My Body, The Buddhist - Deborah Hay

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no message to be consumed. Calling attention to the relationship between location of iteration, whether spoken or danced, and its meaning, Hay’s full-blooded irony plunges viewers into the experiencing and enacting of events while retaining a reflexive distance from them. Voilà stages a series of “what ifs” that encourages viewers to savor the process of meaning-making. In so doing, they may just learn that where they are is what they need.

      SACRED DANCING

      With respect to her own performances and also to dancing in general, Hay comments that the label “sacred dancing” is redundant. Dancing is always and already sacred in the way that it conjoins body and consciousness. Issues concerning religion and spirituality have permeated Hay’s work for many years. In her writing she makes references to an eclectic group of religions including Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish traditions. In her dancing she elaborates strong connections to the spiritual practices of yoga and the martial arts. Yet Hay’s gestures toward religious experience have little to do with institutionalized worship or with New Age spiritual quests. Instead, she finds the sacred in looking at the daily through the lens of a cultivated physicality that is not being used in the service of anything else.

      How does she look at the daily? and how does she maintain focus on physicality? As part of her training, Hay projects the existence of an observer who is watching her exploration of bodily cellular consciousness. Hay further projects a second observer who watches the first. Hay’s moving body is thus watching itself moving and watching itself watching itself. Many theories of consciousness do not permit body to be consciously aware of its own activities while in motion. Many forms of prayer and meditation, even Buddhist meditation, encourage practitioners to sit and be still. In defiance of this opposition between action and reflection, Hay asserts the possibility of a consciously aware and critically reflective corporeality.

      The best way to understand Hay’s “sacred” dancing is to watch her dance or to participate in one of her courses. For those who want to imagine or remember her performance, My Body, The Buddhist offers a reading of body equivalent to her dances. That is to say, Hay’s writing, never sentimental or nostalgic for a body that words only diminish, compartmentalize, or capture, crafts words with the same playful investigativeness that she implements in her choreographic process. This staging of a meditation on bodiliness, in all its devotion and doubt, deepens our understanding of dance and dance-making. Like her workshops, however, My Body, The Buddhist also makes the experience of physicality available to readers from many different walks of life, inviting them to share the dance.

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       acknowledgments

      They are loved, the many friends in Austin who have supported my work with small and large favors that over time have become priceless gifts. Constant, whether I am away from Austin for long periods or at home, drawn to the comforts of my low profile apartment, these friends are essential to the network of relationships I need to live as I do. They are Emily Little, Phyllis Liedeker, Johanna Smith, Margaret Keys, Beverly Bajema, Will Dibrell, Claudia Boles, Diana Prechter, Sherry Smith, Ellen Fullman, and Eric Gould and Janna Buckmaster of Monkey Media. Michael Glicker has donated space for my solo performance practice at his Park Place Studio, for five years!

      Just as consistent are my friends and colleagues in the field who make it possible for me to live and work in other communities near and far. These friends are Jane Refshauge and Margaret Cameron in Melbourne, Australia; Kris Wheeler, who housed me at her Whidbey Island, Washington, home for two summers while I worked on this book; Emily Day, another Whidbey Islander; Jana Haimsohn, the late Cynthia Jean Cohen Bull and Richard Bull, co-directors of the Warren Street Performance Loft in New York City; Elyse and Stanley Grinstein in Los Angeles; and Susan Foster of Riverside, California. All have sheltered me or provided me with access to their respective communities again and again. Movement Research in New York City, DanceHouse in Melbourne, and the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam are institutions that have similarly helped integrate my work into broader community.

      My brother and sister-in-law, Barry and Lorrie Goldensohn, included me in their winter and summer households for inordinately long stretches of time while I worked on My Body, The Buddhist. They were mercilessly astute with their feedback and editing. I thank them for standing beside me as an artist and sitting beside me at the dinner table as a family member, enriching me nightly. I am appreciative of Grace Mi-He Lee, who traveled as my master assistant during a west coast summer tour in 1998. Her presence in this role was stellar, and her editing tips were no less so. Rino Pizzi, a prince of a friend, also supplied invaluable last-minute editing advice. Scott Heron will always milk my soul.

      Suzanna Tamminen, my editor at Wesleyan University Press, asked horrific questions of this manuscript. Her faith and belief helped me find the answers that she wanted and I needed to address.

      I am grateful to Phyllis Liedeker, Todd V. Wolfson, Anja Hitzenberger, and Emma Hanson for permission to use their excellent photographs.

      The individual artists who contributed a response to one of the eighteen chapter headings added immensely to the intention of this manuscript. I thank them, too, for bringing their fine art to life.

      My daughter, Savannah Bradshaw, remains unparalleled in her effect on my living, breathing, and writing. I honor her here.

      The inspiration for so much of the book’s material was located in the dancing bodies of the following workshop participants:

       for seven performers April 1993

      Beverly Bajema, Michael Arnold, Jewell Handy, Meg McHutchison, Grace Mi-He Lee, Jason Phelps, Ginger Rhodes Cain

       Playing Awake 1995

      Polly Gates, Nicole Bell, Sarah Farwell, Charly Raines, Liza Belli, Elizabeth Kubala, Lisa Gonzales, Dorothy Saxe, Sylvie Senecal, Liz Gans, Angeles Romero, Genie Barringer, Harry George, Beverly Bajema, Colene Lee, Charissa Goodrich

       Wesleyan 1995 Choreography Workshop

      Nicole Zell, Pedro Alejandro, Ara Fitzgerald, Sue McCarthy, Sara Kiesel, Christine O’Neal, Carla Mann, Joan Alix, Betty Poulsen, Hooshang Bagheri, Claudia Forest, Teri Roze

       Playing Awake 1996

      Ellen Fullman, Adrienne Truscott, Rebecca Morgan, Kathleen Baginski, Mary Beth Gradziel, Edith Andermatt

       Wednesday Nite Class 1996

      Ellen Fullman, Adrienne Truscott, Rebecca Morgan, Cara Biasucci

       Minnesota Dance Alliance Project 1996

      Alexa M. Bradley, Thérèse Cadieux, Joan Calof, Janet Deming, Mary Disch, Tara Arlene Inman, Susan McKenna, Sherry Saterstrom, Susan Spencer, Karen Spitzer, Anthony Stanton, Elena White, Laurie Young

       1–2–1, Melbourne, Australia 1996

      Anna Szorenyi, Bronwyn Ritchie, David Hookham. Hellen Sky, Jacob Lehrer, Jane Refshauge, Karen Ermacora, Mandy Browne, Margaret Cameron, Martine Murray, Megan Don, Pauline Webb, Peter Fraser, Phil Mitchell, Anna Turner, Ranjit Bhagwandas, Renata Bieske, Ros Warby, Shona Innes, Sylvia Staehli, Valley Lipcer, Natasha Mullings, Adam Forbes

       School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam, 1996 Workshop

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