On Sunday, July 12th, 2009, EDE presented Dance & Performance Art, a program which presented four current works of artists from both fields: JulieAnn Graham, Rachel Thorne Germond, Britt Posmer, Marrisa Perel. The performance concluded with a post show talk prompted by the question below:
Dance & Performance Art: Many ways of exchanges are happening between performance art and dance. It seems like the boundary between the two is getting dimmer. Yet, originally, where are they from and why those two are somehow getting closer? EDE started to investigate why both seem to be related and the differences between the two, if we distinguish them clearly.
Dialogue Moderated by Joseph Ravens
JOSEPH RAVENS: Thank you everyone. Of course I want to thank Ayako for having me here and the church for putting on this event which I thought was amazing. This is the first time I have been to this series and I'm blown away. And thank you of course to the artists for presenting their work. My name is Joseph Ravens and I am a performance artist, or I identify as one I should say and I'm really glad to be here tonight because I think that I am constantly questioning the relationship between the established disciplines of not only dance, but dance, theater and visual arts and how they relate to performance art. Um, let;s introduce ourselves, or the artists introduce themselves, not everyone. For the first piece...
JULIE ANN: I'm Julie Ann Graham.
JOSEPH RAVENS: And I know your bio is basically in the program, uh, I'm curious actually if you wouldn't mind, starting with you, how, just a little bit, maybe just an overview of how you see the relationship between dance and performance art or how you fit into that relationship.
JULIE ANN: I feel personally I fit into it as an artist, as an improviser. Um, I'm starting to work at bringing in text and sound into my improvisation along with movement. So I feel like I'm sort of stepping over that present, being unclear of what I am doing and just being an improviser and that's what I did, the score I did tonight was open to sound and speaking which we sometimes did and we sometimes didn't so it just depended on the score.
JOSEPH: Great, and second piece over here.
BRIT POSMER: I'm Brit Posmer. I have a long history of dance work and... (Recording is inaudible for a moment) an opportunity to re-integrate the voice and the body in a way and to use some other forms of text and visual images, and pictures, and sculptures that use a breath and depth of expression that isn't available in dance when it is framed as just this very...movement.
JOSEPH: The third work.
RACHEL THORNE-GERMOND: Rachel Thorne-Germond. Let's see, I really identify as a choreographer, I do. People are always saying my work is theatrical or performance arty or, but really, I see movement as the engine of the work and then all this other stuff is just part of who I am. I have a background in visual arts, my parents are both painters, I have an MFA and a BFA in art. But I really identify, I don't see huge differences in dance or performance art that much.
JOSEPH: Okay
RACHEL: That's my perspective.
JOSEPH: and then, last.
MARISSA PEREL: Marissa, and I have always, I worked in New York for awhile as many different things at one time and I'm just now formally studying art at the Art Institute, getting my MFA. But I identify as a performance artist and a lot of the time I am working with a vocabulary that really does come from that history which is narrow in way, or it's not that it's narrow in a way. It's all encompassing but it's marginalized and often times it's disguised or seen as dance. I've been called a choreographer but I don't identify as one at all because I almost feel it is disrespectful to walk in and say that.
PART OF DISCUSSION IS CUT OFF
AUDIENCE #1: and I think that's kind of a way, there's this deflection of -isms that we use, current in the combination of dance and performance art. where we are seeing like the inability to
especially with pedestrians coming into modernity like, yeah all of
MARISSA: I just wanted to say one thing though, cause that went into a certain direction too that I worry about that. There's something about being, about making work from the body that brings these things together. Where if you're approaching something with technique or rigor, you're just, you're not gonna lose what grounds you in your body you know? And , yes if you've been a ballerina for fifteen years you don't get up and just start doing something else with your body when it's time for you to do that. Like you can't lose that. Like there's this, I mean that's really important about having a generosity about discussing making work from the body or something like that. Like it's valid to make a different kind of dance from the dance you know, and it's still a dance. It's valid to make, um a different kind of body thrashing if you're a performance artist who thrashes her body a lot., like some of us, and there's a practice there, there's a technique that you are trying to subvert progressively that just happens when you're a practicing artist for a long time or something like that. And then for me the question is like, well, uh you're not gonna lose this thing you've got, you have to keep on making it work. Whether it looks great or doesn't look great, whether it makes something great or something shitty. So how do you keep on making that engine go? And when does it subvert that thing or not and hey I just want to dance... or something like that.
AYAKO: Joseph, also ask the audience.
JOSEPH: Thoughts, observations about any of the things we've talked about?
ZAC WHITTENBERG: Well to a a lot of points I think what you guys have been saying earlier about semantics, is kind of at the crux of it for me anyway because as the genre distinctions disappear they're not reformed, right? You know, you don't have, I mean like you have sushi now and add from mashed potatoes to salsa. Like they're hard generalizations that once they go away they aren't usually re-inserted, or they are they aren't generally productive. You put the wall back up, so that to me is tied to semantics. So that, for me, is why it's important for somebody to say, I'm a choreographer, I'm a sound artist, or I'm doing this and this is... Because that remains as the only frame left and it tells you when you're seeing the work, when you're about to see the work, what am I about to look at? What is this person focusing on, you know, right? If I go to see somebody perform as a sound artist, then how they're walking through the space may not necessarily be germane to the work, that's not what I'm supposed to be looking at. Whereas if somebody is like, “Oh I'm doing a performance,” or like, “What I'm doing is performance art,” then like when they enter the space there could be, like you're saying Rachel, that there could be information embedded in the movement, whereas you know, a painter is not, the movement is making the art happen but it's not the quality of the movement or the information embedded in the movement not what happening.
MARISSA: It's so interesting because they do cross streams so much. People, most times need something to reference for their own comfort because it is really difficult for most people to enter into an unknown no matter what their experience. So even when you're talking about the painter, that painter may have been taking dance classes but never labeled himself a dancer and then suddenly, like their arm moves in a totally different way because of that brush. It's curious because it's a funny thing about labels even, I would be willing to bet if any of us were doing the work that we were doing. Like in one performance put one label and in another performance put another depending on the focus of that experience.
JOSEPH: But as a viewer I would view your work and possibly assess it based on that label you chose and I made a note for the very same thing today. Even when people are looking at my work, when theater critic review my work, I get horrible reviews, Oh, he didn't follow through with character arc and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and all this crap that doesn't matter to me. Like I never tried to have a character arc, I don't care. So it's the same, I think that's are a really good point because um, yeah I like to be a little bit prepared for what I am going to see and what I should look for and look at and yeah, I think that's really important.
AUDIENCE #1: I think the character part, being careful with the semantics you're presenting through , your experience the way you set it up. Realize who you are performing for and the terms in which they're going to address it, in your experience, based on that. Who you're presenting for, in what situation under what terms
JOSEPH: I think it can only help the arts, like you guys putting on or performing or setting the stage for your work for us as an audience. Maybe think of something, this is open to everyone, how do you think venue affects the relationship between dance and performance art? Venue or environment, context? How do you think it affects that? I see a strong sort of thing (laughs) based on time primarily and the whole idea of a beginning and an end and this I find limiting. If you think of someone like uh, I murder his name, Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano tied themselves together for a year or whatever, like you know, if you're in an environment where there's a viewer, someone mentioned generosity or something like that. If you know there's a viewer and you're performing for that viewer and the lights come up and you make an entrance and then it begins and they know when you're done and they clap and then leave. These are all things that all are very, to me they're important things, brackets or bookends to time-based creations and I find that limiting personally and I was wondering if anyone else had thought or observations on context of venue.
MARISSA: I was terrified to do this piece and it took me along time to figure out what it was that was going to happen because I really, I really like to have my work be the process of the work. So if I was going to be in here for eight hours and you came in here on the fourth hour, and you saw where I had gotten to, I'd feel like, Ah, you saw my work. But if you're seeing something I'm doing in fifteen or twenty minutes, you're seeing something but that's not really my preferred way of inhabiting the space or embodying a discipline or material. And it's a struggle for me because I started to make work in the context of dance where you do have fifteen minutes and it's at Judson Church and you know where the pews are and what the thing is, and if you're going to go up on the alter that's subversive and whatever you do. And for me right now, it's difficult to work with time that way. Uh, it's a type of performance that I don't necessarily identify with, however, you know I'm trying to understand how to work with that in the context of cliché and maybe my feeling of being cliché to do it as if a person can really be seen in that time.
JOSEPH: Anyone else on that idea? Let me see what my notes say.
RACHEL: I just feel like you have to be adaptable, I perform in all different kinds of situations. Nightclubs, burlesque clubs, churches, small downtown venues, large auditorium theaters, proscenium stages, we have to think about all of it. But I definitely think about what piece I'm showing in and what context it's in. On some level you can't just think about, Oh I'm just going to perform in churches, I guess you could (Laughter).
JOSEPH: No, but in a general way I know that when I'm at a venue, regardless of what it is I always have to think about the beginning and the end, how I'm going to make the entrance, how is the audience going to know when I am finished.
RACHEL: Definitely
JOSEPH: And personally, dealing with time, that is so frustrating.
RACHEL: You kind of got to set up camp
JOSEPH: If I had my way I would be like there long before, and I do in some performances, I'm there long before inhabiting the space. And similar to what you said, people come in and witness it and then go and I'm still there. But then that brings up a question of duration and punishment or flagellation or something, and the practicality of that.
AUDIENCE #2: Can I say something? I think performance art is more mobile because in some ways one if it's original intentions was about lack of artifice and so I think when you do a theater piece you have a structure of scenery or curtains and sort of prompts are given to the audience. So when you make a forest in a theater production, it's a full forest. So I think with performance art, it's identity is sort of about breaking that down. And saying I'm going to put a dowel rod in the middle of the room and now we're in a forest. So I think it's more mobile because a lot of it's original intentions were about breaking down this surface as well as making it accessible to more people. So I think we have symptomatic of people performing in more churches, burlesque venues, in bars and on the street because just what this medium is that you're working with lends itself to that in a certain way because of its roots.
JOSEPH: Lack of artifice, by the way. Is a perfect way to encapsulate the whole spiel I did about context I just picked up that. Exactly, yeah and there's a whole school of performance art too that would automatically, would sort of shun anyone who has some sort of artifice or polish. There are festivals or whole genres that are, if you even had a smacking of a costume or something they would be like
AUDIENCE #2: But then there are people like Matthew Barney and if you look into any sort of performance art collective, or encyclopedia you would see Matthew Barney there and his work is beyond gallant, it's beyond spectacle, it's a whole other thing.
AUDIENCE #3: And also video which is bringing in a whole different audience as well and I don't know. I feel like performance art, and I don't know if anyone else feels this way, like I really try to focus on this idea of giving a gift, even if it has a plot but giving a gift and provoking their thoughts.
JOSEPH: Yes, provocative elements are an important part of performance art as well and you remind me also of structure, um. Or I'm reminded of structure, as we talk about task and ritual and dance has maybe more of a reliance on structure. I made notes and just words. Metaphor, it's relationship to performance art and dance, the presence of metaphor. Semantics, uh... I think performance is more encompassing of more, a bunch of mediums. Oh, this was a thought I had, the struggle or the quest for the new. You were reminding me of this a little bit but I think this was one of the things that is sort of making the boundaries between mediums fall apart. Quest for the new in art and I think this is true for every area of life. But you talked about making it, even for yourself, as an artist, how can I make this fresh and what's different or new about it? I think that's one area where dancers are thinking how can I make this fresh or interesting. Any thoughts about the quest for the new? Sometimes I feel like I'm answering my own questions, I'm sorry (laughs).
BRIT: One thing I can say, well a couple different things which have been talked about is when we talk about integrity or earnestness in the work. Another is when we talk about the stripping of artifice apparently makes something more real, which I, for me, I begin to question seeing this constant rejection of any kind of technical history, or structure or practice, uh and its assumption that inherently makes it more authentic. I think it's sometimes one's way of deluding oneself as an artist, and a way of creating yet another practice to hide in, you know, my practice now is not to have a practice. You're in the same trap, so I think, and also this idea of constantly striving to new or to make something new, then as an artist, you're always striving to the new. Is that new, is it challenging, is it pushing your work to different places? Is it stretching you, stretching your boundaries of the form, is it providing a different experience for the audience or is it just what you hit on, it's the next new thing, it's the next new thing, which is really symptomatic of our culture in a lot of ways and so it's interesting because I, for me, sort of blurring the different expressions for me is interesting and not so much, what is the next new thing but the fact that the new can actually be inhabiting something familiar. It can be inhabiting a space, a technique, a way of working, but inhabiting it so fully with the totality of oneself, that it becomes as though you're experiencing it for the first time, and in that sense, a technique that is hundreds of years old can be instantly new, can be instantly fresh, can be instantly engaging. Whereas something you chase after, looking for the novelty become dead and banal and just repetitive.
JOSEPH: I agree, I think those are all excellent points and and I hope that all of us are sort of presenting our work, am I saying this right, qualitatively because I have a lot of personal opinions definitely about how polished a work is, how refined, a sense of discipline and how it relates to my craft and the quest for something new. You know I think a lot of our practice and development as an artist is going through possible phases and now a little later in my life I'm thinking about who I am making art and hopefully those of us who are making art are asking these questions and where an impulse comes from and what we are doing with it. Um, I'm personally finding lately that I'm happiest with a piece when I just have an impulse and then make it and I try not to think of, yeah is this new? And is this fresh? Will the uh, Art Institute folks, will they like it? Will the theater critics like it, will whoever like it? You know because I think you're hitting on a very good point, it has to come down to you as an artist and your relationship to the thing that you're making.
AUDIENCE #4: I had a comment to what you said, I think each practice and discipline has it's own stake, like comparing to music...And when it comes to contemporary time, the question is why is there a need for it? I think the contemporary artist it comes down to very personal perspectives, like, I'm from a different country, like very different background so why I am present here? Why am I doing this, what is, I think for each one, what is the meaning for me to do this? From my perspective I think it comes down to very personal boundaries, um because it is a time when we can use different disciplines, are open to different mediums, different technologies, and I think it comes to what we're trying to show the audience. Or again, in that sense, who I would like to invite as audience. That's what I think.
JOSEPH: I can't tell you how thrilled I am with all of you and on the topic of new, I think new to a dancer, as a performance artist I see a lot of stuff and what a theater person thinks is crazy and wacky, I think, my god I saw that in a 4-D class years ago so the new isn't always but I think this quest for new is expanding so much that just the pre-established disciplines are starting to accommodate technology and movement and things in all these different ways and I think there can be good things coming from that.
AUDIENCE #5: I just wanted to add two things and one of the things I'm noticing it's so amazing to hear everyone talking, I'm a dance artist but um, one thing I'm noticing is everything seems to be in terms of Western and it's very interesting to me because I don't primarily work out of Western forms first so I think like a lot of the juxtaposition between performance art and dance is an American conception. It's not even necessarily European so I think the way that we juxtapose that in the United States is way different and I think just to contextualize that within our current moment, you know, what Judson came out of, what was happening in Europe at the same time is useful I think in answering these questions and adding to the discussion.
JOSEPH: Yeah, we've added a lot to the discussion depending on where we are in the world.
AUDIENCE #5: Yeah and I think one of the comments that Peggy Phelon, I don't know if any of you have heard of her work, her new corpus is on all these questions, what's the difference between dance and performance art and what are these boundaries? And she's kind of trying to trouble all of them in terms of, what is presence, what is absence, what/when is the creation of the new? How is stillness used and what is the potential. She is looking mostly at the Judson work and seeing how each artist was challenging different boundaries and how they went off into different trajectories. So it's really, I don't know if it's been published yet but it's really interesting.
JOSEPH: Yeah. Well I think we're all warm and sort of going in circles. So thank you all so much.
Dictation by Suzy Grant
*If you recognize your line as an audience member and would like to break anonymity please contact: furyuayajp(at)gmail.com
photo Britt Posmer by Christine Tenneholtz
