More info at our FB event page.
Hope you can come out and see a show! More musings on the process will follow in a later post...once we're done with the craziness of producing the actual performances!
< 3 Claire
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Hunting for transformation
I think the phrase is actually "haunting old stomping grounds," but I keep turning it over in my head as "stomping old hunting grounds" or alternatively "stamping old hunting grounds" or maybe even "hunting old stamping grounds"...but whatever the actual colloquialism turns out to be, the nuances of each of these images feels appropriate to some aspect of my return to the dance studios at SCU as a guest choreographer.
Passing between studios and wandering the halls of Mayer, I see ghosts of my self and of my friends as students, discovering new ways of moving, thinking, and relating to each other in the spaces where we spent so much of our college years. We thought we knew everything, and it was simultaneously becoming clear that we hardly knew anything at all.
I heard Martin Luther King Jr.'s voice in the background of a radio story I was vaguely spacing out to in the car on one of my long commutes home one night. His words washed over me and began to pick up speed on the tide of melodic cadences, and suddenly I was sitting upright, paying attention. Suddenly I was drowning in the resonance of the words surrounding this idea of a "transformed nonconformist". I came up for air too late to hear the name of the radio program or the name of the host, or any solid information that may have helped me on my many months-long search for the audio (which I still haven't found).
I was able to find out that the speech I had heard was actually this sermon. He spoke of morality and the source of an individual's beliefs about right and wrong. He talked about turning to face the people, society, or moral system that has shaped your beliefs with a critical eye, and delving deeply into a study of what ideals you hold most dear. It made me wonder, where do we get our sense of justice from? Is there a place in our own hearts or souls that is untouched by the influence of others, where our morals truly live? Without the ethical histories of our upbringing, experience, or relationships to divinity, what is it that shapes our notions of what is good, what is intolerable, what is just?
I set out to create a piece with the dancers at SCU that explores the idea of transformation. I asked them, and myself, "what did you once believe, that you no longer feel is true?" What does the word transformation imply, and do you consider yourself to be a nonconformist? Is that necessarily a good or bad title, something to aspire to? As usual, I have way more questions than answers...perhaps I have only questions and NO answers, and that's why I choreograph in the first place.
It feels both ironic and poignant to me that I ask these questions in that location. It's as if I'm still hunting on those same grounds that I traversed in college...I'm still searching for my voice, still wondering how, why, and for whom I make dances. The ground is reverberating under stamping and stomping feet as we figure out just what it means to pursue our own transformation, and who or what we want to be when we "grow up". The joyful noise of these explorations has fueled me in a multi-layered way that I'm sure I'll continue to unwrap as Images comes to a close, and beyond.
I'd love to see you at a show! Come see the piece Feb. 7-10 and please let me know what you see in it!
< 3 Claire
Passing between studios and wandering the halls of Mayer, I see ghosts of my self and of my friends as students, discovering new ways of moving, thinking, and relating to each other in the spaces where we spent so much of our college years. We thought we knew everything, and it was simultaneously becoming clear that we hardly knew anything at all.
I heard Martin Luther King Jr.'s voice in the background of a radio story I was vaguely spacing out to in the car on one of my long commutes home one night. His words washed over me and began to pick up speed on the tide of melodic cadences, and suddenly I was sitting upright, paying attention. Suddenly I was drowning in the resonance of the words surrounding this idea of a "transformed nonconformist". I came up for air too late to hear the name of the radio program or the name of the host, or any solid information that may have helped me on my many months-long search for the audio (which I still haven't found).
I was able to find out that the speech I had heard was actually this sermon. He spoke of morality and the source of an individual's beliefs about right and wrong. He talked about turning to face the people, society, or moral system that has shaped your beliefs with a critical eye, and delving deeply into a study of what ideals you hold most dear. It made me wonder, where do we get our sense of justice from? Is there a place in our own hearts or souls that is untouched by the influence of others, where our morals truly live? Without the ethical histories of our upbringing, experience, or relationships to divinity, what is it that shapes our notions of what is good, what is intolerable, what is just?
I set out to create a piece with the dancers at SCU that explores the idea of transformation. I asked them, and myself, "what did you once believe, that you no longer feel is true?" What does the word transformation imply, and do you consider yourself to be a nonconformist? Is that necessarily a good or bad title, something to aspire to? As usual, I have way more questions than answers...perhaps I have only questions and NO answers, and that's why I choreograph in the first place.
It feels both ironic and poignant to me that I ask these questions in that location. It's as if I'm still hunting on those same grounds that I traversed in college...I'm still searching for my voice, still wondering how, why, and for whom I make dances. The ground is reverberating under stamping and stomping feet as we figure out just what it means to pursue our own transformation, and who or what we want to be when we "grow up". The joyful noise of these explorations has fueled me in a multi-layered way that I'm sure I'll continue to unwrap as Images comes to a close, and beyond.
I'd love to see you at a show! Come see the piece Feb. 7-10 and please let me know what you see in it!
< 3 Claire
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