Spotlight on "fence": An Interview with George Staib

fence runs October 3-6, 2019 in the dance studio of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. Tickets are available at tickets.arts.emory.edu or 404-727-5050.

By Raven Crosby, Emory Dance Office Assistant

Note: Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

On Thursday October 3, 2019, at approximately 7:30p.m., dancers will take their places for the world premiere of fence, choreographed by George Staib and performed by his company, staibdance. This work is the fourth in Staib’s four-year unofficial saga of pieces that depict instances from his childhood in Iran and his experiences as a first-generation Armenian-American.

Fence is a journey into a messy world of power struggles and dismissed histories, and an examination of how "otherness" can rob our power or become its source. Staib's intensely physical movement vocabulary bonds with traditional Iranian dance, exploring unrest felt personally and globally. Through rich and compelling collaborations with musicians; composers; and scenic, lighting and digital designers; audiences become woven into the work, giving shape to the conversation around what takes your power and what gives you power.

I had the opportunity to interview Staib and ask him questions about the process of creating fence, his choreographic process, and his experience with intense collaboration.

In fence, the audience can expect to see digital projection, original music, set pieces, dramaturgy, brilliant lighting, and made-to-measure costumes. fence is the first piece of Staib’s that has been intensively collaborative and as he describes, “...not one decision was made without all collaborators chiming in.”

When asked the impact of cultivating a technically collaborative piece on portraying the personal story of his childhood, Staib responded by saying “The collaborators took the original story and abstracted it to such a degree that we believe there is space for viewers to insert themselves into the experience.” Staib described the collaborative experience as being phenomenal for himself and everyone else involved. He went on to state that “Having the time and space to meet and talk – experiment and play, has meant everything. It was a joy for us all to “respond” to what others brought to the table and also trust that our choices were thoughtful and intentional. Not one element works autonomously – there is agreement within the framework of fence and space for ideas to swirl in compelling ways.”

Alongside Staib’s movement quality, described as intensely physical and technical, fence will display elements of explosiveness, tenderness, and weighted movements. Drawing from the inspiration of memory and intimacy forming from specific life events, Staib explores how the kernel of an idea plants itself in other bodies and later merges with their histories.

Staib, who sees movement as a projection of the internal self, believes that this is only achievable when the brain is able to step out of the way. Dancers must access their internal drive, and be okay with whatever comes out. When this agreement occurs, Staib believes that dancers can be more connected to impulses, and train away judgement, analysis, description, and narrative and authentically move.

Staib is less interested in what the dancer does and is deeply interested in how the dancer commits to the material. He has shifted from creating works that suggest a deeper meaning, but still values that there is something always beneath the surface. As for the audience experience, Staib hopes that his works “...will wash over them, connect viscerally, and invite introspection as well as an opportunity to connect their own journey.”

Student Maria McNiece attends B12 festival in Berlin

Rising senior dance and business major Maria McNiece received a Sally A. Radell Friends of Dance Scholarship to attend the B12 festival in Berlin this summer. Read on for a reflection on her experience.

This summer, I flew to Berlin for the b12 festival for contemporary dance and performance art and left a completely different dancer. I attended six workshops taught by international artists, saw dance film screenings, viewed b12 performance projects and pieces by workshop instructors, watched avant-garde German performance art, and made dozens of friends who are dancing and choreographing in every corner of the world. The work I saw and participated in throughout the festival had a transformative impact on me, and will surely affect the way I view, create, and experience dance moving forward.

b12 was created five years ago with the goal of building an international hub for dance artists with a deep interest in movement research. It has quickly become a sensation—drawing hundreds of international movers every year. The festival stretches over a month, and over 60 international dance artists and researchers teach workshops that are 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10 days in length. Dancers at b12 create their own schedules based on their interests, and I chose to attend six workshops that focused on floorwork, physicality, and choreography.

At the beginning of the festival, I worked with Luke Jessop—an artistic director from the U.K.—and explored challenging street dance principles, explosive dynamics, and complicated inversions. After working with Victor Rottier, an artist from the Netherlands, I learned to frame dance through four major principles—accents, time, rhythm, and flow—and how to pick up significant amounts of material at lightning speed. I built contact improvisation concepts into partnering choreography with Barcelona-based dancers Guy Nader and Maria Campos for four days, and spent two days with German choreographer Nadine Gerspacher, who pushed my physical endurance and aerobic limits in continuously moving sessions.

Fabian Wixe, a Serbian artist, exposed me to David Zambrano’s research as well as “flying low” and “passing through” techniques. Fabian held his dancers to exceptionally high standards, and his demands of my physicality and engagement trained me to notice detail, maintain complete mental and physical availability for hours on end, and take constant inventory of my body. His insistence on moving at breakneck speeds and sustaining perfect precision gave me access to a world of movement qualities of which I didn’t know I was capable. The movement generation exercises he taught us were originally created as ways for him to construct distinctive material in times when inspiration failed; participating in these exercises sent me home with a full notebook and a dozen exercises I’m thrilled to add to my choreographic toolkit.

I closed the festival with an eight-day workshop with Tom Weksler, an artist from Israel, and his partner Roser Tutusaus. Their collaborative research, coined movement archery, is based on physical principles like weight pouring, hip positioning, momentum generation and diminution, and interpersonal communication. Combined, these principles create an acrobatic yet meditative
movement style. At the end of this workshop, I saw an obvious change in my phrase material—I was able to incorporate momentum, spatial attentiveness, and a broad physical range more organically.

b12 breathed new life into my dancing and creative process. It was transformative to immerse myself in learning, physicalizing, and seeing work with movement languages I had not been exposed to before coming to Europe, and it gave me countless ideas for the dance and movement studies thesis I’m choreographing this year. I would highly recommend this festival to anyone looking to expose themselves to new movement vocabularies and to broaden their choreographic toolkit, physical range, and international dance connections. I left this festival a completely different dancer, choreographer, and creative mind with access to physical languages and movement ideologies that I would have never discovered if it weren't for b12.

Note: A big shout out to Friends of Dance for their work and support in making these experiences accessible to me and other Emory dancers!

 

EDC Choreographer Spotlight: Helen Wang

Our next choreographer spotlight is Helen Wang! Helen is a dance & movement studies major, who is very excited to be choreographing for the Emory Dance Company this semester. Helen's cast of four dancers has been working with themes of beauty, and she received inspiration for the work from many different sources.

Read on to find our more about Helen's work!

*Responses have been edited for length and clarity

My work is about my perception of beauty, which is dictated by desires and points to the idea of vanity. There is a twofold meaning of vanity - one is being excessively prideful about one's attractiveness and the other is the state of being futile and empty. Both meanings of vanity constitute the framework of my piece.

Since I have a relatively small cast with only four dancers, I start with a core phrase that I choreograph, and then teach the dancers. I also give them prompts to choreograph, and modify the material I give them. The input from the dancers is an important part of the process because much of the piece is made up of solos and duets.

My work was first inspired by a music video called "Ugly Beauty," sung and performed by Taiwanese singer Jolin Tsai. This music video reflects some of the social phenomena in Taiwanese society and reveals that now is the age of "lookism." Being born and raised in the same society, I also drew on some personal experiences on the topic of perceptions of beauty, and finally reached the conclusion that the pursuit of beauty is often simply to satisfy one's desire and ultimately it's all vanity.

I was also inspired by a dessert called magic chocolate ball in which normally there are brownies and ice cream inside, and the chocolate dome is subsequently melted by molten chocolate. This dessert reminds me of the idea of vanity - being pompous outside and hollow inside, so I decided to bring it to the stage. One dancer puts the chocolate ball on another dancer's head and then pours the molten chocolate to melt the chocolate dome, representing the ruins wreaked by vanity while pursuing beauty based on unrestrained desires. I also intend to use fake rose petals (either red or blue or both) to create a rectangular path along the stage while the center part remains hollow, which also echoes back to the idea of vanity.


Thanks Helen!

Click here to get your tickets for the EDC Spring Concert: eight!

Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram!

EDC Choreographer Spotlight: Maria McNiece

Maria McNiece is our next choreographer spotlight! Maria is a junior at Emory double majoring in dance & movement studies and business. Her work Cubism uses a 26-foot 4x4 grid to translate the concept of cubism into three-dimensional movement using six dancers. This is her first time choreographing for EDC and she is very excited to share this work!

Read on to find out more about Maria's creative process!

*Responses have been edited for length and clarity

As an artist, I'm interested in creating work which evades narrative and entertainment to explore functional movement, and I sought to express my artistic values clearly through this work. Cubism is a group exploration of shape and line, a tethered relationship to inanimate grid, and design of movement patterns around a space.

This first months of rehearsals were characterized by collaborative movement generation between me and my dancers. We used prompts related to angularity, line, and directionality to create dozens of phrases, and then worked to select the most interesting explorations and curate the work's structure. As a group, we created a complete exploration of what it meant to translate cubism through movement. This process was highly collaborative; I do not have the talent alone to create the caliber of work as a team of seven can.

For this work, the stage is structured with lines of masking tape constructing a 26-foot, 4x4 grid on the floor. The dancers' movement outlines the geometry of the squares, places them inside the grid, and ultimately, deconstructs the rules of the physical structure which characterize the piece. I am inspired by the functional aesthetic of costumes utilized by Trisha Brown Dance Company, and worked with designer Cyndi Church to dress my dancers similarly. The pure functionality of the costume choices reflect my proclivity to minimize production elements and only showcase the essential.

As a movement artist, I am especially inspired by the avant-garde and postmodern style developed most prominently by Merce Cunningham during the 1960/70s. When I was beginning this process and considering how I wanted the work's vocabulary to materialize, I decided to apply postmodern values into movement generation while leaning into my love of floor work. The first drafts of this work utilized a vocabulary of floor work exclusively; however, as the work developed, I felt the need to explore cubism on different levels and planes, and could not ignore the possibilities of bringing my dancers off the floor. The final product of this process includes movement on every level of space, with clear attention form the dancers on their bodies' shape, line, and directionality.

Thanks Maria!

Click here to get your tickets for the EDC Spring Concert: eight!

Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram!

EDC Choreographer Spotlight: Kelly Vogel

Emory Dance Company's spring concert "eight" is just around the corner! This concert features new contemporary work by eight student artists. The choreographic works are a culmination of the Choreography II course, led by Professor George Staib, where students learn about the different components of group choreography. As we get closer to the shows April 25-27th, we will be sharing a little insight into each of the works through a choreographer spotlight blog series. Kelly Vogel, a senior dance & movement students major, is our first choreographer spotlight!

Read on to find out more about Kelly's work, verge!

*Responses have been edited for length and clarity

I wanted to explore the idea of divisiveness in my work. As a human being existing in this world, we are constantly bombarded by the proposition to take sides, whether it be in the form of a political party, a certain stance on an issue, or simply an affiliation with an institution or group. It is clear to me the unproductive barriers that this mentality creates - which is why I wanted to start to untangle this topic with my dancers in my piece verge. Although my piece does not solve this division problem, or even necessarily provide answers about why humans exist in this state of divide, I am hoping it will enable audience members to evaluate their own perspectives, behaviors, and tendencies.

My dancers were crucial to the choreographic process. Without their investment in the work and their creativity, my piece would not exist. The way I enjoyed working collaboratively with my dancers was through prompts: I would give them various components of a rough sketch of what I wanted, whether that be an emotion, an attitude, a specific quality of movement, a relationship with another dancer, etc., and then I would set them free to create. Then, as choreographer, I saw it as my job to filter these ideas and understand how to arrange them in time and space to convey the movement and message I wanted.


Thanks Kelly!

Click here to get your tickets for the EDC Spring Concert: eight!

Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram!

Honors Thesis Concert: Laura Briggs

Laura Briggs will be presenting their honors thesis research at the concert on Thursday and Friday March 21 and 22 at 7:30pm in the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. Laura is a senior, majoring in both dance and movement studies and chemistry. With a cast of six dancers, this work is a series of solos entitled Karass that weave together and use Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle as source material.

Read on to find out more about Laura's research process!

I have been a huge Kurt Vonnegut fan ever since I checked out my first copy of Cat’s Cradle in my high school library. His novels are simultaneously humorous and heart-breaking, brief and descriptive, sardonic and deeply human. Re-reading his work in college, I wondered if I could embody this unique style in movement form. This question served as the genesis of a year-long attempt to translate the major themes of Cat’s Cradle into movement form.

My dancers and I used the text of Cat’s Cradle to generate movement material. In one exercise, we each selected two numbers and created phrases inspired by the title of the corresponding chapter of Cat’s Cradle. I also spent time improvising on film while listening to Vonnegut reading his novel out loud. Then, I derived a series of prompts from my movements and delivered the prompts to the dancers to create their own phrases. The process of translating and re-translating text to movement and back again was instrumental to developing material rooted in the novel.

The resulting series of intertwined solo dances, Karass, explores the functionality of religion on a personal and institutional scale. During the concert, the dancers share their own experiences with religion, spirituality, and the existence of a higher power. The movement vocabulary, a series of ethereal and mundane non-sequiturs, echoes from one dancer to another throughout the piece. I do not see this dance as the end product of my research, but as the beginning of a lifetime of movement investigation.

Thank you Laura!

To find out more about our spring events, click here!

Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram!

Emory Dance Winter Studies: David Dorfman Dance

This past winter break Maria McNiece received a Friends of Dance Mini-Grant to attend the David Dorfman Dance Winter Intensive in New York City. At Emory, Maria is a double major in dance & movement studies, and business. She is involved in Emory Dance Company, AHANA Dance, Persuasion Dance Crew, and several others arts organizations.

Read on to find out more about her experiences!

*Responses have been edited for length and clarity

This intensive was an immersive, 6-day experience held at Barnard College, and my attendance was made possible through a Friends of Dance Mini-Grant. Over the course of my week there, I took technique classes with David Dorfman and his company, created a 15-minute length work with my intensive cohort, and gained a deeper understanding of improvisation and the possibilities of incorporating text with movement. There were around 60 other dancers who came through the intensive over the course of the week, and developing relationships with so many artists from around the country made the experience exceptionally meaningful. At the end of my time with this company, I had expanded my improvisational comfort zone, my range in movement vocabulary, and my choreographic toolkit. I would definitely attend this intensive again, and would highly recommend this workshop for artists who are interested in taking their exploration of dance and movement to another level!

Thanks Maria!

Click here to find out more about our upcoming spring events!

And be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram!