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.

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.

A conversation:

"Have you found what you're looking for? Have you made sense of it?
(pause) Do you have an answer? A conclusion?"

"Not yet."

"Do you need to go back? See it all again?"

"Yes."


(and later)


"Why can't i see the real thing?"

"Because it's not yours. It doesn't exist any more."

"Then what am i seeing? Why am i stuck here?"

"Look again."

Crash Crash Crash! Live in Cinemascope!

So i've finally gotten it online! Sorry for the glitchy beginning (i had edited it out, but somehow uploaded this one...) but i can't wait any longer - i have to SHARE!

Here's the vid from our April 12th performance at DanceNOW[nyc]'s RAW festival! Check it out and TELL! US! WHAT! YOU! THINK!


13 Variations on a Car Crash - live performance version from Sarah A.O. Rosner on Vimeo.

You can just post about what you saw, what it made you think or feel, or you can check out the questions we posted if you want to respond to something more specific. Remember, there's no wrong way to see it, no wrong thing to take from it. Feedback on a new work is always immensely helpful, especially while it's still in process. It also just feels good to know that someone's out there on the other side of the 4th wall - sometimes a piece spends so long in the studio or in your head that it's hard to take it out of that context and think about the people who will be seeing it. And if you've got something to say but are shy about posting it publicly, you can always email us at theAOMC@gmail.com

We'll be showing a newer version of this (with an added three minutes from the section that leads into it at the beginning) when we perform with CrossCurrents Dance Company at the Dance Place in DC at the end of May, so all you DCers, put it on your calendars and tell all your friends! It's actually really nice to look forward to performing this again - it's become quite a baby of mine.

That being said, c o m m e n t a w a y !

Call for collaborators: SIDEsubTEN

Here's an email i just sent out to some of the artsy folk in my life. Consider yourself invited! Send submissions to SRosner@gm.slc.edu

Hi Friends!
i hope you are all enjoying the feels-like-spring weather!
I am in the process of recruiting a team of ten artists to each take part creating a side project that i'm working on (thus the SIDE and the TEN part), and emailing you because you were on my mind as a possible collaborator!
I know that all of you are busy busy creators, but check this out and see if it's something you'd be interested in - i think it would be a lot of fun!

Here's the deal:
I'm working with the lovely Julia PT in creating a beautiful plastic-bag-tossing solo that is the end section of the new piece i'm working on.
We have about forty separate phrases of movement, each ranging from one to five seconds in length (so a lot of little clips).
We are arranging them in a certain way for our version of the piece, but are excited by the simplicity of the structure, and want to use this as an opportunity to engage other artists. I am excited by this idea of having the solo in the piece as is, and then also having ten other versions of it. These versions, which would not be included in my piece, would act as a sub-layer (subvisc, if you speak my language - that would be the "sub" part) of information to the solo - a group of interpretations of one set of ideas that could be shown separately as just these eleven works (mine plus the ten of yours). I'm really excited by this idea, and see options in front of us like a gallery showing or a web-centric-gallery where we could show all eleven.
SO.
We'd like to invite you to take the forty phrases that we have, use as many or as few as you want, and make your own work out of it. Ours is a movement/film version, but we're excited to integrate as many different mediums and media as possible - drawing, music, painting, sculpture, dance-tech, film, writing, dance, theater, photography, and all the lovely things that i'm not even thinking of yet. All you ask is that you use our raw material as a starting point to make your own related-but-original work. The options are literally limitless. Come in to the studio with us, "capture" our phrases in any way you want, and then go to town. All we ask is that you make the final projects available for a joint showing/showings!

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in (or even just hearing a little more about) email me and give me a general idea of what you'd like to do - just the general medium(s) and any ideas that might be popping up - don't worry, i won't hold you to them. At this point, i think ten sounds like a manageable number, so we'll see what the response is like. If we get way over ten, we'll figure out some application, but for the time being, just email me to voice interest.

Also, feel free to pass this on to friends and artists you think might be interested.
We can't wait to work with you!

Best, Sarah A.O.

Hope that starts the ideas pinging...let me know if you have any questions!

As promised...

As promised, here are the two full videos of mine and Lillie's final improvs for the day.

These came as a result of going back and forth watching each other's improvisations, picking out things that worked and didn't work, and then going again.





We also spent some time looking at specific guitar stances from the Red Hot Chili Peppers's "Can't Stop" video (an all-time favorite of mine), which i've also added below. If anyone else has any favorites, feel free to post a link in the comments section!

Webvid 3 - Studio Time @ Topaz Arts

Hey all,
Here's the latest - sorry it took a while to get up - something was afloat with youtube, so this is posted on blip.tv. Anyway.
I'm still feeling out what's the best format and approach for showing this footage, so if you have an opinion about what you'd like to see (voice overs v. just pure footage, evolutions v. final products, etc.) please let me know!

Jonathan got some great footage yesterday from our two group rehearsals; i'll try to have it up by tomorrow!

Update on New Work

So in between the videos i thought it might be helpful (for me and for you) to verbalize some of what I'm working on for this new piece. I'm going with a tentative working title (...maybe...) of "over again". Although "Remote control" and "Clutch Clutch"would also be options.

We've had two group rehearsals (although, in true form we've yet to have a rehearsal with the whole cast at the same time...) and I've had five or six studio times to work on material. Needless to say, it's just starting out, and nowhere near gelling into some cohesive gloop yet.

But there are certain truths that have revealed themselves to me so far, as well as specific questions that i'm starting to investigate. I kind of see all the ideas and questions i have right now as fitting on a series of continuums or spectra. One of theses spectra starts as pure art-for-the-sake-of-art creative investigative questions and ends at pure dollar sign economic questions about the business of running my company and producing this piece. Within that spectrum lies a more specific dance-making spectrum of questions and ideas, ranging from the purely visceral to the purely subvisceral (having to do with the information and ideas related to the movement, but outside of the body). The third continuum is altogether separate, and slides between the pure-movement end and the tech/video/programing end.
Which is all just to say: I have many questions and ideas right now. This is how they look in my head so I don't go crazy.

One of the biggest revelations that i've had while working on the piece is a deeper understanding of where this specific movement vocabulary (or at least, one of them - what i'm referring to as "lush") is coming from. Larissa (who i first worked with in "the What's Left Over After") sent me some great questions (as she always does) after our first rehearsal, one of them being a basic "why me for this piece/role". As i've been working more and more during my studio times, I've realized that much of this movement comes from a melding of mine and Larissa's impulses. While it's not the first time that i've been in a great relationship of making dances "for" a dancer - specifically with them in mind - I think it's less common than I would like to believe. I always make movement with my dancers in mind - trying to fit their bodies and keep them engaged and interested, i think it takes some working with each individual to really understand how they move enough to be making for their body through your body when you're alone in the studio. Maybe the best way to describe it is the difference between being really good at knowing what someone would say and actually being so inside their head that you both say the same thing at the same time, but don't find it at all out of the ordinary. So that's exciting. And from here i'm looking forward to the point which we break apart again, and both surprise each other with what we do.

Since i mentioned the "spectrum thinking" that i've been using lately (...this morning...) I'll talk about the other side of realizing i'm really in tune with Larissa's moving - I'm stuck on Ollie and Nick. Being the two "newest" to work with in that i've never made work for them (as I have for Cavin, Lillie, Larissa, and Laurel) and never danced for or with them in a piece (as I have Christina and Julia), i'm a little out of touch with who they are, and uncomfortably so. I'm having my first small group rehearsal tomorrow and focusing on the Cavin/Nick Larissa/Oliver duets, so hopefully that will give me some time to get into their bodies a little more, but I'm also wondering how much of my ignorance in terms of what to make for them is their maleness. In addition to Nick and Ollie, I've also found two more male dancers who are interested in being a part of the piece (who i'll be meeting with and deciding on within the next week or so...) who i'll know even less - i've at least known Nick and Ollie as friends and gotten to see them move as humans and fellow dancepartiers for about a year.

I generally LOVE making movement for men, but for a few reasons making for this piece and these men is hard for me. I hesitate to generalize or present some over-masculinized or flat stereotype of "maleness" in the movement that I make for them (at this point i'm even somewhat internally conflicted about doing a piece that divides so neatly into "male" and "female", even though that's not a new thing for me), and yet at the same time, the piece is about my specific relationship to a male person, portrayed through these series of duets. Yet at the same time, he wasn't even stereotypically male. Yet it's important to me that there is a distinction between the male and female movement because at some level, the piece is about the end product of how the inherent differences in how men and women communicate and think. And yet.
So that's a big one for me right now. The mens.

Another big question is how much to "stay true" to my instincts and ideas, and how much to really listen to the feedback that i'm getting from myself, the dance world around me, and on past work. It's clearly always a balancing act, but it always needs to be re-negotiated. I got really freaked out after the first DTW meet and greet cocktail party really realizing for the first time what Ashley was going through last year - that, yes, it's incredibly intimidating to feel like "The Dance World" is watching closely to see what you'll make. Kind of the same way, i've been meeting more and more people who "read my blog" which is always hugely flattering and exciting, and a little bit terrifying. The world is watching. Who knew? I did. Or maybe I didn't...

Anyway. Part of the fear is that I'm a narrative choreographer. Yes i'm interested in the movement, but not for the sake of it just being movement. I'm interested in what it says and why it happened, and everything that it might convey in a personal, historical, or social context. As long as i've been making dances, it's been the "story" first (or the images, relationships, etc.) and the movement to convey or explore it second. Which is not to say that the movement itself isn't at the heart of my work - i'm a firm believer in the idea that the movement we do can tell us more about what we're feeling than we could ever intellectualize or verbalize or tell. It's just that narrative is so out of style right now - so many choreogrpahers working to deconstruct the limits of narrative work and so many critics just beginning to speak that language - that i hold fear that the work will be dismissed as "young" just because it's telling a story. Which it might be. Because I am. But my belief is that the work is strong (or...you know...will be) and that the use of narrative is a choice and viewpoint rather than a fallback or lack of innovation.

Over drinks with ashley a few weeks ago, I confided that "i don't know if i'm revolutionary enough for new york modern dance" - a statement that she prompted me to really take some time to think about and work through. After seeing two "fall for dance" shows at city center as well as a handful of other work, and doing a good bit of searching online, i'm ready to amend that statement. All of NY modern postmodern dance isn't revolutionary. It isn't all new. And that's okay. My obsession and instinct (regardless if i ever succeed in in) is to make new after new piece. I don't want to see the same thing over and over again. So it's easy for me to fall into this trap of thinking that i'm not "new" enough, because it's a standard that i'm holding myself to. For now, i'm trying to concentrate on making exactly what i want to make and holding myself to that standard - really being 100% satisfied.

I am sharing a lot more of this process than i ever have before - posting all these videos and such. So. Ask me questions. What do you want to know about the process? About what we're making? About the work? About our business practices? I'm hoping to do some website updating soon, and that will have all our new writing up there, but in the meantime, let's keep talking. Hope this was interesting for you to read - it helped me organize my continuums a little.

WebVid1 - StudioTime at Chez Bushwick

The Hypermedia archiving process is back up and running!

Since we'll be filming all the rehearsals and studio times (Jonathan Stromberg is joining the collective as our new cameraman) like we did for "The What's Left Over After", I'm going to try to post a little video for each one. Super rough edit - just so you can start to know some of the movement we're working with. Enjoy!

New Project + good news

So, for those of you that read this blog who don't know me, some exciting news:
I've been selected as a Van Lier Fellow* for Dance Theater Workshop's 2008/2009 season!

I was nominated at the beginning of the summer (along with a good friend and fellow artist) and spent the summer working out an application. DTW asked each school participating in their college partnership program to nominate two dancers that had just graduated, and out of those 16, my friend and I were both lucky enough to be asked in for interviews (along with two other dancers out of the sixteen). In the end, it was narrowed down to two, one being myself! (a later post on the grossness of having to battle between friends like that, and that feeling of getting it).

The fellowship includes:
100 hours of studio time at Topaz Arts in Queens
a paid internship at DTW (which i'll be doing feb-august of next year)
a mentor (yet to be decided) who i'll meet with 12 times throughout the internship
workshops on grant writing, life as a dancer etc.
discussion groups with other DTW artists
and free tickets to DTW's entire season!

This is obviously a * HUGE * deal for me, and honestly hasn't even really sunken in. Suffice it to say, it feels like all the work that i've put in for the last four years has really been recognized. To have DTW say that they're excited about what i'm doing is probably the most exciting part of the whole thing. It feels damn good.

In my proposal for the fellowship, i detailed both the dance and hypermedia work that i've been doing (and sharing with you, ferocious reader). As part of the proposal, i noted that i would be chronicling the work that the project entailed here, on the Urgent Artist. So, you're in for a new project that's both interested in movement making and hypermedia theorizing/actualizing.

Here's the just of the proposal:
- make a piece using the same basic structure of "spots of time" that i used in my piece-before-last, "the What's Left Over After". The idea of the "spot of time" is Wordsworthian, but i came across it through Joyce, in the way that he uses it in Ulysses. The idea is basically that there's a single event (the one that sticks out for me in Ulysses is Bloom and Molly's tryst in the countryside with the seedcake...god what a scene) that multiple characters orbit around - somehow stuck on what occurred (each noticing different parts and taking different impressions). I really like the idea of making these little events, and really getting them the way i want them - crafting a "reality" for the "characters" in the dance. Then, once these self-contained "spots" are set in stone, the piece is choreographed by decaying and interconnecting the spots - taking the event of the spot, and showing it from multiple viewpoints and memories, as well as giving it a context beside the other spots that are occurring. So. What i'm doing for the fellowship is just making these spots. Really taking the time to get them right. Ideas for spots so far include: "13 variations on a car crash", "glassbox", "headphones for lillie", "the timeline", "Him and Her", "catalog of dreams i've had since", "you fucker, you punched me in the throat", "sugarcubism at the Picaso museum", and "drunk woman song". I definitely won't end up using all of them. It's just a starting point.

- I'm also invoking hypermedia yet again. After all this non-embodied theorizing, it's high time i get back in the studio with it. So i'll be filming every rehearsal, just like last time. I want to look especially at how hypermedia (and film footage of everything) is helpful to me as a choreographer - actually, how it can evolve me and restructure the dance-making - as well as if it can be helpful to the dancers in a parallel way. I've also asked a technologist friend if he wants to sign on to the project and play with "artifacting" our makings, but i'm waiting to hear back if he's available.

So those are the two main points. And that i'll be blogging about it all the way. With you. I hope you're excited for this! Or maybe just waiting and seeing. That's okay too.

So to end, here are some things that I want to explore in the piece itself:
- using an understanding of video editing/FCP mindset to make movement (especially playing with slow/superfast motion and with retrograding but with that re-wound look)
- visual art component (in the last piece it was the letters, i'm seeing red string and plywood sheets for this one...)
- as always, hard falls
- the way a bird looks when it flies one direction, then all of a sudden has to change to a different direction
- partnering-heavy duets, some of them using sexual actions (like kissing, not a whole lot more, don't worry...that's another project) as movement
- ideas from Chuck Palahniuk's "Rant" (which i HIGHLY recommend)
- brief, exact, drunk unison
- images from specific dreams i've been having
- cubism as a structure for editing and re-working movement

So that's that.
As ALWAYS, would love to hear any ideas and/or responses! I'm in the process of looking for music still (not even for the final project - just to get me thinking), and one more male dancer. If you know where i can find either, give me a holler.

More to come!
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* The Van Lier Fellowship is a program of Dance Theater Workshop and is supported with funds from the Van Lier Fund of the New York Community Trust