This conversation was made possible thanks to our friends at Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

This conversation was made possible thanks to our friends at Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

This conversation was made possible thanks to our friends at Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

This conversation was made possible thanks to our friends at Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

A map of THE FIFTY PROJECT participants, linking dancers through systems of education (design by Tony Carlson)

Download the map as a PDF.

A map of THE FIFTY PROJECT participants, linking dancers through creative affiliations (design by Tony Carlson)

Download the map as a PDF.

The FIFTY Project video prototype.

Download a PDF of this writing

pictured: Lance Gries with K.J. Holmes, Jonathan Kinzel, Jimena Paz, Jodi Melnick

Is there any configuration in dance more suggestive than the duet? From its very structure, the duet suggests relationships. Then the casting opens up variations upon the theme of the choreography. (Yes a trio is complicated, but once you get past unison or canon and triangulate, it’s just a duet and a solo. A quartet in like manner is, after you get past unison or canon, four solos; or a solo and a trio; or two duets. With partners assigned, or deliciously slipping from one to another.) This project has an added complication: When you see two duets side by side–double duets–and Lance Gries is in both of them, is he two Lances, or the same Lance? Watching them, you will waver on this point….

Here are some small number of the many possible structures of duets, all of which define and describe relationships: mirroring; lifting, supporting/being lifted, supported; dancing the same thing in parallel; dancing different things in parallel; lead/follow; and so forth.

This doesn’t begin to take into account initiation; attack; pursuit and evasion; varying speeds; direction; and the significant matter of facings. Do they look into each other’s eyes? Does one person look up? Down? Away? Do both look away? And then of course the roles can be reversed. Or just change.

Let us take just one example. Parallelism. A couple dancing side by side facing the same way doing the same thing (however simple or complex) suggest oneness of mind. They might be twins. They might be lovers. They might be any number of things. But they are in some kind of essential agreement.

(Gender? Yes there is gender, and it introduces other possibilities, not so much romantic and amorous–those exist the same way whether you have two women, two men, or one of each. But with same sex couples you get other possible relationships== the sisters, the brothers; the father and son, the aunt and niece.  Still, is gender any more important than any other physical contrast or similarity? Slight, muscular. Tall, short. Well maybe a bit more important at that, depending on the doer, and the maker. But really what is important isn’t so much gender as that gender’s intention in a given person. As they say on Facebook, it’s complicated. And in the theater and theatrical performance, often disguised or transformed by acting. But this is improvisation, and people are being themselves, at least as much as they ever are when in a room with a camera and another dancer.)

Then there is the entire issue of interpenetration of form–that interplay of line and volume– and what that can signify, suggest. In a duet, negative space is not only a place–as is, for instance, the space formed by a plié–it is personal territory.

pictured: Lance Gries with Diane Madden, Jimena Paz, Jonathan Kinzel, Vicki Shick

Let us say all these things and more are settled, fixed, and a choreographer makes a duet. Then come the vagaries of casting: physical harmony or contrast; temperament.

Take all of these permutations and combinations and you begin to see the simple complexities of Lance Gries’s 50 for 50 project. He’s been engaged in a long form fusion of speed dating and slow dancing.

Here’s how it goes. Invite 50 people to improvise in duet form. You are always one partner. You may vary according to your mood, your sense of well being, and your level of comfort with your partner. But you are always you. (Or in this case, Lance is always Lance.) But the partners are all over the place, within the wide perimeter you set. Some are men, some are women, some are your age, some are older, some are younger. Some have danced with you before. (A lot of them have danced with each other before, or have danced in the same company at different times, never mind whatever else lies in their back stories.) Some are familiar with improvisation, somatic techniques, certain qualities of fall and recovery, release, suggestion. Others are not. Some are much more familiar with a certain aggressive exchange than you are; others are reticent to the point of self-effacement. Then there is their chemistry with you. Hot, warm, cool, maybe unexpectedly icy at moments?

Each one of these meetings is different. There is no knowledge passed on from one partner to the next; they don’t see each other. Each duet is self contained, a little universe, its own story. You are always you; but maybe you are not the same you. You might, it turns out, be 50 different yous.

What do these duets tell us, seen side by side? If you put two films side by side do you get a quartet? Let’s say you are a mirror. (You, Lance, are a mirror.) Each of these dancers approaches you, finds himself or herself in your reflection. What do they see? Feel? And what about you? How are you different? And how does that tell us, and what does that tell us, about your partners? Isn’t the way you change a portrait of what they are?

pictured: Lance Gries with Diane Madden, Juliette Mapp, Jimena Paz

We are going to have questions, Lance, and so are they. Which was your favorite? Who was the most difficult? Which was the most romantic? The hottest? The sweetest? The one you wish could have gone on forever? Who did you miss while dancing with X? Who did you remember while dancing with Y? Whose eyes made you look away? Whose eyes were kind? Who offered comfort? Challenge? Who made you feel brave? Who made you feel gallant? Who made you take risks? Who was as comfortable as an old soft shoe? Who surprised you the most? Which one did you hope would never end?

And now: When you step back and look at the film, does any of that matter? Does pleasure in the doing translate into pleasure in the seeing? Or is there some perversely inverse ration? If you can forget what it felt like, what do you see?

Now we will see these. Will we feel what you felt when we see these? Or what your partner felt? Or will we be negotiating the terrain that lies between you, that you enhance or obliterate through some alchemy?  Who are you two, when you are together?

The better we know you to begin with—and many of us will know many of you at the outset, then as you move out into the world with these films, less so–the more particular will be our pleasure. The less we know you, the more the movement will tell the story. Improvisation as formalism. No story, no music, no characters, and not even movement given. Just the structure created in the movement, just this once, captured on film without any value judgments. Just the cameras, no intervening human eye.

Until now. Here we are. Mirror, mirror. Mirror.

–Nancy Dalva

Nancy Dalva lives in New York City. Her website is www.nancydalva.com.

Download a PDF of this writing

pictured: Lance Gries with Diane Madden, Juliette Mapp, Jimena Paz, John Jasperse

As my collaborators and I organize sixty hours of video and archival material into a form for public consideration, I hope that writing this will remind me of and ground me in my initial motives for creating this format, re-balancing my current desire and preoccupation to create a cohesive meaningful, even impressive, art work with my earlier intentions.

This project arose from a basic desire to dance with people–intimately–to rekindle, rediscover or discover for the first time deep personal dancing connections with a group of artists who have been formative to my identity as a dancer.

This project was designed to be a loving birthday gift to myself, a bouquet of moving experiences shared with cherished friends, a reminder of where I want my art making to originate from, a form which first valued and took as content the energetic exchange between people dancing.

Since July 2012, I have so far danced with, celebrated with and videoed forty-five sessions with wonderful colleagues.

Meeting each of these dancers in our native language has been a precious experience, an affirmation of the pure joy and importance of sharing our selves as movers and of the deep wisdom and humanity in what we practice as dance artists.

Producing a video installation is inspiring in its own way: seeing these physical memories adhere to time and space in otherwise impossible and unimaginable combinations.  But it is also technologically demanding, exhausting.  As my eyes become portals to a pixilated reality, I yearn for my analog soul, my sweaty dancing body against another.

I don’t recall the exact moment I conceived of dancing with fifty people.  I do remember passing the idea by some friends and how immediately the proposition excited them.  I also remember the anxiety that arose when I tried to imagine a list of who to invite.

Who are those people who’ve been present and formative in my dancing life?  Would these friends and icons of my world accept this invitation?  And what about all of those people I could not include now?

pictured: Lance Gries with Vicki Shick, Diane Madden, Eva Karzag, Randy Warshaw

It was safe to begin at the beginning, inviting life long friends I have known and danced with since 1982 as students at SUNY Purchase, followed by a group of deeply influential colleagues and mentors with whom I grew up aesthetically in Trisha Brown’s life changing vision and company.

It was a relief when the first acceptance emails came in.  This part of the written archive, responses expressing enthusiasm to share a birthday dance remains very touching.  I was reminded of how much I desired to be asked to dance, how much we all do; and so with that in mind, I went on an inviting spree.  (To date, there are fifty-six accepted invitees and I don’t want to stop.)

The next wave included colleagues whom I had known and respected since my arrival to New York in 1985. To me they represented the pillars of New York’s downtown dance community; embodying a history that I was just beginning to embrace as my path.  Over the years, some became dancing partners; but for most, a warm acquaintance developed, but not necessarily a dancing history.

The vagabond dancers’ life of touring and teaching followed and in 1997 I began to meet another community through my involvement with Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s school, P.A.R.T.S. and her company, Rosas in Brussels.  Many teacher/student relationships from there have grown into rich dancing relationships and are among the invitees.

With the list nearing fifty, finally there were invitations to people I only admired from afar, but whose work, individuality and integrity excited me; and so with a healthy dose of “why not”, I just asked.  Amongst those I have danced with to date, it is by far the norm that this was our first dance together in many many years; for about twenty invitees, it was the first.

In an early flash of idealism to preserve the purity of these meetings, I considered not recording these dances.  My informal board agreed that this was insane, artistic suicide; finally, each session has been recorded by two stationary unmanned cameras.

And so, day after day through one of the hottest summers in New York history, I met people in the studio.

Besides a simple suggestion as a starting point, there were no specific instructions or expectations for what could happen over the fifty minutes.  The natural rhythm of coming together, of exploration, developing trust, discovering mutual paths of movement and thought, allowing intentionality to deepen and shape longer arcs of action, to then disperse and recollect, or fall apart – all variations of sharing time and space were welcomed.  The occasion, the time frame, two camera “eyes” and the unknown provided just the right amount of tension to the environment and each time I loved the dancing that transpired.

pictured: Lance Gries with K.J. Holmes, David Thomson, Stanford Makishi, Eleanor Bauer

Nine months later, I now have a collection of forty-five neat packages, of two compact tapes rubber banded together, labeled with the name of a newly embraced dance mate and lovingly filed in a special box.  With this growing archive, I possess material evidence, a “real” birthday gift and tangible proof of my interconnectedness, a lasting artifact and record for the history books. As I write this, I feel a bit “Gollumesque” about this treasure. The loving sentiments of these private dances fading as deadlines approach and a necessary ambition takes over to fuel the long work of editing, of making something substantial and conspicuous for a public.

I want to show how connected we are through our dance practice and how my circle is only a small part of this, located alongside and inside other people’s trajectories, other personal maps extending the boundaries of my own.

These dances have forever shaped the narrative of my now “post fifty” dancing life.

–Lance Gries

Lance Gries is an independent dancer, teacher and choreographer. Besides continuing to expand on “The FIFTY Project”, he is also working on a trio with Juliette Mapp and Jimena Paz for the NYLA Studio Series in May and Danspace Project Winter 2014.

AUNTS/TAMTAMTAM/BERLIN

Saturday, November 5th, 2011

Flutgraben Gallery

Berlin, Germany

AUNTS traveled to Berlin to team up with TAMTAMTAM to put together a one night performance event to bring together Berlin based and American artists.  The event was created in the interest of cultural exchange, to test the AUNTS model for performance and viewing with artists outside of New York City and to work with other artists who experiment with the production and curation of performance events.

Artists who showed their work included:

Zinzi Buchanan

Christine Elmo (in video form)

Eric Green

Liz Santoro

Agata Siniarska

Jessica Taylor

Roxana Valdez Gonzalez

Elizabeth Ward

Katie Wells

With music from DJs Swadansi and Diamant

Special thanks to Isabel Lewis, Dmitry Paranyushkin and Johannes Wengel of TAMTAMTAM.

 A shorts program curated by Movement Research 2010 Artists-in-Residence Anna Azrieli, Laurie Berg, Yve Laris Cohen and Chase Granoff, in collaboration with Dance Films Association Director Deirdre Towers, and overseen by MR Program and Event Manager Rebecca Brooks. This event was a part of DFA’s 39th Annual Dance on Camera Festival. This partnership between Movement Research and Dance Films Association, now in its third year, was originally initiated by Mathew Heggem as part of DFA’s Annual Dance on Camera Festival. www.dancefilms.org

Thumbnail photo: Still from Yak Films’ RIP Oscar Grant

– PART 1 –

The evening’s viewing and discussion radiated out from an initial grouping of three short films selected from submissions to Dance Film Association’s 2011 Dance On Camera Festival. Each film centers around movement in relationship to landscapes, ranging from the natural world to the urban environment. The films posit the moving body as an active agent that designs its surroundings, while still being subject to the sublime. Watch them here!

30 CECIL STREET

Dan Canham/Will Hanke, UK, 2010, 7:20m

Shot in the dilapidated premises of the Theatre Royal in the Limerick Athenaeum building, Ireland. With a history that stretches back over 150 years, the Royal Theatre has been closed to the public for the last 13 years. Engaging with the atmosphere and past of this near-derelict building and using the soundtrack made up of four sounds and interviews with people associated with the Athenaeum, this short explores the state of a building once the hub of cultural activity.

DUNE DANCE

Zena Bibler, USA, 2010, 2:08m

Dune(s) dance on a blustery day in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Choreographed, danced, and filmed on the spot in May 2010.

OANNES

Ivo Serra, USA, 2007, 6m
 

Oannes represents The GOD of knowledge to the Babylonian (Ea) and to the Greeks, cultures, and he was the last mythological figure to be connected with the lost city Atlantis. The artist sought to make this mythological being appear.

– PART 2 –

The second part of the evening featured films and videos selected by the curators, responding to issues brought up by themes in the original films, as well as this event’s curatorial process. Watch them here:

Anna Azrieli’s picks:

SMALL DANCE (performer Steve Paxton)
Olive Bieringa, USA, 2007, 1:30m

SMALL DANCE (performer Lisa Nelson)
Olive Bieringa, USA, 2007, 1:30m

Laurie Berg’s pick:

SUB PLEXUS
Sarah White-Ayon, USA, 2009, 6m

Chase Granoff’s picks:

MY HOME IS MY SHOES
Deborah Anzalone/Century Films, USA, 2009, 3:40m

WILL
unknown, USA, 1995, 6m

 

Yve Laris Cohen’s pick:

RIP Oscar Grant
Yak Films (Yoram Savion and Kash Gaines), USA, 2010, 7:30m

 

 

– PART 3 –

Samuael Topiary moderated a discussion that engaged all of the films and discourses surrounding this event:

Download and listen to a podcast of the discussion here!

Or get more information on this Movement Research podcast here

Movement Research’s Studies Project series is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronting and instigated by the dance and performance community. Questions? email: rebeccabrooks@movementresearch.org

What Sustains You? asks these and other artists to talk about their own sustainability as artists and persons, and the ways they are acting on the world to transform those structures and relationships. This is a departing point and the questions continue to be found as the conversations accumulate. We would love to hear if you want to participate or have a suggestion for people you would like to see interviewed.