Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner (Kathleen Keogh and Rikki Rothenberg) in conversation with Lydia Bell

Lydia: Your artists’ statement says that you are “conducting a kinesthetic experiment in nonsense.” What does nonsense mean to you?

Kathleen: There is a large element of just being playful with each other in our improv and open in our improvisations in our rehearsals. Doing things like authentic movement. [Many] improv forms and dance practices are mindfulness practices. Nonsense is like mindfulness to expressing everything.

Rikki: When we wrote that our work looked different and it felt different. It was really… kooky.

Kathleen: And, more playful. The playfulness is still there but I think from working with each other for so long, [there’s] something that we can kind of get underneath.

Rikki: To a deeper place.

Lydia: Is it a different way of working? Is it a different subject matter? Where does the depth happen?

Rikki: Just like any relationship, having gone through things as friends and as collaborators. And trusting each other to go into lots of weird shit.

Kathleen: But also we were kind of tired of how goofy and kooky things felt. Like, “Look at us! We’re just goofing around on stage!” I think that it drew people in and it was fun for us, but we wanted to take ourselves more seriously and take them [the audience] more seriously.

Lydia: When I saw the word nonsense I got excited because I had been reading about Dada, and that movement aligned nonsense with political action.

Kathleen: I don’t think we spend as much time thinking about what kind of statement or narrative our work is making. But, this kind of work is so important to me and I have to believe that it’s important to the world

I work with psychotic people at my job and I have been interested over the years in this school in town called the Process Work Institute. Some of the theories that have struck me are the importance of expressing oneself, which then can help alleviate the experience of a psychotic person. I don’t know about that directly, but…what we express on stage is a way of just giving people options. Guess what, you can make this face, and this sound, and do this movement too.

Lydia: I’ve read that you perform a lot in bars. Can you talk about that?

Rikki: We used to more. I feel like we are more aligned with bands than dance groups. Although, we have been on same bills with for years now with MGM Grand. That feels like one group that we can travel with. But mostly we play where bands are.

Kathleen: We’ve also done a barn. We’ve done a park, the Cathedral Park. There’s also dance that is happening at Valentine’s. Valentine’s was the first and only bar that we performed in for quite a while. It was a place where we felt really happy and comfortable in. And, then we’ve done some stuff at Holocene, a club-type bar. And at galleries.

Rikki: Basically, in places where we don’t have to behave.

Kathleen: [laughs] That’s true.

Lydia: How did you end up in a band-type model?

Kathleen: I think there’s less pressure on us. It’s a nice way to present [work]. It doesn’t have to be this huge structure of creating a show for a weekend and all the advertising, all the press releases and stuff.

Lydia: Are your pieces song length?

Kathleen: They aren’t songs. It’s more like… constantly creating new material but bringing part of that piece into the next one. A constant work-in-progress showing. Building upon and upon and upon.

Rikki: We don’t have our own studio. We don’t have the means to be in rehearsal four days a week. But we are lucky because there are places in Portland that are very affordable. Performance Works Northwest [is one of them], so we do rehearse there. We also just don’t have that same [model], like certain friends of ours who create dance works are like, “Well, I am just going to have this big showing,” and we’ve never worked like that.

Kathleen: I think that the TBA [Time-Based Art Festival] show [was when] we were creating work that way [with a “big showing” in mind]. We had to shift into that model of presenting finished pieces. TBA really provided us the challenge and the means to do that.

Lydia: I have heard Ben Pryor, who runs the American Realness Festival, speak about a new aesthetic that is coming out of America right now. One of the things he talks about is the way economic realities inform an aesthetic. I am always curious about how the labor or how the production of something informs what it is.

Kathleen: When we feel like we can’t afford studio time we also have rehearsed in nontraditional spaces. We’ve done a lot of park rehearsals, which then ends up completely informing the choreography.

Lydia: Can you talk about your recent residency [at Pieter in Los Angeles]?

Kathleen: It was great! We want to go back [laughs].

Rikki: It really was amazing. Especially because a lot of what we do is authentic movement, and to be able to just not feel like, “Oh God, we have to make choreography,” which we do have to do too. But, we also can relax and find that place that’s awesome to be in.

Lydia: What is that impulse? I mean, it sounds like a great life doing authentic movement every day and never really sharing it. What, for each of you, is the impulse to perform?

Kathleen: Puzzle making in one way. How do we take this completely wide open, amorphous thing that we’ve been doing and make some form out of it. And, enjoying having an audience. When I see performances that really hit me, I love being that audience member.

Lydia: Do you think about your ideal audience member? Or, who you’re making work for?

Kathleen: I don’t know. People who get our jokes [laughs].

Rikki: Not my grandma.

Kathleen: Rikki is, in the current choreography, bottomless for a lot of the time and then writing “Hi Mom” on her butt. So, that’s funny in terms of touching on, “I don’t really want my mom to see this.”

Lydia: Will you invite your mom?

Rikki: My mom’s seen video and actually I showed my mom video of our TBA performance. And, I was really, really nervous. I kept on laughing at certain points because I find what we do really funny. She’s like, “Why are you laughing?” And, I was like, “It’s funny!” But, then she ended up saying she thought it was really beautiful and she was surprised it was so choreographed.

…What we perform on stage is really different from the ways I present myself in the world. And, I really like it for that. It’s a comfortable place to explore those places.

Lydia: I want to segue into talking about the Portland community a little bit. Since I come here twice a year but I don’t live here, twice a year I Google “Experimental Dance in Portland,” and try to see what’s going on but it seems that’s really not the way to do it. My impression is it’s a word-of-mouth community. Where are the hubs?

Kathleen: I think that dance in Portland and experimental dance in Portland has been increasing. There have been a lot more people moving to town and doing their own things, whether it’s creating their own work or creating platforms for other people to perform work. But in terms of how to find out about it, it would be hard just coming into town. It’s not always represented well in the papers. I’ve stopped even sending press releases to the papers anymore, maybe because I am comfortable enough with word-of-mouth because I get enough people [in my audience] that way.

You can go on Linda Austin’s site and find out what’s happening at Performance Works NorthWest, so that’s a hub. Or Conduit. The papers write about music stuff all the time and even write about the underground stuff, house shows. Portland is just so much more focused on music and bands. And, maybe that’s why we also have aligned ourself with bands at times. Because this is what is happening in Portland and you may as well capitalize on it.

Rikki: We also just have a lot of musician friends.

Lydia: Who are the other artists working in town that you hang out with or admire?

Rikki: Oregon Painting Society.

Kathleen: They do visual art and installations, sculptural art and performance installation stuff. They’re great. And, for years, Linda Austin. For over a decade her space [Performance Works NorthWest] has been a place where people could find each other and experiment with their stuff. It was where I met a lot of collaborators and friends.

Lydia: Can you talk about your role as curating or creating other situations for other people to perform in?

Kathleen: A lot of it has been at Valentine’s. A lot of things we’ve performed…we’ve curated stuff on a farm. Our friends used to live on this sheep farm so we curated a few nights of performance there. That was a mix of dance and music.

Lydia: Is it part of your artistic practice to curate?

Rikki: I feel like we just want to see these people [laughs]. If we are going to be performing, we might as well see some of our favorite people performing.

Kathleen: I have been co-curating a dance class series with dancers around town. This is our third year this year. I did a festival for a couple of years with music and dance and then I realized I didn’t have the energy to do it again [laughs].

Lydia: What are the names of the classes? Where do they happen?

Kathleen: The name of the class is Heavy Rotation. The idea is a rotating roster of teachers. Also, every year it’s been at a different studio. This year it was at Conduit.

Lydia: I love that idea. And, what’s the festival?

Kathleen: The festival was called Food and Shelter Festival.

Lydia: Why?

Kathleen: It was a realization of my ideas about sustenance and survival. Realizing that art was crucial to me. Or, that I couldn’t let go of it. That I needed it for survival; and, healthiness and happiness. I think working in homeless services for so long too, of seeing the basic needs that we’re trying to provide for people and therefore thinking, “Oh! All I need are these basic needs for happiness,” and you realize, that is not right. Actually, people need a lot more and I need a lot more that that, and [learning to] accept that rather than looking at my pursuits in art and dance being just luxurious. Or, just…

Rikki: Extracurricular?

Kathleen: Yeah. It’s not just that. It’s crucial.