For all the new art stuff I try, and pull from for my writing and drawing/painting as much as I write and draw/paint between trying the new art stuff and working FT which includes a certain tedium to degrees of distraction like inexorable commuting, today I met my personal limitation: the point I say no-can-do, sit down on a sideline and feel rather close to tears over everything I haven’t managed to swing in life, all tumbling down on me in one fell swoop as a tremendous sadness. Yet, I was surrounded by joy and people going out on their own personal limbs, so I smiled albeit a small one. It was Gretchen Spiro’s Superhero class at Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI). We were falling into and rolling on each other (contact improvising?) We leapt at and over each other. The handstand and fall into a group was my first indication of deep water. I have never even in youth done a handstand, headstand or cartwheel. I don’t get airborne. I can float, given a certain structure of music to use as support.
Music even occurred to me as a crutch to lean on, as yet another institution I depend on instead of developing my own creative-self reliance after taking Susan Schell’s Bigger than the Body on Thursday where as partners we danced with our eyes closed or witnessed our partner do so, without music. On Friday, Benoit Lachambre’s Space, Influence and Senses was exactly that, but who knew before the experience of him and his secret code of feeling space: around the head, inside the shoulder, around the tongue, in the pelvis; swallowing saliva, I don’t remember what all, but was glad for NIA and yes, learning anew only months ago, how to walk heel to ball of foot. Benoit finally elaborated on this all being a technique for being compressed and keeping space to move into. “When you are like this (crunch) in a show 100 times, you have to save your body.” Naturally, this application is not one I’ll likely use, but the models I draw/paint could use that info. And taking Benoit’s class made me feel the art of movement - not the dance of responding to music. I peer into the question of what is it to be a “movement artist?”
After Superhero, I encountered Louis walking up Pine Street. I had rolled over Louis and had Louis roll over me for a while already knowing my alignment, timing and sense of weight were not informed in the least. He assured me that was all “advanced” and I got good closure for the afternoon. Yes, I could go there and learn it. It is a possibility. Like neighborly nudity in a Turkish bath, we could all use more occasion for contact and movement. Two exquisite corpse collages from Robert Yoder’s studio residency workshop earlier in the day at Howard House, my home mural project on the deck, and Unexpected Productions‘ improv theater experience last night convince me that my perception is expanding. All in all SFDI enlightened my senses and helped me get to know my friend Art rather intimately.
poetry, essay, play and prose
activity / inactivity
words come to mind relentlessly
Please get rid of all the words:
interpretation and noise,
memories and obsession.
I’m blind with an option to see
right toe touches flesh
space: consume or explore
space: assemble or master
Within
I am I move I think
smaller after a brush with another
A brush against
limitations. proclivities. need. hurry. harm.
need for
structure, permission, approval, steps and direction
the format of dance
is it dance without music or beat?
external cues / internal musing
is impulse possible?
seeking a means, any way to find
ways of being
BIGGER
Sheila (August 8, 2009)
p.s. I learned the grande dimension of moving dance-wise laying on the floor