A Mythology of a Species: Desolate/Delight

Monday 3/17/8 D/D notes – Damaris

Eliza and Cara absent,
Violaine and videographer from The Contemplative Arts Festival as outside gaze

Evening Format:
6:30 – 7:30 Sitting and Personal awareness practice
7:30 – 7:40 Break/the Gaze
7:40 – 9:30 Three sets of Aunts with a pre-determined director and menu, 20 minutes each, with a seven minute feedback session solicited from audience and performers
Violaine closes Contemplative Arts Festival
9:30 - 10:00 Housekeeping/Discussion

“Awareness is very important. We are here, nowhere else. Since we are here, why not be here?”
- Chogyam Trugpa,

Bobby’s Sun and Moon menu:
Split stage: Damaris reads Moon text lying on her back facing upstage, separate in the space in two halves. A flashlight on the same line illuminates her, SR Tyler is the sun, SL Erika is the moon
Moments we loved:
Flashlights on text
Erika on the back wall going around
Stillness in the beginning
Transition from story to breaking it up
Erika’s feet lit and her consciousness of it
Movement along periphery and repeated, shadows small to big
Sound of rings scraping on floor (as instruments?)
Tyler Butoh cat walking
Drawn to look outside
High in pitch staccato with movement

Tyler Dark with Light and Sound menu
SL 2 solo quads
SR open space
3 on flashlights assigned to keep space lit no other light elements
Moments we loved
People in charge of flashlights – the flashlight filtered through the water
Image of finger and light bulb bubble
Counterpoints
The jumping energy from Miriam
Gibberish trio
It’s helpful to have time support (you have five minutes left..) it gives us the ability to inhabit the endings

BD’s It’s about five… Menu
2 walls lit by clip lights: areas for shadow making
5 people in the space – moving on the exhale
The stone and votive game
One muser with war text prompts
Everyone gets the opportunity to say freeze once
Moments we loved
KK said “help” BD suggested, “leave the space”
Text prompts to stimulate discussion
People passing in and out of world

Tonight people seemed very direct and confident, “here I am, I am doing it for you to see.”
Mythology of a species: Desolate/Delight
We have to want to give and be seen and exchange energy “this is about generosity”


Housekeeping
Mon 3/31 Damaris, Laurie, Eliza direct (KK out)
Thur 4/3 Faculty Show BD directs
4/7
4/14 Christa, Katherine direct
Mon 4/21 d/d in 9190 tech and Light Hang
Wed 23 dress d/d
Fri 25 d/d performance (Cara in Rome!)
Sat 26 d/d performance (Cara in Rome!)

Dissolve the scene and make a fresh start

Monday 3/10/8 D/D notes – Damaris
Laurie and Miriam absent, Cara leaves at 7:45
no outside gaze

DISSOLVE THE SCENE AND MAKE A FRESH START

Evening Format:
6:30 – 6:45 Sitting
6:45 – 7:45 Reflection with talking circle on last Tuesday’s practice day performance
7:45 - 8:00 Silent Break
8:00 – 9:30 Discussion and reflections on the process thus far

“Art makes harmony out of what in life is chaos and discord”
- Isadora Duncan

Moment or Images we loved or stayed with us from Tuesday’s Performance:
Cara & Laurie's duet - nice to see contact.
Barbara's playing on the piano.
People flocking being willing to flock,
Christa playing the piano into space
How Barbara spoke into space
Laurie in the door and light coming in
Katherine and Laurie wired
Startling to hear audience laugh
The look of Barbara doing her intro in the light
It seemed there was a lot of stuff happening in the space
Katherine putting the stones in her mouth
Eric Lacossa music – appreciated having a soundscape
Not a lot of empty space or stillness

Erika felt the experience (and of being in the director’s chair) was a lot like being in an orchestra. The movement felt less potent, but sound seemed hightened.

Cara felt that everything was very dark to her. She also feels a little surprised that she’ll often think “gee this needs more light” and then someone else will blow out the candles. She thinks she may be craving more form in performing.

Erika has a question about form and emptiness., it’s unsatisfying to work in a completely open form, so she has been making little disciplines for herself (as many of us/all of us do) with an intention to tighten it up. As an ongoing process she often feels like she’s going back to square one. In the director’s chair she came up against it. Hop much freedom? What boundaries are necessary?

Christa notes that the space felt so filled all the time – she felt it wasn’t necessary for her to enter. Perhaps the performance energy amped it up for folks? There didn’t seem to be as much listening. She is feeling a little bored with the Light and Dark menu, perhaps this performance was the culmination of a cycle? She would like to bring back elements on a menu to incorporate with this open form. Maybe go back to aunts? She would also like to know what people’s “little gems of specialties” might be, she would like to offer her skills as an improvisational singer, but hasn’t felt that the space needed it yet.

Katherine suggests that there are not actions or activities that are essentially neurotic, but rather intentions behind the action that are so.

Tyler notes that one of the greatest challenges and rewards is keeping the space alive in stillness.

Damaris would like to do some training around text work and bringing back forms or units. She notices a resistance to returning to something and “doing that again”.

Bobby feels that we haven’t really “done” performance, in that he feels we haven’t crafted an event for the audience. He wonders how often we are acting from a space message and how often from our excitement that carries through to impulse? He feels that we know when it “works’ and we also know those false moments where it seems like it’s working, but then, oh , it turns out it wasn’t it. It seems that all the times we’ve felt the magic of it working have been times bathed in spaciousness.

Barbara shares brainstorm ideas that she and Damaris listed in regard to ways to train awareness with text:
Echo
Repetition
Fragmentation
Musing stool
Sound quality: whispered, heard for audience, atmospheric (nonsense words, etc), sound that is not verbal, but is also not song, song


Barbara notes we are in a shaky transition place. Barbara shares her aesthetic: beauty and desolation and (nostalgia?), that space itself is palpable, so thick and dense and so beautiful that the audience is a little nauseous. A vision of the ensemble being more oracular culturally, human systems work, different rythyms and cycles. Showing a bit of the human condition through this aesthetic of a poetic surrealism. The content is so much less important than the intent of how it is delivered. Representing this moment in time of the precious human birth. Not about doing choreography.

Erika notes that if this practice is about performance we need the eye. Clarifying a few more items or units to increase our vocabulary of shared language. Keeping a strong director’s chair.

Erika asks what is the purpose of our performing? What are we trying to offer to an audience?

Barbara notes that it feels very voyeuristic. Is this what a culture of performance looks like? Or maybe it’s open practice that we are inviting others to come and see?


Headline Quotes:
How can I be of service right now?
What does the space need right now VS what do I want to do (my impulse)?
Encourage the nothingness that at times is so daunting
Often the greater risk lies in dropping something or doing nothing
There are no inherently neurotic actions, rather neurotic intentions
Don’t be afraid of silences

Headline Topics:
Our role and contextual presence at Naropa including relationship with audience
Feeling bored with the Light and Dark Menu, a call for the return of Aunts, merged with our winter practice of Light and Dark (and with sound)
A call for text training
Craving of more form in performance
What are we offering through our performance?
Moments that we loved
Barbara shares her aesthetic
Ways to train with text
Barbara summarizes where she feels we are

Headline Decisions:
Next Monday is a “performance” for The Contemplative Arts Festival, so we have decided an order: 20/20/20 sitting, personal awareness practice, flocking
Then we present three 20 minute sets with a director in the chair who brings in a menu (which includes which of our allies – lights, props, music-) will be used, the number of performers, collective images to recall, etc. Bobby, Tyler and Barbara will direct.
We’ll institute a talk back with the audience after each set
If ensemble members have been out, they must witness the first activity/set/Aunt before they participate.

Barbara summarizes where we are:
There is the sense that we want to continue with the track of performance
There is a sense of great confidence in what we’ve accomplished
There is a desire to have someone be the glue holding things together (even if just the director’s chair)
We need some devices to pull things together, but also not to override this community
We desire some way to articulate to an audience our journey and that we are in process – it’s still the idea of an Aunt in that we’re both in process and complete