1. Transparency 2. Choreographic intention refined
1. Occasionally, when rehearsal space can't be found in Manhattan, the five of us trek out to Brooklyn Arts Exchange, which is a lovely friendly, community-centered space with bright studios and clean floors. Sara, at the front desk, is so so so helpful, and tonight, she let us all meet in the multi-purpose room at 8pm, 30 minutes before our studio slot, to fold fundraising letters and talk...
I felt I needed to get permission from these dancers to "define" them in our printed fundraising material as the token representatives of each of their religious or spiritual traditions. Do they feel they represent these broad traditions? I needed to be totally transparent about my intentions, especially as fundraising materials begin to get distributed, and email marketing campaigns begin.
2. Through this project, I am wholly committed in validating the role of religious involvement and/or spiritual practice in one's mortal journey. I am curious about religious worldviews generally, and in discovering the parallels or intersections within these belief systems. Yet, the deeper we wade into issues of religious/spiritual involvement as a cast, the more committed I am becoming in validating the individual experiences of these dancers. In spite of representing Judaism, Mormonism, Buddhism, etc, and in spite of my total commitment to validating these major religious and spiritual traditions, I'm realizing that dance comes alive through the individual experiences of the dancers.
If I seek to create a shared human-to-human experience through dance, in which audience members come to understand themselves in and through the embodied experience of the performers they are witnessing on stage, as they live the tenets, practice the rituals, as they question, as they believe. So, now the task becomes more personal, the stakes are raised, the need for vulnerability and transparency becomes more pressing and more necessary, from everyone involved.
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