The Show Must Go On

On Hold...

Like so many artists across the country, I have cancelled my show and have no idea when or if it will go on. But it's already on, baby. The generation process began last winter and it has been moving steadily on since then. 

Often, choreographers sit and stew with the flotsam and jetsam of life. We sit and stare at the movements and flow until something settles or rises to the surface. As if we are reading the tea-leaves on a grand scale; we see patterns emerge and we make sense of them through movement. We pin down or leave mystery as we see fit and what we leave our public with is mere minutes of the days, months, and years it has taken for us to collate the information newly settled into the patina of our own life experience. 

I may finally have my show, or I may turn our hours of rehearsal into a video. I don't know. But I do know that I don't feel the need to stay in a holding pattern. I want to acknowledge that choreography is so much more than the sum of its parts and share the grand ideas behind the minutes of product. 

Over the next few weeks, I'll share some of my thoughts on the dances you may never see. The thoughts won't necessarily be pretty. The part of choreography that I love is that I read, read, read, and let the information sort itself out. Putting pen to paper is a whole other animal. 

Photo: JHsu Media

Part 1: The first dance

The movement came first and the research began within the process of creating the movement. I was exhausted and needed to create something gentle. Something gentle to teach, something gentle for my mind, something healing. I began with that and discovered...

“Navigating the Firing Field” 

Spacetime Dance

Choreographer: Katie Sopoci Drake

Performers: Amanda Blythe, Jordan Gehley, Althea Skinner

Soundscape by Katie C. Sopoci Drake, Use of “shai pu beng pai, regnmalers, and kolhoz diformin mascularity spendful” by Sofie Loizou through a CC BY-NC 3.0 license

https://vimeo.com/386873697

Program Description

“Navigating the Firing Field” is a work that is performed with eyes closed. It uses improvisational scores and set movement to explore the vulnerability and tenderness of a body in space as it navigates in the dark. The dancers were directed to find each other by sound and touch, and to navigate by memory. I began by examining the comfort found in familiar spaces and ended up diving into the neuroscience behind navigation.

Firing Field: a region where place cells (neurons in the hippocampus) exhibit a high firing rate. Firing fields are thought to provide a "cognitive map" of specific places in our environment.

Katie’s Description

This 12 minute trio begins by traversing a dark landscape in gentle waves. One, by one, 3 dancers softly palpate their way across the space. With their searching movements, they safely find their way to each other to reform into a gentle embrace. 

Small escapes and captures lead into movement towards the viewer. It is now we begin to suspect, to see that their eyes are closed. These palpating movements that bring the trio towards us in starts and stops are because they are venturing slowly away and refinding each other. 

From here, greater risks are taken. 

A duet with one body clinging to another, just a hint of touching the ground before being guided back up and away again. 

A solo that glides so close to the separated pair but skirts away again. 

The risk of traversing the space to reunite with the lost pair. 

The solace of finding each other again only to push away and trust in memory and feeling to stay together. 

Larger and larger risks that rely on the memory, the feel, the internal landscape we have built in our minds, our senses telling us that the breath we hear sounds like a curve, that one a push, that one the relief of an ending. 

Furtive steps and faster gatherings. 

The feeling of the body next to yours. 

Finally we rise and press against one another and gaze for the first time upon the widening landscape with our eyes and see that our memory has served us well. 

Choreographic Prompts

Connor, M. (2019). Wayfinding : the science and mystery of how humans navigate the world. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Eichenbaum, H., Dudchenko, P., Wood, E., Shapiro, M., & Tanila, H. (1999). The Hippocampus, Memory, and Place Cells. Neuron, 23(2), 209–226. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0896-6273(00)80773-4

Mitchell, A. S., Czajkowski, R., Zhang, N., Jeffery, K., & Nelson, A. J. D. (2018). Retrosplenial cortex and its role in spatial cognition. Brain and Neuroscience Advances, 2, 239821281875709. https://doi.org/10.1177/2398212818757098

Niediek, J., & Bain, J. (2014). Human single-unit recordings reveal a link between place-cells and episodic memory. Frontiers in systems neuroscience, 8, 158. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2014.00158