When I first began choreographing professionally (in 2006), I felt a
need to “control” the work — to ensure that the audience “understood” what I
was “trying to say.” Since that time I have come to believe that this is
essentially impossible. I have heard so many people in dance say that “dance is
a universal language.” I recognize the comfort this idea brings, and I admit
that there are certain physical expressions of human emotion that seem to be
shared across cultures. But dance is
not a universal language. There are so many layers springing from the
context in which the dance is born or created that we don’t even recognize when
we are using a sort of “short hand”_ which references and alludes to a vast
communal consciousness that is not “universal,” not even global. What is a
clearly defined, even ‘literal’ dance to one group of people can be experienced
as purely abstract movement to another. 1
I remember the first time I welcomed the empty space rather than
wrestling against it. I had set out to create a piece that would only be
completed by the viewers’ perceiving the dance through the filters of their
lives, memories and experiences. It required a structure, of course, empty
space, and images and moments that resonated strongly enough to call upon the
reservoir of information that each one carried within movements. I felt a need
to find more and digging more about choreography, how to control the work to
ensure that the audience “understood” what I was “trying to say.” Since that
time I have come to believe that this is essentially impossible.” I recognize
the comfort this idea brings, and I admit that there are certain physical
expressions of human emotion that seem to be shared across cultures. But for me
personally after learned by watching, observing other performances and teaching
experiences, dance is not a universal language. What is a clearly defined, even
‘literal’ dance to one group of people can be experienced as purely abstract
movement to another.
The “content” of my
work is always base on movements and always literal, easy to understand and
lacking of idea sometimes. I have been surrounded by people who had experience
in choreography for a decade and I felt very small standing besides all of
them, but I always try to make my work more original and different from others.
My perception always towards how to create abstract dance, what is abstract
dance? We have been discussing in Jamie’s class about how European
choreographers started to explore conceptual and abstract works. My mind kept
thinking about that and keep asking a lot of people especially teachers, friends
and members of Tisch School of the Arts. My
choreography, it seems that I am exploring the possibility of extending this
aspect of dance that I love so deeply to the audience. This seems to me to
require a certain use of the empty space through which the viewer may enter and
experience themselves as living, fully sentient beings. That empty space which
invites us to journey through the dance into a space in our own being where not
only our conscious mind, empathy and emotions are engaged, but also our
visceral senses and subconscious memory. With all this elements I make them as
“core” for me to expand the idea of conceptual and abstract work.
Nonetheless what
I am experiencing is a process of familiarising and observing as to
whether the approach in this city of New York has similarities with other
big cities like London, Berlin, New Zealand and others. I give an example via
Phylis Lamhut's2 class, she is an artiste who is highly influential and
possesses an experience and knowledge of more than a decade. Embellished pride
and honour to be under her countenance. Several paramount aspects in
choreography which are time, space, dynamic, impulse and others are
of vital aspects, yet I as a student am still scrutinizing if I as a
student with minimal experience ought to begin from basic? The answer is no,
because the modus operandi that Phylis has given in her class is the
primary thing in fostering one choreographer to delve, burrow
into and blend so that it transforms into a new idea.
I try to provide structure, metaphors within
a particular frame and enough empty space to invite the viewer to experience
and interpret of the work, which may or may not be the
same as what I need. One of the things I have loved about choreography is the
empty space. Not all empty space and not just any empty space, but that empty
space between resonant movement or images which allows the viewer to experience
the work, to sense its energies, textures, movements, and most important thing
is it is a life.
1. - KJ Holmes_ Guest Choreographer, Graduate Seminar Tisch School of the Arts.
2. - Phyllis Lamhut : Choreographer of over one hundred works. Received her professional training in dance technique, pedagogy, percussion, improvisation, choreography, notation, and stagecraft from Alwin Nikolais. A principal member of the Alwin Nikolais Dance Company and a leading dancer with the Murray Louis Dance Company. Formed the Phyllis Lamhut Dance Company in 1970. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and Meet the Composer's Choreography Project. The National Endowment for the Arts has honored her with sixteen Choreography Fellowships. She was director of the National Association of Regional Ballet Craft of Choreography Conference, the Canadian National Choreographic Seminar, and the Carlisle Project's New Impulses Choreography Workshop. She is published in the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy, The New Dance Review, Ballet Review, Poor Dancer's Almanac and Dance USA. Has served on the National Endowment for the Arts Dance Overview and Mentor Panels and on the advisory board for the New York Foundation for the Arts Artists and on the Artists Advisory Board of the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is published in the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy, The New Dance Review, Ballet Review, Poor Dancer's Almanac and Dance USA
