Thoughts from Vic Marks Conversation by KT 5/8/07

I had a great talk with Vic Marks on Sunday night after the show. What an inspired and inspiring artist she is. It was a privilege to perform for her and an even bigger privilege to nosh on the potential of the piece for two hours over dinner after the show.

I love Vic’s idea that choreography is simply a set of pre-arranged agreements. “When I do this, you do that. When I am here, you will be there.” Some agreements are weightier than others. If I dive in the air, my contract with the dancer catching me is wrapped up in serious physical need. These physical contracts are rarely broken in dance and even more rarely questioned. When injury is the potential end result of a missed connection, its relevance is obvious.

But there are slipperier spoken and unspoken agreements we make with one another. “You ALWAYS do that. Why not tonight? I expected it.” Things relating to timing, emotional connections, physical trajectories and the millions of unspoken moments that get imbedded in a work as it is made and performed. Choreography IS a set of pre-arranged agreements. Yet many of those agreements are subconscious and although they wind up BEING the choreography, they are often not the original intent.

At the end of INHABIT, we each give an individual guest a solo. These solos are the hardest part of the work for me. I usually sit next to someone with my eyes averted, and tell them how hard it is for me to deal with proximity, both with strangers and at times with someone close. Then I muse a bit – “why is this hard? What is it that makes being close to someone in physical or emotional space so vulnerable?” I was remarking on my feelings of failure surrounding this solo to Vic and she asked me to imagine the solo with me speaking my inner monologue into a mic. Still keep the honesty and intimacy of giving it to one person, but simultaneously open it up so all could be privy to the private moment. I think I want to try this.

This conversation led us down an interesting path. Thoughts came up around ways to let guests experience our inner dialogues in general and throughout the evening. Instead of trying to homogenize our pre-arranged agreements with the choreography as a quartet – which is my normal entry point into dance making – Vic made the suggestion to go further into our differences.

This idea would have to be done with care and communication, but I like it. It makes me think about the dialogues we have had in rehearsals over the past year. It has been a deeply collaborative process. As a result, the four of us have brought our agendas and passions to the table more strongly than before. And we don’t always agree. When we don’t agree, the general conversation that ensues is to search for compromise –to find a balance we can all live with. But because our positions are often quite impassioned, compromise usually winds up feeling like a loss to one or more of us.

In general, I think my rules around how to engage with choreography are very traditional and center around timing. Be where you said you were going to be when you said you were going to be there. So, if Dustin decides not to lie down in the square of light before Aaron’s solo, but sit in a different place in the room instead, I am thrown. If Aaron is having a space hold solo with a guest at the end that takes a longer time than “normal”, I am thrown. And so on.

Conversely, my guess is Aaron’s rules of engagement, for example, would be defined differently, if asked. I imagine the strengths and meaning in this work for him center around interactions he has with guests. Therefore, to leave a solo his is giving to an individual when it is going well doesn’t make sense to him. After all, isn’t that what the work is about? And I am curious about Dustin and Bianca. What are their unspoken agreements with the work? Actually, I am curious about us ALL defining and articulating what are agreements to the choreography are and noting where they line up and where they differ.

Then, Vic took it further. Like the KT/mic space hold solo idea, her suggestion was to use the choreography of INHABIT as a boat and see how far the ballast could tip before all hell broke loose – and do it with transparency.

This would mean going deeper into the moment that comes up where I am expecting the choreography to continue in time and another performer decides what they are engaged in should take precedence. To figure out a way to let each of us engage as we see fit and simultaneously let our inner thought processes be heard.

What would it be like if I stated my confusion and desire out loud – “Dustin, I need you to be here in this square right now” and for Dustin to respond “I know and I am going to stay here a bit longer”? It is dicey to imagine this happening in full scale. But it is also exciting. Exciting to imagine the choreography as a strong enough container to let the rules of engagement fray and still maintain the integrity of the work. Then, when there are only three dancers “on the mark” in a moment where there are “supposed” to be four, because one has decided to adhere to another, decidedly more pressing relationship, we could all handle it – perhaps made better by it.

Vic also had a thought about the toasts. I was telling her about Rob Balis and how he was imagining the piece encountering turbulence with a San Francisco audience the way it is currently structured. “It’s a proscenium work in the round, KT, and you’re also telling people it’s ‘interactive’ in some way. Seattle audiences are polite, but in San Francisco, if you say ‘interactive’, they will INTERACT with you guaranteed, and right now it doesn’t seem like the piece can handle that.” Hmm – I wonder about that – how much involvement to we want? Physically, verbally, spatially? And what is the point of the work. IS it a proscenium work in the round? Is it a container for more open communication?

Vic suggested using the first toast one night in Seattle to set the stage. Instead of toasting to “our habits”, toast to a night of exploration. Pointedly make an open invitation to the guests to “get as involved as they dare”. Make it known we are asking for a full throttle night of rule breaking and see how it plays out. Again, a thrilling, yet terrifying idea. I would like to try it – this weekend perhaps?

What is INHABIT about? What are the tenants of the choreography? What are the questions we are asking? About social interaction – about how and why we gather – about what we want out of our crossings with strangers and friends in our days. Is the face off circle about watching our duets in the middle or is it really about communing with the rest of the guests standing dutifully in the round. Noticing if they are tired or bored or engaged and having a moment where you make eye contact with someone and choose to sit down together? A private moment of understanding with a stranger. How delicious.

I like the idea of choreography being a set of pre-arranged agreements and I like using that idea to find more meaning, understanding chaos and clarity in our current artistic and social experiment.

Thank you, Vic.