The Solo Performance Commissioning Project 2005:
From 1998 through 2002, Deborah conducted the Solo Performance Commissioning Project on Whidbey Island, at the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts, in Washington State. August, 2004, the SPCP Helsinki was held in Helsinki, for performers from Finland and Northern Europe.
In September 2004 the SPCP British Isles took place at Findhorn, Scotland, and it will take place there again from August 31 through September 10, 2005.
For information and registration for the SPCP Findhorn 2005, contact Gill Clarke, gclarke@easynet.co.uk
WHAT IS IT?
The Solo Performance Commissioning Project developed from the growing necessity to encourage communities to support artists and their growth.
The project's goal has been to: - further professional training for performers; - provide community access to new directions in performance; - help artist and community to work together for the enhancement of their cultural life and traditions.
Beyond the exchange between Hay and the artists, the residency is based on a commitment to involve the larger community in the process of art creation. The commissioning fee is sought by the artist from his or her community and must not come from the performer's private resources. Sponsorship may come from relatives, friends, businesses, and local, state or federal arts organizations. All patrons receive acknowledgment every time the solo is performed by any of the participating artists.
WORKING WITH DEBORAH HAY
Deborah Hay's orientation to dance is activated by attention to practices of performance. In an intense learning environment she challenges the experienced performer with movement concepts that trigger multiple levels of perception at once. She choreographs the world 'between' moments, where movement proclivity plays second fiddle to exercised inquiry.
With the Solo Performance Commissioning Project all participating artists commission the same solo dance choreographed by Deborah Hay.
Hay rarely demonstrates solutions to the choreography. Rather, she conveys her concepts through directives that each performer translates individually into movement in his/her unique way. As part of the process, the artist is bound to the material through meditation-like exercises that are applied throughout the choreographed dance.
In the latter half of the SPCP each artist is personally coached in his/her performance of the dance, with everyone present. Ultimately the solo is adapted by each performer through a period of practice that extends into the months following the project.
In addition, Deborah Hay teaches and conducts the Zen Imagery Exercises, a series of still and moving postures that promote flow along the major meridian pathways of the body.
The aesthetic preferences & artistic orientation of the performer in the Solo Performance Commissioning Project conceived by Deborah Hay
This list can help determine whether the SPCP is applicable to you as a practitioner of movement and/or performance art, including acting. Those not familiar with my work should consider each item and determine whether these attributes are ones either already familiar to you and/or ones you wish to conscientiously exercise.
o Your ability to laugh at your serious intentions at any given moment is a tool you like to remember to use.
o You have explored "self-expression" and found it limiting as a means to create performance continuity.
o You are drawn to explore movement in all its variety - either through a cultivated or ingrained absence of discrimination.
o You are not content with partial practice.
o You want your process to be continually challenged.
o Your respect for the intelligence of your whole body is unqualified.
o In performance, your non- attachment to professional training in dance or techniques in acting is a source of on-going insight, and delight.
o You are without fear of appearing foolish in your capacity to violate form in order to recognize where and why it exists.
o Integral to your experience of performance is an inclusive regard for the presence of your audience.
o You are becoming or already are skilled at monitoring your own performance. What this means is you have developed a capacity to witness yourself from more than one perspective at once, not as a judge but a guide in the practice of attention.
quotes--
"Through her courageous choreographic and performance practice, remarkable language and immediate presence, Deborah has touched and stimulated the most essential places in my artistic expression, encouraging the integration of every aspect of my performing self with my dance. And here I remember the pleasure in dance. I experience an availability, a flexibility, a wholeness rarely evoked through any other form - touching on my child, adult, fool, craftsman, artist and essential nature - accessing a very alive and ready state from which to work." - Ros Warby, dancer/choreographer
"At a time in my career when I was feeling stagnant, Deborah's work reintroduced me to my own dancing; to dance as a living thing. Her gentle and powerful focus in teaching cuts through old patterns and internal obstacles with fierce intellect and compassion, leaving me amazed to discover myself. Learning and dancing Beauty was like having the top of my head opened to the whole sky." Ü Emily Stein, dancer/choreographer
"Deborah creates an atmosphere with which one can playfully and thoughtfully study the phenomenon of performance while enabling one to freely learn through their own experiences, the subtleties and largeness of art-making and one's presence within it." Ü Amelia Reeber, dancer/choreographer
"Deborah has taught me to notice the physical presence of my favorite things about being a human being, and that they themselves, not representations of them, can be the material for choreography because I am an agent for their physicality. To me, this really is an invention that I have never seen or felt before. And I feel it before I know it because of everything about the Solo Performance Commissioning Project: Deborah's choreography, her teaching strategies, the use of our time." Ü Kathryn Johnson, dancer/choreographer
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