Reflections on Reconstructing a 60 Year Old Dance

by Lynn Frielinghaus

Dance reconstruction brings into play so many aspects of recreation; previous knowledge of the piece from performers and audience viewpoints, labanotation, musical scores and last but not least the memories of the rehearsal process in which the dancers were involved. This includes the manner in which the choreographer worked, the rehearsal atmosphere and, most importantly, the choreographer's discourse on the intent and meaning of the piece. What is the idea that is behind the movement and how does that chosen movement reflect the idea? To be able to understand the intent of a dance, it is best if one can work with the original choreographer, but in dance reconstruction that is usually not possible. We have tools available to us to recreate the movement... videotapes, dance notation, musical scores etc., but the essence of the choreographer is often lost.

As a dancer who worked decades with Sophie Maslow, my job in reconstructing her dance "Folksay" is to keep her vision alive. I must bring to the dancers learning her choreography for the first time, a picture of who Sophie Maslow was and how she approached her work and her life. I need to show the history behind her dance and why its topic concerned her. It is important to point out the subtle and simple way she moved, the integrity behind each and every movement and why she never wasted a single moment with superfluous gestures. In short, if the dancers can understand where the dance came from and a little of who the choreographer was, the reconstruction will have a heart and soul to it and won't look like movements dredged up from decades past that have been pasted on to today's dancers. To understand the dance and feel it's purpose, breathes life into the reconstruction.

I don't think the aim in reconstructing a dance is to "get it right". That is to recreate every movement as it was. Taking into consideration the different way that dancers train today in comparison to 60 years ago, "getting it right" would be almost impossible. No, better to understand the intent, the idea, the motivation behind a dance, learn the basic style and technique of the movement and then bring it together with today's dancers contributing their own experiences. In this way a reconstruction will not only enlighten an audience to the past and give dance a historical context in which to be viewed, but also bring a fresh dimension to the piece. Dance is an art that is alive in time and space, and to deny the present time in reconstruction would be to deny an integral part. In my experience, an understanding of motivating factors in the creation of a dance, a respect for the past, accompanied with an excitement in the present and a balance between old and new all combine to make a successful reconstruction.

The Photo Shoot

By Paul Gordon Emerson

OK, so if you're going to promote concerts, sell tickets and get buzz, you need photographs. Dance companies take pictures of dancers doing insane or elegant or elegantly insane things to get people to go "oooh, I gotta see that." The question is, how insane?

Till now insane was defined this way: August 17, 2007 - Take two highly trained professionals, one house (supplied by Teri and Larry, who had no idea what being on the Board would end up meaning), four one gallon buckets supplied by your local hardware story, one hose spitting water add one extremely expensive camera with a high level of intolerance to things like, oh, water. Go into the back yard of said Board Members house on a steamy Sunday (when most people are eating in their back yard). Get your Director of Marketing and Board treasurer so stand on opposite sides of one or both of said dancers -- either on a chair, a stair, a ladder or some other reasonably unsafe platform). Fill buckets with water. Yell "go." Throw water. Hard. Take photos as dancers get drenched. Watch as, out of the frame, said Marketing Director and Board Treasurer get similarly soaked (not part of the plan but definitely at least as much fun). End result: great and unexpected photos. 

Fast forward to May 1, 2008. In the best traditions of "one-upping" think about the best image for the show "Warmer: Carbon," the follow-on show to the first Global Warming concert (for which the aforementioned water shot was taken). Well, carbon is black. And dirty. And an image about the impact of carbon emissions, which of course is tough since co2 is invisible, has to convey that. OK, so how? Idea found while waiting in the lobby of a hotel: black silica sand like the stuff you used to find in commercial ash trays. Go online. Find said "sand." Order, oh, 300 pounds of it. Have it delivered to the studios at Strathmore. Wait for the emails to come in from the front desk --- "ummm, there's a delivery of, well, sand, at the front desk and its, you know INSANELY heavy. Did you order this and, if so, why? And, if you did, could you please get it off the front desk so we can do work?"

The idea -- pour the sand from a high place on a dancer (better word: victim) and capture all that dramatic bouncing and stuff. Now, when one thinks of sand one thinks of beach sand. But this stuff is more like mica, so it shines. Very cool stuff. Probably insanely toxic, but hey, its art, right? 

Now, the sand really should stick on the dancer (who will now be known as Alice, cause she was crazy enough to say "yes" to the request, which came during her vacation). Hmmm. What should be use for that? Well, oil or something, of course. Nah. We went with vaseline. You know, something that is impossible to get off after you're done. 

This is one of those things you can only do outdoors. Except it was raining Thursday. Hard. While that would have been great for "Warmer," for carbon, not so much. So, you cancel the shoot, right? And reschedule, right? Nah. We moved it indoors. Into the studio. Where we rehearse. 

Cover the entire room with black paper. Put up an elegant screen for lighting, which takes 30 minutes to set-up and which, after its done, you decide not to use at all. Bring in Alice, cover her in vaseline till she looks like a science experiment. Put Betsy -- that Marketing Director I was talking about earlier -- and Dina, our Marketing Associate, on expensive black chairs. Hand them big containers filled with really heavy sand. Have Alice make a crazy set of shapes while all that sand is being poured on her from over her head. Yell "go" (I have a tough job here -- really. Yelling go is exhausting). Take pictures. Of someone being covered in sand --- you know, with all the dust kicking up everywhere around everyone. 

Then clean the whole thing up in about 30 minutes so you can have class. 

Never dull. 

Finding a way

By Paul Gordon Emerson

Of trees, birds and a few metaphors.....

We've been focused on trees for months now. From "Revolution of the Butterflies," the dance Isabel Croxatto has made for us and which is featured throughout earlier video, photographic and text postings on this blog to our commitment at CityDance to create a carbon-neutral office through better practices and through an offset charge payment channeled mainly into the donation of funds for planting trees, trees have been a "thing" with us. 

Apparently they're a thing with most everyone right now. 

That's not a bad thing (well, except for the endless allergens floating around the DC/Metro area now that the "things" are in full bloom). But its a funny thing. Not "hah-hah" funny, but funny in that, as with so many things in Western society we are "discovering" trees and realizing that -- oh, wow, these things are really beneficial. We have this tendency to chop things down, or up, and then, years later, discover them. Its that "Everything old is new again," thing. 

The entire enterprise of "rediscovering" trees is much harder than it at first seems. Major metropolitan areas around the US, and the world, have embarked (there's a pun in there somewhere) on massive tree-planting campaigns. New York is looking to plant a million all by itself. But as it turns out, there's a limited amount of available space in which to do the planting, and where you need it most its hardest to achieve. There's no space, the soil is completely denatured, and the people in neighborhoods without trees sometimes have to be persuaded to accept them. That despite the fact that trees in heavily populated, and cemented, areas tend to yield far more benefit than those planted rurally (that's not including the billion slated for planting in the Eastern Amazon). We are in that crazy place where every tree has a carbon value, a dollar value and a real estate value. Oh, and they're nice to look at, too. 

The birds part: In the past 14 days, randomly, I've seen three astonishing things. All of them have something to do with birds. None to do with dance. Directly.

At 8:15 on a working Wednesday morning I entered one of the biggest and busiest traffic circles in the endless melee of Washington/MD rush hour. This one, at Connecticut Avenue and Western Avenue, represents the dividing line between DC and Maryland. Its a madhouse. 

Pulling up from a side road on the Western edge there was no traffic coming towards me. None. That doesn't happen. Except that on this day there was a woman standing in the middle of the street, blocking traffic. For a family of ducks. One mamma duck and 7 ducklings, who were, somehow, someway, crossing from a nest somewhere by a local church to the center circle, in which there is a fountain to drink from and a pool to learn to swim in. These ducklings were not making their first trip. And somehow not only were they alive, but traffic had stopped for them. In DC. At Rush Hour. Hopefully that has happened every day since, and will happen for so long as they choose to cross. 

Second: the hawk. I live in a house at the crest of the highest point in DC -- in a neighborhood named Mt. Pleasant. I have a south facing deck that looks at the entire southern side of the city. And a few weeks ago that deck had a visitor -- an exceptionally large and remarkable hawk, who appeared to be looking for a meal of pigeon or squirrel, both of which frequent the deck as well. A hawk. In the middle of DC.

Third: the vultures. Aside from the completely ill-informed view of vultures as foul (yes, another pun in there somewhere) creatures, the idea that they thrive in DC is hard to grab onto. But on MacArthur Boulevard the other day there were two, in the median, munching on a breakfast of a squirrel that hadn't made it to the other side. They scavenge, and there has to be enough scavengable food to survive -- and here they were. 

Now -- trees and birds rare and birds doing things seemingly involving a death-wish (as Kathryn said today, people die crossing traffic circles, so what chance do baby birds have). And dance.  The point is that given a chance, life finds a way (to quote, somewhat inelegantly, Jeff Goldblum in, egads, "Jurassic Park"). Trees grow. Birds find a way to coexist with man if man gives them even the most remote chance to do so. And everything is the healthier for it. Birds are a vital indicator of the health of an ecosystem, and as these birds return and thrive, its a measure of what happens when nature is not plowed under at every opportunity, even in the midst of a major metropolitan area.

Its not so different for the arts. Given a chance, given the opportunity to take hold, it does. But it takes effort -- sometimes dedicated and sometimes benign. We plant trees, sometimes over the preconceptions and opposition of those who will benefit most from the planting. We allow birds to live -- not nurture; not help. Just allow. We leave spaces for art and artists, whether in the form of housing in which they can live and studios in which they can work, and they, too, thrive. Sometimes you act. Sometimes you choose not to act, which is in and of itself an act. And things get better. 

Seems simple, but, like the "discovery" of trees, it turns out we have to re-learn it. That's not a cynical statement, but one of encouragement. While we might wish we'd never forgotten in the first place, the point is we figure it out. It just takes someone who will stop in the middle of a four lane road to let a family safely make the journey. 

Very Funny

By Paul Gordon Emerson

The book is closed on Jungle Books, the road kill show, 2008. 

Final count: 

3 Mowglis

3 Shere Khans

2 Kaas

6 monkeys/wolves

Talk about living the endangered species message. 

The bear survived (turns out they really are the hardiest animals in the land) and has fled to North Carolina and the narrator is planning to burn his costume (except its owned by the Washington Opera, so that's probably not the best way to keep that relationship going). 

Best story: The urban jungle of Pomfrey, Maryland

Only one show was more than 30 minutes away. And it was in Texas (well, Southern Maryland). 90 minutes away, a mad dash down Maryland Route 5. No time to waste. Pull up. Unload. We'd spent the morning getting ready for the show the next day because Mowgli #2 had to be in New York for a court date (Mowgli #1 never even got out of the gate... felled by pneumonia the morning the run started). And, yeah, well, the costumes were still in the lobby at Strathmore. 

ALL of them. 

So, welcome to the urban jungle. The tiger went from a purple velvet to jeans and a red t-shirt (that read "hotter than I should be" -- from of all things the World Wildlife Fund). Mowgli wore shades and an attitude. The "imagination station" was rolling. I couldn't stop laughing. 

Best question: 

"What inspired you to become a writer."

Kid couldn't have been more than 9 and was totally into the story, quite convinced apparently that I really am 143 years old and was just shining. Talk about a future Tony Award winning writer. Of course, I'd like to think I was just that convincing..... But seriously, this is what you live for in doing these shows. 

Best review:

"On a scale of one to five, I give it a five." Jenny. Aged 5; from some school lost to identity in the blur of seeing 3,500 kids in 9 days. 

Best save: Shere Khan III (sounds like a Star Trek sequel)

Friday morning. Last day. Last shows. Mowgli #2 ALSO apparently comes down with pneumonia (evidently a high-risk part for pulmonary problems) and is out -- 30 minutes before we leave for the school. Kate Jordan, who normally lives the part of a monkey or wolf, and who isn't even supposed to go that day, volunteers to be Shere Khan, sliding Shere Khan #1 into the role of Mowgli #2. No rehearsal. She never even studied the part (its a guys part, after all), but she goes rocking out there in front of 700+ kids as the jazziest tiger, with rock star hair flowing and the only real nails the tiger had. Meanwhile Mowgli #3, Ja'Malik, is jamming along and cracking up not just the kids but the cast with all the turns and flips and lifts out of NOWHERE. 

(The stage was also pretty much of a storage space, so there was this big love seat off stage left and the whole first show Alice, who somehow wound up along for the ride with nothing to do, was curled up on it missing only popcorn and a beer to look like she was in the living room of a sit com.)

Best Warriors: Jerome and Maggie

The only two people in the cast who did all 15 shows. 

If the run had gone another week we could have opened up our own Animal Planet MASH unit. And gotten it syndicated. 

But it was a ton of fun to see the kids get completely absorbed into the show. EVERY show we heard from teachers and Principles that they couldn't believe the entire room was silent and totally into it. That was great. 

On to Springsteen and doing "Born To Run" right. 

Dumbing Up

by Paul Gordon Emerson

There is a tendency in arts education -- maybe in most education -- to "dumb down," to assume that people, particularly children, won't get it if you challenge them. It seems to come from a place of insecurity. Not the insecurity of the people to whom you are presenting, but of the people doing the presenting. And its never, ever the right answer. And, if there's a place where its even more not the right answer, its with kids. If anything, you have to dumb up. You have to take your preconceptions as an "adult" who "knows" and raise the barre from what you think they're going to take in. 

I remember as a kid always having that reaction when some adult was talking to me. Anytime someone who was 20 years or more older than I was said "you'll understand this one day" I wanted to either crawl under a rock or hit them with the rock. 99% of the time I got it then. And, as Josh liked to say in West Wing, my IQ doesn't exactly break the bank. If I got it, then all those kids in front of us week after week are just as able to get it. More, probably. 

Whatever it is that makes us talk to kids like they're suffering from some sort of cognitive dyspepsia, where challenging them just results in intellectual heartburn, we are constantly reminded by our audiences that we've got it wrong. If you talk to them like they get it, then they'll go with you, and they'll not just get it, they'll get on it. They'll take a story in. They'll take the enchantment you offer and do it with enthusiasm. If anything, kids have a "bull____" meter that is better than ours as adults. 

Jungle Books has been a clear and present reminder of this. From the 5 year olds at the front to the 11 year olds at the back, their questions are smart and their attention to detail is startling. And they are completely willing to be enchanted. Its really just a matter of making sure that we, as the people at the front of the room are genuinely willing to, interested in and inspired to do the enchanting honestly and with passion. If you offer that, if you offer the best story, at the highest level you can manage, dancing and story-telling for 400 kids goes from being a challenge to being a delight. Why we make it more complicated than that -- that's the question, and the place where we get dumb ourselves. Maybe we should just make sure every performer spends a show sitting in the middle of the audience. 

Teach Your Children Well

By Paul Gordon Emerson

The old Crosby, Stills and Nash song has a stanza in it --

Teach your children well,

Their father's hell did slowly go by,

And feed them on your dreams

The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

As CityDance embarks on a two week journey into 15 elementary schools throughout the DC area, for some reason that line -- "feed them on your dreams" -- recurs for me. What is it that we are trying to do, and what is it that we dream, both for ourselves and for them, and how are we sharing the dream with them? We're traveling and touring a version of Jungle Books, the adaptation of the Kipling tales that is a concert program for us and now a road show. Today we shared that story with some 300 children who lost themselves in a story about a fictional boy that was written 112 years ago and set in the heart of a Central Indian jungle. The dancing made them sigh and wonder. The story help them. But what resonated was something which had nothing to do with the tale. It had to do with illness, injury and perseverance.

As departure time neared this morning, as the van was loaded with costumes, props, stereos and a five pound bag of coffee, our lead character, our Mowgli, came through the Strathmore doors. Jason, the star of the show, was too sick to do more than tumble into a chair and mumble something like "I'll be fine." An hour later, as we were preparing to go on stage for our first audience, he was in the Emergency Room of Sibley Hospital. We had a show. He has pneumonia.

Christopher Morgan, who has become our all-purpose utility player, who was supposed to be, intermittently, our narrator, was suddenly Mowgli. With no notice and no warning the company embraced him, and embraced the change, and wondered and worried about Jason alone in ER and told the tale of a young boy, a bear, a snake and a tiger with such skill that no one knew what was different from what was planned. And we could easily have just not told them.

But the lesson -- the teach your children lesson -- the dreams lesson -- is that sharing yourself with little people is something that goes far beyond the flash of a trained dancer and the adaptability of a professional performance troupe. What was memorable for them is the same thing that was memorable for us -- that you train, you practice and in so doing, you persevere. They loved the story and the dancing. But they'll remember Christopher, who shared that he had just stepped in, and that he succeeded because he practiced, because he was willing to take a risk and because we wanted those kids to have a great day with us. We succeeded because all the company was determined. But the kids got something more, and something we often try not to let them see -- the challenge, and thus the humanity, of the day.

Our dream, to share, to dance, is also about that -- to be the people we are with the people they are. That's what made the day special. That's "the one they picked, the one you'll know by."

LITTLE TREES AND BUTTERFLIES, HAPPY EARTH DAY !

Earth Day '08

By Paul Gordon Emerson

Art has a role to play (literally and figuratively) in the political questions of the day. That role can be direct and political. But it can also be communal and very non-political. Both matter.

The Green Apples Earth Day Festival on the National Mall is Sunday, April 20th (Earth Day itself is two days later, on the 22nd). CityDance is dancing on the main stage of what is being called the Flagship Event of a worldwide festival. Its an honor, an extraordinary honor, to be invited.

My God-Daughter, Lucy, is 17, and she said the other day that "her entire school is going." Her passion is two-fold for the day, and herein lies a part of the power of art on a day like this that few other more traditional, and political, participants can claim. That power is to pull people in. Its an irony that so often we complain in this field that we can't sell enough tickets to shows, that there isn't enough interest in our programs and blah, blah, blah. Earth Day is just one example of how that isn't -- and must not -- be true.

Earth Day is about fundamental things --- the need to change our practices on this planet, and our stewardship of it -- if we aren't going to be talking about beach front property in Orlando and the consequences of watching the entire Delta in Bangladesh vanish beneath the surface. But to get people to "buy-in" to fundamental things you often have to make such fundamental things something that feel like a positive and not like a penalty. You have to build community. You have to inspire. You have to draw folks together in common purpose, not divide them in the petty details of difference. Earth Day is a deep and defining opportunity to do this, and art is serving a vital mission in making it happen. It is a source of unity -- the celebration of the art as well as of the message that will be on the concert hall stage.

Its a safe bet that at least as many people are coming to see The Roots as to wander the booths of all the business, NGOs and not-for-profit organizations who are there to demonstrate their "green-curriculum vitae's." And its absolutely the truth that more people are into the idea of listening to Chevy Chase or Chris Rock than the Senate Majority Leader. Rock is there because he believes. Whether Harry Reid (the Majority Leader) can convince anyone of the same is unimportant -- he holds the power of change in a way none of the rest of us do. But that's not the point. The point is that people are being drawn in by the art as much as well as by the cause -- and many are simply being drawn by the art. But they're coming, and that -- particularly in Washington -- is how movements begin. Celebrating the day opens the door to positive ways of changing, and of getting us together to say "this is how we do it."

There are going to be political statements from the artists, as there should be. But while all the focus is on the politics of the day, its too easy to forget that you can inspire change without a sledgehammer, and that its often more effective, and more lasting, when you realize that it doesn't all have to be heavy. There's nothing wrong with taking on the question of a heating planet by doing things which are cool.

The Revolution: Reflections

by Paul Gordon Emerson

Coming to the end of the first phase of creating "Revolution" is both a bit sad and also very inspiring.

Sad because Isabel has journeyed back to Chile, and left the magic she makes in a room to memory (at least for now). Inspiring because she has made something extraordinary and done what gifted choreographers do -- challenge the performers to be more than they were when she entered the room for the first time. Normally those journeys take months. She had three weeks. To create a dance in three weeks is challenging enough. To create a culture on stage is vastly more difficult. But this is what she did. To ask dancers, who are driven by their DNA to move, and most of the time to move at exceptional speed, to forsake the use of their legs would create its own revolution in most companies.

But in this one, it didn't. It created a willingness to understand. As esoteric as that may sound, its critical to the success of any art. Artists paint. They make music. They use inanimate objects to generate color or sound. But dancers are the color and they are, in many ways, the sound. So if something is going to succeed in the mission of challenging, inspiring or captivating an audience, the performers must embrace their roles. These did. The result was a wave of comments about "Revolution" being "breathtaking" and "brilliant."

As an outsider, what captivated me was the dual brilliance of making a work on an impossible subject not just compelling but embracing, and of making it on a group new to the concept and giving them the opportunity to thrive, and thus to realize the mission of the work.

For choreographers, this is a pinnacle. Its what makes something last. Its what makes something captivating for more than a few minutes, and makes it stretch in the consciousness into the days and weeks after the performance is long gone from the stage, but is lingering there in the heart.

There were two "Revolutions" at Warmer. One was the literal revolution -- the dance. The other was the one in the hearts and culture of the dancers. Rare indeed.

"Revolution of the Butterflies" 09