FRONT

A publication on contemporary dance—[email protected]

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FRONT Ed. 05 Featuring: Biba Bell Milka Djordjevich Jessica Jobaris Chris Lael Larson Sara Shelton Mann Taka Yamamoto Order here. 💌

More about FRONT Ed. 05 here.

Publication released: 1/30/16

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Now available: FRONT: BUOY Order by mail here.

FRONT ED4: BUOY FEATURES LINDA AUSTIN + PERFORMANCE WORKS NORTHWEST (PDX) ALLIE HANKINS (PDX) KAJ-ANNE PEPPER (PDX) LAURA/LARRY ARRINGTON (SF) AUNTS (NYC) CHRISTINE BONANSEA (SF) RACHEL COOK (HOUSTON) JESSE HEWIT (SF) MONIQUE JENKINSON (SF) SIRIOL JOYNER (ABERYSTWYTH) HANA VAN DER KOLK (LA) TAISHA PAGGETT (LA) QUEEN SHMOOQUAN (SEA) KATE WALLICH (SEA) + MANY MORE

Release date: 11/22/14

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SELECT EXCERPTS FROM FRONT ED4: BUOY

BUOY opening letter from FRONT For FRONT’s fourth edition, we trespass outside artistic production, asking the dark rich waters of process: What resources do communities self-engender to underwrite artistic inquiry? How is dance developed in the realms of privacy or friendship? What shines skulls and pelvic bowls diagonal from project-driven logics? When distinct roles elide, authorship blossoms into swells of interest, and the force of activity derails estimations of utility—where are you and what are you doing? Now that we can’t tell the ground from the path, we’ve found our ripe beginning. Contemporary dance makers often produce cultural works few capitalized markets demand and even fewer viable systems of distribution circulate. The lament is all too familiar. Yet there’s no small ambivalence toward these conditions of production either. The weak force of “the market” has led artists to generate rather exquisite enclaves that operate on alternative resources of time, attendance, participation, reciprocation, and on and on… These often informal dynamics of cooperation and solidarity in support of artistic practice strike FRONT as one of the most developed and diverse terrains in contemporary dance ecologies. We’re here to give them some broadsheets. BUOY looks to the myriad strategies artists have employed, organized and innovated to enable and sustain artistic vitality. This edition pays homage to two champions of the social potential surrounding performance: Performance Works NorthWest and AUNTS. Sail a few pages over to find three gorgeously distinct contributions on the theme from Arrington, Hewit and Joyner. A brand new section, Notes from the Field presents a trove of artifacts from the creative lives of contemporary dance makers. Now with a twist, ED4’s two Chain Conversations get Pacific—spanning the US West Coast bound North and South. From Houston, Rachel Cook of DiverseWorks delves into her curatorial vantage in a special report for FRONT. And finally, we offer a glimpse into FRONT’s recent Resource Room Residency at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. What a crew. So happy you’re on board. All our best from Portland, FRONT

__________________________________ Linda Austin—Choreographer/Performer, Director and Co-founder of Performance Works NorthWest (PWNW) As I delve through images of past, present and future, what strikes me is that, for PWNW, the event, series or performance is just an excuse—a way to ignite process, share pleasure and form connections; a means of giving agency to artists and audiences, of expressing both reverence and irreverence about what we do, of celebrating, as well as bending, the rules of what an arts experience is. __________________________________

Allie Hankins—Choreographer/Performer (Portland) In performing, I experience a heightened sense of presence, and it always feels risky, so coming out of a performance feeling intact/alive/successful is triumphant (for a brief moment, until the post-show existential crisis sets in—but it is strangely pleasurable to experience that duality so intensely in such a brief period of time). Performing feels fiery, animalistic, completely sacred but at times irreverent. I feel terrified, I feel like a fraud, I feel completely in control as my person is continually informed, shaped, challenged and deconstructed by a complex cascade of urges, memories, emotions and fascinations. I am a shapeshifter, an impersonator, and an interrogator who steers imagination into the realm of transformation and self-discovery. And nothing else feels that way. And I’m addicted. __________________________________

Laura/Larry Arrington—Choreographer/Performer (San Fransisco) I am positive that the potential of art/creativity/ritual/magic must be unhinged from the pivots of “career” and “profession,” and allowed to seep into the totality of our being/living. quotidian practices are personal/political tools for unlocking the total possibility of living art. attempts at infecting the whole of our living with the art practice that we often relegate to the studio. Call me and we’ll devise a few scores/rituals to excavate the creative viability of the lives we’re already living. we work the minutiae in our bodies (both personal and social) our homes, our beds, our cities, our dreams.  you must call me. you calling me completes my quotidian practice.

__________________________________ Rachel Cook—Associate Curator: DiverseWorks (Houston)

I am committed to cracking open the process of presenting performance and multi-dimensional work. Something that I have noticed recently is how the landscape of performance artists, funders and venues has drastically changed since numerous small independent theatres and alternative performance spaces were originally founded in the late seventies and early eighties; the critical language has shifted, the touring structure has pushed institutional support, the silo of disciplines have become increasingly more difficult to identify. 

__________________________________ Han van der Kolk—Choreographer/Performer (Los Angeles) I’m a utopist. I do what I do cuz I’m hoping for a different future. What I practice (through dancing and living) is a practice for that future. The practice is everything. The stage work is a stab at confining it inside a set of conditions, at packaging it in some semi-sexy ways and offering it to an audience for reflection. I am quite busy with the question of how to share a process, a practice, rather than sharing an art object (or maybe I’m in search of some magical event that is both an invitation to witness, maybe even be a part of a practice, as well as an illuminating product). I’m often mystified by this task, often wondering if it’s a worth pursuing, or if the practices should just remain themselves, undocumented, unencumbered by “art.”

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AUNTS (NYC)

Our print edition features a preface from AUNTS—included below—and two artist responses from Shizu Homma and Lenora Champagne. FRONT received a total of eleven artist responses via AUNTS. Below we present the nine contributions we were unable to include in the newsprint publication, a terrific testament to the impact AUNTS has had. AUNTS preface:

For our submission we opened it up to the artists to talk about how AUNTS has helped develop their process (versus performance as product or project-by-project objectives). To reflect on how AUNTS supports process: "how we’ve prioritized artistic inquiry and practice autonomous from market demand and institutional support." This issue of FRONT will focus on "artist-initiated happenings that support fellow artists' processes."  We try to maintain an open and inclusive curatorial practice. In some ways, it is not curatorial at all and instead is a way to facilitate a presentation format filled with self-selected artists. The artist responses included in this article are from a series of "chain curation" events that we did in May and June last year at Arts@Renaissance in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. We asked an initial group of twenty artists to show work and curate someone to show on one of the five nights. That artist was then asked to do the same until a series of five artists were curated. This format was started with Jmy Leary who founded AUNTS in 2005 with Rebecca Brooks. It has been important in creating a steady stream of new artists who show work at AUNTS. In the last month we have learned that this space, Arts@Renaissance, as well as another space that we frequently use, Secret Works Loft, will be closed. Both spaces have been significant in the development of "our" practice in that they have provided open environments where we can get dirty, throw confetti, break open pillows, spill beer, pee, puke and stay up dancing till three or four in the morning—all things that we trade to work in more traditional (and institutional) spaces but that have been instrumental in creating the community that surrounds our work and the irk within it. Supporting artists‘ practices has been very personal. We engage with artists in a very intimate way, and I am realizing that now through gathering content from artists and writing for this piece. __________________________________ Stormy Budwig The environment & freedom at AUNTS was helpful to my work in a number of ways. First—being surrounded by so many performance and visual artists making their work all at the same time not only helped feed my own material, but it created a charged enough environment to make me feel as though I could take creative risks and try things that I may have not felt able to try in a more traditional setting. It was like an amphitheater of artistic process, which was incredibly inviting to jump into when creating/performing my dance. Second, and on that note, Arts@Renaissance as a cavernous, underground space with lair-like hidden rooms and passageways coaxed artist and "audience" alike to get lost. For me this feeling, the sense of getting lost in performance, is exciting and incredibly rare. Third—in making dance at AUNTS this summer I experienced a total balance of pure productivity and pure fun. __________________________________ Matthew Romein Much of my own work exists in an interdisciplinary spectrum between interactive computer coding and body/motion based practices. Being an emerging artist, this typically presents difficulties as neither the dance community nor the art/technology community have performance systems in place that address the needs specific to this type of work. Existing performance structures in the dance community require that your work have little to no technical elements involved, whereas organizations in the art/tech community are ill-equipped to present work in a performance context as opposed to an installation/gallery context. This is why AUNTS is so essential to the performance community; they allow artists to showcase their work in self-made contexts that wouldn't be possible in typical performance structures. Since the entirety of the space is given over to the artists to use as they see fit, the performing space becomes decentralized, allowing for a multiplicity of experiences rather than a singular focus. Possibility and intentions overlap to create an artistically volatile environment. This free-wheeling approach engenders the possibility of failure, an important aspect as it encourages artists to present work with elements of risk and uncertainty and to deviate from their standard work practice. This has been critical for me as I was able to show my work knowing that I was ultimately responsible for how ambitious and complex I wanted it to be. I was never given restrictions that I had to tailor my work around. At the same time, I had to be conscientious of the work happening around me and communicate with other artists when their needs conflicted with mine. This was an organic development though. AUNTS could mediate as needed but a dialogue based on mutual respect was often enough to find solutions. AUNTS has been instrumental for me in terms of developing work practices and performance strategies. They have also developed and provided a community which I greatly respect and feel privileged to be a part of. ________________________________________ Ryan David O’Byrne As an artist participating with AUNTS, I very quickly knew that a resource that I was desperately searching for existed. As someone experimenting with performance, the most important aspect for me is a continual focus on process and discovering when, how and where process becomes performance and if it ever even does. Without opportunities to show work with AUNTS, I was like a scientist without a laboratory. AUNTS provided me with a practical lab, and a place to truly test out my experimentation. Performing with AUNTS also allowed me to extend my reach and connect with fellow artists. The environment is all hands on deck, and being able to help other artists with their pieces and support the work was very rewarding. Last summer I was able to show one of the first pieces I made. It was not only a great opportunity to start conversations with artists with whom I had hoped to be in a dialogue, but also gave me the encouragement I needed to keep making work. It's so difficult to be in a real conversation with an artist whose work you admire until they have an opportunity to see what it is you're up to, and last summer showing work at Arts@Renaissance provided an invaluable exchange of feedback and support. I graduated from the Juilliard School as a drama major and have all but left the world typically associated with that kind of training. Opportunities like this are so important for me on so many levels. Gaining traction within a community of artists who have no idea who you are can be difficult, and I felt so welcomed and embraced by AUNTS. Performing at Arts@Renaissance was one of the most interesting evenings of performance not only because of the great work that was being shown but also the space itself. You could feel how exciting it was for everyone to decide where their particular piece would take place, whether in an old morgue or outside in the parking lot. This participation with the environment really informed and excited the work. My experience with AUNTS has provided me an opportunity to truly experiment. An opportunity that I wouldn't otherwise have. As an early career artist, it is so important for me to have space and time to discover what it is that I'm doing. I often feel like I'm meant to describe, articulate and offer insight into work that I haven't made yet or that is still early in development. AUNTS has given me the chance to test things out and learn what it is that I'm doing.  And for that, I'm so grateful. ____________________________ Christen Clifford My practice explores the act of archiving feminist performance art on the body. It is a research and archival practice: a re-performance, a re-mix, a re-interpretation, an homage, a vision, a hacked version of the original, a situationist reimagining, a re-action, a re-enaction, a re-incarnation, a re-imagined space. Re-performance draws historical connections between the politics of the past and present, with the live performance as the site of contact. AUNTS actually FEELS like institutional support. I mean that in a good way. Laurie and Lilliana have been doing this so well, and for so long, getting to perform at AUNTS feels like a stamp of approval. Or maybe that’s just because I’m always looking for the gold star on my forehead from my dad—who is dead and never would have given it the way I wanted anyways. But I digress. AUNTS Chain Curation was the first time I did my own work at AUNTS. I had previously been to see/participate in the events and also had performed in someone else’s work. I don’t even know who curated me! I curated Lenora Champagne, whose book Out from Under meant the world to me when it came out in 1991. It was the first collection of female performance texts. I read Holly Hughes and Karen Finley for the first time. I see AUNTS as being in a direct line with that kind of experimental work from 80’s. As spaces dwindle, stakes become higher, experimentation gets lost, work becomes safer.  What will “work”—get funded, get press attention, get my friends off their computers on Friday night? AUNTS is fun—it’s a party, there are multiple locations and performances happening; if you don’t like one thing you might be totally into the next. And who cares if you “like” it—it’s an experience, an experiment. It’s about investigating your own work in your own way. There’s no pressure to “perform” other than to do your work. Your audience is built in, mostly young, mostly dance based. The two pieces I presented at AUNTS were part of a practice I have had over the past seven years of reperforming /reimagining/homaging/remixing/mashuping what I consider to be Classic Feminist Performance Art. I am a self-taught expert in this area. The first was a piece I called Feminist Peep Show that drew on the work of Annie Sprinkle, particularly her Public Cervix Announcement. I had a small lavender room at A@R. I craft-papered the floor, hung gauzy white curtains in the back, brought clip lights with pink gels. I created an “altar” to feminist performance art. I drank “Feminist Water” (pink champagne). I hung a copper rain curtain in front, and the audience had to peek in to see what I was doing. I taped a line that they could not cross, though at the end of the night I invited some people to enter. I had originally planned to do many AKTIONS in my lavender room, which I had on a list taped to the wall. I had props and flowers and a fur rug. I started talking about Annie Sprinkle, particularly her Public Cervix Announcement to the twenty-five people gathered outside the rain curtain. I used a plastic speculum and opened my vagina so people could see my cervix, which is a little open. “If you haven’t had children, your cervix usually feels like the end of your nose.” I showed them my scars from having birthed two children, my rectocele (bit of rectum that bulges into my vaginal wall due to tearing and injury during birth). My impetus was that a 30-year-old friend had said that she thought “the feminist project of knowing our bodies had been lost.” Part of what I love about performing at AUNTS is that the audience is moving around, changing and engaged. AUNTS is ALL about inquiry and practice. This piece had been in my head. I had seen photos of A.S. on a stage, with men peering close up at her with a flashlight. I knew that wasn’t what I wanted to do. Making the performance meant having an audience willing to engage with the work, and with me and my body. AUNTS provided that. Feminist Peep Show doesn’t exist without the audience. Another piece I did at a “regular” AUNTS at the Secret Loft was FEED ME ORGONE, a mashup of Barbara T. Smith’s FEED ME and Wilhelm Reich’s ORGONE boxes. This time, I had a shower room/bathroom. Which was perfect as Smith originally performed in the bathroom of an institutional museum in LA. I layered craft paper and ten large rolls of aluminum foil to create the energy chamber of the orgone room. Both pieces had sexual energy as part of their history. The audience came in one at a time, with a 15-minute limit. They fed me, gave me wine and pot, talked to me about scars, orgone rooms, performance art, makeup, cars, mothers, fathers, intimacies with their partners. I loved the interactions, but I hated waiting in the room, waiting for someone to come in to me. I hated how passive I felt. These performances are scholarly research, I can learn them for myself by doing them. There are performances I want to GET INSIDE. In the action, I linked my passivity to Smith’s controversial female essentialism. Having the no-pressure opportunity to work at AUNTS lets me take risks—even the overlapping performances help—I know that if I suck, I still won’t be “disappointing my audience” the same as they would have been if they had paid to see me at a theatre space, with money for a ticket and the expectation of entertainment. The process of continuing to explore these CLASSIC FEMINIST PERFORMANCE ART pieces for a young, often female, audience helps me move to the next piece. I learn about myself and the work. It’s not performance as product. It’s let’s work together and make something great happen for one night, and in the process of that my practice is completely respected. The fact that Laurie and Liliana are women makes a difference to me. I see the series CATCH as being the “boys” and AUNTS as being the “girls” even though they have collaborated and that is reductive reasoning.  AUNTS is important to me as an artist, and I feel lucky and grateful to work with these wonderful people. __________________________________ Larissa Velez-Jackson I’m Larissa Velez-Jackson, a Brooklyn-based choreographer whose creative practice blurs the liminal space between research, rehearsal, performance, dance and choreography. I find it very liberating to approach those as one and the same thing. For nine years, I’ve improvised in the forms of dance, vocal work, video and digital music. Lately, I engage in this multitude of forms simultaneously so the dance practitioner works in a way where forms are in dialogue, competition and support of one another in the moment. I invite my collaborators to work in different mediums where we are untrained to explore the friction between amateurism and virtuosity and practice expression on our own terms. It is no accident that every piece I’ve ever made has been researched before a live audience within an AUNTS event. I’ve shown at AUNTS since 2006; in the past three years I’ve utilized the AUNTS scenario to hold open, durational rehearsals of my choreographic processes before an audience. The fluidity of the AUNTS setup allows me to perform for an hour or longer, sometimes amidst the chaos of other performances in process, sometimes not. It agrees with my aesthetic to just get to work during a party with curious people milling about and lots of other stuff going on. The free-for-all environment allows me to learn about what’s exciting (and not) for people to watch. What does and doesn’t hold attention? What does the work need to sit well in front of people? How does the work change when all of a sudden fifty eager people circle around us? As happened during my wrestling warm-up session at AUNTS’ Arts@Renaissance show last spring. I always learn something new about my material and my behavior in performance. Because of AUNTS, my rehearsals can take the form of charged, yet informal, durational performances. Since I’m most interested in researching the performance state, this is a blessing—to be busy at work because of the generous offering of time and space via AUNTS! ___________________________________ Nora Stephens The AUNTS Chain Curation performance at Arts@Renaissance gave me the opportunity to experiment with brand new ideas in an open, supportive and casual setting. I am working a lot with audience participation so rehearsing alone doesn’t help develop all the ideas or questions I’m struggling with. It’s only through actually sharing the work and bringing it to a public that the work can progress. Because the audience is mobile and free (to sit, stand, leave, talk, drink, whatever) during AUNTS shows, as an artist I felt less pressure to create something that fits into a specific mold or idea of what “performance” is. After my performance, I received a lot of unsolicited, incredibly helpful feedback from strangers, more so than in other venues with no structured post-show talk. The casual and social atmosphere seemed to invite more interaction between everyone present. The Arts@Renaissance AUNTS platform was a perfect place for me to start the process of my duet that I’m still working on and presenting at various stages.  ____________________________________ Laura Bartczak Time Share was a great platform for working artists who aren't always "working" to perform. Through chain curation, friends of friends of friends were asked to participate and inspired to create. People came back week after week. It was so refreshing to see. I was lucky enough to perform for a few different artists, and had my own performance where I collaborated with musician Mark Demolar. I knew I wanted to capture what was happening at AUNTS and the people there—both audience and participants. The old shower stalls in the morgue were perfect for installing a photo booth. Below is a link that shows my documentation—an image and a sound score created by and for each person who came through. http://sonicportraits.tumblr.com/ ___________________________ Allison Brainard Time Share was amazing because I knew what I was doing Saturday night for five weeks in a row. Since it had been curated in a chain, there were plenty of people there that were in my close group of friends and fellow artists, but also so many new people to meet. On the night that I showed my performance, I was also performing in someone else's piece. I was running around all night and it was crazy, but it felt so right. My performers made a big mess with oreos, bananas, balloons and beer cans, so at the end of the night after the insane dance party, I did my best to mop everything up at around maybe 1:00 AM. The night in particular and the whole series is one of my favorite moments of last year. ____________________________________ Chris Henderson from Arts@Renaissance Can you explain a little bit about the site-specific program and what it was intended to do? The site-specific residency program was founded to address both the creative needs of artists and the local community in North Brooklyn. NYC lacks spaces where artists can create truly site-specific work over significant periods of time with the freedom to alter the space at will. In our surveys of North Brooklyn we found a lack of local places where people could find high-quality arts programming without having to travel outside the neighborhood. We built in a community relevancy component that ensured that local residents were involved in the program either through workshops, subject matter, or the creation or realization of the work. The program was new enough that we could get away with a lot of experimental things that wouldn’t fly in more established venues where audiences expect a certain type of performance. Are there any qualities of the space that you think shaped the art that was held within it? The A@R space in the old Greenpoint Hospital lent itself to both these objectives. It was raw enough that artists could express themselves and welcoming enough for audiences to feel comfortable. The maze-like character of the space, the height of the ceilings, the spacial oddities like narrow doors, passageways, a morgue and giant shower stalls all contributed to forcing artists to work with the space rather than try to shape it to their work. And of course the ghosts. If anyone owns the space, it‘s the spirits of all the people who spent time there as patients, doctors, and now artists. What were some of the struggles in having an arts space within an institution with another function/mission, and how did you see the artistic mission relating to that? I've spent a lot time translating between artists and St. Nicks. What is most important is getting everyone to realize that locating an arts space within an institution where the mission is focused on community service means that everyone has to compromise. Artists will always push boundaries and ask questions about the use of space that would never cross the mind of an office worker. The key is integrating and involving the social service without compromising the integrity of the artist's vision. Our challenge was to see how much we could get away with and still respect the space. Is the program going to continue, and can you talk a little about that? Yes. But it's going to change. One of the nice things about the program is that although it is site-specific, it isn't space-specific. We can take the values of experimentation, innovation and community engagement to work with artists at other locations. The program will be more flexible and the pieces of shorter duration with fewer moving parts, but it will continue. The most likely scenario is that we'll get access to a number of spaces in North Brooklyn that are managed by St. Nicks, but not in use at all times, including community gardens, senior center activity rooms, or community centers. I'm sure wherever we go, we'll be able to find artists (like AUNTS and friends) who are interested and capable of creating thoughtful, searching, site-specific work.

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Header image: Lucy Yim: Light Noise (rehearsal image). Pictured: Keyon Gaskin.

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FRONT would like to acknowledge the Precipice Fund, Calligram Foundation and Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of FRONT—ED4: BUOY.

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FRONT ED3: RUBIES FEATURES SHERWOOD CHEN (LA) ABBY CRAIN (OAKLAND) KRISTY EDMUNDS (LA) ATLANTA EKE (MELBOURNE) FLORIN FLUERAS (BUCHAREST) EMMA KIM HADGDAHL (STOCKHOLM) ANDY HORWITZ (NYC) HEATHER KRAVAS (SEA) COLLEEN LEONARDI (COLUMBUS) NEIL MARCUS (BERKLEY) DANA MICHEL (MONTRÉAL) MARY OSLUND (PDX) NOELLE STILES (PDX) TESSA WILLS (SF) ELIZABETH WARD WOBBLY/YULIA ARAKELYAN + ERIK FERGUSON (PDX) +MANY MORE

Release date: 12/8/13

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RUBIES opening letter from FRONT

Welcome to Ed.3—a ruffled ruby out of Portland, Oregon from four friends in the field. Here now a flare; a bright point on the table; an invitation into collected reflections; a jaunt amid geographies; an platform for endeavors in contemporary dance.

In 2013, Ed.2 traveled far and wide, a big sea foam gift we put into as many hands as possible. In the summertime sun, our 3rd annual performance event, The Collision Series, again gathered Portland friends and families around dance—this time out on the terrace of Disjecta Contemporary Art Center. In Autumn, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art facilitated two new avenues for FRONT to build community and dialogue as Field Guide faculty and Resource Room residents.

All along, the edition in your hands was guided by constellations of curiosity. No sponsors, no boards, no prescribed remit—FRONT answers only to the interests of dance artists. This concentration brings to light a perspective often omitted from printed matter. FRONT is a broadsheet beacon connecting disparate dots into an array we like to see together. These pages catalyze articulations from the field and offer an indie vignette of contemporary dance none too far removed from the sweat, focus and inquiry of the studio.

As you wrangle with these cumbersome pages of noisy media, we hope you feel in good company. Ed.3 samples the diverse range of voices presently pursuing creation in and around contemporary dance. We've reprised some favorites—Open 100, Alex's Column, Visual Essays, Chain Conversations—while offering a hearty showcase to five brilliant spots on our collective radar. The ensemble of Eke, Kravas, Michel, Oslund and Flueras spans a wide web around our home base in Oregon. We're honored this paper house could be a home to them. Last but not least, we present an assemblage for FRONT of previously published content from Andy Horwitz—our first reprint, stemming from conversations about balancing original content with smart redistribution.

It's a deeply nourishing collection for us here in Portland. We hope it yields as much and more to you and yours.

Until next time,

FRONT

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Image: Awkward Duets, Oslund + Co. by Julie Keefe and John Klicker (pictured: Margretta Hansen and Keely McIntyre)

Graphic Design, ed. 3 RUBIES: Noelle Stiles

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FRONT ED2: VITUS FEATURES MICHELLE AINZA (PDX) LARISSA BABIJ (KIEV) RYAN BOYLE (PDX) TRACEY BROYLES (PDX) FEYONCE/WAYNE BUND (PDX) GREGG BIELEMEIER (PDX) JAKE DIBELER (NYC) KEYON GASKIN (PDX) KEITH HENNESSY (SF) ITCH (LA) THE LUCKY PENNY (ATL) JIM MCGINN (PDX) NOMAD DANCE ACADEMY (BALKANS) KAJ-ANNE PEPPER (PDX) CHELSEA PETRAKIS (PDX) JAY SANDERS (NYC) DEBORAH SLATER (SF) FRANK SMIGIEL (SFMOMA) MEG WOLFE (LA) +MANY MORE

Release date: 11/14/12

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SELECT EXCERPTS FROM FRONT ED2: Vitus

Vitus opening letter from FRONT

We released the inaugural FRONT a year ago and watched it float between many hands. The conversations and connections that came out of the first edition extended well beyond what we had imagined. Print publications devoted to contemporary dance are all too rare, so FRONT got noticed. Thanks for the encouragement: Contact Quarterly, Conduit Dance, Inc., White Bird Dance, PICA, Nationale, Colleen Leonardi, Ann Cooper Albright and all of our supporters!

In the past months, we’ve been meeting in one another’s homes—or at bars—steering this paper forward by gathering written contributions from our peers in Portland and well beyond. We’ve softly focused this second edition on artists who provide platforms for other artists. We’ve gathered essays from itch + Meg Wolfe (Los Angeles), The Lucky Penny (Atlanta), Nomad Dance Academy (Balkans) and Performativity (Ukraine). These artist-run organizations have taken it upon themselves to nurture and manifest opportunity for present and future dance communities. Also in this second edition, you’ll find practitioners unpacking their doings in the Open 100; Conversation Chains linking creators, curators, dancers, collaborators and intellects; Photo Essays from close range; and the verve of live artists shaping their field.

Additionally, this year FRONT broadened its curatorial practices into event production through The Collision Series. Two performances brought together dancers, musicians, lighting designers and sound artists to improvise into the unknown, 45 minutes at a time. Left to their own devices, brilliant things happened: collective awareness, open builds, magic moments + hot, sweaty togetherness. Deep thanks to the artists, audiences and Conduit Dance, Inc. for supporting FRONT by way of The Collision Series. Your contributions have brought these pages to many eyes and minds.

Our process remains an experiment. It remains an open thing. It remains unstable, yet solidly intent on giving ideas. Here’s to ambitious discussions and awesomely interpretive paraphrases over lunch—paragraphs torn out and pasted into inspiration—copies for strangers! We hope you find something you like here. We hope you take issue with voices here. We hope you take issues with you to give away. Use your bag, binder, arms, hands. We present these words for you and for dance. More always.

Until next time, FRONT

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/// OPEN 100 An odd little publication opportunity: Do whatever you want in the space of 100 words.

ANN COOPER ALBRIGHT (Oberlin) Falling

We live in a state of anxiety about things falling apart, and our bodies reflect that. What can the intentional practice of falling teach us about surviving this historical moment? Contact Improvisation teaches falling as an essential practice, one that radically refigures Western ideologies of falling as failure, giving us a new slant on the binary of up and down. The experience of falling can teach us a great deal about resiliency—physical as well as emotional and even economic resiliency—helping us to mitigate the vague panic that seems to have permeated almost everyone’s being these days.

LINDA AUSTIN (Portland) In my latest studio practice, part of an ongoing experiment to translate into dance what inspires me from other media, I dance the equivalent of a Proustian sentence, setting in motion one long phrase that lasts at least 10 minutes, timed or untimed, where each gesture—whether a slow unfurling or a chopped up mélange of non-sequiturs, a stuttering or a full stop, a word uttered or object hurled—is part of the unwinding of one complete thought, one that wanders and strays, or even knots itself up, but is felt as one thread of contemplation and action...

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IMAGES: Jill Sigman by Andrew West + Keith Hennessy by Ian Douglas

Graphic Design, ed. 2 Vitus: Noelle Stiles

[frontpaper]

FRONT ED1: MOVES WHEN FOLDED FEATURES RICHARD DECKER (PDX) SEAN GRIFFIN (LA) TAHNI HOLT (PDX) LINDA K. JOHNSON (PDX) EMILY JOHNSON (MINNEAPOLIS) JUSTIN JONES (MINNEAPOLIS) SETH NEHIL (PDX) KAREN NELSON (SEA) LISA RADON (PDX) ALYSSA REED-STUEWE (PDX) DANIELLE ROSS (PDX) WOOLY MAMMOTH COMES TO DINNER (PDX) THOMAS LEHMEN DANIEL LEPKOFF MGM GRAND +MANY MORE

Release date: 9/7/11

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SELECT EXCERPTS FROM FRONT ED1: Moves When Folded

Moves When Folded opening letter from FRONT

Welcome to FRONT. The pages in your hands are an offering of affection and imagination. FRONT is devoted to diving into the depths of our tangled affections for contemporary dance and harnessing the collective imagination of those who share these affections. FRONT is dedicated to creating an expansive container for capturing the swell of contemporary discourse surrounding the form. It is a space for the movement of ideas. We thank you for allowing them to find a curve, pursue a line, and swing freely through your consideration.

We have titled our inaugural edition, Edition 1: Moves When Folded. Collapse , double over, create space, open up, and turn the pages. We have started, in part, by beginning to capture a snap shot of our community; a chorus of voices speaking to their own conceptions of and connections to dance and performance. This is an ongoing project. Our  design is to offer a publication that is open to a spectrum of contributors willing to take on the satisfying responsibility of stewarding FRONT ever forward. 

Writing about dance forces a fundamental issue, the lack of a neat tailoring of defined language. We wrestle with and fully bask in this reality here. We invite you to do the same.

Danielle, Noelle, Robert, and Tahni    

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                                    THE CHAIN CONVERSATION: A > B // B > C // C > D

Chain Conversation #2

a. Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner > Karen Nelson  > Daniel Lepkoff

b. Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner > MGM Grand  

Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner is an aesthetically-inclined, trans-pop-culture, dance-therapy performance group formed in Portland, OR in 2006 by Katie Arrants, Kathleen Keogh, and Rikki Rothenberg.

Karen Nelson finds herself dancing, meditating, traveling, performing, practicing, and studying; embodying miraculous and gracious forms.

Daniel Lepkoff is a dancer; over the course of more than three decades he has looked closely at the interweaving of sensation, perception, and action arising in the body’s interactions with its environment and developed dance techniques for practicing and bringing this material on the stage.

MGM Grand is Biba Bell, Jmy Leary, and Piage Martin with R. McNeill (music). Since 2005, the group has been making highly structured dances, functioning as a touring entity that performs single dances in dozens of spaces.

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FRONT > Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner: I feel like your work evokes a sense of mystery. What place does “deliberate” have in your work?

Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner: We are deliberate about encouraging honesty amongst each other.  We are deliberate about making room for our own experiences and personal/individual creative impulses.  We are deliberate about giving enough (but not too much) to the audience in order for them to have their own experience.  If that creates a sense of mystery or a non-linear experience, we allow that. 

We purposely allow the content to create the theme of the piece rather than the other way around.  Authentic Movement is a large part of our rehearsal process.  We create work and spend time with each other being/doing/creating the following: nurturing, stretching, interpersonally relating, being friends, listening, seeing, loving, being like family.  These things create a safe place for entering and expressing risky and unknown places in the psyche with each other and consequently with the audience. 

Woolly > Karen Nelson: How has your Buddhist practice influenced and/or changed your dancing over the years?  Why do you think Woolly Mammoth likes you so much?  How do you do what you do?

Karen Nelson: Actually, dancing and Buddhist practice came at the same time in my life so it’s difficult to distinguish influences. It’s sort of like asking how does life influence your dancing, which sounds like you aren’t living when you are dancing and not dancing when you are living.  They are interchangeable. One is formally done with my body sitting on a cushion. The other is usually minus the cushion. Practice helps me to come home to my experience, towards recognition of embodiment. Buddhist teachings draw my attention to the impermanence of the situation. If I forget, then I feel like Styrofoam. Buddhist practice gives me solitude. It’s always been more difficult to go into the studio alone since I like to dance with others. There is a lot to discover in sitting practice where there is no expectation to do anything. Yet, it’s all happening there, so it’s been essential to discover that possibility.

I can’t know someone else’s experience although I constantly pretend (to myself) that I do. Unraveling my assumptions is my best shot at seeing myself and seeing other. The tuning scores work, introduced to the world and to me, by dancer/choreographer Lisa Nelson truly reveal this wonder. That work celebrates awareness of our unique experience, and raises the possibilities of playing with each other within that awareness. We expose our compositional desires to each other during the improvisation allowing a somewhat informed collaboration to unfold.

Someone’s words or actions offer me a chance to notice my own reactions. Most of the time I simply run with my reactions, believing their reality. Without the awareness that meditation cultivates, I’d be a sunken ship most of the time reacting with rage, jealousy, competition, et al.

So, maybe Woollies think what they like so much is me, but really they see something about themselves that they like, similar to a mirror reflection.

I think my habits, carved by the great river of family of origin, culture, addictions, desires, teachers, people I hang out with, along with physical and perceptual forces, dance me. My body is a habit that mysteriously changes, constantly.

Learning of Steve Paxton’s ‘small dance’ early on gave me a life practice and it’s rather portable, like sitting practice, except it’s done standing. The dancer climbs into the meditation cave of their standing skeleton and watches the miracle of balance. It’s so portable a practice you can take into dancing with others as in contact improvisation, or not, as in delicious embodied solo in space.

Buddha emphasized exploring on your own to discover what resonates and wakes you up. What better dance instructions than this?

Karen > Daniel Lepkoff: In an overview statement of your work you write, “I view dancing as the imagination acting through the body”. Reading these words gives me the sensation that you are saying, “it’s all imagination”. I’d love to know more about your current thinking on dancing and imagination—do you include both physical and mental imaginings as elements of that term? How do you come to your working conclusions? Can you describe an instance?

Text Karen is referencing: “I view dancing as the imagination acting through the body. The work examines how the mind and body act together to compose our movement. Whatever is happening, at any moment, is appreciated as an intelligent response to one’s present moment and as material that can be placed in a dance frame. The workshop provides tools and situations for researching your own movement choices and developing your powers of observation.

I am an improvising performer and my own reference point is to develop a performance practice. However these techniques can be easily applied by anyone interested in making dances or dancing, as well as people with a curiosity about the creative process and an appetite for being physical.

The material is drawn directly from my own research, which has its roots in my early work with both Anatomical Release Technique and Contact Improvisation, as well as through on-going discussions and collaborations with many artist whose interests overlap with mine.”

Daniel Lepkoff: the use of the words “imagination and sensation” when describing my dance work. First it is only fair to say that when I speak about dance I am only speaking of my own dance work which, in my estimation, is rather a unique approach as far as dance techniques go. In the studio, in classes, and when performing I am considering movement from life, that is functional movement, movement that occurs anyway whether one is in a studio, in a workshop, in front of an audience or not!

Is that dance?

NO!

The only thing that makes my work “dance” might be that rather than just occurring, these innate movement events are being intensely studied. Studied how?

Well, certainly not by reading about it in a book. Studied basically by doing what you are doing together with an intense insistence on the act of observing while acting. To do that one needs a variety of tools that bring the “events that be” to our consciousness. Thus my work is a technique.

This kind of learning brings a special kind of knowing about things. To quote myself: “knowledge of that which is known by knowing.” This way of learning is innate, highly functioning when we are children, and seemingly functioning less and less as we age. My observation of human behavior, my own included, is that gradually we stop intensely and actively assessing our situation and rely on tried and true responses. After years of gathering experience and figuring out how to respond, navigate, and survive most of the various situations we are likely to encounter, we feel no need to learn “THAT AGAIN!”. This strategy works! It also causes those faculties of observation that bring moment to moment information to our awareness to atrophy.

Because of this, most of us lack a sense of the mystery of ordinary physical events. Without this mystery we make unconscious assumptions.

At this very moment I am writing and you are reading so can we, for a moment, consider language. Language or words, arise originally through a miraculous and uniquely human process of mapping strings of written symbols or sounds onto actual experiences. For example the word “red” is a symbol for an actual experience of a color and the experience of that color has come to be called “red” or “rouge” or “akai” Over time “red” has also come to mean “stop”, among other things. This is an internationally accepted social convention. Now we can see a red light and rather than look carefully at the sensation of “red” we jump to the action of stopping or waiting. This is convention in action.

Why?

Where do the concepts of sensation and imagination enter into all of this?

Imagine that, rather than jumping to the conventional understanding of the color “red”, you also actually look closely, and then look again, and then again, and then again, and then again to see if you can see what it is that you are actually seeing. This activity brings you closer to the origins of the word “red”, closer to the sensation that has come to be called “red”.

THAT is what I call “sensation”.

Suddenly “red” is no longer just “red” in the way the word “red” means “red” you are tasting a never-before-seen experience. If you want to remember “that” experience, the isolated word “red” will not work, because your own experience is special. And so!!

You find your own way to describe or remember your experience.

That means you create an image or a map that allows you to recall or understand your own experience.

THAT!!! is what I call “imagination”!

Imagination, in this context is functionally creative.

In my own dance practice instead of looking at a red light we may look at the action of moving a weighted object and consider the underlying architecture that connect us functionally to the physical environment. Still, the example of seeing “red” applies exactly. We have concepts held within us of what it takes to accomplish a task. (Where exactly these concepts are held is an interesting question). This is our body’s language. These concepts are organizational principles. They come in the form of tensions, patterns, postures, chemical responses, and so on. If these principles operate outside of our awareness and are not questioned certain learning and change cannot take place. To question our bodies concepts is to use our imagination to create new more finely tuned responses. As a dancer my baseline is to question my understanding at every moment. It is hard to provide instances of this process. New images are both extremely particular and detailed and mostly non verbal. Weight can be sensual, pushy, dense, permeable; one can pick up a chair or one can pick it down, rise from the floor or push the earth away, move through the world or watch the world move, one can come closer to things or watch them get bigger, stare into empty space or watch particles of dust move… hear nothing or listen to silence.. .. and on and on…. The entertaining of alternate meanings and organizations of experience is what I have come to see as my way of dancing.

It strikes me as unfortunate that we have two words: “physical” and “mental”. The more I immerse in my dance practice the more I realize that this division is a fiction, a sad fiction that is the cause of so much human suffering, ignorance, discrimination, and fear.

Our “thoughts” are physical and our “movements” are thoughts. One cannot move without having a map or projection of what one is about to do, one cannot have a map of what one is about to do without having a streaming flow of moment to moment sensation, one cannot make sense of this streaming flow of sensation without mapping an organization principle or image onto these raw sensations, one cannot access a map without a memory, inherited or self created, of a preexisting experience…..

And so…. I’ve come to realize that one cannot imagine anything that either does not already exist or will not soon come into existence… in other words…

the fanciful is real. or ……. what is perhaps more fun…

reality, when examined closely, is fanciful!

March 18, 2011

Woolly Mammoth > MGM Grand: Now that you live across the country from each other, how do you maintain your collaborative practice, and how does the distance affect your art?

MGM Grand: We three way chat. It’s like high school again.  We trade off going to each other’s home towns to work, doing residencies and performances in various places and being in NYC because both Biba and I still work there often, and Paige still lives there. When we are together - wherever it may be - it’s sort of like a movie shoot on a small island. There’s not much going on except for shooting the movie. We just work on the dance 24/7, dancing, discussing, researching, finding costumes, going to museums, making the sound for the dance, making dinner together. When we are apart we do more on the admin side.  It’s strange that this is the way MGM has gone but we have never really been centrally

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Graphic Design, ed. 1 MOVES WHEN FOLDED: Noelle Stiles