It’s just me.

After years of juggling, I’m putting all my eggs into one basket.  (Does one juggle eggs?  Whatever; you get the idea.)  Since moving to New York, I have put much effort into creating branded platforms for my various activities: a performance “company” called Red Metal Mailbox, an “online magazine” called the Inquisitive Owl, a short-lived “online gallery” called Max works with Wax, etc.  I drank the kool-aid during the branding frenzy at the beginning of the decade, and I believed somewhere in the back of my mind that without titles, narrow mission statements, and competitive advantage strategies, I wasn’t really “serious” about my work.  This meant that I was fragmenting myself in the interest of clarifying my multiple activities as distinct, (even sale-able?) elements.

Enter: recession.  Along with all the crap, this economic meltdown has brought some fresh thinking.  With even less chance of anything I do for love turning into something I do for my bread and butter, I’m happily consolidating.  As such, The Inquisitive Owl (and all the other fragments) are being melted down to forge my new online home.  No more aliases – just me and whatever I feel like doing.  I hope you’ll continue to travel along with me.

Let’s go over this one more time:

Dear RoseLee Goldberg,
“Dancers” are ”artists.”

Dear Guggenheim,
(Ahem); the emperor has no clothes.

Dear (Commercial) Visual Art World,
It’s not that we (the downtown performance community) don’t “get” you, and it’s not a case of “the grass is greener.”  You are stealing from us even as you belittle us.  That’s bound to make anyone a little cranky.  Please stop.

Love,
Sarah, etc.

P.S.  The above-captioned letters are in response to this article in the New York Observer.  (Warning: if you make performance, remove any sharp objects from your immediate vicinity prior to clicking the link, as reading the article  may provoke violent thoughts and/or actions.)

True Statement?

Fellow artist-investigators Travis Chamberlain and Ursula Eagly recently challenged me to write an artist statement.  Generally, I feel that an artist’s “statement” is the artist’s “work” itself, and our reliance on written descriptions of what we do to apply for various fundings and/or justify ourselves to others is more or less a waste of time.  However, Travis and Ursula made me do it, and in truth, I suppose it is a necessary evil – just like the awful-yet-essential “archival video.”

Once I barreled through my initial resistance, writing this statement was an interesting process.  I approached it by writing very specifically about my two most recent performance projects, and then deleting everything except the general statements.  With minimal editing after that cut, I ended up with this:

I create live performance.  My work involves a hybrid of forms, including dance, theater, music, and visual arts. The degree to which I use each form, and the references I pull from each, vary greatly from piece to piece.  Though there are common threads, each piece I make is very different from the last, as I work from an investigative point of view, emphasizing my subject through whatever form I feel will serve it most.   I think of form as a tool – just like dialogue, movement, storytelling, or staging.  I choose and create forms, which serve the ideas I’m attempting to explore with an audience.

Investigation is key in my work.  I make work to explore subjects about which I have questions.  I am interested in honesty on stage, which for me usually translates to awkwardness.  I am interested in engaging the audience actively, without making them uncomfortable.  I take the role of the audience very seriously, and I consider it often throughout the creation of a work.  I am interested in the counterpoint between “onstage” and “off,” yet I respect that the audience’s role is generally that of witness and not performer.

Aesthetically, I am interested transforming the simple, common and often handmade into the sublime.  I make work that transforms a paper airplane into catharsis.  Transformation (of the performance space, of the performers, and ultimately the audience) is something I strive for in most of my work.  I want to give the audience an experience, and I want it to stay with them when they leave the theater.  I use materials that the audience encounters in daily life, and I pay close attention to entrance and exit points.  The show begins as soon as an audience enters the building, and I hope that it trails after them when they leave – at least, I follow them with the show as far as I can, and hope they carry something with them after that.

Nearly Network

Remember when I said that experimental performance needed a cable network?  Well, it’s here! Ok, it’s not on cable, but it’s quite amazing, nonetheless.  Thanks to On the Boards, you can catch some of the best contemporary performance from the comfort of your pajamas at 3AM.  Thanks, OTB.

Return to the Fields

I’m delighted to be moderating an upcoming discussion of Ursula Eagly’s brilliant Fields of Ida, which premiered at Dance Theater Workshop last October.  The discussion, which includes a screening of the piece, is part of the series Sorry I Missed Your Show!, developed by Gina Gibney Dance and Dance/NYC.

SIMYS! is an exciting addition to the landscape of “contextual events” for performance.  It promises to provide a thoughtful, productive opportunity for artists to revisit recent works long after the opening-night nausea has worn off.  Equally, it promises an interesting, down-to-earth opportunity for audiences to catch something they may have missed or revisit a work for a deeper look.

Sorry I Missed Your Show! featuring Ursula Eagly’s Fields of Ida
Saturday, January 23rd at 4:30PM
Gina Gibney Dance, Studio 5-2
890 Broadway, 5th Floor (between 19th and 20th)
FREE!  (please RSVP to infoATginagibneydanceDOTorg)

Rear-view mirror; navigation

On October 13th, The Inquisitive Owl turned two.  While I can hardly claim to have been diligently dedicated to posting over the past two years, it has been an interesting practice to attempt to maintain this outlet over that time.  I can only guess as to whether it has provided any interest for others, but that’s the beauty (and the horror) of the internet.

On October 20th, one week after TIO’s modest anniversary, I moderated another installment of my THROW series at The Chocolate Factory Theater.  This one featured works-in-process by Tara O’Con, Renee Archibald, and Reghan Sybrowsky.  Coaching artists through the development of their questions for an audience always teaches me something – and always reinforces the feeling that making art is like drawing a map of the desert in a sandstorm.  Why do we do it?  Well, to quote Ursula Eagly’s recent gem, “We make art to make sense.”  Even though it’s impossible to draw the map, our attempts bring us closer to understanding the desert, and that’s better than nothing.

The last THROW for 2009 is coming up on Tuesday, November 10th.  It will feature works by Dietz Marchant, Mana Kawamura, and Tatyana Tenenbaum.  I’m looking forward to more comparative cartography.

Throw it here – I’m open.

As part of my “off-line” investigations, I curate a performance-development series called “THROW” at The Chocolate Factory Theater in Long Island City.   THROW returns from its summer hiatus on Tuesday, September 15th with works-in-progress by Maura Donohue, Benjamin Rasmussen, and Jessica Ray.

Designed to provide artists and audiences with a platform for testing ideas-in-progress THROW has been going strong since 2006.  But, as LeVar Burton would say, you don’t have to take my word for it:

“Going to THROW is a bit like participating in a brand-new art form, one in which the co-creation is not only between the choreographer and performers, but also with an actively engaged audience.”
-Martha Sherman, Audience Member

“Dialogue!  Process!  Participating in THROW reminded me that this is where the joy is in art-making.”
- Rebecca Davis, Artist

You said it.

I’ve been working on an essay addressing the state of contemporary performance: its opportunities and challenges in the current socio-economic upheaval that we’re experiencing.  With established structures disappearing by the minute in every social sector, the opportunities for new thinking are equal only to the pervasive anxiety caused by the constantly-shifting ground.

Yesterday, I came across this open letter from the newly formed Collective Arts Think Tank, which is a clear and comprehensive investigation of these issues.  So, since CATT has already done the work of framing the conversation, I’ll simply point you there, and offer this brief note as an addition:

I think the most important thing we can do to ensure the health and longevity of the performance field in this moment is to become better audiences.  We must listen to each other (onstage and off) with real interest, rather than simply wait for a turn to speak.

Power equals energy over time.

I should know better than to read the arts section of the Times while sipping my Saturday morning coffee.  For many people, curling up with the arts section is a lovely weekend diversion.  For me, it’s a tug back into the whirlwind of conflicting opinions around the support of artists that governs my workweek.  This morning, an article on Contract Disputes in Dance didn’t just tug me back to work, it catapulted me full force:

First of all, I want to stress that everyone in the dance field feels under-served, underpaid, and under-appreciated.  By everyone, I mean everyone: choreographers, dancers, presenters, writers, designers, stagehands, everyone.  So, this continuing argument of “who has it worse?” and “who deserves the most pity or sympathy or extra-special treatment?” drives me insane.  We all chose this route, and yes, it’s unfair, but blaming each other does nothing to solve the problems of the field.  In fact, I’d wager that it makes things worse.

Second, the fact that, according the the article, an artist involved in a conflict over his contract with the 92nd Street Y, claims that Y’s decision to stick to their contract’s exclusivity clause, which limited the artist’s ability to perform at other venues within a specific span of time, was “appalling,” because the Y’s dance festival doesn’t have “a track record of being a festival that is well attended,” also drives me insane.  Think for a moment.  If you host a festival that is perceived as being generally not well attended, wouldn’t it be that much more important for you to drive as many people who are interested in the artists you are presenting to your venue to see them?  Wouldn’t it hurt your attendance even more if those same artists were performing concurrently in better-established, easier-to-reach venues?  And, if you are an artist who is concerned about your participation in such a festival, why would you sign that contract?

Last, and most important, I’m sick of hearing artists ask, “where is our power?” as another choreographer is quoted as doing in this same article.  As an artist myself, as well as an administrator who has worked for several arts presenters, this drives me most insane.  Artists have all the power we choose to take, and if we choose to give it away by signing contracts we don’t read, or trusting that by simply aligning ourselves with a presenter that our magical, financially-successful career will follow, or complaining about the state of dance criticism without once picking up a pen (or a keyboard) to write about the field ourselves, then we choose to give that power away.

Take charge, artists.  Self-produce.  Read your contracts.  Realize that dance is never going to pay your bills, and make your choices.  You have a lot more power than any of the venues, but it’s up to you to use it.

That’s absurd.

I’ve been heartily enjoying a read of Martin Esslin’s landmark book The Theatre of the Absurd.  It’s a bit embarrassing that I haven’t read it before, actually.  (Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that when I was studying theater in college, my theater history professor believed that the only post-Shakespearean theater worth mentioning was described in the diary of Samuel Pepys; we barely made it to the end of the 17th Century.)  In any case, Esslin’s book, first published in 1961,  is a surprisingly fresh investigation of the trends in theater he observed (and coined) as “Absurd,” including the works of Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, and Genet.

In many ways, reading this book is like finding a long-lost, annotated family tree.  My own searching, investigative approach to performance seems to fit squarely within this lineage of “the absurd.”  I am at once comforted by a sense of belonging and challenged to aspire to the greatness of these artists.  Yet, at the same time, there is a nagging question: Where are the women?

I’m not suggesting that all of these men (and there are many discussed in the book, not just the headline names) don’t deserve as much attention as they receive.  I’m just curious if there were ANY women exploring similar work.  Did the social structures of the ’40s and ’50s mean that the women were overlooked, or did the social structures keep them out of the game entirely?  To stretch my family tree metaphor, I feel like I’m missing an important piece of my own lineage.  Forefathers are important, but foremothers are too.  (Is “foremothers” even a word?)