Dancewriter manifesto

Our assignment this week from Claudia's class.
I know i said i'd be posting my work, but this is only the second one so far i've felt comfortable posting. I'm working on re-writes of three, and will post [or not] eventually. The assignment for this week was our artist statement/manifesto as dance critics.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Dancewriter manifesto as of 5.13.09 @ 1:56pm // Sarah A.O. Rosner

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Let’s be frank, shall we?

It is not, has never been, and will never be my job to judge, proclaim value, describe the work, say what I would do differently, attempt unbias, pretend authority, project pretension, or suggest omnipotence. I am not a critic, a library, a celebrity guest judge, or a mind reader.

As a dancewriter, a fallible human insider to the dance community and a ravenous creator of my own work, it is my intension to be a transparent and available information source via the written word about captured instances of the body in motion. It is my job to be honest [brutally and tenderly], to provoke, question, and examine. It is my job to relate, connect, and link—pulling ideas, images, and artists through history and across state, media, and/or economic lines to embrace and have at each other. It is my job to expose the urgency of art making, and problematize its current modes of production—artistic, emotional, and economic. It is my job, above all, to love this thing called dance [which we can’t define] with a feral veracity and loquacious ravenousness, and make the consequences and journey of that love transparent to you.

It is my mission to give you, gentle reader, what I have in the form of information, insight, detail, process, and questions. To make you not so gentle by osmosis, to allow you to bear witness to a constant grappling with what I seek out or find in front of me. Economy, society, funding, design, networks, anatomy, typography, choreography, performance, sex, gender, organs, bones, fingernails – I reject the current paradigm of dance criticism, of performance, of and dancemaking, and want to know if you do too.

I will not be ephemeral! I will not be clear! As in my dance work, I reject these notions, and dedicate myself to investigating formats of complexity that remain accessible to all.

////////////Is this making sense to you?///////////////////////////////////////////

What we are here to do, you and I, is to find the new answers, new systems, new media. What we are here to do, is amplify our knowledge and evolve the forms. To accomplish this we need honesty, passionate opinions, and open dialogue. I will thrust myself and my art open to you, oh reader, and you, oh you, will yell back at me. I do not strive for fully-functioning arguments [only interesting ideas], and I am not interested in finding all-encompassing answers [only searching].

The arrival is unimportant, only the gnawing counts.

What is your manifesto as an artist?
What is your manifesto as a reader?

What is your manifesto as a dancer in a piece where you don’t dance?

What is your manifesto as the old man in front of me last night who wanted to leave at intermission but didn’t?

What is your manifesto as Isadora Duncan, as James Bond, as Ronald Regan?

What is your manifesto as the choreographer who is already burning out?

What is your manifesto as the Male Dancer?

What is your manifesto as “I don’t get it”?

What is your manifesto as an emerging artist (fiscal sponsorship pending)?

What is your manifesto now at this yes this very moment? Imperfect? Evolving?

Yes.

I want to know how we collide.

The arrival is unimportant, only the gnawing counts.