<![CDATA[ALTERNATIVE MOTION PROJECT - Audience Create-a-Dance Blog]]>

<![CDATA[ALTERNATIVE MOTION PROJECT - Audience Create-a-Dance Blog]]>Fri, 27 Feb 2026 11:59:47 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Where Have I Heard This Before?]]>Mon, 16 Nov 2015 15:09:09 GMThttps://www.alternativemotionproject.org/audience-create-a-dance-blog/-where-have-i-heard-this-beforeMusic is the art, which is most nigh to tears and memory. – Oscar Wilde

I would say we are a music-obsessed culture. I think this might be in part to the I have 17.8 days of music on my iTunes account. For this blog I’ve decided to play a quick game of iPod Roulette. I will hit shuffle and for each song that comes up I will write a short paragraph of the vivid memory that invokes. I fear this may reveal some poor musical taste…

I’m Real Jennifer Lopez and Ja Rule

This song makes me reminisce on Homecoming Dances in the early 2000s. When the children of Suburban Minneapolis where into grinding, wearing Chuck Taylors with a suit and hanging out at Perkins. I was worried about dancing with a girl. KDWB would play this jam every 14 minutes and I would hop up to hone my craft.

Leaving Las Vegas Sheryl Crow

My parents got divorced when I was 7, and my mom played this Sheryl Crow album non-stop. NON-STOP. This was in the 90s, so cassette was king. Rewinding and fast forwarding was my responsibility as the sole passenger in the car. I got it down to science. The rhythm of hitting the rewind the seconds later hitting pause followed by a quick snap of the play button.

Going Up The Country Kitty, Daisy & Lewis

I went to school in a smaller Wisconsin town, where honestly many people went home over breaks and many weekends. The transition from rehearsing and taking class and teaching at a local studio surrounded by fun and interesting people, to the isolation, destitute poverty and wide-open schedule of the J-terms and summers were rough. A friend recommended this song at end of term shindig. For the next 4 weeks it was apart of my aimless walking around playlist. The growl and harmony in modest working class lyrics: I'm going up the country, babe, don't you wanna go? I'm going to some place where I've never been before, And Well, I'm going where the water tastes like wine. We can jump in the water, stay drunk all the time fueled my footsteps.

]]><![CDATA[Everybody Smile]]>Sat, 17 Oct 2015 13:13:21 GMThttps://www.alternativemotionproject.org/audience-create-a-dance-blog/everybody-smileShe glances at the photo, and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes. – Frank Deford

This past year my last remaining grandparents passed away. My fathers father Clare last spring and my mothers mother Eileen in the summer. Both had lived long and full lives and I loved each of them very much. In my grief I began the process of researching and recording my ancestry. I spent literal days on my computer looking over birth certificates, marriage licenses and notices of death. I feel into a hole of state census and passenger lists. Between this depression fueled research and the many hours of reminiscing with relatives and assorted memorials, wakes and burials I found solace in having an idea of my family history. Please note that because of my Irish Catholic background we discussed the faults and follies of all our dearly departed as well, with humor and understanding.

Then the photos came. Treasure in manila envelopes. I stared at photos of my grandfather as small boy and my grandmother as a young woman. He looked happy she looked glamorous. There were photos of great grandmothers, distant uncles, all manner of cousins and even some of my closest relations and me. I began to think of when these photos were taken and the events that were occurring. It didn’t all connect.

That’s were I began this past rehearsal. Developing a section that could illustrate what was occurring directly before and directly after the moment captured. Sampling movement from other sections, each dancer began moving independently at times connecting and then breaking apart. After the movement was in place when began discussing parental platitudes from our own lives. After amassing a lost list the performers where given liberty to yell and scream these familial clichés in each other’s faces as they danced. I will leave it at that, as I don’t want to give too much away.

I leave you with a few of the gems from my newly acquired family photos. I hope you will share any photos of your own family you may have.

]]><![CDATA[ I’m No Bridget Jones, But… ]]>Sat, 17 Oct 2015 13:00:41 GMThttps://www.alternativemotionproject.org/audience-create-a-dance-blog/-im-no-bridget-jones-butMemory is the diary that we all carry with us. – Oscar Wilde

Did you every keep a diary? I did, several throughout my life. I still have them all. There is the one with the puppy cover and the one with Qui-Gon Jinn on the cover. There is the blue one and the green one and the moleskin. There’s the one that doesn’t have a cover anymore. So many hours and so much emotion went into those little books. Now all of them are sitting in a drawer. I don’t read them often. I glace at a few pages every time I move; usually as respite from packing. In those pages are a lot of sad awkward retellings of the daily events. Unrequited love is a major theme. So is vengeance. Especially ages 9 through 14.

But when the numbers came in and the theme was to be memory, I knew I would probably be dusting them off without a U -Haul in sight. Still pretty rough to read. I use way to many exclamation points. Each entry usually deals with 2 to 3 topics, one always being how lame my step dad is. Also I apparently was spelling the word friend wrong well into my teens.

I before E. Get it together!!! Painful stuff.

Painful but inspiring, so we began creating a new section dealing with those reckless records of early days. I had each dancer write a memory out. The specification being that the memory is banal. An exercise like this could easily slip into a very special Barbra Walters interview, so I tried to steer it towards neutral territory. Then we began to intertwine movement and speech in the space to reveal, what I think, is a sweet little piece of dance.

Check out a little sneak peak:

]]><![CDATA[ Memory Outside The Mind ]]>Sat, 17 Oct 2015 12:54:26 GMThttps://www.alternativemotionproject.org/audience-create-a-dance-blog/-memory-outside-the-mind

Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape. – Janet Fitch

As I’ve been researching this piece, I’ve come to learn all of the types of memory that are in play. We are dealing personal memory (which is broken down even further examples are in Blog #1) the sociological collective memory and the external memories people create using symbol recognition.

I am inclined to imagine my own memory as cavernous attic with boxes stacked high, and photos spilling over to intermix with dusty newspapers. Think of the object that you keep as mementos of times gone by. As I scan my apartment from my seat here at the computer I realize nearly everything on display is a physical reminder of the past.

Instead of having to hold every past experience inside my head I am able attach my memory to an object.

The 5 categories of external memory that this piece is going to address will be:

Writing/Diaries – I think there is a reason they are private.
Photographs – Allowing people to see into the past since the past.
Sounds/Music – The flood of emotions when Ja Rule & J. Lo come on the radio.
Talismans, Trinkets & Souvenirs – Oh this? I got it in Paris.
Home Movies – The 80s hair is even worse in motion.

I narrowed these down from a list much longer, but the din of nostalgia that each of these can produce shall undoubtedly suffice.

I leave you with a small challenge. Go open an old diary or listen to song associated with fond memories. It might dislodge a memory from deep inside the cavernous attic. Be careful though. There could be bats…

]]><![CDATA[Making The First Step(s).]]>Mon, 05 Oct 2015 14:28:03 GMThttps://www.alternativemotionproject.org/audience-create-a-dance-blog/-making-the-first-steps

'The Empire She Crumbles' by Jesse Schmitz-Boyd Photo Credit: Bill Cameron

Delphi

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. - Lewis Carroll

Lets start at the very beginning, a very place to start. How do you make dance? What do you do first? You generate material.

I like to create the majority of the movement for a piece through improvisation. I do often bring in some set choreography when I enter a rehearsal process but that was most likely generated from a pervious personal improvisation.

For this piece the dancers and I began with an activity I unabashedly like to call The Oracle. Not only is it much like those soothsayers at Delphi, a message springing forth from the unknown and being interpreted and re-interpreted by those who have received their fate; but also it sounds so pretentious and self-aggrandizing. Which is fun! In this incarnation the message is the movement and we speak for the unseen.

The process begins by having a dancer in the center improvise to a chosen piece of music. The other dancers situated on the perimeter watch the improviser looking for moments of movement that resonate with them. They then take a short a mount of time to repeat the movement on their own bodies so to solidify the muscle memory. Each dancer then takes several of the captured moments and strings them together into a phrase. Then each dancer teaches their phrase to the others.

I like this method for a few reasons. Improvisation allows for individual style and a natural ease. It prevents me from unconsciously recycling material from other pieces and it comes from the dancers own body so I know they will be capable of performing it with accuracy and finesse. Also it creates unique and unexpected dynamics. This method democratizes the movement by having the other dancers choose what the important moments are. You could say every dancer can get their stink on the material. Charmed. I am sure. Finally it is delightfully efficient. A large amount of material can be generated in very short a mount of time.

We will continue to develop and refine this material making it suitable for the needs of the piece in the coming weeks. I hope you stick around to see how that works out!

'Ceramonia' by Jesse Schmitz-Boyd Photo Credit: Michael Estanich

]]><![CDATA[Memory Dance]]>Wed, 16 Sep 2015 12:52:26 GMThttps://www.alternativemotionproject.org/audience-create-a-dance-blog/the-first-rehearsal

Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery. - Ken Kesney, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

What is your earliest memory? Mine is the scent of the pages from Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. That sensory memory has stuck with me longer than any other. It is a memory that to this day makes me docile, agreeable and ready for a nap. Just as it did when I was toddler.

Creating a dance about memory is forcing me to examine what my own memories are as well as how and why memories are created.

Here are the just some of questions I am excited to investigate during the construction of this dance for Alternative Motion Project:

What does the physical process of creating and recalling memory entail? Also how does explicit memory vs. implicit memory manifest in humans physically. As a dancer my curiosity about the corporeal living organism that is the human body will never satisfied.
Where is the beauty in procedural memory? I find muscle memory to be the closest thing to a super power that we, humans, possess. I know dancers in their fifties who can recall entire routines from 2nd grade tap lessons. Recently I’ve been rehearsing a show that I performed many, many times a while back. Not having even thought about the steps, or lines or stage directions in nearly a year. I was able to recall everything with nothing but a few superficial mistakes. That was not only meant be a humble-brag about me individually! That is my honest awe-struck testimony on the unfettered power of human memory species wide!
Which creates a longer lasting memory pleasure or trauma? Which creates the more vivid memory?
Déjà vu! Having a memory of an event as it happens. What the hell is going on with that? All I know it’s a glitch in The Matrix, but what else?
I am interested in the ways semantic memory can evolve or decay. I am asking how does episodic memory warp? Then I may be able to solve the mystery of why certain cousins remember fondly summers at the cabin, while others…um…don’t.

So many questions to ask in single dance! So many to answer! I hope you will check in with us during this process to see if we actually answer any or if we in fact just uncover more questions. Something tells me it will be the latter not the former.

Please share your earliest memories, thoughts on any of these questions or if you have any memory related investigations of your own.

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