{In borrowed costume for a soldier from Chout, c. 1921, designed by Mikhail Larinov, collage on cabinet card from the artists' book, Salvaged Relatives, edition II, 2014–2015.}
{In the borrowed costume for a lady-in-waiting, c. 1921, designed by Léon Bakst, with a Piapiac (Ptilostomus afer), collage on cabinet card from the artists' book, Salvaged Relatives, edition I, 2014–2015.}
And so it begins...
(posting before I chicken)
To Write: Dance Massive Writing Workshop
Arts House Warehouse
Sunday 1st of March 2015
Yesterday, at a workshop on dance with particular emphasis on writing about dance I left with one certainty tucked in close, art is art. At the heart of it, how we make a work and why are no different, and so, a dancer making a piece is no different to a writer making a piece. A process is followed (toyed with, broken, extended, rebuilt) and something is achieved. The outcome can be a finished piece (of dance or writing) or a failed attempt that you learn from, scrap or perhaps mutate into something else, grafting ideas onto the next ‘thing’, whatever that might be. When you strip away all the particulars and look at what is left, art is art.
And so, to me, a written piece about a dance is fundamentally a stand-alone piece. It exists in its own right and performs its own role. It can be a piece about a work that to its subject, if read, is something to be pleased or pleasantly surprised by, eliciting tiny nods of the head and a quiet refrain of, “Yes, that’s it”. It can be something that challenges, provokes or perhaps prompts an “I’ll show you how wrong you are with your assumptions and ill-formed opinions” response. It can be something that inspires you to write your own manifesto, when your tragedy is ‘mistaken’ for whimsy. It can be something that sits alongside a dance as an accompaniment, serving to some as an entry point into the work or as a marker of what has been, a public record to sate an archivist. When mirrored in tone, it can contain trace elements of the original. It can be all of these things and more besides, but to me, a good written piece should be something that can and does stand-alone. A good written piece is all about a conversation with the reader. Having landed in your lap with all the intimacy that entails, a good written piece should enable the reader to experience the performance with all five senses. It should be like an insightful conversation. It should engage. Yes, a good written piece can be just as transformative as a good performance. It’s a time shifter too, you know, and for that reason just as hard to pin down.
But then, I am not a writer; I collage with words. It feels but one other thing I’m looking at from the outside in. (And I like this standing for all its questioning uncertainty.) I move my words around on the page until they sound pleasing to my ear when read aloud. Words are my dance troupe, my orchestrated movement. I use them to say what I cannot say in person. Part shy refuge, part something of a 7-Eleven, able to be accessed at any time, for all time. Written from a memory, looking to recapture a transient spark, when working, they silence the “you can’t do this/you don’t need to do this” chatter. I use them as a tool in the hunt for clarity or expression, taking out the excess, trying to find the most direct and clear way to convey my thoughts (before perhaps throwing in a red herring to make you work). My reason to use words and collage is the same: they are both a means of communication. If I think about writing in this way I am okay with saying "I write". For me, as in my work in collaboration with Louise, it is not the medium that is always of greatest importance, but the message. I use words and images for what they can enable me to say and in turn what I hope they enable you to feel. And as what you as a reader or viewer feel is entirely up to you and thus beyond my control, I love the challenge this presents. I love that a written piece about dance is almost like collaboration, where the writing would not be possible without the dance and something new is made each time. So too the inkblot what-do-you-see collaboration between author and reader where surprising interpretations are formed and new meanings given.
Where a written piece can land and how it lands is where my interest lies. I hope that it feels written just for you in that moment, a quiet conversation between author and reader. That it can take several lines to describe a dancer raising an arm, to me, is a brilliant extension of the medium’s time-altering play. That a particular description of the briefest of moments comes on the back of its own flexing of the muscles involved, a beautiful thing. A sentence, a paragraph, it undergoes its own kind of rehearsal before it is deemed ready. Lights!
At the workshop, hearing what several of the dancers wanted to read in a written piece was not so very different to what I, when seated in the audience, want from a performer: to see their commitment and work. When I think, for example, about what I would like to read in a written piece about Louise and my artists’ books, I am in accord: I want more than solely a description; I want an interpretation of the work. What did you see? What did it make you feel? What did you think it was about? What did it make you think about? I crave more than a paraphrased blurb cobbled together from our own site. I am rendered both greedy and curious by the feedback. This awareness is something I try to weave into my written responses to performance. It is not something I am yet altogether comfortable with, but I think this can be a good thing. Like making artists’ books that never turn out just as they appear in my mind’s eye, it ensures that I will keep working at that which I love. We none of us just want to add to the noise; we want to offer up something worthy of consideration and reflection.
Thank-you Hannah Mathews for inviting me to participate in Sunday’s workshop. Thank-you to Philipa Rothfield, Erin Brannigan, and Philippa Hawker for your insight, time, and generosity. I am feeling Dance Massive ready. I am a mixture of eagerness and nerves. I can do this! Can I do this? On a tightrope, high alert, I’ll keep my wits about me. See you there!
This year, Dance Massive will host a pilot writers’ workshop that seeks to grow the number of people writing on dance in Australia. The workshop will bring together established dance writers who collectively demonstrate a range of approaches to writing with participants interested to develop their critical voice and/or writing skills on dance. The one-day workshop will involve presentations, readings, writing exercises and discussions of current approaches to writing on dance, choices in language, the importance of editing, the notion of audience, and more. During the Festival participants will exercise their workshop experience by writing online texts that respond to a number of Dance Massive performances. These texts, varying in voice, style and content, will be published on the Dance Massive website throughout the Festival and beyond.
Participants: Chloe Chignell, Nat Cursio, Tom Gittings, Helen Grogan, Gracia Haby, Dave Huggins, Varia Karipoff, Ash Kilmartin, Leah Landau, Rennie McDougall, Michelle Mantsio, Anny Mokotow, Phip Murray, Tamara Searle and Laura Summers
The ‘To Write: Dance Massive Writing Workshop’ has been initiated by Hannah Mathews as part of an occasional series of workshops considering dance, choreography and the visual arts.
