Work session, 3/18/09

Posted on by Dale

This post probably won’t go up until Saturday, since I’m heading to Valdosta today (Thursday) and I left my notebook at home.

If we’d like to create the post in comments, feel free!

11 thoughts on “Work session, 3/18/09”

  1. It was brief, but fruitful. I’m beginning to actually see the outlines of a performance.

  2. I like this multiple perspectives approach. Very Rashomon. I get to be Toshiro Mifune. Sorry, Jeff, I called it first.

    I proposed we explore with one line from Jeff’s version of a Bear origin legend:

    And now surely we and the good black things, the best of all, shall see each other

    And then take a few minutes afterwards to recapitulate.

    I just mentioned in a note to Mike Funt that I think we’re exploring the tension between narrative and non-narrative possibilities in performance and in our approach to various texts.

    We tried in recapitulation to isolate and name images and moments from our work. In an effort to catalog them if nothing else. We began, right at the end, as a practice, to try and compose a very brief “performance piece” extracted from the images and thoughts we’d collected. I think we were discovering that every moment peeks out of the water like the tip of an iceberg.

    It was exciting. We found another tension between the transcendent and the…corrupt…? Between Bear Joy and Bear Flesh.

  4. I think the card system to record our “images” will be helpful in the long run, when we can start sorting and combining them into something coherent.

    That said, I think that while the evening was a breakthrough in terms of process, nothing jumped out at me as a “must keep.”

  5. I agree, but I also believe our process is also about “seeing” in an active way, maybe a new way for performing artists. I think during this time when we are teaching ourselves ways to work, we need to pretend our material is worth investigating even if it really leaves us lukewarm. Let’s practice process. Our “learning” material may not, ultimately, take us where we think we want to go, but… I chose to see a clash between the fleshly and the transcendent. I chose to act as if that was interesting. I can compel myself to act through my thought about those notions for any value the moment might contain. And yes, it’s all for naught.

    I worry that during our preliminary phase we will sit on our hands and wait. As if we will somehow know when it’s time to begin in earnest and until then we just watch and wait and withhold.

    I will probably continue to neglect issues of “story” for the present. I’m trying to model what it means to pay attention to less concrete things, as Dale did with his notice of Barb’s gesture on the floor. The uncanny appearance of a word. Opportunities for rhythms or juxtapositions. Moods. The turn of a head. I can will things into meaning through the brute force of a choice. And I can act “as if” those are the meanings that matter.

    You have to fill the pool toy with air before you can enjoy puncturing it.

  6. You have to fill the pool toy with air before you can enjoy puncturing it.

    My, aren’t we gone all aphoristic lately?

  7. “…we need to pretend our material is worth investigating even if it really leaves us lukewarm.”

    I guess I could choose to take offense at that statement.

  10. “nothing jumped out at me as a ‘must keep.'” Dale’s quote. I was merely referencing him. I am never left lukewarm. Ever. I’m perpetually hot and bothered. Dale’s the one who…discerns. Take it up with him.

    I’m supposed to be aphoristic. According to the bylaws.

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