Postscript

A postscript from Christy...

100 Days Score 

I walked before I crawled. Then my motor neural wiring brought me down to crawling as movement exploration, and here is when my home practice started. As a child I followed my mother around as she cleaned and cooked; I imitated her actions in abstraction, hoping to entertain her as she toiled. By the time I was a teenager, I had taken over the basement as a studio, and everyone in my family apologized if they walked in on my dancing. Home practice doesn’t just support public practice—it is the most important thing we can do to develop as artists. It is a place where we create our own economy for our work and are only limited by our commitment.

One night, in late 2013, Rowena Richie admiringly mentioned Cheryl Strayed’s Wild for Strayed’s goal of walking the Pacific Coast Trail for 100 days. Rowena said she wanted to do 100 days of something. I offered to create 100 days of prompts to support Rowena’s curiosity.

The 100 days score is simply that: a list of 100 prompts to spark movement and creative (all of the prompts can be done in any media) investigations. The prompts are designed to take place in your apartment, in rented studio space, outside in both urban and green environments, in cafes—anywhere you can make them happen.

The goal is to support home practice in direct and tangible ways, to direct practice towards exploration and away from production, to examine our first choices and immediate instincts, and to invite in influence from other media as a means of enriching creativity. The score can be used for compositional, improvisational, and/or physical-mental conditioning ends. Most importantly the score values autonomy and the freeing of exploration from productivity.

Day 100: champagne and recap

#100 Meet XT & Ro for champagne and recap!

Six months after I started, I have reached the end. It looks like this:

I'm done. Done! The notion hasn't made itself at home just yet. It's visiting. What's the period at the end of this run on sentence that started back in November? I'm not ready to wrap it up in a tidy bow. It's all too weird. I'm forced to resort to metaphor.

The untidy take aways...

The few times I involved other people in this practice gave me such a sense of relief and support. It was the best way out of my heady spirals and well worn movement paths. There is something here about being open to influence, and the benefits of outward focus.

Having a daily practice makes me happier, for the most part. This particular practice was not always daily for me, clearly. But when it was daily-ish, it had a real effect on my general well-being, despite the artistic angst that popped up at regular intervals.

Yeah, I'm kind of neurotic and angsty about my creative life - surprise! Christy reframed this by suggesting that I am discerning and critical, and that those are important and useful qualities. Perhaps. I am still interested in connecting to the pleasure in dance and performance making.

The suggestion (for the entire project) to "try not to make anything" was the source of some struggles for me. Turns out that Ro's instructions didn't include that, and she was happily making things, and then reveling in the shedding days. I wonder how things would have been different without that concept.

Also in "what would it have been like if..." category: I wonder how it would have been if I hadn't been documenting this whole thing publicly. I'm glad I did. I liked putting all of this raw, unfinished stuff out there into the world. And there was something nice about running into someone, and they would mention reading one of the posts. Surprising, and a little strange, but nice. Maybe it's validating? Like, this is actually happening!

I loved the prompts that had to do with attention - improvising with the senses, observing people.

Space/location was a huge deal. So, so much dancing in my domestic space. It felt cramped a lot of the time, but more comfortable than being out in public space. When I felt stuck, I wanted to blame my bedroom. On the flip side, I'm sitting on my bed now writing this, and the room bears the traces of all that dancing. This is at once my private space, and a public performance space, through the magic of youtube. I like the vulnerability in that. Here I am. Here is where I sleep. Here is my stuff.

Public space was always complicated. That's one of the I'm left wanting to work on or figure out. How to claim space. How to bring creative process into public space, and be comfortable doing it. How to not worry about looking like a freak. How to dance like no one is watching when no one else is dancing and someone might be watching. Or, how to dance for an accidental audience the way I dance for an intentional audience in "real" performance.

Drawing doodley things while listening to music has become one of my favorite ways to relax, and the rediscovery of that came at least partially from this process.

I think it was good that I didn't see any of Ro's 100 days when I started mine. It was good to get onto my own path, without any pre-conceived notions. But seeing her beautiful book (which is the main repository of her documentation) today made me think that it would have been inspiring to see her responses to some of the prompts while I was still in the practice. Not the prompts I hadn't gotten to yet, but some that I had done. She approached things in ways I didn't even think of, and I think seeing that would have opened up even more possibilities and shaken things up. It comes back to where I started - the joys of influence.

And now having come full circle, I think I'll leave it here.

Day 99: MOVE SHED WRITE REPEAT

MOVE SHED WRITE REPEAT


It's the last day. It should be different.
It's the last day. It should reflect everything that came before.

Or, move just to move. Move what feels right. Kinesthetic delight. Shedding the thought "this has been done before."

MOVE SHED WRITE REPEAT

A sense of melancholy is setting in. It has been a week of goodbyes all around.

So, bye now, lady dancing in her bedroom.
Bye bye day 99, 98, 97, 96...

Suddenly I'm remembering dance classes from my early 20s with Cheryl. Lying on the floor, looking up at the picturesque cracks in the ceiling and hearing her voice: "Say goodbye to your day. Say goodbye to work, the people on the bus, your family... Say hello to your body."

MOVE SHED WRITE REPEAT

All done. Time to celebrate.

Day 98: breath support

#98 Run all material with breath support and experiments with phrasing

Special guest stars Chris and Aura joined me for this one. We did away with the notion of saved material and ran an improvisation with these ideas:

Active movement on the periphery
Glacial movement in the center space
Breath support
Experiments with phrasing
Influence
Kinisthetic delight



The idea of phrasing got lost, and we sometimes forgot about breath support. There ended up being a kind of transitional zone between the periphery and the center.

Influence was my favorite part of this. We talked afterward about how improvising with other people releases us from the usual worries about whether our movement is interesting/habitual/whatever. Pay attention. Respond. Play.

Day 97: qualitative fluctuations

# 97: Run all material with qualitative fluctiations in:
flow (muscularity)
weight (strong or light)
space (uni- or multi-focus)
time (slowing down or speeding up)

I released my fear of phrase, at least for the day. Resurrected a little ditty from last week, added on a bit, and then did it about fifteen times in various ways (two are below). I was glad I did. Digging into the same material again and again with the fluctuations in quality is satisfying. You stop worrying about the particulars of the material and whether it's good, but find some nuances and possibilities.

Did this for two rounds of about 10 minutes each (with special guest star Sam on guitar). Video from most of the 2nd round was lost to insufficient memory, and I'm quite sure that's when all the good stuff happened. This is the last version from the first round, and the first version in the second.

Day 96: Spatial Intent

#96 Run all material or improvise with "spatial intent" and spatial support(s)

A long stretch of beach and ocean seemed like the right sort of spatial support for this one. My spatial intent was to revel in the space, to stretch out, to move along the horizon.

Day 95: Dress rehearsal

#95 Dress rehearsal

Still not sure what I'm dress rehearsing for. Decided to think of it as a dress rehearsal for presenting some kind of summary of this whole project. I went through all of the writing and pulled small bits from every prompt into one document, with the idea that this is something I could read aloud. Read some of it aloud.

I think I just turned this into an exercise in editing.

Ideally, there would also be a very edited video with something from every video and drawing that would play, perfectly timed, with the reading.

Day 94: Schedule a dress rehearsal

#94 Schedule a dress rehearsal. Invite 0-50 people to witness.

WTF?

I mean, ok. But dress rehearsal for what? Of what?

This makes me so uncomfortable.

Okherewego. Dress rehearsal is hereby scheduled for Sunday morning at 11am in my apartment. Zero people are invited. Unless y'all want to come over?

Day 93: Re-arrange parts randomly

#93 Re-arrange parts randomly. Improvise "set" or saved material to breathe new life into it.

So, I don't really have set or saved material. And my enthusiasm for phrase-making remains as limp as ever. But then this happened: I read this prompt a couple of days a go and didn't get around to doing it until today. And when I did, I mis-remembered it. Somehow the word "improvise" - my favorite word when it comes to prompts - got lost. I thought I was making another phrase. I reconciled myself to it. I thought about Susan Rethorst's "wrecking" process, where you invite another choreographer to come in and wreck your material. Maybe I could wreck my own. Even though I don't remember any of it.

I dug back through the handful of phrases that I've created, and pulled a few little bits here and there and, voila! New phrase! More or less.

Day 92: the dance not done

#92 Review all of your documentation. Move the "dance not done"

It got fun again. I'm not sure why. Just the change of scenery? After months of dancing in my bedroom, I danced in my bathroom instead. And something about the space and the rather dramatic music made it more fun. I felt less like I was dancing around slack-jawed and aimless, more like there was a story hidden somewhere under the surface.

Day 91: What if?

#91 What if?

The one person (me) version, asked and answered

What if everyone I love and respect leaves the city?
For a long time I've thought that I would live in this city for the rest of my life. Now I wonder what that will look like. As of now, I'm privileged to have a high paying part time job that allows me to live in a studio apartment in San Francisco and spend the rest of my time doing art related stuff. (And ok, also napping and seeing friends and watching Netflix, etc.) This is lucky. Very lucky. But, when the city is drained of artists and wonderful weirdos who are less lucky, or who have just made different choices about how to balance work and life and art, what do I do? Or better question: how do I help stop that from happening so I don't have to answer this question.

What if art and movement practice lived in public spaces?
Sometimes it does. And it's like, yes, this belongs here. This is what actually creates the place.
Sometimes it doesn't. This question came up for me again a couple of days ago when I danced for ten minutes in a parking lot, and felt a strong sensation that I didn't belong. That possibly I was doing something wrong. But I'm thinking that it lives in public spaces if we make it and do it in public spaces and just stake our claim. Not, this is mine, but this is ours. We belong here.

What if I always approached dance-making as a practice rather than a product?
I think I might be happier. But perhaps would feel even less validated by society than I currently do. Would dance-making be a hobby at that point? How different is that? Is it a problem?

What if I stopped producing shows?
Ugh. See above.

What if I die next week?
Well, then for me, nothing. But maybe I would be doing things differently right now. But not SO differently. Yesterday I took dance class and saw an improv show and celebrated a friend's birthday. That's not such a bad day in my final week of life. I probably wouldn't go to work next week, though. I'd go out dancing. I'd go outside. I'd spend as much time as possible with friends and family and my love. I might meditate. I'm not sure about that.

What if everything is slowly falling apart?
What if it is? Now that I think about answering this, I don't think it's such an interesting question.

What if things can really change for the better?
Then we're responsible for working to make that happen.

What if we didn't have bodies?
I once went on a date with someone who thought that in our lifetime, we'd evolve, through use of technology, into pure consciousness. Or something like that. I found this idea a little bit interesting and not at all appealing. I am so attached to having a body. We're animals. I don't think I want to be a consciousness without my body. Half the time, it's using my body that rescues me from my own mind.


The crowd-sourced version, unanswered:

What if more people took chances in life and made changes for the better of love, compassion, and the universe of all living creatures?...

Sleep could be stored like money in a bank?

What if I could see my own eyes?

What if I was holding 4,000 helium balloons?

What if We all had the ability to fly at will.

What if these walls could actually talk?

What if humans loss the ability to take a life.

What if We can change the suicide nightmare the planet is dreaming by mistake?

What if money didn't exist!

What if there was no friction?

What if I gave up? Right now?

What if you could get a life transplant?

What if I could fly!?

What if your feet were made out of cherry-lime jello???

What if you had permission to do exactly what you wanted? Right now?

What if we had wings.

What if we all actually just said what we meant?

What if the Bay Area wasn't so insanely expensive?

I want answers!

Day 90: Translate

#90 Translate one prompt into another medium

Translation of Day 82

There's this girl

No

This woman

There's this woman, and she's in her bedroom

Here's her unmade bed

awkward clusters of pictures on the wall

guitar sulking in the corner

She's dancing

bare feet dancing

Not dancing-in-your-bedroom dancing

She's toes splayed

an arm drifting out to the side

just floating out there forgotten

She's looking at someones who aren't there

looking at her own toes

curious

She's interested in her own toes

testing a transfer of weight

What are they doing down there?

This is dancing:

a deep knee bend

an exploratory swivel of the hips

pretending to be a bird

Day 89: Repeat a prompt of your choice

#89 Repeat a prompt of your choice

Thinking back, two of the most pleasurable prompts were "paint" and "improvise from sense of sound". If it weren't so close to the end of days, I might have stayed inside and reprised the paint prompt. But I am approaching the end, and movement seems called for. I went up to the roof, with a sort of sense of pleasing symmetry in mind - I did one of the earliest prompts on my roof. The sound of the wind up there was inviting, but it was dark and cold, and a little late to be stomping over my neighbors' heads. So I grabbed my tiny tripod and headed out, thinking maybe Dolores Park? I didn't get that far. A nearby parking lot called to me with the siren song of artificial light and graffiti.


Here's what came up as I stood out in a half-empty (or half-full for you optimists out there) parking lot around 10pm and began to dance...

There was the sound of the wind, of cars passing, the metal fence clanging here and there. This is great stuff for dancing to.

Then, pretty soon, a homeless man across the lot yelling out, possibly at me, but I'm not sure. It puts me a little on edge.

My eyes take over. Sorry, ears. There is too much to see here. It seems like you can see and hear at the same time. I mean, that's how we operate in the world. It seems like you can do both. But can you pay attention to both? I was irresistibly drawn to my visual sense as input for my improvisation, for a time. When I consciously tuned back into sounds, they rushed back in, as though I had just pulled out earplugs. The primacy of vision, y'all.

And the awkwardness of doing something out of the ordinary in public spaces. I have not overcome this feeling of tightness underneath all of the fun stuff when I'm doing some non-sanctioned art-type activity in a public space. I shouldn't be here. Someone is going to tell me I can't be here. Or mock me. Or attack me. Or honestly, sometimes, it's not even wanting to be watched or seen. Which doesn't make any sense. I love to perform. But this isn't performance. It's just exploring. Experimenting. Playing. And I can feel myself holding back. Everything is too contained and it's not just my not-warm-enough-a-little-too-old-to-be-dancing-at-this-hour body. It's something else stopping me from rolling all over that slanted wall. I mean, LOOK AT THAT WALL! I could have been mooshing my body all over it. Why wasn't I rolling around like release-trained modern dancer I was trained to be?Ok, the dirt might also be a factor.

But you guys, I think deep down, it's shame. It's me and my so-called art don't belong here. So I make everything smaller, make myself smaller. Small enough to fit in a studio apartment, even when there's a whole damn world out there.

Surely everything will change tomorrow in the wake of this epiphany.

Day 87: generate material

#87: Use your recording from 86 to generate material

Ok. It's been very hard to get to these in the midst of rehearsing and performing and taking classes and planning a show and working. Is there something meaningful to glean from this difficulty? The best I've been able to do of late is to show up where I'm supposed to be and try to drop into the task at hand. And now I am here, and now I am doing this.

But when I don't really have to be somewhere specific doing a specific thing, well, the dropping in is more of a glancing off. Case in point, another prompt sort of tossed off:



There are just a handful of these left. Maybe I'll dig back in with all my teeth and claws and drag something up from the depths. But for now I'm going to nap.

Day 88: architecture

#88 Observe architecture either live or online and discern it's structure. Design your own building.

Another one to file under "not my job".  Also, I'm out of order! I accidentally skipped 87. Back to that next.

Day 86: observe and describe movement

#86 Observe movement (from any source). Record yourself describing it.

Observing movement is endlessly fascinating. Adequately describing it is hard.

When I read today's prompt this afternoon, I thought back to earlier in the day when I sat by the water eating a sandwich and watched a seagull who clearly wanted some of my sandwich. I know I was anthropomorphizing him/her/it, but this guy was hilarious, looking at me sideways, then straight on, backing up, sidling closer, staring me down.

But that is not the movement I officially observed. Went back to humans for that. All men today, for some reason.

Day 85: Japanese Fasion

#85: Visit a Japanese fashion or style website and steal some ideas

I feel sort of dazed.

Here are some people.

Here are some hands.

Here is a fox and a cat and a rabbit.

Day 84: movement version of a scene from a play

#84: Make a movement phrase version of (83)

I could have used some company for this one. Really should have been a duet. I made do with a conversation between my head and my hands.

Day 83: write a scene from a play

#83 Write a scene from a play drawing from any previous material/prompts

A man and a woman sitting in a crowded cafe

Her

You do. You touch your fly when you come out.

Him

No, I don't. I don't do that.

Her

Every time.

Him

You're watching my crotch every time I step out of the bathroom?

Her

The movement of your hand draws my eye.

Him

Perv.

Her

It's almost delicate the way you do it. It's sort of sweet. Your fingers -

Him

No.

Her

No?

Him

No. No it is not delicate the way I touch my fly. Because, and anyway, I didn't touch my fly just now.

Her

You did. You do. Every time.

Him

I was probably smoothing my shirt.

Her

Mm.

Him

Look, if I touched my crotch, you'd know. It wouldn't be some delicate, skulking maneuver. It would be firm and masculine adjustment.

Her

Yes, I imagine it would be.

Day 82: a ride between mobility and stability

#82: Make a phrase based on a ride between mobility and stability

I've been procrastinating. It seems I was avoiding this one. More resistance to phrase-making. An improvisation on the ride between mobility and stability? Sign me up! A phrase? Uh...

A few days ago, I got about 2 movements into a phrase and then just went and did something else. Today, I talked about how I've been avoiding this, and then suddenly when I had 20 minutes free, it was no problem to throw together a tiny little phrase.