Beauty
Choreography, Performance, and Text by Deborah Hay
Notes for the performer of Beauty
What if the you who dances is less like a dancer and more like a computational neuroscientist whose research defines our current understanding of consciousness and normalcy? Some differences are;
1) that as a dancer your laboratory functions best when it is empty whereas a computational neuroscientist needs, at least, a desk, chair, computer, etc;
2) that as a dancer you are not required to write papers in order to be recognized, although it can help;
3) that as a dancer the dynamism of your whole body is necessary to your research whereas a computational neuroscientist needs mental focus;
4) that as a dancer your computational methodologies do not require exactitude because your experimentation is non-quantitative.
You are alone onstage and noticeably different from the person who was alone in the dressing room moments ago. Your body, then, got you to this stage. Now you shimmer.
What if shimmering is the commingling of non-linear, non-representational activity, palpable on all planes, and as far as your eyes can and cannot see? What if everyone in this theater is aware of this mysterious vitality, and feels compelled to focus beyond you for insight? Who benefits? You? Members of the audience? Both you and the audience?
What if, as a counterpart to your shimmering, you exercise your skills for undermining the ordinariness of time? As strong as your genetic and bodily response to inner rhythm and beat may actually feel, you operate more like a jazz musician who turns a song into an eclectic reconfiguration of notes and phrases that defy order, subvert the expected, and then coalesce masterfully.
What if where you are experimentally, is testing the kind of movement that comes naturally; the kind of behavioral patterning that flows from a reservoir of training and acquired tastes that lodge like a fashionable ski resort at the foot of a beautiful mountain in the Rockies?
What if there is a question, applied like a guideline to Beauty, a question that functions like the rudder of a small boat heading out to sea at night? The rudder is in the hand of an experienced boatsman, just as the question is in the body of the dancer. The rudder keeps the boat on course in the same way the question guides the dancer. The steering hand on the rudder bar is relaxed and responsive, like the mind of the dancer. The boatsman heads out to sea without knowledge of what will befall him, yet he is inseparable from his world: the water, the night sky, wind, and the currents that slap against the surface of his launch. In much the same spirit, the theater is your world, and you attend to your navigation by keeping the question current. It is the question that guides you through the night of Beauty. To answer the question is to narrow the immensity of its beauty.
The choreographer’s confession
Stage directions: the performer drops her manuscript and begin talking to your audience about the current politic climate in the US. She describes her inadequacy in articulating concerns about the Bush administration. She can hear only her anger and rage and is fully aware of how ineffective her arguments are under these conditions. She apologizes for her lack of details and analysis. She ends with this remark: “Dance is my form of political activism. It is not what or why I dance. It is that I dance.”The choreographer’s question for the performer of Beauty
What if every cell in your body has the potential to perceive beauty and surrender beauty, at once, each and every moment?
The choreography
Do you relate to the presence of a straight path? It is always there, whether it is followed or not. What if your experience of a straight path is a source of real or imagined security, order, clarity and strength within the construct of Beauty? What if departing from the path takes into account your revolutionary spirit, providing space for the anarchist, the individualist, the surly, the part of you who enjoys playing the odds, testing the limits? She’s the emblem of, the land I love, the home of the free and the brave. You can leave the path because you know where it is when you want to return. Are you willing to take risks? Are you serious enough to risk foolishness? What do you think of life without foolishness? What if what really matters is that you remain doggedly aware of the dog path whether you are on or off of it, getting what you need wherever you choose to be? Let freedom ring. What if being off the path is performed not from obstinacy or will but as a voice for change, nuance, absurdity, beauty, inclusion? My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing… The world flowers when you depart from the straight path because excitement arises through your proximity to, as well as your distance from it. What if a real and/or imagined straight path is the only measure by which you know where you are? The path is your bearing. And, what if your choice to perceive and surrender beauty as life unfolds, on the path, or off the path, is your only means of survival? O beautiful, for spacious skies…
At the far end of the straight path, in quadrant I, Beauty travels counter-clockwise, first away from, and then returning to the straight path. The journey is along a single curve, like the outline of a pregnant belly. .stand beside her, and guide her, through the night with the light from above…What if beauty is the innate performance of feminine power, before memory, without signification, and inclusive of emotion? Pure memory, like a dog with a snake in its jaws, a gorgeous management of energy.
choreographer’s aside to herself: Beauty also includes the absence of a desirable homeland in my life.
What if upon meeting the staged and metaphorical straight path once more, you imagine getting everything you need or think you need? What if you take whatever time is required to assuage need that is always there? What do you need? The answer is too long. It prohibits telling now. But every cell requires oxygen, yes? Thus you are liberated from possibly enacting what it might look like to have need fulfilled. glory glory hallelulla, glory glory hallelulla…
In quadrant II, Beauty is ‘work’, symbolized by repetitive and insistent movement, driven by a passion to survive, a determination to exist for another year, no matter the cost. At some point you even get down on the floor with no drive to make this look good, driven by the desire to experience beauty wherever you are. You deliberately avoid smooth action, economy, or alignment. You do not make it easy just because you are performing in front of an audience. You are unbeguiling, and driven, caught in making your work work. You are a rat. You will not be mislead by looking for beauty in shape and/or content. You notice beauty for infinitesimally small instances. It is gorgeous. It is enough.
What if upon coming up to the staged and metaphorical straight path once more, you imagine getting everything you need or think you need, like silence in the middle of the day, a scarf in cold weather, cream for your coffee. Every heart beats true…In the fourth quadrant you ‘look up’ while perceiving beauty.
Choreographer’s aside: This is difficult, particularly indoors. Try it. As a gesture the poetic or narrative relevance of ‘looking up’ is not applicable in Beauty. For instance, looking up suggests hope and hope has no context onstage except as a function of narrative. As a performer ‘looking up’ expands your personal landscape. Looking up is about becoming more inclusive in your perception of beauty. O beautiful, o beautiful….
As you look up you follow a curved path leading to the top of quadrant four. You return to the starting point of Beauty, the metaphorical apex of the dance, the highest point, the holiest of holy places. my home sweet home, my home sweet home…
Whole and solemn, you follow a petal-shaped path downstage. This is your passport for the resolution of Beauty, where you test your affinity for and disconnectedness from the blueprint that has held you in performance. O beautiful…. O beautiful.
Finally you detach from the blueprint for Beauty, the cipher you have milked for continuity and definition. You enter an imagined void, where the encapsulation of your wit, pathos, memory, disillusionment; the presence of love and anger, form and formlessness, all, merge into nothing but Beauty.
[_writings and notes]