A Company Member’s Perspective: Post Performance

By Tricia Olds

My biggest fear about the show was that breaking the fourth wall would make the audience feel alienated. And if they were uncomfortable how would we deal with that in such a small space? But I soon found as our audiences grew our shared need for connection and our invitation to stay in the present squashed our anxieties and opened the door to possibility. The more people we had in the space the more excited they were to be a part of the process.

We seemed to start each show with a promise to our audience that we wouldn't leave them for a moment and would take care of them for the forty-five minutes we had them.

I learned from Kate the importance of going to the end of each movement. Her choreography has an athleticism that requires physical and emotional agility and total commitment of both from the performer. I can't wait to delve deeper into the process, to find more connections in the work and take this baby to Canada!

A Company Member's Perspective: In Response to "Reflection"

by Adam Roper

Similarly, I realize that the show was so universal. In that, people who do not have any sort of theatre training can "get it". I am so tired of pieces that seem to me like an inside joke. But it "While We Were Waiting" is not about excluding the audience, or even about making the 6 artists on stand a collective, but instead to show everyone that we are all the same. We all experience loss, replacement, fear, nervousness, joy, laughter, love, struggle and boredom. And that all of these things can be beautiful! And that we can feel all of these things without fear of being judged. :)

Reflection: Post-Performance Thoughts from a Company Member

by Josh Rowe

In the week leading up to performances we did several run-throughs of our show for small invited audiences. After each show we had very blunt conversations with our audiences about the work. We asked questions, answered questions, and went through the work with a fine-tooth comb searching for moments that seemed dishonest or unclear. What I initially interpreted to merely be final dress rehearsals quickly gave way to a very productive workshop. Many of our audiences’ remarks were accounted for, responded to, and deeply, sincerely appreciated. And although our audience certainly had a few gripes that needed to be tended to, we were overwhelmed by how easily the conversation came, as if these friends had been acquainted with the work as long as we had. Then, during the week of performance, we were fortunate enough to conduct a few talk-backs—check in with our audience, answer questions, divulge various impetuses for the work. Throughout these conversations I was struck time and time again at how intimately our audience was engaging with our work. Each audience had a few people that would recite, verbatim, the ideas, emotions, questions that Kate brought to us in our first week of process. I suppose it’s my own bias or expectation that contemporary dance or experimental theatre often leaves an audience with an abundance of unanswered questions. I can’t tell you how many performances I’ve been to that feel like a half-hearted tour through a foggy, self-indulgent dream. It was so nice, so reaffirming to be apart of something that was actually communicating, without, I hope, being overtly literal or obvious. In this union of ideas, emotion, and movement, I feel we arrived at a widely accessible language.

A Company Member’s Point of View: Week Four in the Studio

By Lauren Ferebee

"if a candle remembers a little more than necessary, it goes out. if it remembers a little less than necessary, it goes out. if only it could teach us, while burning, to remember correctly." george seferis

When I was eighteen, someone gave me an unmarked black journal (a journal that eventually I accidentally handed over to the NYU library, mistaking it for an overdue book on linguistic deconstruction). I had started writing in it a few months after my birthday in the waning days of my high school career. In it I kept lists of moments in my life that happened, moments I was afraid of forgetting. I remember being so profoundly overwhelmed that year: going to Europe for the first time, leaving Texas, falling in love, getting accepted to college.

I felt then that life was happening so quickly around me that all I could possibly manage was to pluck out moments - rather like photographs - to record a fistful of things that might guard against the eventual forgetting. And I was afraid of losing these intangible things, afraid of who I might become stripped of written memory - stripped of the ability to point at a map or a picture or a note and say "there" or "I know that" or "this is where I have been."

But surely life is not at all like that; neither is memory. Life forces forward movement - in fact it asks nothing but the simple and demanding task of somehow passing time. The question of "living presently," seems almost tautological in nature. After all, living presently in the most literal sense is not a choice: life compels you into the present, puts you, however unwillingly, into the moment that is constantly ending, constantly beginning again. To say that living presently is a function of somehow liberating oneself, of pushing something behind us and grasping what lies ahead, we ignore a formidable body of psychological and scientific work suggesting that our biological animal selves are conditioned by our experiences, that we are living embodiments of everything we have known.

Then the question becomes one of balance: how do we balance our past with our autonomous sense of "present self" - or do these terms, these thoughts, even exist? It is most certainly a question for philosophers. I don't know much about philosophy persay. I am, though, a writer of things, I am filled with the need to imprint, to inventory experience. I understand a deep fear of loss; I understand it in myself, in my eighteen-year-old self so filled with endings and beginnings.

But I also know that five years after losing my black journal, I still remember the orange tree in the Barcelona convent I visited that year; I have yet to forget the way my feet hurt after three days in Rome; I occasionally smell the hyacinth and newly-mown grass scent of my high school graduation - I even remember the heat of my boyfriend's truck bed where we used to cloudgaze. And all of that makes me think that to forget, to lose, to abandon the "holding-onto" makes it possible to fill the present with the resonances of memory, almost like memory is an instrument that we play again and again and again, in the hope of creating a new melody.

The Creator's Perspective: Week Four in the Studio

By Kate Hilliard

We still have a long way to go, but there is a very clear understanding of what we have created together. After spending four weeks discussing what it means to be present, our definitions vary. There is however a consensus that living presently does not negate the past nor does it prevent us from setting goals for the future. We understand the act of being present includes constantly recognizing the immediate world around us. To live presently we ask ourselves to be open to possibility and sensitive to others. We are aware of when people leave and how it makes us feel. We understand that everything leaves an imprint.

I am grateful to Laurence Gingold for his thoughtful contemplation of how to accompany these ideas with sound. I have learned so much about how to include music in the creative process and have asked myself many difficult questions. What is the difference between musically commenting as opposed to making the sound apart of the environment? Laurence talks about the difference between integrating and interpreting. This came as a huge revelation - we continue to work towards a goal where the music (which will be performed live) is as much a part of the work as every other aspect of the piece.

Working with a group of artists that take such initiative and ownership of the work at hand is a gift. Lauren Ferebee took the time to write about a few situations in her life that she relates to our research in the studio. I am moved daily by her commitment to this project. The entire cast has supported me in a way that has been very special and I am so thankful for their generosity.

While We were Waiting a movement research for five actors and one pianist will open on July 14th at The Stella Adler Studio of Acting.

The Creator's Perspective: Week Three in the Studio

by Kate Hilliard

I find the most exciting and moving situations on stage are those that do not feel premeditated. There is a genuine and present way of approaching everything. How much of this understanding is instinctive, and can it be taught? I am encouraging the dancers to react on stage as though something is being shared as opposed to shown. The performers sometimes engage with one another, as if no one is watching, and in these moments I am moved by their honesty. I feel that this very simple and natural exchange of ideas will also provoke an audience and so I am searching for ways to encourage spontaneity, ease and intimacy.

We are trying to create a work that speaks about the importance of the present and how it is fleeting. The choreography contemplates the passing of time and how things get replaced in our lives. The performers have drawn on their own personal experiences to create a history within the piece. As this happens, I am inspired by how similar we are in our need for connection to the world around us. How do we wait, listen, take notice, internalize and react?

The Creator's Perspective: Week Two in the Studio

by Kate Hilliard

Week two brought about many questions. Can the spontaneity of a choreographic section be maintained when the work is being rehearsed daily? It is quite easy to stay connected to the moment while performing movement where the final situation is unknown, for example an open improv or new task. But how is it possible to create that present state of being when the choreography is concrete and the dancers know the ending before they begin to move? I am searching for ways to create complex, specific movement that requires repetition to perfect, without losing the feeling for the audience that what the performers are experiencing is fresh and new.

 

When asked to speak about living in the present, dancer Josh Rowe had this to say:

 

The glare on my toe nail.  The murmur of my friends' chatting in the other room.  The fan whirring in the bathroom.  The shoes scattered all over the floor.  The present is physical.  It is where you are right now.  It's my hands pecking away at the keyboard.  It's the nail in the wall that holds nothing.  The glasses drying in the dish rack. The diffused light emanating from the clouds through the bedroom window. It is not emotional. It's not logical. It is the simplest, unavoidable reality.  It is, now.

 

After dancing a section of choreography, he added: there is a profound emotional state that takes over when one is present. I agree with him.

A Company Member’s Point of View: First Week in the Studio

by Drew DeJesus

I am pleased to be given the opportunity to provide some insight into our process, or my feelings thereon, as I can categorically say this has been a new and exciting experience for me. My training is based in acting, with only as many movement classes taken as were offered by Stella Adler during my course at NYU; however, Ms. Hilliard has managed to establish, in the period of less than a week, a Safe Place where one's background of training is all but unimportant. All that matters is how the movement affects the reality of being, and this is something that all humans may experience, in every waking moment of their bodily existences. Through what I, in word-play, describe as Physio-situational Experimentation -- that is to say, placing One, Two, Three or more Bodies into Individually Prescribed Rules of Physical Limitation in conjunction with some Pertinent Situation -- we find ourselves creating relationships of movement and sometimes language. As these relationships are Heightened and Explored, Refined, we find little gems contained therein that shed more light on the various Themes about which the Piece is beginning to circumnavigate. I am interested to see, when in such a short time we've come so far, to what distances we may travel when the time of our collaboration nears its peak.

The Creator’s Perspective: First Week in the Studio

by Kate Hilliard

A teary goodbye, a rickety plane ride and here I am again in New York City at The Stella Adler Studio of Acting at 31 West 27th Street. It’s been two years since I last roamed these very exciting hallways. In a lot of ways Adler reminds me of NY herself, constantly bustling, steeped in tradition yet always on the verge of something new and innovative. I am thrilled to be back and I am very grateful to my new artistic team who have made the first week of process incredibly inspiring.

We began our research last Monday by talking about what we like, a fairly simple conversation and a great way of getting to know one another. It’s a lot of fun to speak with strangers about what makes them tick and it didn’t take very long for the group to shed formality and begin to talk about ideas and questions that are of great importance to them. Tricia, Josh, Drew, Adam and Lauren made it very easy for me to share my thoughts as well and we quickly began to carve out some of the core ideas that are motivating me to create this new work for five performers.

I have a lot of questions about the act of waiting. It seems that lately I’ve been in the habit of projecting into the future: I find myself constantly thinking about the end result of something that has not yet happened. I’ve been thinking about the physical and emotional state of waiting for both the inevitable and the unpredictable. What is it to live presently? A few nights ago my mom reminded me of George Land’s Theory of Transformation. Are we always in a state of growing or dying? I am moved by the image of a convex meniscus.

Meniscus, plural: menisci/meniscuses, from the Greek for "crescent", is a curve in the surface of a molecular substance and is produced in response to the surface of the container or another object. It can be either concave or convex. A convex meniscus occurs when the molecules have a stronger attraction to each other than to the container.[1] This may be seen between mercury and glass in barometers.[2] Conversely, a concave meniscus occurs when the molecules of the liquid attract those of the container. This can be seen between water and glass.

One week down, five to go! I’m very excited to be working with Laurence Gingold and this fearless team of actors.

The Inaugural MAD CCC Project

The Harold Clurman Center for New Works in Movement and Dance Theater (or MAD) inaugurated a new program this week. Through the Choreographer/Composer Collaboration (or MAD CCC) choreographer Kate Hilliard and composer Laurence Gingold will create an original movement/dance theater work to be presented July 14-16.

In the first week of the residency Ms. Hilliard met with her company of actors. The Company members include Mary Cavett, Drew DeJesus, Lauren Ferebee, Tricia Olds, Adam Roper and Josh Rowe, all of whom studied acting at the Stella Adler Studio. While all of the participating artists have training in Physical Acting and an interest in Movement Art, they do not necessarily have formal dance training.

The Brutes, a prior project of Ms. Hilliard’s was initiated by Alexandra Wells and SpringBoard Danse Montreal and developed at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. Corinne Donly, an actor/writer/director was Ms. Hilliard’s co-creator on that piece (photo at left).

The Harold Clurman Center for New Works in Movement and Dance Theatre creates and presents new dance and movement theatre work. The Center aims to create work that is vital, visceral and which responds to our world and has meaning for our lives. Located in the midst of an acting school, MAD is unique in its proximity to theater and theater artists, whose primary work is focused on the word of the playwright. The movement based works presented by MAD do not deny language, but rather, consider physical work to be the essential language of the “play”. MAD gives space grants and administrative or artistic support to established, emerging and student choreographers and theater makers. MAD’s Advisory Board is comprised of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Mimi Garrard, Margie Gillis, Bill T. Jones, Yoshi Oida and Alexandra Wells.