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Are You Still Immersed In The Process? How Content Culture Can Cap The Artist

 It felt so good to move, undulate, and slide into a deep second position to recoil into a contorted contraction. It truly felt like breathing. Surely, I adore codified technique. However, taking a contemporary class last night taught me way more than I bargained for. Get out of your headspace, get out of the mirror, ditch the "content concept" and just dance. I reckon that is my honest thesis. I felt like Jodie (without my Cooper) as I whisked across the floor. Throughout class I thought about the likes and wisdom of dancers like Robert Battle and Matthew Rushing. While dancing, I recalled both of their sentiments that included abandon and connection (to the floor, to the movement, to the work...) while dancing. Truly, I felt that. Suddenly, I am met with a challenge. Maybe it's culture or maybe its Maybeli — nope! It's definitely culture.  For about one minute, I wrestled with walking off of the floor, grabbing my phone, finding a proper angle to record, propping...
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How To Think About Dance

 As I sat up watching a 6 year old video of myself and an amazing dancer, Frankie, perform a 10 minute and 32 second duet, I became inspired. That inspiration raised a few questions for me as I watched us use every inch of the space. Our priority was synchronicity and steady involvement with each other. While memorization was vital, it did not overtake our interpretation nor our connectivity. I remember Frankie and I being shocked when Mr. grant decided to surprise us by omitting his curtain speech. The second we set up backstage it was time for us to open the show.

Originally set on Jaylon Givan and Lauren Smith, The Need To Be, choreographed by the late Kavin Grant, was a work that had been nationally recognized and known for multiple jaw-dropping moments. In 2014, Givan and Smith performed this work at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. after being chosen at the American College Dance Festival Association to represent the southern region of our country. Even as I recall the pressure that came with being cast in the re-staging of such an accomplished work, I am reminded of questions that came to me. Is it still important to connect with a work for performance? Does choreographic process and developed connection to a work still matter?

The challenge of learning and working to perfect a ten minute duet was a great responsibility. Both time and intention played a role. Dissecting each step and its movement quality on top of recognizing nuisance differences with different body types being side by side on stage was a huge deal. We had to extract our own connection from one that was previously established. Our voice was a different version of the duet and pas de deux couple and we had to make our own statements. 

What an adventure!

 

Is dance still worth these sort of explorations? My answer? One million percent, YES!


...because if dance stops breathing the art doesn't matter.



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