CF: Say more about working until you feel a shift in energy. AF: Yes, this is a big and actual experience. Because of all the screen time I have a profound experience of shift- ing away from it and I’m usually doing our practice at the end of that screen time day. So it’s such a needed change. And it comes on slowly, like at first I don’t feel like doing anything, but I know I have to do it (like brushing my teeth) and so I go and I find a spot and begin . . . and I think I know I feel a change when I feel I become part of the environment almost, that’s when I feel the biggest shift. I don’t always get there, but when I do it’s very restorative. It feels both cellular and chemical. AF: You’re in a place with real winter weather. Dancing outside in snow, and frigid temperatures. How is your sense of perception affected? CF: I grew up in upstate New York so I have roots in the bodily discomfort and psychological dread of winter. The reduction in access. And I am overwhelmed with nostal- gia for and memories of winter and seasonal drama. I appreciate having to adapt. We don’t have to do much of that in Northern California. I recognize, acutely, the privi- leges of access I have. I have a functioning body, a job, an apartment, and a car. So I can be in my apartment mov- ing, I can walk out the door and be in my (safe) neighbor- hood, and I can get in my car and go to the woods. The actual physical difficulties in working outside are welcome challenges. It’s a matter of How more than What and this for me is a comfort zone because of my allergic reaction away from content. I have to prepare and watch weather and tread carefully and push through the weight of snow to get to my spot in the woods. The quietude is addicting. You can practically bite into it. The sculpturing of tree branches by snow and ice is breath-taking. Again, I have nothing to add to the environment, and everything to receive from it by observing. Because of the cold, I can’t sit or be in stillness for too long and so the prompt of doing while observing has been rich. I can see the ruin I bring to my spot by the marks I leave in the snow and the earth. I forgive myself for this. CF: I realize I am cautious that scores do not become content. I like the word “prompt” instead as it’s like an initial push. I sometimes think of a score as something I have to follow, complete, or fulfill. I use improvisation as a way to change my perception, heighten my perception, and attend to perception. Often I find a prompt or score is a starting place to frame or anchor the shift in percep- tion I am seeking. And I appreciate how words frame action. I have been enjoying our lists and collection of words. I am having fun choosing words at random, using SCORES and POTENTIALS AF: What’s your approach to score making?
them to frame the practice, then re-imagining them as I document or write about the session.
AF: I often think of a score as a sort of web or a map, a way to hone my attention and perception but also a way to track particulars. And I both like and push against hav- ing something to follow, complete or fulfill. Again I think it comes back to task, and the rigor of ongoingness that we are inviting. If the “mind is a muscle” (Thanks again Yvonne Rainer) then dancing is certainly a state of mind. I’m loving the journey of it! Grateful for it. CF: Are there ways this score, this practice, could involve others? How do you see that happening beyond SIP? AF: I would love to continue to evolve this research into a cycle of score-based performance work. I love the way working with a score to develop performance work gives individual agency inside the creative process, while still placing the collaborators in a shared world or context. I can imagine the language and prompts we have developed through this practice being repurposed in a variety of capac- ities. I have visions of being in spaces and performers/ audi- ence/community being there and roaming about and every- one somehow being co-creators. I have no idea how it’s going to go post-quarantine but I do have some instincts. How about you? Has this been generative for you?? CF: I would say it has been generative in terms of the unique thoughts and perceptual shifts that emerge from the moving moment. And so, yes, in the doing of this practice I find my decision-making lays itself bare. Clarity may be fleeting but potentials arise. I trust the inevitability of this completely and bring this trust into the working room. In conclusion, we are not concluding anything really. As we write this, our practice is still continuing, and it brings to mind the many dances and creative acts that are going on all over the world. Something about having to find ways to connect with one another through the distance conjures a longing and there is a sweetness to that. CHRISTY FUNSCH formed Funsch Dance in 2002 and has since been present- ed nationally and internationally. She holds an MFA and a Laban Movement Analysis Certification. In 2015 she taught her improvisational practice 100 Days Score at ImpulsTANZ, and she became the first woman to be granted permis- sion to perform Daniel Nagrin’s 1965 solo, Path . In 2019 she was a Fulbright Scholar at Lisbon’s Escola Superior de Dança in 2019. funschdance.org AURA FISCHBECK is a San Francisco based dance artist, movement educator and writer. In 2008 she formed Aura Fischbeck Dance. Her work seeks to create performance events which investigate and communicate the body’s intelligence and reflect the complexity of the contemporary human experience. She is cur- rently working on her first self published book of scores for creative process and practice, entitled “Shapeshifter.” She holds a B.A. in dance and poetry from the Naropa University and is slated to begin pursuit of an MFA this summer, through University of the Arts in Philadelphia. aurafischbeckdance.org
SPACE and SITE CF: Regarding context and space, once you mentioned the experience of taking the “private life” of the studio setting into the public, and that this was a reverse (converse?) of the pandemic making your private space at home public via remote teaching. Can you say more about this flip of space? And can you say more about “letting yourself be seen” as a prompt for you? AF: I have over this SIP time become increasingly aware of how, by teaching remotely from my living room, the space that I live in has now been opened up as a public space. People can see my stuff, my partner wandering into the kitchen to get a snack, etc. The for- mality of going to the neutral space of a studio has been replaced by a sort of virtual entering of people into my private space and I into theirs. It’s fascinating. At the beginning of SIP I started, like many people, with trying to dance in my living room, but the sense of confinement was starting to feel crushing. Then you and I had a conversation and you said you had started to dance outside and I decided I needed to be brave like you and find some way to be moving in open space. I found the soccer field in the Golden Gate park as a first place to
feel comfortable enough to just dance by myself and be seen. I have had many experiences of improvising outside with other people, but the leap to dancing outside alone was something else. So part of my work now is going to various locations and letting my experience be in part about the challenge of letting myself be seen in what feels like an exposed state, and yes, I am also seeing. I work on allowing the difficulty of this to be included. Sometimes I can barely do it, and sometimes I feel totally unconcerned with whether anyone is paying attention to me. CF: Do you approach the sites differently? AF: It’s very pragmatic. I have a few spots close to my house that feel safe. Two of them are on the USF campus and the other is a parking ramp across the street that isn’t very busy. I think more so than approaching the loca- tions differently, it’s that each day is different - how many people are around, what is the weather like, what is my energy level. I try to stay in a state of observing and doing, and lately it has felt like something between being and performing. Duration is also a thing— sometimes I set a timer, and sometimes I tell myself to work as long as it takes to feel a change or shift of energy.
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n amp l i f y u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n a p l i f y
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