By Allie Leach
Written in conjunction with the Poetry Center's 2012 Poetry Off the Page symposium.
Picture this: a white wooden chair sits still on a stage. A film projection of wandering women, followed by floating flowers shines on a screen. A dancer plays on a stage, skipping and spinning, rolling and roughhousing in flowy, loose clothes. While one woman dances, in a battle with herself, another woman speaks—no sings—her poem aloud.
To immerse herself more fully in the experience, Carr not only observed the dancers, but also danced with them.
“This is where we are (or take arms against a sea of troubles)” is a collaboration of epic proportions. Part video, part poem, part dance, part music, the performance relies heavily on the history between its two progenitors: K.J. Holmes and Julie Carr. “Julie and I actually used to dance together and write poetry together from our dancing,” says Holmes, an independent dance artist based in Brooklyn. Carr, also an accomplished dancer and poet, lives in Denver and teaches writing at the University of Colorado-Boulder. While much of their collaboration was long-distance—with the artists sending each other videos, music, writing, and ideas—Carr also met up with Holmes and her dancers in New York. To immerse herself more fully in the experience, Carr not only observed the dancers, but also danced with them. “There was a synchronistic sense of both writing and dancing from observation, but also greatly from experientially being engaged,” observes Holmes.
But, as Carr points out, “just one section came from actually watching the dancers dance. They were doing pedestrian movements, dragging stuff around, climbing walls, taking off jackets, running, walking, lying down. And I simply began to describe what I saw. It became a meditation on presence and absence.” Here is an excerpt from that section:
One walks in
One stays out
One takes off her jacket
One climbs on top
One lies down
Two smoke
One eats
One changes her clothes
One takes a picture
The original performance, which took place in New York’s Chocolate Factory Theatre in March 2011, had six dancers and three musicians, as well as a designer and projectionist. The updated performance, which will take place at The Rogue Theatre as part of the Poetry Off the Page Symposium on Saturday, May 19th, will showcase Holmes as the sole dancer while Carr is on the same stage, speaking the text. In addition, they will make use of a film projection by Tom Ontiveros, and that visual element will be factored into both text and movement. “The relationship between all three is a matter of improvisation,” says Carr, “but that improvisation is built upon years of experience.”
As a dancer and writer myself, I often wonder what it takes to create successful collaborations for both professional and personal projects. How can an essay on, for instance, tap-dancing, incorporate both tap and text? How can one balance the two mediums so that they speak to each other rather than create a dissonance? How can the two interact and react, instead of detract and distract? Writing for dance, as Carr points out, should always have a sense of possibility—a sense of openness that the movement can enter into. “Too many words will make it hard for a person to watch the dance and let it enter into their imagination. The two elements, movement and text, must be partners—and it is easy for language to dominate. So my advice is, do less, listen more,” she says.
As for Holmes, in her experience working with both movement and poetry over the years, she says that the more you can come from the body, in both mediums, the more truthful and resonant the results will be. “Movement is leverage to language,” says Holmes. “But language that does not consider or remember the nature of the body just remains intellect. The truest work, for me, comes from trusting in the unknown and the wisdom of our experience. The dialogue between the two creates a sensorial experience that doesn’t divide the source of dance and words, but unites them in something unexpected yet understood.”