Here it is not even all the way through the first quarter of grad school, and there is of course way more happening than I could ever post, but I wanted to muse a bit on one of the things going on…
I’m in the midst of rehearsals for Anna Sokolow’s “Steps of Silence”. It was originally choreographed in 1968, and is being restaged from the Labanotation score by Valerie Mockabee (who originally restaged it in 2004 on a group in Utah). History nerd that I am, I would be excited about being part of this at any point in my life, but it is especially meaningful for me as part of my graduate school experience. In other classes, we’ve been talking about the nature of the art of dance, how its ephemeral nature affects scholarship on it and its transmission, and other such issues, and I’ve been reading about historical choreographers and works. Last week the dance critic Marcia Siegel and the dance historian Anne Dils were both present as Visiting Scholars, and they discussed the importance of dance literacy and knowing the field’s history. It was pretty neat to go from those discussions into rehearsal, and think about where the piece fit into dance history, its dance lineage, and also how it fit into the political/cultural events of the time, the war and social unrest of the ’60’s that she was directly responding to. It’s a different era now, much has happened in dance since then, but here we are again in a time of war and social divides, which for me gives double poignancy to connecting with and (hopefully) bringing alive this moment of dance history. After talking theory in bunches of classes (which I love, don’t get me wrong), it feels so good to get out and actually do something, not just talk about it. I feel that the activities of pondering ideas and dancing in this piece reinforce each other, making the experience richer than if I were just dancing it on its own.
Oh yes–I will be performing! Sometime on the weekend of March 14-16 2008 (exact schedule not yet set) at the Sharing the Legacy Festival in NYC, then May 1-3 2008 at Dance Downtown here in Columbus.
Whee!
