Monday Night Art Workouts Mutual Interview
04/23/2010 - By Abby Crain and Margit Galanter
Monday Night Art Workouts in SF
This article is a mutual interview between Margit Galanter and Abby Crain. In it, they ask and answer questions regarding performance, practicing presence, and embodiment. In preparation for their class, Monday Night Art Workouts, at Kunst-Stoff, SF
MARGIT:
Abby, what are your current interests in your own performing right now?
ABBY:
One of my interests in performing right now is about appreciating and exploring the power of the relationship that is created when there is an audience and a performer. Until just recently, i have been a performer who actually loved rehearsal much more than performing. I was ambivalent about the contract of watched/ watcher...Seeing and reading about Marina Abramovic's work lately has brought to my attention the idea that when you add an audience, the performer is suddenly offered an amazing amount of energy, power, and focus. Much of Abramovic's work deals directly with this energetic exchange. I think prior to seeing her work, I somewhat narcissistically felt as if there was something perverse about what happened when someone watched me on stage. When I was younger, I was able to get off on this in a sort of dark and twisted way. To me the audience seemed more of a voyeur watching my oh so intense journey than anything else...When I was working with Miguel on the piece " Everyone" Miguel came back from working with Deborah Hay and asked us to " allow ourselves to be seen" I struggled sooo much! I cried! I got angry and rebellious! My whole contract with the audience was, I think unconsciously, that I was not allowing the audience to see me, (but knew they were watching) but then would sometimes catch them ....Allowing myself to be seen took the erotic charge out of the relationship ...it left me high and dry so to speak. This coincided with me reaching an age where I don't necessarily want people looking at me in bright light! If performance was about being watched, I wanted privacy, I wanted out! So i took a big old break from performing....
whoa. It is intense to write all that.
Realizing that the relationship to the audience in live performance is something magical that creates a magical, electric space, in this age when so many things arevirtual, is an astounding revelation to me. Performing feels like an entirely new experience, and something I want to be completely present for.
So then a second interest of mine right now in performing is how to make my entire self present at the moment of performance. How can the moment of performance be, not a performance, but an act of presence .....For me the beginning of this journey is about processing some dark shit and bringing it onto the stage, so that it becomes part of my performance experience. After a career of performing the role of "I am a dancer on stage, see what I can do?" I would like to present other aspects of my experience ....like rage!
thanks for asking.
ABBY:
My question is "what are your interests in making work right now?"
MARGIT:
Making work: what I love about this term is that it can be applied to so many different kinds of purposeful activities, be it the making of live art, of an object, of a field of study, of drumming up one’s vocation. Making work seems to be about defining something through the process of the doing; as you do, so you are becoming.
Making work: my fascinations always have a meta-component, and in the case of art, the question often comes up of why do it at all? There is so much struggle in there. A bunch of years ago I found the way to provide a regenerative answer to the nagging question. I pour my whole self into my art, consciously. What this means is, an artistic project necessarily need be fulfilling a variety of realms: artistic interests, a sense of design, intellectual curiosity, physical health, sensory development, soul practice, human connection, all. So, now my work comes when it is an integration of the total potency. I don’t push it, I see what arrives and follow It. When I can see how these aspects interact, I know I am in It. I am not sure what I am doing is art as much as it is me seeking, and bringing form to my imagination and to the invisible realms. Art is one word which can describe this, and there are others, but truth be told, I feel we need more accurate words to describe our practices. It is very satisfying to be a part of a field, and then there is this aspect that is just the doing. There is in me a part that does not necessarily want to join in. I am choosing to participate right now. It feels right. It moves It forward.
A big part of making work as a dance and performing artist is what it means to be visible, how I shape what I am doing for others to see, and how to be in the presence of others. This comes in so many phases from the inception of the work. In making, I am deciding about a voice, a tone, and a way to be. On the level of performativity, my greatest concern is to see and be seen (scene) simultaneously. This is a vital challenge that is ongoing.
My pieces take many forms, be they straight-up dance experiments, writing, performance lectures, discussions, curatorial projects, and installation work.
My making work these days is a kind of slow build of ideas through the richness of a constellation of questions. I spend time alone investigating and as I can, I work side-by-side with people who inspire me to enliven and help give It form. I like what happens when making work lives in the presence of others. I like what happens to me, all the insight that can come from putting it out. My concern is to create a field of inquiry that can be shared. If it lives in a variety of settings, my expectation is that the contexts can provide another layer still for the work. So it effervesces (is that a word?) amongst its environment and people, developing its life from where it is at.
Right now, I am amidst a project called Y, which is a study of branching, of multiplicity. I am interested in the androgyne as potent characters and symbols of potentiality. The splitting of a cell is the stretching of a polarity to create division- this is the inception of multiplicity! This arrival from singular to more is a place of gender determination, and also an analogue for the rise of language. So, the letter Y has been a symbol both for the Word and the Androgyne, arms outstretched one body into two. You can read a little more about the project at this site: http://margitg.wordpress.com/archive/y/
MARGIT:
Now for you: What is something you would like to research in teaching the Monday Night Art Workouts?
ABBY:
One thing that I am excited to research in the ART Workouts is how to integrate an intellectual and theoretical discourse into a class setting that also involves a rigorous and embodied physical practice.
I feel like back when we went to college (100 years ago), I received a very clear message that dance was one thing, and theory was another. It was assumed and accepted that visual art and filmmaking were deeply connected to theoretical discourse about art and art making, and even perhaps were crucial to it, but that dance fell into some shady and gauche netherworld that landed somewhere between the gym, anthropology, and MTV. I will never forget the reply of one of my esteemed colleagues who responded to my question of "why didn't you come see my show?" (he chose instead to sit in an east village bar, only blocks away). He replied, "I don't watch dance."
At the time, I was quick to nod knowingly, implying of course, how silly of me... dance is for girls and fairies, lets drink some scotch and talk about films.... I tried to study film, but it bored me to tears. I tried to study visual art, but had no talent for it...I read lots of critical theory, but felt like I somehow wasn't supposed to connect it to my own artistic journey with dance to this body of thinking.
Post- college I came out to the Bay Area, and kept dancing. At the time (1994) my experience here corroborated the supposition that dance making and critical theory had no use for each other. I plunged myself into the anarchic, polyamorous, angry, and expressive dance scene that was going on at the time. We talked about our relationships to ourselves, each other, the natural world, the universe, our womanhood, our energy, other peoples energy, homeless people, sex and sexuality, the impact of eating ice cream on our health, but never did anyone mention my beloved Donna Haraway, Roland Barthes, or Fredrick Jameson. In fact, if I tried to go there, people seemed annoyed, threatened, and perhaps even a little angry that I was trying to show off my expensive education.
So when I went to New York seven years later and began working with Miguel, imagine my surprise when one day, Miguel quoted Roland Barthes in rehearsal! Each time we entered a new process with him, he had spent time researching reading , scouring the crevices of the internet for ideas, theories, inspiration, and precedents...We went to Hollins for a residency one spring, and I happened to see the notes on the board left over from Donna Faye’s Choreography class. It read like and introductory course to Modern Culture and Media. Then I saw the work those girls were making. Oh my god! Genius! Earth changing! Something clicked in my brain. Good theory makes good Dance! But I was running too fast --making it to rehearsal, going on tour, running a Pilates studio, and making babies... to do much about it at the time.
So anyhow, now I am back in the Bay Area, and things seem different. Lots of folks have gone to graduate school and I can see already that the dialogue has shifted a lot. This is exciting.
I am really working on integration at the moment. I am trying to connect pieces and aspects of experience.
So i think one of the theoretical projects for me of the ART WORKOUTS is to see if we can finally step out from under that ridiculous dichotomy of mind versus body, which i think as dancers we have always instantly recognized as bogus. I would like to start to really be able to be in a discourse about the nature of performance and reading and performing the body at the same time as we are working to deepen our experience as physical beings. That these things could be, at the least simultaneous and at the most, synonymous activities!! Live performance is radical. Embodied presence is radical!! Perhaps non-embodied presence is too for that matter!
I think you have been thinking this way for a while, but I am apparently a late bloomer....
xo
abby
ABBY:
pick your favorite
Can presence be taught?
What makes a performance compelling to you?
What does your ideal teacher look like and how does she impart her information?
Describe your ideal student.
Why are you interested in creating a class that has a cross-disciplinary dialogue embedded in its constituency?
How will your teaching address the difference in backgrounds of the students?
MARGIT:
I choose the question Can presence being taught?
First of all, I would say that presence is a state that one can experience through clear and embodied action. There is a component to presence that is having a layer of observation that comes with the clarity, and from this one can make choices and decisions that are aligned with one’s values. In terms of performance - be it performance on stage or performance in one’s actions in the world (e.g., having to speak effectively, making decisions in the moment) - a person is often faced with adrenaline and can cut off their full capacity. From Bonnie B. Cohen, I have learned that the sympathetic system, historically called fff (flight, fright, or freeze) also includes actions like tend and befriend. There are physical practices that can show us how to live in embodied states, and recognize which of the multiple systems we are enacting at a given time. All this to say, when you have to perform, you may be limiting your options because you are scared. In a strange way, each action is life threatening, as it threatens your sense of self, and can change the direction of your life course, no matter how delicately small it is. Other roadblocks to being present are that you may also just not be focused on what you are doing, or be into what you are doing and not aware of what else is taking place around you.
This term presence is such an elusive one, so often stated, could use a universe of dialogue, and I think it is quite personal in definition. There is a larger social framework, as ever, that plays into a concept of presence. There are indeed tools that can incite being in the mode of presence, and I will address this later. I am not so into ideals, though the failures and attempts bring great information and clarity. I practice thinking from experience, as a way to find what I already know that need be more greatly articulated and therefore will come to know more fully, and to mend the mind/body division that we inherited, as movers and as citizens of Western Civilization influenced by Descartes. Since we thought therefore we were, some of us collectively have been in a long process of recovering becoming. With the division, we (and I know the “we” is loose; if there is any doubt, count my multiple selves) gained an obsession with quantity, diminishing contrast, pattern, and gestalt (thanks Gregory Bateson for the clarity here). So, I speak from this view of monism, the constellation of connections and a wholistic or ecological approach. I do not want to create an illusion that there is this ideal thing, presence, and we try to get there. Trying is imbued with effort. There is always a step away. One can practice presence, would this be presencing?
I bring up dualism because it is right there oftentimes when one is being seen. Oh, the pain of the separation! Buber spoke of I-Thou, and many lineages have terms to speak of these connections. Eugene Gendlin coins body/environment, Philosophy of the Implicit. Presence is in some aspect about being in the connection, which I have called in the context of my own performance dancing, “dancing with”. You can substitute “being with, acting with, playing with”. It is not so much about a duet, rather about being in the state of with-ness. I experience this with-ness as a body/environment, as a deep fascial movement, through my proprioception in relation to my own moving parts- in self and with. Without with, I am a spinning top, and as a dancer, I know that state place all-too-well. As a motor-mouth and a hothead, I know that state all-too-well! Practicing presence.
The funny thing about presence is you can practice and it may indeed emerge through practice, yet also it just arises, like gas, rises up through the surface, and maybe you happen to notice you are there. It can just come.
So, how does one teach presence? We can teach practicing presence. There are many tools that help the practice. They relate to physical intentions and attentions, and they relate also to creating frameworks and initiations within an particular run of action. Practicing presence is supported by repetition from consciousness, from living in an action, observing it, and trying again. It seems important to slow down enough to match the movement with the attention as you get the presencing motor running. Really, with practice one can start to develop a context for what it means to be in an embodied noticing of action while it occurs. The noticing is strangely close to judging what one is doing, but realms away. What can take place is from this kind of layer of observation that you can make choices, rather than live in the spinning top.
ABBY:
whoa, I love your response. holy cow you are light years ahead of me! That shit about "when you have to perform, you may be limiting your options because you are scared, and in a strange way, each action is life threatening, as it threatens your sense of self, and can change the direction of your life course, no matter how delicately small it is." Is a BIG DEAL!!! that explains so much to me about the state of performing and how it can feel so astounding when one can actually be present through that state, and equally how it can be so devastating when one feels like one loses track of oneself there!
This reminds me of some reading I have been doing about babies and brain development. On some level, as physiological response to performing is probably hardwired into our system from how we experienced trauma in early life. Infant brain research is showing that if the infant is traumatized during the earliest moments of life, before they have much control of their nervous system or bodies, their response is often freezing, or playing dead. This may explain a bit the occasional freeze or blank that happens on stage...
A class that practices performing can, in this way, be like a model mugging class. We can practice choice making and presence from within that adrenalized state.
MARGIT:
And find tools to diminish the stress, so the state can be clearer and more relaxed, with more space and breathing. Stress has a function, but with practice and artful skill you can have choices in how you want to live through the moment.
