Reading & Research Report - March 11

READING & RESEARCH REPORT

Reading RoseLee Goldberg’s performance art chronologies, “Performance Art: From Futurism to Present” and “Performance: Live Art Since 1960”, has really helped to gain a historic perspective and fill in some gaps for me.  The flow of how one artistic movement fed into another, due to key individuals, political influences and other radical changes in philosophy, psychology, art and fashion are all very apparent in her books. They also introduced me to artists I had previously had little or no knowledge of and who I will now continue to research, such as Oskar Schlemmer, Nikolai Foregger and Xanti Schawinsky.

The subject of Performance Studies is not one that I have researched in depth, apart from artistic performance, although I have been aware of its concepts. I am currently reading Richard Schechner’s “Performance Studies” and Victor Turner’s “The Anthropology of Performance” plus the reader “Teaching Performance Studies” compiled by Nathan Stucky and Cynthia Wimmer. These viewpoints are providing me with insight on the roles of performance in society and in perceiving actions as performative – for the function of communication (in both humans and animals).

I also discovered the existence of CPR - the Centre for Performance Research directed by Richard Gough in Aberystwyth Wales, and was wondering how I could have possibly missed knowing about it, since I grew up in the UK!

“Exercises For Rebel Artists” has truly delighted me! I could hear loud and clear the voices of Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Roberto Sifuentes (of La Pocha Nostra) – their language feels very natural and familiar to me. I appreciate the fact that their pedagogy is a well-rounded method that leaves aesthetic choices to the individual. Even though their own artistic, social and political choices are so radical and provocative, their method is one that stands alone and does not necessarily dictate their own aesthetic results. This is exactly what I am aiming to achieve in my own pedagogical method.

Guillermo Gomez-Pena says of his approach to creating (in both pedagogy & performance work) “…. always in response to the moment, with a sense of urgency.”

Of his pedagogical vision he states “ … the classroom … would become a temporary space of utopian possibilities” and “… a nerve center for progressive thought and action.”

His colleague Sara Jane Bailes states, “The body is a way of thinking, and intellectual work can be a creative practice.”

I agree strongly that the body is a way of thinking. There is a process that occurs in the body through movement (either mastering a technical skill or exploring with improvised movement) that also causes neurological changes in the brain. I believe that this opens up possibilities of new thoughts and ideas in many capacities.

I feel I could very easily incorporate any of these exercises into my pedagogy. Some of them are already similar to exercises I have been developing (for example, their warm-up “Monkey Dance” is very much like my “Vibrations”.) I will definitely use some of the interactive partner and group work, such as “Running Blind” and the “Tableaux Vivants”.

Tadaki Suzuki – Anne Bogart – Viewpoints – Mary Overlie

This is the progression my research took after my studio advisor Laura Gonzales suggested I look at Tadaki Suzuki’s movement method for training actors.

I did not actually resonate so much with the Tadaki method – at least, not as something I felt could fit in with my own. It seems to be quite regimented and has a specific quality of movement and set exercises that appear to be targeted towards high intensity and dramatic affect. It seems similar to combative marshal arts training in character and does not leave space for personal exploration and discovery in a variety of modes or qualities.

However … of course one cannot research Suzuki without coming across his American company SITI, established with American director Anne Bogart. I began to read about her work with Viewpoints and Composition and immediately felt like I was hearing my own language! I followed the Viewpoints lead back to its beginnings with Mary Overlie.

Overlie is heralded as a visionary for post-modern dance. One statement she made that I felt a great connection to was in her concern that deconstructionalism should not become too ruthless - “This activity has to be done with great care and respect for the whole. It is essential to know where the seams lay so separating can be done with clarity otherwise the materials and their languages may be ruined making it impossible to deal with them in their integrity.”

I followed the thread from Overlie’s Six Viewpoints or SSTEMS of Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement and Story to Bogart’s development of this system in collaboration with Tina Landau of Nine Viewpoints of Time and Space:

Time – Tempo, Duration, Kinesthetic Response, Repetition.

Space – Shape, Gesture, Architecture, Spatial Relationship, Topography.

Within these categories there are also sub-categories – for example, within Architecture are the subjects of Texture, Colour, Light and Sound.

Here is someone who is speaking my own creative language. I think of creating work and teaching movement in exactly these terms – this is such an exciting discovery!

And as I have also began developing organic sound in my “Body Soundz” work, I was intrigued to see that Bogart and Landau have been examining vocal sounds with this type of deconstructive method as well – using categories of Pitch, Dynamic, Acceleration/Deceleration, Silence, Timbre.

Their compositional concepts of using “ingredients” – objects, textures, colours, sounds, actions and also of borrowing approaches and terminology from music and film composition is so very familiar to me and the way I work.

And when I read Bogart’s statement “ … it is impossible to say where these ideas actually originated, because they are timeless and belong to the natural principles of movement, time and space.” I said, “YES, THANK YOU! AMEN!”

Other theatre focused research included reading essays by Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal. Of these, the only one who I could find directly addressing the body in performance was Boal, who says “We can begin by stating that the first word of the theatrical vocabulary is the human body, the main source of sound and movement. Therefore, to control the means of theatrical production, man must, first of all, control his own body, know his own body, in order to be capable of making it more expressive.” And “In our culture we are used to expressing everything through word, leaving the enormous expressive capabilities of the body in an underdeveloped state.” From ”Theatre Of The Oppressed”.

Although I find Boal’s body-based community work extremely powerful, it is so context / agenda driven that I am not sure how I could adapt any of the exercises he describes into my method – which I want to keep open enough for narrative to evolve organically, or for artists / students to use their own narrative for movement exploration. However, I think I see a connection between his tableaux type of scenes and the abstracted versions of La Pocha Nostra’s “Tableaux Vivants” (where the narrative can vary to all kinds of extremes) and may be able to find a way into working in that vein.

I have also briefly looked at Phillip Zarrilli and Michael Chekhov methods of movement for actors and find both to be extremely rich. I would like to investigate then further. I was initially introduced to the Chekov method several years ago when observing an open master class at the Actors Movement Studio in New York. I couldn’t help but feel that the actors seemed to be quite awkward with this body-based work and wondered how dancers might respond to it.

My online research lead me to Anna Halprin, whose work I had been aware of for a long time but never explored. Although she is heralded as the “mother of post-modern dance” due to her influence on key figures in the Judson Church movement (Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer among them), she does not really recognize herself as such – and I do not see any of the cold detachment of that post-modern movement-as-research approach in her work at all. She resonates with me as a deeply expressive and spiritual being (which are quite dirty words in the Judson world, as far as I can tell!) Her methodology and pedagogy is based on guided imagery, (which relates to my own methods) as in her “Circle the Earth” score. Together with her husband, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, she devised a method for performance collaboration they called RSVP cycles:

Resources (basic materials), Score (how elements of time, space and materials are structured), Valuation (analysis), Performance (implementation).

I would like to learn more about exactly how she conducts her workshops.

I have also been looking at Nancy Stark Smith, who I feel also falls into this post-modern dance category of body-based methodology, however I have not yet been able to access her book “Caught Falling” which I believe describes her exercises in detail.

Of course Meredith Monk creates her very own category of performance methodology, pedagogy and practice. I would very much like to participate in one of her workshops as I have become more drawn to her work in recent years. Mostly what I was able to find in my current research were video documentaries on her life, her creative process and performances. However, I couldn’t find much available information about exactly what her pedagogical process entails.

My most recent research has been in the realm of somewhat familiar territory – and that has been to look at the pedagogies used by practitioners of Butoh dance.

Since it’s beginnings in Japan as an expressionist reaction to World War Two and its aftermath (with connections to German Expressionism through choreographer Mary Wigman), it has branched out into a variety of modern hybrids. However, I still see a link to its original roots through the pedagogical approach of any Butoh-based movement classes I have participated in or heard descriptions of.

What is most distinctive in Butoh methodology is the use of imagery. And although much of the imagery is nature-based, that certainly doesn’t mean it’s pretty! Butoh fully confronts and embraces the horrific and grotesque or perverse as well as the exquisitely beautiful or delicate – it is an art of violent extremes. It grapples with archetypes of human, animal, nature and spirit – forces seen and unseen.

Tatsumi Hijikata is recognized as “The Godfather” of Butoh. (To me his physical countenance bears resemblance to Albrecht Durer’s Christ.) Kazuo Ohno was also a leading pioneer of the movement and any current Butoh pedagogy holds a direct lineage to the methods of these two artists. Very early on, the body-based methods of Michizo Noguchi with his “Noguchi Taiso” (or Noguchi Gymnastics) were absorbed into Butoh training due to their image-based approach to the body.

Although I would not necessarily consider my own work and pedagogy as “Butoh-based”, it is certainly the practice that most resonates with me in its approach to the self as medium for art. Here, I use the word “self” to describe the complete entity of body-mind-spirit that Butoh demands the commitment of. It is here that I find the underlying themes in my work of Transformation, Metamorphosis and Transcendence are called into play, as they are inherent in the Butoh philosophy itself. It is here that my desire as an artist to feel the “voluptuous surrender” of the self into something greater than the self – yet would not exist without the self – is satisfied.

My main current avenues of research are through recent articles – some by practitioners I know within the Butoh community. Zack Fuller worked extensively with Min Tanaka, who danced with Hijikata before founding his own community “Body Weather Farm”, where people from all walks of life could come and participate in his movement workshops and farm the land. Fuller has written about his experiences with Tanaka in his essay “Seeds of an anti-hierarchic ideal: summer training at Body Weather Farm”.

Tanya Calamoneri is a dancer, choreographer and teacher who has trained intensively under the direct Hijikata lineage. I am currently reading her PhD dissertation entitled “Becoming Nothing to Become Something: Methods of Performer Training in Hijikata Tatsumi’s Buto Dance”. Calamoneri also compiled a text guide of “Butoh transformation exercises” for Scene magazine – which I have been referring to.

Another article of great interest to me is an interview for the Japan Foundation with Akaji Maro, dancer with Hijikata and founder of DaiRakudakahn. He speaks about his approach to the body in response to guided imagery, “… I will use any words as long as they get the body to move. But that doesn’t mean that the final movement is an embodiment of the words. The meaning lies somewhere else. The body drinks in the words and they completely dissolve there, leaving only the state of the body, with its movements …”

Of his introduction to Noguchi Gymnastics, he says “It showed me a completely new image of gymnastics as something flexible and formless rather than a set of strict movements and forms, and that the body was also something flexible and formless.”

Of responding to imagery in Hijikata’s pedagogy, Calamoneri states, “ … the images act as a gateway to an experience, which can then be interpreted and shaped by each individual dancer.” She quotes Hijikata as saying “… my body trains itself as a matter of course … when you come in touch with such things (these extreme nature images and experiences) something is naturally forced out of your body.”

According to Fuller, Tanaka is so anti-hierarchy and anti-structure that he does not want to be regarded as a “teacher” or as having a “method” or even his dance form being recognized as Butoh. He describes Body Weather as “ … an ideology that informs training dance and daily life.” and that Tanaka “ … envisions the body as a force of nature: ever-changing, omni-centred, and completely open to external stimuli.”

NEXT …

My research has also included learning some of the “nuts and bolts” of pedagogy.

(I have written about this in a previous journal entry dated 2.6.15)

There are a number of books addressing pedagogy as a creative practice that I have on my bibliography, however I have not yet been able to access them – mainly due to budget issues! Two of them are: Robin Nelson’s “Practice as Research in the Arts” and Daniel Kelin and Kathryn Dawson’s “The Reflexive Teaching Artist”. Also “Performing Pedagogy”.

Next on the research list is to investigate Marina Abramovic’s institute and see if there is any indication of a distinct pedagogical method with which the institute will engage its students.

Another pedagogy I would love to learn more about is that of Gonzalez Caballero, who I stumbled across by accident. However, it appears that any writings by him or about him are all in Spanish with no English translations available!

Another method of research I am conducting is an interview survey on teachers of performance art. (The questionnaire can be found in my blog entry dated 3.3.15) A number of teachers have agreed to participate, including Linda Montano – who I had the opportunity to study under last summer in her wonderful course at the Transart Institute Berlin residency “Performing The Chakras.”

I hope to complete these by the beginning of April so they can be included in my final research paper.