Dance as Service

I remember hearing my friends Abby Crain and Miguel Gutierrez talk about dance and art-making as luxuries once in rehearsal years ago (2002?!). I didn’t quite understand it fully then as a relatively fresh, young NY import, but it’s become clearer over the years. And more than a luxury, it’s also a service. Having my legs is a luxury, this computer, my warm clothes. It’s amazing! And then to be able to dance and do something with what I have… I want to honor that luxury and use it as a service. I hope that’s what happens with what I do. We spend a lot of time working on this dancing thing, this art thing. It’s nice for me to remember that it’s a gift that I have and a gift that I can give. Oh, that makes my aching body feel better!

If you’re in Dublin, come and see ‘why the aches’. But I’m hoping this consciousness of service will carry me through an effortless next 4 shows!

http://www.projectartscentre.ie/programme/whats-on/1486-body-duet-

Thank you!

The Latest

Thank you to Lindsay Clark and the Jeff, Andrew and Caleb at Catch Performance Series!

http://catchseries.org/

Michelle and Lindsay rehearsing for Catch 49
(Feb 11, 2012 at The Invisible Dog in Brooklyn)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all!

2011 was full of many amazing moments, thanks to so many wonderful people.  I’m sharing this bomblog interview again that I did with Lauren Bakst.  Making this piece for Dance and Process at The Kitchen was one of my favorite (and most challenging!) moments of 2011!

http://bombsite.com/issues/1000/articles/6333

From 'Hello, I need you' at The Kitchen, Dec 2011. Photo by Ian Douglas.

Lindsay Clark and Michelle Boulé. Photo by Ian Douglas.

 

‘Hello, I need you’ @ The Kitchen

There is one more performance tonight!
The Kitchen
512 W 19th Street
New York, NY 10011

Here is a BOMBLOG interview by Lauren Bakst about the making of the piece:
http://bombsite.com/issues/1000/articles/6333
And we’re still working towards our $3,000 goal.  Please help us reach it by clicking on the donate link!

Performed by Michelle Boulé and Lindsay Clark
Music by Okkyung Lee and Beyoncé, and Mozart
Costumes by Reid Bartelme

Thank you to my amazing collaborators; to the Kitchen staff; to Yasuko Yokoshi, Julie Alexander, and Martin Lanz; and to my family, wonderful friends and inspiring artists who have supported me throughout the creation of this work.  I feel honored to be able to put art into the world.  Thank you.

DONATIONS for Dance and Process at The Kitchen

We’ve reached about 86% of our $3,000 goal and have just a bit more to raise.  Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far.  The support has been amazing!

If you would like to make a 100% tax-deductible donation to help cover the actual costs of making  a piece, please make a contribution here.  Please be sure to select my name from the drop down menu on the second page! To donate by check, please make checks out to “New York Live Arts” with ‘Michelle Boulé’ in the memo line, and send to 361 Clinton Ave, #10B; Brooklyn, NY 11238.

Donors as of 12/19:  David Birnbaum, Jonathan and Elizabeth Tunney, Anneke Hansen, Brad Schenkel, Patrick Meagher, Miguel Gutierrez, Todd Shalom, Jon Moniaci, Talya Epstein, Kyli Kleven, Joseph Isler, Patricia Knowles, Mark Haim, Toni Yagoda, Angela Boulé, Christine Elmo, Ingrid Nachstern, Melvin Boulé, Ruthann Rains, Kathy Romary, Sarah Klapman, Brad Hampton, Eva Birnbaum, K.J. Holmes.

Michelle Boulé is a member artist of New York Live Arts, Inc., a non-profit tax-exempt organization. Contributions in support of Michelle Boulé’s work are greatly appreciated and may be made payable to New York Live Arts, Inc., earmarked for “the New York Live Arts member project of Michelle Boulé.” A description of the work and current project activities for which such contributions will be used are available from Michelle Boulé or New York Live Arts, upon request. All contributions are fully deductible to the extent allowed by law. (Note: A copy of New York Live Arts’ latest annual financial report filed with the New York State Department of State may be obtained by writing to the N.Y.S. Dept. of State, Charities Registration, 162 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY, 12231, or to New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th Street, New York, NY, 10011.)

Consciousness and Art

Consciousness and Art

I had 15 minutes today to look at the Agnes Martin exhibit at Pace Gallery in Chelsea, NYC.  Agnes Martin was an abstract expressionist painter, her classification of choice.  Her work is also referred to as minimalist, being identified by lines, grids and very subtle fields of color.*

I had a profound experience of seeing her work today, which feels relevant to discussions happening now about consciousness.  I had looked up the exhibition online, saw photos on the Pace Gallery website, and thought ‘oh, maybe I’ll skip this’, but I happily made it there before the gallery closed.  My immediate reaction was that online photographs of artwork don’t do it justice!  This is what we say in dance about video recordings of our pieces.  There’s something vibrational and immediate about having a 3D experience in real-time in a theater or other space as audience or witness.  Similarly, I felt as though I could immediately sense the vibration of Martin’s work as soon as I entered the large gallery space.  Her minimalist work immediately gave me so much space to reflect and experience.  I don’t know much about her, but I picked up a press release and read that she favored looking at her work from a personal and spiritual vantage point rather than an ineffectual one.   (Ha!  That was supposed to say ‘intellectual’ but I must have had a Freudian typo.)  I became aware of the amazing rigor of her work, which I most definitely experience on a relatively uninformed level, not knowing the technicalities of what it takes to create that type of work.  But what was even more amazing was that it was almost as if consciousness were leaping off the canvases!

It took me back to the ‘Dance and Consciousness’ panel that I spoke on last week.  I had listened to a BodyTalk lecture where BodyTalk founder John Veltheim gave a metaphor for our human consciousness.  He spoke about scientists’ putting a frog in a blender, pouring the contents into a beaker and then waiting for the frog to form as if having all the components is what makes the whole, a biological perspective.  (And…beyond that, as scientists continue to try to find the smallest particle, all they can do is keep finding smaller and smaller particles.  Tangent to that is the ‘way’ alternative theory that we are composed of black holes…had to mention it.)  In other words, we are not simply the sum of our parts…arm, leg, foot, nose, brain.  There is something larger that holds the whole being together.  Consciousness is proposed to be the base matter for all beings/matter in this scenario.

So back to Agnes…  I saw the lines, colors, grids, gray, shades of white….in and of themselves, simply that…lines and colors.  But there was something beyond the pieces…beyond intellectual concept, beyond theoretical composition…that I wanted to call ‘consciousness’.  I experienced an invitation to perceive differently, i.e. consciousness created through the action of perception (Alva Noe).  It was something not easily put into words, maybe not meant to be put into words.  I felt like I experienced all the ‘consciousness’ that went into this creation, and it was quite a beautiful, affecting experience.

Quote from Agnes Martin (1912-2004):

‘It is quite commonly thought that the intellect is responsible for everything that is made and done.   It is commonly thought that everything that is can be put into words.  But there is a wide range of emotional response that we make that cannot be put into words.  We are so used to making these emotional responses that we are not consciously aware of them till the are represented as art work.’

*This information was taken from Wikipedia.

Consciousness and Dance

I’ll be speaking on a panel for a Movement Research Studies Project on ‘Dance and Consciousness’ tomorrow, Oct. 6th from 6-8pm at Gina Gibney Studio.  The address is 890 Broadway, 5th Floor.

There are fantastic people on the panel:  Alva Noë (philosopher and author of Out of Our Heads), Miguel Gutierrez (choreographer), RoseAnne Spradlin (choreographer), Daria Fain (choreographer) and others.  I’m excited to hear what all the panelists have to say about this topic!  And I’m also interested in continuing to dialogue about the relationship of my dance practice to my BodyTalk practice, which is often referred to as ‘consciousness-based healthcare’.

From the website description:

A conversation among choreographers, philosophers and performers on the nature of consciousness and how dance as an artistic practice acts as experiential research into this fundamentally human yet indeterminate and far-ranging territory. In addition to gathering different perspectives on the subject, some questions will be considered: How does dance affect current philosophical thinking on consciousness? How do choreographers and performers engage with theory on the subject? How have personal experiences and artistic practices contributed to private and collective understanding and development of consciousness? How can these experiences enter into broader discourse on the subject?