A Moment of Inspiration
I love how anything can be a moment of inspiration and for this research of cymatics and somatics within the body. The source of inspiration for this piece and research in particular evolved from a common but profound moment of when I was dancing wildly, being moved by music, while my mind was fully engaged in conversation. In this moment, I became conscious of the parallels taking place and honed in on the experience of my particles being moved. It was almost as if I could feel the atoms within me fluidly rearranging and transforming into different shapes, morphing and moving my body through space.
I was reminded of learning about cymatics, the visualization of soundwaves, and was struck by the realization that our bodies are mostly made of water and energy of course. How does the sound, and environment as a whole, inform how we move? This was the first question that kickstarted my 10-week S P A C E Residency.
Documenting the First Five Weeks
When I began my S P A C E Rising Residency in September, I was struck by how I was given the opportunity to dance in a studio for hours. For the first five weeks, I spent my time dancing and exploring my connection to self, to dance, to the space. I was alone for my rehearsals and since I decided that I’m a real artist now, I recorded each one with my Sony A7iv to began a strong practice of documenting the artistic process. This was definitely something that was brand new to me but felt important to be able to look back on later.
However, I will admit that it was a little negative at first. I began a process of filming my rehearsals, color-grading the footage at home and through that process, critique every movement I made. It felt that my movements were too rigid, too empty which contrasted heavily with how it felt in the moment. I couldn’t quite understand what I was missing.
Looking back now, I realize that as soon as I would hit the record button, my energy would shift to moving in a way of what I would deem “looks good” for the camera. This ended up with me generating movement that was very frontal focused and constantly being fixed in the moment. There was a lack of fluidity and grace which is what I desired the most.
Community Sharing Day
Community Sharing Day came quite quickly. A few days before the event, I attended MOOVLab, a movement lab I created with Richie Villa, a friend and collaborator of mine. During the lab, we can bring in curiosities and ideas that we would like to explore. That week, I came up a way to transition between a score of mine that moves between shape-shifting and directional movement. It emerged from a question I had in Eric Geiger’s Wednesday morning class where I had asked if he is more focused on creating shapes or directing energy/following pleasure when moving.
During Community Sharing Day, I played the Schumman Resonance (supposedly the resonance frequency of Earth) and also played an audio that moves from 10 BPM to 500 BPM within a span of a couple minutes. The score was to create a shape every time the metronome beats.
What was interesting about the experience in MOOVLab and during Community Sharing Day was that as the BPM went up, it was harder to create a shape and therefore enabled the movers to move towards smaller and/or directional movement using sound.
FindingJerry William, A Live Sound Artist
Around week 5, I decided to get serious. With a push from my mentor, Alyssa Rose, I started to think about collaborators. I didn’t necessarily want another dancer in the space but I wanted a real sound artist. And I was in desperate need of some mentorship.
I posted a note requesting a sound artist for this project and received a DM from a man named Jerry William. After peeking at his profile, I decided that he had everything I was looking for. He presented himself as a sound artist who plays with the handpan, sound bowls, guitar, and loopers to create beautiful soundscapes. His previous experiences mostly involved providing ambient music for yoga classes and such things so taking on the challenge of creating a soundscape for a dancer was an entirely different ordeal.
It was really powerful to work with a live sound artist like Jerry. I realized from the first rehearsal that before involving him, I would typically play songs that I enjoy but I always knew how they would go. With a live sound artist, it felt like it was a conversation between sound and dance which enriched the entire space and experience.
Lessons fromBrianna Nicole Lopez
I started feeling really stuck in my residency after community sharing day since now I had to figure out an actual piece for the S P A C E Rising Showcase which was coming up fast.
During a DISCO RIOT Slow Flow class, I received a fabulous idea while grooving to contact Brianna Nicole Lopez, a woman and a movement artist I have deeply admired for years. I decided to reach out to her that night to ask her to be my movement mentor and collaborator on this project.
This ended up being a wonderful idea and led to a profound series of conversations and insights as a wonderful connection over the next few weeks.
During our first virtual call, I shared my screen and played a snippet of my rehearsal with Jerry the week prior. Brianna gave me a seemingly simple but powerful cue to move from the heartspace and the navalspace.
That was the beginning of a powerful shift in the way that I move.
Over the next few weeks, we repeated this workflow and each time I felt more empowered in my movement.
During the next meeting, we spoke of gaze and the five types of gaze: eyes closed, internal (along the skinscape), local (what’s in the room with me), global/cosmic, and one more, the possessed stare.
In MOOVLab, practicing moving through these gazes and experiencing my witnesses reactions helped solidify the true power of the gaze as a powerful performance tool.
At some point, I told Brianna how I have been seeing my dance while watching the videos of me dancing and expressed a desire to break the movement habits. Later, I would learn more about moving between the unfamiliar and familiar as a paradox Brianna writes about in her Master’s Thesis. She told me something that will stick with me forever: I don’t have to break a habit. What I am doing, how I am moving, is enough. She used the phrase “being excruciatingly seen” in the context that I will be dancing, being witnessed, for 15 minutes straight and framed it as an act of courage. Upon hearing this, I began to feel the magnitude and finally breathe into the challenge I’ve created for myself.
In a way, I wanted to know her secret in how she was able to move the way she does so I asked her what she thinks about when she moves. In short, she replied that she thinks of it as life and death. At any moment, everything can change so we should dance while we can. She presented the idea of feeling completeing in the sense of “what would it be like to fall in love with every single thing you do, fall in love with this walk you’re doing and truly believe in it” She shifted my focus to think of presence in performance in terms of how and not what.
After that conversation, I had to run over from the Dorothea Laub Dance Place Green Room to the Light Box Theater next door. As I ran down the hallway with my backpack bouncing up and down on my back, I thought about Brianna’s question…what would it feel like to fall in love with this run, with this moment? My gaze widened and I began to breathe more deeply. The moment felt delicious. My body felt strong and swift. The colors on the walls and the blue sky peeking in beyond the walls delighted me. I noted how with this simple question, I was able to almost immediately delve into a state of greater presence.
Pausing for Presence
The piece began to take shape in the form of three main scores: moving from the heartspace, moving from the skinscape as a volume of particles, and finally through negative space, negating gravity and control.
As I performed in rehearsal, my mentor Marty Dorado and collaborator Casey Hall-Landers, both shared a note to take more pause in my movements. I realized that under the pressure of having to improvise for almost 15 minutes straight, I felt like I had to keep things interesting by constantly moving.
Brianna helped me understand that pause can be deeply captivating and an extension of your choicemaking. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the pause has to break or disrupt the movement. The movement can dissolve into pause. Pausing and stillness are other options for movement and can be just as interesting as moving big.
Questioning the Relationship Between Art and fear
The weekend before the show, I started to feel quite anxious about the last section of the piece and how to tighten up the movement scores in general. It was the perfect time for the Questioning retreat of dance, yoga, dharma, and meditation with Eric Geiger and Sarah Clark.
From the exercises and discussions we had, I began to realize that this piece and this research that initially began as an exploration of cymatics in the body and how I move began to transform into a potent research in boundlessness and how to move with greater presence and pleasure.
Without knowing it, I was trying to unveil what it means to be boundless in this body through dance. In a way, I have been researching this my entire life.
I decided to make a bold choice for the piece. I was going to do the last section in silence.
This was a very profound choice for me because for my entire life, I have used music as a tool to develop and deepen my dance. I decided that it would be necessary to try to attain the level of presence that I wanted to acheive within the piece.
I also finally figured out the story for the piece even though I initially felt it didn’t need one. Every piece needs a progression of some sort. A way to move forward.
I decided that I would begin with eyes closed in the primordial plane, low to the ground, sliding, yielding, and pushing to the sound of the sound bowls.
Then, I would move to a score of embracing the idea that I am a volume of moving particles. I moved between the heartspace, skinscape, and negative space to rhythmic handpan music.
Finally, I am pure energy. I create sound. I don’t dance but I am dance as it flows through me. My body is not a vessel, it is a part of the space that is moved.
In my movement research, these scores challenged me to dance with more of myself. How do I move in a way where my energy reaches beyond the scope of my skin, beyond my kinosphere.
How can I dance with more of myself?
How does my face dance?
How do my eyes transform the space?
How can I reach beyond the distal ends?
Where does my movement originate from?
These were just some of the questions that guided me right into the performance.
Showtime: The Challenges of Live improvisation
In the last two weeks of the residency, things became real and I suddenly became very aware of the challenge I had decided to take on. I was subjecting myself to being so seen that it was almost unbearable and paralyzing. But this was the work.
While some might consider improvisational performance and particularly, dance, to be lazy or inferior to choreography, I found the choreographed movement was far more challenging.
With choreography, you can fall back on your practice and essentially go on auto-pilot mode, knowing exactly how the piece is supposed to play out. An improvised, and I will add structured piece with particular and technically challenging scores to move through, requires a state of deep presence. The audience can feel when you slip “out of character”. If the voices in your head become too powerful, your witnesses will begin to feel it.
Over the two times I performed, I developed some strategies to get me ready for the stage in a way I had never intentionally made time for.
Friday Night Performance
On the drive over to Grossmont College, I started to feel nervous. It all became so real so fast. Thankfully, Brianna called me to wish me merde. She eased my worries and reminded me that it will be as it’s meant to be. Whatever I do is enough and what really matters is my experience of it.
“I love this. This is enough.”
This was the mantra she gave me for when the self-talk begins and my mind begins to drift.
As soon as I arrived, I spent an hour dancing on stage, becoming friends with it. I needed to not be so afraid of it anymore. Before the piece began, my nerves were so high that I felt that if I were to stop dancing, I would lose the presence and my desire to dance. It really terrified me in a way.
By the time Alyssa and Nicole began sharing the opening notes, I felt as if my heart was going to beat out of my chest. I decided to enter the stage with my eyes closed. As soon as I heard Jerry play the sound bowls, my heart eased and I felt as if I was doing Authentic Movement again. My mind eased and I began.
At the end of the piece, Jerry and I run and spiral into one another. Although I had practiced in my new flowy pants my mom bought specifically for the piece and I had practiced everything except the run at the end. By this I mean I fell hard onto my knees rounding the corner but it was kind of spectacular because Jerry immediately reached out his hand and picked me up, making it a powerful moment of collision. Later, he recounted that this was the only time in the piece that we had actually made contact. I ended up falling one more time to make the first one seem intentional and the piece came to a lovely close.
The lighting for the third section came on too soon and I felt like I was stuck in the center for the longest time. I wanted it to be over. I’m curious if the audience felt that.
Saturday Night Performance
Saturday was a big night. Emotions and energy was high knowing that this was not just closing night, but also the beginning of the end of the internship at DISCO RIOT. There was so much love and gratitude in the air.
The interns were guided to a small dressing room with five cards, each with a lavender rose, a brownie, and a pumpkin, carefully aligned along the counter. I felt the tears starting to well up as each of us exchanged words of gratitude and love for this cohort and for DISCO RIOT for this opportunity.
Right before the piece, I avoided dancing my heart out too much and instead directed my energy to writing down some affirmations and the scores… I am a body of matter… I am a volume of particles… I am energy… I am sound… I am space… I love this… I am enough.
Before the opening credits, Alyssa shared the idea of taking a body photograph before going on stage. Essentially, listening and taking a mental snapshot of where I am, what am I experiencing internally, mentally, physically, etc.
I remember feeling deep gratitude and a sense of power and destiny before stepping out on stage. It felt like this is the beginning.
I don’t remember much of what I did during the piece except a few key moments.
For one, I didn’t pray for the middle section to be over. I felt like I had really indulged in the dance and felt the same joy I do when I have danced in my room. I was doing my favorite thing in the world and I was captivating and I was enough. I was also more focused than before and my self-talk was more positive and encouraging than Friday night.
I also remember that during the part when Jerry gets up to meet me on the diagonal, my breath was so loud in the silence that I decided to hold my breath as I turned and met his gaze. For me, this moment felt powerful and viseral. I hope the audience felt it too.
I felt like I had achieved what I wanted to. A state of presence. Perhaps not boundlessness just yet but that’s where the research continues.