In 2007, I created this performance at CRS with butoh performer Corinna Brown. Corinna was previously seen here in the post Emergence. The music is a live improvisation by Dan Fabricatore on upright bass.
This is a shadowplay and a painting performance. The use of shadows on a translucent screen allows us to play with the relative scale of the performers.
In one of my artist’s statements, I said “The act of drawing, like dancing or making music, is a highly focused form of movement in time. The expressive power of drawing is all about rhythm and flow, feeling and modulation. So I have been drawn to try to capture the qualities of movement through drawing, and to explore drawing itself as a performance art.” I’ve been doing drawing/painting performances for many years. This is the first one to appear on this blog.
This week I’ll be leading workshops at the Sirius Rising festival at the Brushwood Folklore Center in Sherman, New York, so I won’t have the chance to do a new post until after July 19. See you then.
Butoh dancers use breath and visualizations projected within and around the body to embody elemental forces and to explore pre-verbal sensations and experiences. It’s a form of dance that arose in Japan in the ferment of experimental art and postwar radicalism starting in the late 1950’s. You may find that this video tries your patience, but if you surrender to it, this kind of performance can alter your perception of time.
Emergence is an improvised performance by butoh dancers Corinna Brown and Craig Colorusso. Corinna is a long time friend with whom I have collaborated many times, and you’re sure to see more of her here. I videotaped this performance on May 31, 2003, at a performance at a Brooklyn loft party/art exhibit that was a fundraiser for oceanic ecology. The recorded music is by Diving Bell, a duo consisting of Craig Colorusso, also seen dancing here, and Joel Westerdale.
There was supposed to be a special spot light for this performance. I was to videotape, using Corinna’s old Sony Hi8 format camcorder. But as the performance began, the spot light failed to work. The space was almost completely dark. I wasn’t getting anything on tape. Thinking quickly, I switched the camera over to the NightShot mode, which records in monochrome in dark conditions, and pulled the Mini MagLite out of my back pocket. This is one of the tiny AAA battery ones, not very bright, but bright enough for NightShot and bright enough to let the audience see the performance in the dark loft. Holding the camera with the right hand and the light with the left, I used thumb and forefinger to change the focus of the light, causing a ring of brightness to expand and contract around the performers.
The look of this video is all thanks to an accident and a seat-of-the-pants solution. The eerie greenish whiteness, the looming shadows and pulsing aura, would not have been part of this video had the intended lighting not malfunctioned. And yet it’s perfect. Not only does it stylistically fit the performance in the video, I think the dim and eerie hand-held light also enhanced the live performance. The stage light would have separated the performers from the crowd and made people stand back, but the darkness drew people into it and made it more intimate.
Chaos is an artist. When she emerges to collaborate with you, do not refuse her, but welcome her and answer her openly and freely, and she will impart something better than you could have conceived.
I’ll be trying my first video post tomorrow. Today, just a quick note about a film I saw today at a special screening at the Guggenheim Museum. Inner Voice is Babeth VanLoo’s documentary about composer/vocalist/choreographer/director Meredith Monk. Monk has long been an inspiration to me. As an artist she has done her own thing in defiance of traditional discipline categories and cultural fashions over four decades, and it just keeps getting deeper and stronger. She has managed to do all this while seemingly remaining a kind and humble person. The film beautifully reveals the integration of Monk’s art, her life, and her spiritual practice. Information about the film is here, and a link to view the entire film, though in very small format, is here.
