Saturday, October 11, 2008

Visitors comments - Fall 08

Please leave any comments here if you've visited our Monday night events. Just click on the icon below. Many thanks!

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Images and comments from 'Mythologies of a Species'

You can comment and/or describe images from the 2 performances April 25-26 by clicking on the icon below. And thank you!

Monday, April 7, 2008

The thought about the future occurs in the present

Can we continue to support evolution? Support through commitment to participating, though experiments, though discussion and examination and though each one's inner practice of waking up. How do we support evolution when every day is complete? And we must plan for the future?

What is a definition of improvisation? We make something in time and in space with what we already know. We use the tools we have. We let the environment be heard. Together with our tools and the environment something occurs....not planned, but true. Is this the mythogies of our species? What stories do we find in space?

We rehearse improvisation. Is that a crazy twist or sane training? Who is the director? I felt stuck at the Faculty OUt Front concert last Thursday. How do I direct in such a classic setting? It felt so awkward. I wanted to be in a different place, not stuck on the edge of the stage. Where is the place for the director's chair in a classical performing arena?

Does each person view the desolatedelight AUNT through their personal lens? Are the myths private to each one who watches? Is there a shared story somewhere?

What do we want to give?

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Naropa Community Practice Day show - March 4

Below you can click the comment icon and leave any thoughts, images for the Project.
Thank you.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Post Your comments from last Monday 2/25 here

Expanding out - How can this be an offering?

“Whatever it is, passionate and complete involvement engages the heart and body in one activity. We are contained, not dribbling away our energy or entertaining ourselves in half- hearted frivolity. Practicing these art forms springs from a longing to see things as they are, longing to connect ourselves to the order and harmony of the natural world, and longing to communicate this harmony to others…your perceptions are sensitized and this intensifies the presence of the world. You see more vividly and deeply and from that clarity you can execute your work of art. You empty yourself of the small mind and perform the action so completely that you loose self-consciousness. There is a precise awareness undisturbed by inner chatter. Then you can tap into the larger, mote creative mind in which you do not feel separate from your materials and your art. Everything clicks and your action feels unified and effortless. When you persevere in practicing the forms, then you can actually connect with them so thoroughly that sometimes you feel as if you did nothing – the form of your work just come through you.”
- Sacred World Jeremy & Karen Hayward

Dark with Light Menu Laurie takes the director’s chair
Barbara is using a timer with a meditation or mindfulness alarm (although it’s not here this week!), so that the Aunt can be timed without someone watching the clock. Working with an evolving solo quad form, lights, stones, musing stool, votives.

Laurie will be using the mindfulness bell as a signal to pause.

Reflections on the first 15 minutes of this Aunt:
The lights go out. Barbara enters along the wall to US wall and places three votives on a plate against the US wall. She returns to downstage and takes three more votives on another paper plate and pads to the evolving line of candles upstage. Eliza puts on music from Barbara’s CD collection as five crawl from the cushions to onstage together. Barbara is returning after the third trip with the lit votives, there is now a line of candles against the back wall. She returns to the cushions. The five in all black begin squat-walking, torsos erect, legs in a crouch, both hands on the ground. They stop and agree to move together, then in dust and trios. Variations of the squat walk become manifest. Christa enters upright walking. Tyler turns on the mag-light highlighting certain activities in the space. Everything is moving quickly. Laurie rings the pause bell, the group pauses for maybe five seconds. Eliza asks, “Does the bell mean something? “Pause!” is the group response.

Beautiful spatial and timing agreements are being made, beautiful simultaneous trios, duet and solos that flows in and out of flocking (is this due to the influence of the music?) “Does the bell mean something? “Pause!” Beautiful moments of stillness and again new duets and trios. Barbara turns off the cd. The sound of smooth rocks is heard and a duet’s footsteps falling as the run out of the space and rejoin the cushions. A trio now remains. They are suspended, balanced and backlit by the votives. Tyler’s flashlight now illuminates only Erika’s feet.

The whistles and sound of screeching train brakes from across the road accompanies the sound of the rocks in Eliza’s hands. Katherine remains looking out the back window for the train.

Barbara has entered from the other wall with a clip light and supports the images that Tyler chooses to light. A large shadow of Christa’s hands with the rocks plays on the upstage wall. She abruptly lets the rocks drop to the floor. “Shit”. I feel a little lost right now. Laurie rings the pause bell.
The clip light and flashlight go out.

A horizontal beam of light from the mag cuts through the space. Barbara and Eliza both proceed up opposite walls and plug in clip lamps.

Katherine begins speaking about her experience of remembering that she left a muffin wrapper in her parked car at the long-term parking lot. Others from the cushion begin echoing bits of her text. Eliza asks “what kind of a wrapper?”. The text begins building with side conversations echoing and interweaving with Katherine’s monologue. Katherine exits as Barbara makes her way across the space to Eliza.

Laurie rings the pause bell.

Tyler, Christa and Miriam enter echoing the squat walk from the beginning of the improv. The commitment to the physicality results in some of the most hilarious physical humor I’ve seen in a long time.

Katherine’s monologue returns now standing on the stool upstage with a metronome.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Notes from a Monday Evening Practice

Below is Damaris Webb's notes, which she has been taking for every Monday Evening Practice since Sept 07.



Monday 2/18 D/D notes – Damaris
Eliza absent
One MFA outside gaze
Evolution of Group Mind

Evening Format:
6:30 – 7:30 Sitting and Personal awareness practice
7:30 – 7:40 Break/the Gaze
7:40 – 9:30 two sets of Light and Dark - 45 minutes each with a 15-minute silent break
9:30 - 10:00 Housekeeping/Discussion

Dark with Light Menu - Tyler takes the director’s chair
Barbara is using a timer with a meditation or mindfulness alarm, so that the Aunt can be timed without someone watching the clock. Working with an evolving solo quad form, lights, stones, musing stool, votives

Before we start Cara asks if an aesthetic is developing with the lights or a trend. To her it feels perhaps like a shift towards theatrical from dance.

As a culture we then begin to list the moments that seem to be recalled from our mythology:
Zen walks, votives in arches on the wall, prostration and crawling groups, lying Buddah, the corded people against the wall, two people sharing a stool and musing, looking out the darkened window to the parking lot, laughing geese on the back, the musing stool, solo quads, flocking, herding, swarming. We also call upon reinforcement of repetition and stillness.

Tyler requests that the room to settle in the dark before we begin, then someone define the space with the votives. Tyler suggests that if we encounter a time when we don’t know what to do next, return to the menu of stillness, repetition, Let it come down so something else can come up.

REFLECTIONS on the first three minutes of this Aunt:

As I sit and wait and listen in the dark with the rest of the ensemble on the cushions, I flash a very clear call into the darkness, a very clear image of how the votives wish to be in space. I wait for three beats and then I enter the space and set up votives demarking the four quads. There is a moment as I walk back into the area of the cushions where I look back to see how my image looks to me from here, to discriminate if it is set up correctly.

The first entrance is the flashlight! The large, unfocused light sweeps along the back wall and ceiling, as the focus of the center is slowly turned into view.

Barbara enters from downstage slowly leaning/dragging along the wall with a clip lamp and long extension cord. Very purposefully, almost rhythmically, she uncoils the roll of extension cord, casting it before her as if she’s casting out a line, into the darkness before her.

In a few moments I join into the Aunt on stage, memories of this experience include the unspoken agreement in the moment of one group freezing when the light went on and another group beginning movement. It feels as if the culture has developed a group awareness for timing and space! I also have a strong impression of an improved dialogue, reflecting in the moment on the moment of acting or not acting on impulse, whisper spoke with Katherine as we looked out the back window.

Dark with Light Menu 2 - Miriam takes the director’s chair
Some images in particular:
The tick/tock of the slow metronome influencing a tick/tock vocabulary of movement, first with Tyler and Erika, then joined by Bobby.

In general many cool problem solving techniques. I kept watning to see images at the outside of the door, but was afraid if I went out of the room , by the time I got to the outside door, the image in the room would have changed.

Miriam from the director’s chair asks Tyler to tell us about his brother. Also my improved text spoken by me with Christa Ray as echo or underscore or chorus (somewhat ala Gertrude Stein) about my perceptions about what can be seen at the reservoir.

post AUNT discussion
Our group mind is evolving! Both Tyler and Miriam from the perspective of the director’s chair note they would imagine something in the space and before they could call it, it would be done. We note that having someone sit in the director’s chair, whether they say one thing or not, helps to hold the space so that the energy doesn’t leak out.

Housekeeping
Community Practice Day showing is Tuesday 3/4 from 3:45 to 4:30 at Nalanda. We will meet at 2pm for an abbreviated sit and w-up.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Dark and with Light (and Sound)

Light & Dark Menu
Barbara is using a timer with a meditation or mindfulness alarm, so that the Aunt can be timed without someone watching the clock. Working with an evolving solo quad form, lights, stones, musing stool, votives. Eric Lacossa’s Dessert Soundscape

It’s a very different experience writing in the dark. Frankly I’m not so sure about how to document this process now. I feel my gaze is very subjective, what I’ll record are not facts or quotes. Do I trust that the group mind has developed enough that what I perceive is what is necessary to record? For what reason do I record this? Are we so in the now that my observations are superfluous? Are the moments and images that arrest/stimulate/relax me moments that point to something deeper, actually pointing to synchronicities or set ups that occurred seconds or hours or days earlier? How do I record that process?

I’m so exhausted I’m not sure I can trust what I’m thinking or feeling. We start in the darkness. I am sitting on a cushion, like the rest of the ensemble. Barbara is in the director’s chair. Barbara enters with the smooth little rocks in the straw basket, kneeling. Bobby sets the candles up in a repeat of the cross formation from last week, delineating the four quads of our playing space. After a little Laurie whispers to me to pass her the flashlight. Tyler comes to the CD player and turns it off. How bold! Cara enters from the audience as Laurie begins slowly rolling the large mag flashlight in a semi circle on the floor. Erika, Eliza and Katherine join Cara in the slow crawl from their seats on the cushions in the audience. I am aware that the green tea is especially hot and delicious and restorative. The four crawlers have reached the back of the space and two of them begin crawling up the wall. Synchronicity is strong in group agreement to hold images.
Laurie investigates walking along the wall with the flashlight the arching the flashlight again in half circles on the floor. Each sound is part of the choreography. The darkness of the room intensifies our awareness of sound. Although I cannot see her do it from the angle I am resting at I hear Cara roll the small rocks onto the floor. A satisfying sound. A recognizable sound. How many sounds do I know in the this studio? What is a surprise in the dark? What sounds are a part of our culture? I feel calm and bathed sitting in the dark, I notice the red light glowing from the silent boom box and I feel relieved that my back hurts a little less with the rolled up cushion in the small of my back.

Barbara goes back to sit in the director’s chair, Erika crawls to downstage and off into the cushions. Meanwhile the cross formation of the votives is being dismantled.

What are the rules again?

Barbara asks that we “Continue to emphasize repetition”. Repetition from my personal vocabulary? Influence from another in the moment? Recycled images and moments from an earlier Aunt? On another night?

We have no outside gaze in our audience tonight. We are the only witnesses, the only interpreters of our offering tonight. It is so dark in the studio that I can hear a rock making a long rolling journey but I can’t see where it is, but know it’s trajectory none the less.

Barbara calls “Pause. For as long as you want.” Me? Should I pause in my gaze? Return my attention to my breath? Am I at this moment the gaze or the performer or the recorder or all simultaneously. How the audience perceives what you are doing affects what you are doing. Christa clears her throat. I can’t see that it’s Christa, but rather I recognize her sound, even though she does not speak. Booby hums from the audience. Laurie sweeps the flashlight and for a moment it illuminates this page I am writing. I see the black ink against the white paper and the shadow made from my pen.

Barbara asks “Christa, tell us a dream”.
Christa tells us about her dream about the Maharishi who had just died.
Barbara asks Christa to stay where she is as she is telling the story and asks Eliza to plug a clip lamp into the long extension cord.
It goes dark again and I become aware of Miriam dancing by a group of votive candles.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Emerging

While I have been such an advocate for giving feedback through appreciation of specific events/moments we see at the end of an AUNT that delight us, I'm now wondering if even this way of building our 'myths' will deter the emerging properties of the next creative forms.

For instance, if I say I like the solo Bobby did with the 'flock/herd' moving in influence around the edges of the space (this was last Monday), and I don't mention another event, will this give the message that this other 'event' was not appreciated and therefore should die out?

We natually delight in the familiar, those performance images that we recognize and have enjoyed. But the emerging properties coming though spontaneous responses are not going to be familiar to us. How do we cultivate the delight in the more familier mythologies of our species and also support the unfamiliar, newly arising, soon-to-be-dominate experiences?

Can we still give feedback and know that if your actions were not mentioned they are still essential to the culture as a whole? It feels that the issue here is vitality, aliveness, responsiveness and a certain trust in being spontaneous without having a lot of second thoughts.

Perhaps the image of a certain event, say an AUNT, which is directed, polished, repeated, and coached,...over and over....happening in the space....at the same time as other present moment AUNTS are arising from the nowness of the space.... perhaps this kind of overlay will allow for a multiple field of aesthetics to emerge.