For the last time...

If just once more someone tells me that my career means nothing now that I have a baby, I may have to resurrect my idea to move baby and Dennes to Big Sur where we live like curmudgeonly hermits until California breaks off from the continent in the big earthquake that begins the rapture.....or whatever.

I proudly push baby in his stroller to the studio after the last iteration of the "career means nothing" vibe. And I endeavour to make my career mean more now that baby is here.

I have two things to leave to this planet -- my baby, my art -- and hopefully both will be lasting enough to leave something to the planet in turn....

Generosity

A couple of things have happened in the last year that have caused me to doubt the value of generosity. I have, or my husband has, been taken advantage of, played, suckered in the course of wanting to help. But a book, recommended by the incredibly generous dance artist Peggy Baker, has started to pull me in off the ledge after yesterday's biggest disappointment when it comes to generosity and being taken for a fool. Yesterday I was ready to cancel a co-production with three other artists (who have nothing to do with my heartbreak surrounding generosity), I was ready to move husband and baby to a log cabin in Big Sur California and become a family of cranky old hermits who threaten trespassers with a really big stick.

The book is Lewis Hyde's "The GIft", and though it sounds like a book on witchcraft or a feel-good treatise on artistic talent for would-be artists, it instead dives into market versus gift economy models and is saving me from the corrosion of my belief system, melodramatic as that sounds.

Now I learned many years ago never to give help, money, resources with any expectation of return. I once worked for someone who was constantly giving me things, things I didn't need or want, then reminding me of the gifts given as a tool to manipulate an obligation to her. That, to me is not true generosity, that is more like capitalism. Investing in something in order to get product from it later. All fine and well but don't call it a gift.

The idea, that Hyde puts forth in the first chapter of his book, is about the energy of gifts and generosity, that the flow needs to continue. Someone who receives a gift should pass along a gift to someone else. It's a bit of that cheesy pay-it-forward concept, or the ripples in a pond image, but when you relate it to the creation and sharing of art, it makes sense. If you are creating for yourself, no matter what the form, without a sense of your audience you are stopping the flow of art's economy. That economy is built on the ephemeral value of art, on the intangible, the emotional, psychological or intellectual stimulation. It is built on the things we can't buy in a store. And we need those things. Deeply.

In another book I read recently, which I can't remember the name of at the moment, a philosopher was talking about people under extreme environmental, financial or political duress and that the cornerstones of their societies become food, shelter and culture. Think about North America and Western Europe in the 1930s -- through the Great Depression we had one of the most verdant periods of film and music and literature, among other art forms. Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer is one of my favourite examples. Everyone was writing a novel in the 1930s the way everyone has a blog or a website now.

At any rate, by the end of Lewis Hyde's first chapter I am dedicated not to becoming a miser but to choosing where and how I let that generosity flow -- both as an artist and in the broader context of my life. I will continue not to expect a return, but I will not allow things to be thrown back in my face -- the struggles I have had this year have stemmed from sharing, opening to those who believe themselves entitled, have placed their needs above mine, and above many others around them. It is hard when this happens between artists. When I can help someone with talent that is not being seen or appreciated it seems important to do what I can to facilitate the exposure of their artistry, but when their dissatisfaction with the whole artistic environment becomes expressed through a deadstop of that flow of energy -- well, I just find that sad. And then to have it thrown back at me, as though I didn't do enough, while we are all struggling to let our lights out from under a bushel...

That's what I'm done with....after all my rambling above, I am simply done with a random flow of generosity. I'll stick with field theory for performances -- let it out everywhere and let it stick where it sticks --but on a personal level, one on one, I will be choosing my channels more wisely, though not less frequently or with less fervour.

The good end to yesterday was another reminder of this flow of gifting....A friend passed along some baby clothes from someone who had passed along some baby clothes and as I washed and folded and put away these new gifts for Pablo, I showed Pablo all the clothes that he has now outgrown and put them in a bag to be passed along to someone who will pass them along to someone until they find where they are needed.

I should have just gone back to my own beginnings when I felt so betrayed by those I shared with and by my own beliefs. Until I was about 5 or 6 I don't think I had any clothes or books that weren't secondhand. And sure enough my mother would go through my closet and take out the things I couldn't wear anymore and together, we would drop them at the Salvation Army or Goodwill.

Hey, it's called Goodwill for a reason.

Ritual

My friend Monika Berenyi just sent me a film she made about what ritual means to us in the 21st century and it got me to thinking.....

Ritual is connected to the theatre for me, the practice of preparation and comfort before stepping on stage. It has never meant anything religious to me; I wasn't brought up going to church and such. The theatre is like a church for me -- not in a flakey or spiritual communion kind of way, although I suppose there is a bit of that -- but in the sense of community and transcendence it brings, the pursuit of humanity, transparency and meaning in life.

There is nothing authoritarian about my ritual or my comparison of theatre to church. I do not bow down to God, Allah or "the muse" while in the theatre or making my preparations. You can't bow down to the pursuit of meaning, transparency of humanity. If you bow your head and close your eyes you can't take part in the chase.

Bowing the head and closing the eyes happens the land of dreaming for me, equally important and sacred, in a non-religious, non-ritualistic way. I do not prepare for or coax out the dreams, they wash through when they need or want to. Then they are filtered through into preparation for taking to the stage. Perhaps the filter is the ritual. Little dream images slipping through holes in soft cheesecloth....

www.monikaberenyi.com

First time in the studio with baby Pablo

Listening to Arvo Part -- music I meditated to while pregnant, music I had hoped to play (to remind myself to breathe!) while giving birth, music that could not be played while I was giving birth because everything happened so fast. Sitting on the floor of the studio stretching after dancing/warming up for half an hour. Pablo begins stretching as the music plays. He has been sleeping since we arrived.

Focusing on his sleeping body liberates me while improvising. My body is loose, except my lower back and laterally in my pelvis (muscles over-worked during the delivery), disassembled, wriggling, eager. My ego slips away. I am watching the baby on the floor sleeping while I am dancing. I realize I need to turn the camera on in the corner and just let it go for the whole time. Something new is happening. The mirror doesn't exist, the ego, which sometimes directs my improvisations to things that feel good and I know I can do well, is absent or perhaps watching the baby too.

Pablo wakes up and freaks out a little, not knowing where he is, so we waltz around the room to "Spiegel im Spiegel" -- he laughs and smiles, especially when we do the formal waltz turns over and over again. He's having fun and I'm remembering a bit of footwork for a show Theatre Rusticle will be remounting later this season. He rather likes the Alvin Ailey poster on the wall with it's red-orange background and black silhouetted figure.

I realize bringing Pablo here is important, it forces me to ease off of precision in QUANTITATIVE terms. We may arrive at 1:30pm but what happens in the 2 hours of studio time I've booked must be loosely structured. I must be prepared to be here for 3 hours if I want to dance for 2. I need to stop being so controlled, stop scheduling myself so tightly, enjoy the details that emerge when I don't feel the need to "dance like Lucy".

To find precision in QUALITATIVE terms...I care suddenly less about going to daily technique class (which I never do and always feel guilty about). I am willing to relinquish that dream I never really chased. I am happy with Moksha yoga and studio time. I am old enough to enjoy my idiosyncracies, to develop them into a craft, rather than feel them as a liability, something which has emerged because I don't go to a symmetrical conventional class often enough. Symmetry and convention are important for training, but now that Pablo is here I see new forms of symmetry and convention which fall outside daily contemporary technique class. I am far enough into my career to not care how idiosyncratic my dancing is. To chase THIS dream -- individualism -- to be myself, to do my tendus and plies and then explore wonderland.

My elbows and throat are fascinating today driving the movement that is coming through. My feet which have weakened a little over this summer of no ballet classes and a lot of running around literally barefoot and pregnant, are solid, happy, pliable on the floor.

I must bring Pablo with me to the studio as much as I can in these early months -- until he starts locomoting or stops enjoying his studio-floor naps and watching mummie dance in the mirror. It is an incredible thing to get to do-- to share my work with him so that maybe when he is a little older he will not be sad when I am away from him working, maybe he will understand what I do and how much his existence inspires me -- not so much thematically, but at the root of my spine, in the meaty part of my soul that sends out the order "CHARGE!!!!" How loud this voice is now. I have been a passive observer for too much of my life, avoiding sensuality of the purest kind. You can't do that anymore, not with Pablo here. "Dance like Lucy" can't be in quotation marks anymore.

In the very eloquent words of my friend Sarah Slean: Love is the reason we are here.

Hear hear.

Here here.

Notes after being on the Dora Dance Jury for 2008-2009 PART TWO

Please read disclaimer in part 1. Synopsis: Random notes from attending dance shows this season, impressions not meant to offend anyone involved in shows, purely personal thoughts on dance, dancing and dance-making.....Groups of thoughts represent a cluster of ideas about an individual show.

The dancers are self-conscious at the beginning and not in a good way.

Schtick without authenticity. Is that ok if it's intentional? how do you know if it's intentional?

They can absorb the style with a certain aplomb but lack artistry.

I feel I am never watching what I wish I was watching....like I have missed something somewhere else on stage that was more entertaining or interesting.

One dancer seems to be flirting with my friend who came with me. Not really taking it seriously?

Now the costumes appear to me to be a disguise for the emptiness of the work.

I am not sure the dancers are convinced of what they've been asked to do.

Are the gestures supposed to be real or accessed?

Why something if nothing is your motivation?

Why something if nothing?

Re: Program notes: I don't care, just do.

Is pathetic supposed to be endearing or clever?

Again, I understand it's supposed to be about "X" but what is the stance, opinion, thesis about X? Otherwise it seems just like practising cursive writing. R, R, R, R....all across a page of an hour.

Where is the art? Is no art the point? Then why should I care? Nothing is posited.

There is no performance. No performance can be a kind of performance, but this feels just empty. I might as well not be here.

Our brains are more sophisticated than this work seems to imply. We can absorb concept X with more complex material. We are not zombies. If we were we would already have stormed the stage in search of brains-for-dinner.

Now this show feels like an insider joke that none of us get to be in on. Like we're not cool enough to even guess how sophisticated the joke is. But I don't think it's particularly sophisticated, even though the performance is quite impressive. I'm starting to resent the "cool" factor that gets applied to the marketing of different shows, I am assuming not necessarily generated by the creators or performers. The cool factor is often empty, inauthentic. True coolness is inspired not cultivated.

One of the best moments of this show is when a raccoon walked by the open window near my seat.

I like how this is defying extremity of line but refreshes the classical form at the same time. However the dancers don't seem to grasp this and are not sending it far enough out to us. Lacking a fluid connection that the choreography seems to inherently possess. Juxtapositions of neo and pure classicism is satisfying.

Under-rehearsed, but they seem to love moving this way.

After watching this, I can't wait to go into the studio tomorrow.

Very slammy and rhythmically the same all the way through. No emotional level can come through, though the dancers and choreographer/choreography seem to want it.

This is the show that other other show wanted to be but couldn't find it's way too.

The creative process revealed without insulting its audience. Pedestrian movement is always stylized, made more than mundane. The impact of simple movement smartly put together.

Baby is not so much into the music of this work.

I smell feet that have been in sneakers too long, corn chips and lemon pledge. Weird.

One dancer's body is too soft for the choreography. It lacks impetus.

What is the root of the sensuality?

Somehow the upper arms of the dancers are inarticulate. Just the upper arms.

Unexpected how the ideas of the choreographer turned into choreography, which is so pleasurable.

The performances are pretty sincere if a little shallow. They are genuine in what they are. You can't get mad at a piece for being what it is.

A bit ridiculous. Sloppy. No relationship to music, so why is the music there? Why not silence?Spacing bad. Costuming lazy. Lacks substance behind gestures. The edge and approach towards it is faked. Movements are heavy and though fast, lethargic, somehow. Good ideas but choreography is not very useful in articulating those ideas. Why break the fourth wall just once and have nothing change in the arc of the work after broken?

The man next to me looks at his watch. No context. No set-up. Why the reactions between dancers? They don't seem connected enough to elicit responses from each other.

Voyeurism is so 1990s.

Why do the legs go up? Do we ever know? What is the relationship between dancer and audience? Nothing ingratiating about it, I am somehow not on her side. Is the substance merely strength? That might be enough.

This one makes me think how clever a designer has to be to light a black costume in a black box theatre so well.

Hallucinations. Ghosts occupy other places on stage, where dancers are not. My eyes do strange things in response. The movement is so classically modern but then planed, cut off, compelling. If you're gonna run, run like that. Leaves you wanting more but still unsure of what you've just seen.

RULES FOR CONTEMPORARY DANCE AFTER THIS SEASON:

No more babies or children in sound scores.

No costuming by American Apparel.

No program notes if you have no opinion about what you state in your program notes.

If you're repeating yourself ask yourself why. If you can't answer don't do it.

No smug dancing.

No smug choreography.

If someone bumps into you and apologizes don't be a bitch about it.

More dance in Toronto, please.

Notes after being on the Dora Dance Jury for 2008-2009 PART ONE

These are my notes, unedited, unspecified, in random order after attending a full season of shows as part of the dance division jury for the Dora Mavor Moore Performing Arts Awards in Toronto this year. I am not including names or dates, but a stream of thoughts about what I was seeing and feeling while in the audience. Written in the dark, words and phrases to remind me what I liked or didn't like, what moved me to redefine what I do: to walk the walk if my critical eye was going to talk the talk.

Thoughts on the season, on dance and dancing, on choreography and ego as they appeared on stage. Groups of thoughts

represent a bundle of ideas relating to an individual show:

I hate Saturday matinees. Idle, aspiring, rich, ancient.

A lot of clunking around with props. No one seems comfortable.

Why don't they look at each other?

The old ladies behind me smell of patchouli and cigarettes.

What does a flattened palm mean?

Why do intimate gestures get no response from the other dancers?

The dynamic is constantly controlled. No one breaks out.

I think this is supposed to mean something but then why the blank stares? Everything is diluted. Intellectual with no intellect. Philosophical with no philosophy.

You can see the interactions and interruptions coming from a mile away.

Why are the other dancers witnessing? Why not put them off stage?

There is purpose but I can't feel it. No exertion, no risk.

Mild proud angst.

It is not enough to consider it good because they are well-rehearsed.

If the content is to be that obvious, then where is the complicity? the play? What is the difference between the beginning and the end? Why does no one have volition?

I am distracted by thoughts about having a baby possibly, and by new leotards that are to arrive in the mail soon. Simultaneously shallow and existential as I wait for this show to begin.

Someone in the audience smells like vitamins.

Commitment comes and goes but when it's there it's amazing.

The choreography hasn't been looked at from all angles of the house.

It is good to see something so pure. Innocence in the fabric of the choreography. It alleviates an emotional overwhelm for the audience, helps us feel it not as a destructive force but as a nurturing one.

The weight-bearing moves feel like a cop-out or cliche, but how do we express consolation otherwise?

I can't tell if the sound is really good or if it is well-matched to the manipulation of emotions necessary. Maybe that's the same thing?

No dynamic to this show. Everything stays at exactly the same pace and exertion.

The floor has not been mopped.

What is the attitude towards these choreographic moments? There seems to be no thesis, no opinion. Smug intelligence. The choreography is not trying to communicate.

Why this music? Why these clothes as costumes? Why this movement at this position on stage?None of these things seem considered.

Why should I watch this if you are not offering me something even through absence?

Perfect example of how choreography does not have to be innovative if the intentions are crisp and clear and the staging is well thought out.

There is nothing magical about this show. Nothing is supposed to be magical. It is borderline grim. Gravity is palpable. The wobbling or lack of balance in the dancers is fascinating in this context. This is not a denial of emotion, but an intentional suppression, trusting the impact of the choreography, not questioning the vision behind it. They are not projecting into their performances what they think we should be or are seeing. Perfect execution would be boring. It reminds me of Big Sur: the frankness of the landscape, beautiful, complex but so open to everything, unconsciously. Stumbling backwards is still terrifying to watch, even a year and half after I broke my arm.

Empty vessels expressively.

I am watching the evolution of a spine. Illusions created by one lone body. Limbs sprouting.

Transformation without theatricality.

Pretentious audience already. Mr. X's wife was incredibly snotty when I accidentally bumped my coat against her chair. The house is somewhat empty physically and emotionally. People are chatting about academic shit and rushing into the house as the lights are dimming. Yawn.

If I see one more contemporary dance show costumed entirely at Amercian Apparel, I'm going to barf.

No sense of rhythm but a grand sense of space.

What does the torso have to say?

Moving your arms with urgency to intense music and no expression is not necessarily good dance. Just because it's fast also does not mean it is necessarily good.

The rhythm is the same through this whole work. Nice images, but what is your thesis? Your program notes say it's about "X" but what is your attitude towards X, what is your opinion? Show me! There is no investigation of what it all might communicate or mean or what visceral emotion it might inspire. I think this is mandatory even if it's just about physicality.

If I am supposed to appreciate the sheer physicality of it all, then please light it a bit better so that I can see.

What do all the blackouts mean?

It must feel great to dance this piece.

I'm tired of hearing dancers breathe on stage as part of choreography. (Just a personal thing).

It's somehow a bit sexist.

What experience do you want me to be having? If you don't know, we won't.

I am bored with the angsty vocabulary.

BOOOOOOO. That is about all I can muster for this one.

I apologize to my friend who came with me.

Lacked content, care, beauty, palpable concept, follow-through. Smug and lazy in form and execution. Void of content. Said nothing.

Sloppy performance.

Accuracy, clarity and imagination are not as tricky as they sound.

Hard to watch this show objectively when my desire to dance comes so strongly and I am getting towards baby, is it purposeful, good?

The muscularity of this movement is refreshing. Here is tension and release, not constant tension or constant release.

Suspensions feel choreographed and not sensed.

Pure hedonism, not sure what the idea was....

As I continue watching, my mind wanders to conditioning and training I need to do through the pregnancy...

Lacks a bit of subtlety. Everything feels a bit slammed.

Too many solos in a row can numb the potential effect of each individually.

One dancer is clearly trying to be noticed amid the rest who are casual, it actual makes me ignore her rather than pay attention.

This is what that other show wanted to be but didn't have the courage to be.

The immaturity of the students in the audience make this section "funnier" than it actually is. Fascinating!

Is this controversial? I don't feel offended or challenged; moved, yes.

I guarantee that the students here are going to rip off some of what they see when they get to choreograph later this year.

I feel like the choreographer is immature and well-developed at the same time. I am not sure what he is trying to get across. There are no moments of ugliness for me to counterpoint the moments of great beauty and great mundaneness. The dancers spend a lot of time making the audience comfortable so that when those ugly images are presented we feel they are illusions, not reality and that everyone is safe.

It feels like a treatise on theatre and acting.

The acting in this is really bad.

Choreography grew more clear and evident, integrated and woven, the longer you invested in watching it. Acting remained bad. Distracted from dancing.

I love how trussed up this audience is. Uber-cool.

You can't be mad at a work for being what it is. For not being something other than what it wants to be. You have to watch it with the eyes that it wants you to watch it with. But you can only do that when the choreographer makes it clear which eyes you should pop in your sockets.

I want to call out to her in the stillness. Are you alive?

Strange world, the social rules are slightly askew.

It makes me wonder, how does a lighting designer choose his or her moments?

The sound of shoes squeaking on the floor seems like onomatopoeia.

END OF PART 1.

Written for P just before he was born

little one if these leaves of grass

do not soothe

i hope

the captain's verses do

each night a little insight for little one

who cannot understand

nor hear everything

but feel vibrations

of the madman with wild white hair

among the blades

we hope for you good nights

sleep

dreams

movement, words, music

that carry we do not hope you to be

"artist"

see instead the living of life as an art

and fill your thoughts

with imaginative kindness

blade by blade

green by green each burnt to a crisp

of meaning for future reference

love of all loves made you

together we rise, that song you have liked

along the way

we have moved twisted swords

built worded armies

to combat this world

and its disappeal making new words

as necessary

like Germans

ear to ear

listening

and if your first word starts with an F

we will laugh

we only ask you not become a 20-something

smoking weed in a park with a can of cream soda and a cell phone

continue kicking as hard as you kick now

a lung a rib

a kidney

we will recognize you when you come

sounding your yawp

barbarically

musically

kickingly

(Lucy Rupert, June 25 2009)