As I begin to prepare for my MFA thesis project, I am reflecting on how my current work connects to work from my past. I am surprised at the themes that are emerging as I look back, and even more surprised by the fact that I hadn’t made these realizations sooner. Many of my choreographic pieces and projects from college tie into the research I am doing today on the relationship between small and large (micro and macro, individual and communal) and Adrienne Maree Browns' Emergent Strategy—specifically, the elements of intentional adaptation and interdependence.
Part I - The Long Line (2016)
I can identify intentional adaptation and interdependence in one of my first choreographic works from 2016. The Long Line is an ensemble piece I choreographed in response to a Ted Talk episode by conductor Benjamin Zander. In this episode, Zander gives a lecture on the 24 Preludes by pianist Frederic Chopin. One of the many lessons that Zander shares with his audience in this lecture is the importance of focusing on your vision, or as he calls it “the long line.” Using the Chopin prelude to translate his lesson into a lesson for life, Zander talks about how all of the small, individual steps (or, in the case of music, notes) contribute to the vision (or song) as a whole. Click Here to view the Ted Talk episode.
This concept of pursuing a vision one step at a time fueled the creative inspiration for my 2016 piece The Long Line. The Long Line explores struggles and obstacles of everyday life and the different ways people respond to these experiences, taking the dancers on a journey of learning and growing as they move one step at a time towards a newer and stronger version of themselves. The dancers are pulled back and forth by the magnetic forces of past, present and future as they focus their attention on each precious step forward. Although I didn’t know of Adrienne Maree Brown’s work at the time, this dance is entirely about intentional adaptation—the process of changing while staying in touch with our deeper sense of purpose. Brown elaborates on intentional adaptation by stating “As an individual, developing your capacity for adaptation can mean assessing your default reactions to change, and whether those reactions create space for opportunity, possibility, and continuing to move towards your vision” (Brown 2017, 71).
The Long Line (2016)
Intentional adaptation is a tool for individuals and communities to cope with, adjust to, and possibly flourish from moments of instability. Brown organizes these moments into two categories: shocks and slides. Shocks are acute moments of disruption, for example market crashes, the loss of a loved one, and (cough cough) global pandemics. Slides are equally as catastrophic but occur incrementally, such as climate change and unemployment. I have always been a goal-and-growth-oriented person, and I have always had visions for myself that others would categorize as unrealistic when looking at where I come from. Intentional adaptation is the tool that has allowed me to cope with and learn from traumas (or, instability)— growing up poor, the loss of my father to suicide, depression, abuse—to focus on my vision of becoming the best version of myself, despite those challenges. Intentional adaptation takes those experiences and makes them digestible, allowing me to move forward another day toward my vision.
Part II - Indeterminacy Festival: PASTFUTURE/FUTUREPAST (2019)
The theme of dealing with disruption and uncertainty, while pursuing community and connection can also be seen in my work for Indeterminacy Festival 2019. Indeterminacy Festival is an annual interdisciplinary arts festival that explores indeterminacy—"the various facets of uncertainty, which are typically experienced as negative, transformed into a site of creative possibility” (Oltmer 2019). Each year, the festival draws together over eighty collaborators from across a wide set of backgrounds and experiences. These collaborators check in with each other periodically, but don’t come together fully until the final performance—adding to the levels of uncertainty around the project.
The word indeterminacy means “not knowing in advance, not determined or precisely fixed”—and that is exactly what this project feels like from the inside out. Each year there is a different theme that brings collaborators together in their creative endeavors. However, aside from the theme performers, directors, and spectators don’t know what to expect during performance. In earlier years of the festival, I had participated as a performer. One year, after months of rehearsing choreographic material outside on an abandoned grain silo site, it began to thunderstorm dramatically an hour before our performance. Without hesitation, all collaborators had to problem-solve (quickly!) to move over 80 performers inside the shelter of the silos. I personally found this new adaptation of the performance more exhilarating and exciting than what we had developed in the first place.
While serving as head choreographer for the festival in 2019, I worked with three different groups of dancers—one group of college-age dancers, one group of refugee children new to dance, and one ensemble of senior citizens with Parkinson’s Disease. I held weekly or biweekly workshops with each group separately from September to May, and the performers all came together on-site for the first time, hours before our performance. Our theme for the year was interstellar communication, and each group of dancers worked with 20x20 foot parachutes--so large they couldn’t fully expand in the rooms we rehearsed in. These parachutes were used to represent planets in orbit and gravitational waves. We collaborated with a projectionist, who was committed to designing light which would illuminate the parachutes throughout the duration of the performance.
The day before our show, there was an incredible windstorm that tore down many of the set elements we had put up. We adapted by buying multiple sandbags to help weigh down the parachutes, but of course, that wasn’t the only disruption on our vision of the performance. Hours before the show started our projectionist quit. In the moments leading up to the performance our generator blew—causing us to lose our only power source. We all adapted, the audience arrived, and the show went on.
If Indeterminacy Festival isn’t a practice in intentional adaptation and developing interdependence, I don’t know what is. Interdependence is the ability to meet each other’s needs in a variety of ways—developing mutual reliance and shared leadership toward a central vision. Without intentional adaptation and interdependence, we would have been better off calling it quits and cancelling the show. The only reason this festival is successful each year is because of these elements of adaptation and interdependence. Over the course of several months, collaborators develop trust that if (when) something goes “wrong,” there will be a community there to support the collective vision. This is why I believe it is imperative that tools for adaptability and interdependence are shared with those in our local communities.
Part III – Dancing Through Difficulty: Embodied Tools for an Ever-Changing World
For my thesis project, I am creating an embodied approach to Brown’s Emergent Strategy— “how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for” (Brown 2017, 3). The elements of Emergent Strategy which guide my work are (1) Fractals, the relationship between small and large; (2) Adaptative, how we change; (3) Interdependence and Decentralization, who we are and how we share; (4) Non-Linear and Iterative, the pace and pathways of change; (5) Resilience and Transformative Justice, how we recover and transform; and (6) Creating More Possibilities, how we move towards life. For this project, I will use movement exercises for developing skills in intentional adaptation and interdependence, which will be shared with people in the Columbus community. These exercises will guide participants on a journey of individual reflection, growth-oriented goal making, and connection building. After setting visions for their personal growth, participants will use the embodied tools learned to create a vision together as a community—addressing changes they would like to see in their local neighborhoods. “How we live and grow and stay purposeful in the face of constant change actually does determine both the quality of our lives, and the impact that we can have when we move into action together” (Brown 2017, 69). By emphasizing fractals—beginning small (individual) and working towards the large (communal), I believe that participants will have tools for shifting and adapting to the many challenges our country faces in the years to come while working towards their vision as individuals and as a community.
Brown, Adrienne Maree. 2017. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.
Chico: AK Press.
Oltmer, Alexis. 2019. Indeterminacy Festival: PASTFUTURE/FUTUREPAST. The Public.
Retrieved from: http://www.dailypublic.com/articles/05102019/indeterminacy-festival-pastfuturefuturepast Accessed March 9 2021.
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