This week was a reminder to dig deep with quality, meaning, and depth of expression. I finally got to be an audience member, and I'm grateful to have had Natasha Kozaily set a grounding, spiritually sound tone for the week with her piece "still a stone dancing in a circle." I was really excited to be gifted from the ether the title for Friday's performance "Make out with your fears." I plan to follow up with t-shirts soon because that sentiment has been a fiery power of which I hope to share more.
Monday July 4th
Title: “still a stone dancing in a circle”
Summary: This performance was created and executed by Natasha Kozaily. Dressed in a scout style fit, brown kimono, a lengthy purple wig, silky red gloves, and a stone-faced mask appearing as if from the tree of life itself, Kozaily stepped out from the sliding glass doors. Upon the sidewalk, she drew a chalk circle a little under 2ft in diameter in which to stand. She was accompanied by the sound of her delighted voice telling of her performance's conceptualization and offering the vast pertinence of circles across space and time. Her motion was barely noticeable until an obvious shift in positioning of her silky red gloves. The gloves left slowly from her torso to expand as a circle. She successfully executed an extremely slow stone dance move across what I remember to be about 10min. In the last few minutes of the performance, a song played to follow her speech. She utilized the warmth of the tune and lyrics to unwind from her motionless realm, spinning her hands in acceleration until bouncing with playful style to dance in and around the circle as if a doll coming to life.
Check out this spotify playlist Natasha made -----> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0aL8YvDnTvZm34a1TaVz9Q?si=yoLvdA01TW2e5hMFjild0g
Tuesday July 5th
Title: “Optimistic Momentum”
Instructions: This is a secret piece where the goal is to appear as optimistic momentum by channeling this story of being a marshmallow that gets microwaved on a graham cracker, s’mored then eaten in super slow slow motion.
Rehearsal discoveries: wear some fabric to expand in. Consider optimism. Consider optimistic mantras. Move slowly and let stillness do its work. Perhaps 5 min of expanding, 5 min of graham cracker, and 5 min of melting and being eaten.
Performance write up: This one really takes on different forms for me reflection-wise depending on what measurements I am using. If it were storytelling, I'd give myself a D+. If it's about experiencing optimism, probably something like a B-. Here's my initial response:
Very difficult. Was planning to make more silly faces. No one present for the performance, so silly faces sounded creepy. They are anyways, but it’s funny feeling a bit creepy vs feeling a bit weird. I am fine with weird. Utilizing stillness and tension and release in the body to create poses was a lovely yoga-like time. This kind of art could be really good as an intuitive body work out. Trying to take too much time, I never had a chance to get to being “s’mored and eaten” I only made it to the graham cracker expansion phase because, before, 15min was so much longer. I’ve never used so much stillness in these until now. It’s like a portal of time to be still, and I feel more healed by this for at least that reason.
It’s nice to see people walk by and not notice or care. Someone said the other day they couldn’t believe people could do that. I’m assuming this is about the imperative to surrender to the random once in a lifetime occurrences, but people walk by street artists all the time. Every moment really is a worthy, once in a lifetime experience in the same way if given the deep intention. People can be carrying any thought around while walking. How much do we validate the worthiness of one another’s presence and intention? Why do we assume everyone is simply “caught up” in the day to day? They could be full of magnificent thoughts and bubbling up great actions equally, if not more potent than whatever is taking place in the window. Why do we generalize with down talk on casual experiences when glory, among other great vibrations, is potent in the air, the sea, the dirt, the cotton ball?
In regard to the incompletion of the task, I will figure out an app to use to chime different minute intervals next time. I really feel like this was one of my most boring performances. I had planned to use lots of facial expressions. That would’ve been much more interesting I think and evoked emotions within myself. There is art in stagnation I suppose.
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Wednesday July 6th
Title: rhythm for soup
Instructions: Cut food for soup with rhythm. Get the looper and loop one vegetable at a time
Rehearsal Discoveries: I think I’m just going to go with whatever rhythm becomes and when I start getting in the flow, begin looping. I want to stay focused on the fact that I am going to make soup with these.
Performance write up: Truly a great time. Unfortunately, I was so focused on the audio set up, I completely flailed in setting up the camera. I forgot it would be displaced when I opened the sliding door. I had wanted to hear the track, and I thought if I placed the speaker under the table, I would hear more than placing it to the side door. This speaker set up was used before during "3 Nice Things" performance, but in that case, I remembered the camera would need a different positioning. This affects the shot on youtube, but didn't make a difference to the audience present. The distraction of the camera placement flail frazzled me enough to forget to set the timer before beginning. It wasn't until about 3 or 4 minutes in to the rhythmic play that I realized I had not set the timer. Of course this affected me. The awkward flails all really just blended together!
I ended up playing longer than 15min. I decided to try and cut all the vegetables, hoping it would take me to an end point. I wanted to be timely, so I ended up stepping out from the curtain to check the time. It's all good. May not be the last frazzled time.
The cacophony was comprised of steady rhythmic gestures, accidental phasing, and intentional randomness. I made the choice to turn the loop on and off to capture moments more specifically. I always enjoy the FX from the pedal as new perspective on the loop, so I decided to end with this. Ultimately, I got hella vegetables cut, made them into a soup, and enjoyed it with my life friend Katie Berns. There was art in all of the mess. Disappointed in the video angle, but onward is the only way now.
Become a patron to view -----> https://www.patreon.com/TenAmStudio
Thursday July 7th
Title: “Styrofoam and wantedness
Instructions: Play and move with styrofoam chunks. Puppet them as if they are wanted. Puppet them as if you are wanted. Contemplate wanting. Who is wanted? What do angles have to do with wanting? What do points of interception have to do with wanting? What kind of wanting smooshes together or pulls apart? Perhaps they can also exist without wanting.
Rehearsal discoveries: briefly moved with objects and found angles and some freedom of motion.
Performance write up: I trusted this one. I was able to give myself to it more. I felt prepared and experienced because I paralleled it with the "Sheets and Limbs" performance. This one even had a deeper layer of examining the single concept of “wantedness” throughout. I got good enough sleep and was able to navigate staying present with the styrofoam through the many gestures of wanting, finding within myself the stories of wantedness. Side note: I am still questioning the validity of the word "wantedness," and at the same time, I think language should be played with and used flexibly.
View on youtube ----> https://youtu.be/4gUbLn0vMr8
Friday July 1st
Title: “Make out with your fears”
Instructions:
Get the two mannequin heads
Write your fears on them
Make out metaphorically
By being deeply affectionate
And feeling at their faces.
With tender love
Rehearsal discoveries: Getting Nancy Ross involved. She swoops into directing like a falcon dives for a rat. She's got ideas about lipstick. She tells me to establish the characters and our relationships. She wants to know features of my time and what circumstance we are being brought into. She says people are excited to see my reactions, and that I should keep a dialogue going in my head. One character becomes 'time' and is represented by everyone I've ever loved. The other character becomes the madness.
Performance write up: Being directed by Nancy was a completely different experience than any other performance I've done from this 15min weekday series. Her level of detail and emphasis in storytelling created a more defined outline within a concept I had been leaving open ended. Many of the performances so far have been open ended and explorative instead of given definition prior. I am excited to embark on a trade Nancy and I have going where I will be assisting her in creating lead sheets, and she, me in storytelling/acting/theater/movement.
Once I had spent some time considering the symbolism and emotional reaction I was having to each of the mannequins, I turned them to face one another and realized they functioned as opposites. I fear the loss of time and madness beckons an early death of some sort. I realized how fateful and lucky I am to have survived until now, and this brought about tears to my eyes.
I was given an A- at first by Nancy because of my uncertainty and return to repeating a previous element of the story. I figured she was being nice, and I gave myself a B+. :) I definitely recommend loving anything deeply and affectionately, whether its a universe of a person or a styrofoam mannequin head.
Check Nancy's epic generational uplifting out https://www.moversandgroovers.org/
View on Youtube! ----> https://youtu.be/3SiiazYfmHo
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