DIVERSITY = PRODUCTIVITY

Monday 1/14 D/D notes – Damaris
Cara and Christa absent
No outside gaze

DIVERSITY = PRODUCTIVITY

Evening Format:
6:30 – 7:00 Sitting and Personal awareness practice
7:00 – 7:30 reconnoiter
7:30 – 7:40 Break
7:40 – 9:30 AUNTS making
9:30 - 10:00 Housekeeping/Discussion

Reconnoiter –verb (used with object)
1. to inspect, observe, or survey (the enemy, the enemy's strength or position, a region, etc.) in order to gain information for military purposes.
2. to examine or survey (a region, area, etc.) for engineering, geological, or other purposes.
–verb (used without object)
3. to make a reconnaissance.
[Origin: 1700–10; <>

BD would like us to review the “performance options” available to su in the upcoming month and decide if we want them and what we would want from them. BD had an idea of perhaps we could diversify around these, that individual members could “take on” the producing of a specific event. Using their director’s eye. An idea of maturing something:
What do individuals want from this second semster?

March???: (could be the Monday of Spring Break) Contemplative Festival
April: May? Denver Art Museum
April 3: Faculty Concert
April 25 & 26 Our advertised last showing (and Katherine’s 50th birthday!)

We reviewed the mission statement and the Aunts manifesto for inspiration and grounding.
Erika B shared an inspiration from a review of a book that she read (I went on line and found (I think) a similar article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/science/08conv.html?ex=1357880400&en=e0eff70095b6eb8c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

“Diverse groups of people bring to organizations more and different ways of seeing a problem and, thus, faster/better ways of solving it.

People from different backgrounds have varying ways of looking at problems, what I call “tools.” The sum of these tools is far more powerful in organizations with diversity than in ones where everyone has gone to the same schools, been trained in the same mold and thinks in almost identical ways.

The problems we face in the world are very complicated. Any one of us can get stuck. If we’re in an organization where everyone thinks in the same way, everyone will get stuck in the same place.

But if we have people with diverse tools, they’ll get stuck in different places. One person can do their best, and then someone else can come in and improve on it. There’s a lot of empirical data to show that diverse cities are more productive, diverse boards of directors make better decisions, the most innovative companies are diverse.”


Flick and Flack Menu, Barbara and Bobby discuss from director’s eye, Katherine, Eliza and trio of Laurie, Erika and Tyler
BD’s image of trying to work with time. Figuring out duration? Three separate layers:
1. KK is observed finding her place in space where she will take a sleeping posture for the entirety of the event
2. 2. EL will build on bell, stool, bird call and go into almost animal hibernation and then activated, then settles
3. Trio working with distal initiation, proximal strength and imitation (slow, but then sudden abrupt activity, maintain relaxed and wholesome.

Amid & post AUNT discussion
This was a unique situation as BD and BR were set in the audience making their observations and thought pattern transparent from the director’s eye chair. This meant the gaze as well as the performers could hear the commentary during the Aunt. Miriam felt the discussion fro the area of the gazers was very disturbing, and made the suggestion that BD and BR move to a place on the stage which then made it easier for the audience to hear. Before that MW felt that their comments were infringing on the interpretation she had of the improv she was watching.
DW felt it might be more focused if BD and BR only spoke aloud the observations relating to a particular theme (in this case time), perhaps in this case we would could hear the development of that “experiment” relating to time and not feel our individual experience of the improv was being dictated by the vocalized commentaries of the directors.
The intention is to be open and transparent to the audience, the concern is commentary helping them settle down and see specific things (like at an art gallery – you have your subjective experience of a painting, and then you can hear the art comments the guide makes and see the composition more deeply, sometimes to the detriment of your personal experience and sometimes to it’s enhancement.

Miriam & Tyler’s Five Rocks, Eliza, Laurie, Katherine, Erika, Bobby
Five people enter the stage stagerred. Each one finds a “still” location as a rock. Time passes. Each rock has a specific movement to complete prior to re-arranging in space. Individuals rearrange again in the movement, but only one may move at a time

Post Aunt Discussion
This was the second Aunt in a row that had two people sharing the director’s chair!
EB was reminded of the Zen Rock Garden exercise – truly an investigation of time and space “Taking your rock position and inhabiting it fully, so it becomes a cellular experience, opening the senses.” EL commented on how her imagination is activated in seeming inactivity.
There was a general interest in re-visiting this Aunt embodying a houseplant, aquarium or fallen soldier, etc


Housekeeping
Sunday 1/27 is a dinner at Barbara’s from 6-8pm