As a small dance company, we have rarely taken the opportunity to reconstruct dance works.  With only a couple of performances a year, our resources (financial and logistical, scheduling etc.) have always been tied up in making new dances.

I make a dance, we mount it, we move on and start the next new dance. 

This M.O. has served us well in the past seven years, leading to almost two dozen premieres.  But it also leaves little time for self-reflection and repertoire building.  How can I/we learn from our past if I allow it to disappear after every show?  Of course, there are some past productions that I will be glad to let slip into oblivion; not every dance has been a masterpiece.  But, there are others that deserve a second time at bat…

On Saturday we will host “Sorry I Missed Your Show,” a benefit and silent auction to help launch us into our eighth season.  It is also the first time that we have remounted dance works from our past.  We are showing four solos, ghosts of Leopold Group shows passed.  Spending the past month watching videos of old shows and re-embodying the movement has been a wonderful gift.  I have had the opportunity to reflect on my choreographic voice as it has changed over these years.  For the first time, I feel buttressed by a potential Leopold Group repertoire – firm on my feet with strong dances in our past and strong ones to come in the future.

Of course, the process of remounting dances can be (and has been) particularly challenging – both physically and mentally.  Some of these early works weren’t preserved well on video and making them presentable for a second time requires a combination of muscle memory, photographic clues, video viewing and a whole lot of patience.  Was that foot supposed to be flexed or was she just off of her balance that night?  This is how I remember this move, but that’s not how the video shows it…  You can imagine how frustrating the process becomes, trying in vain to arrive at some sort of fantastical “authentic” original.  But these struggles are what I love about dance, requiring mental and physical flexibility.

In these seven years, I must admit to feeling the necessity for newness at every turn.  During the reconstruction process this past month, I have proved myself wrong.

Newness and high-speed forward trajectory are not ontological tenants of running a dance company.  Just as stillness and repetition are hugely important choreographic tools, they too are essential tools for the administrative side of things.

This tension between past and present isn’t particular to small companies like us.  Many larger dance organizations struggle to balance the dance historical canon with new commissions.  Of course a loyal audience loves the comfort of a familiar piece, but they also long for the thrill of something completely unexpected.  As an audience member myself, I too am firmly situated on that precipice of old and new, loving a glance in both directions.

So, Saturday night will be the Leopold Group’s first official and public glancing backwards.  We will share with you a solo from the first concert we ever mounted – an excerpt from a piece called “Brahms String Quintet No. 1″ – an excerpt from “Of Mind & Sky,” one of those pieces that will likely fade into oblivion (although this solo excerpt is quite lovely) – and three other snippets.  My hope is that we can share in the past and collectively move forward, without leaving so much behind this time.  My hope is that I will start to do a better job of balancing past and present, of (re)constructing a diverse repertoire and of fending off the invented threat of stasis.

photo by Vin Reed

Sometimes standing still, firmly, is the right choice.

Brave. Clear.

Plotting the next move, in any direction…

If you’re here you too know that we have a new website!

My hope is that this site is more interactive for you (lots of new images, a chance to comment and like blog posts, and more videos coming down the pipe soon) and easier to navigate.  Simple but pretty.

So, I’d love to hear from you here and at our upcoming Sorry I Missed Your Show benefit (click for tickets).  Although the internet is cool, we can’t share a drink or shake your hand over the new blog.  So come out and help us celebrate a great year to come!!!

Thoughts from Josh Weckesser,: lighting designer and dance philosopher…

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. We’ll see if we get there (1000 words) with this post; it seems a long way a way, numbers that big. We won’t get to who “they” are. What we’re wondering is what a dance is worth. Ten dollars? Twenty? If you’re going downtown to see the Paris Ballet, those might be going for two hundred. That seems like a lot. Nay, I know not seems, that is a lot. Maybe if you have a group you could get a discount. Everyone needs a value these days, especially on art. Depends on the theatre; group size could be ten, or maybe twenty (all my life’s a circle). Get out your facebook list, find some people you know well enough to spend two hours sitting next to in silence. Some people might think silence is easy. Then again, some people think art is easy. Takes all kinds, some think love is all you need. This might be too literal, I know how people don’t like to talk about figures, especially if those figures are followed by words like “dollars” or “yen” or “annual percentage rate.”

How many words are a dance worth? This is sort of a misnomer. Most of the dance words are French, to begin with, and we all know how Americans feel about the French. Also dance is its own language, full of the same lisps and vocabulary misunderstandings as the one you speak from day to day. More, I’d wager. (How much would I wager? We’ve moved past that.) How many pictures? How many sighs, gasps, shrugs? How many eye-rolls? How my excited texts, or tweets, or facebook updates? How many elbows to the person next to you followed by whispers of “look at that” with not-fully-extended arms with fully-extended index fingers at the end of them? How do we quantify? How do we know quality without numbers? How do we know the Truth (capital T)?

These questions, I believe, are at the center of “_A Correct Likeness._”:https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.486609421372605.113212.104336446266573&type=3 Also, at the molten, swirling core, is that belief. Belief, like dance, is a beautiful thing, and surely we need it. I believe these questions have value. I believe these questions are worth asking. I believe these questions have no answer. I believe it is the questioning that is the reason, the journey for the sand.

If I may stretch my metaphor a bit, when I reach that shore, worn out, cracked toe nails, let’s say beautiful day, with a sky that stretches forever. Surely (surely) I feel satisfied. I will put my feet into that salt water, and let the soft waves lick at my ankles, steal the dust from my soles. I may grow bold and leave my clothes on the shore and dive head-long, reckless into the surf and swim (again, metaphorically, those that know me well know that literally this is impossible) until I have reached my limit. I see in front of me the sun setting and the endlessness of water turning red, orange, with hints of blue and black and green. I hear only the waves and my heart, not knowing which is which. I know behind me my pants await, and my shoes to cover my feet after they dry (most likely muddy then) and the jar, which I have not filled. Not yet. I am content in this moment, treading water, watching the sunset, feeling like there is nothing left to do.

Eventually the light will dim, the water chill, and I will make my way back. I will shake as much of the sea from my hair as I may, and I will allow my dusty clothes to stick more closely to me. I will kneel down, as if praying, and I will unscrew the cap, and with one hand gently usher the soft sand into the hard jar. I will reflect with a small smile that they are the same thing, sand and jar, in the same way that ice and water are the same. But also different. I will put the sand into my bag, and I will turn back, knowing I am half way though my journey.

If you will continue to indulge, the moments when we preformed A Correct Likeness were like those moments in the ocean. Satisfying and complete, but not the whole journey. There was value in those still photos juxtaposed with the moving dances in front of us. There was value in the walls that defined the space moving throughout it. There was value in the live music mixed with recorded, with instantly captured images being immediacy shown, with beer and wine and people moving throughout. There was value of being so close to the event that you could touch it, that you felt like you were both watching it and a part of it, that you were somehow inside the painting. Because, of course, you were. There was value in the open window front, and the perplexed gawkers on the sidewalk, and the person next to you that didn’t get it and on the other side the person that liked it a bit too much, leaning forward, mouth slightly agape, almost drooling.

What is the value of these things, you may ask? Rightly so, your eyes eager and staring directly into mine, wanting to know the Truth. Of course you should expect it from me, here I am, guru like, talking as if I know; that I am just being coy, talking around something rather than talking directly at it. It does seem that way, most of the time; that understanding is just over those hills, can’t you hear the waves? I blink, suddenly shy, and look at my mud-stained shoes and I kick them about nervously, as if I am about to dance. “Well, I …” is all I’m able to stammer to the floor. I reach into my bag and pull forth for you a jar, full of sand.

*1000 Words*

At a conference this weekend I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Larry Lavender, a smartly irreverent dance scholar. His expertise and teaching field focuses on choreographic mentorship and methods/practices for teaching choreography. He sent me this today and I wanted to share it with you. He (and I) invite you to participate in Inner Mission.

FROM LARRY:
Dear Friends,

As you know, I define choreography as “possibilizing the presence of people in places.” With that in mind, I invite you to participate in a choreographic work called Inner Mission. I hope each of you will choose to perform it during intermission of a dance concert that you attend.

If you agree to perform Inner Mission, you might consider performing it at a dance concert you would have attended anyway, rather than to attend a concert solely for the purpose of performing the work. This way the carbon footprint of the work will be zero, since no additional energy will be expended for the purpose of traveling to and from the performance.

Inner Mission researches body freedom — the freedom for each body to decide in each moment whether to move, and how to move. Body freedom is precisely what is denied to the body in many “set-work” contexts, and even in many improvisation practices where we find constraints on body freedom in various kinds of commands, parameters, structures, guidelines, and even strict rules that are imposed on the movements a mover moves.

There are no constraints on movement in Inner Mission, because in this work each mover performs a right now answer to the always-present body freedom research question: What next?

To address that question I ask that you invent, rehearse, and make perfect (in the ways that dancers usually do) one particular movement choice that will be your pre-set choreography for the work. But, when you actually perform the work, I hope you will decide at that instant whether to keep, change, or discard all or part of your pre-set What next? In other words, in this work the idea is to perform body freedom at the precise moment when, in a conventional choreographed work, body freedom would be denied.

To perform the work, make your way to any spot onstage that you choose during intermission. Your spot may be one step onto the stage, or in the middle, or anywhere else you choose. Feel free to pre-choreograph your spot, or to find it afresh during the performance. Either way, go to “your spot” and occupy it until you decide What next? Then perform what is next. Obviously, your pre-set What next? will be available to you for performance, but since you stand in a relationship of body freedom to your earlier choreographic decisions, whatever is performed during Inner Mission will be chosen-in-freedom. Once you have performed What next? leave the stage; your performance of Inner Mission is complete.

In addition to body freedom, Inner Mission is interested in existing in an unfastened relationship with the part of the self that desires to be watched performing, and perhaps to be praised for performing well. Inner Mission is not interested in taking any action to make sure it is seen by others, but neither is it hiding from them. Your performance may be seen by others, but they may not know that they are seeing a performance. If the stage curtain is closed when you perform Inner Mission, then there is a good chance your performance will not have any audience … but whether it does or does not have an audience is a trivial concern to Inner Mission. The work wishes to be performed, but it does not care if it is performed “for” any outside eye.

A bit of theory: In choosing to exist only during intermission of a dance concert, when the concert is taking a rest and no official part of its planned choreography is occupying the stage, Inner Mission chooses a peaceful co-existence with the dance concert. Inner Mission does not interfere with, interrupt, or get in the way of any moment of the dance concert while the concert is experiencing the full glory of its self-presentation to the public. Inner Mission exists only when the concert is not on stage. At the same time, though, Inner Mission does locate itself at the temporal center of the concert — it is literally a center-piece — occupying the ignored and invisible crease between the two temporal halves of the concert.

One additional request for those who choose to perform Inner Mission: If you can, please snap a photo (cell phone photos are fine) of your pre-planned What next? I would like to have these photos as a form of pre-documentation of the intended choreography of the work. Later, I would love a report from you on what happened during your performance. Did your pre-set What next? emerge in the moment of performance, or did something else turn out to be What Next? Please share whatever you can about what that moment was like. This will be valuable data for research on body freedom. I will distribute the collected data and images to all the members of the Inner Mission cast.

The time frame for Inner Mission is now until December 31st at midnight; it is a 2012 research project.

Thanks for considering participation in Inner Mission.

Love, LL

PS: Please share this email with anyone you know who may be interested in performing Inner Mission.

Last year around this time we did a Kickstarter Campaign leading up to our premiere of Dancing. It was a great success and for any generous donor who pledged $100, we promised to let him/her commission a video dance from us. Well, yesterday we began delivery on those promises.

A close friend and beautiful dancer in her own right, Roche Janken, donated $100 and asked this of us:

WHO: 4 or more dancers in monochrome costumes that are not particularly feminine or human (such as orange jumpsuits)
WHAT: dancing and shifting like water spiders on the surface of a pond
WHERE: on the roof of a parking garage or a parking lot or an equally flat and slightly desolate space, shot from far away
WHEN: does not matter
WHY: because i can rarely these days think of something i can watch young beautiful women doing but this sounds very nice

We did our best to deliver on her wishes. There were some unavoidable compromises: The jump suits we had access to were white. The desolate space happened to have lots of cars in it so the shots were pretty close up to keep the traffic out of frame. And well, the police were an unexpected addition. That’s right, police. Two friendly cops were VERY perplexed by our robot/space suits, “water spider” wriggling, video-camera toting selves. We tried to explain and then, in jest, asked them if they wanted to participate. Their response…to get out of the car and handcuff Natalia and Laura. Why, you might ask. I am still asking the same question. It was all in good fun and we hope to see these friendly officers at our next show…

As I am editing the footage, enjoy some stills from the shoot (more on our facebook page.) And Roche, we had a great time doing this for you and sorry about the surprise guests. The police apparently thought it all sounded very nice too!

Fraction: Dance in Progress
Links Hall (3435 N. Sheffield/Chicago)
Monday September 24 at 8pm

We’re showing a new piece entitled Sanctus Dominus Dressing Room. While clothing becomes costume and both act as permeable border between our bodies and the world (or rather the world becomes the audience), the intimate and simple act of dressing and undressing is put forward to negotiate boundaries of touch and proximity.

Maybe that’s all a lot of mumbo-jumbo and you should just come see the dance….

photo by Matthew Gregory Hollis
(a sneak peak into our dance performance/photography exhibit A Correct Likness. GET YOUR TICKETS HERE!)

CLIP ON PAYIS AND JOHANNES BRAHMS

So, almost a year ago I was in the midst of planning Dancing and was pretty bummed to realize that there was another dance show happening at Links Hall on the same nights at the same times. Being pretty small potatoes in a rather intimate dance scene, I was anxious about dividing the audience between two shows and not being able to fill the theater. So, I took a deep breath and emailed Lauren Warnecke, the other choreographer, and we decided to work together to create a sort of dance show/bar crawl between our two venues. What an awesome idea! She was so warm and helpful and I hoped that it would not be the last time I worked with her.

Well, a year later I have the chance to work with Lauren again through her series Produce. Produce is a “multi-arts experiment in four parts.” Lauren and her partner-in-crime, Russell Weiss, invited a handful of dance makers and music makers to come together and create chaos. We dance a little bit, they make a little sound and the audience gets to decide how the two parts fit (or don’t fit).

This past Friday was our first go at it and we presented a trio version of a quartet we’ve been working on (last minute changes and scheduling conflicts turned a quartet into a trio). The trio is part of a larger work tentatively titled Sanctus Dominus Dressing Room (there’s a blog post in there too…more to come). It is scored by a Brahms String Quintet and is rather formal and abstract. But the beauty of Produce is that it reminded me not to take all of this modern dance (said with an English accent) too seriously. Lauren and Russell quickly replaced the Brahms with Sid Yiddish and His Candy Store Henchmen. And it was as awesome/ridiculous as it sounds. Sid has to be seen to be believed, but here’s what his website says about him:

Even an abstract dance to a classical piece of music has bountiful absurdity within it. Pirouettes and pointed toes are just as arbitrary as arhythmic gonging and Sid’s clip on payis.

If this doesn’t peak your interest, I don’t know what will! You have three more chances to catch the chaos and force an inevitable duet between Sid and your favorite Leopold Group dancer….

Produce
Friday July 20, 27 & August 3 at 8pm
Fasseas Whitebox Theater
The Drucker Center
1535 N. Dayton St, Chicago, IL
Tickets: $8

Here’s the game…

I stand in the front of the studio and improvise for about 5 seconds. Then I give the dancers about 20 seconds to remember, decide and construct their best version of what I did. This is repeated ad naseum until the dancers’ brains nearly explode. The pace of choreographic production is maddeningly fast. The result is awesome ven-diagramatic solos, divergent and overlapping in wonderful ways. Check out this video to see some of the solos that came from this game on Saturday. I like how impossibly individualized the movement becomes.

ENJOY

Today we embarked on a new work/project entitled A Correct Likeness, exploring the intersection of still photography and dance. The title comes from the need for early painters to render an accurate “likeness,” of faces or landscapes or historical events, as a marker of their artistic success. Prior to the invention of photography (and strangely for a while there after) artists were charged with the task of recording people and events, blending fact with fiction in order to represent things strategically but recognizably.

And well, it just doesn’t seem right to be without a camera recording our rehearsal process as we go. The pictures offer a chance to reflect on the material (the choreographed steps) through a pairing of these two mediums – dance and photography. There are more photos on our facebook page and we would love feedback.

What do you see? What don’t you see? Who do you see and who don’t you see? What feels true about the photograph?

Dates and details on upcoming performances to come!