OK, so here I am with a residency at ODC. it doesn't include rehearsal space nor a budget nor class discounts. I mean it really isn't a residency about support. It is a residency about us discovering how we support ourselves, how we manage with nothing, how we self-produce without a budget. It's funny to me that there is a residency for such a thing. I keep hearing mentors talk about the "real world" and about not expecting to get paid. I keep asking myself WHY is this the norm? WHY are we telling the emerging artists that they need to expect NOT to get paid. What are we doing? Why is this considered OK and furthermore, why is it what we are continuing to accept and teach to the future artists? It reminds me of women telling their daughters not to speak out, not to ask to be paid the same as men, not to be sexually empowered, etc. etc. How are we viewing ourselves? Where is the critical dialogue about the status quo and what we intend to do about it? I know that I don't feel good about this acceptance of disregard and devaluing of dance artists. I don't particularly have a solution, but it is a topic that I think we can collectively investigate.
Nonetheless, I am doing the residency. I am doing the work. And my chosen idea/focus/interest is my solo practice. What is it that I do when i am alone in the studio? What is it that I do when I am alone or with others, regardless. What is MY PRACTICE? pfff.... good fucking question. I have watched myself over the last month basically not practicing. not rehearsing, not working. I have rehearsed once, but it was not organized. Time was spent errantly playing with the work. I recorded it but moved the camera 5 mins into the rehearsal and ultimately recorded 90 minutes of the ceiling. I have written about the work and scribbled ideas down. I have played with the material and thought about costumes. But without format. Without organized discipline. Now, I think there is value to unorganized creative time/space. But without the container (aka the practice/method/format) the creatively is blown away like dust in the wind.
So, what do I have for tomorrow's showing? I have dust in my eyes. The dust I am supposed to be dancing in. The dust I want on my skin. because it makes my skin soft and grounded. the dust connects my skin to my bones, if that makes sense.
So, I want to write a bit about
GOLD, but first, I am going to publicly PLAN my method. My solo method. MY practice. I think I want it to involved silence/stillness, chaos, writing, and precision/exactness.
Here is my plan for now:
10 minutes of silence/stillness
10 minutes of warm up
10 minutes of CHAOS, CRAZINESS, MESSY BOUNDARY CROSSING
30 minutes of organized honing of choreography, using tools and focusing on precision, speed, and exactness(recorded)
10 minutes of exploration and open score of exactness(recorded)
10 minutes of writing
total rehearsal time: 1 hr 20 mins
**
I'll let ya'll know how it goes.
GOLD
well dear solo, dear sparkly friend, dear dirt, dear failure, dear self absorption, dear earth.
I chose failure. During last summer, I went to the YBCA to see a queer women of color film festival and there was a documentary about a witch. She told us that she used to have rage as a child. She used to get so so so angry and her mother would command, "Go outside! And DIG a hole in the earth and get in it!!!" And so this child would do just this. She would go outside and dig a hole and get in and be there for sometimes hours. Finally her mother would come outside, kneel down to her child, putting dirt on the child's forehead and kissing her, and calmly say, "Mother Earth has taken all your anger, hasn't she? Come on inside now love and have a cup of tea."
My soul wants to do this. To dig a hole. and get inside and stay there and let the anger and grief and shame seep from my body into the earth. I want the dirt to cradle my bones and sweep my skin.
What is the gold about? Why is it there? is it the excellence? Is it the assumed excellence? the idea of excellence? the fear of failure? is it real? cultural? Is it because I like gold? I like it's richness. I like how it lives in the dirt, with the dirt, encased in dirt, like my bones and my skin.
http://ldolphin.org/Gold.html
walking in circles before laying down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1YX6A3MKVs
this solo is about failure.
And gold. I think about gold when I think about the European colonial men that survived and continued across North America to the wild west of California (whom Solnit writes about as well). The ones who came here for the gold. The ones that engaged that atmospheric indigo between where they were and the wild west, but what they saw in their minds eye was not infact blue, nor indigo, but real element metal gold. This unseen gold became the drive, invited their experience of longing.
