Indelible [I closed the book and I changed my life] - a dance documentary

Indelible [I closed the book and I changed my life]
By Becca Weber

   
    This video installation is a dance film and documentation of a site-specific performance work. Situating the work, which questions our embodied histories, within the confines of a library challenges the Cartesian distinctions between mind and body.  The library, while a physical location, remains a site firmly situated in intellectual and mental territories, and thus is rarely a place of embodied exploration.  By performing movement explorations in this space, we disrupt the “safe space” of the hierarchy of mind over body, and reinforce the plasticity of our bodies—its ever-alive and changing nature which reflects our own individual histories.  This site-specific dance also highlights the physicality of the books, and the presence of bodies—of both performers and studious “audience” members—in the space.  By situating our explorations in physical intersubjectivity, we hope to transgress the boundaries between mind and body and the social codes of behaviour in public spaces of the mind to reunite the body and brain, the physical with the intellectual. Elizabeth Grosz claims in an analysis of Deleuze that the space in between two things is where thought originates; “becoming” which is the method of transformation for the two things creating this liminal space, “is bodily thought, the ways in which thought, force, or change invests and invents new series, metamorphosing new bodies from the old through their encounter.” (Grosz 2001, p.68-69) Becoming enables singular parts to be released from the system of the whole, transforming possible experiences. By prioritizing the relational aesthetics of the dancers to each other and to the books, “Indelible” engages in this bodily thought and transforms individual participants and witnesses experiences of this intellectual space to raise physicalized experience to an equal plane of value.  Thus, the work actualizes an alternative method of engagement in a space dictated by the hierarchies of academia. In the silent space of the library, our movement is the nonverbal communication, giving voice to the knowledge of histories in our bodies and aligning them with the knowledge in the books.

    These themes were cultivated from a multi-part movement exploration of themes inherent or implied in Bruce Smith’s poem, “Untitled [I closed the book and I changed my life].”  The choreography stems from a collaborative creative process which examines our own embodied histories—specifically, our deliberate, chosen past actions to create change in our lives. The movement utilizes a playful, and at times fraught, interaction with books as metaphoric representations of this change/decision.  “I closed the book,” “I turned over a new leaf,” “I’m beginning a new chapter of my life.” We tend to think of these touchstones in our lives as memories which live on in our minds, yet we keep rereading the same lines over and over, rediscovering familiar patterns at different points in our lives. When we create change, are those changes lasting?  Or do we always carry our past histories with us, our embodied memories affecting our currently-enacted lives?

Indelible [I closed the book and I changed my life] - to come!

Since January, I have been working on a new piece for six dancers, which we recently turned into a site-specific piece in Paley Library at Temple University.  We are performing the stage version at Temple University's graduate concert, ENDINGS on May 4th at 7:30pm.  It's a free show, so come out if you're around!

Here are some still shots from our site-specific performance in Paley Library:

The words behind the work

For the piece I am currently working on, I found a poem that, for me, compiled all the layers of the questions I was interested in asking. Here it is:

Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life]

I closed the book and changed my life and changed my life and changed my life and one more change and I was back here looking up at a blue sky with russets and the World was hypnotic but it wasn’t great. I wanted more range, maybe, more bliss, I didn’t know about bliss. Is bliss just a rant about the size of the bowl? The trance was the true thing, no, the rant, no, the sky, now, that icy whiteness.

"Observer Effect" Revisited this weekend!

Hey, New Yorkers (or anyone near NYC)! Come out and see a version of "Observer Effect" performed at the Dance Across the Board Conference this weekend at NYU!




Our performance is at 11:45am on Saturday, and it's FREE!
More details can be found on the DAB Website.


"Observer Effect", is a contemporary dance work that explores layering quantum and classical physics, neurophysiology, and social psychology/interpersonal relations. What does it mean to see and be seen? How do we construct our identity through how we see ourselves, or how we are seen by others? How does the mere act of being observed change our behaviors and our very selves? How do these affects ripple on a micro- and macro-level, from our cells to social relationships? In “Observer Effect” as in our daily lives, we are both the watchers and the watched.

Familiar Capers

I don't update this often enough! "Familiar Capers" was a new work that was created in Autumn 2011, and was performed at Temple University's "ENDINGS" dance concert in December 2011.

It was a spirited, upbeat, fun piece and an easy and joyful process with my three dancers, Shailer, Ariel, and Alison. I'm really grateful to them for their shining spirits and all the hard work and playfulness they contributed to the choreography and improvisation for this work.

Some of my favorite photos (all by Bill H Photos)--and a link to the video--below!





















More pictures can be found here.



And here's the video:

momentum and momentous revelations

i realize that i am best at work when alone with myself, my thoughts, music, and space. i think a lot physically (mentally) and in terms of space/movement when on my own and traveling, traveling, traveling forward. momentum propels me. "things that remind me of other things" - the title to a new piece?

movement and relationships. there are so many places where i remember, viscerally and visually, the walks i have taken. walks in philadelphia, trying to find new corners but always ending in familiar places. thinking i've gone somewhere i've never been only to be met with a familiar visage. walks along the river ribble, heavy-hearted and heavy-armed, full of groceries for one. a special trip. walking around peachtree in atlanta, owning your territory. in the cascades, all up & down, literally and figuratively amongst the firs. in new york, alone and lost amongst streets in an unfamiliar neighborhood...here, always: retrace your steps, back to the studio, back to the body. getting lost in the forward momentum, propelled by the beat and one's own headstrong impulses. this doesn't hurt my foot, of course not. only a few blocks more, it costs too much to transit publicly. we tell ourselves stories in order to live.

this is where i am at.
this is MY life. this is not a charade. i am not treading water until my life comes along. this is it. this is me.

how strange it is to be anything at all.
how strange it is to be anywhere at all.
how strange it is to be anyone at all.

Crow

Dear friends,

It has been a crazy summer--I quit my job, in order to try and finally heal this broken bone in my foot which has been a source of pain and frustration for over a year and a half now. Quitting my job also allowed me to travel down South (home) for a few weeks and see family and friends and attend one of the loveliest weddings I could ever imagine. After returning home, I began dancing for a few of my colleagues in their work, and found out my grandmother passed away...

All of this whirlwind connecting to the past has gotten me thinking about community and memory and where we house our memories in our bodies, and how those memories make themselves known; those memories can also be falsified and can betray themselves. I cannot tell you for sure what the next piece I am working on will end up looking like, but I feel like it has something to do with my grieving process and the transient nature of the majority of our relationshps in life.

I grow weary of the melodramatic in dance--as if when we aren't serious or sad then our work isn't to be taken seriously. I am also acutely aware of the "bad art" of making the dance equivalent of what I like to call "bad teenage poetry". I really don't want to do that.

And a friend of mine once told me that my works are always too intelligent--that I overthink things, rely on layering meaning and editing movement too much, and it makes them sort of inaccessible. So her challenge to me was just to do the research, and create the movement without analyzing but trusting that the concepts are there. So that is my goal.

I am making a new work, tentatively titled "Crow", which I want to grow organically. The challenge in this endeavor is that because of all the whirlwind of the summer, I only have one month (a week of which I will be with my grandfather and family) to pull it together. I'm excited to see what is going to come.

Our first showing will be as part of the Philly Fringe Festival on September 11th at CHI MAC (Home of Kun-Yang Lin Dancers) in South Philly. We will have shows at 4pm and 7pm and tickets are only going to be $10!

Here is our postcard!


Our second showing will be at the Open Performance Series in Brooklyn on September 28th at 8pm. It will be held in the “Great Room” at the Space located at 138 S. Oxford St. in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.