Week of two solos

Hello Dear Sweet Readers,

I created a solo for Deke Weaver's class "ARTS 445 Performance"  the assignment is titled 'ASSIGNMENT 01: YOUR LIFE' - tell the story of your life in 5 minutes or less.

I'm currently in 'prep mode' for this work I'm presenting in October at the Chicago Dance Makers Forum. It's the first paid work  since 2020 that I'll be presenting live so I am a little nervous... which also makes me want to self-sabotage but I'm also unwilling to do that!!! It's a film about being here after being in Taiwan, and this solo is trying to accomplish something similar. I feel so torn these days, torn about where i 'belong', torn about what to pay attention to, torn about what to pursue in the future and how to go about doing that!

And so i dance and so i dance...

And so. . . I made a solo about masturbation!! Which will, in some way, tie into the film I present in October.

It's not entirely about masturbation, but the hook does include an anecdote about self-pleasure. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the feedback I got from classmates "touched" on the fact that I talked about a topic that is slightly taboo, or at least not something you talk about during a get to know you icebreaker. But i was also happy that some said the text allowed them as audience to really see me, really spend time with me.

I'm excited to push the boundaries of what i am brave enough to show, I am excited to see what I can get away with in Art School, and I think by willing myself to be uncomfortable from the beginning, I have given myself room to explore the limits of my audience's attention and my own interests.

I created the projected video with DaVinci Resolve using: home videoclips I found of my dad and brothers, Youtube videos (playlist) of how to pronounce California, Pleasanton, and Jesus' (Possessive), the Moomin title sequence from 1990, alarm clocks,  The Best Binaural Beats to stimulate your brain, and a jpeg of grass. I think I accomplished my goals of presenting work that says, "sometimes I dont know whats going on but here i am, im ready to go, im ready to get weird, and i have a long road ahead."

The second solo I created was for a dance graduate seminar. We created works that responded to an exhibit at the Krannert Art Museum, each of us choosing one pot to focus on. This process was a different type of here i am. it was a calmer one, it was one that allowed me to reflect on my histories, and it was created in a class that has centered land as pedagogy, and personal histories in dance making from day 1.

In my paper about my solo, I detail how I arrived at my choreographic inspiration based on the pot's own creation and design. The pot was created by the great-grand daughter of Nampeyo, a Pueblo artist who simultaneously innovated pot making by creating new design methods and preserved traditional artistic methods through teaching future generations. The design of the pot represents migration through lines and lines and lines, and represents movement with bird like imagery of feathers and beaks.

By learning about the familial teaching of technique, I was reminded of cooking, how tradition and history of cooking, is rooted in witness as well. You learn by watching and you do by doing. I shared with the class a quote my mom sometimes says about when her mother was teaching her how to cook, "you're so bad just watch me do it! do what i'm doing!" I created a work that pulled from these ideas, showing my audience how i put on my socks, tracing a line clear across the floor, and migrating from a high to low level in search of material. The .gif below is a fellow grad and I performing our solos together in order to have a recording to send to the exhibit curator. We performed together because we chose the same pot.

In class we've been watching Miguel Gutierrez, Ralph Lemon, Bella Lewinzky, and Jerome Bel. Theses artists works have been described as; political, pieces on the fringes of performance, abject, vaudeville, hyper emotional, wastes of time, wastes of fundings, multimedia, narration,

i'm so inspired and i cant believe how lucky i am to wake up every day and think about dance, watch dance, dance dance!!

thanks for reading

xoxoxo

gabriel

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