Image: Ana Mendata Siluetas Series

    The concrete nature of bodily being is typically in contrast with the ephemeral nature of the performative space. In An Ontology of Performance Peggy Phelan states that “performance’s being becomes itself…

Image: Kat Brown, photographed by Kat Brown

Because I am 1,000 Grains of Sand -

December 8, 2015

Site Specific

UT, US

Artist Statement

Because I am 1,000 Grains of Sand is a long duration movement piece that took place in the desert of Southern Utah. It is because of our bodily being that we experience ourselves as…

IX

"There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we…

Alexa Salamé, photo by Shige Moriya

Alexa Salamé

On Poetics

I’ve been gently navigating my way through Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space for a time now. In it,…

Psychological Examination of the Presence of Butoh Dancers’ Body

Tadashi Kato, Ph.D., Fairmont State University

Introduction

My first encounter with Butoh was Kunishi Kamiryo’s performance in Tokyo in Spring 1984.  I was a college freshman and was recommended to see his performance from a fellow student in Akira Kasai’s Eurythmy class.  At that time, I did not know anything about…

Alexa Salamé, Starting

Solo

By Alexa…

Landscape with Red Spots  c.1913, Wassily Kandinsky

“Art only begins where imitation ends”

Oscar Wilde De Profundis…

Photo: Painting by Kat Brown

    Dance is an art that can only exist through continuous embodiment, it’s a living expression of self and symbol that exists in the perpetual present moment. Dance is made through bodies in motion; the body is a biological entity, but the body in dance is also a conceptualized, cultured and…

(Disclaimer: while seemingly unrelated to leimay's rehearsal process, I felt this post belonged here, next to all the others)

There’s something so

tragically selfish

about writing—

To be kept away from the

distractions

of day to day,

Content with the isolation

needed to draw out what

lies beneath.

How arrogant

of one to think that

solitude could lead to

greatness!  That the things…

Something that I keep going back to during the borders creation process is T.S. Eliot's poetic work, "Four Quartets"

Aviar row clanus un

briar clowman brutanite

xyalowayo gune zarrowmen

saracophonus ack lorrum

sunder bode wrek clune tao

amor ella bon gia flo risen

agga menna r ella etu bofey

omba chekka menna don

gunda zao fen ewwe len

graphon oh gunda chi valloway

shrinance eel ophan frenma

halloway dryscue lario

rander umprietta bel pro nassum

ephrennial khan jour nassa tek

honorennial benna…

Tess Dworman, photo by NICOLE SCHNEIT.

I met Tess Dworman to interview her at the café at BRIC in Forte Greene near BAM and the Mark Morris Dance Center. It was one of the first beautiful, sunny days in May this year where everyone was making excuses to be walking outside. Chatting with Tess for a little over an hour with sandwiches,…

Dancers: Adam Gauzza and…

Dancers: Adam Gauzza and Calvin Tsang | PC: Chelsea Robin Lee

In 1948, Alfred Hitchcock created the film Rope - a version of a play inspired by the Leopold-Loeb murder of 1924, in which Nathan Leopold…

Yuko Takeda, Paul Peers and Tina Mitchell

In June this year, Paul Peers and myself traveled to Finland to participate in a residency called Saari, funded by the Kone Foundation. This fully funded residency not only paid for the flight to Finland and accommodation, but gave us a living allowance and an enormous fully equipped rehearsal room to use exclusively for…

When I was first tackling the concept of borders there were many examples that came to mind fairly quickly. Some of these examples were metaphorical and others more concrete - all of them sharing what I now consider to have been a weakness in my foundational understanding of what a border can be. I was constantly envisioning a structure that divided two things. Perhaps these things were once one thing. Perhaps they had actually never made contact with each other, and the drama before me was…

“To understand that the self must leave if the Loa is to enter, is to understand that one cannot be man and god at once,” wrote artist and filmmaker, Maya Deren, in her work on Haitian Vodou, The Divine Horsemen.  In order for a Loa, or spirit, to possess a human, the human body must become vacant or…

(some notes written in response to the subject of BORDERS)

                         Le Bout du Monde (The End of the World), Leonor Fini

Words do not express thoughts very…

Gin nam bah Kah Feta Teko She min Koo gah bah go ley nam ka fah toh il kee tel em a

gooo beefini katem ishi trim cino go ic pah. Fenekap loit teenab zarkowi batzarken

lymphazodee titzooboo kentanaboo pleecow pertenabini fetakuno bleep a boon keen klintaro

pertabula sheet ex glintara hicular etta bin setoil ashook bin etta bin eshit utza aren thift

usheren owenif eteation ardile icot boreen otome ownsky agels poex alings orth utler iance

eldona verayne…

Puzzle Reflection:

 For some reason this was such a challenging task for me, on multiple levels. First of all I think it was hard for me to stay true to the creation of souly action and reaciton movement. I wanted to do moment in the duet that involved both parties initiation. Also I had trouble keeping true to the idea of actually fitting together like a puzzle. Especially during the transitions. But probably the most challenging of all was remembering the duet for the…