Performance Art using principles of BodyMind Centering
07/15/2010 - By Annie Brook, Ph.D., LPC Performance requires intense inner awareness and outer communion; a balance of intention/attention played through the lens of connection with self, other, and world. The mentioned BMC skills helped to create pieces of depth, vitality, and inspiration
Performance Art using principles of BodyMind Centering®
Attention/Intention, Dialog and the Use of Body Systems
By Annie Brook, Ph.D., LPC
Listening to the Mind of a piece
The title is a mouthful and there is a huge skill set available as a performing artist based on BodyMind Centering training. What I mean by that title, and in more simple terms, is that performance is not a show but an exchange, a …dialog. This dialog skill is one of the basic tenets of BodyMind Centering hands on work and it also applies to performance art. For me the performance must be a dialog, and I’ve spent years of my performance life making audience participation pieces, and using BodyMind Centering skills throughout my design, development, and final showing.
In this article, I will share how I do this and highlight my last two pieces as examples. I attempt to keep clarity by highlighting design, development, and showing, but may overlap these areas in an attempt to describe with words a non-linear process. I also include journal entries to give a more felt sense of the pieces.
Design
Here I listen for the “mind of the piece.” I think of this as the Diva of the piece, or the muse. This design comes from some experience I have that is larger than myself, and calls upon me to share in both a personal and transpersonal manner. Having learned via BMC to listen to the mind of a body system, such as the mind of the muscles or the glands, and trained to “feel” this evoked in a space of moving bodies, is a natural segue into listening for the “ mind of the piece.”
From the beginning I am looking for a design that allows for dialog with the audience. I invite the audience to participate, through questions, through movement, through sound. I do not give the piece away to them, or make them take over. I simply include them, invite them at times to speak from their seats, I ask a question, I touch someone in the audience. To engage people who normally come to a show to “ watch,” I include some form of body warm up in my piece. In this I want the audience to listen with their bodies as well. I want the piece to be received through the body tissue. I use sound and vocal art to help with this. I work with pacing and pay attention to how the audience is feeling. I have the audience stand up and stretch, or look around. I might divide them into 3 sections by having them shout out their birthdays, and then group them. I might ask how many brothers and sisters they have and connect this answer to a cued response. Other times I will ask them to turn to the person beside them and grasp their hand or push gently on their shoulder. The choice of request is based on the type of piece and emotional tone.
Tone of the Performance Space
In BMC we talk about support precedes movement, and we talk about tissue tone. Middle tone (not taught or collapsed) is known as active yield, and that is how I want my audience to be. Audience interaction done skillfully brings an audience into their body and invites their bloodfulness and presence. A warm audience changes the tone of the performance space. I have live people to respond to, not just my own ideas.
In addition, dialog brings a rich improvisational basis to each performance that keeps the piece fresh. It pushes my skill set. Because the piece changes slightly each night based on the different audience, I am presented with different artistic choices to meet what the audience delivers. This is challenging, enriching, exciting and at times scary. Can I meet the next moment, keeping my intention and attention balance? This attention/intention balance is another key skill of BMC, and is what I use most often as a performer. It means that when on stage, I am following my intention (my score) but keeping my attention on the artistic muse, my body responses, and the audience engagement and response.
Development
Body Systems and Sequencing energy from one body system to another allows the piece to develop. I will do rehearsals where I run a piece with my fluids in the foreground. Then I will run it again with my muscles, or bones or glands. I will listen for my intention and see what system in the foreground supports that intention. Then I let it all go and put my intention in the background and my attention in the foreground. I let things enter the piece I haven’t thought of but that live in my body. Then I sort through and redesign a number of times. I let the piece work me; this puts me more in touch with the mind of the piece instead of my fears of visibility or that I might not “remember” everything.
Having access to the different body systems and mind of the system evokes a rich palette of emotional choice for performance. Having a body that sequences movement and sound and story keeps an audience engaged and I access a space where my whole being is sharing the piece.
Showing
All the above rehearsals weave into the sharing. The skill set is the same with the added addition of communion. Here I am in communion with the audience. I must extend through the support of my glands to engage the larger vision and muse, to pace well without overwhelming or exhausting the audience or myself. I must listen for humor to balance the intensity. I must find the fat of my being to support this as well as to keep the pacing slow enough for people who are entering into this dialog for the first time. I must remember to dedicate the energies at the end of the piece, to express the gratitude for all the support, and to ask that it benefit all beings in a language that is familiar and non-secular.
Examples of these skills
I will share a bit from my design and performance of the last 2 pieces I did to illustrate my points.
“ Will you remember” was a piece honoring the Afghan women who were either on the run, or perhaps already killed. The second piece was Bloodlines, Voices of the Grandmothers, and it had 6 showings. In it I showed the impact of managed labor on little ones, showed styles of attachment and bonding, and connected this with footage I had taken of an ancient (between 120 and 150 years of age) African grandmother on request of her relatives. I describe a bit about each piece below.
“Remember” (Tech details: 20-minute performance ending with slides photos of faces of people from around the world, final photo an Afghan woman. The song “Will You Remember Me” by Sara McLaughlin ran during the slides. The piece was performed at 4 venues over the course of 3 months).
Design
I had not thought to make such a piece. It literally called to me through Jewelry I found in a bead store in Berkeley. I felt the jewelry before I saw it, followed my nose to the back of the store and saw the jewelry heaped upon a table. I knew at that moment I would make a ritual performance to honor these women’s voices. That was the inspiration, and the performance was an unconscious vow I made to them that they would not be forgotten.
Development: I started wearing the jewelry in rehearsal space, moving with it, taking it on and off. The piece became clear as I let it move through my body. I knew it was an intense topic, and that I would have to engage the audience to reflect on difficult issues. I formed simple questions: What do you remember? How do you remember? I knew I would have to soften the impact as well as meet the tone the piece needed. I created a beginning, middle and end. I worked to balance extension and flexion, giving me the change to go inward during the piece and then to come out with the ferocity and ground needed to hold space for peoples voices.
Showing: I opened with the story of finding the jewelry that set the tone for the piece. I then warmed the audience up by inviting them to make sound, to stand and stretch, since their words were to be the music for my dance. From there the piece took on a life of its own and I learned more each time I performed it about staying present to the unexpected and still honoring the audience. I kept adding new parts, such as music and visual image, until the end result accomplished my goal of honoring the Afghan women, and honoring life in general. It was the everyday living that was important to remember, and how that builds a sense of “all my relations” when we remember each other as living, feeling and loving in the same simple ways the world over.
“In myth, the substance of the cosmos is pure sound, which, when transposed into space through rhythm, becomes movement. Ritual chanting aims at reaching the ‘sound behind creation’, which also lies within the worshipper.” (From Sacred Dance: Encounter with the Gods by Maria –Gabriele Wosien, Avon Books, 1974).
What follows are my journal notes about the learning that transpired.
Entry: I bought jewelry yesterday that was taken from the Afghan women who were starving and fleeing for their lives. I knew it as soon as I saw it. These pieces were traditional jewelry, not costume, but woven into the culture. A lineage of decoration and tradition. The lineage of women who bear children and bury their dead. This jewelry is the kind that is given to one’s sisters or passed on to one’s children. It is not sold…unless one is starving, or maybe left behind when one flees…or is killed…
Entry: Did the first dance last night. Remembrance. I asked the audience to be part of the piece, their words the music for my dance. I asked them to remember moments of preciousness, love, delight, awe and wonder. I asked them to help me in remembering the Afghani women as vivacious dancing women. They helped me and I moved and word the jewelry as I said I would. I danced and responded to the words form the audience, their personal stories creating meaning and reflection. And I dedicated this dance to the dance that lives and moves in all of us. As I danced I finally surrendered and let the dance itself overtake me. I yelled and yodeled and whirled and then the forces were there and the women from Afghanistan were dancing; those who may have died in body were there in spirit; their songs and laughter and lovemaking and humanness were present. And so it was.
Entry: Now tonight again I dance. Already the portal has been opened. I must be awake now to the refinement that has occurred since last night and listen for the new impulses and forms. It may be more or less wild in its refinement. There is no way of knowing. When I came home last night I knew it was time to burn all my journals. I went out back and with my housemate’s help we did a burning ritual and tore the pages and burned them. We poured lamp oil on the paper to help it light and it was exciting to watch the words slowly dissolve into smoke; pictures diagrams, images of years of time in my life were going and releasing. I saw a picture from Africa I didn’t remember was in my journal; it was of my late husband when he had joined me there. I saw drawings of meditation practices and stories of the whales and dolphins and turtles and adventures in nature during my years as a kayak guide. I saw practices cultivated with my Lama teacher dissolve into smoke. I saw times and days and years that took so long to write and even longer to live. And this was not a disappearance, but an integration of those times and a making space. Making space on my bookshelf and making space in my psyche for the next emergence of my creativity. I am so grateful for my life.
Entry Feb 3: Last night cooked me. The performance was definitely different than the previous night. The set up was fine, with good energy and connection. There were things I forgot; one was to dedicate the piece. The other was to really stay totally present. With improvisation, you never know what is going to happen and you must absolutely work with what emerges. I told my story of the jewelry and the audience responded and I warmed them up with the invitation to speak in gibberish to their partners. When they sat back down I asked them to call out the remembering of moments of delight, passion, bliss, special fondness people started speaking in sounds; it was like the afghan language but had no tone or meaning I could pick up. I tried to move to it; this was the second place; I moved to it a little too long; adapting rather than asking them to also speak in English. I was so surprised that I followed it to see where it would go, which is a part of improvisation. I could have rode it further in; however my surprise and startle kept me more on the surface. Finally I reminded them that they could speak in English. However, then the things said were not so much those fond significant moments. Someone called out ‘I can’t see you’ etc. People were really tuning into the Afghani experience rather than their own memories. So I kept moving to that and then when someone called out ‘You are leaving me’ I responded; ‘no, I am not leaving, we are not leaving, they are not leaving.’ SO that is where I turned the piece around and reclaimed it. However, it was also the moment where I slightly left my intention. I could have stayed a bit longer on stage, which I did, and I could have re-offered the intention to share moments of joy, delight. Instead I danced with it and then exited.
Entry: It is wonderful to be cooked by experience. This was a big one and unsettling and useful. I wasn’t discouraged; simply curious about the whole interaction. What I have come to is the ideas for the next showing. I realize I have to carry the piece and have the audience interaction still there but in a different way. My new score is to use music rather than words to set the tone. There is a piece “Will you remember me?” and I think I will walk on to that and move some, and then talk about the jewelry, and while I am moving invite people to share and then carry it to that place of dancing no matter what, using Jimmy Cliff’s “Keep on Dancing.” In addition, I am going to put a video piece of this together where I will flash pictures of faces of people from all over the world. Interspersed in that I am going to put some of my baby pictures and growing up pictures and one of my wedding. So all of that will be in the ‘ will you remember’ part. It will be something to weave it all together.
Entry: Interestingly, after the first night’s piece, I came home and burned all my diaries. It was something I had known I would do at some point; simply as a gesture of time moving on. When you have no children to keep a legacy the personal tends to fall away. The burning felt good and was done in a ritual way with good prayer. While I was doing it, I realized I would also at some point burn my wedding album. I don’t yet know when; however I trust the timing will emerge. I want to include slide images in the next performance of this piece that show people in life. Now when I think of this dance piece, I am remembering a specific picture of me in my wedding dress. I am laughing in absolute delight. That is one of the pictures I will use in this next performance…It is an incredibly sweet and joyous picture, and I wonder if I have felt that happy and safe since then. It was taken on the eve of my wedding day, which was an entire 24 hours of ritual. By using this in the piece I will both remember and let go. Phew!
The final performance opened the veil and I could feel the intent of the piece accomplished. I felt the presence of the Afghan women who shared their jewelry, and that common place of humanity that faces grief and loss and still remembers. There was a felt sense at the end of the performance that the Afghan women were honored and remembered. The audience was involved, challenged and included; those who witnessed had been transported across time, ethnicity, and geography to be in relationship with the people bore those jewels. We remembered.
Bloodlines: Voices of the Grandmothers (tech details) 1-hour piece. 6 showings offered at different times of day. Video footage: 3 clips of Ngoko, ancient elder, 1 clip of South African doctor using “Kangaroo Care” (where newborns are placed on the mom’s chest and tied there with a wrapper and a protective hood, instead of using NICU’s and incubators, which are costly and not available to his clients). Cellist sitting on stage throughout the piece who improvised with me. Contact duet displaying the forces of opposition life/death journey: twin brothers who I know from the Contact community performed this.
Design
The mind of the piece was formed by my experience in Africa itself, also with this elder, by my work with prenatal and postnatal issues in infants, children and adults, and by my experience of death and loss, my intention to share information about the potential impact of managed labor that might interrupt bonding and attachment in a non-lecture manner. The hope was to invite people, prospective parents, child care/teachers/parents to consider that little ones remember and feel and are imprinted by first template experiences; how early patterns are set down and replayed throughout life. To consider that managed labor, (hospital interventions) performed without the awareness of impact on babies, can potentially send infants into a state of shock that may create both high tone vigilance (sympathetic) and low tone dissociation (parasympathetic) patterns that make it more difficult for mom and baby to bond, and for little ones to attach in a trusting manner. That these patterns can show up throughout life as questions of safety, trust and intimacy.
I also wanted to share positive interventions in hospitals that were done with awareness of the little one’s dilemma and the need for the interventions in such a manner that lessened detrimental impact. Addressing issues of life/death, can we face death even at birth? With support and witness, and resources, we can repair and integrate our life experience. It was a large vision that I knew would have to come from the piece itself.
Development
This piece was cooking in me for years. I needed to ripen before I could bring the parts together. I used my own life story as example as well as vignettes from clinical sessions.
I worked the piece solo, and then invited the twins, then the cellist. I knew the birth issues might activate potential shock issues in the audience so wanted to be able to pace and share and move in a manner that lessened difficulties but still got the point across. I knew I would need support and chose cello for this. I felt it would support my fluids and keep me well paced throughout the piece. I also brought the twins so I would have support in rehearsal and on stage. I also used stuffed animal toys from my clinical office in the stage set as a way to support bringing in clinical experience in a playful and understandable manner.
This piece was hard work. I invited an actress friend to give us feedback. I went into shock following that rehearsal and slept the whole afternoon. I am glad for that because it helped me clarify how to keep that from happening to my audience. We did one rehearsal on site, and then had 6 showings over a 2-week time span. The piece was different each night,
Showing
Cellist and video opened with my vocals off stage. I shared intention of piece with audience, warmed them up, and ran the piece which was interspersed with video, personal story, and having the audience be the babies, while I interacted with them in ways that might produce anxious/avoidant, disorganized, disoriented, and secure attachment. Pacing allowed for the depth to emerge and the South Africa video repaired any parts of disintegration with its positive warmth. The contact duet and trio held the space for life/death questions and we finished with me picking up the “baby” and the twins emerging and tying her to me with the wrapper. We got excellent audience ratings from the web site that followed the piece and it was a great integration.
Summary
Performance requires intense inner awareness and outer communion; a balance of intention/attention played through the lens of connection with self, other, and world. The mentioned BMC skills of Mind, body systems, tone, pacing, flexion, extension and developmental progression helped to create pieces of depth, vitality, and inspiration. Thanks to the work and the support it brings to the art of performance as dialog.
For further interest in movement learning, see www.anniebrook.com
Contact Improvisation and BodyMind Centering, a manual for teaching and learning
From Conception to Crawling, a foundation for Developmental Movement