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Tuesday, November 20th, 2012 we enjoyed an intimate evening at Vanessa DeWolf's Studio Current, a cherished creative/performative space on Capitol Hill in Seattle.   Angelina Baldoz, Allie Hankins and I (Beth Graczyk) shared material from our Portland residency, and Kt Shores, Steven Gomez, Corrie Befort, and Elby Brosch shared a quartet that developed out of the Confluence & Rebellion classes.  

The evening began with a reading as a large group - each of us holding a different text but reading out-loud as if it were one text, allowing overlap, interruption, and silence.  We ended the evening with a lively discussion.  Here we share with you audio excerpts of  the group reading, a small sampling of the texts, and audience responses to the dance/sound in drawings and words.  

The readers included: Kt Shores, Elby Brosch, Vanessa DeWolf, Steven Gomez, Corrie Befort, Bill Befort, Nancy Befort, Margaret Wilhyde, Evan Foster, Paige Barnes, Mark Haim, Koushik Ghosh, Adam Sekuler, Shannon Stewart, Joyce Liao, Angelina Baldoz, Beth Graczyk, Allie Hankins and John Stolk.    

Selected excerpts of read texts:

"Merleau-Ponty's writings enact a steadily renewed resuscitation of wonder at the exuberant mystery of the real.  He worked tirelessly to draw philosophy to a sense of astonishment at the wild-flowering weirdness of the world in which we find ourselves before abstract reflection weaves its spell on our senses.  Further, he sought to awaken reflective reason to its own genesis in the world of untamed perception, and to ensure that philosophy and the sciences would begin to frequent that dimension of direct, non discursive experience - testing their conclusions against the irrefutable eloquence that things display when we meet them in the flesh, taking guidance from the specific ways such elemental encounters always resist, in some manner, the formulas we use to explain them."   - David Abram, Earth in Eclipse

"Movement never lies.  It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.  This might be called the law of the dancer's life-- the law which governs its outer aspects.  Then there is the cultivation of the being.  It is through this that the legends of the soul's journey are retold with all their gaiety and their tragedy and the bitterness and sweetness of living."  - Martha Graham, An Athlete of God

"it is said thus: atman's own nature is being [temporarily] colored by "laughter," "erotic love," etc. that can tint it into their own hues.  But, [all the same,] he remains this extremely white [colorless] thread which shines (nirbhasamana) through the conglomeration of loosely strung [semi-transparent colored] jewels." - Abhinavagupta, Abhinavagupta's Aesthetics (Natalia Isayeva)

"I think little and therefore understand everything I feel.  I am feeling in the flesh and not intellect in the flesh.  I am the flesh.  I am the flesh.  I am the flesh and not intellect in the flesh.  I am the flesh.  I am feeling.  I am God in the flesh and in feeling.  I am man and not God.  I am simple."  - Vaslav Nijinsky, The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky 

Alexis Kane drawings, audience member:

Pamm Hanson drawings, audience member:

Thank you to those who came out for this event!  We are as always, so grateful for your support and enthusiasm for this project and its development!

We had a wonderful mini-residency at Linda Austin's Performance Works NW space in Portland, Oregon, October 25-28th, 2012. 

C48 dancer Allie Hankins and visual artist Micki Skudlarczyk joined Angelina Baldoz and I (Beth Graczyk) for a long weekend of playing and generating improvisational scores that were both rigorous and open.  Over-arching ideas brought forth included the subconscious influence of reading texts as a group, engaging in ritual actions that were responsive yet autonomous, cycles of generation and disintegration, and following the formation of a live unison duet.  We also continually returned to Angelina Baldoz performing a solo either on trumpet or on bass, and emanating material as a response to the experience of watching, hearing and feeling the form and content of her solo.  Micki Skudlarczyk brought in rabbit skins, yarn, wigs, and marigolds for raw materials.  The alchemy of our particular dynamics as a group in the specific space of Performance Works sensually influenced the tone, rhythm and energy of our actions.  

We engaged in a ritual of reading texts out-loud from the 8 Voices, as well as additional materials from Kandinsky, Deleuze on Spinoza, and Elaine Scarry.  The score we often employed utilized each of us reading different texts with the sensation of reading a singular text, generating new combinations of phrases, words, and ideas produced out of the action of meshing seemingly disparate texts. 

We skyped with Torben and Molly on Friday with the crew, and met up with C48 visual artist Steven Berardelli for dinner.  Peggy, Mark, and Amiya, the rest of our C48 team, were missed dearly!

We thank Linda Austin, Jeff Forbes, Performance Works NW, and Portland for giving us time, space, and energy to explore our ideas in a generative and supportive environment.  Linda and I are scheming for our second residency in early 2013, which will potentially include an informal public showing.  

November 20th, 7pm at Studio Current in Seattle, we will perform a score generated during this residency.  If you would like to attend, please make a reservation through our contact page or through Studio Current.  

Thank you for reading this and letting us share our fantastic residency at Performance Works NW with you! 

*Here are a collection of small video excerpts from the weekend.  This is raw footage edited swiftly to share bits and pieces.