musings
speak
(or perhaps just a list of questions) on the culture of rehearsal, creative process, dancer agency and score based practices
by AURA FISCHBECK
AS A MOVEMENT-BASED ARTIST, my work is sus- tained and perpetuated by the dynamic inter- change which occurs between practices of noticing, investigating, and distilling. I’m an avid observer of the human condition posing as a choreographer. I’m currently interested in researching strategies which undermine habitual choice making, and inviting ambi- guity and comfortability with the unknown as a deliberate performative state. I’m inter- ested in framing the activities of the moving body with an allowance of its multiplici- tous nature. Along these lines I find myself increasingly interested in score-based prac- tices as a way to generate material as well as a way to tune and train my body and mind. I define score as the environment which creates the conditions for tracking a direct relationship with space, time, the senses, the materials, and one’s perceptual experience of this interchange. The score is alive. When I say the word “score” to myself, it automatically conjures a visual image of a web. Within this web or network I cultivate a practice of mapping particulars as land- marks toward which I can tune my percep- tual experience. There are particulars that might include directions for the body, the senses, directions in space and time. I have a sense of working with score as a simulta- neous experience of micro and macro. It’s a way of getting in touch with nature, not as an imagined or projected experience or place outside of myself, but as an experience that, like the natural world, doesn’t desire to be anything other than what it is. I’m look- ing to create conditions that allow for this. A score is a structure on which to rest or lean into and in so doing perhaps access an experience of a decentralized self. It isn’t me that I’m doing or showing. It’s the score. Yes, I’m responsible for my participation in it or in relationship to it, but the yielding to the container of the score grants a kind of dis- association from the need to assert an iden- tity in the usual way. Then another kind of being or doing is possible. In my experience the agency of each performer is amplified through directives that invite individual aes- thetics, choice. A tuning to the present that allows for our perception of what we are performing, or practicing performing, to be inherently inclusive of the unknown. The question of “what is choreography” is not a new one or a particularly interest- ing one, but because there isn’t one answer to the question, rather than invite an answer it invites musings of a multitude of possible answers to the question. Namely, there are an infinite number of ways to construct a dance, and it is useful to re-examine and re-investi- gate this terrain with each creative process. What does it mean to get in a room with people and move together with the intention of “making” something? How does the cul- ture we create in rehearsal process impact the “finished product”? It’s a strange phenom- enon—the rehearsal process—and for most dance artists the time spent in rehearsal greatly outnumbers the time spent in performance. And yet, to the greater public, this notion of rehearsal culture remains mysterious, and even to many dance artists laden with a his- tory of presumed roles, power structures, and behaviors. As a dancer you commit your time, your skill, your intelligence, and your physical attendance in service of the project. This isn’t questioned. It’s a given. Dancers expect this. But what does it actually mean? And what is being assumed? I find myself questioning: what is the nature of the assumptions of the dancer/choreographer relationship and how can we as artists be in more active contempla- tion of the culture we engender in our cre- ative processes? What do we want to do here? Why are we here? Are our reasons symbiotic?
In my current process I have felt my notions of what it means to be productive have shifted. I wanted to spend time with these people (Arletta Anderson, Deborah Karp, Phoenicia Pettyjohn, and Karla Quin- tero) doing and being and talking and mov- ing. I have felt the space of this creative pro- cess as a field in which to have exchanges – intellectual, physical, emotional. As we move closer to the performance event, I find myself considering how the end “product” of the dance is somehow a container or catch all for all the time we’ve spent together. And the residue of all the time spent, regardless of the material we have distilled into the piece, is present in the work as held by each person’s sense of history and memory, and the relation- ality between us. The piece exists as a docu- ment of our cumulative time spent together, a sort of spatio-temporal living bricolage. My desire in making this current work was to direct in such a way that in this con- stellation of people each person is very much individuated and distinct in the world of the piece. Within this environment we are consensually co-existing. How can each woman be navigating the multiplicity of her own inner world(s) and bodily expressions and also be in this collective activity? How does the environment, the sound score and eventually the presence of an audience sup- port this? Then there is the question of how the body is “prepared” (like an instrument) to perform the work. This brings to mind John Cage’s prepared pianos, that were made to alter the possible sounds and combinations of sounds available from the instrument. To me this is also what we do in rehearsal – it’s not just about practicing the material, but about cul- tivating a shared culture that is specific to this particular dance and we are all innately co-creators in this. How can our rehearsal practices prepare us, or tune us not to attach to a previous precious iteration but to allow for multiple iterations to co-exist and thus inform one another as multiple but equally valued experiences? My work with score and scoring has helped facilitate this possibility. I believe there is limitless potential for each creative process to be an opportunity for reinvention and rejuvenation, brought forth through a continuous reinvigoration of our rehearsal and performance practices. I don’t know if I even know what all of this means yet, but even just the curiosity and the acknowledgement of the need to practice this kind of examination feels radical and necessary. AURA FISCHBECK is a San Francisco based move- ment artist, teacher and writer. She creates dance theater performance events which investigate and communicate the bodies intelligence and reflect the complexity of the contemporary human experi- ence. Her work seeks to examine the intersection of movement, language and culture as a bodily poetics. Aura Fischbeck’s choreography has been presented nationally in series, festivals and shared programs since 2001. Aura is a 2nd generation dance artist. A Philadelphia native, Aura Fischbeck received her earliest dance training from her mother Brigitta Her- rmann, a student of Mary Wigman and co-founder and co-artistic director of Group Motion Dance Com- pany, and her father Manfred Fischbeck, co-founder and co-artistic director of the Group Motion Dance Company. She holds a B.A. in dance and poetry from the Naropa University where she studied under Barbara Dilley, among others. aurafischbeckdance.org
Aura Fischbeck Dance / video stills by Mark McBeth
matter how tightly prescribed it may be. So then it might follow that a dance is a type of communal property. I do believe that as artists we are made by and evolve through our making activities. How does the rehearsal process function as a microcosm for the way we wish the world to function? Often in my experience with cre- ating new work the time spent in rehearsal versus performance is probably 30 to 1. So what are these minutes, hours, days, weeks, months comprised of and how do they have meaning in and of themselves regardless or even in spite of the outcome of the final product, AKA “the performance”? The poli- tics we espouse in the world are reflected in the way we operate in our most intimate environments, and I include the rehearsal space to be in this category. Can we employ practices in our rehearsal processes that blow open conventions in the same way we’d like our work to function?
Who are we serving and who is being served? What is the line between design and domi- nation? Who gets to choose? Does everyone in the room feel empowered? Valued? Who ultimately owns the work if it’s been created collectively? In dialogue with friend and col- league Christy Funsch (with whom I have spent countless hours in creative process and dialogue), she put it aptly: “Rehearsal culture and the state of the working room are too often assumed to be agreed-upon constructs... . . . What if we were as bold and imaginative in our methodologies as we are with our content? Who makes the work, who is the work, where does the work reside if not in the bodies and minds of those enacting it?” Dances cannot be relics or museum pieces as they are not objects but rather lived expe- riences. Even the most historical dances, in the performance of them, are created anew by the bodies enacting the choreography, no
Aura Fischbeck Dance presents DUSK: Nov 9-11, Joe Goode Annex, SF. joegoode.org
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in dance NOV 2018
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