We showed several new sections of Sixty at DTW on March 20. I was particularly interested in people’s reaction to a duet that we’re working on for Paul and Eun Jung. The duet is in three parts. The first is loosely based on one of the duets in Heatwave, another section of Sixty. It’s an intimate duet with close, complex partnering. In the last part, Paul dances alone. In the middle section Paul has a camera and takes pictures as Eun Jung moves through an ordinary day with familiar gestures like washing her face, pulling on her pants, pouring coffee. The dilemma is how to make a man taking pictures of a woman look something other than predatory. It turns out to be difficult to do no matter what your intention is. In this case my intention was that the picture taking be an attempt to remember Eun Jung. My own idea of what I was after blinded me to seeing it how others might see it. In the first version Paul stayed on the periphery of the stage with the camera. When the other dancers said it looked like he was stalking her I was shocked. When an audience member said the camera objectified Eun Jung and she found it disturbing, I was completely surprised. So we’ve experimented with different ways of connecting Paul and Eun Jung through the camera. I don’t think we’ve solved this yet.
Another new section that we’ve added is an excerpt from Plain Crossing, made in 1977. Last summer the dancers saw the piece on video and wanted to learn it. We decided we could do an excerpt of it as part of Sixty. The dancers learned it from the video. I’ve added another layer – as the dancers are dancing, I talk about some of the things that were happening in the world the year the piece was made. I also go in and out of the dancing with them. I love being back inside that piece after so many years.
One of the ideas I received for Sixty is an elegant and witty creation that begins with an anagram and develops into words, their synonyms, two separate stories made from the synonyms, one story with the ideas of both merged, and ends with a drawing based on the story. We’re working with the structure of this amazing process. We started with a set of letters from the dancers’ names, made words, each dancer wrote a story with their words – they are zany and full of wonderful images – then made a short dance based on his or her story. Now we’re using these solos to build duets and trios.
It always amazes me how no matter what you start with, anything that any of us creates is informed by the particulars of who we are and everything that we’ve ever thought, felt, or experienced. That’s what makes dancing and choreography both thrilling and terrifying – we are always revealing ourselves.
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