Community Underscore

Had the opportunity to participate in a community underscore today led by Nancy Stark Smith (contact improv pioneer) and Mike Vargas (musician partner who played haunting mixtures of piano, loops, baby toys). My final undescore of 2010. A lovely culmination of a year of many contact imrovisation-inspired moments.

We began by facing London, England (NE) at 2:50, precisely the time a group of dancers was facing us! We danced for three hours. It was epic. I sat out for a brief time to rehydrate and take pictures, but I couldn't really capture the vast, layered, energetic and aural landscape. People in a variety of colors, shapes and sizes, men and women, young and not so old. People I have known for years and years, people I met this year, people I met dancing just today. I shared a surprisingly yummy dance with the young man sitting against the mirror in this photo. I've never seen him before and didn't expect him to be so present, graceful, fluid and connected. One of my most memorable dances of the day.

I danced in trios--Liz (my friend from waaaay back in college who I woke up thinking about today, but had no idea I'd be seeing!), Merrill and me. We were like mystics casting spells. Me, Chris (bearded man who once showed up at nono underscore on a night it was cancelled, but I was there and MaryAlice asked him to come in, and we ended up dancing with only bike lights and a seminal psychedelic record on), and Virginia, (new to me). I did a lot of drifting between engagements, lifting and being lifted, mostly in flow, but friendly with the occasional "gaps." To think Nancy made this remarkable score up with glyphs for prescriptions and descriptions! We did 21 claps to close in honor of winter solstice and the lunar eclipse. As I clapped with the 50 or so other participants I had one of those recurring "I can't believe I get to do this" contact moments.

Sitting In A Circle

"Sitting In A Circle" is a film created by Ishan Vernallis and Erika Chong Shuch. I was one of many performers in it, as was my daughter, Skyla, pictured picking a daisy in the middle of this group photo taken by Ed. It was filmed during Erika's residency at the de Young Museum, primarily in the James Turrell "skyspace," in the sculpture garden. It was a really fun and visually remarkable experience. We spent so many hours in the skyspace--a sort of concrete igloo with a hole cut in the top--in many moods of light and weather. I was really struck by how it feels to view the world through a single opening. It rained one day, an incredibly momentous event. A seagull flying overhead was an exhilerating, rare occurrence. A leaf dropping in through the opening felt like a message directly from God. It was wild to dance literally in the round, rolling around the edges like laundry tumbling in a dryer. The concrete bench that runs along the interior is heated. And at night neon lights fade from blue to green to red illuminating the dome and changing the way the sky looks through the hole. If the light is blue the sky looks chartreuse. Here is a link to a video to give you a sense of the view through the hole. A rough cut of the film was shown on October 1, 2010 at the de Young. Stay tuned for further (final cut) showings.

Romesticity

This morning I talked to a friend on the phone about housewife and stay-at-home-mama life. I heard myself say, "I like it and I'm good at it." Pictured here: shepherds' pie and Lambie pie--some of the spoils of Romesticity. Since Skyla started Kindergarten I've been cooking, reading, and rehearsing lots more. In the food photo: filling I made for tonight's shepherds' pie, flocked, as it were, by a script for the Christmas pageant, with lines highlighted for Angel Skyla and me, Mary, and the Style section from the Sunday Chron with the "deep dish" on fashion muse and femme fatale Isaella Blow. In the lamb photo: The kids' and my fashion treatment of Lambie, Skyla's idea. Skyla and Julius, with an eye for fashion himself, hand decorated the skirt with butterflies and mountains and sun dots. The sew-free shawl is Skyla's favorite color: rainbow. When I look at these pictures I can see why I said what I said.

A Hand In Desire Video

So DuBois. Click on that link. Do you like what you see? I'm in the ecru little too big pleated dress otherwise known as Blanche. DuBois. Sort of. I'm also Rowena Richie, little known dancer actor in this city of Saint Francisco, 2010, Mama C's V Factory. I'm playing with EmSpace Dance. That link is for a our publicity promotional Kickstarter A Hand In Desire video. Wanna Give? You can pledge on the Kickstarter site. I'm rehearsing right now for this theater dance experiment based on Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. And we've moved into the performance space--Veracocha on Valencia. Not where this video was shot. We are playing a card game of Hearts that will dictate what scenes are performed in what order. It's genius possibilities. I want to play all 45 scenes, but we will only do half, or so. But which ones, and in what arrangement? That's the surprise for us all: players, musicians, designers and audience. No two shows will be the same. Today we worked on a song, Stella's song. I made up a backup singer dance which Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, the director, edited. Funsoulfull. Come see our show, A Hand In Desire, January 14-29 at Veracocha in SF. It's at 8 o'clock on Valencia Street in the Miss-ion Diss-trict. 21st is the cross street. Parking tricky, but BART friendly. Or bike. I'm playing Blanche DuBois made famous by Vivien Leigh (and Marlon Brando as her nemesis, Stanley Kowalski). "I thought that part of the task was not to be influenced by the film," claims Cate Blanchett who just played Blanche on Broadway. She's right, but it's dang difficult not to mirror Leigh. I'm slowly finding My Way. Recurring image of My Blanche as talking head in TV infomertial. A brunette, not a blonde. You know, me. With charm and cunning. Prowess. A certain grace. Extremely sensitive skin. A touch of madness (which increases as the game wears on). Brilliant white hairs flocked by a coarse wiry black forest. Tenderness and honesty. Deception and Indulgence. She is Dead Walking. She is Cheap Sleep Tired. And her gig is flat. She will be redeemed, won't she? She walks the walk, don't she? She talks a pretty story. She feels things deeply. She feeds on beauty and pleasures herself with extremes of emotion. She operates both as seducer and seduced. She won't stay until he kicks her out. She thinks out loud. She is somebody. 'S problem.

Making Contact

My love affair with contact improvisation is still in its infancy but I am totally smitten with a particular form I've been practicing for the past 8 months called the Underscore. The Underscore was conceived of by Nancy Stark Smith, one of the founders of CI. You can read more about her here. (This accompanying photo was added later, take in December at a community underscore Nancy led during her Bay Area visit. Read more in the Dec. 19 post). In this video my underscore mentors, the red shirts Rosemary and Vitali, demonstrate their smooth moves at the grand opening of Blick art supply store on Market St. I join in the dance with my partner Tree. Centrifugal force and spirals are themes we frequently explore. In our Wednesday night workshop last week Vitali posed the question--what if we thought of time not as a line, but as a curve or spiral? Later that evening there was an accumulation of bodies swirling through space around a central axis, sort of like crack-the-whip, but more dynamic with people getting drawn in and out and around the center. At some point I literally got swept off my feet and lifted up over the top--it was one of those rare moments when time slowed down and I could feel everything. I spontaneously burst out, "Yaaaaaaay!"

xperiMint

This groovy sampler is of an improv I conducted with my co-conspirator Christy Funsch on September 17, 2010, in the SF Mint Plaza. The concerned bystander-speak goes something like this: "Hey...ha, ha! What's wrong with her? What's wrong? You need help? You need help? You want me to call a doctor for you? He can give her a pill, he can give her a pill that will bring her right back." Sweet, no? Over the course of three sessions in the plaza, two rehearsals to map out a score, and the gig, we encountered many people who inspired us. Thanks to them, and to all the sweethearts who came out and laughed at us. A longer, higher resolution version of xperiMint can be found here.

Flow with Ro, Connect with Christy

Over Father's Day weekend, I had the lovliest experience co-teaching a somatic improvisation workshop with my friend and mentor Christy Funsch. It was a somatic smorgasborg. After tapping our cortices, we underscored, we rounded down, we flexed our femurs, we freed our necks, we shared vinyasas and we palpated each others' psoases (the filet mignon of the body). It was so juicy and fun. Highlights include being in the brick-lined, airy Kunst-Stoff Arts Studio, decomposing to the grungy sounds of Soundgarden, gazing out the windows at downtown SF then gazing inside at our own marvelous mechanics, underscoring with Rosemary Hannon: my contact improv priestess, the scapula train, and banana roll. It was so enjoyable both being led and leading an intimate group of movers through a variety of practices and improv scores. More, more, more.

Lost and Found in the Mission

Photo by Borys Procak. www.lostandfoundinthemission.blogspot.com

Studio 2/15/2010

Here are some images of the South Beach studio I share with my dear friends Jan and Cheryl. There is wonderful light and energy there. In the video, shot sideways by Ed, talking about his book project, I'm working on a "chandelier" made out of bike rims, film reels, film, and fabric.

YouTube clip of Macbeth by Rapid Descent

Here's me on Mother's Day as Lady Mac in a snippet of Macbeth. It's a sampling of an upcoming production (that I may or may not be in) by Rapid Descent. RD is the offspring of Megan Finlay, a sharp, foxy director who hails from Sidney, Australia, England and the States. I met Megan in a contact improv workshop and enjoyed her "mixed tape" at our closing contact jam.

Lady Mac was very new territory for me, my first stab at Shakespeare. Bear in mind this excerpt is in the early stages of development. Still, I wish we had played more with my character and Mac and Lady's relationship--Lady M looks (and felt) a bit stilted to me. But there are some charged moments, especially between Macbeth and the ghost of Banquo.

This is the banquet scene. Mac has just learned that his orders to kill Banquo have been carried out. During the banquet Mac first encounters his ghost.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSppfl-ihqg