NOTES ON THE CREATION OF SIXTY


Journal Entry #3: February 2008

As I continued to sort through the responses to my request for ideas on which to base a dance, I was led to Salamone Rossi, a prolific Italian composer, by Laurie Uprichard and Phil Sandstrom. They suggested I make a dance to Jewish music from the 1600s. Rossi's music is gorgeous and, like other early music, has a tricky rhythmic structure that isn't apparent until you try counting it or moving to it. We started with the movement of bending and bowing. What's in a bow? What are you saying when you bow to another person? Four dancers face each other in a square to begin. I imagine this growing into a set of three or four squares, with twelve or sixteen dancers performing this section.

Scott Johnson, who composed the score for Resist/Surrender, sent me a detailed description of a solo he envisioned for me. He said it came to him after seeing a Meredith Monk performance, which made him think about the span of a dancer's life. He imagined me seated with my upper body reclining and only my four limbs moving. I explored this with the dancers and it evolved into an idea we call Limb Quartets that will appear in the piece three times. The first time it appears, all the dancers are seated on chairs facing the audience. They set each other's limbs moving in a complicated version of the kids' game of patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time. It is gripping to watch each dancer struggle to keep his or her four limbs moving completely differently. It takes enormous concentration. Inevitably each one starts to laugh, then finds the focus again. The dancers look so vulnerable. This section will return in a slightly different way as a duet and as a solo. Elise said she sees it as a comment on choreography which, though often collaborative, is ultimately not democratic.

Last summer when we were working in upstate New York I showed the dancers a videotape I had recently found o f Plain Crossing, a piece I made in 1977. It was danced by four women, including me, at Trisha Brown's loft on Broadway. The next year we did at Washington Square Church (which has been turned into condos). Then we did a version of it in the Sculpture Garden of MOMA. As I watched the video, my muscles remembered how certain movements felt. The dancers loved it and said they wanted it to be the idea they contributed to Sixty. They've learned a section from the video. So here I am, thirty years later, and I'm getting to clean up a piece I made as a much younger person. How often do we wish for that chance in other aspects of our lives! I like watching six foot tall Luke do my part (I've always wished I was a few inches taller).

I'm about to start working on a duet for Paul and Eun Jung. I look forward to telling you more about it soon.


Journal Entry #2: January, 2008

Sixty is growing. We've now performed The Long Haul and Heatwave several times. At our last showing at the 92nd Street Y on Nov 30, Vicky Shick and I performed a revised version of Reading Aloud, a trio for the two of us and a book. Audience feedback from these showings has been very helpful. After showing Reading Aloud for the first time in October, I knew it needed work. After showing a revised version at the Y, I felt I was on the right track.

This section is based on a wonderful story I received from Carol Mullins about her 20th birthday. She talked her mother into letting her have the family car and drove with her best friend from Virginia, where they lived, to North Carolina. They went to Thomas Wolfe's grave, sat beside it and read aloud to each other from Look Homeward Angel. I found it such a touching and evocative image. I love the youthful fervor that runs through that book, as well as through Carol's story. It's a pleasure for me to do this section with Vicky, a friend of many years. Though we don't actually read aloud from the book, in this little dance, the book connects us.

We also showed Sixty Beginnings for the first time. Vicky and Deborah Glaser, another old dance friend, gave me a great challenge: make a dance with 60 beginnings. There are so many ways to think about this. What is a beginning anyway? And when does a beginning end? We experimented with lots of ideas in the studio and wound up with a dance of at least 60 beginnings.

I've had the pleasure of working with playwright/composer Ellen Maddow of Talking Band fame several times. For Sixty, Ellen gave me one of the songs on her Betty and the Blenders album that she did in the eighties. In Red Bikini, she sings a list of things she's thinking - things she wants, wonders about, fears. As I listened to it I thought, oh - that's the inside of Ellen's head. Funny, it sounds just like mine! This section is a rush of movement for all five dancers and me. Working on it reminded me why, in recent years, I've danced less in my own work. It's so hard to be in it, see it, and shape it. It's hard for me to believe that when I first started making dances, I was always in everything. From this vantage point, I don't know how I did that.

A few ideas are waiting in the wings - a dance based on Jewish music from the 1600s, a dream about the Jerusalem sky, and a complex anagram that evolves into a short story. The structure of the anagram interests me. How can we use it to make a dance? I'm also working on a suggestion to make a set of "limb quartets," which turns out to be a quartet of quartets: four dancers onstage, each dancer performing a solo "quartet" with their four limbs.

We'll be doing another showing at the Y on Feb 29. I hope you can join us!


Journal Entry #1: November, 2007

I feel like I'm sitting at the top of a mountain with a 360 degree view that lets me see my life from every angle - back, forward and around. I have found that when you travel a road, especially by foot or bike, the same road looks very different when you turn around and come back. I imagine being on that mountaintop or walking on that road with people who have been important in my life - remembering the past, savoring the present, and dreaming the future. We'll all remember, see and dream different things, but also the same things in different ways.

These ideas inspired me to send out sixty letters to friends, family, and colleagues asking for an idea for a dance. I will use fifteen or twenty of these ideas to create three- to four-minute sections of a sixty-minute dance. More than one idea might be overlaid in one section. I have fantastic dancers working with me - Elise Knudson, Eun Jung Gonzalez, Paul Singh, Luke Gutgsell and Gabriel Forestieri. There will be some guest performers too.

We'll continue building this piece over the winter and spring and will present the finished work next fall. During the year we'll show sections of the piece as works-in-progress at several different venues (see schedule of upcoming events). I'll also keep this page of our website current with news, pictures and video clips of the piece as it develops. Hope you can join us and watch it grow.

There are photos here from a showing on Oct 2 at The Flea Theater. We showed four sections. The first, The Long Haul, is based on a phrase in a letter sent to me by a former dancer. Heatwave is based on the popular sixties hit that has always been a favorite of mine. My children sent me the CD along with the printed lyrics. I was struck by the over-the-top drama of teen romance and realized that in the realm of romance, we never stop being teens. Reading Aloud, a trio for me, Vicky Shick, and a book, is based on a story sent by a friend. She and her best friend spent her 20th birthday sitting at the grave of Thomas Wolfe reading aloud from Look Homeward Angel. Then there's Still, a solo for me that combines movement from the three previous sections.

We're currently working on two new sections: an instruction I received to make a dance with sixty beginnings, and a big, dense section with Ellen Maddow's touching, funny song, Red Bikini. I hope to have both of these ready for our showing at the 92nd St Y on Nov 30. Check back for more Sixty news soon.