The morning after ChoreoLab -- thoughts/organization

I feel the Choreo Lab was a huge success. I felt nourished, challenged, stimulated, loved, and fully engaged in process/product as well as community. I am so happy and honored that I got to be a part of it.

The following thoughts are only possible because you all jumped in with such great generosity and bravery to create this Lab. I feel so grateful to J.R., Celeste, and Lisa, Kristina, and Loren for making this opportunity to get into this stew together.

What might I experiment with the next time, if I were to be part of the planning team?

These are some questions I would ask myself, that were all stimulated by the amazing work we just did together.

0. What is “embodied learning”? Is it the same, different, a subset of “learning through dance”? Let’s understand/analyze/define what learning through dance is... how does it work? (Once we know how it works, then we can communicate this to others....) (Remember when TPR - Total Physical Response was popular for second language acquisition? This might be embodied learning, yet is so different from “Learning Through Dance/Dancing to Learn”)

1. Dance for Teaching/Learning (in Education)

1. Learning how to learn (in general) - possible connection to current brain research e.g. Dan Siegel/how I learn (specifically)
2. Learning some “facts” from academic curriculum

(What are our values about these different aspects of learning? Do we understand (after what the choreos presented in this lab) that we might need to tackle a. before we tackle b? or tease out/analyze/understand a. to get to b?

1. Dance as Research

1. inquiry through the body/with the body -- how? methods/methodologies
2. dance as applied to different phases of the research process (when is this analogous to point 0. above?) Forming a research question or hypothesis, creating a method of inquiry, collecting data, analyzing data via different types of coding, quantitative, and qualitative methods, synthesizing analysis with prior research, research done in the community of peers, etc.

1. Documentation of dance (process/product)

1. purposes/why?
2. methods and media
3. linking b. to a. (I think this is probably something Kristina and Loren know a lot about)

1. Advocacy for “Learning Through Dance/Dancing to Learn”

1. in general for any individual/group
2. in an educational setting

and, as a corollary, how are we communicating these things amongst ourselves in the Lab? how do we “discuss” or “dance discuss” or “video/power point discuss”? Can we discover ways that communicate amongst all of us (working together in the lab) clearly, effectively, richly? what happens when we communicate if we are outside, at lunch eating, in the St Denis studio, in the Rose studio? (this is yet another question of interest to me- issues of place, time of day, situations for communicating)

I think/feel it was a fascinating idea to have individuals hold different aspects of these question/facets of what we were doing -- i.e. “faculty, researchers, and choreographers.” What did we learn from that? A lot! Let’s see if we can articulate it together (please help!). Also, since I am interested in all the facets and have explored all in the past, I would love the opportunity to be in a Lab/think tank situation in which all of us could work on all of these aspects -- where we acknowledge ourselves as choreographer/teacher/researchers and we all get the opportunity to be in choreographer sessions, researcher sessions, and teaching/planning sessions... of course, this could easily be overwhelming... I might be the only person who would want to be present for all these sessions. It would mean not giving researcher and choreographer sessions concurrently so that those who wanted to could participate in all -- this would take more time. (Discussion here of how we want to create an experience in relation to time.... when do we want to experience an expansion of time, a constriction of time... how does the way we interact with time influence our learning? our learning through dance? our communication via documentation in dance or other medium?)

exposure to/discussion of different ways being considered to research/share the work of the choreographers working in the Lab by Kristina/Lisa -- case study was chosen, what were some others being considered? How would this discussion be supported by a dance research process or how might the dancers and choreos be stimulated by these various research methodologies/choices?

other questions that emerged from our work together:

-- improvisation and set choreography as differing processes/media for research and presentation

-- teaching and directing as similar yet different ways of facilitating -- what do we learn as students in these different processes?

Thank you for inviting me and going on this journey with me. It was an amazing gift!!!!!!!

love, Michael

Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival Choreographers Lab 2010

Comments sparked by Loren's video (see post above)

I posted Loren's final video on my facebook profile. Here are the comments that appeared:

Celeste Young: (Biology teacher at the High School where Curriculum in Motion happens)
I was noticing when I was at the Pillow with you that you were using the principles of Backward Design & it is really evident in the video (nice job, Laura!). The Teaching HS Biology is focusing on how to use inquiry, which is essentially backward design/constructivism/whatever name you would like to put in there - basically having the goal chosen (standard), figuring out which questions to ask to help your students begin to think about the topic, then figuring out which activities to do & which evidence to collect to validate that the students are "getting it", all the while incorporating the assessment piece (which isn't necessarily testing! It can be reflection in a journal (my least favorite word in the English language), a "ticket to leave"- stating something that you learned & asking one question that you still have), drawing a picture, or choosing a movement to reflect what you learn. It just struck me that as a society, we don't have a common language for assessing movement. A student could just stand up there and move... but if the teacher doesn't know what each movement represents, then she can't assess the student. However, if the student explains what she is doing (like your type of movement, Celeste), then that is the common language. Hmm... like Lisken said, the movement that the student uses might be the tool for him or her to learn the material... it may not mean anything to anyone else but the student, but if that helps the student learn, then great. But it's important for others to be able to assess whether the student "got it". Enough rambling... not even sure that makes sense!

Lisken Van Pelt Dus: (Latin/French/Spanish teacher at the High school)
One of the things that strikes me (in intersection with some other questions I've been considering, too) is the notion that there are some people who cannot function without embodied learning as a tool. By extension, there are others for whom it is not an especially important mode - and, of course, the whole spectrum between. What this suggests to me is that we need to find ways to embed this learning more generally into teachers' methods, rather than presenting it in chunks, so that it becomes one among many modalities through which students are being given the opportunity to take in and consider ideas and to express their own - in other words, it seems like the mentoring work you've been doing is a move in the right direction.

On another note, how fortunate we (Celeste Y., I, others) are to be in a district where we've had superintendents and principals who DO get it!

L'Ana Burton: Dance Teaching Artist/Connecticut, has participated in my workshops for HOTSCHOOLS Summer Institute
I sat BREATHLESS watching this video Celeste & now I am DETERMINED that I will be at this Lab next year to experience this FOR MYSELF ! AMEN. ALLELUIA What a wonderful thing- you really brought to the surface the jewels we cannot quite GRASP or ARICULATE and suddenly they are VISIBLE. I wanted to take my notebook & GET THE ENTIRE TEXT PART DONE ON PAPOER- In fact- yes that's exactly what I will now do! I AM SO EXCITED & CONNECTED & IN LOVE WITH THIS WORK : BRAVO !!!!! BRAVO !!!!!

Video Documentation Research Process of the Choreographers Lab 2010

What an incredibly full week at Jacob's Pillow! I am thrilled for the opportunity to dig into layered questions around documenting process in relation to the arts and to education at this year's Choreographers Lab, to not only witness the investigations of "embodied learning" and of documentation of this learning, but to fully engage in the research myself from the perspective of video.
See my "teaspoon" sketches/sharings throughout the process...

Reflection - Layer One

Reflections and further thinking after Choreolab 2010 at Jacob’s Pillow

In honor of Michael I am setting my timer for 42 minutes:

I am left with the realization that many people, including and, possibly especially, dancers, cannot finish the sentence “Because I dance I know...”  In the contingent that can muster an answer or two, few of those then transcend into language and expression that can be understood as as acutuality by people outside of the dnace realm.  This, it seems, is a problem.

From this realization, I begin to ask some questions of myself -

What is embodied learning, really?

Is it merely a hands on practice of investigation used in classrooms?  If it is more than that, and I believe that is most definitely is, then how so?  

Is it enough to say that because I am in motion I am learning?  What is the practice that allows me to know that I know?  That allows an onlooker to also know?

What is meant by learning through dance?  

What is meant by danced learning?

Are these questions asking different things, and if so, what?  Do their evi/dances manifest in different ways and if so what are the identifiers?

Difficulties come when the artist educators themselves have not made decisions about the distinctions and/or have not yet found the bridges and the deep water diving suits required to push us past the sentimental and stereotypical statements surrounding I just feel it in my body ( my gut, my heart...could THIS be some actual physiological response to information?  recognition stimulating the neurons to fire more rapidly - pupils dilating, heart rate increasing to keep up with the increased need of blood and oxygen to the brain???)

I know that we did investigate some of this but I also feel that in speaking with our audience there was a definite lack of common language that assists the identifying therefore, once again, relegating danced knowledge to that ephemeral temoprally sensitive place that allows us to shrug and say - “well, I could just feel it, you know?...”

So - WHAT IS IT? And what do we KNOW because of it?

I am thinking a lot about the process of how we record information.  Although we feel duty bound to name the many learning styles and modalities, to say that I am ( or you are) a kinesthetic learner however, feels at this point like a cop out.  Is there anyone you have ever met who did not have an increased sense of understanding or knowing after having an embodied experience of some kind in their explorations?  Maria brought up the new research on motor neurons and I think that there is some very important information there - it goes well with the somatic investigations of kinsethesia - the idea being that once you have had an experience in your body then when you see something similar happening there in an automatic sympathetic motor response in your body as you watch it occuring on someone else.  This idea added to the notion that there are mirror neurons, acutal neuronal structures that recognize and remember the information gathered through motoric investigations gives us some real information.  As we investigate the neuro-motor pathways are open and evaluating every moment.  WE analyze the data as it comes in and we adjust our responses accordingly - in better informed trials or in highly skilled and decisive actions.  There mirror neurons are seperate from the original neuro-motor pathways - and yet they are stimulated by initiating a memory process surrounding the action in question - they help us know what we know and why - they help us layer and cross modalities so that we connect our verbal knowledge into our motor knowledge, our motor into verbal, our written to motor to verbal , our sight to written to motor to verbal - you get the idea - 

but is the actual physical structure in our nervous system getting stimulated by TO CONNECT differing types of information that allow us to integrate our knowledge in a deeper way.

SO - when I suggest that by spending time in motor investigation in order to know - suggesting too that because I dance I gain knowledge that I would not have gained otherwise - could this be part of the why and the how and the multi layered proof needed?  

BEyond the question of emdodied learning - is the further question of what is embodied research?

What is research?  We hold a question or a hypothesis outside of our selves based on formerly gathered information that holds together as agreed upon truth - or knowledge.  AS I hold it away from me in the form of a question or hypothesis what takes place?  I ask a series of questions of the question as object - how to investigate it through movement to find out something I didn’t know before?  If I know a., b. and c., what if I alter how I see or use a.?  Will the overall relationships still hold?  As silly as it may sound what does it mean if I investigate the rhythmic or inflective potential of the word research itself?  ( RHy......tttttthhhhhh/MIC or rhhhhyyyytththththththmimimi c c c c or R H Y THHHHHHHHHHH/      mic) Isn’t this analogous to documenting the changes in gestation periods of frog eggs as we consider the patterns of warming climate in the northeast?  

Is not the process of working on idea in space and time, similar to going to a library and looking something up?  

Here’s a question - How do we look things up on and in the body?  

What is it when we observe others in movement investigations and what do we see?  

How do we know we are seeing it?  

What allows us to recognize or identify information?

I am determined to continue to push this investigation -

Descartes already used the I think therefore I am simplicity thing - to say I dance therefore I know is not enough.

There are levels and layers - 

Dance to investigate specific curricular problems

Dance to investigate intuitive honing

Dance to interpret learning expressively

Dance to know one’s self

Dance to know one’s self in relationship to....( fill in the blank)

Dance to re/search what one knows and how many ways one came to know it

Dance as a partner or peer in the normal research arsenal of books, internet, media, reading, writing and talking - to add to the depth of ways we investigate and know.

ok, I htink that’s it for the moment 

to post or not to post, THAT is the question.

To be continued....

We have called it a wrap. All scattered our separate ways. The work has been profound and deep. I will be processing for a long time. I think the work we created was extraordinary, ground-breaking, and desperately needed. Our next steps are to get it out there, in all the possible forms it might take. I wish I could organize my brain to make more sense of things just now, but hopefully one of you will post some reflections and get this rolling.

Our first night

Rainy and cold at the Pillow. Autumn has set in here. So strange to have come from the heat of Atlanta to suddenly this. Is as disorienting as a beginning could possibly be. We begin. A circle full of inquisitive, beautiful, impassioned people. So many hearts/minds at work trying to step into this universe that we will all create together in the next seven days. Darwin in the neotropics, " No one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more to (hu)man(kind) that the mere breath of his body." Speaks similarly for me at the Pillow.

When I think of the moments of transformational learning that happened when dance was the tool for learning, these are some of the stories. Moments of grace and catastrophe.
- Imagination. Bobby was a freshman in an English class for freshmen who didn't have the literacy skills to handle high school. (This was a residency when Michael was my co-artist.) Bobby was willing, but confused. As light bulbs gradually went off for the rest of the class, Bobby was amiable, but the light bulbs of learning weren't going off. On the last day as we did our circle check in/check out in came around to Bobby. He said, "I realize that I have an imagination." I made pleasing sounds and moved on to the next student. He stopped me and repeated, "I realize that I have an imagination." He elaborated, "When I was a kid the other kids would grab a cardboard box and say, 'let's play racing cars' and I didn't get it. It was just a cardboard box. I didn't get it. But now I get it. I realize now, I have an imagination!" Later as the class worked on their written reflections I sat down next to Bobby. He wasn't writing. He was listening. The school band was rehearsing in another room, the sound wafting through. Bobby said, "I can hear the music and see all these things happening. This has never happened to me before. I have an imagination, and it's not going away is it?"
- L'ana Burton, dance teaching artist, did a residency in a school in CT with 4th graders - the Holocaust Unit. They made two dances, and a third surprise dance. The first dance was from what they read. They created movement images from their readings. The second dance was from their own writings that were responses to what they were learning and feeling. The third dance was a gift to L'ana. When it came time for the whole school sharing to show the dances the students announced that they had learned so much from L'ana that they had choreographed a dance for her that expressed the learning they had done with her. I am looking at this gift from the students as both an assessment of their experience, and their docudance
- Biology class. THe students were in breakout groups creating dances using cell structure as the source material. Dan, the Biology teacher, and I were standing watching and chatting as they worked. One student came running over to us and said, "I don't know who to ask, but we need to know or we can't finish our dance. We need to know how does the MRNA molecule transfer information? Is it a direct pathway or indirect? What is the quality of the movement? We need to know so we can put it in the movement." Dan said, "I don't know....." "Okay," said the kid, "We'll figure it out." ANd he went running back to his group. Dan turned to me and said, "No one has ever asked me that before..." It was a transformational moment for Dan.
- The broken glass. It was at the end of a Biology class. A double period class. Dan (same teacher) announced that when the bell rang, they should finish up their dances and then he would let them take a break but they didn't need to bolt when the bell rang. One troubled young man, who had finally gotten totally on board with the movement work, and was trying some amazing physical expressions of the science ideas - didn't hear. He was too busy dancing. WHen the bell rang, like Pavlov's dogs, he bolted. In a grand exuberant leap out the door - pushing the door of the classroom, which unexpectedly hit the corner of a desk, and the glass panel in the door shattered. THe remaining students were shocked. And high school drama ensued. One student went running after the boy, others gossiped immediately. The boy hadn't realized what had happened and had flown off full tilt down the hall when his friends caught up with him. Stunned, scared. In trouble. The boy did the unexpected (according to all later accounts) He went to the principal and told her that he just broke the glass in the door of the biology classroom. THe principal and the boy returned to the classroom. Dan and I were there, picking up pieces of glass with some of the other students. The boy showed the principal what happened. She listened. Everyone listened. Finally she said, "Well, I think you will have to pay for the glass." "I know," he said. Pause. Everyone was holding their breath. "How much do you think that will be?" She said, "About $70-75." A huge sigh of relief. "I can do that", he said. And then class resumed. I walked down the hall with the principal. I congratulated her on having a school where that kid would come to her and take responsibility. "Oh no," she said, "This is thanks to the Pillow. You guys have a way of pulling a sense of responsibility out of these kids. Even kids like ___"
- There are so many stories.....

Definitions

Kristina just asked me if I had a definition for dance, which I do and use in my work all the time. It is the first part of every workshop I do. And then there are other words that I feel we will be using/defining in our work. This is what I wrote to Kristina:
Actually, I do! I define dance as: movement aware of itself practiced with intent. I define choreography as movement aware of itself designed for affect.
I use the word "aware" as in the zen/meditation/spirituality sense - some colleagues argue my use of the word aware, suggesting that it means self-conscious.
I usually do an exercise with non-dancers where I use that definition and then I say - "now, just take one arm up in the air and down again." (they do) and I say "We all just moved." Now. Take a few deep breaths, be aware of all the movement in your body. Your heart beats, your organs are working, your blood is flowing. ALl that movement is going on without you "doing" anything. If it wasn't moving, you wouldn't be alive. Now we are going to take our arm up and down again, but this time, be aware of what you are doing, and make some choices. Fast? slow? Palm facing towards you, or away? Are you going directly overhead? SLightly out to the side? Breathe again, and when you are ready be aware and bring your arm overhead and down." They do. and i say "We all just danced. In my book, we all just danced."
Other words to define:
Cleave - this comes from Lisa saying that researchers take things apart, and artists put things together to create something. And I was reading a book by Alan Watts and he talked about the word cleave. Which means to break apart, and to hold together.
Words that need defining:
Teaching Artist (probably Eric Booth's definition is the one most used in the field)
Protocols (as in ways to talk about work)
Commission:
Teaspoon: this is a concept from a friend of mine, Nicole Livieratos. Little tiny phrases, ideas, etc. Just a teaspoon of an idea.
Grace: A friend of mine, Anne Bluethenthal, was talking about "moments of grace" in teaching
Catastrophe: I thought catastrophe was a nice opposite of those moments of grace.
Document: (defined on website)
Docudance (working definition on website)
Transformational learning

Our Creative Process/Environment

Lisa shared with me a selection from Ann Bogart's Viewpoints, written by one of Ann's dramaturgs. It gives detail to how he works to create his dramaturgy for Ann's work. His process involves collecting lots and lots of visual imagery and creating interactive wall displays from which she directs her actors to gather their material for their characters. I think about how each of us works on our work. The environments we create in, the ways we create an environment to work in.
My colleague and amazing choreographer Nicole Livieratos keeps her studio pristine, except for one curious piece. A red wagon. An old iron garden table. That somehow figures into the work. Not actually, but in her thinking.
My studio walls get covered with writings, drawings, images, scraps of paper with quotes on them. And books, books, books everywhere. I actually don't write in the studio. Not very much anyway. I write at the kitchen table, much to the dismay of any attempts for an orderly dinner.
Ann Kilkelly, another great artist, keeps boxes catalogued and things go in the boxes. But the boxes contain all - no spillage.
Michael (one of our lab participants and long time colleague/friend) and I spent deep retreat time together looking at this question among many others, and he articulated the outdoors as his studio.
And of course - each of these spaces becomes a document of the artist's working process.

We have an opportunity to collectively build our creative process/environment. I remember one Choreo Lab when Joanna Haigood came to the Pillow to visit. She came to the studio, where our walls were covered with papers and drawings. She said, teasingly, "Uh oh. Lotta thinking going on in there."

We have an opportunity to be witness to how the transformation of the space documents our thinking process/creative process over the course of our eight days together. How can we learn to "read" these signs? How will this influence the work we create, as well as how the work we create influences the space?

Paolo Friere

As I was packing books to send on to the Pillow for our onsite library, Friere's Pedagogy of Hope opened to this passage:

"Never does an event, a fact, a deed, a gesture of rage or love, a poem, a painting, a song, a book, have only one reason behind it. In fact, a deed, a gesture, a poem, a painting, a song, a book are always wrapped in thick wrappers. They have been touched by manifold whys. Only some of those are close enough to the event or the creation to be visible as whys. And so I have always been more interested in understanding the process in and by which things come about than in the product itself."
- Paolo Friere, Pedagogy of Hope

Math and Matter

My new docudance is an interplay on ideas of "matter" - weaving "matter" as in the scientific term, and "matter" as in things that have meaning. The resonant question is about the work we do - mattering.
My premise. Art-making makes things matter. Art-making, and using creative process as a tool for learning. In our case, using dance-making as a tool for learning. It makes things matter. Creative process helps us to get to: It matters. Which makes me think about the kids (especially in high school) who ask “Why do we have to learn this? It doesn’t matter. I’m never going to need this in my life!”
I felt like that in High School - the science and math classes. I was going to be a dancer - why would I need science and math? Now I am a science geek - why? Because it gives me a sense of joy, delight, wonder. I connect to the world through dance and science. When our students connect to the dance-making they connect to the science and suddenly say “It matters”. Matter can be neither created or destroyed. On the last day of the teacher’s workshop at HotSchools Summer Institute we made Math dances for the essence of math, for the unsolved problem. They resonated in the air. Everyone felt it. We made things that mattered. We got to the heart of Math - not a series of numerical facts and equations, but the beauty and eloquence of mathematical language through our bodes in time and space - because invested with the creative energy of their creators, they became emotionally powerful along with the "math facts" of our source material. They were also very funny. (Humor.... one of my favorite emotions)

Threads, Pathways, Doors

I'm about to leave Atlanta to head to SC to teach for Lesley U and then HOTschools Summer Institute in Connecticut. Both are opportunities to teach teachers. Classroom teachers. Last night I was having a conversation in my head with my students. I wanted to say to them that the way I teach is to figure out ways to open up doors. Then I thought, maybe its more like pathways. So here's my metaphor- there's this huge jungle and its called "Integrated teaching through the Arts" - and I know the part of the jungle that is dance pretty well. Have been trekking through it for many years. I can be a good guide through the part of the jungle that I know. And my teaching style is not to lecture (because that would mean that people wouldn't actually be in the jungle, they would be listening to a lecture somewhere other than the jungle) my style is to teach in the jungle. And as a guide, I point out paths rather than walk out in front and expect everyone to dutifully follow behind me. We start out together, and then we get to the waterfall and I say - well you could go this way and you might find.... or if you are interested in (fill in the blank) you might want to go that way...... my delight is when one of my students discovers a path, or something in the jungle, that I haven't seen before. A point of view, a piece of research.....
Which is not so unlike how I make my work. I usually say that I collect threads and then the fun is to figure out how I can weave them together. But I wonder what would happen if I stick to the pathways metaphor and think about how I construct my work with the metaphor of trekking through the vast, looking for familiar paths (my usual choreographic tools) and also looking for new pathways, and sometimes going where there is no path.
So I'll be following through on this thought. More soon.

Welcome

The journey begins. Before we all convene together in 68 days..... my show in North Georgia will open and close. I will complete a course I am teaching for Lesley University. I will head off to Connecticut as faculty for the HOT Schools Summer Institute with an all new format. I will take a ten day vacation in Panama (the country). My daughter will return from Massachusetts and begin her senior year. And all the other unknown stuff as well. What about you?