Posts in category: Uncategorized

I find that I cannot write about this show without being intensely personal.  Supposedly, as Martha Graham translated her autobiography into Jungian mythology the audience found themselves subject to the same psychoanalytical process as the artist. Perhaps some lucky few experienced the stories she told without angst, but for most their own drama was commingled with what they saw. Se Prendre placed me in a similar state of mind.  As I watched, the meaning of each phrase of movement oscillated wildly, as I write my point of view flickers.

A trio of snapshots:

ONE: In the opening sequence, he climbs onto her swayed back as she struggles under his weight. For a moment, I am musing about the unequal burden of emotional labor or some other “armchair feminism” I read about in the New York Times. But as she staggers along the opposite wall, he is gripping the molding, bracing himself against the doorways with a flexed foot and clawing at the paint.  This isn’t just about the weight she is carrying, it is also about his inability to fend for himself. They are both flailing. They are lying face down on the floor, her body is splayed out on top of his body, and I find myself focusing on the round, ruddy blossom of a bruise high up on his right arm.  I think about the news stories where someone drowns trying to save a person who is drowning.

TWO:  We are crammed into the bedroom and she winds him up in a shroud of sheets and curls up on top of him.  It is disturbing, but for a split second, it is also funny – why do you sleep like that / steal the sheets / kick me off the bed?  If you would just be still and let me hold you, I could sleep.  Sometimes you are patient enough to let me fall asleep before you crawl out from under me.  They switch places and he is rolling her up in the sheets.  He tips her off the mattress onto the bedframe and leans the mattress over her.  He sits down, resolutely turned away.  Sometimes, (ashamedly) I want desperately to be alone.  To pretend you are not there.

There are also neutral moments, crunching away at the kitchen table.

And rosy moments, when they are eating ice cream with the music thumping.  It is a simple act elevated by someone’s presence, a sense of shared idleness and joy. In the pink haze, she is suddenly floating up over his shoulder, grazing the chandelier. 

THREE:  In a violent variation, he throws her up over his shoulder, and she is walking on the ceiling.  Bracing hard against the walls, she stays suspended upside down as he walks away.  She is glued there by sheer will, still panting and struggling.

The apartment becomes a layered space, a performance and a revelation following the oft-cited de’ Certeau in which “[s]pace is a practiced place.”  Something difficult and extraordinary is happened inches away from the coat rack you hang your keys on every morning.  In the post-show discussion, they mentioned that the home owner is away and hasn’t seen them run the show.  It would be strange – the palimpsest of looking out the window drinking your morning coffee months later and remembering him wedged, sweating and stammering, into that window frame towering over the tiny plant she perched on the window sill.

The plant feels like a metaphor – they mutter about plants growing on rocks, and how we (as their towering, omniscient observers) know that they will eventually die.  But they don’t know.  This relationship might make it, wind its roots through to reach the soil, but the seeds were scattered by a careless hand.  So, we don’t know about its fate either.  When I fall, will you catch me?  It doesn’t need to be artful or graceful.  I will fall like a stone, off the grape arbor, the fence, or the branch of a tree.  You will hear wet flesh on wet flesh and the squeak of rubber on rubber.  There will only be pavement underneath.  But we are taller together.  Taller in the alley than the living room can hold.  What other choice do I have?

I want to run away from the circus

I don’t mean this in a bad way. In fact I think that it could be necessary, and would be incredibly beneficial for me. But I also don’t mean entirely away from the circus. As if I was swimming in the sea, I want to get out of the water, but I might remain knee deep. That’s how I feel with circus. A shift in my perspective and relative position within the circus world. 

This week has been incredibly eye-opening. I felt I knew what to expect in terms of practical research, and so far it has been as I thought it would be; full-on, in-depth, plateaus and sometimes a feeling of directionless research. Conversations that go seemingly in circles. Making me internally scream. I feel the frustration rise as I my cogs slowly turn trying to keep up with the conversation in front of me. Thankfully I find juggling meditatative; so I can create my own paradoxical spiral of juggling to calm the frustration of research, whilst still researching. Needless to say it’s been interesting. I certainly didn’t plan to juggle with a stanchion before I arrived! 

But what did take me by surprise, is how evoking it is to be in a room surrounded by people that are circus intellects. Working alongside people with doctorates, people with masters, people from different fields of study and people with years of experience above mine has been truly eye opening. I feel like I am a few steps into my journey of research-creation, practice-as-research, research-led-practice, and overhearing so many viewpoints and ideas on the topic is making my brain want to explode. I leave everyday with new thoughts and ideas floating around my near imploded brain. All of them fighting to be the one that is thought about. One of the questions that remains more buoyant than the rest  is: what direction do I want to go in next? Which brings me back to wanting to get out of the sea, but remain slightly submerged in the water. Knee deep, still feeling it’s cool, welcoming nature. Hearing my peers’ opinions and thoughts on areas of circus, and practice as research in particular, has made me question whether or not performing is the sole direction to go in. I strongly believed that I would perform and then fall into teaching and, hopefully, directing. And this was the path I would take. I was unaware that becoming an academic within circus could be an attainable goal, and lifestyle. I feel unbelievable inspired to continue my education into the depths of circus research. 

Back to this week. 

Finding a question to research is hard. And then attempting to research that in six or seven afternoons isn’t an easy feat. At what point is moving an object juggling? How little can I do, and it remains interesting to watch? Which I guess leads to other questions that are similar yet specific; At what point does an object become a juggling prop? I think in short, this can be answered as follows. 

For a prop to become a juggling prop it must be juggled. So I believe the beginning of this must start with defining juggling; I will define juggling as such; ‘continuously toss into the air and catch (a number of objects) so as to keep at least one in the air while handling the others, typically for the entertainment of others.’ (Cambridge English Dictionary). 

I think that it’s necessary to break this definition down. Firstly note here that if you are to juggle only one prop, then the middle section of the definition becomes obsolete. Giving you space to do anything with two empty hands. Additionally, ‘typically’ implies in most cases but not all, and therefore for the purposes of this blog elements of examples may not refer to being in front of an audience or for the entertainment of others. To toss is to ‘throw lightly or carelessly’. 

This raises more questions; does this mean that if I throw my wheel spinning away, and then catch it, that I have juggled it and it has been juggled? It has passed through the air from above the point of contact with the ground. It has moved in a spatiotemporal way. Or if I roll a ball (or any object for that matter) across a stage and another person catches it, has that been juggled? 

Perhaps.

Check back in a week and perhaps I will have a more detailed grasp of these thoughts.

But for now I feel like I live in a circus house. But perhaps for a while it would be good to get out. View things from a different point of view. I want to look at the house from across the road of theory, rather than from inside, out at the daunting road of theory. 

Dear Diary,

So I took the last version of the puppet to the class today and there were basically three type of reactions. There were people who most liked

1. the skeleton version,
2. the muscle version (also found the hands creepy and grotesque because they are out of scale);
3. and also people who confirmed my belief that people identify with the puppet once the face comes.

(PS: I wish things weren’t so intense and I could have had an extra day to bring the “skin-only” version with no face and hair to get reactions in that state of the puppet too…)

So Amy seemed to really like the puppet – which made me happy – and played with it in the afternoon. Here are some pictures of her playing with the contortion puppet:

As we were talking about our last presentation Amy though of asking some other people to play with the puppet to see if they can balance them like Amy does. I felt like we needed to ask another contortionist so we asked Elliott to balance the puppet in different poses. Here is Elliott and Amy playing with the puppet:

So yes, Elliott can balance the puppet too – even though I can’t stop but feel like how they balance the puppet is slightly different than each other and I think it has something to do with how they balance their own bodies in various contortion poses. As Elliott and Amy were playing Elliott referred to the puppet as “she” and then got self-conscious and said he didn’t want to project gender onto the puppet. Since I was somewhat trying to somewhat imitate Amy’s body and it will be Amy’s puppet at the end I told Elliott that I was feeling like the puppet was “female” too. It became more “female” today after I made a skirt for her. I am noting this conversation here because it is quite interesting to think about gender when it is projected onto objects.

Elliott also said that doing contortion with the puppet felt kind of weird because the essential thing to contortion is the fact that the body is live and conscious and breathing. That might also explain why people find it super funny that a puppet is making contortion in Amy’s Instagram posts (but also puppets are generally funny).

I asked Amy what felt wrong with the puppet and these are the notes she gave me (even though I can’t fix them for this puppet if we continue this project they would be important for the second puppet):

1. Neck of the puppet is not flexible enough.
2. One of the arms is slightly longer than the other (which has happened because I added the hands kind of last minute. That wouldn’t have happened if I had started with a plan of making hands since the beginning of the process.)
3. Upper back of the puppet is not flexible enough (for a contortionist)

Then I asked Amy if she would like me to add Velcro to the palms and soles of the puppet for a better grab, and she said the current state of balance for the puppet was good enough and we shouldn’t divert so radically from mimicking the human body. So no to Velcro.

Finally I worked on the puppet to finish it tonight with all its tiny details (including the glasses) and here is the result:

I think it is funny and good enough. To be honest I’m so exhausted and feel so consumed by the puppet throughout the last week, I think I will just give it to Amy tomorrow forever.

So goodbye contortion puppet! It was nice to make you but you would be in safer hands with Amy after this point!

During his public presentation in the 4th Space at Concordia University, Sean Gandini talked about “making something new in the kitchen” and joked about stopping to snack when you got hungry. The video recording playing as he spoke showed a trio of jugglers in front of a set of pine shelves that were stuffed but orderly, like any lived-in room.  The sum-total showed art overlapped life in a way that felt spontaneous and fun, though it also reflected on the way the sun never sets on the creative process. Gandini’s wife was in the juggling video, the one with whom he traded tricks in a sunlit London park as a form of artistic courtship, but there was also the girlfriend from long ago who told him to choose: her or juggling.  She wanted him to be all-in or get out, and (obviously) he chose “out.”

Before attending Se Prendre, I was thinking of Batson’s writing on Les 7 Doigts de la Main in Cirque Global.  In my academic world of context and lineage, Se Prendre seemed poised to quote that proceeding apartment show from the same Québéquios circus scene.  It was a show that melded the mundane and the extraordinary as kitchen accoutrements became play things and aerialists dangled above beds and couches.  Bringing circus back to a “human scale,” the performers were mediated versions of themselves instead of mythical strangers. In the chapter, Batson compares it to the television sitcom Friends.  “Welcome,” the artists said to their audience members turned guests, “please have a seat.”  While the tone might be personal, or mildly confessional, there was nothing untoward going on.  I felt smugly prepared.

After a radically different experience (which I attempt to write about in part 2 of 2) I went looking for hints about the content after the fact.  I found the language in the program slippery.  My gut feelings would have lead me somewhere slightly different than the translation.  The translation promised me a “mirror” that is “brutal and tender,” but the French word is “délicat.” Tender implies sensuality, its edges are rounded.  Something “delicate” is breakable and brittle.  Furthermore, the English program offers me something “singular and disturbing.”  In the French, the word used is “troublant,” which leads me more readily to “troubling.”  Disturbing is first defined as “interfer[ing] with the normal arrangement or functioning of.”  There are productive questions to ask – is the performance “interfering with” the normal “functioning” of the contemporary circus genre?  Or of this apartment turned performance venue?  For “troubling,” however, the meaning is undiluted by alternatives.  It is solely defined as “causing distress or anxiety.”  Regardless of translation, there is an undeniable darkness in the short program description that would have better prepared me for the show I was going to see.

In the post-show discussion for Se Prendre, “trigger warnings” came up.  I confess, I cannot imagine the show in an institutional context without them. But the production thrives on the sense that we are privy to something that is normally kept out sight.  The voyeurism that is always-already part of watching a performance hangs in the sticky summer air. We are all occasionally our ugliest, our most bereft and most brutal, in our own homes.  That is why the cognitive dissonance between public and private can be so excruciating in real life. For a while, I found myself constantly being asked by smiling family members and acquaintances: “How is married life going?” You can substitute that cringe-worthy question with the prying question of your choice about parenthood, new jobs, or various kinds of recovery. You default to a polite knee-jerk reaction and save the genuine article for somewhere behind closed doors.  And where are we when the show begins?  In an assortment of chairs in a non-descript living room in the Mile-End of Montreal in the “home” of the artists – where everything public and personal is hopelessly mixed behind closed doors.

Se Prendre was exquisite in so many ways.  Because my research is about creative exploration on invented apparatus, I’ll share my perspective through that lens.

In the show there are two apparatus – the bodies and the apartment itself. It becomes apparent very early on that the performers have explored every inch of each other’s bodies, from an acrobatic & technical perspective. 

Can I step on you there? 

Can you support my weight this way? 

Will this knock you over? 

Can I put my fingers here?

We watch their characters explore and get to know each other during the course of the theatrical production, but of course they have already spent hours doing this in order to so perfectly execute elaborate and challenging athletic sequences in the context of the characters’ story.  No body part seems to have been left unexplored.  Earlobes, thighs, solar plexus.  Without being erotic, they are thorough, sensual, daring, questioning, pressing, climbing, hovering.

So, too, they explore the apartment.  Each window sill, light fixture, wall, wainscoting, shower, gazebo, bed frame and shower seems to have been pressed, climbed, smoothed, entered, exited, opened, closed, flipped over, jumped off of, lain on.

Amazingly, each new presentation of the show involves a new apartment, and therefore a new process of exploration and discovery as to how and what previous explorations can be applied to this new apparatus.  Having developed a vocabulary of shared knowledge, the performers must now apply that to the modified apparatus, their new structure, the new apartment. 

Can I press on this wall? 

Can I climb this window? 

Is this chandelier too close?

Can I shut this door to the necessary effect? 

What new options does this new apartment offer us that we might not have explored yet?

In my own exploration of the process of creation on a new apparatus I frequently notice the role virtuosity plays in the development of a complete physical vocabulary.  When the artist / athlete has physical prowess in an applicable skill set the results of the exploration are deeper and ultimately, to me, more satisfying.  I believe this is what takes the work in Se Pendre through theater, past dance and into the realm of circus.

At first glance the performers keep their prowess off display. Meaning it is not hidden, but in the physical quality of posture, clothing, etc it is not on display – like cut abs, bulging biceps or perfectly turned out feet.  But as their exploration of each other and the apartment progresses we see how deeply skilled these two bodies are, how attune they are to the nuanced physical needs of each other, a virtuosity that is ultimately 100% necessary to the impact of their exploration of the apparatus, their bodies and the apartment.

I never thought, “oh, I wish they” or “I wonder if they could . . . “.  Literally every door was opened, every light was turned on, every mattress was overturned, every ceiling fixture was danced around and a seemingly endless array of acrobatics sequences were performed.  Perhaps a dust bunny under the sofa is still in place, unexplored and unaffected.  But I truly doubt it.

Five different perspectives. Five stories. Five countries. One underlying bonding element, we’re all Latin American.

Throughout the first week of this seminar, all of us in our team discussed several research questions. Like anyone else, we were wondering what exactly was that we wanted to know. Which question were we going to answer through art, circus to be precise. We spent hours and hours talking. Those familiar with the method, took time to play and explore with their bodies. Those of us who are used to play with our minds instead of our bodies, rambled and contemplated, wanted to free our brains so they could find that one question.

And then we all came up with an answer. We would take one of the 5 questions and we would all go with it. I believe all of us were willing to do our best to use circus to answer our question. But somehow, we couldn’t engage. There was something missing, no matter how hard we tried we kept moving in circles, finding lots of interesting ideas but none that would actually moved us in the right direction. So we decided we needed to work during the weekend. 

A part of me resented having to sacrifice three hours of my weekend to work on the project when I was already exhausted from a long and strenuous week. But another part of me, I believe the Sandra who was born and raised in Mexico, knew that there was one and only one way to get things done: through arduous work. When you live in a world where oppression, scarcity, and even physical danger are your everyday reality you learn that the only way to survive is by never giving up. And even then, you know nothing is guaranteed.

While trapped in a dark room, surrounded by a very unique ambiance created by one of our team members, we had our “aha” moment. We had been trying to find one question to answer, ignoring the fact that in reality we all had several questions we wanted to answer. But like it usually happens in any thriving group, we found our way by focusing on our communalities, not our differences. We were all Latin American, we had all experienced the stress and anxiety of crossing a border. We were all well aware of the perils of crossing the Mexican-USA border for those that, unlike us, could not afford to do it legally. We decided that using a common theme, and our diverse talents, we would create an art piece and through that piece we would each aim to answer our own questions.

So we got working, created an outline, taking every single one of us into consideration. We made sure to include elements that would help each and every one of us to answer at least one question. And engagement followed instantly. We were all walking around, throwing ideas, helping each other, playing, and it finally felt that we started moving ahead.

Now, as a researcher, I know that no matter how good a plan is, it will always fail. At least, it will fail if your sole objective is for everything to go as planned. But as a researcher I also know that, no matter how badly you fail, there’s one thing you will always gain through experimentation: knowledge.

Yes. 

As a scientist my research has always strived to be as unbiased as possible, constantly looking to be a silent spectator who has no impact on the measurements taken at the end of the experiment. 

Is this truly possible?

Not really, no matter how detached and objective we believe we are, we are humans and will always taint the results with our own personal vision. So what do we scientists do about this? Enter the scientific method into the picture. We use processes and methods that can be replicated, and we describe in detail how these methods, and our own biases impact our results and interpretations. We ask other scientists to review and critique our research. We encourage others to replicate our study in similar conditions and validate (or not) our results. In other words, we rely on critical thinking to help us ensure continuous learning, analysis, progress.

Yesterday a group of us, all Latin-Americans, decided to use sound to explore the immigration process. We started by listing all the sounds we associate with the immigration process. After we had listed about 20 different sounds we asked the sound technician, as an experiment, what these sounds meant to her (she was widely unaware of our project). She listed several different ideas and themes, none of them truly related to ours. 

At that moment it became clear to me that while everyone in the group shared a common underlying construct, but that this construct was unique to our history as people born and raised in latin america. That we were all biased towards a reality we had been exposed since we were young. And that the immigration construct existed in most of us, but it can look entirely different.

Thus a question arises, how can I use art to help others understand this construct, when theirs is so different? How can I ask others to understand my bias, when their own bias likely speaks as strongly to them as mine does to me?

We’re at the halfway point. 

Only 4 days until the presentations.

Only 3 days of creation research left.

Only 2 days of play left.

Only 1 day of discomfort?…yeah right. 

I spent a good chunk of my weekend thinking of this presentation.  Even if I wasn’t actively chewing on it, it was always swishing around in the back of my brain.  When I went and saw 7 Finger’s ginormous stage show, I found myself watching the audience and wondering what they were thinking/feeling as they embraced this show.  When I wandered around St. Denis and stumbled into a handful of street shows, I witnessed the joy and delight of kids as their eyes grew 10 times larger when a contortionist twisted her body to and fro. 

There was a visceral relationship being created before our eyes.  The performer aware that they had a captive audience, and knowing that they were in the middle of a blocked off street about to share their magnificent talents; all of that information was twinkling in their eyes.  I swear to it, and I was jealous. I want that, and yet, street performing scares the living shit out of me (not the dead shit, just the live ones).

Crap, I got distracted again. Right, okay, back to discomfort, back to audiences.  Although, to be fair, I was writing about audiences. Just not the kind I was expecting to find, here. 

Okay, here’s what I got so far in my thinking: 

As performers, we can make audiences uncomfortable very easily. It doesn’t take much. So WHY do it?  Is there a point? Do we want the audience to examine why they’re uncomfortable? 

So this brought me to my presentation and in making the audience uncomfortable but it seemed to be for no reason, and that wasn’t sitting well with me.  So I thought about what I had planned and how the audience could or couldn’t be a part of this story. 

Oh….

I haven’t shared what I’m planning, not in its entirety. 

Phase One

Perform dance and tumbling to song as seriously as possible.  Complete 4th wall built. 

Phase Two

Perform the same dance and tumbling routine to same song, but in red nose.  4th wall is completely destroyed.

Phase Three

Perform the same dance and tumbling routine to same song, but in no nose.  4th wall is gone, and we are all in one room together. 

So, with these three phases, I’ve been struggling to figure out how they link all together.  Basically, I’m thinking like a director and trying to work out the transitions and it was as I was sitting in a park it dawned on me.  It’s a runner! No, it’s not running away from me, although it does feel like that at times.  I think over the course of the day of performances, we keep revisiting this same character, but she’s slightly different each time.  

Then I thought back as to why I’m trying to make the audience uncomfortable, to what end?  And then I thought about how society like judging people: The Gong Show, America’s Got Talent, The Voice.  We, society, enjoy tearing apart someone’s talent, but sometimes it bleeds into tearing the person apart.  What if I make the audience do that? Asking them to examine why do we judge artists?  Or better yet: Why do we enjoy judging artists? 

So what happens if this entire performance is framed as if it’s a judgement based show?  The audience are the judges and each time we revisit this character the stakes get higher and higher, so that by the time we get to the ending piece, they are asked to judge the value of this artist as a person. 

Feels icky, right? Right. 

As I sit down in downtown Montreal, a Mexican who has been living in Canada for almost 17 years, I wonder how much has my background influenced who I am now, who I am as an artist. 

I have now spent several hours discussing with my team of latin american artists what our research project in the seminar would look like. And while a large diversity of questions, ideas, approaches, and visions were thrown in, there was always an underlying theme emerging every time one of us spoke, no matter what we researched, our work had to create change, it had to have an impact that would go beyond out need to create art.

One of the artists in the group explained, in a society where you are constantly finding a way to survive, where thriving is the exception, there is no time to do self-indulgent art. We were all discussing what could art do for our respective communities. See, when you grow in our kind of environment, you learn very early that you will have to fight ignorance, injustice, corruption. For all of us in that group, there has always been a clear relationship between education, social change, and art, it felt like we all agreed it was our duty to go beyond the theory, the abstract, and dive right into action. 

It may not come as a surprise that several of the research questions other groups were asking seemed somewhat self-indulgent to some in our group. Creating art just because it brings you pleasure as an artist it too much of a luxury, asking research questions whose only objective is to create learning is just not viable, we would be wasting resources that are already scarce.

As someone who grew up in adversity but who had privileged access to some of the best education in her country via academic scholarships, I have a very unique vantage point. As a Mexican who moved to Canada so many years ago, I now understand what it means to live in an environment where economic, political, and social stability is not only possible but the only reality known to most. I know what it is to feel safe enough that you can start asking questions such as “What is the purpose of my human?”.

So yes, my background has strongly impacted who I am as a person and as an artist. But it also has provided me with the tools and mindset I needed to learn, to change, to adapt, to thrive in a new environment. And it is that mindset that now allows me to realize, I do want to do self-indulgent art, the type of self-indulgent art that creates change, impacts society, and at the same time will make me grow as an artist and as a human being.

Bosch Dreams would have been the place to leave my “critical mind” behind.  The projections were lush and engrossing.  The environments for the hand balancing act and the single point trapeze act were whimsical in a way that seldom fails to delight me. Some of the circus acts were spectacular, the hand balancing was a virtuoso display of both strength and musicality and the Chinese pole sequence from the end felt daring.  The puppeteer in me loved the man-eating monster.  The theme of Bosch – that looped in Dali and Morrison – gave the artists a broad palette of images, recordings, and songs to work with. Perhaps they did just that, I could easily believe that each artist picked what inspiration they wanted to use and then the group stitched it together in post with the narrative device of the girl and the professor.  The pace lagged at times, but over-all, it was thoroughly enjoyable.  Maybe next time I listen to the Doors I’ll find myself day-dreaming of Bosch.

Yet as the show began to wrap up, there was a moment when I wondered – is this going to turn out to be a delightfully complicated narrative? When it suddenly gels, will I long to watch it again and pick up every hint?  And the answer was, sadly, no.

No, it won’t make sense why some of those peasants were masked and others weren’t.

No, we don’t clearly find out what the girl is trying to accomplish or what the ball is for.

No, the images don’t always pair with the actions, and yes, they repeat without logic.

Why roulette? Why the cup game over and over?

Having engaged with so much that was theatrical and narrative, I desperately wanted them to have gone the extra mile to create a consistent dramaturgy for the world onstage.  Or I wanted them to alter the balance of narrative to spectacle and let it all wash over us.  But perhaps the best path is to surrender and follow the white rabbit through the looking glass without asking so many questions.  Eat, drink, and dream along with Alice (and Jim). I wouldn’t blame you.

Dear Diary,

I have spend the entire – like the entire – weekend making the puppet. There were moments of existential crisis involved as it happens in all my puppet making and dissertation writing and playwriting processes. But since I have been through so many of them by now I just knew that it would eventually pass and it won’t be a disaster even if I mess up the puppet (even though adds up to more than 20 hours of creative, high-concentration work at the moment). I won’t get into my mindset – since there was a delirious state around late Sunday afternoon because of too much sewing done on a three dimensional surface – but I do want to document the innovation process.

So the first thing I did was sewing the “muscle tissues”, which are the pink elastic ribbons covering the wire skeleton, to each other to make sure they won’t slip as the puppet is played with. That took a lot more time that I had planned but whatever, I did it.

After that essential part I decided to take on the biggest challenge I ever put myself into with puppet making, which is making hands for the puppet. I decided get into this craziness because Amy said because the puppet couldn’t hold or grab, it couldn’t do certain poses. So I thought, “well we got this far, why stop now?” and started playing with the material to actually do it.

First of all, as a person who has enough of an amateur background in painting and sculpture, I can assure you that hands are the most difficult part of the body (yes, even harder than the face) to get right. Hands have a very particular engineering to them and it is more than a question of scale to get them right, let alone making movable replicas of them. So I thought for a while about how exactly to start making the hands of the puppet and decided to make a wire skeleton like I have done with the rest of the body.

Once the wire skeleton of the hand was done I covered it with rubber bands to give it both resilience and structure (like tendons and muscles would do).

Once the hands was done I realized I can’t just attach them to the arms, so I needed to open the skeleton of the puppet up to the elbows to attach the new hands… It really felt like a weird surgery…

When I was attaching the second hand a little disaster happened: after I completed attaching it I realized the arm has become longer than it should be (imagine facepalm emoji here).

So I reopened the entire lower arm again and fixed it. It turns out that the problem has occurred because I used the same sticks (which I use for bones) that I used before but the hand has added some new length because of the wrist area. So I cut the sticks a little to readjust it with the wrist’s length. Once this Frankensteinish part was done I got into further Frankensteinish aspects of the process such as adding the “skin”:

I finished sewing the skin of the puppet (covering it with skin-colored lycra fabric) around 8pm. After that I left the puppet aside and started making the hair.

Finally, I wasn’t going to do the face and add the hair today but finally I decided to do them too:

Okay, so now what is left?

1. Ask Amy which fabric she would like me to use for clothes. And decide on the clothes together if possible.
2. Ask Amy if she would like me to add Velcro to the palms and soles of the feet (and also make a fitting surface for the movement of puppet so the Velcro would make sense) to increase “the grab” of the puppet.

Hopefully that will be it… Sigh… This was a long weekend.

I am no longer in love with the circus.

Our affair has been long, a little over 30 years.  The circus found me when I was young and impressionable.  I had never met anything like the circus before.  I had had a few affairs, a few of which I continued after I met the circus.  Like reading. And I started a few that I met because of the circus.  Photography and I have had a grand old time together but almost always with the circus there between us.

But I find myself moving on from circus.  Oh, I still love a good aerial fabric knot, tied creatively and executed cleanly.  And discovering the muscles and hand placement to get up and over the curve of the lyra still gives me satisfaction.  And a technically perfect double twisting anything is still a sight to behold.  But circus has started to bore me.  Most days when we sit down together, it feels predictable.  When we go out together I find myself not paying attention, and so it talks louder and faster, and then I get frustrated and we go home and have a little fight and circus goes off to one corner and I go to my corner and it takes longer and longer for us to make up. 

And to be completely honest, and I haven’t told circus this yet, I found someone else.  Actually, they have been there all along.  We have all three of us spent a lot of time together. I realize now that I have never been without them.  Like a true love in a romantic movie, they have supported me, picked me up when I fell, brought me soup when I was sick and told me I was interesting and worth while when I doubted myself.  I appreciated them all along, but didn’t see that it was actually them I was in love with until now.

Circus knows them well, too.  They are actually best friends.  I know, such a cliché!  To have fallen for the ‘best friend’.  But for all these years we’ve done almost everything together. It seems like I can’t go anywhere with circus without them showing up. Sometimes they disappear for a little while but it’s usually when circus is being particularly selfish.  Like that time when circus took us out and then left us alone with technology.  Technology was actually really interesting, but circus had invited me on that date, so I got a bit grumpy about being left alone like that.  But they were there, too, and it all turned out okay in the end because it turns out that technology is kind of fun when you get to know them, and when circus isn’t pretending to be the center of attention.

I guess if you have read this far I need to tell you who they are, or that wouldn’t be fair. 

They are the faces turned up to the aerialist spinning in the sky.  They are the little kids seriously contemplating a contortionist bending in half (in thirds!), with their little mouths in the shape of an exhaled “oh”.  They are the teenagers who turn away from their phone to say “cool” when the 7^th ring is tossed, and caught.  They are the grandparents holding hands to keep from falling over while watching the wheel spins faster and faster and faster and faster and . . . .  They are the women in front of me and the trio of young men behind me all gasping over the abs of the man on the german wheel, and gasping again when he flips off the top to land safely on the sidewalk. They are child giggling and grandfather guffawing at the antics of a clown.

They are the people who are excited about the things that circus doesn’t always pay attention to anymore.  When circus is sloppy and careless and disrespectful or pretends to be all knowing, they often don’t notice, and applaud anyway. Sometimes, when the circus is distracted by technology and their other friends, they are still there. They are there in theaters, tents and casinos; they are at random parties and on the street corners.  Sometimes they spend their hard earned money on tickets, and sometimes they just find circus in parks and community centers. 

When circus is attentive and compassionate and strong and creative they are there to give circus the world, to stand up in their seats and yell ‘bravo’ and whistle so circus can go home at the end of the night and feel good about themselves.  (Circus will usually go home at the end of the night feeling good about themselves anyway, because circus is like that.)  But enough about circus.  I’m in love with the people.  There, I’ve said it. 

Promise me you won’t tell circus?  Because I still really do still love them, too. It’s just not the same anymore.  

Addendum

I love the tribe of people who are circus.  I love the people who appreciate circus.  I love the hard work and camaraderie that goes into circus, on both sides of the ring or the curtain or sidewalk.  I love when “it” all comes together.  I love the electricity that runs through and between performers and audience, supporters and creators.  Sometimes it hits like lightening, sometimes it is a little electrical current of connection or even tiny little spark of contact.  I love everything about the tribe, the complexity of individual humans that make up circus and the audience, the audience that is needed to allow circus to be circus, because it is a performance art.  This entire tribe has saved me many times.  It is, for better or for worse and everything in between, my family.  

This third-day* feeling is not unique. I came here with some fairly strongly held intuitions about the intersection point of my academic and circus practices (but no idea about how to makethat actually look like research). Rather, I felt that the way I learned new concepts and ideologies mirrored the manner in which I learned physical things. I’ve heard related sentiments reflected in everyone else in the room, a great start.

As a self-professed over-thinker, I often feel that I have to truly understand something before I dive in and try it. I ask a hundred questions, try to line it up within frameworks I already know, ask about angles and pathways, ask about why we bother trying to look like that anyways. And inevitably whoever I am working with gets exasperated and tells me to just go. And I do. And then I have a hundred new questions. As a coach, I know I can be a frustrating student because I know it’s important to give (and receive) just one or two fundamental queues about a physical skill, just enough that the pathway is sketched out and the first attempt will be safe. This isn’t novel. A few key points, then you just need to try, to feel the rhythm smooth itself out in your body. The first attempt is never great. The second attempt is always different. The third attempt is almost always better. But without someone to guide you through this process, like when you’re trying to create a new movement, vocabulary or thought pattern, it’s harder to figure out how to give yourself that one nugget and push yourself off the ledge, to let yourself try something safely, and allow yourself to find the path that leads to greater understanding, hopefully with the added bonus of some more cool tricks. 

It’s the same when thinking difficult concepts, particularly new philosophical concepts which inevitably bend your base assumptions and beliefs. You may not be in the same kind of danger as when trying a new circus apparatus, but it can still feel like your spinning out of control and the same panic ensues. It feels like you have to do all this new thinking at once, which is impossible because you’re not even sure which basic framework your thinking within, or what the world will look like once you shift these assumptions. Enter: the drowning feeling of anxiety that I’ve heard so many echoes of in the 4th space this week (and the relation of my very general abstract considerations to the very tangible stress surveys we’ve been circulating).

Anyways, turns out that my intuition of that connection (of the way we think and move and think about how we move) is really just a basis of why the research-as/is/for-creation is a respected method. A real awe shit what am I doing moment. Of course the connection is there, but it’s really too abstract to give you anything tangible, or frankly interesting, to explore. So the question becomes, how do you analyze that fundamental and parallel progression, how can we unite the practice with the research towards an end besides just proving it’s worthwhile to do. In the research-creation process, we start with a question, based on something that interests us, that seems easy enough to answer. But this question ends up giving rise to a plethora of related but (hopefully) better questions. 

So what I found useful was to try to situate myself in this spiral of questions, so I tried to follow the phenomenological method as Hegel outlines it. Now, it seems that phenomenology is a particular method for exploring this field, so I know it has a particular meaning and use for research. However, it’s also a philosophical with some very particular histories, which arguably begin with Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Here he tries to describe the nature of truth and absolute knowing (small task) through our experience of spirit (ie: the culmination of mind-body, he’s trying to get over Descartes’ separation). It’s complex, I forget a lot of details, but until this turns into a philosophical paper, I don’t think we need them. What does resonate with me is the dialectical movement between stages of realization – or, how we experience reflecting on ways in which we seem to know the world. Loosely: he starts with how we seem to know the world, the senses. But quickly realizes that this is insufficient, for we don’t just sense, we reflect on sensory data in the form of perception. But this too is insufficient, because to perceive, we must have some of consciousness to process that perception. But this consciousness is both of the world and the internal self. And this goes on, through layers of psychology and history, to end up at absolute spirit/knowing – which turns out to be something active, not some fossilized truth. The key to the dialectical progression is that it is not linear moving towards some fixed end, but rather a spiral then encompasses yet surpasses each of the preceding steps. With each step we take, it seems obvious, as if there were no other alternative. Of course we use our senses, of course the world is full of empirical data. But there is always some insufficiency, so we must subvert the concept to find what is missing – which becomes the next step we arrive at. It is a constant pattern of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, where the synthesis embodies aspects of the previous two steps, but brings something new: hence the spiraling forward. Which feels pretty similar to how we learn a new movement pattern or vocabulary. 

But to embark on that journey, everyone needs to start with some intuition, some realization. And you need to embody it. To experience it to believe it. And then once you do, it feels so obvious that you can’t imagine not thinking it before. I had to get on the Weggsphere and spin. And then it is part of you, part of your practice. The spinning patterns that originally felt stiff and blocked and uninteresting start to feel natural, something that I can sidle up against. It seems impossible. Until you do it. Until you feel the patterns and stop fighting against it. And then you can’t imagine it was ever hidden. And you also can’t imagine stopping there.

*I know it’s far beyond the third day, turns out just starting can be scary. Also turns out that fear is probably embodied at every step..

I had a blast listening to Sean Gandini story.

Memories, stories and facts that came with a smile on his face, added to some personal identification, certainly brought me to a very comfortable and joyful place to be at that morning. Also, aspects like clear language, humanization, passion to music and math, humor and ability to connect singular and particular episodes to his source of creativity really inspired me and reinforced the idea that I am on the right way. 

It is very interesting how specifics episodes and certain atitudes can change the course of our lives. He mentioned about his mom being very supportive on his childhood an his firsts artistic manifestations. And also how can this feeling of being accepted could develop the feeling that the other could appreciate your art. Isn’t that incredible?

I remember when I was 5 or 6 years old my dad showing me Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and encouraging me to create a performance with that soundtrack. He would prepare the “stage”that was our living room to the special performance. I can certainly identify how this encouragement made a huge difference in my artistic world. Thank you, Dad. And yes, this is incredible.

Gandini also mentioned something about how can some arts manifestations can inspire your own art. For example, if a painter copies any other paint, this is just about imitation. However, if a painter find his inspiration in architecture, this would be innovation. 

This thought made be go through my creativity processes and identify that I already had both feelings. The felling of create something and at the end, I realized that I wasn’t being honest or I didn’t try my best… That I was just copying someone’s idea. And the opposite sensation of create something that came from the diversity of sources and allowing these informations cross until something new occur. 

But how to measure the creativity? Is that even possible? 

I love the idea of watching the same performance or listening the same music in completely different times of my life and having so my distinct thoughts about it. How amazing is that our perception can change so much and give us completely new experiences. Or even If you at least create the minimum contact with the Artist or his story, this also can modify the way that you interact with that art form.

So how much the art itself depend on others comprehension to be good or not? 

I honestly felt so good after I knew that Sean, even after so many thousand of performances and having such huge experience, still feels fragile to people’s feedbacks about his performances and shows. It was so relieving to have this information and at the same time funny to think that this feeling that I personally fight agains sometimes may last forever. It gave me hope.

Listening his story and watching some of his works was so unique and special. How big he is and at the same time so humble, charismatic and human. It was definitely a special and very inspirational morning to keep in my memories. 

Theres something about creativity that always brought me the image of something going away and coming back. And listening to Sean Gandini made me feel that “it” not just came back, but think that maybe never left me.

Art as a form of qualitative research

A phrase I had never considered. All my schooling told me that my experience wasn’t valid, that my knowledge wasn’t valid. It’s been a gaslighting problem that leaves me not trusting myself or my instincts, in attempts to be more objective.

But every single time I tried to do things “their way” I broke down. Sometimes I would fight, sometimes fly. Eventually I became a human statue. I became an embodiment of the freeze response caught between what I know and what I have been given permission to know.

My art became the embodiment of a woman’s role: pretty, pleasing, silent. In many ways I made my show small to not disturb the status quo. To fit in small spaces. My paint became armour against attacks from two fronts: society’s expectations and the other buskers territorial tendencies.

Inside, I loathed the rules of statue itself. In fact it took me years to realize I didn’t have to abide by them. The paint was a means to an end, but I didn’t have to always do what was expected. I didn’t need to get into power-games like staring contests. When someone came up in my face, I could just say “boo” and turn the game around. When I didn’t play by their rules it startled them.

But stretching out of my self chosen small pitch while believing that my inner knowledge is not knowledge at all was impossible. How can you say anything confidently when you don’t trust yourself? How can you call yourself an artist when your art is specifically created to please and satisfy the status quo? When society, lovers, friends are all under the spell of a theory of objective rationality, how can what you know really be true?

Giving permission to the believe my own knowledge is valid, valuable and can further the pursuit of knowledge might be the greatest gift I have received in a long time.

After watching Gandini’s Juggling Spring, I felt at peace and satisfied with the performance I had witnessed. The artists presented a series of repeated dance patterns and siteswaps. They were also playing with light, shadows, multiplicity and colours. This all blended together to create very mesmerizing and soothing effect. After going through the first 3 days of seminar and being bombarded with new knowledge, it was great to be under the pleasant and calming spell of Gandini’s Code like language.

It reminded me of the state I get into when playing vintage arcade games or simple puzzle apps on my phone that typically involve creating lines and/or pairing colours. As these games, the music fell into background. The music on its own might not be appealing but it fit the numbered coded designed patterns.

One moment truly stood out to me. The first being the frantic walk of a juggler with three balls in the background. I was reminded of a vintage arcade game in which a crazy fast song plays while an ostrich walks across a platform. I had the impression the walking acted as a segue between scenes. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this mathematical performance by Sean Gandini.

Food for thought: I wonder what would be possible if the artists were to juggle different objects such as one ring and two balls with a mathematical approach as the coded juggling in Spring. Or what if they juggled binary codes with clubs representing 1 and rings representing 0…

As a director, I have always tried to work collaboratively. It is never easy, but in general it is how I believe I can reach spaces of creativity that are not possible to achieve alone. The old popular saying “two heads think better than one”. Yes, the problem is generally ego, but my problem has never been with invasion of territories by professionals who are supposed to be paying attention to something else (Bogart, 2014, p.106). My collaborative process is extremely focused on the performer. The first thing to do in each performance is improvisation. Therefore, my first concern is to create an atmosphere of security, so that the performer feels that he is free to outsource whatever his body tries to create in the scenic space. For this we need to placate “fear, anxiety and the desire to be certain” (Bogart, 2014, p.106). Often this care is confused with omission and the freedom of intervention is confused with the possession of the scenic space.

In my first experiences as a director I had an immense difficulty discarding ideas. I believe that a process is only collaborative if the artist’s creativity is respected and, at the beginning, I felt that respecting the artist’s creativity meant accepting all the material that was brought to the scene. I was the first to confuse collaboration with agreement (Bogart, 2014, p.107). With experience and maturity I began to realize that directing is to make choices. I have been seeking a path between total acceptance and the possibility of saying no. I have acquired the habit of dividing the essay period into three parts: in the first, the actors have complete freedom to create; in the second, I make the necessary cuts and arrangements; in the third I work cleaning, rithym and other specific needs. The time of each step is what is most difficult to determine. When the brain must move from the “loosening critical thought” phase (Bogart, 2014, p.119) to that of “judgment and evaluation” (Bogart, 2014, p. 120)? But, mainly, how to make the transition from this environment that cost so much to create, in which ‘everything is possible’, to the understanding that we need to debut sometime?

In my works with actors I usually have problems when I enter the second stage. They enjoy the freedom of create, but are rebelely when I start making decisions and choices. When I started working with dancers, I had a surprise: they did not feel comfortable at the stage of creation.[1] "But what exactly do you want?” That's a recurring question. They wanted me conducting them. When we finally enter the second stage, they breathe a sigh of relief. While the actors need to be convinced that it is necessary to pass the show once again, the dancers can repeat it for hours without being bored. However, to bring them out of the passivity, I often needed artifices, because only the "show me" simply did not become an incentive to action. I’ve tried something alike to the "one, two three, go" (Bogart, 2014, 117), but it did not work very well, the artists were stocked at "what do you want us to do?" It is necessary to prepare the environment for the "go" to work. Many times I have used the viewpoints, but also contact and improvisation, variations on a leitmotiv, small trigger actions ... Since the performers of the Companhia Corpo na Contramão have a very different background (In the current line up we are two circus artists, one actor/circus, one classical dancer, one balroom dancer, one actor/musician and myself), the beginning of each work is a period of quite delicate self exposition.

BUT WHAT DID YOU DO?

Not long ago I worked on a choreography whith a classical dancer, a popper and a ballroom dancer and the process was as follows: each one created a choreographic excerpt within his own background. Then each of these sequences was reread by the others, each within its own embodyment. It was hours and hours of work to find out which movements had the best dialogue with other dances, such as facilitating the reading of each one and trying to emphasize the background of each dancer, making it clear that the original movement had been the same for everyone. A lot of work! When we went to receive the cache, one of the artists saw that I was getting as a choreographer and asked me: "but what did you do?" For her, if I did not dictate the steps, I did not choreograph.

The same movement reread by the three dancers.

They are small, but important, differences in how one sees his or her own performance in the world at large and at work in particular, which often creates large bubbles of discomfort that sooner or later explodes and may lead to the loss of all the effort to build an environment conducive to creation. In short, the most complicated in a collaborative process is ... collaboration.

I often say that a show is never really ready. There is always something to improve, things to change. A show is something alive. The moment I declare that a spectacle is ready, it is the moment when I declare his death. After each presentation, I reevaluate every thing, distribute tasks, recommend readings. This used to leave the artists insecure, they had this feeling that I was never satisfied with the results. It was a big problem in my cast. Today I say that each presentation is an invitation to the public to see what we have the best for now. We are always growing, learning, changing. A debut is not the end of the creative process, it’s part of it. This way of looking at the spectacle has helped to reduce anxiety, to coat the egos (since a droped part can always return in another presentation) and to remind us, always, that we are there in the service of something greater than our own performance. Art is always greater than the artist.

PENSAMENTOS SOBRE COLABORAÇÃO

Como diretora, sempre procurei trabalhar colaborativamente. Nunca é fácil, mas em geral é como acredito que posso atingir espaços de criatividade que não são possíveis de se alcançar sozinha. O velho ditado popular “duas cabeças pensam melhor do que uma”. Sim, o problema é geralmente ego, mas meu problema nunca foi com invasão de territórios por profissionais que, supostamente, deveriam estar prestando atenção em outra coisa (Bogart, 2014, p.106). Meu processo colaborativo é extremamente focado no atuante. A primeira coisa a ser feita em cada espetáculo é a improvisação. Sendo assim, minha primeira preocupação é criar uma atmosfera de segurança, para que o atuante sinta que tem liberdade de externalizar o que quer que seu corpo intente criar no espaço cênico. Para isso precisamos aplacar o “medo, ansiedade e o desejo de ter certeza” (Bogart, 2014, p.106). Frequentemente esse cuidado é confundido com omissão e a liberdade de intervenção é confundida com a posse do espaço cênico.

Em minhas primeiras experiências como diretora eu tinha uma imensa dificuldade de descartar ideias. Acredito que um processo só é colaborativo se a criatividade do artista é respeitada e, no início, achava que respeitar a criatividade do artista significava aceitar todo o material que era trazido à cena. Eu era a primeira a confundir colaboração com concordância (Bogart, 2014, p.107). Com a experiência e a maturidade comecei a perceber que dirigir é fazer escolhas. Fui buscando um caminho entre a total aceitação e a possibilidade de dizer não. Adquiri o hábito de dividir o período de ensaios em três partes: na primeira, os atuantes têm total liberdade para criar; na segunda, faço os cortes e arranjos necessários; na terceira trabalho limpeza, ritmo e outras necessidades específicas. O tempo de cada etapa é que é o mais difícil de determinar. Quando o cérebro deve passar da fase de “afrouxar o pensamento crítico” (Bogart, 2014, p.119) para a de “julgamento e avaliação” (Bogart, 2014, p.120)? Mas, principalmente, como fazer a transição deste ambiente que custei tanto a criar, em que ‘tudo é possível’, para a compreensão de que precisamos estrear em algum momento?

Em meus trabalhos com atores geralmente tenho problemas quando entro na segunda etapa. Eles gostam da liberdade de criar, não têm problemas para sair da passividade, mas se rebelam quando começo a tomar decisões e fazer escolhas. Quando comecei a trabalhar com dançarinos, tive uma surpresa: eles não se sentiam confortáveis na etapa de criação[2]. “Mas o que você quer, exatamente?” Essa é uma pergunta recorrente. Queriam que eu os conduzisse. Quando finalmente entramos na segunda etapa, respiram aliviados. Enquanto atores precisam ser convencidos de que é preciso passar mais uma vez o espetáculo, dançarinos podem repeti-lo por horas, sem que se sintam entediados. No entanto, para tirá-los na passividade, frequentemente precisei de artifícios, pois o “show me”, simplesmente, não chegava a ser um incentivo à ação. Tentei algo parecido com “one, two three, go” (Bogart, 2014, p. 117), mas não funcionou muito bem, os artistas ficavam presos ao “o que você quer que a gente faça?”. É preciso preparar o ambiente para que o “go” funcione. Muitas vezes utilizei os viewpoints, mas também contato e improvisação, variações em cima de um leitmotiv, pequenas ações disparadoras… Como o trabalho da Companhia Corpo na Coontramão basicamente é reunir artistas com backgrounds muito diferentes[3], o início de cada trabalho é um período exposição bastante delicado.

MAS O QUE VOCÊ FEZ?

Há pouco tempo trabalhei uma coreografia em que dançavam uma bailarina clássica, um popper e um dançarino de salão e o processo foi o seguinte: cada um criou uma trecho coreográfico dentro de seu próprio background. Depois, cada uma destas sequências foi relida pelos outros, cada qual dentro de seu próprio embodyment. Foram horas e horas de trabalho pesquisando quais os movimentos dialogavam melhor com as outras danças, como facilitar a leitura de cada um e procurando enfatizar o background de cada dançarino, deixando claro que o movimento original havia o mesmo para todos. Muito trabalho! Quando fomos receber o cachê, uma das artistas viu que eu estava recebendo como coreógrafa e me perguntou: “mas o que você fez?”. Para ela, se eu não ditei os passos, não coreografei.

São pequenas, mas importantes diferenças no modo de cada um ver sua própria atuação no mundo em geral e no trabalho em particular, que muitas vezes cria grandes bolsas de desconforto que, cedo ou tarde, explodem e podem levar a perder todo o esforço de construir um ambiente propício à criação. Em suma, o mais complicado em um processo colaborativo é… colaboração.

Costumo dizer que um show nunca está realmente pronto. Sempre há o que melhorar, coisas a modificar. Um espetáculo é algo vivo. O momento em que declaro que um espetáculo está pronto, é o momento em que declaro sua morte. Após cada apresentação, reavalio cada coisa, distribuo tarefas, recomendo leituras. Isso costumava deixar os artistas inseguros, eles tinham essa sensação de que eu nunca estava satisfeita com os resultados. Era um grande problema nos meus elencos. Hoje costumo dizer que cada apresentação é um convite ao público para que veja o que temos de melhor agora. Estamos sempre crescendo, aprendendo, mudando. Uma estreia não é o fim do processo criativo, é parte dele. Esta forma de olhar o espetáculo ajudou a reduzir a ansiedade, acamar os egos (já que uma parte cortada pode sempre voltar em uma outra apresentação) e nos lembrar, sempre, de que estamos ali a serviço de algo maior que nossa própria atuação. A arte é sempre maior que o artista.

[1] One exception was the street dancer, who improvises all the time. In this case the difficulty was to make him repeat the same sequence of movements. Contemporary dancers are also more accustomed to this type of process.

[2] Uma exceção foi o dançarino de street dance, pois improvisam o tempo todo. Nesse caso a dificuldade era fazê-lo repetir a mesma sequência de movimentos. Dançarinos contemporâneos também costumam estar mais habituados a esse tipo de processo.

[3] Na formação atual somos dois circenses, um ator/circense, uma bailarina clássica, um streeet dancer, um dançarino de salão, um ator/músico e eu.

While playing with the puppet yesterday (it now has flesh and connective tissue and is steadily approaching the uncanny dimension), I had a few new revelations…

Firstly, the puppet had broken from its lower back because Hsing-Ho played too hard with it. Luckily, real humans ideally do not use only their lower back to bend (cough, cough), but also their butt/core strength to stabilize and their upper back to balance the bend. However, when the puppet was fixed with a new spring around its torso, I noticed that it was slightly stiffer from its rib cage and upper back, and that it also was a bit naturally lopsided.

I myself am lopsided standing because of a variety of issues: hypermobility and weird resting posture, a past shoulder injury that only recently healed, an aerial history, past bad training habits and such-like (luckily nothing to do with my actual back). I found that I had to adjust the puppet quite like I have to adjust myself continuously during training (often, to less success than others). I am naturally a little crooked on my less flexible side (right side stronger, right hip less flexible), and these continuous re-adjustments are something I’m still getting used to in training. Having to make the puppet do the same thing was… interesting. It made me realize all bodies have a history that changes how we even stand, let alone bend. The slightest trauma makes our body compensate and can change our posture for months to come. The weird ‘lopsided’ feeling I feel when I’m actually straight was interesting when externalized on the puppet.

Expanding on the pedagogical side, I think the puppet is a good tool to help people understanding the importance of not just using your lower back to bend, which naturally bendy people tend to do until they’re told to do otherwise. In order to manipulate the puppet, you need to turn out its hips or change certain elements to get it to balance properly. You can also feel its connective tissue ‘contracting’ to support certain poses. It’s a bit hard to explain in words, but I felt like I had a tactile experience of actually moulding a body into a position using its muscular tissue and its body mechanics. It was… an uncannily visceral experience. The puppet still needs more core strength, more upper back bending and it needs to grip the floor better, though, and that is sort of limiting it from doing a lot more things than it could do (and here, I find myself talking to the puppet like it was a student, haha). I found myself actually pressing its upper back strongly like I would do with a human to get it to bend more from its stiff upper back, which kind of replicates an actual teaching experience with a student.

Secondly, balance: I found the puppet could do certain poses like I did. There is a pose I find rather difficult which I call a Mexican forearm stand which is in some ways harder than a regular Mexican handstand because you need more bend to leverage the body so it can balance in a horizontal line. This requires, mostly, a lot of upper back flexibility (since hips are closed) and a ton of shoulder strength and stability (we affectionally call it the ‘shoulder breaker’). The puppet, surprisingly, could actually do the pose, which made me realize that just from a physics point of view, it’s technically possible. The puppet also was not super stable in the pose, which made me realize perhaps what extent strength may play in the picture, although I need to think about the biomechanics of it a bit more (I’m not a scientist, haha).

Lastly, people’s reactions to the puppet were interesting as well. I put shots of the puppet on my Instagram stories together with the collages I made comparing myself and the puppet doing the same poses. Strangely, almost 80% of the reactions I got was laughter. Apparently, people thought it was very funny that the puppet was doing contortion! The other reaction I got was applause when I just posted pictures of the puppet doing a very difficult pose, like the Mexican forearm stand. So, people can identify that a pose is very difficult for a human or puppet. That made me think about how people may perceive the artists’s success and failure. Anyway, thoughts for another day!

Street performance is a rejection of the institution of our society. By its nature, it rejects the formality of schedules, preferring spontaneity and surprise. I am a street performer because I rejected various institutions, and as a result have become what I heard Patrick Leroux refer to as a “mercenary performer”. I now realize am lucky I became a performer at all.

The Toronto performer Brant Matthews, who owns the Talent Lab, called people like us “cowboy” circus performers in an informal conversation we had on our last visit. We’ve talked in the past how most of Canada is made of cowboys, except Quebec. “They play a different game” he said. Cowboys like us feel like a bull in a china shop within these institutions, suddenly having to play the game of bureaucratic and political pleasing of others, just for a chance at doing our art.

When seeing the Quebec scene through Patrick’s lecture and through the first chapters in Beyond Circus, it becomes clear how the Quebec scene has become institutionalized and continues to do so. Patrick explained the benefits of funding, structure, and collaboration. For me it seems the opposite: these institutions have always been in our way, reinforcing capitalistic and patriarchal ideals.

The irony behind that in the process of institutionalizing and therefore validating the art forms and offering protection, we in fact cage ourselves into a new box that then removes the spontaneous nature of what we are creating.

No wonder I have been so frustrated as a performer in Montreal. I am a cowgirl lost in the white hallways of a institution. Even when I can find my way, trying to spit out my words in French further alienates me from joining the community. The rest of the Canadian Circus scene wonders why it’s cut off from the celebration of circus that is in Montreal, but it turns out that was by design, by the goals of the separatist party when funding the circus in the first place. I thought joining the circus was a celebration of different abilities, but Montreal is really becoming homogenized with specific gatekeepers allowing only certain aesthetics and language to come through.

For me, it would not have been possible to become a circus performer without the possibility of street performance. These institutions have failed me and so many others over time, and as a result I chose the grinding life of a street artist. Anyone who isn’t status quo according to institutional standards, will be left by the wayside in one way or another. Currently, street performers are driving to Quebec City on weekends just to have the space to play.

The hoops required to prove my worth in Montreal (where you are required to show professional associations and pay $300 to get a permit), would have prevented me from ever becoming an artist. I would have never had the chance to fail, learn, grow and get good at my craft. Grinding on the street alone has always been better to me than volunteering to be in a cage.

Of course this is written ironically, considering I am writing this from the education institution of Concordia. This program is clearly open to challenging institutional structures and paradigms and I am a privileged one. I have grown my own art, healed many of my wounds and I have money and support to move through/past/around the barriers the walls of an institution placed in front of me. The other street performers? They have fewer options. The people not yet performers? They have no chance at all.

Why is worth not is seen in the awe and wonder of the crowds that gather, rather than being determined by the institution? Would Sean Gandini be a performer today if he was not allowed a chance to be free in Covent Garden 30 years ago? When did freedom of expression get caged, with a paid entrance fee? Street Performers knew that art was a way of knowing, they didn’t need it validated by a university lecture to be working on their art.

Cities around the world have been increasingly formalizing the good performance pitches. Just as any attempts to actually be free to express ourselves in our society will eventually be commodified, regulated and stratified. The result is often that new performers do not have a time or the space required to build shows. Old street artists can’t meet the new standards and regulations. Artists of all kinds don’t have the chances to fail or the liberties to try news things as the performers of the 70’s and 80’s have had. And worst of all, institutions will only listen to other institutions when trying to break the paradigms. Us mercenaries are more on our own than ever.

Long before I was ever a circus artist, I had a hidden life as a visual artist. Hidden, because I never actually went to art school but rather, I was in school for the humanities. I sort of became an artist by accident when, during a class on the Grotesque with a rather inspiring professor, I started drawing to map out some of the exploding ideas I had in my brain (it felt like my brain was a dam bursting and I had to draw them or die), and it soon became an addiction. After that, I produced one drawing a week for the next three years (I guess I was catching up for lost time). For that course, I ended up producing two bodies of art that got shown in a small cafe that same month because someone asked me to. Shortly after, I got my first art commissions and I found myself inexplicably a ‘visual artist’. This is kind of the trajectory I have for most things: fall in love by accident, get obsessed, accidentally become a professional (let’s just say that it’s no surprise that I have a heavy dose of imposter syndrome). This sort of paradigm applied for circus arts, as well. However, I want to devote this blog not to my career trajectory but rather to a recent trend I realized recently: my artistic life, my academic and circus life are oddly combining in an unexpected way. The obsessions that crowded my brain at 16 still crowd my brain 13 years later, only now rather different and perhaps better formed now I have the tools to explore them.

The themes in my art that obsess me are subliminal, visceral and arguably really solipsistic. I’m attracted to developing a cosmology of the internal world and the possibilities of the grotesque body as a vehicle for the expression of mythic ideas within that cosmology (points of a compass as you will). Also, there was a preoccupation with the limitless Baktinian body which is eternally flowing and transgressive of modern systems of thinking. Before contortion, I sort of only drew abstracted limbs. After contortion, I found myself connecting the shapes in contortion to more abstract ideas within my universe, yet there was still no obvious connect between the two beyond incorporating contortion shapes. In contortion, I also found similar ideas that I’m interested in: with the displacement of body parts, the body also has the potential to express something much more than human. However, I am actually not sure about how to connect this on an aesthetic level to what I want to express, because I feel the two dimensional realm is severely limiting.

My main question in this blog post, then, is whether it is possible to connect one’s different practices? Is this a futile pursuit? Is it possible for me, personally, to connect academia, visual art and circus arts in order to discuss and explore the same obsessions? Arguably yes: I am trying to do this at the moment. But log on onto the Canadian Council of Arts website and you can’t even register for grants as both a circus artist and a visual artist, let alone also use that project to develop research (officially, anyway). This poses some very concrete distinctions between these different worlds as they exist in our society. I find myself continuously in liminal places: too academic for circus, too visual for academia, too corporeal for an artist.

Today, I had a visual idea come to me strongly: the image of a contortionist blindfolded with eyes drawn in black all over her body. She is almost not recognizable as a human form, but moves in a way that is uncanny and displacing. The audience sits in a circle around the contortionist, giving her cues as to how she moves, yet not actually knowing how those words would be read by the contortionist’s body. I shared this idea with Deniz, and she brought some insight into my idea. She said that in Turkish culture, there is a nervousness about ‘being seen’ which is perceived to be a bad thing. The Turkish evil eye, as such, came about as a way to deflect the gaze of an audience. I had never actually thought about it in this way, but the eyes on my body that would be drawn also ‘returns the gaze’ onto the audience. The audience, being in a circle with the artist, also resembles a kind of iris. It’s funny how you sometimes have flashes of visual inspiration, and then you realize only after the fact that it may have… meaning and connection to your research questions and artistic preoccupations? (shocking, I know)

This actually made me think about the themes in my visual art practice: there is a focus on inward introspection which is how I interpret my inability to draw girls with open eyes which always feels like a violation of their intimacy (I quite literally am not able to do it: all of the girls in my drawings have their eyes closed). The multitude of eyes in my drawings, concurrently, represent to me the limitless self that permeates with its environment, inseparable from the influences that surround it. There is a deep vulnerability in my drawings that make me feel exposed, yet I’m also hiding in my drawings by creating a cosmology of the self and a language that is, to a degree, unreadable yet easily interpreted on a personal level. I never know exactly what I’m drawing: people bring their meanings to it and tell me what they see. I’m in favour of a democracy of meaning (hullo, rhizomes! You changed my life forever; the meaning of life is mushrooms) and I absolutely despise artists who try to map their own meanings onto their work without any ability to flow outside it.

So… how do the two ideas I’ve highlighted actually connect? Obviously, I see a visual semblance. But do they actually connect in terms of artistic interest or research questions to be explored? Has my research performance somehow morphed into an artistic installation? (arguably, this is my comfort zone). Does my contortion performance actually answer the question of bringing an accessibility and intimacy to a contortion performance, in which one observes and objectifies the body of a human whose abilities are usually vastly different from their own? It seems that every day brings a new dimension of questioning, but perhaps that is also the point of this seminar?

I remember my first juggling workshop rather clearly: merely an hour after it had begun, I felt a mysterious fatigue set over me, so much that I couldn’t actually think straight and I found my vision blurring. I’m someone who can do three hours of aerials or contortion without any issue, but simply having to juggle two or three balls in the air for the first time exhausted my mental resources. This made me think… is there a specific kind of person who does juggling? Can it be trained? I’m sure the answer to both questions is yes and yes, then the question is: how much is training and how much is predisposition? Or, is it just pure obsession and dedication to the craft? (Jugglers: you’re welcome to pitch in your responses here.)

As a contortionist, I’ve heard many other contortionists say, “Everyone can be a contortionist” which is both true and not true. There are certain limiting factors such as age, genetics and the amount of time you’re willing to devote to training. Also, your willingness to sacrifice your social life (thankfully, not a priority for me). I see a similar obsessive personality in juggling: you need to be completely obsessed to juggle, just as you need to be obsessed to train your body to even have a baseline contortion level of flexibility. I’ve personally devoted hundreds of hours to not just training, but also to learning about the body and understanding how it moves. When I heard Gandini talk, I could relate a lot to what he was saying: the level of obsession that juggling or maybe any circus art requires is so much that it, in a way, overtakes your life and swallows everything else.

When I heard Gandini talk, he also reminded me of my brother who is a computer scientist working for Apple, who is also an obsessive and addictive personality, only his obsession is with numbers and computations. I remember listening to him talk about how he was going to map fractals as visual images and how each line had a specific and different meaning. I remember totally blanking out, because what he was describing was so far from my world that it felt like he was talking in a completely different language. This reminds me of Gandini’s talk about the geometry of shapes in juggling and how adjusting the number of balls, speed and pace can radically change the pattern of juggling. I had never actually thought of juggling in such a way, being more preoccupied with not having the balls fall. At some point, the talk got so abstract that I lost track of reality and had to leave. This experience made me realize that his brain is so radically different from mine, yet there is some kind of similarity as well. His brain is wired for mathematics, geometry, calculations and data. Mine is wired towards making connections between disparate ideas on different planes as we do in academia. Separate differences that perhaps also contain a mirrored symmetry.

My question then is: how could juggling be used as research into the brains of computer scientists, mathematicians and people who simply put are accustomed to calculations and computing? Would a computer scientist, such as my brother, take to juggling as easy as I did to contortion? Would it be a natural permutation of a predisposed trait- the need to find geometric patterns and create order and art within that? Has someone actually brought juggling to Caltech, Silicon Valley or tech companies to see how such people take to it? Can juggling be used as a way to find similar patterns in the brain through MRI scans?

I’ve no idea how to answer these questions, and I’m definitely not qualified to do this project. However, if any adept juggler wants to take on this Herculean task, I really do think this is a blank slate of exploration that someone should embark upon. And, there’s probably people willing and eager to fund it.

Excerpt: Their “flow state,” to reference the reading from Anne Bogart, becomes infectious.  The metaphor of a river is too organic for the cold grey stage, lit with the searing colors and crisp, multiplied shadows of contemporary dance lighting. Perhaps instead the apt metaphor comes from the “flow” of data in cyberspace where colors, numbers, and words coded as ones and zeros rush through mazes of fiber optic cable at the speed of light…

When I think of partnering in the context of circus, my mind flies upward.  I think of hanging from the bar in duo trapeze with my base under me in catcher’s lock. “I’m afraid,” I whisper to her, “you call it.”  I breathe in and she gives me a short, percussive “hup.”  I let go and arch backwards, my straight legs and flexed feet lock in between her shoulders and hands as I fall into place.  If I own the momentum in the back swing, I can release on the return.  My legs fly out behind me as my hands reach for her hands.  The physical intimacy and trust that drives the form underpins the common narratives of aerial pas de deux.  As discussed in seminar, these kinds of aerial acts are often read as romances even when the performers involved are strangers or siblings rather than lovers. The drama inherent in the actions themselves readily provokes the audience’s imagination.

Watching “Spring,” I was struck by the performers in duos and trios focusing so intensely not on each-other but on the juggling balls they were passing and intercepting.  Like Jim Lasko’s “Third Thing,” the puppet that allows for collaboration between diverse artists and communities in The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance, the ball becomes a mediator between people.  It is a necessary part of the equation.  The pas de deux becomes a pas de trois (quatre, cinq, six, etcetera as the tangle of balls and limbs multiplies). 

The part of my brain that seeks out narrative kept searching for human contact.  “There it was,” I’d think, “they made eye contact.  I saw her smile.”  And then the militant focus would return to the flurry of balls flying in front of them.  The moments of audience address in the show are, I think, funny for that exact reason.  They are interruptions to the “regularly scheduled program(ming).” 

This estrangement is re-doubled by the miraculous precision of the group sequences.  Like the chorus line historically mirrored the assembly line, the jugglers blur into a collective as they count 100 perfect throws to kick off the show.  Their “flow state,” to reference the reading from Anne Bogart, becomes infectious.  The metaphor of a river is too organic for the cold grey stage, lit with the searing colors and crisp, multiplied shadows of contemporary dance lighting. Perhaps instead the apt metaphor comes from the “flow” of data in cyberspace where colors, numbers, and words coded as ones and zeros rush through mazes of fiber optic cable at the speed of light.  Moving faster and faster, the predictive text stutters at the end, mimicking human speech patterns that link colors with adjectives but without sufficient sense: “spicy green,” “dangerous tangerine,” “depressed pink,” and a broken link.

_we’re sorry the page you are trying to access is temporarily unavailable_

The Gandini Juggling company is clearly comfortable changing style and inspiration, and if “Smashed” is their most oft-repeated production this is a clear and definitive break.  “Spring” is a distinctly different offering.  Here, the narrative of the “superhuman” circus performer became not about risk or daring, the freaky “fleshy” body of Hurley, but something so meticulous it became transcendent.

Or as the cheerleaders quipped in a moment of chipper, though equally crisp, direct address:

“It’s mys-terious.  Almost de-lirious.”  It is a moment of apt self-assessment, “Spring” is not organic – in this case it is neither season nor ritualistic rite, though Sean Gandini contemplated both during the creative process – but rather a dose of engrossing digital delirium.

-Skye Strauss

Have you ever felt like you were being pushed off the edge of a cliff? What about being mid-fall while wearing a ball gown, explaining the theory of relativity, a mosquito is annoyingly buzzing around your face like your nose hairs are the only things that matter in the world AND… You have to smile. I think it’s something most circus performers can relate to. 

That’s what the first few days of this seminar have been for me. A sense of being entirely out of my comfort zone amongst a group of people who seem completely in tune with their own bodies. The way “circus bodies” interact with the space, is so fluid and natural, I couldn’t help but notice how unsettled I felt in comparison. I crossed my legs. I uncrossed them. I hunched my back to write legibly. Then I thought “Oh damn, are my jeans riding down. I should fix that. But what if me fixing it draws attention to it. It’s probably fine… No, it’s not fine…is it?” and so on and on. I saw how some of them naturally stretched into splits while paying attention to the lecture. Others comfortably brought their knees up to the chair to provide support for their notebooks. But the truth is, we’re all having inner-existential-mind-melting dialogues. They just do it with more grace. 

We were told we had two weeks to answer a question. One question? Pfff, I have a few so get comfortable. 

The way the performers move and exist in a space got me thinking: Does the practice of the circus arts attract a specific daring character? Or does the practice make you more daring? How do they even deal with performing risky acts in front of audiences? Seriously…HOW? What is their brain telling them when they are about to dangle from a sky-high (not dramatic at all) hoop? What makes you want to fold your body into yourself? How do stories emerge from their practice? What can I do to extract some sort of this circus-magic into my own creative process? How does one even think about creating stiletto-skates, let alone perform in them? What drives them to get better? 

Do I have any of that circus courage in me?

Are you dizzy yet? 

Going down this rabbit-hole got me down. The only thing I could do to get out of my own head was to submit to the process. Submitting to something I have no control over. A result that is unknown. I entered the 4th space this morning with this in mind. But as more of the other participants arrived, I felt the creeping sensation of inadequacy crawling up my spine. Perfect. I needed to get back to a place of “not thinking.” I needed to play. I looked around the room and my eyes locked on the Weggsphere. 

Well, there’s an idea.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Spring fresh in mind for most, there was a lot of talking about juggling today. Having Sean Gandini coming in was absolutely amazing, because his (/their) work is so well known in the juggling community now, that it is interesting to see where it came from and how it was received at the time. Juggling is incredibly old, as Gandini also mentioned, and has been warped into new levels of impossibilities through the internet. After his presentation some of us discussed how the early videos of juggling that he showed were seen so scandalously strange at the time, while that exact style of juggling is normal now, even mild. That just shows the changing nature of juggling as an art form(/sport). Which may lead the things that are scandalous in juggling now to become the norm in 20 years.

The first juggling convention I went to was a small(-ish) convention in the Netherlands almost 10 years ago and I could just about juggle 3 balls. Surrounded by the best jugglers of the country, I though I knew what/who jugglers are. I looked at the tricks and I told myself that once you’re able to do a 3 ball box, that’s when you can be seen as a real juggler. As I didn’t juggle much at the time, it took me a while to land that trick, but by the time I had it down consistently, my perspective had changed and 5 ball-juggling had become the entrance requirement of jugglerness. Once I learned 5 balls, the entry requirement had gone up once again and I think this is why I probably won’t ever consider myself to be a “real” juggler.

First of all, in learning how to juggle and going to more juggling conventions, I met more and more genuinely amazing and skilled jugglers. With those in mind, it is hard to be a juggler by comparison. Especially with the crazy talented people, who have the same level when you meet, but a year later have surpassed you to the point that you won’t be able to catch up. Of course these people have the obsession (and time) to throw themselves into juggling fully and unfortunately I am clearly not as determined as they are.

More importantly, I think, is a shift in understanding of what juggling is, both for me personally and globally in the scene. Talking to jugglers, seeing videos and shows, and practising gives more insight into what juggling really entails and what is the most tricky. Certain things that look complicated can be incredibly simple, while other things are physically hard to do. The juggling world had certain assumptions of the limits of possibilities, but people proved those things wrong. (Two examples are the “impossible balance” and the 14-ball flash.) As part of the juggling community you move along with these shifts without noticing. Many people have commented on the amount of diabolos currently prevalent, event though 2 of them used to amaze everyone 15-ish years ago, while at current conventions, many diabolists can be seen training with 5. Internet really helped the world to see the actuality of things that were assumed impossible, but were achieved by people on the other side of the world.

It never gets old, seeing a big top. I’ve put up plenty of big tops and travelled with some, but still the sight of such a site makes my heart beat faster and my internal butterflies flutter. I am always slightly disappointed when there is something non-circusy happening in a space so sacred to me. I was actually not looking for the big striped tent, but the giant Ferris Wheel behind it, when I noticed the peaks of the tent. A short stop before I walked on, while I tried to tell myself it didn’t have to be a circus tent. But, I mean, I am in Montreal, I am here for circus, however my heart had been broken in such a way before, so I couldn’t have my hopes up too much. My initial enthusiasm was rewarded and it was a circus tent indeed. I decided against going too close, because I had accidentally found the circus too early and I didn’t want to take away from the excitement I knew I would feel a next day. Yet I found the circus, I incidentally found Alegria, I found Cirque Du Soleil. My heart kept beating too fast for the pace I was walking. I was trying to take it all in; the blue canvas, the white stripes, the clear sky and the faint cheers. I wanted to laugh and jump and shout and share my excitement with the world, but unfortunately I was wandering on my own.

Days later I was talking to some people about the Cocktail Party Effect, which describes how, no matter the circumstances, you will notice when your name is being said. It even happens when you are at a party in the middle of a conversation, hence the name. What happens in your brain is, in short, that the pathway connected to your name is so strong that any input results in activation of the network surrounding it. During this short conversation, I admitted that a similar happens for me when I hear the word “circus”. (However, in a context like this it is a counterproductive reaction, because it is used way above average, which can be distracting. In “normal” life it got me to overhear several fun conversations on the other hand.) In that sense it is almost like my middle name in my brain.

I dread the day that circus won’t excite me any longer and no more butterflies appear at the sight of a striped tent. Hopefully that day is far away, because for now the excitement is still fresh enough to share with the world.

Dear Diary,

I took the puppet to the class today. Amy liked it. Some other people liked it too. Here are some contortion poses Amy did with the puppet:

The interesting thing is as I was watching Amy play with the puppet I came to realize that I can’t animate the puppet as good as her. I don’t really know how gravity acts on humanoid structures like she does: therefore I can’t really balance it. Before Amy started playing with the puppet I wasn’t even sure that it can stand on flat surfaces (and I was trying to find artificial solutions to that nonexistent problem). Here is an interesting thing about any kind of creative creation: you need other people to understand what you have made because your motivation cannot holistically define anything about the creation itself.

After Amy Hsing-Ho came to play with the puppet. He managed to do some very interesting balancing stuff too. Here are some moments of that:

As Hsing-Ho was playing with the puppet he said that it might break if we bend it too much and I confidently told him that it can’t break because I used the wires that were used to make stop motion figures. Ha-ha, so the joke is on me, the puppet did break… It turns out that I need to listen to the practitioners closer. As a result I needed to purchase more wire, and as I was doing that I bumped into these amazing pink straps that are perfect to add the first muscle tissues to the puppet. Here is an image of the broken puppet surrounded by the new stuff I got to mend it and improve it (namely three different kinds of wire, pink straps, rubber bands – the rest of the materials are from yesterday):

When I went home I first mended the puppet. I added the spring ring to the belly part, used wire all around and inside to attach the two pieces and then used some more wire (in different thickness and elasticity levels) to apply the same kind of strengthening process to all the limbs.

Once I was satisfied with the skeleton I moved on to covering the puppet with the initial muscle tissue, which was the pink straps:

After I returned from watching the “Spring” tonight I sewed the bits of the pink straps to make neater. I will bring it to Amy again tomorrow and continue with the skin and the rest in the weekend…

Sigh… What a day.

Rethinking about the day 3

I got questioned: “Did you do something for the first time in your life today?”

Yes. Actually more than one.

Talking about research creation in an academic community and context was brand new for me. I could feel myself going into that place that somehow I really want to be part of something. 

I got caught trying to connect my personal events and experiences with all those readings and lots of meaningful words. I admit that wasn’t an easy/light morning for me. 

However, reading the posters that were spread on the same place where all those questions emerged in my brain was very helpful. I ended up understanding much better -but honestly not fully – about the concept of research-creation that appeared so many times on those readings and discussions.          

Also, for the first time, aware of the right context, being able to understand how to formulate (or try to) a question that would drive the creational process. Which I believe that we didn’t find completely yet, but thing are becoming much more clear.

No much time to find out the best research question and develop the ideal way of representing it, but still a lot of days to come and many things to happen until the final presentation. 

Looking forward to re-read this text and re-think about my thoughts at the end of the Seminar. From the day that I got here until this third day, so many things have happened. There’s so much to share and to learn. So many people to talk and to listen. And a lot of work ahead…

It has really been exciting to realize where these so many “first times” that we allow ourselves to go through can led us to amazing paths.

I came into the seminar feeling entirely too confident in what I hoped to research and explore. 

I should’ve known better.  In less than two days, everything came crashing down.  It felt like an epic destruction scene from the TRANSFORMERS film or some other action adventure movie, when the protagonists are running through the streets and debris is falling on them.

But before the destruction and debris, some context: I came to Montreal wanting to research audiences. My question: “How can we set up audiences for success?”  Pretty good, right? BUGHHHHHH….maybe. But then we have to ask what defines success? Some performances want to punish audiences, so having them leave in tears and outrage would be a success.  So then I thought about “How can we better care for our audiences?” But what audience? A circus audience? A Montreal audience? An American audience? An audience made up of rich white older theatre go-ers? 

I was speaking with Alisan Funk today; I wanted to bounce ideas off of her, because, quiet honestly, I felt like I was drowning. So in true educator fashion, she threw questions back at me. With all the question marks flying, around it felt like I was being pinned to the wall.

It was through this interrogation, I mean conversation, that we started to dig at what I was so upset about.  And yes, I’m upset, hell, I’m enraged. I’m tired of seeing shows, theatre or circus, where the audience is not considered.  It’s as if we didn’t need to be there, in fact, sometimes we feel like we’re a nuisance to the performer and might as well leave. I’ve heard too often from artists, “I don’t care what the audience feels or thinks.” WHAT?  Then why the hell did you put that in front of an audience if you’d be just as content to do it in your living room?

So, then we started talking about discomfort.  When, as audience members, do we feel uncomfortable?  Maybe a performer is making aggressive eye-contact and licking their lips at you seductively (yes, I’ve seen this done before), or if an audience member is asked to come on stage, they say no, and then they’re shamed into oblivion (I’ve seen this one way too often), or maybe worse yet, performers put the audience is danger, real or perceived, such as having the audience sit under a tent and hold pieces of the structure that is above all of our heads (yes, this a show that exists).

However, how in a two week seminar that is about practice led research, how can I develop a practice around an audience? They’re the last ingredient in an artist’s potion.  Alisan and I brainstormed more (she threw more questions at me …I think all I see now are question marks) and we landed on the fact that in order to move forward, I have to start from the artist. And maybe this is why we, as art creators, sometimes forget to think about the audience.  We don’t know them, we can’t predict them, but we know ourselves (we hope). And we can create from there.

So, keeping in line with the idea of discomfort or un-comfortability:  what happens if the artist performs actions that make them uncomfortable? Does an audience sense that?  Does it make them uncomfortable? I don’t know, but that’s what I’m hoping to explore tomorrow. 

SOOOOOO: What makes me uncomfortable performing?

Performing dance and tumbling.  The level of seriousness it takes in duality with the awkwardness that is my body doing it. And being in a city where circus is woven into the fabric of its society; where the elite come to LEARN and train, where the country has recognized circus as an official art form, where the base level of any circus artist is to be able to hold a handstand for over 30 seconds…minimum.

My comfort level lives in clown; in being able to laugh at myself, and be laughed at.  Clown makes me feel like I’m in on the joke. It allows me to poke at an audience or a societal practice and laugh at it and have them laugh with me.  Being uncomfortable on stage or failing on stage, in red nose, is golden. It’s a gift. It allows all of us, performer and audience, to acknowledge that we’re all human beings with flaws and baggage and bias.  We can laugh at it, or cry about it, or walk away wondering what the hell that was, but feeling affected by it.

But to move with grace and power and vulnerability without the nose …terrifies me.  Makes me so uncomfortable that l freeze. Add any sort of sexuality or sensuality to it and I think I’ll turn into a beet from embarrassment. 

To attempt the grace and power means to highlight that I don’t belong in this circus world.  I have a serious case of imposter syndrome. The only way I’ve felt like I belong is when I’m able to share the delight and wonder of the world through laughter. 

So that’s what I’m going to do. Live in the discomfort. Find what makes me uncomfortable and try to gauge if it makes anyone else as uncomfortable as I feel.

Oh goodness, I hope they laugh.  The good belly laughs, not the uncomfortable snickers….well, actually, maybe the uncomfortable giggles are what I want? Oh geez, more questions.

When I first played with Deniz’s puppet, I felt an odd, uncanny recognition of myself in the puppet. I’m not sure how to explain it, but I could feel myself in its skeleton, as if it were an externalization of my own body. The puppet itself is still yet a skeleton prototype with no discernible human features, yet I could feel myself in it when I was playing with it as if it were a projection of my own movements. During the process of manipulating its limbs, I felt a kind of effortless ease; the same kind of ease I feel when I’m watching a video of myself performing a sequence and I have forgotten how much energy it actually takes to reach the point where the body bends easily and things look effortless (spoiler alert: it isn’t easy. It’s actually really difficult).

The process of training contortion is always preceded by a period of struggle in which you have to use muscles to bend bone till the body is pliable and ready to bend. The warming up process is always long and tedious, and it takes at least 30-45 minutes of sustained practice (less if the weather is warm) before you get into a kind of flow state in which things feel effortless and you feel like you can flow with the body (I feel the need to add the disclaimer here that 50% of the time, I do get distracted and never actually reach this flow state either because I do not have enough time or my body just gives out and decides ‘not today’). When I reach this state, I feel the need to bend backwards on everything and to find all possibilities within my body. There is a kind of extreme corporeality I experience in which there is no dimension but me, my body and breath. When I am in this zone, hours tend to fly by and I lose track of time because I’m fully focussed on exploring the limits of my body and my body has ‘melted’ to a pliable state where it’s easily manipulated by my imagination. This is the state I usually have to be in to create a performance choreography. It’s also a state I get to when I’m performing for others or when I’m doing a long photoshoot in which I have to perform for a couple of hours continuously.

Perhaps because contortion often involves a flow state, I find it very hard to troubleshoot or actually have an ‘action plan’ when training contortion, which is why a lot of my ‘contortion thinking’ happens outside training. Or, I need to write things down in a very structured way to be even a bit organized in my training. When trying to figure out certain moves or transitions, I often have to ‘manipulate’ my body in my mind and this process is actually one of the most difficult things for me. If I cannot imagine what the body is doing, it’s almost impossible for me to map it out in movement. Also, there are some things you accidentally discover in contortion when you are messing around and getting your limbs tangled, but without a visual representation, it’s almost impossible to return back to those things to understand how they work. During the process of manipulating the puppet’s limbs, I felt I could work through those issues easier without actually having to spend the energy to do so which I can tell you is very appealing, as a contortionist. It brings another dimension of possibility in which exploration and choreography can happen outside the flow state. For me, anyway, choreography does involve writing things down but those things tend to fly out the window when you’re actually doing contortion.

Another element I found interesting was the possibility of the puppet as a pedagogical tool. There are some moves in contortion which look similar but are actually radically different. Moving the arms from the back to the front in a chest stand, for example, shifts the bend from the neck and upper back to the hips and lower back. Most people, upon seeing the two poses, think they look similar and involve the same body mechanics. Having to explain or contain contortion within textual form is really a Herculean effort since contortion, in a way, evades textual representation (try to explain a contortion move to me and see if I have the same image in my head as you do). Perhaps having contortion students manipulate contortion puppets could actually help them to understand certain precise actions needed in a pose.

To illustrate, triple fold is not simply a matter of extreme back flexibility. In order to get into it, the lower back has to bend so the butt is behind (not on top) of the head and the hips have to open for the head to pass through. In addition, the shoulders need to be flexible enough to externally rotate and grab the knees. These are things that you cannot know unless you actually train the pose itself and having a puppet to manipulate could perhaps help students to understand how things may feel in their body without the extreme warm-up, concentration and intense sensation that usually comes with it.

Also, I often rotate poses in my mind sideways or upside down in order to understand the mechanics of a move, find out alternate ways to train something or discover new transitions. Having the puppet materializes this process in a way which is tangible. You can also find points of balance in certain poses that seem impossible such as sitting on your head without hands or various handstand moves. The puppet also has its plane of physics similar to a human, and one can discover new possibilities of balance with the puppet that otherwise would not be possible (with certain limitations, of course).

Another interesting issue I’d like to explore is the possibilities of creating a different relationship with the audience through puppeteering. I often face two extremely different responses to contortion: some think it’s much easier than it is and they under-estimate the sheer amount of work it takes to make the impossible look effortless. The other response is those who face a mirror-like pain in their bodies. Perhaps, playing with a puppet can also bring regular people who do not train contortion a level of understanding of the contortionist’s body or what it may feel like to perform or train contortion. Perhaps, having me perform contortion and being able to manipulate the puppet simultaneously could bring the audience into the contortionist’s world and/or open up a playful and inclusive dimension? For those people who feel pain when they see the contortionist’s body, will actually being able to manipulate a puppet into contortion poses bring them towards a closer level of identification with the contortionist? Or, does being able to play with a puppet also have the possibility to erase the intense effort needed to train and perform contortion? These are all questions that arose today and that I have yet to answer.

This past two days have been very intense for me. I was not only introduced to a new field of knowledge but also was pretty intimidated by the well-known gap between my knowledge as a scholar and knowledge of the practitioners. It also made me – once again – aware of the fact that I have been educating my body to be as passive as possible to make sure that it didn’t intervene with the work of my mind for more than a decade. It is a little bit of a sad discovery for sure…

I wasn’t sure about what to do until today but Amy’s idea about her final performance gave me an idea about what I can do. So I talked to Amy about a possible collaboration and told her that I can make a puppet of her so we can animate the puppet side by side with her physical work – and observe audience reactions? (Well, we can figure how we will read the performance later.)

Because today was one of my very few empty afternoons through this intense course I decided to start crafting the puppet so I can show Amy tomorrow and get her approval before I proceed to a final product. So after my very necessary coffee and cookie break I went to Dollarama and DeSerres to get craft material for making the puppet. Here is what I ended up buying:

So the best part of making puppets for me (also considering that I have no training) is discovering how the materials work together for the need of that particular puppet. Since Amy’s puppet needs to be a contortionist like Amy, I was particularly interested in how to make a human-like skeleton for the puppet that has somewhat the limits of the human body. I started with making a very basic sketch of where I wanted to go:

I started making the skeleton with armature wire and used beads to give a “spine” to the puppet. I wasn’t sure about using the spring ring roll for the bell part but finally I decided not to.  

I started with the torso and the arms to have a better sense of where the puppet would go and used bead to define the joints and sponge to include some soft tissue:

And only then I moved on to legs. I attached some wire to the torso to start building the legs, and later added sponge to the chest area to create some needed volume there:

After some trial and error, such as readjustment of legs after realizing one happened to be longer than the other in the first trial, I finally add the beads to define the feet and I have the very first sketch somewhat realized:

I do the final touches of the skeleton after this, which are:

1. Tying the small wooden sticks in between two joint areas (3 wooden sticks per each area to be exact) with extra wire to make sure that the non-bendable parts of the human body can’t bend in the puppet too,
2. Using the last pieces of the wire to cage the sponge in the head and chest areas,
3. Making the finishing touches with adding beads to the hands (only at the very end I realized the feet became cooler than the hands and I should readjust the hands of the puppet).  

And here are some poses that the bendy puppet skeleton can do:

I will update you here on the progress of the puppet. And hopefully I will be able to have something to show on the presentation day.

Test Post. Trying out the new visual editor. The first 300 characters of your post will appear on the main blog page. When you click on the post title, you will be taken to the full blog post page, where you will see your full text and all images/other media that you have included.

This is how a quotation is styled.

By Author