CounterPULSE » Blog

Winter Special Snapshot: Hotel in a Bottle

2012-02-08T21:11:53Z

Entering Underland

2012-02-06T06:20:26Z

I’m thrilled to be back at CounterPULSE, about a year after our first ARC residency. The piece we created through the residency, FRIEND came out of the recent loss of one of my closest friends to a brain tumor at the beginning of our time at CounterPULSE. In working on that piece and unearthing stories about the beginning of our friendship in 11th grade I was flooded by other stories. I had met Sharon during my one year of attending Berkeley High School and we were part of a group of friends that came together quickly, briefly and intensively–united around shared desires for consciousness expanding, artistic exploration and boundary pushing of many kinds. Sharon had been the one friend I had kept in touch with after high school, through college and into our adult lives. As she died, many of the friends from that wild year reunited at her bedside.

It was wonderful to reconnect, and it also stirred up a potent mixture of memories and unresolved feelings. During that year in the late 1980′s we opened many doors that flooded us with more insights, questions, darkness and light than our young psyches were prepared for. Some of us were able to recover gracefully, and some (like myself) were cracked open and tossed around by the winds of confusion for many years.

I am exploring once again all that was unleashed for me through that rush of spiritual seeking, psychedelic drug-tripping, sexual exploration, rebellion and power play with the help of the Dandelion Dancetheater ensemble.

I relayed my stories in as much detail as I could remember to Mantra Plonsey, who then wrote a script that became the seed and structure of our new work, ARTHUR IN UNDERLAND. The piece is taking me back into a frightening and wonderful land wherein I seemed to have left important pieces of myself–a sense of wonder and delight, a longing for discovery and a trust in the mysterious synchronicity of the path that is always at my feet.

The story of ARTHUR IN UNDERLAND is fictional, and yet it feels painfully true to me, more so than if we had tried to retell the literal story of that time. I am powerfully reminded once again of my love of performance as a vehicle for healing and transformation. I find myself deeply nourished every time we enter this dream-world in rehearsal. It’s uncomfortable, electrifying, provocative, overwhelming, joyful and very mysterious. I feel honored to be working alongside such courageous and generous artists, and to do so in a venue that creates such a safe space for risky exploration.

Here’s a 3 minute preview of Arthur’s journeys:

Dandelion\’s \”Arthur in Underland\” – 3 minute preview

Quarter 4: Collaboration

2012-02-03T16:44:15Z

Special thanks to Lynn Huang for writing and contributing this post to the Murakami conversation. Lynn is one of the four talented performer/collaborators in Hotel in a Bottle, which opens next Friday!

“Portales! We’re doing portales piquitos and then portales grandes, right?” Erin asked. “Si! Si!” we replied in turn. Despite the fact that none of us actually speak Spanish, in the context of our rehearsals, we did. The five ‘portals’ scattered around the perimeter of the stage in our structured improvisation became ‘portales.’ We had slipped into another language, just as we slid down the oil ramps of our ‘portales’ to enter into a new state of being where we had no skin—just blood, bones, and muscle exposed to air.

Breaking out into a foreign language was the perfect metaphor for dancemaking, which is essentially learning to speak another language. It was easier to put it in another language; that way, words, movements, and concepts were expectedly unfamiliar, and therefore liberating. Speaking Spanish in rehearsal was novel, just as the ideas we were working with were foreign. We were creating a new language through our bodies, embracing and reveling in its inherent strangeness.

We fell into the varied landscapes of Murakami’s novels, shimmying down to rest for a moment beneath their skins. Taking a line-by-line approach, we held photocopied pages of his text in our hands as we stepped onto the smooth studio floors and allowed his words to direct our movement. We climbed across ladders on the painted white wall of the stage and constructed wells within our minds. I felt the cold on my skin and the blackness around me within my own well. The darkness was total inside and outside and in that moment, I could not remember the shape of my face. We translated our internal landscapes into physical movement.

And then the movement ceased to matter. We had been transformed. The piece developed a life of its own, with its flickering walls, the projected images that would engulf us or replace us. We became its willing or perhaps unwilling inhabitants—isolated, observing, waiting.”

Alexander McQueen is dead, long live the McQueen

2012-01-30T23:42:48Z

From Savage Beauty:

pg 17
“As a human being, he was far more complex, elusive and indeed more magical than any reductive media incarnation.”

pg 18
“…Rather than waiting for someone to disappoint he provokes them into a hostile reaction which confirms his worst suspicions and justifies his own behavior.”

pg 19
“It had very little to do with the clothes and more to do with him as a person. And it’s fundamentally true of anybody. Any interest in the clothes is secondary to the interest in a designer. You need to know you’re a good designer as well though…”

pg 20
“We’re not talking about models’ personal feelings here we’re talking about mine. It’s all about the way I feel about my life.”

pg 26
“He always needed to see how far he could push things, how far he could push himself and everyone who worked with him.”

pg 30
“You’ve got to learn the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.”

pg 74
“There’s blood beneath every layer of skin.”

Quarter 3: The music of Murakami

2012-01-29T17:58:04Z

If Murakami’s works came to life, and you could suddenly take a stroll through them, chances are music would be everywhere. Chauffeured in a car, you would hear “the classical strains of Chopin.” In the bathroom of Denny’s, Hall & Oates’ I can’t go for that would be playing. And jazz would fit into the small spaces everywhere else.

I knew when I started this piece, music would figure in significantly to it, and my musical selections might not match audience expectations. When you think of a soundscape to define Murakami, your first thoughts may tend towards atmospheric, mysterious music. Check out Murakami’s website, and you’ll hear what I mean.

However, that sound is rarely found within Murakami’s novels. Instead, he uses a great deal of specificity about music, down to the conductor, artist, soloist or label. He incorporates various genres of music inside each chapter – ranging from jazz to American pop in the 60s and 70s, classical and J-Pop.

Most of Hotel in a Bottle has been created in silence, with music entering into the process only in the last month. Because music can have such a strong effect on movement choices, I wanted to develop the dance first. Hotel in a Bottle incorporates a sonic pastiche, with music and sounds taken from several different novels. Typically, I incorporate a wide variety of sound into my work, and it certainly has been a pleasure selecting from such a broad playlist.

Working with Bert Bergen has been a treat; he has opened my ears to new sounds and genres in this process. He has helped me to find the sound of Murakami without always going for the most well-known songs. This allows the piece to create new connections to Murakami without necessarily triggering memories associated with popular songs.

Two weeks to go!

Erin blogs regularly about her process at erinmalley.tumblr.com

indifference – Lisa Townsend Co.

2012-01-30T20:13:33Z

VIDEO #3 – Waves

I had the whole sky in my eyes and it was blue and gold.

indifference – Lisa Townsend Co.

2012-01-28T08:53:06Z

VIDEO #2 – habit, 8 years

is life to be lived rather than mulled over or dreamed about? do we exist among or against each other in a brutal adventure, to which we must by our actions give meaning? is our direct experience our only guide?

To the Singers of Tales Rehearsal at CounterPULSE

2012-01-26T18:56:08Z

Winter Special Snapshot: To the Singers of Tales

2012-01-25T22:32:56Z

Svetlana Spajic Sings of Serbia, by Jaime Robles

2012-01-21T00:05:50Z