LITMIR.BIZ

       2 a lecture on the performance of beauty

      MARCH 2003

      In 2002 I was invited by Mary Brady to write an essay about the choreographic process for the inaugural edition of a journal, Choreographic Encounters, published in 2003 for the Institute for Choreography and Dance in Cork, Ireland. Instead I submitted the written score for the solo dance o beautiful. A Lecture on the Performance of Beauty is an edited, expanded, and performed version of the original written score.

      Preset: Two large screens, adjacent and flush, are ten to fifteen feet in front of the audience. A page on a large pad sits on an easel to the right of the screens. Horizontal and vertical lines divide the drawing into four quadrants numbered counterclockwise, beginning with quadrant one at the lower right. A black marker is in the tray. Standing near the easel, I hold and speak extemporaneously into a corded microphone. In my other hand is a binder with the ten-page text for A Lecture on the Performance of Beauty.

      The title for my solo dance o beautiful, choreographed in 2002, was an appropriation of the first two words of a patriotic American song. I was feeling tremendous resentment and anger toward then president George W. Bush and his administration that was coupled with a sense of personal powerlessness in regard to the crimes perpetrated throughout the world during his terms of office. I continue to feel this way in relation to American policy at home and abroad.

      My challenge in choreographing o beautiful was: If I do not set out to choreograph a dance, will a daily performance of the same set of parameters, over the course of a year, ultimately give birth to a dance? This was my goal, because I did not think I could intentionally create a dance about politics.

      Pointing to the line drawing on the pad and using its two intersecting straight lines as a guide, I traced my index finger over, around, and through those two lines again and again, to signify my daily resolve to follow the path that was not yet drawn on the paper. I also described the fundamental question that guided my daily practice for more than a year: “What if every cell in my body at once has the potential to perceive beauty and to surrender beauty simultaneously, each and every moment?” I then joked with audiences, trying to reassure them that I knew the question was unknowable, but that at the same time the process of entering into the question was transformative, although I could not say how.

      TIMELINE FOR A Lecture on the Performance of Beauty

      o beautiful was choreographed in 2002. That winter I commissioned Laura Cannon, a young dancer/costumer from Austin, Texas, to design an outfit inspired by the film Blade Runner. I was distraught about the state of affairs in the world. Audiences could see me performing o beautiful in the Blade Runner costume on the left screen a little further into A Lecture.

      January 2003 saw my first public performances of o beautiful at Zodiak Center for New Dance in Helsinki, Finland, and later at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Following those performances I decided against the postapocalyptic attire because of how it influenced my movement and colored my behavior onstage. I found a simple pair of pale blue linen pants and a matching tailored shirt to wear instead.

      My solo practice of o beautiful continued through early summer in Austin, Texas, where temperatures rose into the 90s. I made a point of not turning on the air conditioner in the downtown studio because I was not paying rent. My arrangement with the proprietor was an exchange of practice space for acknowledging his support in my dance programs and newsletters. The studio was a large room within a suite of smaller massage cubicles above a bicycle shop. One morning I stripped off my clothing and danced. I was an animal dancing, and the movement felt naked in the most pristine environment imaginable. Nudity became the costume, and on the spot I changed the solo’s title to Beauty.

      The London program, in July 2003, began with my solo Music. After intermission, clothed in blue linen, I approached the audience and invited a volunteer to the stage. Speaking quietly, I asked if this young woman would follow me upstage and undress me there before returning to her seat. Like a caring mother, she carefully removed, folded, and stacked my garments on the floor. Beauty was performed only once, at the Greenwich Dance Agency. It was a quintessentially satisfying experience for me, and the minute it was over, in the dark, even before the audience began clapping, I knew I would never perform Beauty again. A Lecture on the Performance of Beauty is what replaced Beauty.

      I signal the technician to start the video of the London performance of Beauty, which is then projected on the right screen. I then begin reading from the text.

      NOTES FOR THE PERFORMER OF Beauty

      What if the you who dances is less like a dancer and more like a computational neuroscientist whose research currently defines our understanding of consciousness and normalcy? Here are some differences between your work as a dancer and that of the computational neuroscientist:

      1. Your laboratory functions best when it is empty, whereas a computational neuroscientist needs at least a desk, chair, computer, and so on.

      2. You are not required to write papers in order to be recognized, … although I can attest to the fact that it can help your career.

      3. Your discipline is in schooling your body to perform, whereas the scientist disciplines her mind.

      4. Your methodologies as a dancer do not require exactitude because your experimentation is deliberately inestimable.

      What if there is a question, applied like a guideline for Beauty, a question that functions like the rudder of a small boat heading out to sea at night? The rudder is in the hands of an experienced navigator, just as the question is in the body of the dancer. The rudder keeps the boat on course in the same way that the question guides the dancer. The steering hand on the rudder bar is relaxed and responsive, like the mind of the dancer. The boatman is inseparable from

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