Dancing in the District: Daniel

I have this friend, David Dowling, who is embarking on an amazing and worthwhile film about modern dance.  He has asked me to be one of four dancers in the film to talk about my views on modern dance and also the life of a modern dancer.  So here is a teaser that he made the night after our shoot, ya he does amazing work!!  I hope you enjoy this.



Dancing in the District: trailer 3: Daniel from IsItModern? on Vimeo.

The Power of Improvisation

My thoughts today come from a book I am currently reading called "The Courage to Teach" by Parker J. Palmer.  I have thought a lot about improvisation and the need for it in life, but a part of what I read today helped the vision of its purpose in life clarify a bit more for me today.  It said, "Forced to listen, respond, and improvise, I am more likely to hear something
unexpected and insightful from myself as well as others."

Structure can bring about wonderful things, and continually reproduce an event or circumstance, but newness doesn't typically originate from comfort.  Comfort creates routine, which creates habits, which creates ruts, which creates similar flow, which deepens a whole which creates walls, which damns you from changing course.  This is where improvisation comes in.  As we go through life we have the choice to choose comfort or change.  When we choose change this requires an amount of improvisation, the willingness and daring to push yourself somewhere new where failure, success, and uncertainty lurk.  We don't know what will happen when we stray from a path, but why should that be bad?  We don't know what will happen if we try something different than what others have told us.  And we don't know who we will or can be if we don't challenge ourselves and spread ourselves wide open to experiences.  To improvise to me is to act or move according to ones true desires (which many times can be subconscious which pushes us to act on impulse trusting that feeling inside), or according to ones potential.  This requires setting aside fear to allow raw energy and creativity to take course, creating life in ways we never would have thought of, to live in manners we wouldn't have called natural, and to perceive our world from eyes we didn't have before.

With that life metaphor in place we can relate it to all arts (for a person's art and life parallel each other and create each other), but for me especially dance.  Coming to a place of improvisation in movement is a very vulnerable space.  To allow oneself to move in a manner without the bias of movement learned from the codified side of their training is a place of great discovery.  Returning to the quote above when the man allowed himself that place of improvisation he was more likely to experience that unexpected and insightful part of himself reflected in the subject at hand.  So it is with dance for within that allowance of improvisation one can find parts of themselves they didn't know existed, had suppressed, love or even hate.  They can also find an honesty that can be scary, for their mask is taken from them as their inner form comes forth.  But it is through improvisation that we find and inner landscape that we never had explored before.  And as we come to learn about that inner landscape we can allow it to flow in our art and in our lives.

A life is not truly lived unless the inner you gets to live it; this is done through improvisation.

What Creates Great Art?

Today I read "Happiness does not beget fine art."  It stated that the reason for this is because great art is typically born out of the "planes of agony, broken dreams, pain, suffering and torment." After reflecting on this concept/statement, I do agree that we typically see the great art rising from that place of angst in the soul, but I do not hold with happiness not begetting fine art, I think it is because we don't know how to continue it once we get there.

Discarding the Frame - Mark Tansey

Great art is typically born of questions, of journeys, of a place of searching.  This reality of life is almost thrown in our face when we are experiencing pain for it is our natural instinct to avoid or disperse pain if it be in our lives; with this comes a search for how to do that.  Sometimes the questions developed and asked in this process are easily answered and the pain easily remedied bringing the asker to a place of contentment...and many times there ends the search.  Sometimes the questions are not so easily answered, or acted upon when received which brings one on a journey of self discovery and learning which creates new understandings, which gives birth to great art.  So why is this not so likely in a state of happiness?

Along comes happiness, a wonderful, peaceful and damning place to be...if we are not careful.  I believe this is why"great art" is typically stifled in happiness is because at that point contentment sets in, there isn't really any stark pain anymore, sure discomforts might arise, but life is beautiful and why would you want to try to change it?  Happiness can create an illusion that we have "arrived" for you have come to the best state of living you have achieved in life...and many times this can turn into a belief that that is the best.  Here is where an artist must remain alive and continue the journey, question more, continue to expand, or contentment will settle in and slowly bind you to where you stand.

Triumph Over Mastery - Mark Tansey

In no way am I saying happiness is bad, I consider myself a happy person, I love being happy, but as an artist there is more to life, the world, and...well me than my happiness.  Happiness and peace is a great center to obtain after working through much agony, broken dreams, pain, suffering and torment (and no saying if those will return again), but then we must continue to venture out from it, continue to experience, to question, to change.  It is in this journey that great art is born, through discovery, which I admit is a lot more pressing when pain is involved, but is equally obtainable in a life of joy and happiness.

To close my thoughts I want to refer to the picture to the right. We can paint a masterpiece with our life and feel that what we have created for ourselves is so wonderful...and it is...but then are we just going to sit there and look at it, or are we going to give ourselves space to continue to work and create a life and art that is even better than our best so far?

A Sharing Vs a Performance

This past weekend I was privileged to be part of an African dance festival called Dance Africa DC at Dance Place in Washington DC.  The whole festival was focused on African heritage with vendors selling every kind of African merchandise you could think of, and of course we had amazing dance performances from groups such as Umkhathi Theatre Works from Zimbabwe, Farafina Kan from DC, and other amazing African performance groups.  The thing that really caught my attention and provoked much reflection was during one of the performances Baba Chuck, the mastermind of the festival and leader of each performance, got up and was talking with the audience about how they don't like to call these performances or show, rather they like to call them "sharings".

This brings me to a dichotomy, what is this contrast in Performance and Sharing?  In a performance we pull together a show that is meant to be watched, reacted to, and then left/discussed after wards.  What I felt defined a "sharing" was there were pieces created to be presented, but not so much in a way to just have the audience react, they want the audience to interact.  I didn't feel this interaction was supposed to just happen between dancers and audience members but amongst the audience members themselves throughout the show, which truly created an open, energetic, and improvisational atmosphere to the whole night.  I believe the cultural aspect of the show helped create this environment since most of the people were emotionally, religiously, and ancestrally invested in the show, but because of this atmosphere I felt that I was at a family gathering where we were the performers were not deemed as better than us for their talent and performance, rather they were same as us, just they were the medium through which this spirit of sharing was facilitated.

Some things I saw that I don't usually see at a performance included:

• People throwing money on stage for the company
• Audience members actually running on stage to collect the money and put it in a pile for the company
• One lady taping a bill on a drummers forehead
• Kids sitting on mats right in front so they could be close to the dancers and be able to move if they needed to
• People talking and yelling throughout pretty much the whole show
• The "imperfections" in the performances themselves, which no one cared about because those were humans on stage, and they were dancing their culture not putting on a performance
• And the way the performers smiled into the audience as if they knew them and were just performing for their family.

This concept of sharing I think is beautiful and creates a whole new experience for everyone involved in a show like this.  I now have a new question to ask myself while creating I am creating a show or a choreographic work, "how do I want the audience involved?"  do I want to "perform" this for them or "share" it with them?

Blog Purpose

Hello, and welcome to my blog!  The purpose of this blog is to collect my dance works, experiences, and thoughts into one place so I can have an archive of it but also so that others may see what my dance background is and what I am doing as an artist.  In this section I will be posting my thoughts on different subjects related to dance as I am making discoveries and finding questions in my research and life.  I hope that this blog will prove to be inspirational and helpful to those who are striving to learn more about dance, wanting to develop as an artist, and also if someone wishes to commission me for choreography, writing, teaching, or performance.  Enjoy!!