For reshearsal this satruday...

To solo or not to solo...

the AOMC's ///NEW!/// Mission Statement

I'm super excited to share this with all of you - it's been through one round of focus groups (ie: a few close friends and family) and now i'm ready to bring it to step two: the Urgent Artist community - the AOMC's supporters and insiders. So here it is: our new mission statement for 2009/2010. As one of my round-one's pointed out, it's a bit more manifesto than mission statement, but I'm very okay with that.

I would love whatever feedback you have - both in terms of how it feels to you as a mission statement/manifesto (ie: does it give you a clear feeling for the company? does it excite you? does it sound like other things you've read? if so, what? etc) and how it feels to you as a human/thinker/fellow artist (ie: do you agree? is it an affront to what you believe art to be? how do you see it fitting in with the current paradigm? etc). We'll have a few weeks before i'll start posting the "final" (ha.) version of it on the website and press kit, so comments are VERY helpful!

Onwards. Unveil!
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Founded in 2006, The A.O. Movement Collective is a home for hard falls, heavy slow dances, and constant evolution - a community of dancers, collaborators, thinkers, and makers who live by their art. The AOMC encompasses my choreographic work and, when joined with blog/community hub Urgent Artist and arts freelancing collective A.O. PRO(+ductions), it is the movement third of a three-entity family that represents a new business model for American dancemaking.

As a dance and new media artist, my main goal is to create evocative reinventions of the human experience – works that investigate the intricacy, wreckage, compassion, and mess inherent in the ways we live our lives. Dances that push you to the edge of your seat, tempt you to tackle someone as you leave the theater, or make you think “well I haven’t thought about him in a long time.” My work is based on an ongoing investigation/love affair with the aesthetics of mess - visual, human, emotional, and all else. The dances that I make are epic, human, and wonderfully too much.

Rather than resigning to the clarity that I believe is now being asked of us as choreographers (so that the dance may be seen, enjoyed, and understood entirely in one viewing), I am investigating work that can retain all of its complexity, vastness, and innate lovely disarray and still offer a rich human accessibility to each viewer. I am interested in making dances that don’t know how to be seen yet, and then creating the programs and modes of thought necessary to support such work.

In short, I am an Anti-Ephemeral PoMo Humanist. As a maker of both live performance and dancefilm, I disregard the notion that dance must be ephemeral. Dance is some approximate concoction of the body doing love or violence to the space around it, muscles and limbs creating meaning or abstraction, and dream-state wanderlust – how dare we assume it to be limited to (or worse, try to confine it to) the live theater experience! It must out-exist us, it must be preserved in a truthful way, or we doom ourselves to eternal obscurity, and thus eternal financial struggle, and thus eternal focus away from all the work that must be done if we are to truly evolve the form. This is a new era of dancemaking – everything, from the creative process to the industry, must be reconsidered.

Therefore, in addition to its creative work, the AOMC is an experiment in the business of dance making. As an arts businessman, I am dedicated to a constant cultivation of the AOMC’s structure as a company model that holistically supports the creative work and lives of all those involved – dancers, creators, audience, and community. The AOMC will not be satisfied pursuing a creative ‘habit’—we are serious and practical about the time commitment necessary for substantial discovery, innovation, and change. Likewise, we understand that striving for change within the arts without considering the broader socio-economic structures in which the community exists is futile. We therefore disregard the notion that art and business must be separate, and are working towards modes of creation that internally support longevity via self-sufficiency.

The A.O. Movement Collective and its members are a family, a think-tank, dancemakers, community leaders, ever-evolving mind-bodies, technology developers, and catalysts: movers and shakers in every sense. We strive to answer questions and question answers by grappling with them kinetically and ideologically, in and on the blogosphere, mind, studio, and stage.

It is an exciting future towards which we extend our toes. Won’t you join us?

And the New Epic is called......

Some pieces (like 2007’s “Haunt”) start with titles. Others weed out the title as they go, eventually letting you know what they want to be called. Others never settle, and get named something that feels eternally not quite right, ever almost there. I know it’s not a big deal, but titles are important to me. They’re branding, they’re expressive, and they’re informational. And (although I’ve been told by many that I need to care less about the audience “getting it”) they’re a chance to communicate something essential about the piece in the language of words.

Which is why I’m so pleased that a title (of sorts) has started to draft up from the depths of our (approaching year-long) work on the AOMC’s new epic. It’s not final, certainly, and I worry that blogging about it might out it too early (when I first told Cristina and Lillie the tentative new title, I whispered it in their ears) and make it less fitting. But it’s time to share it with you. Drum roll please?
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“90 ways to wake from drowning”

What do you think? Do you like it? Hate it? Before I tell you anything, how does it relate to what you’ve seen so far of the piece?

There are many variations (“90 vs. Ninety”, why 90? What about 27?, Wake or wake, Drowning or drowning, Wake/drowning? Drowning/wake?, and also a possible tag at the end of it – “(he knows she is making this piece)”) but however it evolves, title or not, the implication and the idea is there, and it’s really begun to loft the piece for me in an extremely helpful way.

What does it mean: to wake from drowning? It’s a curious phrase, yet one that appeared out of the blue on my tongue feeling normal and old, as if I had been saying it for a while now which, I haven’t. I think it does a great job of encompassing the entirety of all the different aspects of the piece – something I haven’t been able to do yet. To me it speaks to waking from the drowning sensations of dreams of past or future lovers and the different ways to do so – snap out of it heart racing and eyes wide, try to hold on to it as you slip back into reality, push yourself out of it fighting and kicking, go through the day unable to shake it off, part with it mutually, etc. It also speaks to the cyclical/purgatorial nature of the piece – Her arc of a constantly repeating struggle to pass beyond her current fixation/experience/location, and how she seems (at many parts) to be at the surface of “waking” but keeps being pulled back by His undercutting. It speaks to water – the universal symbol or image of sexuality (and memories of an English teacher writing “WATER = SEX, ALWAYS.” on the black board.) It speaks to the idea of multiple levels of consciousness and reality – some more based in reality yet less “real” than others – and His and Her traversal of these boundaries using unconsciousness as a means of transportation and osmosis. There’s something too about the closeness of physical danger to survival – when I say “wake from drowning” am I referencing the self destructiveness of the piece? The car crashes and falls and falls and falls? Maybe it’s the feeling that they’re the only thing that can get Her through the surface. It’s quite sadomasochistic, really: thud enough, and you’ll wake from drowning. Maybe.

Anyway.

It’s all Tom Robbin’s fault, really.

Even before she passed it along to me, my roommate had to keep reading me passages of “Still Life with Woodpecker” out loud. It’s one of those books. I read it as soon as she finished and loved it. The book has many, many things to love about it, but one of the things that I fell in love with was the reoccurring theme in the book of “how to make love stay”, not so much in content, as for its structure glorious structure.

Tom writes:

“Who knows how to make love stay?


Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay.

Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.

Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.”

And that was it.
And I put down the book for a second.
And I smiled and/or frowned
(whatever I do when I’m thinking – you know better than me).
And I said: “Oh. 90 ways to wake from drowning.”

So that’s what we’ve been doing in rehearsal, and that’s what I’ve been doing every night and sometimes on the train. Writing a list of ways to wake from drowning. To say I’m pleased with what’s coming out of that structure is an understatement. It’s perfect. I’m not sure how it incorporates (movement-wise) with the piece yet – the idea was raised that maybe we’ll just write hundreds upon hundreds, and the 90 that are supposed to be a part of the piece (I mean, really supposed to be a part of the piece) will be included in the program, and nothing more. I like that idea. But they may be movement too. Some of them are too good not to be.

Here are a few so far from me that I’ve been happy with (more from the dancers, which are the really amazing ones, soon):

“Push your lover’s face under the surface of the water and realize they aren’t breathing,
just waiting. You will wake from drowning.”

“Let days go by, let water in glasses by the window dry up, forget to water your fichus. You will wake from drowning.”

“Let the cold sweat from the back of your neck press indents into pillows, leaving coffee stains of the him of last week. You will wake from drowning.”

“Pile bile spit lymph fingernails lemon rind in one hand and nipples cold sex sweat and sugar in the other. Rub vigorously, creating an exfoliating agent. Exfoliate. You will wake from drowning.”

“Barter with the drowning on the off chance that it has a consciousness.”

“Purse the word ‘rupture’ on your lips. You will wake from drowning.”

“List reasons why sex, elbows, a brown comforter, a white bed, and sounds of beltway traffic have nothing to do with waking, or drowning. They are, after all, just objects in a room.”

“No. no. no. no. nonononononono, please no. That is how you wake from drowning.”

“Kill cockroaches. You will wake from drowning.”

“Wait until one leg falls asleep. Run through empty wooden houses shouting everything but his name, and occasionally his name. Pull a splinter from your heel and use it as a toothpick. You will wake from drowning.”

We’ll keep writing and posting them (I’m setting it up so my dancers can either blog or tweet them directly via text message) and I thoroughly encourage you to send any you come up with to theAOMC@gmail.com or post them in the comments of this post. We’ll keep you updated, and if any movement comes out of it we’ll post video asap.

But here’s the real question: are you awake, drowning, waking, or sleeping? Or maybe just sleep-walking into that luscious womb, that unconscious, time-travel-allowing void. You know, the one called “oh, it’s on.” We’re here, boys and girls, creating and rehearsing, and the piece is finally arriving.

Split Screen Improv

Intern Kate's first day // a primer in the aesthetics of mess

Today was Kate's first day in the office (ie: my bedroom + desk) working with me! She's totally awesome and efficient, but this isn't news - she danced for me back in 2008 in "D()!L@rS !N tHe B@nK!", so i know she's legit from way back. She offered to do some admin work for the us, and i quickly took her up on her offer - BAMN! that's how it happens!

Anyway. Today i got her started on two of our MegaTasks for the summer: revitalizing the AOMC's facebook presence (ie: making our group into a "page", which is how you're supposed to do it now...adding video, making new "friends", etc) and getting old performances and dancefilms up on vimeo. Have i mentioned how awesome this girl is? She got SO MUCH DONE!

Check it out - they're still both works in process, but we'd love for you to
///Become a FAN!/// of the Collective's facebook page (Urgent Artist facebook page to come soon!) and ///Check out our VIMEO page!///
to see some awesome vintage AOMC stuff. It's far from polished (as it's stuff from the past time and not the now time or the future time) but it's fun to see all we've done in the past three years!

One of the things that getting all this stuff out of archive has made me think about is how my interests as an artist have evolved over the past few years and, more specifically, where those interests first started and where they're headed.

One of the most obvious to me, is the emergence of a fixation with "the aesthetics of mess". Mess is quickly becoming a part of our branding (take our new slogan: "Anti-Ephemeral PoMo Humanism //ie: hot mess.//") and a bigger part of what's important to me aesthetically. Where did it come from? As far as i can tell, i've always been a little fixated. I can remember preferencing imperfection to clarity for much of my childhood and teenage years (okay, maybe it was an angsty thing) and aesthetically, i can remember being attracted to images and displays of mess in art galleries and movies. In terms of my own work, however, it's a little less clear. Where does a fixation like that come from? What is the second that a fixation clicks into existence and begins to grow? Before i go off on a tangent about my fixation with the origin of fixations, let's get back on track: the aesthetics of mess.

During my junior year at Sarah Lawrence College I took my first real film class, and our first assignment was to take a work we had already done and re-make the same idea or theme using a different layout or series of images. I took this piece that i had made the year before:



which was in turn made off of a stage piece called "Five on Love and Lack Thereof" and re-did it in a bathroom setting. This is what the final result (my first time editing on final cut) looked like:



While i didn't find it hugely successful (at the then time or in the now time) for a few reasons (mainly lack of experience), it did spark a few things in me. The main sparkage, of course being mess. But what kind of mess? I'm a structuralist at heart, so even mess is organized in the way i think about it.

What kind indeed. White mess, lots of white mess. Specifically: an aesthetic attraction to large quantities of white pedestrian items used in ways that generate a large amount of mess, disorder, etc. SO. When it came time for our final products at the end of the film class, i knew what i wanted.

It's much simpler to connect the dots in hindsight (i wasn't aware at the time) but the White Arias Project is a clear descendant of this original film. Made of two separate films (although there was a third milk-based film in the works) "Eggshells" and "Flour" both hold a special place in my heart. I can't show you Eggshells, much as i'd like to, at the request of the semi-nude dancers who performed it, but here's Flour:



So. Clear, right? In hindsight. But!
Looking towards the future time:




Do you see where it's going!?!
It's so nice to discover a context to give oneself mid-process, and so exciting to imagine adding a new voice to the mess-dialogue happening between my works!

Which is all of course to say: Kate is an AWESOME intern for posting all of this so i can share it with you! Look for a post from her soon!

From Rehearsal 7/3 @ Soundance

"i bloom so lonely"

Yes folks, it's semi-official.
What once was "Glass Tree" is getting over-hauled and re-worked and will now be (the/ilona's/a) "Bloomcycle".

Why?
For starters, "glass tree" was an idea and image that was, to me, very specific to Julia. Since she's no longer dancing it, I needed to mentally shift it before a choreographic re-envisioning could be made. This is, you'll remember, the section that once was Julia dancing 30 short phrases with a plastic bag (cut off by her injury), which was genesis for the SIDEsubTEN project (cut off by inexperienced planning on my part). With all that bad karma (silly as it sounds, it really starts to weigh you down if you don't address it) I felt a need to re-examine and redefine it if we were going to keep it in the piece.

Not that this is a bad instinct for any section - we've been doing it organically for all the sections, and this one just got dusty because we left it under the bed for so long. So yes - time to redefine.

For starters, i want to give it more of a contrast between the lightness (almost unapparent in the first version) and more breadth spatially. I'm also playing with ideas about involving the whole group into it (either as to-be-thrown-bag suppliers or as movers) and really focusing on what it means that it's the last "spot of time" that She attempts to show Him, and how it can or can't function as the end of the piece or transition to that end. Also, with Ilona dancing it (for now) and Ilona being Her (for now), there are certainly questions bubbling up about how that changes both it's positioning within the piece, and the movement itself. So that's a lot.

Why "bloomcycle"?
Well...i was looking through an old notebook trying to figure out what to do with the material we'd made, looking for things we'd moved on from or forgotten, and i came across this:

"Bloomcycles" and further down the page "i bloom so lonely"

both of those kind of stuck with me, despite the fact that i have NO recollection of why i wrote them down, though i can recall the rehearsal, place i was sitting, and people who were there. I think it fits with what that section is aiming for - She (and bear with me, becuase this is new, as of Ilona being cast as Her) is finally exploding, or blooming, or wilting, or even just saying something, even if it's just a whisper. She's finally using her own voice, rather than speaking through these other metaphors, and it's directly about her state - the conflict of feeling okay, feeling progress, feeling some semblance of power, and then also being continually undercut, getting more and more frustrated, feeling less and less progress. So the idea that blooming could be lonely, that fits. And the idea of it being a cycle points to the possibility of involving other dancers, and the notion that becuase of the undercutting, her evolution is cyclical. And then of course there's Leopold Bloom, and he fits with everything.

Maybe i'm christening this a bloomcycle to see where he leads it - he's always taking me somewhere interesting.

Happy New Year!

Here, on this cold 2009 morning, i present to you what we're going to change in 2009.
Or, perhaps more precisely, that we will change in 2009, but need money to do so.

I was at the Amanda Palmer show last night (till oh...5:45 am...) to ring in the new year and she said something along the lines of: "this year it's different, because there's this great weird atmosphere in the air. People everywhere have had such a horrible year, but they're excited. It's not often that those two things happen at the same time."

Please consider starting the year off right and supporting the A.O. Movement Collective!

the AOMC's Fundraising Mail Campaign, Winter 2008

First off, an explanation of the proliferation of posts: i'm on vacation, and finally have time to pick up some of the things i love doing, such as this, that i usually don't have time for. Don't be overwhelmed, take your time. I think they're worth reading though, so i'm hoping the quantity doesn't discourage you. More rehearsal videos to come after the break.

So i wanted to do a short post (before i run to catch my bus to DC) on the AOMC's fundraising status, as we've just sent out our first big mail campaign for the season.

In past mail campaigns (2006 and 2007 respectively) we've raised $3,125 (36 donors) and $2,400 (29 donors) The second season we were worried that there would be less donations due to a number of factors, the primary one being more donations in the first year from family/friends who wanted to help me start, but didn't plan on being regular donors. However, while this trend proved true, we were nonetheless pleasantly surprised by the campaign's return. I would LOVE for this season to return to the high 30's donor range. This season, there are a few big factors that make me very nervous about what we'll earn. However each has a counterpoint:

1. Horrible Economy. Point: Hard times for everyone, all different types of donors are feeling the pull, state support dwindling, etc. Counterpoint: with a bad economy, many private donors feel responsible for supporting the arts. Additionally, the arts have always been poor. We know how to function with very little money, so we're a good investment in a down economy.

2. Timing. The jury is still out on this one, but i keep going back and forth on whether the proximity to xmas/new years will help or hurt. Point: people have just spent a lot of money and are now trying to save. Counterpoint: xmas spirit breeds generosity and charity, plus people are trying to get in their tax-deductible donations before the new year.

3. Location. Point: What incentive does our donor base (mainly MD and DC residents) have to support a company that is now located in NY? Also, the NY dance world is completely different from DC's, and i feel very unsure about what to expect in terms of NY donors. Counterpoint: Hopefully, we'll get some of that "just starting out" support again, since it's our first NY season. Additionally, though it won't help for this season, we'll hopefully be developing a strong constituency of NY donors this season who will end up being our main supporters and repeat donors in the future.

4. Donor Profiles. Point: most of our "community" in terms of potential donors are artists and/or students. Young, less likely to donate. More likely to think that "it's not their place or prerogative" and to leave it up to "the people who have money" who in turn leave it up to "the people who really care about that sort of thing", who have no money to donate. Counterpoint: none really, other than increased effort to fundraise among students and artists.

So.

In past years, we’ve only sent out one letter to all of our mailing list. This year, however, I felt that we had really reached a point where we needed to craft two different messages: one for those who had previously donated to the AOMC (and thus knew about the company’s history and mission) and one for people who hadn’t donated before, both long time viewers and new members of our community. I wanted to be able to thank those who had gotten us so far already, and at the same time be able to deliver a slightly more action oriented message to potential donors, most of whom are our age and artists. I therefore sent out two letters - same general idea with a few differences. Here they are (click on the pics for a more readable size):

Main Fundraiser Letter

Previous Donor Fundraiser Letter

And then here's the donation form that was included in each mailing (with a pre-addressed stamped return envelope)


In addition to the two letters, we've also upped the effort in our approach to online fundraising. I'll of course post some information here about how to donate, and we've also sent a message to our facebook group and are in the process of adding the "how to donate" message to our youtube and dance-tech.net profiles. Additionally, a new AOMC newsletter will go out within the next week or so with the lead story being our fundraising campaign. While we're not quite done (and have yet to receive the DTW go ahead) with the newsletter text and the blog text, here's our language for the online sites. Each is a little different, but you get the idea. Here's facebook:

"All of us at the A.O. Movement Collective love that you're supporting our work by keeping in touch with us digitally! We want to keep bringing you innovative and exciting projects, and the number one thing you can do to make that a reality is to make a contribution - right here right now! We know that our supporters are students, artists, and revolutionaries - people who don't have wads of money to throw around - but think about this: if every member of this group donated just $10 (less than seeing a movie, proposing to your partner, or buying a new pair of jeans), we would have enough to self-produce an ENTIRE SHOW next year!

All you have to do is GO TO THIS SITE

https://dnbweb1.blackbaud.com/OPXDONATE/donate.asp?cguid=98B0A09F%2D9D5A%2D4653%2D9079%2D9CCCD7EB6251&dpid=7503

and specify in the form that you want to donate to SARAH A.O. ROSNER on the drop down menu. To donate by mail, and for more information on how we use donations, check out our website. It's tax deductible* and can officially be considered your "good deed", "act of charity", or "protest against lack of arts funding" for the week! Also, we'll be eternally grateful.

*Sarah A.O. Rosner is a member artist of Dance Theater Workshop, Inc., a non-profit tax-exempt organization. Contributions in support of Rosner's work are greatly appreciated and may be made payable to Dance Theater Workshop, Inc., earmarked for "the Dance Theater Workshop member project of Sarah A.O. Rosner." A description of the work and current project activities for which such contributions will be used are available from Rosner or Dance Theater Workshop, upon request. All contributions are fully deductible to the extent allowed by law. (Note: A copy of Dance Theater Workshop's latest annual financial report filed with the New York State Department of State may be obtained by writing to the N.Y.S. Dept. of State, Charities Registration, 162 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY, 12231, or to Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, New York, NY, 10011)"

As i mentioned in the last fundraising post, my reason for posting all this information (which, i've been reminded by some, is more valuable if i keep it my business secret) is that i understand how immensely helpful it was for me to have something to go off of when i started working on my first one. With each letter i feel that i've been able to make some vast improvements (both in terms of language and design), and i understand that there's always room to improve. I welcome any comments or insights about what works for you and what doesn't. Additionally, if you have a recent fundraising approach or letter you'd like to add to the conversation, please feel free to post it, or send to me.

I've just started receiving mail donations, so i'll keep you updated on how this campaign goes, and all the details of what we raise. Fingers crossed!