More about movement and story (or lack thereof)

Worked/played for two hours in a rehearsal studio with Shula on Thursday, using elements of two dance phrases I had created earlier (the one from the Heisenberg principle, and one based on a sentence from a Towson University student magazine) and different techniques from the Toolbox (http://www.danceexchange.org/toolbox)

The process around creating both phrases began with "equivalents" -- a tool of translating one word or one visual symbol into a single dance moment with a clear beginning, middle, and end. In the process, then, movement grew out of meaning. Once the movement/dance/gesture has been shaped, though, it exists independent of the meaning that initiated it. Then we bring a range of possibilities -- a tool labeled "theme and variations" -- to the movements of the dance phrase, changing the speed, the scale, the emphasis, the direction, level, sequence (the list goes on). Once the act of variation begins, the meaning changes or simply falls away.

As an artist, as a rabbi, I have always been very "why" dependent. Needing to know why. Rabbinically, I treat it as part of my ethical responsibility, not to be random or sloppy when dealing with people's lives and with texts they hold sacred. When I directed plays and operas, I was careful to know why I blocked an actor to do something. If I had an instinct of how something was to be staged or played, I spent hours tracing the instinct to an understanding, to a why. Over the years, I have put energy into connecting the dots. I'd list it as one of my talents, in fact: "Connects dots well." It's an important talent when interpreting a fragmented or problematic text, when creating a eulogy, when counseling, when directing big shows in a short space of time.

Part of the improv style of the Dance Exchange is not connecting the dots too early in the creative process. Play for a while, use theme and variations, transfer a movement to a different height or a different body part, see what happens next. Once I started working like that with Shula, it became fun, discovering a new logic that could link one posture or gesture to the next, but had nothing to do with 'meaning.' In the abstract, though, and before we got into the work, it made me nervous: What was I doing simply moving in space, without a story to tell or a logical sequence to complete?

Eventually a dance can comprise a mix of geometrical shapes, a sense of continuity and momentum sustained by the body of the dancer (or, in this instance, the non-dancer), narrative moments a split second in length. All that in once dance. In this moment I'm reminded of pointillism (definitely thinking "Sunday in the Park") where a single dot of paint has no logic, no narrative content of its own, but constitutes an integral part of a larger system or story. Artists and viewers both have to decide how far away they want or need to stand in order to hold the larger shape and to select but not constrict the details.

And just there, I suddenly thought, oh, I'm back to religion again, after all. Huh.