Bearnstow 2010 - Day 2

So much happened yesterday that I scarcely think I will get to it all in this little post. First of all - and this is pretty insignificant, or at least I think it is now - the rain started. It eventually let up in time for afternoon swims in the lake, but returned with a vengeance around 10pm. I guess this what Maine is like in the summer.

The morning session was great. We ran through some time honored improvisational warm-ups - follow the leader, mirroring, voice warmups, tongue twisters. We created a sound score based on Monday's writing exercise and from there chose an animal to go along with the sound of the words. Then we paired up and performed duets in an A-B-A structure, using overlapping transitions to connect our solos. I enjoy pairing up and creating duets. The performance of my own material quickly ratchets up when joined with someone else - especially someone with whom I am just beginning to know.

The afternoon session was intense and somewhat intimidating for me. Claire started the second session by announcing that we will be receiving a "present." "Rashana will perform for us." This was not a surprise to me. I asked her if I could show my work and receive feedback. I just didn't expect the word "present" to be associated with my showing. Don't get me wrong - I had something I wanted to offer. I just hoped the viewers would enjoying receiving such a "present."

The reaction to Bear Traps and Other Impressions was completely different than I had experienced. Not a peep out of the eleven observers. The lodge that I performed in was the most intimate of spaces. When I revealed my legs during the last half of my solo, they saw every mosquito bite, bruise and scar. During my performance I peered at them, they peered back. They were definitely watching my solo with critical eyes. I am in fact the youngest attendee at this workshop. My audience has a wealth of experience at watching dance. I didn't expect otherwise, however, during my performance I wondered what I was thinking by revealing so much of myself. Talk about vulnerability.

The feedback:

Claire saw a lot of grief. (I think the crying was more profound in this particular performance space - people commented on it a lot.) She thought some of my vocalization seemed forced and she wasn't sure why I sang. We talked about changing the treatment of my humming. She enjoyed the weightiness of my movement and wanted to see more. She felt like the solo was a psychological exploration.

Liz Keen offered some suggestions of changing the sequence of events, for example starting the piece already in movement. Vicki Angel (also an OSU alum) wanted to see more of each snippet. To her, I just piqued her interest before moving on. I received this comment last spring as well, but like last spring there were others who enjoyed just seeing snippets. Soooo - whatya do? Linn Schlaifer suggested I make it longer. I bemoaned making a solo that was longer than 5-6 minutes and she questioned why. Perhaps I'm not confident yet. Or maybe it depends on the venue. The whole group engaged in a discussion about the title. Due to the heavier interpretation of the solo, I received more serious title suggestions like Mine Fields or Mind Fields. All things to consider. All in all, the "present" at the beginning of the afternoon session was really a gift to me.

After taking up part of class (which admittedly I felt a little bad about), we continued our work with combining words with movement, overlapping transitions and giving/receiving more feedback. Before dinner I spoke with Claire about creating, managing and promoting a solo career. I have a few more ideas about how my MFA project can feed into my work after graduation. The conversation was extremely helpful and useful - yet another gift.

The day finished up beautifully with a spectacular meal - thai fish stew followed by a light and tasty lemon bundt cake. Looking around the table I wondered if I was in the midst of a kind of family reunion. Granted I didn't know these people before arriving at Bearnstow, but I definitely felt like we came from the same stock. Eh, or maybe it was the wine. In any case, it was nice. Also, Olivia, Claire, Liz, Judith and I ended our evening watching episode one of the latest season of Project Runway. So entertaining!

Bearnstow 2010 - Day 1

Good morning Parker Pond! (This is what I see in the morning.)

Today we worked on Theme, Content, Structure. Claire gave wonderfully useful directives and limitations. We shared our phrases with each other, learned each other's phrases and gave titles to what we saw - one that I might consider using is: Down the Other Street.

Shortly before lunch we were invited to peruse Claire's books. The following are books that I would like to have for myself:

"Action Theatre"

"Acting Games"

"Theatre Games"

"The Art of Comedy"

I had a relaxing nap by the lake (well, they call it a pond) while my feet dangled in the water. Heaven! And then it was back to afternoon class.

What do I want to work on Claire asks. Writing several short (very short) stories and creating work from them. I suppose my theme is Memory. From a particular memory I drew these lines. They were spoken by other dancers as I moved:

She tossed the clean sheets over the hyper chickens.

He told me to move on and then he kissed my hand.

He kissed my hand.

He kissed my hand.

He kissed my hand.

I kissed his hand.

This came from a dream about Woody a couple of months before his passing. Obviously I have a lot of work to do, but this was the first thing to come to mind.

Another highlight of the day - talking to Vicki about taking performances into schools. She is involved in a program that takes Bill T. Jones' Ghost Catcher into schools. I read about this earlier this year and was intrigued. Now I'm in a workshop with one of the people making it happen. I need to find more time to talk with her this week!

One last thing - I asked Claire if I could show her my solo, Bear Traps and Other Impressions. She said absolutely! I show tomorrow before the afternoon session. I'm looking forward to it!

Time to slip under three blankets to prepare for a cold evening/morning. I froze last night! (But I secretly loved it.)

Bearnstow 2010

I managed to make it to Bearnstow! Two beautiful days of driving and I'm here! There are ten of us taking the workshop and of course Claire Porter leading us. I've enjoyed meeting everyone and getting settled. Each day I'm adding a little reading from Terry Barrett's class. And how fortunate that today I chose the preface to Kitchen Table Wisdom.

At the onset of writing her book, Rachel Naomi Remen was asked by her editor to write an outline. (Remen was unsuccessful with the outline, but successful at putting my mind at rest when it comes to knowing what will come out of this week.)

“What is the book about?” she asked.

I did not know.

“Rachel,” she said. “When you meet a new counseling patient, surely you identify their problem, decide what to do and in what order you need to do it, and make a plan, don’t you?”

I had felt exposed.

“No,” I said. “I don’t know what people need to do or who they need to become. When I first meet with someone, I have no idea where we are going, and where we end up is usually a surprise to us both.”

She sat back in dismay. “Then how do you get quality outcomes?” she asked.

“I just follow the natural process of things."

So that's what I'm going to do....

Summer of Wheels

This summer I'm training a little differently. Cycling and roller derby. It's all about the wheels!

Summer Time!

It's been a year since I drove into Columbus - July 4, 2009. It's been an incredibly intense year and now I must admit, I'm really happy that it's summer. While I still have school work and work at the Wexner Center, I'm pleased to have more time at home. David and I are getting to know each other again. We walked to Whetstone Park Sunday to watch fireworks. They were over fast, but they were beautiful. Fifteen-minute fireworks. Sixty minute round trip walk. Invaluable time with the hubbie.

We started clearing out the front yard. This is something I put off doing until I had weekend mornings to devote. Since it's hot out now, I only work in the morning and try my best to stay in the shade. David doesn't seem to mind working in the hot afternoon sun. Right now I'm trying to come up with some kind of analogy to give you a good idea of how much sweat David produces. Horses, pigs... Anyway, I digress. We're finding a lot of plants we didn't know existed underneath all the ornamental grass. This poor yard has been neglected for so many years. It's obvious that at one time the landscaping was quite stunning, however that was several owners ago. So sad. It's hard for David and I to continue living in this house without taking care of the front yard properly. I don't care if it is a rental. Now, if I can only convince our landlord to purchase some mulch....

The other, non-academic noteworthy development is my acceptance into the Ohio Roller Girls Derby team. I'll have more on that later. Tomorrow is my orientation. We're meeting at a bar in German Village. I'm looking forward to working out three times a week with these women. They're sooo going to kick my rear-end.

Media in Performance Overview

I'm in the process of looking over my Media in Performance class notes, videos and just generally reviewing. Blogging actually helps! You can click on the images if you really want to read my notes.

During the first couple of classes we talked about our experiences with media in performances - what we liked and what we didn't. I talked about working with Lifeforms in the mid-nineties and how for me it was more about coming up with choreographic ideas rather than projecting it during a performance. It was my first taste with integrating software into the choreographic process. My fascination with video editing and animation is ever-present, however Lifeforms is a distant blip on my choreographic EKG.

I enjoyed reading "Saturday." Above are some of my notes. I felt it useful to transcribe some entries that denoted time for me. I'd like to read it again this summer when I have to time to actually savor it! Another reading that was particularly useful and one I will revisit many times I'm sure is Ann Bogart's "A Director Prepares." I wrote about this earlier during the quarter. Here's a quick link to that entry: http://rashanaworks.blogspot.com/2010/05/quick-note-from-reading-1.html. An additional thing I will say about directing - I feel like I move slowly. I want to think it's me trying to be patient, but I'm not quite sure about that. I was a bit frustrated during this process. I couldn't always find the right words for Joda. Some metaphors worked and others did not. I need a directing class. Naturally, I would have loved more rehearsal time.

To the left are notes from our first study. Alexis Del Sol, Joda Lee and I had the task of creating work that utilized a computer monitor (or TV screen). This was particularly challenging. With a projector you have more choices about what to project the images on. With a monitor - that's it. That's your surface. Further, there were some discrepancies about whether we were supposed to use the large TV screen connected to a big tower, a laptop, or smaller computer monitor. I went ahead and used the large TV screen just to make things a little more difficult for myself. Once in place, I couldn't move (what I like to call) the Tower of Technology.

It was heavy and clunky and of course, full of wires. On the other hand, it made me think about the content of the video and the integration of movement by Joda Lee, my dancer for the study. The study was only two minutes. For something so short, I still think I could work more on this without going over two minutes. I wanted more time to direct Joda and investigate more movement options. Time continues to be problematic throughout the quarter. (How interesting that we would start the quarter reading about time!)

Something positive that continued to come up for me during the quarter - video examination. I have elements of Joda examining the video of himself in the first study, of him videotaping himself, of him responding to seeing himself, etc. I have also been examining videos, literally picking them apart - not only for this class, but also for the "Theories of the Body" class. For my final paper in that class, I took three videos and examined camera angles and framing, timing and pacing, and sound in order to determine the motives or intensions for the videos. I'm completely fascinated about how sound can completely alter our "gaze." I just scratched the surface on this idea, but I will be diving into it a lot more this summer during an independent study project.

I found it useful to draw out the space for our final project. I still wish I would have used the space differently, but I felt like, for the purpose of a 12 minute piece that needed to accommodate all three of our pieces, we did okay. At one point there were layers of projections through screens that I really liked, but the logistics of moving those screens for other sections of our final project seemed to overrule the necessity of the layers. I was and still am incredibly intrigued with projecting small images onto objects (or large images onto small objects), however, I would like to do it in an installation environment instead of a traditionally laid out stage space. If anything, this final project gave me more ideas about collaborating with other artists to actually create objects for which to project from and onto.

Below are technical notes for the final showing. I ran lights for Mair, Tiffeny and Kristen. On the left are the notes for those cues. I really enjoyed working with light. I want to do more! I especially think this is important when there's projection on stage. I appreciated Shawn Hove's lighting suggestions - it's amazing how much (light) bounce you can get from white scrims. Too bad I didn't use them.

On the right, are Isadora notes for my group's work. I would have enjoyed working more with Isadora and I definitely can see myself doing this. It's not even a question of "if" - it's "when". Luckily Isadora has great tutorials, so maybe I can work on my own. Shawn mentioned getting Isadora in the media lab. I really hope so! That could be a great class all on its own.

Finally, here are the feedback notes I took after our first showing of our last project. Bebe, as usual, brought up some great questions. I just can't help wondering what this process would have been like if all of us weren't so overcommitted this quarter. Nevertheless, this project was shown and the class is over. I'll see where all this video, projection, lighting, and Isadora-ing will take me next. Or rather, I'll see where I take video, projection, lighting and Isadora!

Pile Up - The Last Show of the School Year!

Pile Up is the last show this quarter, this school year. Don't miss it! Dante's Chalk Boundaries will be shown again, but augmented to fit the space of Studio One. (I'm performing in this one too. Fun stuff!) Maree ReMalia's and Abby Zbikowski's work will also be shown. I can't wait to see what they've been working on. This showing holds great promise! Make it out tonight for one last hurrah!

See you at 7pm, Sullivant Hall - Studio One - on the OSU campus (High and 15th Street).

Poster credit - Erik Abbott-Main