Deborah Hay︎︎︎
This book is a great account of Deborah’s solo work and includes notes form different processes and performances. It includes many of her great questions that spark research into performance. I wanted to choreograph a spoken language that would inspire a shift in dance away from the illustrative body, despite its intense appeal to dancers and audiences alike, to a non-representational body.
If I remove movement as the primary component of Dance making, can the ways I perceived space and time suffice as material within the choreography and performance of my work? The question is not there to be answered. And, to not look for an answer requires a lot of work for everyone. That is why the question has to be so attractive to the person who is dancing.
In the context of my work, what matters is not what you do but how you are choosing to engage in the movement.
Selected questions:
What if I presume I am served by how I see?
What is every cell in your body at once has the potential to perceive your loyalty to dance, and you’re just interested in us in the loyalty simultaneously?
What if every cell in your body at once has the potential to perceive all space moving as you move through it?
What if every cell in your body at once has the potential to perceive your movement as your music?
What if every cell in your body has the potential to perceive beauty and to surrender beauty, simultaneously, each and every moment?
What if every cell in your body at once has the potential to perceive time passing?
What if every cell in your body at once has the potential to choose to surrender the pattern of facing a single direction?
What if where I am is what I need?
What if how I see while I am dancing is a means by which movement arises without looking for it?
What if how you see is the subject of your experience instead of what you see being an object in your experience?
What if how you see while you are dancing, including what you imagine, invent, project, can and cannot see in a prescribed area near, mid-range, and far, at any given moment, is a means by which movement arises without looking for it.
Turn your fucking head.
If I remove movement as the primary component of Dance making, can the ways I perceived space and time suffice as material within the choreography and performance of my work? The question is not there to be answered. And, to not look for an answer requires a lot of work for everyone. That is why the question has to be so attractive to the person who is dancing.
In the context of my work, what matters is not what you do but how you are choosing to engage in the movement.
Selected questions:
What if I presume I am served by how I see?
What is every cell in your body at once has the potential to perceive your loyalty to dance, and you’re just interested in us in the loyalty simultaneously?
What if every cell in your body at once has the potential to perceive all space moving as you move through it?
What if every cell in your body at once has the potential to perceive your movement as your music?
What if every cell in your body has the potential to perceive beauty and to surrender beauty, simultaneously, each and every moment?
What if every cell in your body at once has the potential to perceive time passing?
What if every cell in your body at once has the potential to choose to surrender the pattern of facing a single direction?
What if where I am is what I need?
What if how I see while I am dancing is a means by which movement arises without looking for it?
What if how you see is the subject of your experience instead of what you see being an object in your experience?
What if how you see while you are dancing, including what you imagine, invent, project, can and cannot see in a prescribed area near, mid-range, and far, at any given moment, is a means by which movement arises without looking for it.
Turn your fucking head.
Welcome to mapping collaboration, a toolbox for workshopping and creating across disciplines...
In spite of a long history of interdisciplinary creation, from our earliest recorded arts to our present moment, artistic pedagogy has created divisions between disciplines. This has left artists in a "post-Babel" condition where we don't share the same language and definitions. It’s also encouraged artists to develop practices for devising, creating and composing work that are distinct to their disciplines.
In spite of a long history of interdisciplinary creation, from our earliest recorded arts to our present moment, artistic pedagogy has created divisions between disciplines. This has left artists in a "post-Babel" condition where we don't share the same language and definitions. It’s also encouraged artists to develop practices for devising, creating and composing work that are distinct to their disciplines.
The inspiration for this project came from faculty and students at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts where BFA, MFA and PhD programs in Dance, Theatre Production and Design, Visual Art, Film, and Music and Sound all work together in studio settings and playfully experiment with processes of art-making.
We wanted to create a database of projects, assignments and theory that we collect inside the studio and from research happening in other places. We are curious about how we collaborate and how structures reoccur, translate and deviate from one discipline to another.
Composition is central to these processes and offers a base for our approaches and experiments. We are excited about what our students are doing and inspired by the new languages in contemporary art and performance we continue to see develop.
︎︎︎select a category above to build assignments, learn more about how artists process ideas across disciplines and to create a collaborative process of your own
︎︎︎these tools are collected and used in workshops and classes; some are resources from artists; some are quotes about art-making and how bodies think and listen; others are ideas to expand and disrupt your own training and processes.
︎︎︎Each idea is intentially short- and not meant to be executed as written, but to be adapted to your own practice and specific project/context. Some may be taken in parts or combined with others to spark new ways of training and making together.
︎︎︎submit your own ideas and tools so we can keep building this site!
︎︎︎select a category above to build assignments, learn more about how artists process ideas across disciplines and to create a collaborative process of your own
︎︎︎these tools are collected and used in workshops and classes; some are resources from artists; some are quotes about art-making and how bodies think and listen; others are ideas to expand and disrupt your own training and processes.
︎︎︎Each idea is intentially short- and not meant to be executed as written, but to be adapted to your own practice and specific project/context. Some may be taken in parts or combined with others to spark new ways of training and making together.
︎︎︎submit your own ideas and tools so we can keep building this site!
