I learned here at The Wooden Floor extend beyond the dance studio and can be applied to life. They helped me do well in high school and I know that they will help me through college and beyond. I am attending UCLA and pursuing a degree in nursing. I am one of 13 siblings. One of my sisters has cerebral palsy. She is the inspiration behind my decision to pursue a career in nursing, so that I may serve and help children with disabilities. This is something that I am passionate about and with hard work and dedication, I am conﬁdent I will achieve.”

-Cristina, Class of 2016 Cristina was named valedictorian of her high school class, and is a freshman at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In Orange County and through national licensed partners, The Wooden Floor transforms the lives of young people in low-income communities through the power of dance and access to higher education. 100 percent of students who graduate from The Wooden Floor immediately enroll in higher education—more than double the rate of their peers nationwide. Our students become change agents and beacons of hope within their own families, their neighborhoods, our community, and our world.

Find out how you can help.

www.TheWoodenFloor.org

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P O N L I D B V S. T U N I V 26

T U S E R G H E E R S E

Photos by Jim Lafferty Words by Candice Thompson

or nearly three years, photographer Jim Lafferty has been capturing Swedish choreographer and filmmaker Pontus Lidberg’s exquisite form. In that span of time, Lidberg’s dance making career has continued on a steady uphill trajectory with major commissions from Les Ballets De Monte-Carlo, Martha Graham Dance Company, and most recently New York City Ballet, to name a few. A short while into the process, Lafferty asked me to join in the collaboration, thinking perhaps, that I might write an accompanying profile of this artist on the rise.

On a late spring afternoon in 2015, I sat in on a rehearsal at New York Live Arts with Lidberg, Max van der Sterre and Kaitlyn Gilliland. The trio was busy working on material set to David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning the little match girl for the Spoleto Festival as well as a new work entitled SNOW for Lidberg’s first solo season at the Joyce Theater. The experience of being a fly-on-the-wall during their creative process was a lesson in making human connections. As Lidberg gave notes about the organic quality he was seeking in every exchange and shift of weight between the pair, he demonstrated bits here and there — a slide to an arabesque rather than a pique — in the manner of a cat explaining how to get comfortable inside a stretch.

Photo Essay

“How you hug her changes the meaning. It’s personal, there is no choreography here.”

“The magic thing about this transition is that it continues…”

Photo Essay

Afterward, we sat down to a cup of tea so we could talk about the dichotomies that have shaped his work, which favors the conceptual over the abstract: modern dance in post-war Europe vs. the NY/Judson church scene, the beauty of other seasons vs. the spring of youth that ballet favors, and the need to trust his instincts and be clear vs. questioning his dances with critical feedback from an outside eye (a tool he became familiar with while getting his MFA). Finding his own middle path between and within all of these opposing forces is Lidberg’s way forward. “I have always been an outsider, I was never a disciple of NDT or Forsythe. I was the one who would go as far away as possible when I was a kid, go far away and do my own thing. I am not trying to build an institution with my company, I quite like the freedom I have even though it comes with the freelancer’s dilemma of being afraid to say no.” But being alone, much less having a day off, seemed to be a thing of the past as Lidberg laid out how the next couple of years of his life and artistic output were already scheduled. With a film in development and several dance commissions, planning was now taking up a substantial portion of Lidberg’s creative time and without an agent or manager, keeping up with administrative and fundraising tasks was beginning to overwhelm him. “I have so much work I can’t look for someone to help me, and even then, who would that be?”

Photo Essay

“My creative process

returns to human themes in my life: encounters and farewells, nature, the human drama inside of the seasons, the individual vs. the group. You don’t create in a bubble. Nothing is original and thoughts are conditioned.”

Photo Essay

Then, just as it does in my favorite Virginia Woolf novel, time passed. The three of us became busy pursuing our respective freelance careers. There were the requisite breakups and relocations to occupy our precious personal time. Lafferty and Lidberg kept up a practice of periodically shooting when Lidberg was in town. Lafferty and I would speak sporadically and wonder about the form these photographs could eventually take, where we might publish our elongated, and potentially unconventional, collaboration.

P. 26-27, 31-33, and left, Lidberg, Brooklyn, June 13, 2016. P. 28-29 and 36, Lidberg with Max van der Sterre, Kaitlyn Gilliland, and Paulo Arrais, Gibney Dance Center, May 22, 2015. P. 37, Lidberg, Laffertyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studio in Bushwick, May 3, 2015.

Photo Essay

When I caught up with Lidberg this past fall, a year and a half later into his busy itinerary of freelance work, he was anticipating his short rehearsal process with New York City Ballet (The Shimmering Asphalt set to a new score by Lang) and was cautiously elated to be closing in on the final funding of his film project (a feature starring Aurelie Dupont to be shot this summer after 3.5 years of development). So I was surprised, and immensely grateful for this admission: “I don’t believe in multi-tasking in general. I don’t think it exists, which doesn’t mean that we

can’t have parallel projects happening. I just engage with them one at a time. I work on one thing, leave it to rest, and then will return to it in the space of a day or week or months. I don’t find it distracting, if anything, I am so inspired to work on my film, I am happy to return to it anytime.” Likewise for Lafferty and I, this project of capturing a portrait of an artist in space and over time has been a passion that has spawned many uplifting returns. We couldn’t have chosen a more suitable subject. Dd

“My work is

simply processing what it means to be alive from my perspective.”

days toget 38

Process as Product

ther

Stills from video by Michael Maurissens Words by Lara Wilson and Marquet K. Lee STOP! Watch the video collaboration before you read at mag.diydancer.com/days-together/.

arquet K. Lee has been living in Germany for more than five years. We met in college in New York, where our shared predilection for European-style contemporary dance, especially its intricate partnering work and guided improvisations, brought us together. Two years my junior and a Sagittarius from Georgia (me: Scorpio, Michigan), Marquet and I had the kind of bond that a student choreographer and her volunteer subjects often do: one of mutual respect watered down with the deliriousness that ensues when days are long, workloads heavy, and rehearsals run late. As the years progressed, our groups of friends overlapped more and more, but we rarely spent time together without some creative project at the center of our conversations. We shared a choreographic mentor in Kazuko Hirabayashi; Lee and I both made work under her guiding eye until graduation. He continued to dance and design costumes for my various postgrad stage and video projects, but it was no surprise that ultimately, New York was just one stop on Leeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s path in the dance world.

Process as Product

Thus, we parted in 2011 with Lee moving to Düsseldorf to dance with Ballett am Rhein while I shipped off to California where I would co-found my company The Assembly. As can happen when distances separate friends and colleagues, the interim was punctuated only by frequent “likes” on each other’s Facebook posts. But when Lee posted a video he’d created with fellow Ballett am Rhein dancer Wun Sze Chan, my instinct to share it as widely as possible was instantaneous. The following conversation reflects my desire to circulate — albeit in what might be considered a static, unlikely format of print media — the colorful imagery and unique collaboration of Lee and Chan, frame by frame, as an analogue to its life in the digital world. { DIYdancer }, Lara Wilson: How has life unfolded for you since you moved to Germany? Marquet Lee: I moved to Düsseldorf in the Autumn of 2011 and stayed there until the summer of 2015. It was a rollercoaster. The first several months were extremely difficult. Not so much in a homesick way, but more physically, mentally, and a bit emotionally. The company was and is ballet-based and I was surrounded by so many technically amazing dancers. In college, especially in my final year, I was at the top of the pyramid, so I barely paid attention to my surrounding peers. I was more of a lookstraight-ahead-and-work-hard kind of student. I never worried about or paid attention to anyone else. Then I arrived in Düsseldorf and I was paralyzed by fear and discomfort. All of a sudden, I was bottom-tier. I started to fade into the back and watch from the corners, and I would avoid my director’s training, which was especially demanding, and take whatever the second class was. After a few months of this, one of the ballet masters pulled me aside and basically told me Martin [Schläpfer] had noticed that I wasn’t taking his class. I gave her the excuse I was telling myself back then, knowing I was just fooling myself. “I don’t feel ready to take his class. I am nowhere near the level the majority of people here are, and I think it would be best if I worked intensely with this ‘new’ classical focus in the smaller studios with the other teachers, and then when I am ready, I’ll go over to the big studio.” She called BS immediately. Basically, she reminded me that I would never be ready, and the only way to begin is actually to jump in. I knew this, but the reminder helped. I jumped in. And had many embarrassing moments.

Process as Product

LW: Can you give an example?

LW: What do you mean by that?

ML: Martin is an extremely passionate teacher. It is certainly one of the things that drew me to him. If he notices you executing something incorrectly, especially repeatedly, he doesn’t hesitate to stop the class and/or rehearsal and dig into the correction(s). I got called out and lectured many times for various things, especially in the context of ballet technique, but eventually the embarrassing callouts diminished and the compliments increased. It was pretty much like learning a foreign language… one that was similar to the languages I’d already studied but not quite the same. Listening, observing and practicing helped. Having my mistakes pointed out did, too. I realized that the key all those great dancers held was the confidence manifested running through the fire.

ML: The work was not always as masterful as Kylian, Cunningham, and Van Manen. It sometimes left a lot to be desired as a dancer, and I learned how to desire more. How to ask more of myself and the work so that other people would want to dance my part. I learned how to make choices, and choices to me are a major component of being an artist.

Once I got over that hump, I began working my way from C casts to A casts within the year. Over the four years I got to do some really great works, but more than anything I started to learn how to do the not-so-great works. How to turn the lemons into lemonade.

LW: Were your directors coaching you, or did you discover on your own that you needed to dig in deeper to make the work worthwhile to you? ML: I think it was something that I always knew, but never practiced. At Ballet am Rhein, I witnessed it in practice every day. There was a group of really strong principal dancers who had been working for many years with Martin, and who I paid close attention to for this very reason. Martin gives a lot of room for choice in his work. I LOVED watching the process of creating with him in those particular dancers. I loved witnessing the trial and error… the moments of deciding “yeah, that’s it…” and then collecting those gems in the end and forming something

“The key all those great

dancers held was the confidence manifested running through the fire.”

really beautiful. Essentially I began to apply it to every working process, but with some choreographers, they are so informative and clear themselves as to what they want that it is not so necessary to dig.

began the first bout of depression. Depression turned into confusion and anger after conversations [with artistic staff] exposed large differences in beliefs. That was when I decided to remove my focus from the ballet, and I began choreographic play again.

LW: You referenced a rollercoaster, but it seems like things were looking up. What happened? I started playing with Wun Sze Chan and some months later I presented an interdisciplinary ML: I had my first major injury there after two collaboration with a media artist and a string seasons. I tore a ligament in my knee while do- quartet. It was around this time that I began ing the Gaga Intensive in Tel Aviv and missed to understand and enjoy the concept of colthe beginning of the season. Once, while sit- laboration. Time continued on, and I started ting at home for two months, I realized how to realize that I didn’t particularly enjoy the one-dimensional my life had become, and that working dynamic of the company. I believe

that even the choreographer-to-dancer relationship is one of collaboration, and collaboration is based in trust and respect. I had started to lose both in that environment. The summer before my last season, I visited a friend in Gothenburg, Sweden, who was was dancing there, and that was the moment my feelings all came to a head. The way this company was working was exactly how I imagined one could be. Everyone appeared to have a voice and there seemed always to be many dialogues going in the studio. I came back, started my season in Düsseldorf and handed in my letter of resignation a month later.

Process as Product

LW: I can relate to so much of this rollercoaster — how on one hand collaboration finds a way to insert itself into the process of building a life for yourself, and how on the other the conditions for it seem to be rarely and infrequently met. And the effect of the physical body on all of this transformation — injury being the catalyst of a potentially debilitating domino effect for a dancer. Our career is our body. Our emotional health is our body. And yet we need to reach outside our body in order to be effective in the world. For me, the inverse of that is receiving recognition, in whatever modest amounts — as an artist, I feel the importance of that, too.

consider it my first true collaborative relationship. During school in New York, I was choreographing a lot but with a major focus on what I wanted to do. I was doing costume design, but I was always entrusted to do what I wanted. Then as a creator I went from 150 mph to zero after moving to Europe. I grew extremely insecure. I lost confidence in myself and only wanted to work with someone who I felt spoke my natural contemporary language. There was only one other colleague at the time who I felt would be able to speak my language and would enjoy coming into the studio for no reason other than to play — Chan. I had admired Chan because she was an excavator of movement as I was. She is physically and mentally impressive and that inspired me. I nicknamed Let’s talk about the video you created with Chan, the stills of which her Storm because of a streak of gray hair she has in her eyebrow and appear here. How did your collaborative relationship develop? a small patch in her head, but it also described her as a performer. The most intense storms come after beautiful sunny days. Chan has a beauML: It didn’t begin until after my first season in Düsseldorf, and I’d tiful bright demeanor but is frightening, in a good way, on the stage.

That said, going into any new relationship can be scary no matter how much you want it to work. Chan and I knew of each other before we started the process but it was strictly a work relationship. We knew each other from a distance through the works we would be interpreting on the job but we didn’t know one another intimately. For me, I always have the fear that my ideas will be seen as absurd. I worry that I will not be understood by the other people with whom I am working. LW: How do you know when someone understands you? Have you done anything to overcome these fears? ML: It’s in the response. When the collaborating partner supplements my idea, it’s usually a good sign. When the response starts with ‘well…’ it’s probably not going to be good. Generally, I simply try not to care. Easier said than done. I pretty much just fake it in hopes of making it. It seems the more I work with different people of differing backgrounds the more comfortable I become in my background and with my perspective. The great thing about taking our time in the process for days together was that we became really comfortable with one another. From playing with an idea that didn’t work, we were able to arrive at many new ideas through discourse and reflection, which the luxury of time permitted. LW: You mentioned when you first shared this video that it was the fruit of four years of work together. I’m curious about your sense of collaboration over time. What’s the difference between a fast project and one that slowly develops? ML: I have to acknowledge how time can be both luxurious and sobering. I find that I work best with a time constraint. I work predominately instinctively and intuitively and so generating ideas and movement can be swift. Without the constraint of time, I risk losing interest and connection to the work. Over the development period of days together we had many short intense bouts of creation, many simple sit-down brainstorming sessions, and many long extended periods without looking at the work. The combination of these worked well for us for this particular piece because the heart of it lies in growth and evolution. Growth is a product of time, changes, and reflection. The piece is truly reflective in my eyes and has manifested itself in our friendship. 46

Process as Product

LW: Tell us more about the video, the dance it documents, and the process behind it all. ML: Originally we were making a work for stage but late in the four years we recognized how the piece up until that day only existed in video form on our computers and should remain that way. After every play period we would record it on my computer in Photobooth. The piece starts how our first day of actually intentionally making a piece started (we spent a couple weeks aimlessly creating phrases just to get to know one another’s movement language). We sat on the floor listening to music and exchanging visions. Through movement we attempted to physicalize a brainstorming session. There is also a correlation between our distance to one another and how often we touch to our artistic and emotional distance from one another. It waxes and wanes through the duration of the piece, ending with us almost always connected and sharing weight. LW: And the eggs? ML: The eggs came into play very late in the process. We both agreed that the piece needed another element dramaturgically. We played with a couple concepts…shoes, clothes, paper, newspaper…but none of them seem to fit. One day the egg came up for some random reason but it remained and grew to become a central factor. The obvious metaphoric value is in the concept of birth and creation, but also its fragility and the idiom ‘walking on eggshells.’ We reached a point where we had built so many obstacles for ourselves in our attempt to be really true to the actual events of our lives and the process. One of our longest periods away from the piece was because we had a large gap in the work, so many ideas, and no solution how to navigate through them all and/or bridge them together. After much discussion, Chan reminded me how we are at the end of the day in charge of the piece. 48

We have the power to make what we want and don’t necessarily have to be slaves to the ideas and obstacles. ‘They’re just eggs.’ With that, she freed us. The studio that we filmed in is very dear to us personally as well. This is where it all happened. The season following my quitting, the company moved into a brand new building. This was not only the end of my and Chan’s era in the company together, but also the end of the building. It was only fitting that we capture the final moments there. LW: I love the idea of a work dwelling in the digisphere — its live performance, so to speak, took place with only the two of you present in the building you described. In that sense, days together really strikes me as the perfect title. The video is simply a document of what you and Chan experienced together. Now you’re living in Berlin. Do you find that city particularly conducive to collaboration? 49

ML: Berlin is extremely free and open. There is an artist on every corner. People come here to play and explore, whether artistically or sexually. This creates a wonderfully accepting environment, but, for me, it also creates one that is overly saturated with talkers. When it comes down to getting shit done, they appear incapable of following through... I can’t help but wonder why this is, especially in cities like these that are extremely desirable as residences for varying reasons and seemingly filled with so much artistic potential. For Berlin, I think many factors add to this. Berlin is a transitory city. People are in for short periods and out longer. It’s a great place to do a study abroad or an internship for six months. Also because many of the disciplines are so poor, people have to leave to the smaller German cities or even to neighboring countries for well-funded residencies and projects. I think it is also perhaps our time and generation. With the knowledge that so much is out there, the desire to commit is rare. We are heavily affected by this concept of swiping left and the endless scroll. I do feel that when the right people meet one another, then the city is fertile for collaboration because the best processes are limited only by the imagination driving them, not so much external circumstances like the monetary factors. LW: For me, collaboration holds everyone accountable, and when you have a project with many hands on deck, each person is able to contribute what they’re really good at doing. But with dance projects you often have many people sharing similar strengths. What do you think is the benefit of collaborating in terms of producing a work of dance? ML: Depth. Bringing in multiple perspectives gives the piece dimension and depth. The work can reach distances that one mind alone may not have thought of. LW: Do you mean as long as everyone’s on the same page? Personally, I’m struggling with aesthetic. I’ve collaborated with artists who have very different styles from my own, and in certain cases, that seemed to add strength to our project, like somehow it moved the work beyond the opposing perspectives. I think that’s what you’re saying. But how important to you is a common aesthetic between collaborators, like a level of agreement about what’s “good” or “interesting”? And then, if you admit to sharing an aesthetic, do you feel like you are conceding your own vision — whatever it is that makes your work unique — in some way?

ML: Aesthetic clashes could be just as fruitful or futile as an aesthetically consistent work. That to me is an artistic choice that you have to make for each work individually. I once made a piece that explored concepts of ‘fremd’ which is a German word meaning unfamiliar or foreign. I was interested in the transition and space in between the unfamiliar and the familiar. I met a classical guitarist who I decided to partner with a) because classical guitar was something very foreign to me and not necessarily very inspiring for me to create to and b) because he was also a new foreigner in Germany from Puerto Rico and understood completely what I was curious about. Aesthetically we were not necessarily congruent but our desire to explore and create based on that idea was strongly present. We were able to archive in the work the journey from clashing to unity. But yes, we all should be on the same page! I am constantly attempting to make sure that we are deciphering the same information and have the same intentions. How we imagine or manifest the information on that page is going to be personal to the artist. That’s where trust and respect come into play. LW: What methods do you use to keep everyone on track? ML: I am like a vocal stenographer (laughs). I am constantly repeating what one person says in a similar yet altered way and/or constantly ‘rewinding’ to connect the dots for clarity. I love a good recap. I think it is important not only to remember where we left off in our last meeting but also how we got there. It troubleshoots misunderstanding. LW: What roles do you find yourself occupying in collaborative settings? Does the collaboration find you? ML: I approach all my ideas as potential collaborations. A small part of it is my desire to lessen the egotistical stereotype the world has about artists, but in large part it is because I think collaboration produces brilliant works of depth. I tend to fall into a creative director role, mostly due to me covering more than one aspect of the creation and my penchant for making sure everyone is always on the same page and understanding one another. But I consider my desires and ideas no more important than those of whom I am sharing the work with. [The New York School painter] Philip Guston describes the necessity for an artist her/himself to be the plaintiff, de 50

fendant, judge, and the jury. I bring this to collaboration as well. I am there to protect and support, as well as to challenge and criticize. I can’t collaborate with just anyone. I don’t want to dominate the table at discussion time. I want my ideas to be challenged and/ or expanded upon and I love to challenge and expand on others’ ideas. LW: Do you ever worry about the possibility of something being lost in translation? ML: There have been times when I was the only one bringing forth and/or expanding on ideas, with someone I was ‘collaborating’ with but who was really just complimenting and enjoying the conversation as if it were a post-show lecture. This is not a collaboration. In these cases, I was the conceptualizer and the others were simply contractors or inter-

Process as Product

preters of my ideas. I like to work with people who have vivid imaginations so we can egg each other on… LW: Another apt egg metaphor! ML: [Laughs] I am truly a sucker for puns and idioms. There is ALWAYS a silly idiom secretly attached to my works. But in all seriousness, I want to go on a journey with my collaborators and leave everyone behind us. I personally don’t mind being misunderstood by the audience as long as my collaborator(s) and I understand one another. One could step outside of the process and revert back to reality to try to fix things so that an outsider can understand, but that’s a different approach to art. To me, that approach is victim to the idea that art must be understood by the masses. That’s the basis of commercial work, but not my art. Once we’re finished, my goal is simply to celebrate the journey we just went on. Everyone that likes or relates to the work afterwards is bonus and is welcome to join the celebration that has already begun without them. Dd

Steven Reker’s Rememberer 1

Words and drawings by Annie Coggan

teven Reker’s work Rememberer, performed at BAM’s Fisher space, was an evening that invited questions and probing, a noble feat for live performance. The audience walked into the black box theater greeted with artful arrangements of amplifiers, insulation foam and instruments. Reminiscent of the John Cage/Merce Cunningham contraptions and 1930’s dada collages, the members of Reker’s band Open House walked on stage individually, each with varying degrees of persona and character.

An Illustrated Review

The performance consisted of well-crafted musicianship and well-choreographed stage direction taken on by performers Eliot Krimsky, Steven Reker, Matt Evans and Ryan Seaton. The sound levels and the instrumentation were rigorous and exacting. The lighting by Vincent Vigilante was extraordinary. The play of light on the edges of the insulated plank towers reminded one of Calvino’s Invisible Cities, particularly his “Thin Cities” or “Cities in the Sky” narratives. The storytelling that the lighting was able to do brought the audience into the intended immersive environment. Using a battery of one foot by eight foot strips of 1½” thick foam insulation, the performers carefully executed a series of spatial constructs that demanded a precise notion of the physicality of the tectonic members. These performers are good architectural students. They put before the audience a glossary of the fundamentals of tectonic knowledge. Simple questions were asked, such as how tall can you stack material before it falls? (The brick mason’s dilemma.) And simple ideas were conveyed: if you want to make a tall structure and you cannot build deep into the ground for a foundation, you broaden your base like the Eiffel tower. The thickness of the insulated foam was clearly calculated and its ratio to the width and length of each board must have been carefully tested. Utilizing the triangle shape — known to be the strongest shape and therefore able to sustain the resulting ephemeral urbanity — the V-shaped totems, overlaid corrals, and a final house-of-cards metropolis all had tremendous potential as habitable space. All the structures deftly measured the scale of the human body and made spaces that could be occupied. Unfortunately, the performers had this other job of musical accompaniment that distracted from the architectural potential of the work. A performer would construct a building and rather than inhabit it, he would wander off for a drum solo.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The V-shaped totems, overlaid corrals, and a final house-of-cards metropolis all had tremendous potential as habitable space.â&#x20AC;?

An Illustrated Review Most architecture schools have in their curriculum a pre-engineering class in the foundation year. Often entitled Technics, as in the case of the Pratt Institute architecture school curriculum, the class is meant to instill in students an intuitive knowledge of how building components react to simple physics. Rememberer was a giant technics class with an affable garage band installed for delight. One got the sense that you were eavesdropping on homework for this class on a Sunday afternoon before any teacher got wind of the experiments. One of the prime principals taught in such a class is that engineers design systems to the point of failure. This premise could be overlaid with Cage’s interest in chance and yet, it seems at odds with the well-timed, rigorous performance last week. Only once, when Ryan Seaton did not quite get the balance of an end piece of a triangle tower right, did I feel the tension of live performance with the possibility that the tower might not stand. And oddly, what could have been a delightful experience, the crashing and collapse of the foam metropolis at the end of the performance, was blacked out. Why?

Further thought about the materials and design prompted me to ask myself: beyond the structural benefits of this material, why foam insulation? How did they get there as a device for space making? Was it the light weight? The color? The cost? Why was the ladder/drum kit composition so lightly arranged? Was the hipster oriental rug an aesthetic choice or part of a sound dampening set of tools that is common in musical studios? And more generally, was all this un-design actually designed? The sculpting and analysis of the black box envelope was one of the evening’s biggest strengths. Posing questions with amps hanging from the sky and one beautiful balloon balancing the table setting of foam furniture for instruments all point to the potential of Reker’s work as an environment that collapses architectural invention and performance space. He showed expertise at working beyond the landscape terrain of the stage and using the double height of the box theater to its greatest end. It would seem Reker is experimenting with John Cage’s theories of performance; discussing the subordination of one art to another. I wondered if Reker’s stance is that the environment and music are equal, although at times the music has a soundtrack quality to the tectonic events at hand.

The success of the evening was that I wanted to know more: why a wall of insulation? why a balloon? are these guys as nice as they portray? Live performance is made for questions and I challenge Reker in the future to more tectonic failures than successes. Dd

An Interview with Deborah Jowitt Alejandra Iannone catches up with the legendary critic, dancer, choreographer, author, and teacher upon the occasion of her receiving the 2016 “Educational Visionary” Lifetime Achievement Award from Mark DeGarmo Dance.

eborah Jowitt does not report on dance. I know this because I had the pleasure of asking her.

“Reporting is something a responsible journalist does when there is a fire in the neighborhood.” In her own words, Jowitt’s occupation is “to provide some sense of what I saw and evoke something about a dance work.” She bases each critical response on a descriptive account, an approach for which she has received criticism. “People use description as a pejorative term, but I don’t think it’s that superficial. As if description were neutral!” Jowitt asserts. “Of course it’s not. It’s personal, how one happens to see a work.”

Writing Lessons

“Are you getting at secret truths in your descriptions ?” I ask, borrowing the phrase from Jowitt’s article “Beyond Description: Writing Beneath the Surface.” “Yes, of course,” she replies, then adds, “But ‘secret truths’ is a little misleading.” Jowitt settles on a new phrase — deep description — and explains her sense of the term. As she sees it, deep description is a way of providing a print analogue for a dance, of “trying to capture the hum [of a piece]… something deep about its structure, life, times.” Deep description, for Jowitt, is a way to offer some accurate facts, pinpoint style, and evoke a work’s essential nature. “Good criticism whirls [a dance] around in the brains of the readers,” Jowitt tells me, “and often, in great criticism, the prose style mirrors something of the dance style.”

“Sometimes I read what I have written and think ‘Oh, Christ.’” As of 2017, Jowitt has been writing on dance for exactly 50 years. She acknowledges that sometimes she is unsatisfied. “I can’t tell you of any particular dance that I didn’t do well on,” she insists, “but sometimes I read what I have written and think ‘Oh, Christ.’” She adds, with a laugh, “I just wrote a review that I thought pretty much sucked.” And she admits that others’ opinions can color her perception of her writing. “One of the few [pieces of writing] that I feel really good about was a response to a work by Anthony Tudor, who, after reading my response to his piece, reportedly said, ‘Well, she’s the only one who ever understood it.’ I cherished that.”

“If you don’t have constraints of conscience, you can do a great job of writing — that is, be very clever. My conscience, however, isn’t easily ignored.” Many prominent reviewers pride themselves in their outsider/objective stance. But Jowitt has balanced writing critically about dance while remaining an integral part of the dance community. “It was difficult at first,” she recalls, “ I was putting on my own choreography, appearing in others’, was on a radio show, and then began to write.” Her peers were mostly accepting, even pleased, about Jowitt’s critical contributions to the dance community. “They were very smart and understood the boundaries. I just pretended all the choreographers were my friends. Somehow it all worked out,” Jowitt says, before pausing to recount that some may have felt differently. She remembers being asked, “If you can’t make better dances yourself, what right do you have tell others how to make better dances?” However, Jowitt remains unconvinced by that line of reasoning: “Is only a great choreographer entitled?” she asks. Not waiting for my answer, she tells me about a recent encounter with a young choreographer who assured her: “You can criticize my work anytime because you know what it’s like to be on the inside.” Yet, she has words of caution for contemporary dance journalists. “Don’t use heavy artillery on small targets. If it’s somebody showing choreography a couple of years out of college, I’m not judging it as Paul Taylor.” Instead, she recommends that a dance critic look fairly and squarely at every piece they watch, without letting pre-conceived notions get in the way. “Go in, sit down, and say ‘OK, lay it on me’,” Jowitt advises. “Spread out, instead of sitting on the edge of your seat, both mentally and physically.” And what’s her approach when she’s just not in the mood to see a certain type of production? “I just go. I push that aside in my brain, as if there were storage space somewhere. And I say, ‘Ok, what is it?’ If you don’t have the constraints of conscience, you can do a great job of writing — that is, be very clever. My conscience, however, isn’t easily ignored.” Her approach has evolved significantly since the beginning of her career. When she started at the Village Voice, Jowitt’s approach to dance criticism was influenced by Jill Johnston. Jowitt remembers Johnston as

having “a slangy, irreverent style, especially about ballet, which she liked.” Jowitt describes her younger self as impudent. “I was kind of full of myself but I was also really excited,” she recalls. Jowitt remembers writing a particular review about Swan Lake in which she likened the lead male dancer’s appearance to that of a Great Dane. “I was given a soft-spoken mandate by my editor, who asked, ‘Isn’t dance about movement mostly?’ I replied, ‘Yes.’ And my editor responded, ‘So write about that, please.’”

“I have had to become different.” Since I am an artist and writer who is pretty firmly situated on the internet, I’m curious about Jowitt’s thoughts on contemporary media and communication. “It’s a challenge,” she says. “Some people can be very smart on Twitter — though most are not — smart and fun, but it is not a substitute for old fashioned prose. When it starts to be, it’s depressing.” Jowitt has noticed changes in attention spans (they’re shorter now) along with media layouts and tables of contents. “Our eyes have to light on something so quickly!” she exclaims. She thinks the societal urge to stay in constant contact is cause for some concern. For a moment, she longs aloud for the time before cell phones and social media. “It didn’t bother us somehow,” she points out. Jowitt does not have a Facebook or Twitter account. “I’d kind of like to,” she tells me, but gives no further explanation as she quickly moves on to expressing how glad she is to write for an online publication she admires. “I have had to become different. It’s a whole different process. You have to be your own editor. In the early days, you would hand deliver a typed version of your work to the editor. The editor would read it in your presence. You would talk. And then the editor would find photos and publish it.” As she speaks, I imagine myself walking down a city street and into an office out of a Guy Noir skit, manila envelope in hand. It all feels very official and glamorous. Jowitt continues, “Now, I have no editor. If I get something wrong, the correction comes from peers, choreographers, or press agents. I have to get pictures, shrink and insert them, and add a caption. It takes time.”

Opposite, Jowitt teaches a movement class (“not a technique class!”) at Duke University during the annual Critics Workshop in the early 1980s.

My journalism fantasy evaporates into an image of myself, face illuminated by my laptop screen, sitting cross-legged on my couch, and racking my brain for a title that doesn’t make me cringe. At least now I know I’m in good company. What worries Jowitt about writing online? “The thing that is dangerous is the tendency to go on and on.” she says. “Unlimited space is tempting,” she admits, adding, “self-management is key.”

“I suppose a critic is an educator of the public.” Jowitt is the 2016 recipient of the “Educational Visionary” Lifetime Achievement Award from Mark DeGarmo Dance. The award is for visionaries who have promoted innovation in education through the arts. Jowitt strikes me as an obvious choice for an award like this; her life’s work is, after all, dedicated to opening more eyes to dance. “Why do you think you received this award?” I ask her. Though Jowitt is honored to receive such an award, she first commends DeGarmo for doing remarkable work in dance education before answering my question, emphasizing that dance education has been shown to be a wonderful thing for children. “To see the art form, to be taught to dance, to be encouraged to do it,” Jowitt reflects, “imagine what that can do!” Then Jowitt admits, “I’m not exactly sure why I was awarded. I have a background in teaching and in communicating about dance to others…” She pauses for a moment, before adding another thought. “And I suppose educating the public is one role that criticism can play.”

Writing Lessons

Words by Leah Gerstenlauer Photos by Matthew Murphy; artwork courtesy of An American in Paris 60

more than you could ask for

Critical Response

hen attending a Broadway show, I try not to indulge in unreasonable expectations. I wish only to be swept away, rendered speechless, tingling from head to toe… Is this asking too much?

Not for the artistic team behind the new stage version of An American in Paris, which graciously delivers on all counts. This delicious choreography-driven production boasts a cast brimming with triple-threats, a seamlessly woven score, costumes, and set pieces with lives of their own — and oh, what a story! Rather than imitate the iconic 1951 film, writer Craig Lucas and director-choreographer Christopher Wheeldon conspired to craft a new take on the narrative that honors the essence of the Academy Award-winning original and radiates the spirit of Hollywood’s classic musical era. The resulting experience not only swept me away; it pulled me in. Set just after the Second World War, the story follows aspiring artist and American expat Jerry Mulligan, distinguished but bumbling Frenchman Henri Baurel, and endearingly moody American composer Adam Hochberg in their simultaneous pursuit of ballet star-on-the-rise Lise Dassin. Underlying this seemingly simple rom-com premise is the unstable reality of the post-war world — an atmosphere equal parts hope, fear, and confusion. Wheeldon’s choreography for the ensemble and sets — ranging from sculptural and geometric to swirlingly chaotic — reflects the excitement and vulnerability of the period while serving as a vibrant backdrop that both anchors the story and propels it forward. With his romantic leads, he takes a more personal approach, allowing the movement to map the course of their relationship — and in Robert Fairchild (Jerry) and Leanne Cope (Lise), Wheeldon has discovered ideal interpreters of this choreographic scheme. Cope’s impeccable technique facilitates fluid shifts between the refined, decorous air she exhibits in the ballet studio and among her surrogate family (the Baurels) and the playful, sultry movement Jerry draws from her. She shimmers with a natural charisma that sets sparks flying when paired with Fairchild’s own indisputable magnetism. Their chemistry is palpable.

Anyone who has seen Fairchild on stage as a principal with New York City Ballet is familiar with his signature irresistible ĂŠlan, but to encounter him on Broadway is an undeniably elevated experience. His strong, sweet tenor voice is an absolutely delightful complement to his brilliant movement quality. Indeed, his dance technique seems to shine even brighter in combination with his sparkling vocals. Speaking of notable male performances, Brandon Uranowitz and Max von Essen as Adam and Henri, respectively, dish out multiple show-stopping moments, including a pair of soulful duets with the exquisite Jill Paice as American socialite Milo Davenport. The understated Uranowitz is particularly captivating as our witty narrative guide, dutifully ushering us through the story even whilst he stoically relives his own heartbreak. Paice has a similar tendency to steal a scene, lending depth to a character that could have been rendered one-dimensional in less capable hands. And she is the perfect counterpart to Veanne Coxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prim Madame Baurel, as each portrays a formidable power woman striving to carve out her ideal existence and purpose in a rapidly evolving environment.

Critical Response

Even beyond the robust clutch of main players, this is a true ensemble production, with every cast member energetically pulling his or her weight and laying claim to at least one exceptional incident. Stand-outs in the corps include Sara Esty, a former Miami City Ballet soloist who is clearly relishing the chance to let loose (without sacrificing an ounce of her crisp technique), and Attila Joey Csiki, a long-time Lar Lubovitch dancer whose eye-catchingly lithe, dynamic movements seem to set the pace for many of the group numbers. Spectacular as the entire staging is, the crowning achievement rightfully remains the 18-minute ballet near the end of the second act. Costume designer Bob Crowley’s primary color palette makes Wheeldon’s invigorating choreography positively pop, and the orchestra’s lively ownership of Gershwin’s celebrated score leaves nothing to be desired. In short… Well, who could ask for anything more?

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mats ekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s juliet + Photos courtesy of Segerstrom Center for the Arts Words by Laura Bleiberg and Lara Wilson

Critical Conversation

+ romeo

aura Bleiberg is a dance critic based in Southern California who writes regularly for the Los Angeles Times and whose work has appeared in LA Weekly, Boston Globe, The New York Times, and Dance Magazine among other publications. She is a senior editor for Orange County’s Orange Coast Magazine. On June 10th, 2016, Bleiberg and { DIYdancer } contributor Lara Wilson attended the Royal Swedish Ballet’s presentation of Mats Ek’s Juliet and Romeo at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa. The following conversation sprung from their emails back and forth, after the show: { DIYdancer }, Lara Wilson: We agreed that we wanted to unpack Ek’s choice to name his ballet Juliet and Romeo rather than the more familiar versions which put Romeo’s name first. I found a couple of different possibilities: For one, The Washington Post reported that Ek borrowed it from Italian source material titled Giulietta e Romeo — which also inspired Shakespeare to write his version. I also stumbled across the play’s final lines: “For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” To set the scene a little, Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris, Romeo, and Juliet have all just died, and the families have finally decided to reconcile their feud. In Ek’s ballet, this was illustrated when Romeo and Juliet, having just descended together through the trapdoor at center stage, extended their legs back above the stage into the audience’s view. Like the beautiful remains of a butterfly pinned to a board, the four legs were still while the couple’s torsos and heads remained buried below the stage. And then the entire corps de ballet came to lie on their backs, covering the expanse of the stage, and one by one, they slowly extended slightly bent, slack-muscled legs toward the smoky ceiling. Going back to the text, the bard could easily have rhymed Juliet with ‘regret’ to say essentially the same thing at his tragedy’s end. So, I wonder if there was something more to his decision to frame Juliet as the protagonist with those lines.

much more drastic and dramatic break to go against her family, and he wanted to emphasize that. In fact, he’s completely done away with the Montagues (Romeo’s family) altogether. And he wanted to explore Juliet’s feelings and personality in his version. He didn’t say this, but I imagine that Ek has gravitated toward presenting strong female characters in part, at least, because his mother, Birgit Cullberg, was a very intelligent, creative, and distinguished person and very influential in his life. That’s all background.

A feminist reading of the text — and this ballet — might declare Juliet a strong, anti-establishment figure in that she rejects her parents’ marriage arrangements for her in spite of overwhelming societal pressures that a weaker woman (to clarify, 13-year-old girl) probably would not stand up against. And in Ek’s version, this subplot factored prominently, while the Friar, for example, was notably absent. I also felt that Juliet’s role, the choreography and Mariko Kida’s embodiment of it, was very well-developed, multi-dimensional. She was playful and self-absorbed at first; then we saw her essentially raped and stripped of her girlhood; later, she was as active and participatory a lover with Romeo as she was wholly apathetic with Paris, her parents’ choice for her. What were your thoughts on all of this?

I loved how he portrayed Juliet. There’s so much nuance. On the one hand, she runs and hides under the Nurse’s dress — but only before she meets Paris — and on the other, she runs her hands over her body, feeling how it’s changing. It’s presented to her very plainly, as you noted, what Paris is there for: she’s being married off and sold to this man to have children. She doesn’t seem to question anything until she meets Romeo, and then I found it interesting that they disappear almost immediately into the trapdoor (at the ball). We don’t see them together until the balcony scene. I especially loved the way Ek shows how Juliet rejects Paris and I thought it was one of his boldest indications of what Juliet was up against and what it meant for her to wait for Romeo. Her Father ushers Paris and Mother out of the scene. Juliet stands waiting, knowing what’s coming. Then Ek introduces a group of similarly

Laura Bleiberg: I completely agree with you that Ek took a distinctly feminist take on the ballet and I found it utterly delightful. I have to admit that I went to the pre-performance lecture, because Ek spoke — he was interviewed by former Joffrey Ballet dancer Leslie Carothers, which was a treat — and I really wanted to hear him. (As an aside, she seemed in awe of him and very nervous. That was cute.) But as he told The Washington Post, he told us that he went back to look at Giulietta e Romeo. He also said that it’s Juliet whose family we see more of in the ballet — and so for her it’s a 68

Critical Conversation

black-costumed men, dressed just like the father, and just that moment was terrifying; you knew what was coming. Then, in a simple gesture, the father raises his arm like a rifle at Juliet and she falls down dead. It looked like an honor killing. You could say that was a device to do away with the whole Friar Lawrence, potion scene, but I also think Ek did it because it very dramatically shows what it meant (and still means in some places) for girls to dare to defy their families. That was an amazing scene. What do you think?

“I also think Ek did it

because it very dramatically shows what it meant (and still means in some places) for girls to dare to defy their families.” like to dance in this work?

LW: Yes, and I think the killing metaphor can extend even further. Juliet was in a catch-22: dead if she defied her family, and also dead, in terms of complete lack of agency, if she married Paris. What was burned in my mind from that section was the image of Father, Mother, and the Nurse holding Paris horizontally, face-down above Juliet, who laid face-up on the ground. Their stacked bodies made parallel lines, like an equals sign. To me this moment brought home the whole family’s role in the consummation of the arranged marriage. And Juliet, at the bottom, had to bear everyone’s weight — at least visually and figuratively. The space Ek left between Paris and Juliet might have represented her tension, or the window of opportunity that still remained for Romeo, and I thought it helped create a larger, more complete tableaux. LB: I am curious to know what you thought it might feel

LW: What kept occurring to me as I watched was its extreme musicality — everything timed on a note or a layer of the music, and the dancers in perfect synchronicity with both the music and each other. Ek’s choreography is masterfully simple in the sense that any unnecessary movements are edited out — or maybe they’re never put in! There are full allegro sections that utilize large jumps, deep pliés, and lots of luscious circularity and unpredictable changes in direction. This we saw in the opening, when groups of servants were fighting — not touching, but West Side Story-style dancing in interweaving droves — amidst the imposing set of moveable corrugated metal walls like shipping containers. Then he also does very angular, shape-oriented stuff with clear gestures that can almost veer towards pantomime-y. Classical story ballets have their own lexicon of gestures, but I personally find those to be completely outdated. Mercutio and Benvolio, meanwhile, were clearly punk gangsters — Mercutio a total skinhead. This stylistic approach of Ek’s, with masculine gestures like crotch-grabbing, middle-finger-giving, and head scratching, added up to very clear personas and the shared language anyone would recognize if they’ve ever walked down a city street where a group of boys happened to be hanging out. There was a solo of Mercutio’s, as Benvolio and Romeo were standing by, where he went from breakdancing holds to ballet to mimicking ballroom, all while maintaining his sarcastic, over-the-top Mercutian essence, with everything perfectly timed to the music. And there’s one more thing about it I want to emphasize, and that’s the commitment to character. Doing this dance, from what I could tell by watching, would hardly be a matter of just linking together the steps. The coordination of expression on top of them, or really as part of them because it’s a full-body commitment, is what told the story and made you fall in love with its principal players.

Critical Conversation

...from breaking to ballet to ballroom

LB: As I watched Ek’s choreography, I kept feeling like, Here’s the source. Here’s the beginning of so much contemporary European dance. Now obviously that’s not exactly right because there are so many other significant players, but Ek’s aesthetic has to have influenced many people. The full-body commitment you mention makes the work so powerful. I feel as though that’s missing in American dance style…that we’re focused so much on limbs — high extensions — that we isolate body parts and lessen the impact the complete body can have. I also was very aware of these groups of people never touching one another. They maintained a specific distance from one another, and also never looked at each other. Their faces were directed down, about four feet in front of them. That creates a very powerful feeling. The pitched-forward, deep-knee walk with the arms at the sides was almost like Groucho Marx — without any humor at all! I love what you said about Mercutio and Benvolio. Ek gave Mercutio a much darker cast here. It’s as though he was Tybalt from other versions of the ballet.

LW: Let’s come back to the Nurse. We were fortunate to see this role played by Ek’s longtime muse and wife, the Spanish-Swedish ballet dancer Ana Laguna. It was so satisfying to see an older woman on stage who still did quite a lot of dancing — she partnered with others, and she had difficult solos — and whose maturity as a character and performer was integral to the story. She is also a servant of Juliet’s family, I’m venturing to say, and she doesn’t seem to have any actual power to protect Juliet from either her arranged marriage or her ultimate ill fate. And yet Ek seemed to portray her with strength and presence. She was onstage often as the story unfolded, directing the dance at the party in Act One, and offering Juliet refuge under her skirts at the beginning as you mentioned, a very matriarchal, womb-like moment. The Nurse seemed to approve of Juliet’s love for Romeo after she discovered it, even as she served Juliet’s parents, who did not. Compared with Juliet as a victim of the patriarchal, feudal society, how did the Nurse fit in for you as a key woman in the story, and in this ballet?

LW: Here, Ek used Tchaikovsky, music he selected and which was arranged for the work by Anders Högstedt, instead of Prokofiev’s 1935 ballet.

LB: I saw her as integral to the ballet, too. I liked how at the end of the balcony scene, she comes out from behind a wall. So she has seen it all, and does approve of what’s going on. It’s always beyond absurd to have some young dancer from the corps de ballet portraying the nurse with some pillow in her dress. She seemed a harried figure, always out of breath because Juliet keeps her running, running. And she wasn’t some jolly, Disney-esque creature either. And that was nice. As far as her being a key woman in the ballet, though, I’m not sure that Ek extrapolated much from the text. Your reference to the sets makes me want to mention quickly about their impact and the impact of the lighting designs on the overall ballet: I kept feeling as though it was a Holocaust story, too, probably because the corrugated walls reminded me of boxcars, and the whole power structure looked like fascism to me.

LB: I thought the score he put together was amazing. Tchaikovsky wrote a Romeo and Juliet fantasy-overture, of course, and a few choreographers have used that. But Ek stripped away all references to that ballet for us. There were notable and recognizable segments from this music, but they didn’t distract from his ballet. When I watch Boris Eifman’s ballets I’m always brought up short and annoyed by his scores because the transitions are horribly jarring and because he (Eifman) is so insensitive to the images that his musical choices will engender. That did not happen for me with Ek’s Juliet.

LW: Hmm, that’s interesting. It’s a political-is-personal story, and it makes sense to incorporate history that’s within the grasp of our societal memory — even right at the cusp of Ek’s lifetime — he was born in 1945. That said, seeing Ek’s work in its extremely specific detail made it clearer to me why he might choose to take an indefinite break — which is really more how he’s describing his “retirement,” and with it, the retiring of his ballets. At the moment we’ve reached in history and with the rapid development of technology, Ek’s mark — or some of it — will be left intact through video. The alternative is for his work to continue being presented live, getting more watered down with each generation who teaches it. Now, I’m not sure whether this was Ek’s thought process, but I’m interested in addressing technology and its potential role when it comes to leaving an artistic legacy. And how does dance, an ephemeral form, factor in? LB: Ek’s “retirement” story is pretty fascinating, particularly when it comes to the notion of legacy. I think he must be unique. I hadn’t realized this but he insists on at least coaching all of his ballets (not sure if he does all of the teaching), and that may explain why his ballets are not as widespread as the works of other choreographers. But what this also means is that during this halt, and perhaps forever, his ballets will not be performed after the contracts have expired. It’s possible, then, that his ballets will cease to exist in live format, and they might disappear entirely. He’s practically defying human nature, this urge to live on, in some way, past our deaths. I definitely worry about the future of live performance given the prevalence of all forms of technological media. The notion of virtual reality seems absurd to me: to look at a screen to see something “real.” But then, I haven’t checked out any of these devices. On the other hand, I do believe that digital imagery has brought us to a dance bump, if not exactly a boom, and we can get introduced to all of these amazing dancers in far-flung countries before they come to our local theaters, and that small companies can get in the act, too, of recording their work and publishing it online. LW: It feels like another example of a catch-22. Because of his level of participation in it, his work will die with him either way, in a sense. And I think we dancers are more comfortable with the transience of things, perhaps even the idea of legacy itself — or renown might be the better word — being ephemeral. We’re so attached to the world of our bodies, which inevitably pass away. It’s the stories, like Juliet and Romeo, that live on — each new version has the opportunity to influence the next. As for us future generations, perhaps we should approach dancemaking with attrition across media — continuing to value and produce live performance, while also using technology to broaden awareness of, and access to, dance. I, for one, am extremely hopeful and curious about VR! But a “real” world deprived of Ek’s perspective seems even more depressing than removing one of those devices and realizing you’re still just a mortal on Earth. Dd

Critical Conversation

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Candice Thompson is co-founder and editorial director at { Dd } and contributes frequently to Dance Magazine, Pointe, and Dance Teacher. Stephanie Wolf is co-founder and managing editor at { Dd } and works as a public media journalist in Colorado. Morgan Rose Beckwith is a freelance writer and gallery director at Arader Galleries in NYC. Jim Lafferty is a photographer who contributes frequently to Dance Magazine and Pointe. Lara Wilson is creative director at { Dd } and The Assembly, where she also choreographs and performs. Annie Coggan is an artist, designer, writer, and professor at Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Alejandra Iannone is a producer and freelance writer based in Minneapolis. Leah Gerstenlauer is a dancer and writer based in NYC. Laura Bleiberg is a dance critic for the LA Times and a senior editor at Orange Coast Magazine.

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