Making Dance That Makes Itself

 

Choreography has never been my thing. In fact, I have spent most of my dance career evading making with the same obsessive fervor as an Olympic athlete chasing gold.  Recently, however, the allure of avoidance has transformed into an unrelenting urge to experience that thing which I had, until now, so successfully escaped.

 

So I made something. 

 

 In case you haven't experienced the creative process for your self (chances are you have even if you did so unconsciously), it is everything folks claim it to be: Enchantingly addictive and murderously frustrating. 

 

Currently, I'm in the final stages of expanding the work for Urbanity Next, a showcase of emerging choreography (March 24th and 25th at Green Street Studios if you're interested in checking it out) . As part of the process, each choreographer was asked to submit answers to a series of questions for a blog feature. Per usual, mine was rather verbose and some sections were truncated when the post was published in the interest of space and readability.

 

Fortunately, there is plenty of space here for the entirety of those right brain musings.

I want to share them with you.

 

Here's the unabridged version.

Jump around.

No need to be linear.



 "SAM Eye Am" @Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center

Title of work

SAM Eye Am

Tell me a little bit about the piece you are creating. What is your inspiration? 

As many works do, this one started out as a completely separate entity from what it has developed into. Initially, I entertained visions of a giant laundry pile, plastic bowls with odd faces drawn on them, a sarcastic title, and a score saturated with jazz standards, none of which stuck. Over the last few months, I’ve eliminated the theatrics and instead, turned my attention towards the concept of chiseling someone else’s experience out of infinity. Sounds heady, right? I promise, it’s simpler than you think. Bear with me.

In any instant, there exists innumerable lenses through which to view that instant. The particular lens we choose, or, if you prefer, the lens that chooses us, determines which bits of that moment we observe and reflect upon, and which aspects we miss or discard. I’m chasing the extent to which an outside source (choreographer) can manipulate physicality (the dance) and how the viewing of that circumstantial control (sitting in the audience) results in a particular dissemination of ideas regarding the physicality. Ironically, this led me to Dr. Seuss.

The book Green Eggs and Ham, featuring the narrator Sam-I-Am (from whom I

derived the title of my work) consists of just 50 words. Even in the case of this children’s book, we can categorize levels of awareness of the story’s lineage. At the most basic, readers see a story with a charming rhyme scheme ending in a moral about the value of trying new things. Looking a little deeper, you may choose to see the vocabulary lessons, perhaps smiling to yourself when listening to a novice reader deciphering the text because you understand that she is engaging in a learning activity disguised as a silly story. When I look at Green Eggs and Ham, I choose to see beyond the story to the challenge. Instead of beloved cartoon characters, I picture the excitement of solving a narrative with a word limit. SAM Eye Am is based on the same sort of game. The dance only consists of 30 movements. You will see each step or gesture in its original form many times, but we have also altered, deconstructed, and rebuilt them to create phrase work that I hope inspires fresh interest in each item. I’m looking forward to expanding the work and continue playing with how to keep my process accessible in the product.

  What do you hope to leave your audience with? 

It’s a “choose your own adventure kind of dance” Since my interest lies in perception of the physical mechanics, there is a lot of room for audience interpretation. I didn’t make a story line, not intentionally anyways, but a lot of people came up to me after presenting the work in the Urbanity Underground Show postulating that my dance was ABOUT dinosaurs or ABOUT sharks or ABOUT something. I didn’t tend for it to be ABOUT anything but having those talks gave me an indication of the gestures that made an impression. With this work, I’m striving to simply leave audiences with a hunger for curiosity and the opportunity to validate their own narratives. I hope their sense of wit is tickled.

 

 

What do you hope to leave your dancers with?

 

PLAY, a willingness to solve puzzles, perhaps a little audacity.

Tell me a bit about your process. How do you create? 

Have you ever owned a coloring book? These days I color post cards mostly, but I still color often. I start with an outline and visualize how to fill it. I have a roughly imagined idea of what I want the saturated picture to feel like rather than look like. From there, I put the colors where they want to go. Odd, perhaps, personifying the elements of creation, but for this work I have found my choreography emerging in a similar manner. The beginning of my rehearsal process involves a lot of listening. We play improvisation games and I try to absorb ideas about energy and relationships from those. I try out sounds and write a bit and then add those elements into improvisation exercises with a bit more structure. Phrase work and gestures appear and then, as with the coloring, I try to organize the movement into the configuration that it wants to be in. Movement can be kinder than coloring though. It’s much easier to move elements around when they’re in the wrong spots if your eraser doesn’t smudge.

What excites you about working with Urbanity Dance in Particular?

In rehearsals, I continuously toss every interesting, potentially contusion inducing, idea that fits in the context of my work at my dancers. They nod at me, sometimes like I’m crazy, and then go right on and try out what I have proposed or else find an even more satisfying circumlocution of my original proposal. Urbanity is a “yes” factory. I’m grateful to work amongst dancers who are willing to embrace a new “yes” of physicality as I say “yes” to the foreign land of choreography for the first time.

  Where can we learn more about your work? 

Pick a coffee shop- Any coffee shop with espresso. I’m still holding fast to a life where I learn about people in person rather than on a screen. So seriously, e-mail me and let’s find a time to talk (japassios@yahoo.com). I also have a blog where I post my musings from time to time http://jpjitterbug.blogspot.com/.

  Any other bits of information you would like me to know or be able to talk about? 

I think that's all for now

 

Shed or Gap 3

Locks clatter to the floor
The key, they told her
To finding her power
But she stares back and declares
She was already a warrior
Though they tried convincing her otherwise
Hair had nothing to do with it

Chop, or Gap 2

Shoe to root
She wades through a minefield of stumps
Petrified dreams decompose
Feeding sun starved saplings

The shoots fight
And she nods in approval
Then begins to shake at the sight of the trunks
Concentric hopes unrealized
Handcuffed to the ground

She saws at their chains
Licking deltas of salt from her lip
Cheeks streaked with war paint
As the chains constrict
Suffocating the wood
It screams.
"Go!"

She runs
Dodging debris
Focused, until
The sky hums
Her flight momentarily masked by the soft lullaby
Of wings

He hovers,
The hornet.
Buzzing with electric promise.
Offering her the air
Confident that he can
But she knows.
That the stumps were once trees.

So she runs faster.
Then trips
And lands chin to chest
Shrouded by hair

Peaking through the web,
She faces a kaleidoscope of distorted reflections
Nightmarish iterations of herself
In his compound lenses

He nuzzles against her neck
And promises to be gentle
Body soft
As she reaches to stroke the wing

But when her fingers fan,
The soil groans
Her soles rooting
Clawing at the vacuum that was once air

He drones apologetically,
When he stings her
And lands
Vowing to stay

But her branches weep
Burdened by the constant reminder
That the stumps were once trees
And she can no longer run.

Skim, or Gap 1

I went to a jungle

I went to a jungle with trees, a tree really,

And climbed to the point in the canopy

Where vines grew thick and made way

To the place where I lay and stared at the sky

For hours

Watching the leaves breathe

And inhaling bits of history

Narratives on the air

Alone.

Caught in thoughts on time, in time,

As the sun ticked down

Past the edge of infinity

And the sky hinted at yellow

Amidst the hum of man made things

Where the jungle isn't a jungle

But the tree is still a tree

And the vines are purple nylon

That hold

Hold enough for me not to, in fact be

Alone

But with my conscience

Eyes that complement

Pairs of soil and sky

Matter that isn't mine but may as well be

Company in solitude

Cursive among the branches

Where forward is up and there is no down.

Sex is talk and love is life

We watch the struggle

And wait as our nose grows cold

Ears booming with the silence

Of time continuing to pass

Questions, now internal certainties

That we

I?

Pour into hollow capillaries.

We watch the branches fill

And let them tangle

Satisfied by the knots

For if it were any other way,

They wouldn't be ours

And we would fall

Oblivious

Diffusing the past particles of someone else's future.

On Visibility- A Letter to My Local Cultural Council

Good Morning Mr. Benson,

My name is Jennifer Passios and I am a dancer and arts educator in the Greater Boston Area. Although most of my work takes place in the city, I grew up in Lunenburg and still reside here in town.



Students at the American Dance Festival 2016 engaging with faculty facilitators
in conversations about race and gender disparities

With Arts in Education week upon us beginning September 11, I've been thinking a lot about my role as an artist and how my work relates back to elevating the arts in my own community. Until recently, I was supplementing my dancing with work as a substitute teacher and frequently utilized tools from my performance practice in the classroom. Students, even those who I had previously experienced challenges with, reengaged with the material. They left lessons with a deeper understanding of complex concepts and visibly demonstrated more confidence in their learning.  As an artist, keeping creativity alive on the local level is important to me and that spark begins with the students. I'm curious what the cultural council's role is in keeping the arts alive throughout our community, the schools in particular since they constitute such a large breadth of mental plasticity and imagination.

As you may know, Julie Burrows became the Chief of Arts and Culture for the city of Boston on September 23, 2014. This was an exciting jump for those of us with arts professions because her appointment prompted a series of initiatives that boosted arts funding and more importantly, visibility throughout the city. The landscape is becoming one that is more sustainable for artists and, as a result, is helping to bring the entire city together through dance, visual art, music, poetry, writing, film, spoken word, and conversation. I was on the town of Lunenburg website earlier today and didn't come across a tab for the Cultural Council anywhere on the page. I'm curious as to why. I am not single minded enough to think that the town doesn't have a multitude of committees and initiatives that need to be present and easy to find on the website, but it disheartened me that the Cultural Council isn't represented at all.

The first time I came upon Lunenburg's Cultural Council, I was researching the LCC grant program in conjunction with my own work. However, in reflecting more on arts initiatives, it seems to me that I can contribute more to this community in partnership with the Council rather than as a grant seeker. I was wondering if there were any open seats on the council and if so, if you could provide me with some more information regarding present goals, active projects, and time commitment? It is important to me as a young person to represent my demographic and increase access to career paths that are underfunded and underrepresented, particularly in small town settings.

My goal here is to facilitate dialogue. I am curious about the work of the Cultural Council because its work is important to community growth. Being an artist has given me the opportunity to connect to people of the world, to think quickly, to become a voice for positive social change, to show empathy, to create, to advocate, and to spread awareness.

I look forward to continuing the conversation and hope that there is some way I can contribute to your efforts in town this year.

Cheers,

Jen 

< 501: Verb

I sat beside a hay bale on a farm in Vermont and surveyed an open barn doorway lit by twinkle lights and vibrating with the memory of fiddles. The eves dripped, conjuring thoughts of an evening punctuated by skipping through puddles, whooping with the thunder, and carving paths through the torrents with a blue feather. Across from me as the last of the droplets slid down my eyelashes knelt a fellow weather worshiper. Connected by the rain we talked, simple things mostly-

Where do you live?- A yurt in New York, but I went to school in Boston



Moonshine Music Festival (c) TW Collins

What for?- Electrical Engineering

And the ever difficult,

Why did you choose that?

 “I’ve always been fascinated by making something out of nothing”

Simple, but stupefying.

The poetics left me reeling.

Today it is raining again and as I reflect back on this encounter I have realized a truth about why I have chosen to be an artist.

Hold on to your hats- None of that “It makes me feel free”, “I can let out my emotions”, “I can say the things that words cannot”, Hallmark business.

I dance for the same reason that humans are enthralled by newborn babies.  

Confused?

Understandable.

Let me return to farms. I recently watched FarmHer, a PBS documentary profiling women in agriculture. About halfway through the program, the videographer zooms in on a small tray of verdant potted seedlings as a dirt encrusted hand motions gently, reminiscing on farming and miracles. Ten days prior, these tiny plants were encased in a protective coating underground. Cells negotiated and differentiated. Roots spread out. The reaching fingers soaked up water and made a deal with new shoots- I’ll hydrate you if you nourish me. Gametes battled their way towards the light. Shoots wriggled past soil, fertilizer, perhaps an insect or two, and the lucky ones pumped their fists triumphantly through the Earth. Viola. Plant babies.

We are floored by birth, but it’s not the baby itself that is miraculous. The tiny warm thing squirming around becomes a source of wonder because of the processes that brought it there- conception, pregnancy, growth, cell division, development, turning a thought into a creature. Looking at that baby, we don’t see an object, we see all of the actions that brought the baby here. The miracle is that those actions ultimately manifested as a person that will continue navigating the world through yet more actions.

The baby in a parent’s arms, or pushing up though the soil, or stumbling around on 4 legs is the physical manifestation of millions of processes. It is evidence of verbs.

Life as an artist is about being aware of those processes. It’s difficult to understand because the rewards aren’t often tangible. In being this way though, art is miraculous. As a performer, I get to be that newborn, the result of thought made manifest and brought to fruition, of making something out of nothing.

I dance because I am a verb.

(494)

< 501: People

At the age of 3, I was chastised in the produce aisle of my local Shop n’ Save for inviting an old man home to dinner. My disconcerted mother reminded me that I wasn't supposed to talk to strangers. Proudly, I gazed up at her and exclaimed, “I told him my name is Jennifer, so he isn’t a stranger anymore!”

 

Thus began my habit of social networking.

 

Bates Dance Festival 2014- Photo Credit: Arthur Fink

Successful relationship building has been a determining factor in the viability of nearly all of my endeavors, artistic or otherwise.  As I have worked to become a dancer, mentors have encouraged me to build connections with the people I encounter in class, at shows, during auditions, and in other arts saturated settings. I listened, did, and have passed on the suggestions to younger dancers, frequently accompanied by modified renditions of the “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” sentiment.

 

Recently, I have found myself attempting to restructure my interpretation of this phrase.  

 

I've become consumed by the question- How do we choose who to know?

 

I'm not here to diminish the importance of forging connections rooted in artistic commonality. It’s logical to seek out companions in our field. However, in confining our interactions to environments where we are surrounded only by other artists of the same discipline, we lose out on speaking with the folks who have the greatest potential direct us in spreading our artistic influence effectively.

 

How, then, do we strike up a conversation when place doesn’t immediately dictate artistic inclination? I’ve found fearlessness with a healthy dose of empathy typically works. Smiling helps. And yes, my favorite place to meet people is still the grocery store.

 

Whole Foods is my current location of choice since it contains an invaluable relationship building tool- tables. There are never enough to meet the demand of customers hoping to find one unoccupied. I’m thrilled when people choose to sit near me. Fortunately, it happens often. Sitting that close to someone and refraining from at least an introduction makes me uncomfortable. It seems that the people who choose to share tables with me feel similarly.

So we talk.

I have made the acquaintance of a gentleman who works at a homeless shelter and details high end rugs, a 70something local sculptor who also dances, describing Argentine Tango as a way of life, a freelance makeup artist, and a nanny newly in breast cancer remission. I left each interaction with a story and often a business card. These people all enriched my experience as an artist but I wouldn't have met any of them had I chosen to network only at dance related events.

Artists are facilitators, but we are not the only people who make art happen. Yes, we input creative impulses and metamorphose them into visual, tangible, or otherwise sensory products. We indulge in the responsibility of experience translation.

 

But.

 

To reimagine human life, you must collect experiences.

To collect those experiences, you must be human.

Humans make art happen.

(498)