Critical Correspondence

Biba Bell, Jmy Leary, and Piage Martin of Modern Garage Movement (aka MGM Grand) in conversation with Nicole Daunic

Biba Bell, Jmy Leary, and Piage Martin of MGM Grand talk with Nicole Daunic about their garage band touring model and the new work that they will premiere at The Kitchen April 20-22, 2011.

Interview date: 4.8.11

Download this conversation as pdf

Download this conversation as a podcast

A forward by Nicole Daunic:

I’ve had a bit of a crush on MGM from the moment Jmy Leary, donning false eyelashes and a welcoming smile, approached me in the Pace Wildenstein Gallery during a performance of New Gree and asked me to join hands with the rest of the audience swaying side-to-side in an eyes-closed circle dance.  I admire their flexibility, find hope in their recklessness, and it was a pleasure to have this opportunity to discuss another point of intrigue for me: their approach methodologically, conceptually, and energetically to creating highly structured dances that are at the same time responsive, sensitive, breathing, open-systems capable of affecting and being affected by the various spaces and audiences encountered on tour.  I hoped somehow in our discussion I could come to a better understanding of the distinct feeling I get when watching MGM perform, the feeling that I am perhaps not seeing New Gree, for example, but a New Gree, or New Grees, or New Gree-ness; the feeling of a piece developing, unraveling, and regenerating along a shifting, sweaty, and exploited continuum—but they tended to veer off topic and follow tangents.  I admire that too.

Nicole: I’m here with Biba Bell, Jmy Leary, and Piage Martin of Modern Garage Movement, aka MGM Grand. I pulled a quote from the MGM website that raises some interesting questions. It’s from a dance called: THIS DANCE IS CALLED GREE. IT IS FROM BEDSTUY.

“Thirteen more days of tour, fifteen more days of shows, three more locations. We have been witness and more to an am/pm revelry, ended the dance in the Pacific Ocean, gotten the entire audience to do interpretive movement, set an old movie theater on fire, slept on the beach, gotten some groupies, kinda feel like a rock band, marvel at rivaling shades of blue ocean and sky, and the dance has now grown just past puberty.”

This textured, episodic, and playful diary entry raises a couple questions we could begin to discuss about your work. Could you describe the performance model of MGM? It seems that this is an important element to any discussion about how you go about making work, specifically in terms of this garage band aesthetic and your touring apparatus and performing in alternative spaces. How did this idea arise and why and what do you find generative about it?

Biba: The rock band was a model that we used. It offered the ability to perform a dance many times—to have multiple gigs in a day in different places, to do many different iterations of the same material. Also, (the rock band model) creates its own lifespan, and that’s the tour. All of these things happen, and they become part of the dance. Something that really came out of that tour was the layering process of experience in this constant act of performing. The piece was accumulating layers and also eroding them away. How many layers can it accumulate before it starts to degenerate again?

Jmy: Performing the dance is the only thing that you’re doing when you’re on tour, so you really get into a zone. None of us have a home that we’re going to every night, or other people (i.e. partners, friends) that we’re really dealing with. We have this set of experiences as a trio. You’re not an individual anymore, you’re really part of this group. That isn’t something that can happen to this extreme when you’re performing in New York. I guess you might be touring with other people, where you go to your hotel rooms. When we’ve been on tour thus far, it hasn’t been luxurious, it’s been a lot of meals of chips and salsa and really this relentless quality to our lives that shows up inside of the work. All of these experiences come into the performing of the piece.

Biba: They start to influence the material inside of the piece.

Nicole: In terms of a memory of the other spaces that you’ve performed in also being part of the space that you’re presently performing in?

Biba: That definitely happens. It can be choices that we’ve made, because there is space for improvisation and play inside of the choreography and also inside of the touring. We plot the whole thing out ahead of time, but inside of it we’re constantly shifting and restructuring and deciding, “Oh, let’s take an extra day here” or “Let’s not spend the night at this person’s house and go over there” or “Let’s add a show here, this person said they had a great place for us to do the dance.” Things like that. But also in terms of how we’re going into each space. There are specific choices that are made immediately to set it up, and we talk through it, which is our rehearsal process in a way. Sometimes there’s time for that and sometimes there really isn’t, and we do (make choices) inside of the performance. Not that we’re making that so apparent, but there is a way in which negotiations happen while we’re performing. I think that that corresponds specifically to memories of previous performances in previous spaces. It puts multiple pockets of information inside of the dance that we can then access and make decisions against. I know that there are things that will happen, and I have a sense of how that worked in one space, and then I’ll do a counterpoint to that a week later. And somehow there’s a relationship that happens between those performances. It does create a lot more internal dialoguing.

Jmy: And external (dialoguing), because we are constantly talking about the dance, the performance, and our experience with everything. Being on tour, the dance gets defined in a way that I don’t have with other dance experiences. It’s also defined by these many different audiences that we have. Because the audiences are more intimate, we usually end up talking to them before and after the show in length. They’re also audiences that don’t see a lot of dance necessarily. They have a lot of questions, and because we’re on tour, we don’t really have anywhere to go, and we’re just going to talk to them. There’s a lot more external feedback as you go through the whole process of the tour that helps to define (the dance) later. By the end, you have a much different idea of what this thing is that you’ve been doing than at the beginning, because you’ve had so many different opinions and so many different internal experiences. You have your own set of opinions in relation to the external opinions that keep on forming and reforming.

Biba: It becomes a conversation. And I think it also goes back to the sense that I was mentioning before that we don’t necessarily rehearse dances so much, or we haven’t in the past. Previously, as immediately as we can, we take (the dance) and start performing it. The dance structure informs itself in relationship to the audience, always. I don’t necessarily mean in terms of “audience participation.” There is this sense, (related to) the little I know about Authentic Movement, that (the dance is) always forming in relationship to a witness, in that there’s an audience. Learning about the dance isn’t about seeing it from the mirror or the video or from having another dancer doing it and looking at from the outside. Seeing it is seeing the audience seeing it.

Piage: The notion of (the dance) being made and being ready and being finished is completely different than it would be in another setting. It’s not to a degree where the structure is complete, so that it can be done, it can be performed. It stays open.

Biba: We did New Gree at PaceWildenstein (on 22nd St) after almost a year… we had taken (the piece) on tour, done about fifty performances of it, and we basically didn’t do it for nine months and then we came back and did a show at Pace Wildenstein Gallery. We had one rehearsal, we knew it so well. And when we did that performance, I felt, “now I know what it feels like to have one of our pieces be finished.”

Piage: Is that the show where the car drove up in the driveway? Me and Rachel were stuck outside, banging on the window. A lot of the audience, including me and Rachel who were outside right next to the car thought “Wow, look what they designed.” (The gallery had) this plate glass window, and this car drove up, saw that there was a performance, and specifically was being an asshole and just decided to drive, shine its headlights into the space with all the people. It was blaring music. We assumed it was designed, and then it finally took off. It was perfect.

Nicole: How did you guys respond to that uncontrollable moment?

Jmy: We like that stuff. When we made TONIGHT, we tried to figure out how to bring in elements of the unexpected that we were used to inside of a piece that was going to be inside of a theater. That was when we started to have the unexpected happen much more inside of the piece than outside of the piece. It really was about the relationship between the three of us and the unexpected that we could have happen and to create a structure where that was possible.

Nicole: How would you do that in TONIGHT?

Jmy: TONIGHT was pretty simplistic in the score. You could learn it in an hour. But the performance of it is complicated in (terms of) who and what is leading something. It’s supposed to be viewed from above and it has an underwater feeling to it. The backdrop is the cardboard floor with the grid, so it’s sort of like Tron.

Biba: Our busted-up version of Tron.

Jmy: We were playing with perspective, because (the audience) was above us. We were exploiting our bodies with our flexibility. The structure wasn’t set as to who would be cuing things, except for a few places. So in terms of the movement, we really had to pay attention to each other and tap into the fourth mind, this other energy flow that was happening. It was scored. How else would you think that we brought in those other elements?

Biba: TONIGHT is a dance that Felicia Ballos and Jmy and I did together. Jmy at one point was in LA, and Felicia and I did a performance of it at The Kitchen, because Tony Conrad was doing a show and he invited us to open. He had seen a video of this piece.

Jmy: I think he just loved the cardboard floor.

Biba: Jmy wasn’t around, so we asked Piage, and this was the first time we worked with Piage. Felica and I taught (the dance) to Piage, and there were a number of questions that came up. (The answers were) kind of like “The facings always change.” It didn’t matter.

Jmy: Also the audience, too, orienting towards where people might be or not be.

Biba: And also timing. We would always be shifting between each other in terms of where we were in space and in time. Those kinds of gradations started to create different effects inside of the dance. It also allowed the piece to shift. We had initially done it at the new Dixon Place, and so we had everyone on the balcony looking down. That was initially where we had conceived of making the performance. But since then we did it a couple of other places, and we would bring the floor with us. The floor contains the dance. So even if it isn’t the situation of being contained in a theater, we’re creating this space of containment, and also of padding and creating a consistent floor. We actually did do (the dance) on this gravel driveway in Callicoon outside of the gallery. And we did it at Jack Hanley Gallery on a concrete floor, at a place in Brooklyn on a concrete floor, and then at The Kitchen. The floor uniformity, in a sense, was our initial attempt at (defining) the content of the theater. In terms of the choreographic structure for it.

Jmy: We had the concept of the piece first because we were making something for Dixon Place, and it was indoors, we were going to make a piece that was only floor work, because that was something that we rarely got to do when we were on tour, with so many different surfaces. We thought what kind of floor would be ideal for this dance that we were making that was only on the floor and to consider the visual aspect of that. We considered linoleum. We thought about floors that other people use, like breakdancers or tap dancers. And also not liking marley and the lines in the marley.

Biba: And something cheap, too. Because most of the cardboard we just got off of the street. We definitely had pieces of cardboard with staples coming out of it. I got cut with staples a couple of times.

Jmy: We’d get caught in tape. And then we that the physicality was never the same between the three of us. We were on the same page inside of some sort of trip or zone or performing aspect, but the actual movement of it, we would go through and realize that we were all doing completely different things.

Biba: We were doing the same movement but in entirely different ways.

Jmy: In terms of initiation and execution. So then we started really exploiting that aspect of it. And then maybe Felicia wouldn’t want to do some movement, and so she would do something else. It was also based on having worked together for a while, knowing that Biba had a tendency to go inside of the light, I had a tendency to go in the dark, and Felicia would be the bridge.

Biba: Felicia was good at cuing things.

Jmy: Because I would do it too short.

Biba: And I would do it too long.

Jmy: So in TONIGHT, it ended up that Felicia cued mostly everything. I realized that what you ended up seeing in this piece is, or was, our interpersonal relationship between the three of us. That was very apparent. That was also the first time that I had even thought about it in that way and recognized that those aspects of any work are so clearly visible on the outside. I didn’t really understand that before, and I think from that point on, I started to look at work as autobiographical. I always thought that any work was really an extension of the person’s personality, but then I started to see all work in a much different way.

Nicole: We’ve covered a lot of ideas that I want to go back to now and dig a little deeper into. Maybe we can hover around this idea of space and what your interest is in taking performances typically outside of the conventional theater space. You’re working on a piece that’s going to be performed at The Kitchen. It’s not that you haven’t ever performed in conventional theater spaces, but I’m interested in what interests you about alternative spaces. And then what it’s like to prepare for a conventional space and how you experience the differences or similarities in terms of what you’re working on.

Biba: I remember the first time, maybe in THIS DANCE IS CALLED GREE. IT IS FROM BEDSTUY we talked about that a little bit. We introduce ourselves and talked about coming from a background in dance, dance training, and performance. We had grown up in dance studios, in different places and with different experiences, but had all spent a lot of time in the studios and in the theater. We’d been doing this in undergrad and moved to New York. (Dancers) spend so much time in these isolated places. They’re also not isolated, because you’re in relationship to other dancers, but there was a way in which we wanted to be out in the world in a different kind of way doing what we do. We didn’t want to be in the dark theater for six hours a day, preparing for a show. We’d rather be at my friend Hana’s backyard in Portland and have this process we’re engaged in extend to these other places and people that aren’t the typical dance community. Or even art community, necessarily. We definitely all circulate within different types of art, like visual art, or the whole band thing. So then we were like, are we interested in the visual art world? In the dance world? Music? Where are we circulating? But then it was also kind of wherever, which is why we do the tours. Maybe less so in the last year or two, (we’ve toured to) more specifically art-related spaces, but we really just perform anywhere. Places that are not so illustrious. I’ve definitely ended up finishing a performance being covered in urine from sliding along some alleyway. It can be disgusting.

Jmy: I fell into the llama shit pile that was hidden in the grass.

Biba: Adventures in dancing. There’s the technique and discipline of dance, doing these technical things. How does that sort of body, which is really rarified on a certain level, how can we (perform in unconventional spaces)? That’s where exploitation comes in. We talk about exploiting our technique or our flexibility. How can we do that in places where the space doesn’t support it? It’s chaotic, it’s dirty, and it’s filled with stuff. People are going to wander in where you don’t expect them to, and they’re not going to leave the place where you thought you were going to do your solo moment. All of these things happen and push against that line, that extension, that ability to stay on your leg or follow through with the momentum. You can’t count on any of that. And that’s really exciting.

Jmy: When you think of a dance performance, you might think of this controlled environment. Shows starting at a set time in a set place, sitting down, knowing that the show is going to be under an hour and a half. There are all these expectations that are set up. Being outside of that, there was no choice but to figure out how we were going to deal with every one of those aspects. We had in mind that we would have an audience, even though sometimes we didn’t.

Biba: There was always one person, at least.

Jmy: And still we were dealing inside the spectrum of the theater, in terms of lighting it. We got more sophisticated as we went along. For the last tour, we brought our one theater light with us. It was so bright, it really created a space of drama in its path that we didn’t have in our previous tours. The first tour was with a few clip lamps. Then we had work lights, then Christmas lights. It was always considering these elements – the lights, the audience, the dance itself, but we could make up how we were going to execute every single one of these aspects. And we always worked with the natural light, the sun, the moon. Nothing was set up. So then we realized through the tours, that this audience was coming to see us, and they really wanted to be good audience members. And we had to meet them. In these backyards, we had to guide them a little bit. If we didn’t give them a way in, then they were just going to be completely alienated. That happened at times in our first tour, even though it was much more conventional. Which was why the second tour, we put a speech in the beginning, and we told people that they could move around. And in the performance, we would sometimes talk to people. We would have to deal with homeless people on the streets asking us for cigarettes.

Biba: Or the cops in San Francisco, they came by and said “Why are all these people here?” Or the fire—when the Capital Theater in Olympia (WA) caught on fire, and we had to deal with that inside of the performance.

Jmy: So there was no way that we couldn’t not think about how the situation was constructed because we had to build it ourselves.

Nicole: …and because the audience was way more contingent.

Jmy: Everything was an experiment with light and audience and sound and mobility. And then also inside of the dance, what level could we get to physically, in terms of being on all these different surfaces and maybe not being able to see. You didn’t want to break your ankle, and it wasn’t in a safe situation mostly. How were we going to deal with that?

Biba: I felt like I got to know my body in a very different way.

Nicole: That’s what I was going to ask you. I’ve seen you perform three times, and it really seems like you’re pushing your bodies to energetic limits, or different kinds of states. It’s uncanny to think about how you negotiate that and this uncertain terrain, because you’re not being careful. What’s that experience like?

Jmy: When we go on tour and start out the process of meeting these different spaces, it takes a little bit to get into it. It’s kind of like being on a boat, where you get your sea legs.

Biba: It’s a different type of fitness.

Jmy: But even then, we started realizing that when we came into relationship to a space that we were going to perform in, we had to give every space the focus that it deserved. We couldn’t take for granted that one space was the same as the next, or that one audience was the same as the next. We had to really approach each thing fresh. That takes a certain type of focus. When you’re inside of the theater, doing your same performance for five nights or whatever, you might have a slightly different feeling with the audience every night, but it’s not as extreme as what we were dealing with. This really required a different type of attention and focus. I really like to work that way. The more that I’ve done it, the more exciting it is, the not knowing and letting go of control, but still connecting energetically—to the audience and to this really strong trio. You can’t do it tentatively when you’re out there, you have to trust that it will work out.

Biba: I really invest in the dance. If anything is going to be my through-line, that’s what it is. There’s so much flux that can happen in terms of the spaces and audiences. You enter into these structures, thinking that they might exist in a certain way. Once you get inside of it, it exists in an entirely different experience. I think that’s where the transformation starts to occur. Going in and moving through, engaging with dancing, there are these tensions that are suddenly apparent, or energy flows or blocks that start to articulate. That pushes me as a performer to be engaged on that level. There’s nothing that can be taken for granted.