Author: María Ferrara

LIVE ARTS FOR THE EVERYDAY – APPLICABLE THOUGHT #44 – Criticism

| María Ferrara

Some live artists purposefully never read reviews. Others would love to get a review, but don’t. A review is recognition that the performance happened, that someone went to see it and has something to say about it. Dance critic Deborah Jowitt says in this AudioStage podcast that reviewing is “inevitably a subjective act. I’m not neutral, I’m not objective, I hope I can be fair (…) (I) try to give something of its essence (…) how I and others seemed to respond (…)”. Being subjective is natural, because we all have our own opinions and feelings about things. However, universalizing our subjective view as if it were an objective fact is using our preferences as a measuring stick to pass judgement. “I don’t like it” is very different to “it’s bad”. Taking responsibility for our opinion and our experience leaves room for all the other opinions and experiences that, together with ours, make up reality.

 


María Ferrara

 

LIVE ARTS FOR THE EVERYDAY – APPLICABLE THOUGHT #43 – Up and Down

| María Ferrara

Ballet enhances going up; it uses jumps, lifts and standing on tip-toe or on the toes themselves. Modern dance at the beginning of the 20th Century started to bring the heels back down and in the 60s Postmodern dance allowed the whole body to lay down on the ground and invited weight into the dance. Regardless of where the emphasis is, up and down can not be separated from each other. Because we are in a gravitational field, anything that goes up will come back down. Also, to pull away from gravity in a jump we need to go down first by flexing our legs so that we can spring up. Outside dance, the deeper the roots, the taller the tree can grow, and the more it grows, the more sun it gets through its leaves and the more energy it has for its roots, which can then go deeper still. Up becomes down becomes up becomes down…

 


María Ferrara

 

LIVE ARTS FOR THE EVERYDAY – APPLICABLE THOUGHT #42 – Homogeneity

| María Ferrara

Repetition and minimalism are two of the approaches with which postmodern music and dance in the 1960s questioned traditional forms. Attention is challenged by not feeding it with the contrast that it naturally gravitates towards. Instead, the same pattern or element is looped ad infinitum, with or without slight variation or developments. When we hold ourselves in there long enough, our perception will sooner or later switch into a different perception paradigm. John Cage said, “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.” A bit like meditating. At first it may seem like nothing is happening, but at some point there is a shift in the mind and we start noticing the subtleties that usually pass us by unnoticed.

 


María Ferrara

 

LIVE ARTS FOR THE EVERYDAY – APPLICABLE THOUGHT #41 – Contrast

| María Ferrara

Our mind is wired to respond to change and difference with attention. This enables us to adapt to new conditions and helps us survive. Because of the time element involved in live arts, this is an important consideration when composing a piece. Contrast tends to keep the audience attentive. However, if everything is different and changing all the time, this would become the constant and the mind would register sameness as the contrasting element. Routine can turn my attention off. What do I need to break the routine and wake up? Is it a routine of sameness or a routine of irregularity? Do I need something extraordinary or, rather, some continuity?

 


María Ferrara

 

LIVE ARTS FOR THE EVERYDAY – APPLICABLE THOUGHT #40 – set

| María Ferrara

I still remember my theatre teacher Juan Carlos Corazza saying “set design is not the same as interior design”. This is a particular pitfall of naturalistic theatre, but the consideration can be useful for other live arts aswell. The main idea behind this statement is that set design is not about decorating, but about supporting the performance. Stages tend to be as neutral as possible, pure space. Social scientist and philosopher Michel de Certeau in “The Practice of Everyday Life” makes a distinction between a space (which is undefined, open and common) and a place (which is defined, delineated and individual). A space is polyvalent: fit for a greater variety of things but offering no specialized features. A place is specific: appropriate for certain uses but lacking versatility. Finding the appropriate point along the spectrum between space and place would be a decisive step for a set design. This fine-tuning between general and specific, versatile and specialized can be extrapolated to many areas of life. Different situations may benefit from different approaches.

 


María Ferrara

 

LIVE ARTS FOR THE EVERYDAY – APPLICABLE THOUGHT #39 – real-time composition

| María Ferrara

Real-time composition is the process of improvising composition, that is, composing in real-time in front of an audience. The essence of improvisation is being present in the moment and in the development of events one by one. On the other hand, the essence of composition is viewing the whole that is created by combining elements. The two seem to contradict each other. Ruth Zaporah, creator of the Action Theater methodology offers a way to bring the two together by improvising as if you’re walking backwards, “You can see where you’ve been, but you can’t see where you’re going. But what you see does affect where you’re going” (The Improvisation of Presence, Ruth Zaporah). Interestingly enough, this matches the way in which the Aymara people of the Andes and the Tuva People of Siberia conceptualize time: the past is in front of us, where we can see it, and the future is behind us, where we can’t see it. Any intention of composing our lives can only be put into practice in real time, because we’ll never get the chance to make adjustments once we see the finished whole. Perhaps we can start making our way through life backwards like the Aymara and the Tuvans.

 

 

María Ferrara

 

LIVE ARTS FOR THE EVERYDAY – APPLICABLE THOUGHT #38 – Direction

| María Ferrara

In a piece, the director has an overview of all the artistic aspects of the performance and fine tunes them so that they come together in a coherent whole that corresponds to their vision. Although there are lots of choices, some things are beyond even the director’s control. Struggling with what is lacking can become a waste of energy and time, which may be better used getting the best out of what is actually there. Even though in our lives much more is beyond our control, sometimes we want to give them a certain direction. What is my vision? How much energy is it reasonable to invest in what is lacking? How much energy can be invested in making the best out of what is actually there?

 


María Ferrara

 

LIVE ARTS FOR THE EVERYDAY – APPLICABLE THOUGHT #37 – Work in Progress

| María Ferrara

Showing an unfinished work allows live artists to get feedback and also a feel for how the presence of the audience influences the piece. Both things are valuable in continuing with the work. There needs to be something to be shown, some hypothesis, some prototype. Many things may feel dubious, but if they are done half-heartedly it is impossible to see how they work. Therefore, the performers need to commit to the performance as if it was the finished product while remaining open to the audience’s reaction. It’s a moment of vulnerability in which the achievement so far is presented wholeheartedly and yet as a question. Are we, as persons, ever finished? Like all living things, we are in constant transformation. At every single point along the process of our life we are work in progress. This is no reason to be unsure, but a consideration to allow us to be wholehearted in what we are at this moment in time yet humble.

 


María Ferrara

 

LIVE ARTS FOR THE EVERYDAY – APPLICABLE THOUGHT #36 – Inspiration

| María Ferrara

Inspiration in its most literal sense means breathing in. The sense of receiving something also appears in its figurative sense, regarding the arousal of the mind, emotions or spirit that leads to discovery, creativity, flow or sacred revelation. Inspiration is not something that one can generate, but something that either comes, apparently out of the blue, or doesn’t. It is related to the non-logical right hemisphere of our brain and being inspired feels intense and harmonious at the same time. Although we can not make inspiration happen, we can cultivate a state of relaxed awareness in which we can best “hear” this inner voice that so clearly leads the way. Artists depend on inspiration, so they learn how it works and how to work with it. That’s part of an artistic practice. We can find our own artistic practices so that inspiration can find us more easily, in order to learn the language it speaks.

 


María Ferrara