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

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

Yes, I could go for a 3rd viewing...

I've never had much of a desire to watch award shows. Sure, in the back of my mind I register when they're on and I want to see what everyone is wearing and watch the performances, but I don't get all that excited. Unless Idina Menzel is singing at the Tonys or something.


But this year I actually wish I was going to be home to watch the Academy Awards. Because PINA has been nominated for Best Documentary Feature, and I have a strange sense of pride in that fact. I guess this must be how sports fans feel...and to think I always raise an eyebrow when they say "we won"!


PINA was breathtaking...awe-inspiring...best movie of the year...yup all those adjectives that describe so tritely an experience that obviously goes beyond words. Well my capacity for words anyway. 


Go see this film. 

Dancer or not...go see it. Actually I'd like to hijack the next episode of So You Think You Can Dance and broadcast it instead. Those things are like 2 hours long right? Now THAT would truly educate the masses.

I think what struck me most about PINA was not the 3D (which was absolutely brilliant) or the elaborate stagings and beautiful cinematography, but the rawness that underscored all of Pina Bausch's work. It's in her dancers' ability to sit in front of a camera practically motionless, without saying a word, and express the deepness of sorrow in mourning, the complexity of laughing when you want to cry, and the elation of feeling capable of love and filled with strength. It's in her choreography as it always has been, but it's also in the solos created by her dancers, who eulogize her with heartfelt evidence of how dancing for her has peeled away the layers of artifice and left only artistry: human, vulnerable, articulate, captivating.


Anyway I'm gushing. Obviously I want to make a dance film now. I actually always have, and especially since 2009 when I created a dance called Buoyancy on ten UCI undergraduate dancers. It's about my experience working with a community in Nicaragua, and all that they taught me about survival and humanity, and I've always seen it in vignettes. Parts of it happening in the shallows of a river, others in the dirt roads of a tiny village, still others in a landfill that is juxtaposed hauntingly with the beautiful and awesome natural force of a smouldering volcano in the background...someday!


Thanks for the inspiration Pina...now and always. And come this Sunday, GO TEAM MODERN DANCE!!!


<3 Claire

Tina Fey on standards of beauty

I'm reading Bossypants by Tina Fey right now, which is such a great read, and I thought this passage was smart and appropriate and hilarious so I had to share it. 

This is Tina's "laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful":

• Caucasian blue eyes
• full Spanish lips
• a classic button nose
• hairless Asian skin with a California tan
• a Jamaican dance hall ass
• long Swedish legs
• small Japanese feet
• the abs of a lesbian gym owner
• the hips of a nine-year old boy
• the arms of Michelle Obama
• and doll tits

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did =).
<3 Claire

P.S. no plans on Sunday? Come and talk dance and eat cupcakes with me...doesn't that sound dreamy? 2nd Sundays @ CounterPULSE

We're on Facebook!

Does that mean that we're legit? Like how you're not really in or out of a relationship until it's "Facebook official"? 

Check us out and "like" us! Otherwise we won't know if you really do or not...

http://www.facebook.com/forchangedance

New projects are brewing...so excited!

I love being in a dance studio. Just being there. Absorbing the energies of thinking bodies and moving minds that have left their marks on the floors and their scrawled notes and drawings strewn around. You can feel the dance in the air.

I'm in the studio with dancers now working again on "in a delicate way...", trying to delve further into the subject matter and deepen the material. And all the work we are going to be doing with it has been driven by conversation. I'm un-endingly grateful for everyone who's participated.

Engaging my dancers in the choreographic process is one of the driving principles of my work, and the idea of inclusivity is something that for change dance collective is all about for me. I also think that dance audiences have much to offer that is never mined by artists. Whenever it's possible, I want to give viewers of my work a chance to participate in it's evolution.

So, getting to my point (I know...FINALLY, right?), I'd like to invite you all to keep December 11th free on your calendar. I'll be showing some work at 2nd Sundays at counterPULSE in SF, which is a free salon where artists informally show work and solicit feedback from audience members. If you're curious you can check out the link here: http://counterpulse.org/programs/second-sundays/ or look under the "PERFORMANCES" tab.

I'm also in conversations with a composer friend of mine to possibly start working on a collaboration, which will be TOTALLY RAD because I've always wanted to do that. Wish there was more time in a weekend and more money in my bank account for all these projects!

<3 Claire

what makes you feel pretty?

http://www.prissyinpink.com/catalog.php?item=1504

Jess saw this on pinterest.com and sent it to me. It's from an online boutique that caters to "Girly Girls" called Prissy in Pink. When I was a kid I probably would have given my left arm for a chance to model in their clothes! And I made Lauren model in these shoes for my last piece muahaha =) She was amazing!

I don't think I'm quite finished with "in a delicate way..." there's so much to dissect about how the game of dress-up seeps into our everyday lives. I've been thinking lately that I spend way too much time on Facebook, and what is social networking really but a way for us to present ourselves to the outside world in a way that we can control and edit and fashion. It's digital dress-up.

Little girls love to pretend they are someone else. Maybe someone older, more fashionable, more powerful. Someone who can wear red patent leather high heels and walk with that trademark affectation that only comes from the effects these instruments of torture have on your body. 

Big girls love to dress up too. It's often asked, who do girls dress up for, the boys or other women? Isn't it really for themselves, to feel more empowered as well, wielding their feminine wiles with the full force of cultural preconceptions about appearance behind them? Even if you're dressing up in a different style...any style...you project an identity loud and clear. I feel great when I know I'm properly dressed for the occasion, whether it's dance class in San Francisco or LA (two clearly different aesthetics), work, a baby shower, or hanging out with my hipster friends who shall remain unnamed ;)

And boys are by no means exempt from the dress-up phenomenon. It's part of life, it's part of everyone's daily routine, it affected everyone's childhood, it's always one of the top five categories on any good list of how to interview well or get a date. It's interesting to me precisely because it is so inevitable, often enjoyable, and yet has destructive powers as well.

I want to ask everyone, what does it take for you to feel dressed?

<3 Claire