My original list of concepts for my 19 ChoreOVIDs included: "Just trying to dance in a small space". As my dancing friends and colleagues have commented it is not just the amount of space that is needed for dancing, it is all kinds of other collateral attributes - some physical (floor surface and spring, ceiling height) and some more emotional and spiritual. Dance studios and spaces are often imbued with a kind of potential, a layering of past sweat and breath and imagination that fuels the present. There are rituals of entering; placement of bags, water bottles, foam rollers, and tape; pre-class or pre-rehearsal chit-chat actually necessary to download stuff in order to prepare for the rigorous upload about to ensue; ways to zone out or zero in; ways to drop stress, test resiliency, or get some heat; and all the while the space is opening its arms, warming its walls, stretching its vibrations - and then we start.
During this pandemic dancers have gone to extraordinary lengths to adapt hallways, kitchens, bedrooms, and basements into dancing spaces, dealing with carpet burns, stunted jumps, unsatisfying swoops and leans and reaches. Families, friends, partners, and animals have had to get used to the rhythms and noises of dance practice - not normal in domestic spaces! In my little space (8'x8'?) I wanted to push the limit of full-body dancing including jumps (don't hit the fan), off-vertical leans and falls, and more importantly train the space into remembering its hosting of movement such that it could open its arms to me everyday and become a facsimile of a dance-space - making noises with jumping, brushing, and breathing has to be part of this. When I heard Michael Wall's piece "War Machine" I knew it would be the perfect acoustic for this work, and I found the slow motion to be a compelling approach to underscore the effort and the pushing through of the confinement. I worried that slo-mo would be romanticizing quarantine, but I think after 4 minutes it might turn to really reminding us of the effort to step through and forward - and this coincides with my anti-racist commitment - to step through and forward with uncomfortable spaces, and reflect on what it means to be able to breathe.
Technicalities, if interested: After several semi-improvised takes, I could see that I needed to make a phrase that had quickness, effort, precarity, asymmetry, use walls/windows, gestural detail, no repeats, jumps... otherwise it would get generic/boring and lack an undercurrent of drive inside the "languidness" of the slo-mo. There are still some place I wished I had done more precise detail, but at a certain point done is done.
Link to the piece: https://vimeo.com/433154144
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