Yes, it has only been a day since the Martha Graham workshop ended, and my body’s going through contraction withdrawal. Maybe I’m being a bit melodramatic, but it was Martha who showed the world that the hysteria of one’s emotions is meant to be personafied into a public display of generalizations of humanity. Yet, unlike the foe poets and misguided artists, I’ve come to accept the honesty behind Martha’s works.
These past three weeks has been an interesting experience that unfolded in an elevated simplistic manor. What I mean by this is that my objective prior to the workshop was succeeded by the end of the program, but it was a padded-down process that forced me to go beyond a technical experience supported by a legend’s name and rethink my role as a dancer/ my role as an installation artist. As a dancer, you are requested to perform a variation of artistic expression in a confined space, and you are lucky enough to even be given the chance to perform, but most importantly you are lucky enough to understand why you are there.
The other night Peter Sparling conducted a presentation of his dance media works that he has been working on for the past few years, and he really caught my attention when he asked, “How do we as dancers document our portraits?” That was one of the first times that I ever felt invited to think of dance in a space separate from sprung floors and dusty curtains. As a dancer it is easy to fall into the pattern of bounding your thought to the hope of one day earning the accomplishment of performing in a “Major” dance company. But the idea that dancers are individuals portraying physical literature that deems the possibility of showcasing honest self-expression is completely liberating and once again invites the dancer to create and not just imitate. I realize that the great thing about doing Graham is the ability to reconstruct masterworks, but the most interesting thing that I took from doing Graham is gaining the courage to ask why I am here and an inspiration to create my own work.
Honestly, I hope I am making sense, because I’m just allowing my thoughts to sprinkle onto the page. So I sum this up with the contentment of surviving a legendary experience. The people I met were incredible, the work was intriguing, and I’m still thinking. It’s good to know that in my mind it is not over, because too often we conclude our experiences when a deadline is given. But I’m still regurgitating all this stuff that has accumulated in my mind the past three weeks. So Cheers to everyone who made this experience possible and I hope everyone gained somethings out of it.
