Kinesthetic Connection and Audience Reflection: Historical Themes in Columbia, Manifest Emily A. Hawk Department of Theatre, Dance, and Film TDF490: Independent Study 18 April 2016 Graduation date: May 7, 2016 Hawk 2 Using dance to present history is a challenge because it relies on an ephemeral art form to preserve an historical moment. Still, the choreographer’s choices of how to arrange bodies in space can have political subtext within the context of a work’s creation and performances. To examine the relationship between dance and history, I choreographed Columbia, Manifest, a sitespecific dance performance in the galleries of the Phillips Museum of Art at Franklin & Marshall College. I worked with other artists and art forms in the process to create a collaborative arts presentation that explored the mythology of American exceptionalism. Throughout this process, I discovered that dance performance and gallery spaces function well in tandem as they heighten the kinesthetic engagement of the viewer, which primes him or her to engage in profound reflection on the historical themes presented in the work. Columbia, Manifest resulted from many years of brainstorming, several months of analytical research, and many weeks of rehearsals with my cast of four dancers. Below, I will reflect upon my personal experience of creating this piece, using my choreography journal as a major source. For this reflection, I will use the same framework established by Lincoln Kirstein that I used in my research paper, examining elements of plot, production, politics, audience response, and precedent. Although this reflection may not cover every single influence on the project or every choice I made throughout the process, I have selected the most central aspects of creating Columbia, Manifest to consider as I reflect upon the relationship between dance and history in a museum gallery setting. Plot Although Columbia, Manifest did not have an explicit narrative with characters, conflicts, or resolutions, it had an intentional overarching theme. My intention was for the piece to use the Hawk 3 history of the Columbia River and its dams as a metaphor for American expansion. As I developed this metaphor, I grappled with the balance between conveying my theme clearly and avoiding cliché references to Americana. Yet, I also sought to avoid such extreme abstraction that viewers would not recognize the iconography as American. As I refined my intention for the work, there were two particular factors that I considered: the nature of the historical theme I would address, and the degree of influence that the Phillips Museum and “River Relations” exhibit would have on that theme. From my first imaginings of what my independent study would be, I knew that it would engage with a subject of American history. I first toyed with potential topics for my senior independent study in 2013, despite how distant the implementation of that project seemed at the time. This was the year that I was first introduced to the work of Martha Graham by taking part in F&M’s reconstruction of Celebration (1933) and attending the Graham Company’s summer intensive. I recall being struck by the masterful presentation of American heritage in Appalachian Spring (1944), which would later become one of the four case study pieces in my research. For months, I daydreamed about the characters’ journeys and played Copland’s melody in my head, reflecting on my first experience of dance and history in collaboration. In the two years following my first viewing of Appalachian Spring, I kept a notebook of potential topics for my independent study. Naturally, my affinity for this Graham classic pointed me toward the mythology of manifest destiny. I also thought about Graham’s solo Frontier (1935), and the rope featured in Isamu Noguchi’s set that stretched endlessly beyond the wings. I was amazed by how this extended rope, a symbol of the West, implied infinite space even in the confines of the proscenium stage. At this point, I imagined that dimensionality and spatial arrangement would be a focus of my independent study. Hawk 4 After performing in my second historical reconstruction at F&M, Marche Heroique (1916) by Isadora Duncan, my interest returned to the cultural context of choreography. Thanks to the lessons of our director Lori Belilove, I knew that this piece of Duncan’s choreography was a politically charged call to action in World War I, and I realized that perhaps audiences in 2014 were seeing the piece as a century-old time capsule for that patriotic spirit. Duncan’s own words brought me back to the mythology of manifest destiny: “I see America dancing, standing with one foot poised on the highest point of the Rockies, her two hands stretched out from the Atlantic to the Pacific, her fine head tossed to the sky, her forehead shining with a Crown of a million stars.”1 In the spring semester of my junior year, knowing I wanted to combine dance and history in my independent study, I decided that I would examine pieces with explicit historical themes for the way in which they present the past to an audience. Spatiality still interested me, too, which led to my decision to make a site-specific piece rather than hold a studio showing in the Roschel Performing Arts Center. Having taken a course in the Phillips Museum of Art,2 I considered the gallery space as a potential location for the performance component of my project and cleared the idea with the museum’s staff. I was nervous about creating a site-specific piece since I had no experience with site-specific choreography or performance, but resolved myself to accept the challenge of rethinking the boundaries of performance space. As my junior year came to a close, I took comfort in the fact that I had established two factors of my performance, but still felt uneasy about the unlimited number of choices those factors presented for the practical development of the work. I knew that I would choreograph 1Isadora Duncan in The Vision of Modern Dance 2nd edition, eds. Jean Morrison Brown, Naomi Mindlin, and Charles H. Woodford (Highstown, NJ: Princeton Book Company, Publishers, 1998), 8. 2 HIS376: Museum Mysteries, taught by Philip Zimmerman in Spring 2015. Hawk 5 about American themes and present the piece in the gallery of an art museum, but I didn’t quite know why I was doing that or what exactly I hoped to learn from the experience. That summer, however, I took a trip that redirected and recharged my approach to the project. My academic enrichment trip to Paris, Copenhagen, and London in the summer of 2015 marked my first time ever leaving the United States. It was my first time even leaving the Eastern Time zone. The purpose of the trip was to see ballet performances and relate them to each city’s ballet heritage, but I also visited art museums as a complementary element, another forum in which these cities present their history to the public. While touring the museums, I was struck by the various ways in which visitors interacted with the art: how near or far they stood from it, how they walked through the museum, the angle from which they admired the works. My intrigue for the body language I observed in the museums reaffirmed my decision to use the Phillips Museum galleries for my performance. However, I began to question my decision to reflect on American themes. Why did I feel as though I had to incorporate American history into my project? Why was I even interested in American history to begin with? I suddenly felt as though my lifelong passion for American history only existed because I had never been exposed to any other environment than the eastern coast of the United States. I found myself questioning the personal exceptionalism that the United States held in my academic interests. Upon returning to campus for the fall semester, I met with Phillips Museum staff to discuss which exhibit would be up during the weekend of my performance. When the staff member informed me that the exhibit would be a multi-media collaboration by Professor John Holmgren and Nick Conbere featuring the Columbia River and its dams, the subject seemed too serendipitous to be true. The exhibit was called “River Relations,” and approached “the dams as Hawk 6 both cultural phenomena and as a metaphor for industrial scale intervention into nature.”3 I had intended on using the Curriculum and Rothman Galleries no matter what the art on the walls would be. I never imagined that it could relate to the subject of manifest destiny that I had been considering, as the concept of manipulating nature corresponded to the pioneers’ takeover of the Western territories. It seemed like a sign that I should return to my roots in American history for this project. However, I resisted fully embracing Holmgren and Conbere’s subject from “River Relations” because I did not want to rely on the coincidence of our simultaneous presentations. For that reason, I decided that I would simply use the broader idea of the Columbia River and its dams as a metaphor for the history of American expansion. I knew that in both cases, man had manipulated and attempted to control nature only to have to deal with the dangerous implications of that interference. I wanted to explore the mythology of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism through movement, bringing me back to my original vision with an outlook ripened by personal experience. Production As I began planning the production, I made decisions about certain elements that alluded to Americana without being too explicit. The production category covers a wide range of these choices I had to make during the development of Columbia, Manifest. It encompasses core elements of the work, such as the choreography and original score. It also includes the collaborative relationships I had with other artists and art forms. Finally, it addresses the sitespecific nature of the piece and the process of moving the choreography from the dance studio to 3 John Holmgren and Nick Conbere, exhibit description posted in the Phillips Museum. Hawk 7 the gallery space. Although perhaps at the exclusion of other production elements, I will focus predominantly on these aspects because of their centrality to both my creative process and the final version of the piece. To create the choreography for the work, I primarily relied upon two compositional tools in tandem: improvisation and imagery. For the first section, which I started making in October 2015, I relied on imagery of the Columbia River to generate movements, thinking of the speeds, shapes, and curves of the river. For inspiration, I went into the dance studio and read several chapters from Richard White’s The Organic Machine, an environmental history of the Columbia and its dams. I was particularly struck by one passage about energy: I emphasize energy because energy is such a protean and useful concept. The flow of the river is energy, so is the electricity that comes from the dams that block that flow. Human labor is energy; so are the calories stored as fat by salmon for their journey upstream. Seen one way, energy is an abstraction; seen another it is as concrete as salmon, human bodies, and the Grand Coulee Dam.4 These words excited me. I sorted out my definitions of abstract and concrete energy through improvisation. During this exercise I determined that, for me, the abstract was an elongated movement or pause and the concrete was whatever movement released this suspension and took the dancer through space. I continued by improvising and setting the movements until I had four complete phrases, thinking about natural and unnatural forms of energy, and how that energy could pause or flow like the river itself. The content of those original four phrases repeated throughout the remainder of the work, and I manipulated elements of the movement quality so that the choreography would seem familiar, yet somehow different to the attentive viewer when it repeated. 4 Richard White, The Organic Machine (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), ix. Hawk 8 To do so, I relied on my knowledge of the Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) and Labanotation system of describing movement that I had learned in a course at F&M.5 Created by Rudolf von Laban, LMA “addresses qualitative changes of movement in space and time as well as qualitative analysis of dynamic elements of movement expression.”6 The Labanotation component of LMA features symbols that correspond to every body part and every basic action, as well as how the movement is performed and in which spatial direction it travels. In my choreography, I primarily considered the LMA effort qualities, described as “the mover’s attitude toward investing energy in…flow, time, weight, and space,” or “an inroad to expressivity.”7 I used these effort qualities – particularly flow and time – to inform how my choreography changed throughout the piece. For example, to show the contrast between the natural state of the Columbia River and its condition after it was dammed, I shifted the movement from a quality of free flow and sustained time to bound flow and sudden time. In other words, the movements in the beginning of the piece were full, relaxed, and fluid, but the movements toward the end of the piece were sharp, staccato, and rigid. My intention was to express how manipulation of the river’s flow transformed it into something more mechanized and less natural. Having sketched the symbols for each effort quality in my choreographic notes, I was able to effectively describe these dynamic shifts to my dancers in rehearsal. As the dancers responded to these varying effort qualities in their movement, they also embodied my intention. 5 TDF220: Introduction to Movement Analysis, taught by Lynn Matluck Brooks in Fall 2014. 6“Intro to LMA,” NYU Movement Projects, accessed 17 April 2016, https://movement.nyu.edu/projects/lma/intro.html 7 “Intro to LMA,” NYU Movement Projects, accessed 17 April 2016, https://movement.nyu.edu/projects/lma/intro.html Hawk 9 However carefully I considered and documented my choreography, the ultimate production of Columbia, Manifest would not be possible without my various collaborations across artistic mediums. The most in-depth collaboration was with Timar Shevlin, the musician who composed the original score. But, I also feel as though I collaborated with John Holmgren and Nick Conbere by relating my movement to their work in “River Relations,” as well as collaborating with the architecture of the Rothman and Curriculum Galleries. Dance, music, visual art, and architecture combined to present Columbia, Manifest as a collaborative arts statement. My collaboration with Timar was the first one that I initiated during my creative process, and also the most extensive collaboration associated with this project. I had collaborated with Timar twice before on dance and music projects,8 so I knew that we had a productive working relationship and that our ideas meshed well. Neither of us had ever choreographed or composed a piece of this length before, but we accepted the challenge together as collaborators. I trusted him to create the music for a project of this magnitude and personal significance, and I am so thankful that he could contribute his compositional skills to Columbia, Manifest. Throughout the fall and spring semesters, Timar and I created the music and choreography simultaneously. We met in person once, a meeting in which I described my intention for the piece with him and the concept of Laban effort qualities. During that meeting, he developed a rough sketch for the structure of his composition. From that point on, we were in constant contact about the development of our respective component. He would send me short clips of music to approve before he continued composing. I would record rehearsals and send him the videos, and he would adjust the length of the music to match the movement cues. I gave 8 Celestial Bodies (2013) and land/Here (2014). Hawk 10 him tremendous latitude in that regard, allowing him to choose how and when the movement and music should correspond to each other throughout the piece. The final versions of the choreography and composition mirrored each other in some fundamental ways. One of these ways was quoting material from other artists to support the intention of the piece. I used symbolic gestures drawn from iconic American moments in the choreography, such as a peace sign and a salute. Timar quoted melodies from Woody Guthrie’s songs about the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River. Similarly, since Timar knew about the Laban effort qualities I used, his music shifted from predominantly free to bound flow as my choreography did. For example, the music began with calm and serene minimalism, broken by a silence midway through the piece that represented the damming of the river. From then on, the music took on a tense, industrialized tone, like the movement. Working with Timar on this project was a rewarding collaboration that resulted in the ideal composition for Columbia, Manifest. Another collaborative element of this process was the relationship of my choreography to the art in “River Relations.” Despite my resistance to relying heavily on the art, I was captivated by the wall in the Curriculum Gallery that featured hundreds of small images printed on paper, arranged in the shape of the Columbia River at the Bonneville Dam. I frequently went to the museum and studied the images displayed on that wall, admiring it from different angles and distances and taking notes on the icons I recognized. In my view, this wall seemed analogous to my gesture phrase: a compilation of segmented symbols, somehow smoothed into a cohesive whole. Because of this, I used this wall of “River Relations” as the backdrop for the introduction of the gesture phrase. Hawk 11 Since the dancing occurred in both the Curriculum and the Rothman Galleries, I also had to consider John Holmgren’s exhibit “District of the Penguins” as a set surrounding my choreography. Although I did not respond to individual works in “District of the Penguins” as I did in “River Relations,” I learned that Holmgren’s overall intention for the exhibit could complement the historical themes of my project. As he said, the combination of still life photographs and archival journals of Antarctic travels served to explore how people record their experiences, both in memory and in text.9 He was addressing the same questions of preservation that guided the research portion of my project, and so I welcomed “District of the Penguins” as a setting for the creative portion. As I considered how to arrange the action throughout the space and which section of the piece would be performed in which gallery, I collaborated with the architecture of the setting in which Columbia, Manifest was performed. First, as simple as it seems, I had to consider the shape of the floor. I have only ever performed on or choreographed for a rectangular proscenium stage. Of course, the shape of the galleries presented practical challenges since our rehearsal space in the Holmberg-Eichmann dance studio was rectangular and only half the length of the Rothman Gallery. We placed a portable barre in the center of the floor to represent the wall separating the Curriculum Gallery from the Rothman Gallery, but it was still difficult to ascertain what the gallery environment would be like. With limited times to access the Phillips Museum, we rehearsed solely in the dance studio until just three days before the performance. I was nervous about the process of translating the material to the space it was created for, but the dancers ultimately adapted brilliantly to their new environment during dress rehearsal. 9 Conversation with John Holmgren, 19 January 2016. Hawk 12 But, I also had to consider the arrangement of the choreographic events within that irregular shape. I needed to decide where each chapter of the piece would take place. To this end, I took several trips by myself to the gallery space, standing in various locations throughout the space to understand all possible perspectives, and imaging my choreography from 360 degrees of vantage points. I worried that the audience would get too comfortable in the familiarity of the square Curriculum gallery, and for the most part, I avoided any setup that would encourage a theatre-in-the-round audience arrangement. The Rothman Gallery, by contrast, was long and open except for several glass cases and moveable walls in its center. I chose to move two of the glass cases due to their fragility and precarious positions in the dancers’ pathways, but kept all of the movable walls in the space. Although these walls prevented a clear view from across the gallery, I hoped that their presence would encourage the audience to make bolder choices in positioning themselves to see the dancers. The final production collaboration I engaged with was my costume design, which I developed with my mother, who is experienced in sewing. In designing the costumes, I knew I wanted them to be red, white, and blue – the colors of the United States – but with a twist. So, I chose a light blue fabric that could be seen as the color of the river’s water instead. It was as if the white and blue American colors had bled together to result in this lighter shade. I decided that the dancers would wear dresses so that the fabric could flow as an extension of their movements. The dresses I made from this light blue fabric were accented with red lace and sashes. So, although all the colors of Americana were there, they did not appear outright. This approach of bending explicit iconography guided many of the smaller-level decisions I made throughout the production process. Hawk 13 Politics Of my four case study pieces, I found that all of them contained some form of political subtext in the context of their creation and premiere. Some choreographers made their political opinion explicit, while others relied on audience reflection and consideration for the political subtext to emerge. In creating Columbia, Manifest, I leaned toward the latter approach, and used my piece to ask a question about American exceptionalism rather than make a statement about my personal opinion on the topic. I knew very early in my choreographic process that I wanted to use the piece to ask a question of the audience about the mythology of manifest destiny. Including the word “Manifest” in the title nudges the viewer toward that line of thinking. I wanted the viewer to question the dominance of American ideals and develop his or her own answer to that question as it relates to their personal experience of American mythology. I avoided making my personal opinion explicit in the choreography and, in turn, directed the audience’s experience to their own reflection on the subject. To this end, the Columbia River metaphor served my aims by allowing me to indirectly explore the topic of westward expansion. Certainly, I have my own opinion on the reality of American exceptionalism, having taken a history course that examined this very subject.10 I do believe that the United States is exceptional in some fundamental ways – specifically, its youth in relation to other Western powers, its massive geographic size, and its diversity of ethnic backgrounds. Yet, in most cultural respects, the United States is not unique among Western nations. It has dabbled in colonialism, operates on Judeo-Christian ideology, and shares Western aesthetics. Even within 10 HIS236: U.S. Empire, taught by Louise Stevenson in Fall 2013. Hawk 14 the context of dance history, the United States has forged its identity in relation to the standard of European ballet – usually by modifying it or rebelling against it. Yet, I resisted advertisement of my personal sentiment in Columbia, Manifest. Who was I to question American dominance when the United States had monopolized my life experiences and worldview until just nine months ago? Still, despite my hesitations, I ultimately realized that even asking the audience to question the mythology was a political act in its own right. Inviting the audience to verbally respond to the piece in a talkback session immediately following the performance was an extension of that political action. This format implied that the audience’s experience, not just my intention as choreographer, was valid. Considering these realities, I had to accept that even without being explicit, my piece still had political subtext. I also think that the setting of the piece in a gallery space had political implications by toppling the accepted behavioral norms for human interaction with art. Usually, as I observed during my travels in Europe, people wander through an art museum in silence and stand at a distance from the works to admire them. In a concert dance setting, the distance is usually even more severe as the audience sits stationary in rows, removed from the action of the proscenium stage. It is a formal exchange, and the expected way to interact with art. By placing Columbia, Manifest in a gallery space and circulating the four dancers throughout the gallery from the beginning of the work, I challenged the audience to break those norms of museum and performance etiquette. Although just the sheer presence of dance moving through an art gallery challenged expectations, it required heightened attention from the dancers and elective engagement from the audience. The site-specific nature of the work fostered a different form of interaction between art and audience. Hawk 15 Response Throughout the entirety of my creative process, I took the audience into consideration. I attempted to predict how they would move through the gallery space, I organized a talk back structure to hear their responses, and I worried about directing their experience too forcefully by being explicit in expressing my theme. However, despite these considerations, I could never have fully prepared for the experience of having seventy living, breathing people watch my choreography each night and watch them make choices about it in real-time. I was simultaneously exhilarated and overwhelmed when I saw the people wander through the space in search of an ideal view, and I was reminded of the body language from the art admirers in those European museums that captured my attention last summer. The relationship of the audience to the art was certainly the factor that distinguished Columbia, Manifest from any of my case study pieces or any piece I’ve previously choreographed. As I have mentioned, having the audience move among the dancers defied the expected norms of both performance viewing and museum-going. When I watched the video of the piece and saw audience members descending the stairs into the gallery space, it seemed as though viewers entered this new viewing environment with a range of emotions. Some were hesitant and unsure while others were confident and curious. Soon, the audience members realized that the nature of this performance demanded their active participation. They had to move through the space if they wanted to see the dancers. In reviewing the comments made by audience members during the talk back session, I did not find the explicit reflections on American mythology that I expected and tried to set up with my prompting questions. Instead, most of the comments focused on each individual’s experience as a viewer in the work, such as the frustration of not being able to see everything or Hawk 16 the excitement of being so close to the dancers as they performed. I wondered if perhaps I had presented too many stimuli for the audience to take in and synthesize, or if the newness of viewing environment for many audience members overpowered any context that emerged from the work. Even though the audience focused more on their experience than their interpretations, I still perceived in some comments an understanding of information that related to my intended theme. As one viewer described her experience, she noted a shift from free to bound flow in her choices of where to stand because her ability to view the action became more limited as the piece progressed. Her kinesthetic experience as a member of the audience paralleled the quality of the choreography that the dancers embodied. Another viewer discussed how her experience reminded her of mapping and traversing the landscape. This sensation corresponded to the images of westward expansion and navigation of the frontier that guided my choreography. I could still draw out reflections on my historical question even if they were not the primary focus of audience responses. From the nature of the feedback, I conclude that because the audience physically moved along with the action of the piece, a deeper kinesthetic connection developed between the viewers and the performers. In turn, the audience experienced a heightened attention to the piece because of that kinesthetic connection. As one viewer said, he felt as if he was exploring the river itself, and appreciated the ability to flow along with the dancers through the space. I predict that, if he had seen the same piece on a proscenium stage, he would feel as if he were watching the river go by rather than placing himself within the action. The deep kinesthetic connection made possible by the site-specific setting therefore opened new possibilities for an engaged audience experience. Hawk 17 Yet, other viewers found their physical involvement in the piece somewhat frustrating because they could not see every moment of the action. As one viewer pointed out, he realized this dynamic early on in the piece and had to accept that fact before allowing himself to be recruited into the viewing process. Others felt tense that they might be standing in the pathway of a dancer and impede the action of the piece. There was a general sense of anxiety about breaking the norms of museum behavior in order to watch this piece. To summarize the majors themes I heard in audience feedback, I would highlight one specific response that I received, prefaced by “I’m not a dancer, so take this for what it is.” This individual found the frustration of his blocked view to be a refreshingly “egalitarian” experience: he was on the same level, literally and figuratively, as the dancers, and both had to navigate their positioning within the same spatial limits. He also found it “democratic,” as he and the other audience members not only had a choice in where to stand, but an obligation to make that choice if they wanted to see the dancers. Rich responses such as this one supported my theory that the deepened kinesthetic connection corresponded to heightened attention to the work. They also demonstrate that within the comments on viewer experience were embedded American themes that addressed my intention for the work. The kinesthetic experience of the work therefore allowed for profound historical reflections and questions from audience members. Precedent As I mentioned before, my participation in historical reconstructions such as Celebration and Marche Heroique set a precedent for me to think about dance as a reflection of history. My Hawk 18 previous choreographic works11 had also primed me to consider historical perspectives as I generated and arranged movement. In this way, my personal experience as a performer and choreographer influenced Columbia, Manifest. But, I was also influenced by the extensive research I undertook in the fall semester. I found elements of my case study pieces surfacing in my choreography, my approach, and my collaborations during the creation of the piece. Graham’s Appalachian Spring shaped the thematic direction of my piece by inspiring me to think about the American frontier and westward expansion. But, her collaboration with Aaron Copland also served as a model for Timar and me. We approached our collaboration similarly, with simultaneous creation of music and dance and constant correspondence between us. I also thought of “River Relations” as analogous to Isamu Noguchi’s set, as a complement to the intention of the choreography. As I arranged the movement in the space, the relationship of Graham’s choreography to Noguchi’s set reminded me to be mindful of how I considered the artworks in “River Relations.” George Balanchine’s Agon provided me with inspiration for my movement vocabulary. Balanchine relied on a classical ballet vocabulary and infused it with modern twists such as parallel positions and turned-in legs. Since I am predominantly trained in ballet, I am inclined toward a ballet aesthetic in my choreography. My more recent training in modern dance at F&M has manifested in twists on the classical movements similar to Balanchine’s modifications, but my choreography is still rooted firmly in the ballet technique. In this way, I see my work as being similar to Balanchine’s as it relates to movement vocabulary. Conversely, I see Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes as a contrast to my approach regarding production elements. Stars and Stripes was over-the-top and flashy in its display of Americana in 11 land/Here (2014), a collaboration with Timar Shevlin based upon imagery of the Statue of Liberty and Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus.” Hawk 19 movement, music, costuming, and set. It was intended to be a crowd-pleaser, and did so by capitalizing upon easily recognizable patriotic symbols. I sought to be subtle in placing American iconography within these elements of Columbia, Manifest. I was not intending to create a crowd-pleasing piece, but rather a crowd-stimulating piece that encouraged engagement with the iconography beyond the superficial recognition of them. As such, I often thought of Stars and Stripes as an example to avoid as a developed my work. West Side Story by Jerome Robbins also had a minimal influence on Columbia, Manifest because it dealt with elements of characterization that I wanted to avoid in my piece. In West Side Story, costumes and stylized movements set up the conflict of the plot and defined the relationships among the characters. In Columbia, Manifest, I avoided developing a clear narrative in favor of exploring an overarching theme. So, I dressed all of my dancers identically and drew their choreography from the same improvisational sources. Had they been dressed differently or moved differently like the characters in West Side Story, perhaps an untended narrative would have emerged between the characters, masking the themes of American mythology and history of the Columbia River that I hoped to present instead. Anna Sokolow’s Rooms had perhaps the greatest influence on Columbia, Manifest by shaping my general approach to the topic of my piece. After watching excerpts of Rooms and reading about its development, I was captivated by the idea of asking the audience a question and inviting them to respond. It seemed like a mature choice that would require me to be intentional and sensitive about every choreographic decision I made. I predicted that taking such an approach would demand a higher level of attention and engagement from the viewers and stimulate their cognitive synthesis of production elements. Hawk 20 As I crafted the piece with the intention of asking a question, I was again inspired by Sokolow’s internal structure of Rooms and allowed it to shape the structure of Columbia, Manifest. Rooms was divided into subsections, each with its own premise, setting, and subtitle. Columbia, Manifest was divided the same way. For example, the opening section of my piece, “Pauses and Flow,” acclimated the audience to the unfamiliar viewing environment of the gallery space. The trio, titled “Borderline,” explored the dimensionality of the choreography and the limits of each dancer’s kinesphere. “Columbia,” the duet, considered both the triumphant and the shameful connotations of its name. Sokolow’s work guided me in developing this structure and approach to a piece of such great length. Although I have always done a small amount of research before choreographing, I had never preceded my creative process with such deep analytical research as I did for Columbia, Manifest. In doing so, I set a new precedent for myself by letting academic research shape my creative process. Still, I was often concerned that these two components of my project were too divergent to ever find a connection. I feared that adding the site-specific element to my production was too extreme of a variable for me to consider effectively. Once I saw the final performance of Columbia, Manifest, complete with an audience and finally set in the gallery space where I had imagined it, I realized that the connection between the two components would be audience engagement and response. The way in which the audience interacted with the piece marked the major difference between a traditional concert dance arrangement and my site-specific setting. Therefore, examining audience response to the piece was a rich opportunity from which to draw conclusions from the creative process in comparison to my prior research. Hawk 21 Conclusion Columbia, Manifest was not just a site-specific dance performance; throughout my creative process, it evolved into a collaborative arts statement that will guide my future endeavors as a choreographer and dance historian. It drew upon influences from both my collaborative relationships and my research to explore how the combination of dance and museums can raise an historical question and present it to an audience. Throughout the process, I learned that this combination of dance and museums functions well to engage the audience with an historical question because it challenges the normal behavior of interacting with art in a dynamic way. The somewhat unorthodox setting of dance in a gallery space added an element of unpredictability for the dancers, the audience, and for me as the choreographer. For the dancers, it was difficult to anticipate how they would adapt to a new environment while adjusting in the moment to the positioning of the audience members in their pathways. For the audience, there was a combination of excitement and uncertainty as they awaited the next development in the piece or the next transition through the space. For me, I had to place my complete trust in the dancers and in the audience as the piece began, stepping back and allowing them to engage in a dialogue about American exceptionalism. While this happens in any performance, the sense of surrender was heightened because I could actually see the audience physically maneuvering the space and responding to the work. In hindsight, I wonder if my intention to ask a question about American exceptionalism truly came across in the performance of Columbia, Manifest. I question how the piece will be remembered in relation to that intention. Was it truly an artistic exploration of American themes, or was it simply an experience that joined other artists in breaking the norms of concert dance Hawk 22 and museum etiquette? I realize that I opened myself up to that possibility by not being explicit in my statement and inviting the audience to articulate their own individual response to the work, and I must accept the reality that my intention might have been overshadowed by other production elements. Still, even though audience response primarily focused on the experience of viewing the performance, their feedback also drew out reflections on my intended themes. From listening to the individual experiences of audience members, I discovered content within my work that I could have never predicted. For example, one viewer saw a distinct parallel between the four explorers featured in “District of the Penguins” and the four dancers. Although I didn’t plan this connection, the comment still demonstrated an understanding of the themes of American exploration that I had intended for the work. In light of the diversity of responses I received, I have concluded that asking a question of the audience is the best approach to use in linking research with a choreographic statement. It allows for new questions and associations to arise among the audience members rather than imposing a meaning upon them, which would limit the range of responses that the piece could elicit. In doing so, and giving the audience some autonomy in determining the meaning of the work, I was exposed to new ideas about Columbia, Manifest that I had never considered in my creative process. I learned an incredible amount about how history is perceived through dance by listening to the individual experiences of my audience members, and this feedback became the richest source of material for me to reflect on the project. To continue this research, I would examine how the piece evolves across subsequent performances and if it takes on a new meaning when viewed in a new context. To this end, I could set the piece in a gallery space as well as on a proscenium stage and gather feedback from Hawk 23 audience members in both settings. Or, I could set the piece in a gallery space with a different set of artworks and see how the piece collaborates with a new visual art component. I could also make internal changes to the work, such as casting different dancers or dressing them in different costumes, to see how the perception of the work is altered. All of these developments would enable me to more deeply understand the nature of audience reaction and kinesthetic engagement with historical themes in dance. Through both the research and creative portions of my process, I have concluded that dance and museums do complement each other not only by presenting an historical theme or question, but also by inviting the audience to feel the experience on a kinesthetic level. As a dancer and a historian, the opportunity to create Columbia, Manifest and receive such rich feedback from the many people who attended excited me to continue my investigation of this topic. I feel encouraged to create similar projects in the future, choreographing for gallery spaces and once again collaborating with music, art, and architecture. With this project completed and the incredible insight I gained from the process, I will keep asking questions of my audience and of myself as I continue to combine dance performance and historical research. Hawk 24 Works Cited Brown, Jean Morrison, Naomi Mindlin, and Charles H. Woodford, eds. The Vision of Modern Dance 2nd edition. Highstown, NJ: Princeton Book Company, Publishers, 1998. “Intro to LMA,” NYU Movement Projects. Accessed 17 April 2016. https://movement.nyu.edu/projects/lma/intro.html\ White, Richard. The Organic Machine. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.
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