referencing Shen Wei post

The post immediately previous contained information about some "guerrilla" activity from the well known Shen Wei Dance Arts company. I had some thoughts that came after posting that relate pretty directly, so I thought I'd toss 'em up on the ol' blog.

It's always nice to see big time choreographers "bring it to the people." Not only does it offer a chance for individuals to experience certain types of art that often require an expensive ticket, but it also makes steps to address the lines between the artist and the viewer: the 'fourth wall,' performers outside of their usual shell as "performer on stage" raised above the audience, the definition of a performance space, etc. Many concepts that are often intentionally/unintentionally addressed in most guerrilla art (not only performance guerrilla art, but also that of stencil, graffiti, and the like.) This type of guerrilla art showcased by Shen Wei however, is interesting as it not only comes from an established creator of art - sort of a philosophical(/literal?) oxymoron to the very idea of Guerrilla - but also plays a part as promotion for a non-guerrilla showcase of art. Part of me wonders about this performance being deemed by Shen Wei himself as "guerrilla."

Especially considering the fact that guerilla is often as a type of subversion of the greater society/culture, rather than a perpetuation of it - which could be seen here (promotion for a very non-guerrilla proscenium stage performance, and created by an organization (Shen Wei Dance Arts) that finds great amounts of support from the greater institution of society/culture.)

P.S. 

this is a huge topic...one that I think it pretty vital to my own thoughts about Guerrilla-ness, but something that can't fully be covered in this single post. I'll definitely come back to this. and for the record, this blog in no way means to downplay how much I support any type of guerrilla or guerrilla-esque act. My questioning and analyzation is merely for the sake of attempting to understand this monster of a subject.

gdance, set to A Few words

The other day someone was asking me about how I personally approach gdance (seeing as there are surely infinite ways of doing it.) A couple things came to mind that I thought I'd share.

When I think of guerrilla dance, what comes to mind as the most important factor is the individual. The individual dancing. Right there is all you need to gdance - a human body. You have one of those, and you're golden.
Although I don't think these are always necessary, having set times or places can be helpful. Creating a schedule of when a group can get together is extremely beneficial when people are busy (as we all know.) But hey, you can just have a set time and no set place, or a set place and no set time...or sometimes it's even more fun to just call some friends up and go boogy in a nearby mall *shrug* up to you and your posse.
Don't get hung up on what gdance "should" be. It should be whatever the hell you want it to be: large choreographed routine, the same act over and over, walking slow, dancing your heart out, salsa, ballet, Caribbean, club dancing, and the list goes on and on. The manifestation of guerrilla dance is very dependent on who is doing it.

If anyone has questions about gdancing, I hope my thoughts are helpful. But hey, these are just my thoughts, in no way does this define how anything should be done. This post is more for those who have the heeby jeebies about going out and being a social outcast. ;)

and remember there are others who gdance as well. Find 'em.

Enjoy your guerrilla ways of life. :P

Club Dancing

This is a slight departure for this blog: I tend to write in direct relation to "guerrilla dancing," or rather, the times when I say "Now I'm going to dance as part of my project!!"

yet, last night something stuck out to me like a sore thumb. I took a trip to a local bar of downtown Columbus to dance with some friends of mine. While we were there doing our thing on the dance floor amidst the bumping, grinding, and awkward shifting of feet most displayed, one person stood out. There was this really short (5 footish), slightly husky, spectacled, semi-attractive guy dancing his heart out...all by himself. On a dance floor where almost everyone is either with a group, dancing with a partner, or if alone is on the side looking for another to dance with, this guy was truly outside of what seemed to be that dance floor's norm. For quite some time though, he just kept going, as if it was the last night he'd ever be able to dance again. It wasn't as if he was dancing - "like no one was watching" - but instead as if he was completely aware of his surroundings, and was simply unaffected: he wanted to dance, his way, and so he did.

Within 15-20 minutes after he began dancing, girls started to approach him. First it was just one, then another, and soon a space had been cleared, he was surrounded by a crowd, and several girls took their turn (sometimes two at a time) to dance with him. Even then, while he did seem to be enjoying himself, his face showed no sign of "yeah! look at how many girls I'm getting, and everyone is watching me!" instead his expression stayed in a place of somewhat of a solemn, internal focus. In a place where just about everyone followed a set of rules, rules that depended on others in just about every case, the one person who was gathering the most amount of positive attention was the one who had little to no dependency on the thoughts, support, or perspective of others - even when he was flooded with all those "power in numbers" social supports. He was never tempted to let it affect him; nothing seemed important except for that moment in which he was doing what he enjoyed; and this continued to be true when the crowd had dissipated and he was back to soloing again.

interesting

(on the side, freewritin' thoughts)

This isn't the first time soloing has happened in this project. I soloed back at Bates for a time and then most recently next to Jimmy Johns. All of which I've written/talked about. However, I never have tackled it head on - with intention to do so. I've never really had a reason to. My knees' pain gave me reason. I'm finding a core of interest in this society thing, and most specifically in the solo thing. It confronts the reality of what we're doing - Guerrilla Dancing - head on. Almost like it strips down the act to its purest form, without any perspectives, opinions, attempts at achieving a goal (which always alters an act) without any desire to make it into anything, but instead letting it breath and just be. Just like the quote from Siddhartha that I'm in love with, "As a result of your seeking you cannot find.....it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything......because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking...because he is obsessed with his goal." Dancing. It's just dancing, without any goal or attempt to affect/gain the approval of others - because you're going into it with the knowledge people might take to it negatively. You're not expecting any approval - quite the opposite - and even if you thrive on that type of defiance, that's not why you do it (at least not in the context I've been involved in - by myself and with Jasmine). An act beyond the walls of the past, the knowledge of historical /cultural pressures. In a sense, a completely new act. An act without a web of relation and precedence.

Or at least that sounds nice. Don't know if it's really true. :P

"This is your one opportunity to do something that no one has ever done before and that no one will copy throughout human existence. And if nothing else, you will be remembered as the one guy who ever did this. This one thing" - Sam, from the movie "Garden State"

Guerrilla Dance - Solo (pt. #2)

The first people I talked to were viewers of Jasmine's solo dancing.

I talked to one girl who was fairly surprised by the seemingly random act of dancing in the library, a place one rarely finds much more than quiet book reading and laptop typing. Nonetheless, she was quite positive about the dancing. She thought it was gutsy, cool to see, and despite the fact that she didn't really feel like it naturally fit in a library, was glad to have it there. I asked her about the fact that she was going solo, and she simply re-emphasized how gutsy Jasmine seemed. I prodded further to see if she would ever do something similar, and she again talked about guts: how she would only have enough to do it if she had a group of her friends to do it with her.

Soon thereafter, I talked to two other girls who I had spotted looking and laughing to each other about Jasmine. We had a long conversation that touched on many points, but one that really stuck out to me came when I asked about Jasmine's soloing, and whether or not these two girls would ever do the same thing. They both laughed, and voiced how one of them had suggested just that idea, of joining in: "I will if you'll come with me." They decided not to, but it kept this idea of soloing in the forefront of my mind. It was so important to have someone else to stand next to when going against what was established as the proper way to act in a specific setting. (Not that this was a surprise to me. Going against what the majority deems as appropriate is a well accepted difficulty in the life of many humans: ex. high school, media, religion, art in general, etc. but) Why was this so important? Both these girls, and the one I had previously talked to had expressed quite an interest in joining. They all wanted to do it, but didn't have the "guts" to unless a friend was beside them. What strength was there in this extra person? What did a partner offer that was a substitute for their lack of guts? And whatever was holding them back - society, culture, the "norm," rules - was holding them back from an experience that seemed enjoyable to them. They wanted to dance on the staircase of Thompson Library, in plain view of four stories worth of fellow studying students and passerbys. Yet there was some danger they wouldn't risk acting against. An entity of some sort that could hurt them. The joy in dancing wasn't worth the possible consequences.

These consequences...

Guerrilla Dance - Solo (pt. #1)

This whole idea of solo dancing in a place designated for a completely different type of behavior is slowly garnering an intense amount of attention in my mind.

A dancer (Jasmine) and I took a trip to our local library to dance, and as an experiment (and because my knees are shot from repeatedly dancing on concrete) I had her dance alone. First she danced without any music for about 20 minutes, a break, then danced for another 20 or so minutes with an iPod on.

The question was, would there be any difference with this dancing experience with a single dancer versus the groups of three or four that usually go out?

The difference was there, and I soon felt bad for knowingly putting my dancer into the...lion's den, if you will. I saw looks like I always do, and saw Jasmine dance with infectious joy and fearlessness, like I always do. At first, I found nothing irregular. However, time went on and I myself began to feel embarrassed for her - despite my own involvement in the project. There was something about her up on the staircase, a lone figure in her attempt to do something out of the ordinary. How horrible it seemed...

Beyond that feeling of my own, I didn't see any other obvious signs of real negativity. Until of course I actually went and talked to others...

Past, Present, Future and Tech

Sometimes I feel like there's so much history that is so easily accessible, and flows so easily in between people (Youtube, Facebook, E-mail, etc all help us know what we like, what others like, and in effect, what is out there) that our minds are filled with what has already been done throughout history. I feel like we're mostly surrounded by a society stuck in exposure. We all have such an awareness of what happened before us, and because of the ability to relate with each other, opinions and reactions to the past are constantly being presented to us. We're always talking about how we feel about the life around us, and throwing opinions back and forth.This is all well and good, but instead of this happening between a smaller group of friends and family as it has been in the past, we are able to participate in the same practice on a scale that permeates our lives much more frequently. YouTube is filled with videos of nostalgia for those who lived in the 90's and 80's, you can find bumper stickers on FB that indeed refer to current trends, but also things our parents told us stories about when we were kids, blogs all over the web give opinions about music and film, so often doing so through reference "sounds like..." "reminds me of..." We are taking these technologies offered to us, and using them to talk about what came before us instead of who we are as a generation, and what our characteristics mean: how they should shape what choices we make now.

Now, are these types of discussion anything new? Of course not, people have talked about the past since there could be one, and these modern tools are used for much more than just looking back. What I wonder is if the massive increase of scale from a smoky basement where one discuss art with friends to a "location" populated by billions - in a span of 20-30 years mind you - has left us suddenly aware of how we all relate to each other. The actual technology we use is moving forward, but so much of it opens the ability for this type of past-focused communication to increase.

The only reason I even attempt to draw out cause & effect is simply a matter of me recently thinking of three things at the same time. Art, (mostly referring to music, film and dance as I am more in tune with those mediums) the current state of it, and how that differs from the past state of it. I don't know if any of this actually is true, but it's a thought. All I know is that I rarely feel like I'm having new experiences, but instead being subjected to rehashed ideas. Artists like Animal Collective and Tv on the Radio work to prove this feeling as near-sighted/unfounded, and maybe there really aren't that many 'Revolutionists' during any one time. Possibly I'm only glamorizing the history of life before my time.

But all I can see when I look back is the "golden age" of film in the 30's and 40's, the creation of modern dance in the early part of the 20th century/late 19th century, total post modern overhaul in the 60's, and the rise of rock and roll 40's-60's/70's. What is our claim to fame? What are we as a generation doing - not simply to make a name for ourselves, but to live lives worthy of being given a name? I'm not saying our art is less than that of the past century, but more that the art which I see feels more like an echo than the origination of an idea.

But maybe the culprit - if there even is one - lies in the last sentence of my first paragraph: "Our technology is moving forward." I wonder if our generation is that of technology. Our geniuses are creating Google and Twitter, instead of being inspired to make the next Sergeant Pepper's. These technologies are the pieces of human creation that seem to be defining our generation. Not the music (insert other art form) or film content of our society. Maybe our generation is not those medium's time. Maybe ours is a time to focus on how we live our everyday lives in new ways via technology, and not how we talk about it, or what we choose to enjoy on an artistic level (Disclaimer: This is not to say that art does not affect how we live our lives).

But if that's true, that technology has taken the forefront and as a whole, art (both mainstream and more underground/less mainstream) is in a weird place. What do we do during this time as artists? Do we simply continue on with our work and wait for someone to come and take us into the forefront again? Do we even care? Should we just live our lives and let the tide of history take us where it may?

Speaking of art that is pushing forward, I'll let my ol' friend try and answer that question.

"No more talk about the old days; it's time for something great." - Thom Yorke