Questions and Answers

SC - Susan Cash
CA - Carol Anderson
SZ - Sashar Zarif
Q - Question

SC: I don't know whether I clarified the link between moving-site performance work and the rest of my work – I did talk a lot about the way Sashar and I work – but my interest is in cultural choreographic processes. I'm working on making that connection.

Q: When you were creating the site pieces – were they created at the site or were they created in the studio and then brought to the site?

SC: I did both – I worked in the studio and in different locations. Certainly for Fence, I worked in a different location outside and a bit inside, and then it felt right where we did it. Garden I just did at the initial site. For the work Shameless, with Sashar, we worked in the studio; but once I saw the site I adapted it. I went down to the site and we did rehearse it in the site – so the work changed from studio to location.

Q: Did you give your performers any specific instructions about how to be in their new spaces – in relating to it, or the variables in the performances?

SC: Sometimes.

Q: And was that important? Because it seems like your work is about animating the space …

SC: Not all the dancers, though they were very proficient dancers onstage, were well suited for the outdoor space – that was curious to me. Many of the dancers had trouble concentrating, focussing, or being in their bodies but also being connected to the space or holding onto something in the space. I would say that my idea is to give dancers a sketch of something and see what they do with it, as opposed to being very specific. Then I get more clear with what they give me. I did have to kind of corral a bit, but I want to explore that whole aspect of having responses from dancers a bit further. Also I think it requires a different kind of direction. When we did Garden at the World Dance Alliance [performed outside a window of the Accolade East Building at York University in July, 2006], I was inside looking out to see what it looked like, but then I'd be running outside to give notes, or the dancers would be off talking to somebody they met on the street.

Q: That could be part of it.

SC: That definitely could be part of it. I think that my new work Path is actually going to be more interactive – consciously interactive with the passers-by, whether they like it or not (laughter). Not that I'm going to go up and get in their face (flails and makes a silly noise). No. But, I think the dancers are going to pick some one and follow them, move around them, say something to them – “Oh, what's your cell phone number? Can I have your e-mail?” I'm interested in seeing what special skills are needed to do this kind of work. Because unless I'm doing something incredibly technical, I would like it to be a form I can bring somewhere and say “We're going to be here and come out and do this dance” or, “We're going to do this moving-site performance work and here are your instructions” and the performers will just learn them and then go. I'd like to be able to do that, but I need to know more about what the variables are.

CA: It's very interesting, what your talking about, because there's really an element of ritual at some level in that notion of having a flexible form – we don't have many rituals we can do, and I think we need them; if there was a dance that we could do to mark the beginning of school, or the coming of autumn, or other passages, it would be wonderful.

SC: It's interesting – I was thinking that as I do this work it could be like a warm-up for becoming a member of the York Dance Ensemble. We might do Path, and then go on to our traditional proscenium stage works – that ritual brings us together but also connects us to where we are. We don't have that. That's why everyone does salute to the sun, because it's a ritual – it gets us going, or brings us to our centres.

Q: For your new crane piece, one of the first things I thought was, “How are you going to negotiate the whole danger aspect of having the dancers up on the various cranes”? Also, people driving by on the highway and looking, because it would probably cause an accident.

SC: I probably will do it when there's gridlock. I'll probably do it when there's stop and start on the highway, or at a time when there's not much going on – when everybody's going to their cottage and you can't move anyway. At least then you'll have something nice to look at. I don't know all the logistics, I'm just in the baby steps of it, but I've had this idea for a long time and feel I really want to do it. There are a number of small circus troupes – they can't be afraid of heights. And I don't imagine complicated movement. (demonstrates some tricky dance steps). It's going to be minimal movement – more sculptural, and over a long period of time, showing stamina, inner intent and external focus. So it would be very minimal – a form of visual art. Actually think I'm more of a visual artist than a choreographer, but I didn't want to get into that today.

Q: Susan, you point out something very interesting in encouraging trained dancers to embrace the space and be comfortable in the space because their previous training has been the setting of the studio, the theatre and so on. But I wonder if you've been having experiences also with traditional dancers because with most of the traditional dancers it's about the relationship with the space and the transformation of the space. And if your roots are Mohawk you can be a witness of how a traditional dancer or grass dancer who even as a kid was really transforming the space. They had to be judged by people at competitions and so on, but the dance was about the relationship they had with the space and how they transform the space. I just wonder if you had any relationship with that, because it's a technique, acquired with hundred of years and knowledge that has been passed through generations. So, are you thinking of making parallels with that?

SC: I have been – I attended the Living Rituals conference that happened at York. Lots of aboriginal movers and speakers came to that conference to talk about emerging art from these different populations. I was there but I'm not really a part of the whole movement of where one's going with the traditions and whether elaborating or moving away from them is allowed.

Q: It's the relationship with the space, to transform and move traditions. To me, the question is how to get a trained dancer into that frame of mind, that space, and be comfortable to embrace or transform traditions. We try to explore the parallels of that.

I certainly have lots of questions around those ideas or tradition and taking traditions into present time and what actually is allowed to happen with those traditions and how those filter and change one's perspective of the new places that these traditions would live. Maybe I should hire some different kinds of movers.

It's social, political, economic – how we see, and what we see, and our traditions of training. If we're only doing ballet we're living in our bodies in a certain way and we're also viewing the world in a certain way. How to be adaptable to all different kinds of ways of seeing requires us to be involved in a whole spectrum of practices or a synergy of practices that is not just one-dimensional.

Q: When you were talking about your cranes piece, all of a sudden I saw the CNE, and I wondered could all your cranes go to the CNE and be performed during the mob scene of the Exhibition?

SC: Well I did think if I can't go to the cranes, maybe the cranes can come to me. I wonder if I need to be a construction person and have certification, and do I need to hire all those people to run each crane? I don't really know much about construction. I'm going to find a construction person to come with me to the crane company, and figure out whether I can rent cranes, or rent the construction site. “Dickey More” is the crane company. It's in an industrial area and there are all sorts of funky little restaurants around – so I thought I'd get all the restaurants to stay open and people could either be in traffic on Highway 400 or they could be standing across the road having a souvlaki and watching this wild thing happening in their industrial area. Bringing art to industry. Do you think that would fly? I don't know.

For Path I'm getting each dancer to construct their own idea of what “path” means to them or the varying ideas of what “path” is about for them. So, it's not just a geometric – it can be a road, or a way of life. I'm encouraging them to think of it in very broad terms and to think about what is important to them and how that gets manifested in movement and then shape that movement so that they're on a path in themselves. But we will also find out what the relationships are when you're in that path. So it's both personal and physical.

Q: Are you inspired by specific places? Or do you have an idea and start the work and then find the place you want?

SC: All places are quite inspiring to me.

Q: So, for the Fence piece. You performed it in a particular place, but would you perform it in other places?

SC: Yes. I adapted it for stage and I could do it other places. Moving-site performance work is really about bringing movement to any type of space. So I like to think that everything that I make I could do anywhere.

Q: How do you create a work with the dancers differently if your site-specific work is framed, or in a wide-open space. When people are sitting at a window to watch Garden, it's framed visually, more stage-like. I'm wondering how you work differently in different circumstances.

SC: When you shoot video, there is a frame around the action – the screen.

Q: But when you're at the Fence there's so much else going on. How do you feel differently about drawing your audience to you, as opposed to someone standing there watching Garden, with the dancers not leaving that space. How do you compel the audience further if you're not in one site, if it's a moving piece, or if there's so much else competing for their attention?

SC: I like to just insert the piece – and whoever is there is compelled to be there, or they're just there.

That's my idea for Path. I want to get the dancers going so we can do it every day, somewhere on campus, so that it is a regular thing, so that people get used to seeing dance in unusual spaces, so it becomes part of the culture like musicians in the subway. Like with So You Think You Can Dance – so many people know about that show, and it raises the consciousness of dance. That's what I think I could do if I could just spend my whole life doing moving-site performance work. That would be my raison d'être and it would raise the art form of dance.

Audience Comment: If I'm correct there's another part of your question too. The site that you used for Garden when you did it at the WDA was behind a window, and that window created a theatrical space. Whereas when you create in other spaces, such as an outside garden you don't have that same frame. So the audience is very different; you obviously have to have some consciousness of these different spaces. How do you negotiate the audiences in those two different spaces, or is that really important to you as a consideration?

SC: I'm interested in the space and what it creates, by being wide open, casual, informal, and I'm also interested in any kind of shift in perspective if work is more framed, or part of something else. The WDA festival was part of that. So I don't really think about my audience beforehand, though I like to know what the audience response is.

CA: There's much writing, mostly in the architectural world, about how places and buildings change the way we live, but not much about the idea of a resonance of movement or dancing that has happened in a place. In straight-up Western culture there's not much consideration of that. Having seen all your pieces on the campus, if I walk by Atkinson Residence, or the fence you used as a site, I think of those performances happening – and so do lots of other people. What do you think happens? Does dance create an unconscious connection?

SC: It has something to do with consciousness. Raising consciousness. Memory and connection. Opening the portals of seeing. I really think it's important to make connection between what was going on in the space and that space. The relationship to physical space is important for life.

CA: I just want to say there are not that many people who can talk about it in the way that you do.

Q: I have a question about the dancing space. You work in the site space and then you go to the theatre. How do you transform the space in the theatre? Are you inspired by the movement that you create in the space, and do you go to the theatre and transform the stage space?

SC: I'm more interested in the actual choreography of the movement when I'm going to the stage. For me, the most interesting part of creating is the process – I'm not always that excited about the product. But, my moving-site performance work, is always in process and always changes because of where it is, or how it is in where it is [laughs]. So I feel that it's satisfying in much more interesting ways. Moving to the stage – I know it's proscenium so I know how it needs to be in that space. So I think I'm more interested in the actual choreography of the movement when it's on stage.

Q: I find this site-specific work really interesting, because it is like a social pop quiz for people going by. They're given movement choices, so they're participating. And people move in similar ways. There's the duck and run past. There's the awkward side step. So, there's movement that comes out of it. Do you notice – if the choreography is more pedestrian or if it's more unusual – that the reaction is different from passers-by?

SC: I think it's not so much the movement it's the act of collective intention towards a movement. I could just do pedestrian, but if the performers are all walking and they're all together and they have that intention, that's going to freak the general population out if it's in the regular campus area. Or they can be doing grand jetés and everybody would maybe react by saying, “Oh Wow.” Maybe it would be easier to see less pedestrian movement because then observers would feel more detached by knowing, “Okay this is something I really wouldn't do. So it must be a show.” But when you get a crowd of people just walking down the street, people really do have a visceral reaction – “Oh God. They'd better not walk up to me.” If movement is closer to home, if it's as simple as walking, it challenges people to either be okay with it, or run away.

CA: Sashar, maybe you could comment about the work you've done with Susan, and what that process is like from your perspective.

SZ: In working with Susan, I'm trying to come out of my traditional frame. I don't want to let it go, but I would like to explore being outside that traditional frame. I don't really have only one tradition, it's a mix of things. Working with Susan has enabled me to see what is possible beyond what I have already in my training, to see the alternatives. Whenever it comes to a space within our collaboration, I just say, “Susan will you take care of that?” Then I learn from what she does. My gain from that aspect of collaboration has been very important.

SC: But it's not just choreographic, our work together is creative too. I would not be able to identify specific movement in Interbeing that is mine or is Sashar's. We have an intuition about our work together that allows us to relinquish ownership on every little thing that we do and be able to adapt and change and get deeper with our movement, and sustain this ongoing exchange. Interbeing is not something I did, or Sashar did. It's not even a collaboration. I don't know what we would call it.

SZ: It's quite interesting when you look at it on stage. I know I'm thinking, “Where did that movement come from? Is it yours?” Susan would say, “I don't know. Is it yours? How did we come up with that?” Sometimes the movement changes so much that we can't relate to it, but we can't really go back and find out.

References

Basso, Keith H. 1996. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Amoung the Western Apache. New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press.

McLuhan, Eric and Frank Zingrone, eds. 1996. The Essential McLuhan. New York: BasicBooks.

Moore, Carol-Lynne and Kaoru Yamamoto. 2005. Beyond Words: Movement Observation and Analysis. New York, NY: Routledge.

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