I'm always heaping praise on Cedar Lake, especially for how they've embraced the Internet and reached out to dance bloggers. But this time, I think that Cedar Lake has missed an opportunity to connect the themes and explorations of this new work, choreographed by Jill Johnson, to the participatory nature of the Internet and the desire of audiences (at least some) to be more directly involved in the creative process.
I expand on this disconnect below. But first here are two videos about this upcoming installation:
"The Copier" explores basic ideas of copying, following and replication by using the traditional photocopier as a springboard for their investigations.
But what I've learned so far about this upcoming installation leaves me wanting more.
First, why am I not being asked to participate in a creative fashion in The Copier? I stand on-line in Starbucks. I forward emails. I see examples everyday of replicated patterns. Do I and others have nothing to contribute to these explorations?
Here's Evan's description of a movement-generation exercise led by Jill Johnson:
The studio was silent on Monday afternoon as four clusters of Cedar Lake dancers were weaving their arms together, paying attention to the way their wrists, elbows, and shoulders folded into or retracted out of the others. The complexity of the movement and resulting image would come from the layering of the limbs. "Don't move until you're moved", instructed Jill Johnson, the Canadian choreographer of Cedar Lake's upcoming installation The Copier. "Think of all sides of your arm, not just the inside and outside." This exercise, which later Jill told me was informally called "spider-hands", was one of several tasks that Jill gave the dancers on the first day of rehearsal.
Well, why doesn't Cedar Lake and Johnson invite the Internet audience to create their own "spider-hands" videos and upload them? It would be fun to participate in a project of creating improvisational snippets of interwoven hands and arms.
Second, Evan highlights how Cedar Lake wants to cultivate a new type of audience that is engaged in a non-traditional setting with a dance work:
Additionally, the installation is an interactive piece between the audience and the dancers. Without a defined boundary between stage and seats, the audience - collectively and individually - will become part of the composition, resulting in a slightly different performance each time. "I'm curious to see how the public will circulate. Hopefully I've designed a space where people will do that."
Clearly, Cedar Lake is not the only dance company to explore non-traditional environments for showcasing dance. In addition, I don't understand how specifically the audience will become part of the composition. Simply by standing in one location instead of another the flow of the work will change?
I want more. I want to be involved. I want to be part of the action.
For me, the ideas and themes that are being explored in conjunction with how the Internet is being used to promote this piece, simply call out for a more proactive way to engage the audience.
Last night I took a wonderful beginner ballet class with Yoshimura Hitomi at New Dance Group - I had never heard of NDG until I saw a performance there two weeks ago. It's on 8th ave. and 38th street.
Taking a regular beginner ballet class is a bit on the challenging side for me because I've taken no more than 10-15 hours of ballet. But the class was fun and Hitomi gives a lot of helpful direction. When I figure out my "regular" dance schedule for the fall, I should probably take a combination of a real newcomer beginning ballet class along with a beginner ballet class. (If you haven't taken many concert-form dance classes, "beginner" almost never means beginner; it usually means that you have at least an introductory background in the dance form).
Since I started dancing in my 40s, part of me wants to find a way to accelerate my dance training. But in the end, there clearly is no magical way to learn how to dance faster than people who start at a younger age. I just have to keep telling myself that.
It simply takes time. And given my dance interests, it requires taking lots of modern, jazz and ballet classes.
