Critical Correspondence

Donna Faye Burchfield, Lindsay Clark, Diana Crum, Gina Kohler, Jesse Zaritt in conversation with Levi Gonzalez

Fantasy Generator

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Fantasy Generator was a 2-week residency that took place at Hollins University in the Summer of 2009. The residency was free and open to anyone who expressed an interest. The participating artists shaped the structure of the residency through email exchanges and group conversations, with Hollins University and the organizers providing whatever resources they had at their disposal. This interview is with the organizers of Fantasy Generator, short pieces by some of the participants follows the interview below.

Levi Gonzalez: I would like you to introduce yourself and in relationship to the program. Who are you? What do you do? And how did you get involved in Fantasy Generator?

Jesse Zaritt: I’m Jesse Zaritt. I’m a dancer, a teacher of dance and a creator of dance. And I spent the spring semester teaching at Hollins University. Teaching for the undergraduate program and that put me into contact with the MFA candidates and with Donna Faye. And through a series of conversations about the field of dance, this idea of the Fantasy Generator came up and that is how I became involved.

Lindsay Clark: I just graduated from the Hollins ADF/MFA program this past July. Coming to Hollins was a lot about having space and time to investigate why I am in my body in a dance capacity. My interest in Fantasy Generator stems from wanting to extend that time and space to other people that possibly can’t find it in their urban home settings. That has been a huge gift of being at Hollins and at ADF: having that opportunity to slow down a little bit and just focus on getting what you need.

Levi: And Diana, you are also in the MFA program, right?

Diana Crum: Right. So I finished up in July as well, and I think the Fantasy Generator idea was in the air last spring when we were all at Hollins. I was there when the conversation started about how to extend all of these opportunities to more people. Our class and Jesse were all fortunate enough to be there when the opportunity arose to turn this hypothetical question into a reality.

Levi: And Gina you are also in the MFA program?

Gina Kohler: Yes, I just finished as well. I also make work and teach dance and yoga. I came into the process a little later once the logistics of the project were beginning to take shape. My interest in it was primarily the ability to bring people together in one location where they could experiment together and exchange ideas and resources not in isolation. I was interested in a model for a residency that was focused on gathering in a community environment where there could be an exchange on different levels, both academic and social.

Levi: And Donna Faye, you are not in the MFA Program.

Donna Faye Burchfield: No I’m not. Maybe I should be. (laughs)

Levi: Could you talk about your role at Hollins and how this residency came into existence?

Donna: I direct the graduate area in dance at Hollins. I try to reflect on what it is like to see all of these people pass through one place, what it was like for me to come here in 1993, and what it feels like now. In 1993 with hard work combined with dreaming, things started growing quickly at Hollins. There was the conjuncture of the history with whatever was needed now and this feeling of personal freedom in a way that has to do with the landscape of the place. Markus who came from Vienna said it was like an oasis in the middle of nowhere. You certainly get that feeling from the landscape of Hollins. I arrived in ’93 with two small children, and Hollins was where I slept, I ate, I taught, and I dreamed. It was an awakening in a way. I’ve always considered it to be a place where things have been realized pretty quickly. I felt like it could happen for me, and then I watched it happen with my students. There is a sort of collective energy that became contagious. I think it has to do with the intimacy of the setting, but also the accumulation of history- the thinking, consciousness, and hard work starts accumulating. Having been at ADF now for over 25 years, a quarter of a century, I know what that feels like to have history accumulated before and around you. Perhaps I embodied this and carried it with me to Hollins. There was the hope that if the undergrad program could generate that kind of energy, students could leave and still continue that. The MFA program opened up these other possibilities that began to sort of shape and form themselves: possibilities of networking, of new work, of talking about work, of connecting resources.

It worried me that the possibilities would get locked only within an academic context, which provides access to information and resources only to those in the academic loop. I felt we had figure out a way to open this up so that other people could come and experience having the time, the place, the whatever that is that allows for that exchange, that radiant ignition. So Fantasy Generator certainly came from the MFA class that was there, along with Jesse. The title is their own. But I believe the stirrings of such a project happened even before I got to Hollins. I don’t think it is an accident that Annie Dillards wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning novel from those very grounds.

Levi: Something about the place.

Donna: I do it think its the place combined with the history, the energies, and the hard work of the people who pass through there. It manifests in the support and sharing, which are essential to growth.

Levi: When did the idea for Fantasy Generator come into being and how was its structure shaped? You’ve already started to talk about the interest in sharing ideas and information in a community-focused residency and generating openness in how the residency could be used.

Donna: The idea has been in the ether of Hollins since Sarah Procopio and Shani Collins were there 10 years ago. A group of undergrads who graduated from Hollins almost a decade ago, along with Jesse, stuck around Hollins when there wasn’t an MFA program and tried to ignite something. It needed a moment that would push it into existence and, Diana, Jesse, Lindsay, and Gina started the conversation again. They just grabbed on and said we’re just fucking doing it. You know to me, that’s when you realize that there’s – its just hard work you know. Somebody needed to grab on and hold on and go. Once the idea got in the water, the strengths of the people involved started to swim up.

Jesse: I don’t think there is a formula or model that we were following. The shape of the project evolved as we figured out what work needed to happen, who would do it, and how those things got distributed. It was tricky, but it wasn’t something that was laid out in advance. It emerged in the process.

Gina: The model was to not have a model and to just see who would come. From there, we all sat together in a circle and said okay, what is everyone interested in? We put a bunch of stuff up on the board, and from that the week took its shape. We did it again the following week and discussed what people were interested in continuing, shifting, or changing. There was time for people to show their work and get feedback. Also, the low residency MFA students were at Hollins, so there was a great exchange between Fantasy Generator and the MFA program. They were able to sit in on classes and participate. It was a really busy two weeks.

Diana: It’s hard to say when the idea for the project started. There were conversations that happened long before the time that I became involved that informed the project. Last spring, we had already had several conversations about it among this group when we finally pulled out a computer and started taking notes. But it started long before this.

Donna: In all sincerity, I thought that we would have maybe 20 people. We did a kind of fake budget, which assumed we would have 25 participants, and we tried to figure out if we could cover their housing costs.

Levi: How many people ended up coming to the residency?

Gina: There were 27 Fantasy Generators in addition to the low residency MFA students and the four of us who were organizing and helping to shape it.

Donna: I think Markus and Anita did a count, and they reported there were about 44 of us.

Diana: It was hard to keep track of how many people were there. People who lived in Roanoke, people who were doing the MFA program, or people who were undergraduates at Hollins all came through. Everyday the number would change because someone would show-up or someone would have to leave.

Levi: I showed up and did a showing. (everyone laughs)

Donna: It drove the people with the dorms insane. We pushed the limits at the university.

Levi: What struck me about the project was that it was generated from an artist point of view. So often in a residency environment, the program will tell you what resources are being provided, what are you going to get from it, and what the obligations are of the residency. Fantasy Generator put those questions back to the artist asking “What do you want from a residency?” and “How can you use it?”  By trying to provide resources that met the desires of the artist, this project seemed to be an inversion of the traditional model of a residency.

Lindsay: There can be such desperation around art production in that we are so limited in our resources. So there’s a lot of latching on to what we can get and holding it safe so that we don’t lose it because there is so little to have. Something that we kept catching on is find ways to give it away that will infuse everyone that’s involved. We started thinking about this idea of radical generosity, a kind of giving that doesn’t deplete the person whose giving, but actually benefits the individual and group as a whole.

Gina: Also, I think that the absence of money being exchanged created a different atmosphere. There was a whole different level of exchange that happened by taking out that element.

Levi: It’s creating a space outside of a market system. It seems like the residency has some relationship to a book I’ve been reading called The Gift by Lewis Hyde. He makes this distinction that “labor” is not quantifiable in the same way that “work” is and that it’s results are not easy to predict or organize with deadlines and identifiable goals, and I certainly think dance falls into the “labor” category as opposed to the “work” category. As opposed to a traditional model of a residency being about working in isolation, this residency creates a gift economy within it by sharing your work and ideas with a community of people. How was that idea realized throughout the residency?

Jesse: Dance is a very communal form. We are each other’s resources. The residency creates the feeling of not having to produce something from yourself, but you can be inspired by what someone else brings. It’s like a harvesting of a community of ideas where one aesthetic or set of artistic priorities isn’t above another.

Diana: Not only is it about different aesthetics coming together but different geographies as well. The person from New York can talk with the person who is from Roanoke who can talk with the person from Vienna.

Donna: I agree with Diana. We went to Europe for five weeks in the spring term and we were met with such generosity at the places we were going, and I kept thinking we can do that here at Hollins. If we can go to Vienna or France, and they can give space for a week, and we can perform and get feedback, then we can do that here and it would result in something really incredible for the students. One year we paid all this money and we produced MFA works-in-progress at The Kitchen and we immediately fell into this stereotypical situation. We were all extremely nervous because it was going to be at The Kitchen. The conversations that happened afterwards were like all the conversations that happened after shows in New York. We just fell into this space that already exists. When we performed in Vienna something else happened and the conversations were different around the work. Of course that has a lot to do with context and the generosity can be there because they are getting support from the state, but how can we galvanize here and think differently enough that we can create something through these mobile communities of artists? Our resources are not just studios but also each other.

Levi: This residency seems to create a space for the ideas around the work and the ideas around dance that we are relating to, not just making the work. Place matters for dance especially in terms of how your work resonates with meaning. The work changes as it moves though the world, as it’s perceived by people in different places and contexts. How does being away from the urban environment and amidst the offerings of Hollins shape the residency?

Jesse: In New York, its hard to reflect on the ways in which I am in relation to more than just whatever it is I am immediately doing. Going to Hollins has always been about suddenly finding myself in relation to a much wider sphere of ideas. I feel like I have access there to ideas in art, ideas in dance, ideas in theater that are coming from all over the world. Hollins in its particular location gives me this expansive curiosity towards ideas that come from other places and other disciplines, that are from politics and activism.

Gina: There’s a certain ability to focus. In the city, I crave these conversations that are about the ideas around a dance. But because time and space are so limited, those conversations never came into fruition as they were able to at Hollins.

Jesse: At Hollins, you can feel a layering in the space of books, photographs, ideas. You are walking into a dance and a process of research that is already always happening. You are walking into relation with these things that have been held and cared for and nurtured with passion and you feel it.

Levi: In New York City, there is such a sense of forcing things to come into existence through sheer will and against the face of adversity. There is a need to figure out how to create space for process, inquiry and connections. And it is a skill.

Donna: It is a skill. I was hearing this analogy yesterday in a faculty meeting at Hollins, that of an iceberg and what is below the surface of the water is so huge. I was thinking about that accumulation of labor. I feel like there’s always a lot of pushing in dance and our lives in dance. But then there’s a moment when the iceberg surfaces and you recognize it, see it and move towards it. There is something in that group ethos that dance provides us from which we learn to think together. We have to. It is a kind of survival and it is also inherent in it. I tried to get there before but I couldn’t swim that distance by myself. It is sheer will too. It’s like everybody is saying get the fuck over there and stand on that island. It may be small, but we can all see it. Dance is always making itself, so why don’t we try to make this?

Levi: How do you think the residency went in terms of artists who came and how you responded to them?

Diana: Many people came not having an idea of what to expect. I was struck by the fact that it was such a different energy when they left. Afterwards, a lot of them talked about the generosity amongst the group and how it generated energy as well. They never thought they would be talking to these people who come from a different aesthetic or sphere. They never thought that they would be in this person’s rehearsal. They never thought that person would be in their rehearsal or never thought that you could just share studio space and ideas.

Gina: I remember talking about the Fantasy Generator possibly being mobile and that it could happen in different places with different groups of people. It could be a thing that is just given away. The potential there for expansion is endless.

Levi: How are each of you taking this experience with you and in what ways can you see the residency expanding your relationship to dance?

Donna: For me personally, I realize that there are resources at Hollins that can be shared and opened up and benefitted from year-round. I have this charge now to figure out how to share these resources at Hollins to those outside the academic loop, how it can serve the dance field at large.

Jesse: I continue to think about this idea of radical generosity in terms of my own life and thinking. How can I share even more of what I have? I have a residency at Manhattan at this community center, how can I give that away? What of that can I share? How can I give information away?

Gina: I see the world differently then the way I did before I went through the MFA program at Hollins. For example, there is this huge, empty courtyard in the building I live in that no body uses. I have been thinking about making a dance for this courtyard so that everyone in the building could all look down in the courtyard where normally nothing happens. So trying to activate spaces that are stagnant. Maybe generating something tiny.

Lindsay: We’ve been talking a lot about practices and I’m trying to create a practice that’s mobile. How I can engage my body and myself in a way that I can take with me wherever I go? The idea of radical generosity – it’s a practical tool that I can use constantly in whatever and whoever I’m relating to.

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS

Fantasy Generator Invitation

We’re nomads. Many of us are based in NYC. Others are spread out across the world. How can we talk to one another about the dance and artowrk that engages us most passionately? How can we make work that evidences our individuality and also speks to a collective, thinking field? What are new directions – an expanded vision – for our form?

We want to create a space where we can gather to generatie ideas together. We think dialogue needs to happen. We want to create conversations around our creative work, our activism, and our pedagogies. We want to engage with questions that seek to advance and transform the field of dance.

By practicing our art making together, we hope to extend our fantasies into reality, to begin to create for the future of our field.

We will give you space and time to work/research/inquire. This open space could be used to choreograph, read, watch, discuss, teach, etc. We only ask that you engage, share challenge, and question yourself and your colleagues.

We propose a two-week-long FANTASY GENERATOR at Hollins University, in Roanoke, VA. This will happen August 2-15, 2009. Paricipants will hae access to one another’s brains, dance studios, green hills, and a college library.

It is our hope and belief that when many passionate thinkers and makers gather, our wildest dance dreams can begin to manifest.

We think we can accommodate up to 20 participants. We hope to welcome everyone who is interested.

Participants will shape the content of the FANTASY GENERATOR. You can lead (or request that we make available) panel discussions, movement classes or showings. Tell us what you want to do and we will arrange it. At Hollins, we can make it happen.

Sincerely,

The Fantasy Generator Organizers: Donna Faye Burchfield, Lindsay Clark, Diana Crum, Gina Kohler, and Jesse Zaritt

From Sasha Welsh

For me, Fantasy Generator was an opportunity to spend a week with a very diverse group of artists, without a lot of expectation about what would be produced. It was a very open format, that created a space in which to re-envision what a residency could be, how artists and institutions could interact, and how artists might better support and challenge each other. The program seemed to be growing out of a real desire for the organizers to share some of the resources they had benefited from while in school at Hollins, and to ask questions both from the individual artists and the group: “what is the fantasy? What can we imagine both in our own work and in the structure of a residency that might be different or new or more interesting than things how they are?”

There was a lot of intensity to the schedule- there was so much going on that no one could do everything; we had to choose our own priorities. Fantasy Generator proposed a different model: maybe what artists need is to have a wider community, or to articulate their vision, needs and desires to strangers-maybe to be more challenged instead of made more comfortable.

I also thought some about gift and exchange economies because of the way that both sides invested in the project but no money was physically exchanged. We gave the program time and energy, the program gave us an opportunity, resources and housing, etc. A lot of people volunteered a lot of time- the organizers, the participants who taught classes and workshops, etc. So then, the residency had the feeling of being a trade or a cultural exchange rather than an economic exchange– which I think can also influence how people interact with each other. It became clear over the course of the week that the organizers’ generosity was also a quality of Donna Faye’s department- and part of the pleasure of the residency was also experiencing an academic setting that values and welcomes outside artists.

From Christine Elmo

By the time Friday rolled around I found myself just ready to get started. It was an amazing opportunity to be given and I was disappointed that I was unable to be there for the full two weeks. The time was invigorating. A creative retreat. The best part for me was having access to such an amazing library. I was thrilled to have finally met Donna Faye because that woman’s name is like a ghost to me in NYC. I often hear reference to her like a whisper coming from the mouths of people who have had the privilege to attend American Dance Festival and Hollins.

My only disappointment about Fantasy Generator is how much it articulated what life as an artist in New York City is not; a broad and harsh statement to write considering ones life is so subjective, but while I was at Hollins there was the freedom to produce in a way that is not available (to me) in New York. When in New York I always feel obligated to make in a certain way or to be in the studio in a certain way because money, time, space is so limited. (The same story most artists tell / cry / share / whine) But my mind was at ease with all of these usual complications and I was able to research in a way that felt more full and all-inclusive of the world in which we are presenting in – and I mean that beyond the insular life of the dance world. I mean the entire world.

I would love my life in New York to be like the life I lived in Roanoke for that one week, but regardless of what changes are to come this fantasy is an impossibility. What is not an impossible fantasy is to construct a conduit between NY and VA, which would cultivate more fluidity and texture to what is happening to dance – a constantly evolving art form.

From Sari Nordman

I felt a generous atmosphere at the Hollins which made it comfortable and inspiring to have and execute fantasies. Organized discussions, discussions on showings and ability to attend lectures were good and needed exchange among peers. I missed some organized discussions on the classes we taught but there seemed to be no time for this. This may need to be a residency on its own…

My fantasies came true during FG: my childhood fantasy of standing under a waterfall was exhilarating as it was happening! I hadn’t choreographed anything for almost 2 years, and there was a flow of movement ideas that just poured out of me. I met people that I will be in touch with and possibly work with in years to come.

About fantasies, I came to realize that they are essential for being an artist. This seems obvious but yet it looks as if I easily forgot about this in my city life. After the residency I have contemplated meaning in my art making and existence in general, and have discovered that allowing myself to have fantasies (even daily) seems to be the key for finding meaning and for having fun. The residency was a good reminder on that.

From Emily Wexler

here’s a story that really happened.

last night around 2 am, a group of us walked back into the woods through a gravel path.

it was completely black.

we kept walking until we came to an old abandoned house that is covered in vines and trees and berry bushes.

the second floor is caving in. everything has been left as if the people who lived there just ran out. there is an old piano still on the porch and dishes, bedding, curtains, the like.

we walked through the dark path, through the porch and into the house.

it was terrifying and amazing.

when we turned around, the full moon made everything brighter.

we could see the intricacies of the landscape around us.

it was all cool. it was all fine.

no ghosts or vampires or mountain lions coming out from the bush.

not even skunks.

we were in reality and it was fantastic.

here’s where I am going to make the corny metaphor clear:

as we started on the path, I was walking alone in the front.

because in moments of great fear I always find my courage with just approaching what scares me. and in this dance life, I have felt like I have had to do that for the most part alone, with my brave face on. patching some sort of random inexplicable, uncertain structure of a life around my absolute commitment, desire, and embodied passion for dance.

I turned around last night and saw a group of other people just like me walking just behind.

and when we walked back down the path, it was easier.

because we did it together.

we are also doing this with our dancing lives, here.

that is what the fantasy generator is about.

by directly engaging and expanding our communities, we are trying to generate actual tools that will help us address the current realities of living as dance artists.

we are starting this process by DOING IT.

meaning our bodies together in collaboration with this space – discussing how change can happen in our lives as artists, in the life of our form.

And even though many people may integrate these practices already, I think it is necessary that there be spaces to remind us of how important and possible models of generous activation can be.

cause we are our resources.

and why not.

From Anita Kaya and Markus Bruckner

…instead of summing up – some con/notations:

Diving into the dance world of Hollins: About 40 dancers/choreographers gathered – rehearsing, working on their thesis, participating in classes, giving classes, performing, watching performances and rehearsals, researching at the library, celebrating …..

Within the FANTASY GENERATOR – a self organized ambitious framing – two intense weeks of sharing, of posing and (not) answering questions, of engaging and challenging ourselves…

Soaring and Falling by Diane Shooman, Poetry into Performance by TJ Anderson, Performance, Media & Aesthetics by Jen Boyle and Donna Faye Burchfield’s class Thinking Choreographically – the MFA program offers profound and diverse insights during our stay, it opens up on many levels. Perspectives. Relations. Horizons.

Deeply touched by the quality of the classes and the communication, by the social and political dimension and implications: Hollins: the people, the place, the institution, the instigator – an oasis inside, outside or alongside the

conservative local community of Roanoke/Virginia. A particular awareness is raised: Being shocked by the history and recent situation of the Afro-American population that is experienced around here. In daily life. And moreover, as an important issue of the American performing arts as well.

Here, at this intersection: Being part of – nearness and immediacy.

“The universe unfolds in the body, which is its mirror and its creature. Our era is critical; it has destroyed the old image of the world and as yet has not created another. That is why we do not have a body…” -Octavio Paz