Joe Goode Performance Group

I love language. Anyone who knows me or my work knows this to be true. I particularly love language when it is juxtaposed or collided with movement. For me, this provides endless possibilities. Deeply felt movement or gesture can illuminate something hidden or fallow in the text. Similarly, powerful language can dislodge the prettiness or vanity of dancing. I am fascinated by the conversation between the two.
I also love the human voice. Like most dancers I fell in love the human body and what it can do at an early age, utterly fascinated at the multitudinous ways it could bend and twist and configure itself. But unlike most dancers, I also fell in love with the voice somewhere along the way, its sonorities, its depth, its ability to express emotion. So I am not one of those choreographers who utilizes the disembodied voiceover very much. I am much more attracted to the real time sound of the voice as it resonates in the body. What could be more delicious than witnessing a performer as he/she grapples with a complex physical task and a highly structured vocal task at the same time? It’s not just the level of difficulty that intrigues me it’s the thrill of the encounter- that the performer is likely to discover something truthful and unplanned in that collision between the two forces. This opens up the space for real intuitive action. When the mind is put so far at bay and one’s whole being is concentrated on the task of finding ownership in both the sound and the movement that you are making, then you are somehow relying on a different part of your being. You are deliciously unselfconscious and perhaps for a brief period not watching yourself. That’s when you begin to perform from a deeper place.
But oh my, I have seriously strayed from the topic at hand. What I really wanted to say is- Puppets don’t talk! That may be one reason why in twenty years of theatrical experimentation it never occurred to me to work with one. Sure, I have seen them from time to time and thought them endearing, but loving language and the human voice as I do (not to mention the fleshy reality of the human body) I just always thought puppets were not for me. So…… enter Basil Twist who convinced me to work with him on Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home. He was having his debut as a director at the Magic Theater and needed someone to choreograph a homoerotic solo for one of the characters. Well, I can do that with my eyes closed, thought I! But I wasn’t really compelled to say yes until I met Basil and he charmed me into it. Little did I know that when I got into the rehearsal process with him and saw these very human, beautiful puppets of his that I realized I would have to shed my lifelong identity as a puppetphobe. I wanted the puppets to be onstage longer, I couldn’t get enough of them. They were so potent somehow, the embodiment of everything that is fragile and vulnerable and beautiful about us humans. And their emotions were wonderfully transparent- they were just who they were! They couldn’t lie! They were just puppets after all!
Anyway, I was infatuated and completely blindsided by my own infatuation. I had gone into the project thinking I would probably just avert my eyes whenever the puppets appeared. But it was quite the contrary, I wanted to run over and touch them and hold them and see if they would like me.
All of this I attribute to Basil and his enormous gift as a puppet maker. He really loves these creatures and makes them with such care. He imbues them all with a bit of his own spirit (which is elfin and magical, by the way). But more importantly, he believes they will become who they are, find themselves if you will, and blossom into full glorious beings. He believes. And he makes you believe.
So after that transformative experience at the Magic Theater, we kept in touch. We kept imagining working together. We talked about a sensitive gay puppet, an overly aesthetic adolescent boy who feels ill equipped to be in the world with all of its cruelty and ugliness. We got on the same page about this topic very quickly, mind you. ( I can’t imagine why.)
We kept after it and pretty soon we found our Wonderboy. I had a ball finding words and movements for him and, of course, it was a wonderful journey with the performers in my company to find out how they could be an integral part of his story. I don’t wish to say too much more about the actual piece, but am eager to share him finally with the rest of the world. I will just say that I have fallen in love with another one of Basil’s puppets and I hope I have done him justice.

Jess Curtis is the director of Jess Curtis/ Gravity. He lives/works part of the year in Berlin. Jess is a choreographer/dancer and generous spirit and was willing to talk to me from Berlin (via SKYPE) about his work and about being bicontinental. A side note for my Bay Area dance friends- Jess will be here with his “Symmetry Project” at Counterpulse, March 27-30, April 3-6.
He will also be guest dance faculty at UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies. yay!

Okay, here it is:

JOE: Mostly, I want to know the big sweep of how you came to split your time between Germany and SF and how that is working out for you?

JESS: Well, let’s see…. I mostly just followed the work that was offered to me and this is where it lead me.

JOE: But at a certain point you decided to have two homes, not an easy decision I would think….

JESS: It was actually more that at some point I decided not to give up on America, or San Francisco in particular. In ‘98 I was invited to work with in France. And I was in France without coming home for almost two years. At that point I decided to make an effort to keep coming home to SF each year and doing work there.

JOE: Well, lucky for us over here that you kept your hand in. Can we talk about the differences? How is the Berlin contemporary dance scene different from the SF one?

JESS: OK….. Berlin has a very long history of art and culture, and much more developed avenues of cultural discourse. I remember my first review here referring to the “unripe dramaturgy” of my work. I had to go look up the word dramaturgy to make sure I knew what it meant.

JOE: Not likely that our SF critics would accuse you of such an elevated thing.

JESS: haha. There are some that I see are trying, but the level of critical discussion in general in the (SF) newspapers is sort of discouraging. They have to write for their audience and they are not given much space to educate that audience.
There is much more discussion about art here in Berlin. Right after the show AND in the newspaper the next day.

JOE: Do you find that the discussion ultimately assists you in making more mature work? Or are you just being muscled into making work along the current trends of Berlin artmakers?

JESS: I think the discussion challenges me to be more aware of what I do. And forces me to take responsibility for it, and sometimes to defend it to my collaborators. Even if my defense is that I “feel” an intuitive impulse to do something. I have to take responsibility for that intuition.

JOE: And how does this discussion unfold usually? I guess what I am after is the “how” of artists talking to each other about their work. As you know, here in the US we mostly just say we loved it and then start criticizing when we’re out of earshot. How does this more open dialogue come about in Europe?

JESS: Well, first of all, Germans are famous for being willing to tell you they don’t like something. I remember the one choreographer talking my ear off for an hour about how much he didn’t like one of my pieces. People are not afraid to disagree and they in general take disagreement as a sign of engagement. Over here that kind of discourse is seen as the point of making art. But it is even built into the architecture of the theaters. Every theater has a bar and most of them stay open after the show and lots of people hang out and talk about what they saw. (Like we did when you were here at Tanz Im August.) It is also in the nature of the collaborations - that people are building time into creation processes to examine what they are doing. It is almost de rigeur now to have a dramaturge working on your piece.

JOE: That is the most cogent answer I have received on that topic- thank you!
And are you now finding that you can “engage” a choreographer by challenging him/her on what they did in a given performance? I ask this because it seems like such a deep cultural difference, here in the US we just don’t go up to someone after a program and say- “ I didn’t like this part of what you did.” I think it is a great loss really that we are so well trained to be polite- the opportunity for dialogue, really challenging dialogue about ideas, can get passed over.

JESS: I am still pretty polite unless I know someone quite well. I think it’s a bit different as a colleague to tell someone you didn’t like what they made without a clear invitation and time to talk about why. I find that normal audience members are much more willing to engage me about what they saw or felt, and in general they are a bit more articulate and have more language tools to talk about the work than I usually experience in the states. But that is certainly a big generalization.
I would like to find/create some more forums in which we could engage and challenge each other as colleagues when we have something to say about each other’s work. I think we all learn a lot about the work in general when we can do that.

JOE: To go back to something you said earlier about this German (is it German?) tendency toward placing more importance on the theory over the feeling. I remember we disagreed about Matanicola, the rather “queer” piece with the Goth music and all the boys in high heels. I think I responded to it because I felt the garage party energy of it. They were working out their naughty (if clichéd) fantasies and they were loving it. It was the uncomplicated “loving it” part that made me enjoy it so much. It was in such stark contrast to all of the theoretical “unfelt’ work we were seeing in the festival.

JESS: Great example. For me that piece was just a bunch of un examined, self aggrandizing strutting that only worked on any level because they had some big budget costumes. I thought it was in fact justifying itself (in the program) based on a kind of queer theory re-reading of Weimar Germany without actually coming through in any substantial way. And I thought they were actually a bunch of drag posers. I would rather go to Trannyshack any night. On the other hand, one piece that you didn’t much like by Eszter Solomon, touched me through its very post-structural deconstruction of her identity/name and all the stories of the different Eszter Solomon’s that she found. The de-construction of identity gave me something to think about, but the stories of the different people touched me even when I lost track of who was who.

In the end I think it is important to me that I feel that I am part of an exchange. That the artist is offering me something for my 20 bucks.

I’m starting to feel like one of those New York Times “blogging heads”.

or siskel and ebert.

JOE: wow, well here is our opportunity to disagree. I felt the Solomon piece was a one note exploration of something paper thin (the people who have my name) and the presentation was so frontal and really just an excuse for some fancy video work which did nothing to reveal or illuminate the “topic”. With the Matanicola guys, while they certainly were not doing what they proposed in the program, they were inhabiting real time in the space, they were getting into something tactile and sensual that I could share as an experience.
Perhaps if I had seen the Matanicola piece outside of the context of Tanz Im August I would have dismissed it. But, for me, it was such an antidote to see people having a good time and being brazenly silly in the context of all that bloated theoretical pomposity- that I ended up really going with them.

JESS: For me, the video in the Solomon piece gave me an association of image, memory. The fact that it was lit so that I wasn’t always clear if something was live or a video projection made me think a lot about how memory changes and our images of things are not always what they seem. But in the end I think I was intrigued by the comparison of the actual stories of the different Esters. Maybe I was sitting too far back for the Matanicola piece, but if they were having a good time I didn’t feel at all let in on it. And I didn’t read them ever as silly, quite the opposite. They felt like they were taking themselves way too seriously. But here we are, modeling exactly what we were just talking about. I would even admit to having been much more polite than this when we talked about both of these pieces in August after seeing them. If we were German, maybe we would have already said all of this.

JOE: True, but it’s interesting (and frankly, a relief) to get it out now. But let’s get back to you and your work which spans two continents- As an outsider observing your work over the years, one thing I have noticed is that you now seem to include language a lot more. Both “Rachel Lincoln (see footnotes)” and “Touched” were very language oriented. Has your time in Germany somehow given you permission to go in this direction? It seems that perhaps your interest in “ideas” has propelled you more into spoken word, not at the cost of real movement, but in addition to it. Does this stem from being in that environment where ideas are so valued?

JESS: I’m not sure I see that. We talked a lot in Contraband. Sex and Gravity (94) was very text based. CORE’s “entertainment for the apocalypse” had a lot of text in it. I studied theater at university and have always used text when I had something to “say”. But as far as ideas go I would say that I have felt challenged to be more clear about the ideas that are in, or behind the work. The new piece we are bringing to SF this spring has no text at all, but it is based quite firmly on the “idea” (and the physical embodiment) of symmetry.
It is a little funny to me that in the press in SF, I start to gain a reputation for being “that Intellectual choreographer”, while here in Berlin I am a bit “that californian that still thinks dancing around is relevant”

JOE: haha. That’s says a lot about the two dance cultures. The fact that you’ve gained that reputation here in SF is precisely the point. Here audiences have been groomed to see dance as something that happens “to” and “around” the music. If dance tries to do something else (i.e. talk about ideas, refer to other things in the world), it is considered suspect, even pretentious.

JESS: Well yes. I think it’s more about the texts I’ve been reading and how that affects the work. With the piece “Rachel Lincoln (see footnotes)” I had started reading more french philosophy/theory, Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes about the death of the author and Kristeva’s concept of Intertextuality- that everything you write is just a recombination of things you have read before, from the literal words to the more complex ideas. With “Touched” I was reading Deleuze and Guattari’s 1000 plateaus and I was trying to see if some off their ideas about “the plateau” and “becoming” and “rhizomorphic structure” could be put on stage. I’ve started reading Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble” this week, I’m curious what that will instigate.
I do think one of the exciting things here in Europe is that people start to position “dance” as a real forum for research into what it means to live in a body. I was reading an article by Martin Spanberg, a big shot dance dramaturge here, who was questioning the “research” aspect of dance that is such a buzz word in Europe at the moment. He was asking, “Who are the end-users of this research?” I like that this is being asked. In the end I believe that “dance” has lots to offer the world on many levels other than being pretty and entertaining.
1
JOE: Yes, it seems the Europeans are in danger of going down a path where the “research” on a piece trumps the need for an actual experience to happen. Andre Lepecki’s “Exhausting Dance” really illuminated this for me. Personally, I want to swing back toward something tactile without losing the thoughtful segment.

10:41 AM
That is a great book. I could go on of course. But…

Joe, I have to go buy dinner before the Super Market closes.
Another Euro/ American difference-
That all the Super markets close.

JOE: Of course - Run, run to the market!

JESS: Do you think we got something there?

JOE: I think we got a few gems. Thank you so much!

JESS: Thank you. See you in the new year!

What do we know about Argentine dance? passion, sexuality, an air of theatricality- the tango! well, I would love to say that I’m here to debunk these shabby myths, but actually the contemporary work I have seen here is ALL of those things EXCEPT the tango part. Maybe the contemporary artists are trying to get out from under the shadow of tango or maybe it is so intrinsically in their skin that they don’t need to overtly “quote” it, but I would have to say it is nowhere in sight on the alternative stages I have visited so far.
What I have encountered instead is a kind of theater of the absurd- ontological, intuitive, profoundly interdisciplinary, hugely theatrical and always sexy. Of course, this kind of unscientific survey is very much the luck of the draw, but for my purposes I have been really lucky. One piece I discovered through word of mouth was called “el lobo”. Have you ever seen a naked man dancing with a bidet on his head? Well, I have. This auteur, Pablo Rotemberg, set his dance/play in the bathroom and then proceeded to pound and scratch and ultimately rub with excrement all of the fixtures in the room. It sounds a little sensationalist, I know, and I am not sure I can defend that aspect of it, but it accumulated into such a painful depiction of a lost soul, a nervous, obsessive, and bone chillingly lonely guy trying to get through the night. The only reference to the wolf (lobo) was a frightening moment where he strode around on all fours his naked body glistening and smeared with the dirt of the experience, rubbing up against the furniture, a restless and dangerous result of his own bad behavior- a flawed but really interesting piece of work.
I also happened onto a small series being presented at the University of Buenos Aires/ Rojas Cultural Center called “Queer Dance”- that’s right, I had to come all the way to Buenos Aires to see queer dance. And I was delighted by what I found, one piece was a very erotically charged duet between a muscular opera singer and a wiry spark plug of a dancer (”grandes amigos”)
another was a rather narcissistic study of a woman alone- only this woman was constantly being filmed by another woman and the very grainy MTVish footage was being displayed for the audience by a live feed.
The third piece and, by far my favorite, was a truly remarkable piece of dance theater called “Monte Carlo” (choreography and direction by Carlos Casella, text by Jean Cocteau)
- imagine a cross between Twin Peaks and the Angels of Light (only the truly dedicated students of San Francisco theater history will get that reference) Anyway, in this piece we had an elegant, if aging, raconteur who kept intoning (in Spanish ) about the poetic raptures of Monte Carlo and how he longed to be there again. Meanwhile his attendant, a lovely young man with a carrot top hairdo misunderstands constantly and replies in a flat midwestern American dialect with banalities like ” just get up and get dressed, it’s getting late.” Admittedly, a lot happens in this piece, a woman dressed in a thong is lifted and flown around the room while she plays the castanets, the bedraggled raconteur does a bit of the ballet Swan Lake, a Xmas tree gets decorated with flowers while a powerhouse singer in a nurse’s outfit sings the song from Titanic (”near, far, wherever you are”). Sentimentality and cliche get celebrated and deconstructed in the same stroke. We enter a world of wanton emotionality that has no object, no place to be received. Pretty great stuff and the audience gets swept up in it, they don’t pause to think about whether it’s dance or theater, they just dive in and swim along with it.
What does this say about the “dance scene” down here in Argentina? I can only relate what my hunch was while watching these works. There is a joyful freedom here, maybe a response to many years of very repressive governmental regimes. There is a boldness, a desire to “feel” in public and be felt. There is a gleeful disregard for the boundaries between dance and theater. Of course, to be fair, a great deal of credit needs to go to the curator of this program, Alejandro Cervera. He has somehow succeeded in giving these artists the freedom to explore and to get messy with their work. (He, as the director of the dance division of Rojas, commissioned all three works). But more about Cervera later, he interests me a lot because he is a working artist who is serving in this role of curator- I plan to interview him for the blog before I leave South America. What I have found here is something quite special. Given that most of these artists have not performed outside of the country the work seems remarkably sophisticated. There is a tipping of the hat to some of the boldest artists on the European scene, most notably Pina Bausch. I discovered in a conversation with Cervera that Bausch has performed here in B.A. many times and the audiences simply devour her. So is it something in the national character perhaps- a boldness, a frankness around sexuality, a smouldering intensity? To answer this question I would need to extend my stay for quite a while longer- hmmmmmm.

Melissa Hudson and Hannah Schwadron are graduate students at the MFA program at UC Riverside in Experimental Choreography and Dance. For a course in “Rhetorical
Approaches to Dance Studies” they came up with the following questions:

In general, we have been investigating the ways that
words and language relate to movement and our
understanding of the body, and this week we are
specifically considering the ‘policing’ of bodily
movement, particularly in regards to gender. We were
given David Gere’s article entitled, “29 Effeminate
Gestures: Choreographer Joe Goode and the Heroism of
Effeminacy” to read for discussion. Please feel free
to answer the questions in whatever way strikes you,
and to omit any that are not of interest to you.

1. How do you feel about the way that you work has
been written by others (reviews, articles)? Have you
experienced an occasion wherein you felt that words
were given authority over your dance? or that you were
grossly misinterpreted by a viewer/reviewer?

JOE: Truthfully, i am not sure when I haven’t felt that way. I think the act of looking and deciphering, the critical act , always has an agenda. Someone comes to review or analyze because they have a thesis to prove or a point of view to espouse. As much as they may want to be impartial they are always providing a very distinct lens on the work. Often what is missing in that critical view of art is the artist’s concern with the functional, with the “how” something gets made. Most of us do not start from a point of research saying “I am going to make something about this”. We start from a point of methodology, “I wonder what would happen if i tried to do this”. In other words, we are experimenting with materials and methods as well as content. I often feel that writers and critics are looking at the end result and solely analyzing the content of my work. But they haven’t considered how the content was manipulated and changed in the process , how it unfolded, not just as an idea, but as material that has life and will of its own.

2. In your work, what power is given to the body,
specifically the dancing body, to perpetuate or rework
sociopolitical norms?

JOE: well, I give a lot of consideration to the body as political territory. Men touching men with tenderness, with an erotic charge, is certainly political and often a place where I might begin- partly just because I long to see it (and don’t feel that I DO see it much in the world of high art,) but also because it is charged- for the performers (it is still a pretty transgressive act, believe it or not) and for the audience. I also like to see women debunk the myth that they are the weaker sex. I love to see them lift the boys and each other and I love to see them in postures of anger or obstinacy. The dance norms for women are so limiting, always being pliable, vulnerable, sensual in a pussycat kind of way. Those depictions are nothing like the women I know who are so strong and self determined. certainly the dancer women I know and work with are so incredibly strong and confident in who they are, I like to get some of that across in the stage work.

3. In your opinion, how does the body inscribe
meaning or ’speak’ in an effective way?

JOE: “Inscribe meaning” is such a terribly comical phrase. Only in an advanced degree program would you ever hear this phrase. let me just say that I think this coded language of dance theory is dangerous. Dangerous because it only speaks to other people who have the same educational background, the same frame of reference, it really doesn’t speak to the rest of the world. of course the body “inscribes” meaning. As I said in the earlier answer, the body is a political territory, every gesture, every posture is a statement of who this person is in this moment of action or this very public moment of being seen. If a male dancer touches himself in a sensual way or collapses into the arms of another male dancer in a way that relinquishes all control, these are very meaningful statements. there are limitless possibilities of what the body can “mean”.

4. What do you find most scary in dance and
choreography? what is not scary?

JOE: What is most scary for me in dance is that narcissistic glory that happens. We are all trained, or most of us, by looking at ourselves in the mirror. As young dancers we strive for the kind of physical perfection that we saw in our teachers- get the leg higher, try for more revolutions in the turns -whatever. this kind of dancing is in danger of not being about much except the beauty of the dancer. and this definition of beauty is very narrowly defined. We all started out dancing for grandma- showing off our tricks or our endearing cuteness or sex appeal. It is very hard to excise this vanity, this self conscious element from our choreography as we mature. I want dancing to be about more than just how beautiful and flexible the body is. I want it to serve a more complex vision of our humanity, that we are flailing and absurd and in the process of decay, that we have very dark places in our souls and that we are cruel and even stupid- these are some of the things I want to show with dancing. Just regurgitating my skill is not enough. frankly, in this time when we have such amazing skills being displayed on the stage- i.e. cirque du soleil, the chinese acrobats, just showing our high legs or our double turns isn’t going to thrill anybody much anyway.

5. How would you like to be written in history?

JOE: I really don’t care. I am looking for a meaningful pastime. when I am dead I will be dead.

6. Why do you choose to include spoken and sung text
in your dance pieces?

JOE: I never understood why the dancer should be mute. a dumb rule in my book. I also do not view dance as separate from theater. I am interested in the performative moment as a moment of revelation, of intimacy. whatever can bring me there is fair game.

7. Finally, could you remark on the process of
creating ‘29 Effeminate Gestures’ (process, goals,
‘aha’ moments) and on the interaction that you had
with David Gere as he aspired to write your dancing
body?

JOE:
I am kind of bored with talking about the ‘aha’ moments in 29 gestures. The big moment was realizing that on some level I was effeminate and that I was going to show it in front of lots of people. my own fear and self loathing in that moment of “knowing” that some of my gestures identified me (at least in this culture) as a sissy was really revealing and taught me a lot. As far as working with David, I was fascinated to see what he saw in the piece. I think he is very smart and comes from a very transnational perspective on things. I think he saw some things that I hadn’t considered before and that was interesting.
I have a blog now that I am writing that you might want to look at. it will illuminate some of the ways I am feeling about dancing these days. Joe

Miguel Gutierrez is a choreographer/ dancer/ beautiful mind who lives in NYC and dances there and in Europe. His own work is starting to get a lot of attention and he can still be seen working collaboratively with others, most notably Deborah Hay, Alain Bouffard. He also is a former member of the Joe Goode Performance Group and was instrumental in creating some memorable works with the company a decade ago including “Maverick Strain”, “Stareways”, and “Take/Place” to name a few.
I ran into Miguel recently in Barcelona where he was performing with Alain Bouffard (to be discussed in another blog entry) in a piece called “(Not) a Love Song”. He was then on his way to teach and perform his own work at many points beyond in Europe and Eastern Europe. here is a conversation we had via SKYPE while he was in London and I was in Barcelona.

Joe: you are uniquely situated in that you are working quite a bit in Europe and yet have a strong presence in NYC

Miguel: yes…though I wish I was getting presented here (in Europe) even more..

Joe: many people (including me) would look at your professional life and think- “wow, he´s got it made”

Miguel: yeah, well, the grass is always greener, isnt it? I look at some of my peers who have moved to Europe and feel the same way about them… I still feel like there is a confusion or a resistance about my work or just a lack of knowledge… I think with presenters here, the first thing you are contending with is their perception that everything from the U.S. is uninteresting or dumb or ugly or old school.

Joe: yes, there is the dumb factor, the assumption that all things American are naive and self involved.

Miguel: and there is the fact that the U.S. is the perpetrator of the most heinous war in the world right now…. and I think that that anger at the U.S. subtly or explicitly affects people’s perception of anyone from the U.S. (unsurprisingly..)

Joe: I think there is a justified resistance to things American- given the current political climate and the fact that “tanztheatre” has evolved in a way that is uniquely European and Americans are still, to some degree, playing by different rules.

Miguel: yes, for sure…
but I think that it’s ironic considering how powerfully the legacy of “American” post modernism has impacted contemporary western European dance…

Joe: well, certainly Merce and Trisha and some of the other Judson thinkers had a huge impact, but there has been a surge of investigative dance making going on in Europe that takes this information and then adds a particular Euro sensibility to the mix. I think this is a really interesting topic (which we got into a bit the other night,) what are the rules and how are they different?

Miguel: oh… it is so tricky!
the U.S., is also the home of the entertainment industry complex…
and the largest pop-cultural imperialist..
and I think that we are a nation that has not been embattled by war in the same way that European nations have been… and so we tend to aim to please and have a more positive outlook in some ways… and we ARE incredibly politically naïve!
Also, here there are completely different (well maybe just MORE) networks of cultural dissemination than in the U.S.

Joe: you mean the support for established artists?

Miguel: yes but it is not just that…
In the U.S., Judson was a particular moment in time, it wasn’t like those folks then went on to tour all over the U.S in festivals…
here (in Europe) you have something like, say, “the reconstruction of continuous project altered daily,” (the Yvonne Rainer piece), and it gets performed all over France

Joe: But again, this comes down to support for experimentation. Audiences in Europe have become used to seeing work that is in ¨process¨, that is, discovering itself- they seem to enjoy that almost more than a finished product.

Miguel: well, I am not sure that everyone enjoys it…

Joe: maybe not in a “yay!” sort of way, but they enjoy feeling that they are somehow part of the experiment, the discovery. And while this might promote a sort of cerebral approach to art viewing it does have a certain amount of energy.

Miguel: well, my perception here is that there is also the phenomenon of fascination with art “movements”… the kind of rallying around identification of a particular trend or philosophical strain or approach… in general, more of an interaction between contemporary philosophy and performance…This is present in the U.S. in visual art fields…

Joe: I am fascinated with art “movements” for what they can teach me, for the discussions that can emerge from them. I am resistant to “movements” when they start to dictate what can be viewed as current or acceptable. At that point, I think they become parochial and stifling.

Miguel: I totally agree

Miguel: but of course movements of this sort are often linked to political shifts or revolutions… this is the problem maybe in the U.S.- our lack of a political conscience and any kind of cultural movement attached to it…
(this is a highly subjective and judgmental view of course…)
I mean, it makes me think of the NEA wars and how maybe that was the last moment I can think of that produced some kind of cohesion in thought about art production…

______________________

Joe: let´s talk about theater. you are the consummate entertainer, a beautiful dancer, an amazing singer. (will you just come to my home and sing to me for many hours?) I think maybe this ability to do so many things is viewed with skepticism. I don´t know what makes me say this, but it´s a hunch.

Miguel: oh that is sweet..
I have always been afraid of being a “jack of all trades, master of none…”
also, as I am sure you know, it seems like it is an easier ride of sorts in the art world when you can just DECIDE what the hell you are and then the press release doesn’t confuse people…
but then again- I think hybridity is basically the cultural condition we find ourselves in.

Joe: I was thinking in this new genre or “movement” towards, what shall we call it, post structuralist work? perhaps there is skepticism about something which “delivers” in such a clear way?

Miguel: by “delivers” do you mean “entertains”?

Joe: I mean, you, as a performer, deliver the goods, the dancing, the singing, the emotional clarity, is that perhaps suspect in this “movement” towards the minimal, the opaque? Of course, I am talking about myself here as well.

Miguel: maybe… I dont know… I dont necessarily equate minimal with opaque, though I know what you are talking about from reading your blog… i think it is suspect when you experience “entertainment” in a “concert” dance context…
but what exactly “it” is and who is finding it suspect is up for grabs

Joe: for me, there is something to be learned in the reluctance to “give” too much. I am happy when I am asked to search, even to decipher, up to a point. But it can go to the extreme of opacity.

It seems there is a fascination with codes in some of the European work I am seeing. To speak in the correct coded language makes one okay.

Miguel: yes, but abstract dance can be another kind of opaque code… and this is very much a legacy of american work… I recall my friend david in new york telling me he had gone to see Cunningham at bam, and he said “I didn’t understand a single gesture…” for him, THAT was coded!

Miguel: it seems like this movement that you are talking about is actually trying to make certain things frustratingly obvious…
I recall the thing that you wrote about Ezster Salamon’s piece… I mean, are we really talking about codes or emotions…?
as Alain (Bouffard) spoke about at the post performance discussion, does the “performance” fulfill an initial “research” point or question…? much in the same way as a scientific research method? Or is it an experience that is rooted in sensation, in the ineffable, in real time “feeling”? I hate putting those things in opposition per se…

Joe: well, in the Salamon piece, we certainly ARE talking about the supremacy of idea over experience. the “idea” that all these people with the same name (HER name) had divergent life experiences- this is what guided the piece. but she never transformed it into an experience…

Miguel: well then, I think it becomes important to define what “experience” means (though I am pretty sure I know what you are talking about)… and if THAT is in fact, the goal of theater…

Miguel: I mean, I am just playing devil’s advocate here. Because ultimately, I struggle with these same issues in my work- because I feel like I am dealing with sensation and the expressive possibilities of the body, inclusive of a consciousness of the complexity of thought, but also, an “ineffability” of the body to transform the energetic timbre of a room…

____________________________

Joe: so here is the big, big question for me- if you and I and others are attracted to this purity of energy in space, how can we use language and song and other elements of theater without diluting or masking the physical language?

Miguel: wow that is a really complicated question…
I think it has partly to do with what the song and language elements are… with what the dance elements are…. with what kind of vocabulary you are working with… with how a piece articulates its own structure…

Joe: well, we can use the “pomo “ device of keeping the juxtapositions very contrary or contrasted. but this seems like a copout after a while.
I mean, I don´t want linear narrative, but I do want to push the limits of these very different forms to do more than just provide a smorgasbord of options of meaning

Miguel: I am reminded of something my friend heather told me while I was working on my solo. there is a thing that i do at the end of my solo where I repeat the words “I am” over and over, first quietly and then it eventually gets into a scream…
and of course, I can ride the “emotional” growth of the accumulation if I want to, but heather pushed me to think about the “material” elements of the accumulation…
so that I would stay with the sound, and the feeling, and the quality, rather than my expectation of its impact…

Joe: please finish this thought

Miguel: I am reminded of your “he’s a gooooood guy, he’s a gooooood guy ” in 29 (Effeminate Gestures)……

Joe: the very same principles of execution apply

Miguel: how that is DANCE to me, in the sense of the body and sound coming together….
and the joke of course that your last name is goode and all that…
but how the commitment is to the ACTION of saying those words…

Joe: yes

Miguel: and yet the framing of those words in the larger piece is particular and gives it a particular resonance…
I feel like the “answer” is right there in a way…

Joe: and we must keep articulating what we find in our forays into sound-movement collisions. The world does not get it yet.

Miguel: I think some people do…

Joe: you are so articulate and wonderful. I have really enjoyed this

Miguel: thank you thank you!!! back at you sister…
it was really fun…

PARIS- Tonight I saw the company of Mathilde Monnier. This is solid work with a point of view. It seems to me that this artist is tackling the very hard question of how does the dancer get out of the way of the dance? In other words, how can one make a dance that isn’t about the technical skill of the dancers? This is not a new thing, we have been thinking about this since Judson days, but here she has even skirted the usual pitfall of the star personality. We are not looking at Trisha Brown being Trisha Brown or David Gordon being David Gordon. She has transcended skill and personality and even any traditional concept of beauty. The dancers do not have dancers’ bodies, the movement isn’t linear or aesthetic in the ways we are used to. What we end up watching is a different kind of skill, the skill of perception- the dancers are relying on very intricate internal timings to sync up with each other, they are breathing together and focusing together in a way that is not showy, but ultimately very satisfying. And all of this to the strange and wonderful music of Gyorgi Ligeti. I have heard my discerning opera friends sigh with glee over Ligeti and I never really got it. Tonight, seeing/hearing it juxtaposed with this minimalist gestural movement, something finally clicked for me. It was like Monnier was giving the viewer the space to just roam inside of this musical landscape. So all in all a pretty good art viewing experience. I mean, my panties aren’t moist, but I enjoyed being in the presence of such competent artistry with such a distinct point of view.
But what I really need to marvel about was the audience and the reception for this program. Imagine, first of all, an American artist doing an evening length work about unison (yes, that was the subject of tonight’s piece). Imagine that there are no beautiful sexy dancers and no feats of bedazzlement, no confrontational statements about race or sexuality, no live music (the Ligeti was recorded). Yeah, try to imagine it. I can’t quite get there. Well, it’s a whole different story here in Paris. The theatre de la Ville is a huge space (easily 2,000 seats) smack in the middle of the most touristic part of Paris. And it was packed. I had to buy a scalped ticket at the last minute because I couldn’t figure out how to buy one online in advance of getting here. And again, like my German experience at Tanz Im August, there was a palpable excitement in the crowd. They were excited to see what this artist had for them. They were ready to be challenged, even edified by the experience.
So what does this mean about the state of American performance? Will it always be true that an artist working on an esoteric track like this one will be relegated to the garages and alternative spaces? Are we condemned to a future of Stomp and River Dance? I have to say that I think it is partly a failure of our institutions. We don’t have a place for artists to experiment and veer off from the center. We don’t support research that is not headed in the direction of commercial viability or, at the least, some kind of familiar palatability. No wonder contemporary dance in America is mostly playing second fiddle to the composers it is paired with. We don’t believe in our ideas. We don’t have institutions that support really new thinking. European artists have surpassed us in their willingness to experiment and fail. The economy for the arts over here is not a cash and carry economy. An artist can risk being cerebral or pedantic, even solipsistic. And while I am sure that some of that is dreadful to behold, it has the effect of creating a much more tolerant and educated audience, an audience that is on the long journey with you. Not just a thumbs down “this ain’t box office” audience.
Okay, I will quit my bellyaching. I think we have some work to do back home. And it won’t be the hired hands, the administrative wonks or the political appointees who will make it better. It will be the artists, like myself, who shoulder some of the responsibility for finding ways to ignite discussion and curiosity and experimentation. I believe. I think I believe.

How to sum up my experience with Tanz Im August? I think seeing it 2 years ago for the first time, I was so delighted by the atmosphere- wine drinking, animated people actually having heated debates over the merits/non-merits of the art on display. People clamoring for tickets- every showing in every venue beyond sold out! And all for contemporary dance/theater! Even more bizarre, a genre of dance/theater that was cerebral, even opaque at times, certainly not the easily accessible variety. This time around, because I was not so busy being stunned by the heady atmosphere of the festival, I was able to settle into the work and, sadly, the experience was not as thrilling. I was bothered by the opacity of the work- glad, of course, that there is a place where this kind of experimentation can happen (goddess knows it’s nigh onto impossible to do it in the US and have any kind of career or visibility). But still, I couldn’t help but feel that much of the work was arcane in a way that suggested it was not interested in the experience of the viewer. It teetered on the edge of being smug and even elitist, like there was some private joke to be gotten and if you didn’t get it then you needn’t be there.
There were entries like “And Then” which was a work by an artist named Ezster Salomon. She, Ezster Salomon, apparently interviewed over 200 women with the same name (yes, her name, Ezter Salomon) from all around the world and the presentation consisted of snippets of narrative about their various lives- this Ezster getting married, another Ezster studying music, yet another one having children. I guess the point was the banality of it all and the myth of individuality but it was painfully dull to sit through. This is the art that Google built. All I can say is- if this is an indication of the possibilities that the internet age has brought us then “let’s go back, let’s go back!”
I think many of the works were aiming to challenge our assumptions about what theater “does” or what dancing “is”. I appreciated the intent but most of these works weren’t abrasive enough or intellectually rigorous enough to accomplish the task. There was one good thing that I saw, a group called “Matanicola”. Imagine Goth meets Las Vegas showgirls meets homo leather dungeon meets Heironymous Bosch. Yes, and all infused with a kind of naughty boy delight! None of the individual elements were completely original but the way it all came together was absolutely its own little universe. This was a performance that was living in its own skin. Even while it was deliberately referencing many other genres and even eras, in the end, it was uniquely within itself. And if you want to see grown men dance (and, I mean, dance) in six inch heels- this is the show to see.
So, after spending time at at a “Tanz” festival, some thoughts:
I am reminded that the “act” of dancing is, in itself, an act of rebellion- against the inevitable demise of this temporary body, against thrift, against the inert asexual texture of daily life. But with that comes a responsibility. How do we keep the dancing sincere? How do we avoid merely celebrating our own skill? It is an art form very susceptible to the pitfalls of vanity. After all, doesn’t every dance career start with showing off for grandma? Unfortunately, much of the subsequent dance education that we receive scarcely elevates beyond this. We imitate, we strive to look like the teacher. We spend unbelievable amounts of time scrutinizing ourselves in the mirror. Rarely are we asked the question- what is all this dancing about? Who is it for? Aside from its autoerotic benefits, what place does it have in the world as a mature art form?
My German experience has served its purpose, I guess. I will approach my own work with a renewed vigor. There will be new energy and necessity behind the old questions:
How do I make something honest?
How do I insist on “feeling” without succumbing to easy sentiment?
How do I avoid the trap of monumentality? (You know, when you resort to making something so unassailably skillful and difficult that your own artistic prowess takes center stage and the material , the subject matter gets lost. I know you know, people, we’ve all done it)
And finally, what am I dancing about? What is essential here? Is there something in this material, in this process I have initiated that helps me survive this chaotic, bizarre life? Do I need this? Does anybody need this?

So , having written this, I am realizing that I came away with quite a bit. I have refreshed my own idea of what an artistic experience should be. I want it to be the result of some discomfort, some real testing of the boundaries. Smarty pants isn’t good enough and something that is merely professional in execution? well, that’s downright depressing.

What I have read so far:
Thirteen Moons- Charles Frazier (white orphan boy is raised by Indians)
The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini (beautifully felt, but a little too tidy in its plot devices)
The Road- Cormac McCarthy ( I cried on the plane, I cried on the train)
Travels in the Scriptorium- Paul Auster (existential sci-fi)
Dance,Dance,Dance- Haruki Murakami ( this author is becoming a bit of a guilty pleasure for me- sexy pseudo mystical yummy stuff- thanks Marit!)
Falling Man- Dom Delillo (really gorgeous writing about alienated people, does this topic ever get old? Here we have a post 9/11 spin)
Bauhaus Archive Berlin-(this is the book they produce about their archive and collection- if you haven’t been to this place in Berlin you simply must go, it will renew your budding art student enthusiasm for the Bauhaus phenom!)

Something fresh- Tino Sehgal

Here I am sweating through my tee shirt feeling very out of place. Frankfurt is full of men in black suits looking bizarrely unruffled and I am careening through the streets with my torn shoulder bag and my frayed map feeling every bit the unworthy tourist. It’s worse than that, actually, I am feverish- the jet lag sniffles have turned into something worse, a flight of stairs makes me all clammy and I feel disoriented and addled. This is not good for someone like me who gets lost in the aisles of Safeway. I am famously without a sense of direction and now I am stumbling through the financial center of Frankfurt looking for the Moderne Kunst (contemporary art museum) literally having crossed the same landmarks two or three times from different directions. I start to suspect that the dark suited men have noticed me circling aimlessly. I feel like Dostoyevsky’s poor Raskolnikov, the sweaty outsider, the embodiment of human poverty, the man with no right to be anywhere. Wait- is that an axe peeping out of my shoulder bag?
Okay, so I am having a dramatic moment. Then, like a miracle, the museum materializes and I step inside. What a comfort to know that I can pay my 6 Euros and wander in the air conditioning with the civilized and familiar works of some of my favorite contemporary artists. Here’s a Nauman video of him painting himself red and then white and then black. Here is a Dan Flavin fluorescent homage to the Swiss flag. Here’s the hilarious and irreverent Joseph Bueys installation of two voices emanating from a wall- One says ”Ja, Ja, Ja” while the other contradicts “Ne,Ne,Ne”. I sat in the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art last summer and listened to a recording of this but it has new meaning in a more German context. As I’m wandering I keep hearing a shrill giggle and shriek from another gallery, I assume it’s a video piece that’s on some kind of loop and that I’ll check it out when I get to that part of the museum. Then I enter a gallery space that seems completely empty. I see a guard by the door, a short, fat man of about sixty and another tall dour looking guard entering the gallery from another door. Then suddenly there is a third, a younger blond one, and they all descend on me hopping in a circle very close around me and flapping their arms up and down shouting” This is so contemporary! so contemporary! And then eeeiioooo they all squeal. They do this about seven or eight times. Because of the german accents it sounds more like “this is su contimpreery, su contimpreery.” I am so taken unawares that I stop dead in my tracks caught between the need to laugh and call the police. But these are the police! The museum police, anyway. I was nailed to the spot, all assumptions about the safety and propriety of the museum sanctum snatched out from under me. After I somehow manage to extricate myself from them I return to the lobby of the museum and ask the friendly woman there what has just happened to me. I ask if there is anything in English that I can read about the exhibit and she says- Not in English or in any language. Tino Sehgal, the artist, does not allow anything to be written about the piece. I am stunned and a little exhausted from the experience. She gives me a knowing look and tells me that I should step across the street to their auxiliary gallery space, that the entry I have already paid will suffice for both. I quickly do so, suspecting that something is up. When I get there I find a gutted old brick warehouse. There is no art on the wall, just a woman sitting at an impromptu card table by the door who doesn’t look up as I pass. I wander through some dusty hallways and come upon a room with about 8 or 9 people in it. As I enter they all suck in their breath in this audible suction sound and say in unison something like “this is a situation” then they proceed to move in a casual form of slow motion sitting or leaning in groups of twos and threes. As they do this they discuss the meaning of “situation”, whether it can be created or is it always spontaneous? Is it really possible to construct a situation or will the situation always have a destiny of its own? Actually, the conversation is very interesting and I settle down on the floor to listen in. When they sense that I’m comfortable one of the women turns to me and asks me what I think? I become part of the piece, not in a self conscious way but in a way that lets me know I was part of the piece long before I entered the room, that they know I am the kind of person who thinks about these things. I feel like telling them about my journey and being lost and feeling like a character from “Crime and Punishment” but I don’t want to show off. After about 45 minutes I leave.
This is Tino Sehgal, and one of these pieces (or something similar) was Germany’s entry into the Venice Biennale 2 years ago. Look him up. Maybe I will never be able to have an experience with his work again that rivals this one, the element of surprise was huge in its effectiveness, but it was really something. Fresh is the word. something I will remember. something which will shift my perception of the museum experience and what its possibilities are.

WHY?
_What am I looking for? If this journey is about seeing art, about discovering inspiration, or even replenishment, then what do I hope to see? Of course, I don’t fully know the answer. I do know that I don’t care so much about the shape or form of it, but I want to see something born out of necessity, something that feels essential, that has the mark of the maker’s blood and sweat and tears on it. It should be personal. It should certainly extend beyond a mere demonstration of skill, (I’ve grown to really detest that over the years. It’s the sure sign of an artist who wants to be loved but not known.)
Will it come to me as a fresh take on dance/theater? Well, that would be great but I have no such presumption. I will certainly cast my net wider than that. I will look at art and architecture and cabaret and street theater, in high places and in the sweet low ones. I will get up in the morning with my art finding lens affixed to my head and to my heart. I’m bound to find something, don’t you think?

HOW?
_This blog will be a blurting out, a telling, a clumsy reportage. It will be personal and messy and reflect the internal meanderings of the teller. I am sure it won’t draw any conclusions or support its subjective views with much historical data. There will be very little editing or fixing along the way. If I put that pressure on myself (to be “writerly”) than I will be paralyzed and nothing I put down will ever look good enough. So here goes…….

—- too many flights. i feel slightly ill. can’t seem to get sleep. still i am starting to settle into the daydream that is traveling alone. deep in my books. even deeper into my museum experience. no one to divert me into my personality. no one to react for, for whom to make intelligent summations of what I see, hear. this is somehow a blessing for me. i can respond more authentically without satisfying someone else’s idea of what my response should be. does that make any sense? I have realized on these european sojourns that I am really a deeply aesthetic creature. maybe aesthetic is not the right word. I am deeply receptive to art that vibrates with its own truth. i can respond in a childlike way. i can dream with it. no one else is needed. i don’t seem to need a third party to validate this experience. i must say that i am surprised to learn this about myself. most of my artmaking and art viewing has been such a social experience. it is deliciously “un”social to experience art in this solitary way.
I wish I could start with something I loved art wise. Maybe this won’t be so easy. My second night here I had failed to get tickets for anything at Tanz Im August, actually the only performance slated on my first free evening was LA LA LA Human Steps from Montreal. I have seen them a few times before and the work delivers thrills of a certain kind- it’s very high tech dancing, ballet with a metallic edge, fierce and trying to be frankly sexual, I think, although it fails for me on that level as ballet mostly does. Some of my thoughts of that evening:

It might be an expression of my ambivalence about seeing lalala that I didn’t get tickets in advance. I feel a palpable weight in my feet as I wander up and down the bandalee looking for the strasse that will take me to the Berliner Festspiele. Everything seems more interesting to me than bearing witness to high tech dance- the trees almost choked out by construction, their wan greenness and the way they lean so fragile against the impromptu walkway that has been built up around them- like lillian gish on that famous icefloe, these poor saplings are destined for calamity and yet they never stop being lovely, waving and churning and slapping their vulnerable branches against the plywood wall. This is more pathos than I am likely to get where I’m going, I really must amend my attitude- just see, just see.
So I get there and get my name on a waiting list, surely there will be some no shows. I am given a little slip of paper with the number 24 on it and told to come back at five minutes til show time. I wander out into the courtyard. The art goers look familiar, not that different from the US high culture crowd, maybe a little more attenuated, a little more fierce in their arty attire. I wonder how many of them dread the high techness of the dance as much as I. Maybe they love it, maybe it provides them with some astringent pleasure like cleaning out the closet or scrubbing a pan til it shines. Anyhow, look…. there are people dancing out in the gravel walkway. Are they protesting the high artness of what is about to take place? Are they making the statement that it can be had for free and be just as good? And it is pretty good. The bodies are all coiled and athletic, the men with such pronounced ab muscles they are practically bent in a C curve. It looks improvisational , swoopy, diving under and around each other’s limbs. It certainly feels like a familiar san fran vernacular, but expertly done. There is electronic pop music on a boom box providing an underlayer for the various groupings. I’m liking it in spite of myself. They really know how to follow these easy impulses through the body and let them shift and flourish in dynamic ways. Still, there is this thing that happens when we dance, particularly when we improvise, this kind of looking inward. Literally the eyes are in a blurry focus much the way a meditator might focus or “un” focus from the world around him. There’s nothing wrong with it, but I wonder what would happen if all this skill, this pleasure in the body was put to some outward task. What would it be? This is the question we are all asking ourselves. We can dance around an issue, we can put the stink of “content” on our dancing, but it often feels like it is imposed or false. Still, I am certain this group of movers could take me deeply into some territory (psychological, emotional) if there were just a little more context for what they’re doing. I pick a flier up off the ground, it says “berlingogos.de”. later I would check it out and discover that it was all in german, of course. But there was something about buying a dance or a dancer? Have one of them visit me in my hotel room? Hmmm, the mind reels. But still I think there is an idea there I would like to know more about. I will have to get one of my german friends to translate soon.
So it’s 5 minutes to 8, I slip back into the crowd at the box office window. Slowly, agonizingly, the box office person calls one number at a time, all the way to number 19 when he stops abruptly and says the box office is closed. I feel disappointed, then relieved, then delighted. I’m gonna go back and see my little saplings in the twilight.

here is my first post. I am going to see if this really works