Roble Gym Rehearsal, Stanford University with Judy Syrkin-Nikolau
The artist is nothing without the gift,
but the gift is nothing without work.
Émile Zola
Heterogenous Spectacles
Roble Gym Rehearsal
Documenting Performance and Truth
i’m not interested in documenting
documenting is boring
documenting is recording facts
and facts are not particularly interesting
i often worry that photographing performance
is a violent act
even when i photograph my own work
i’m concerned
that there is some form of displacement
I often see photographers
use their cameras as weapons
machine gunning the performers
with the hopes that 1 of the 1000 images
captures the moment
this i find extremely violent
a point of view is interesting
feelings or impressions are fascinating
my approach
because i am not a photographer
that is
I view the camera as a tool
i use within a broader artistic practice…
to be clearer on this point
consider a novelist
one day they might write with a pencil
the next day
a typeriter
another day
a pen
as a typewriter is for the writer
the camera is for me
and just as the novelist knows his “s” key sometimes sticks
i know my 35mm lens overly vignettes
when wide open
it’s just a tool i use
as a means to express something
something i’m still struggling to understand
and with this tool
i capture images for myself
as if they were sketches
in a work journal
the only thing my photos document
are my own feelings
which is mostly what i see
when I look back at my own work
i don’t rush in and out
it takes time for me to understand
to form feelings … attachments
… relationships …
not just with the people
but with the space/environment
we inhabit
when collaborating
i often have a general understanding
i’ve read the play
studied it in school
imagined it brought to life
but when i show up
i realize my preconceived ideas
which may be manifested or not
are my ideas
ones that i am pushing onto someone else’s work
preventing me from being present
taking me out of the moment before me
truth comes to me
little by little
i think
truth is temporal
truth can come suddenly too
moments like this only happen
when I know the collaborators
i’ve breathed with them over time
so that i see them
as if they were standing before me naked
and they in turn see me naked
with my vulnerabilities and insecurities
we see each other
with no judgment
only with our hearts
when that happens
and i have been very fortunate
to work with people who make this very easy
the images somehow become
more than my personal sketches
capturing some semblance of a truth
in the performance
it’s a question of trust
to capture such moments
it’s the game of yes
where you open yourself up to another
as Joyce writes
in the last lines of Ulysses…
“…I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. “aJames Joyce, Ulysses, 1922 edition
it’s only then
i feel
that i see the truth
Documenting Performance and Truth
Notes
References
rehearsing Nausicaä at Pillar Point
Speculation: rehearsing Nausicaä at Pillar Point with Aleta Hayes, Judy Syrkin-Nikola, Amber Levine, Benjamin Cohn, and Timothy Lee.
So Odysseus moved out . . .
about to mingle with all those lovely girls,
naked now as he was, for the need drove him on,
a terrible sight, all crusted, caked with brine–
they scattered in panic down the jutting beaches.
Only Alcinous’ daughter held fast, for Athena planted
courage within her heart, dissolved the trembling in her limbs,
and she firmly stood her ground and faced Odysseus, torn now–
Should he fling his arms around her knees, the young beauty,
plead for help, or stand back, plead with a winning word,
beg her to lead him to the town and lend him clothing?
Homer, Odyssey, trans. Robert Fagles
Rehearsing Nausicaä
Nausicaä on The Beach: speculation and Site Specific Dance rehearsing of Sophocles Nausicaä with Amber Levine and Judy Syrkin-Nikolau on the beach at Pillar Point…
so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again…
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Midsummer Night’s Dream in Lafayette Park
San Francisco Shakespeare Festival: Midsummer Night’s Dream in Lafayette Park San Francisco Recreation & Parks.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
William Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream
rehearsing Nausicaä in Windhover
Site Responsive Theater rehearsal: Judy Syrkin-Nikolau dancing a section of Sophocles Nausicaä in Nathan Oliveira Windhover…
The gesture must be correct.
If the gesture is correct,
your mind really creates the reality of the figure,
and it is not necessary to hang on all the rest…
Nathan Oliveira
Nausicaä & Odysseus…
Site Responsive Theater: Judy and Ben (Nausicaä and Odysseus) working a section of Sophocles’ Nauscaä at Pillar Point with choreographer Aleta Hayes
Actually, I do happen to resemble a hallucination. Kindly note my silhouette in the moonlight.” The cat climbed into the shaft of moonlight and wanted to keep talking but was asked to be quiet. “Very well, I shall be silent,” he replied, “I shall be a silent hallucination.”
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Nausicaä rehearsal: Poseidon vs. Odysseus
rehearsing Sophocles Nausicäa in Stanford TAPS Prosser Studio
Poseidon god of the earthquake launched a colossal wave,
terrible, murderous, arching over him, pounding down on him,
hard as a windstorm blasting piles of dry parched chaff,
scattering flying husks…
The Odyssey, Robert Fagles trans.
rehearsing Sophocles Nausicaä
Speculation: rehearsing Sophocles Nausicaä at Pillar Point with Aleta Hayes, Judy Syrkin-Nikolau and Benjamin Cohn.
He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.
An untrammelled conscience
Speculation: production meeting on a beach…
You must learn not what people round you consider good or bad, but to act in life as your conscience bids you. An untrammelled conscience will always know more than all the books and teachers put together.
Meetings With Remarkable Men
Wave Organ Rehearsal
Wave Organ Practice: a rehearsal for the site responsive theater production of a Sophocles fragment at the Wave Organ, San Francisco
There is nothing to playing the organ. You only have to hit the right notes at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Yula Rehearsal
In Italian museums are sometimes found little painted screens that the priest used to hold in front of the face of condemned men to hide the scaffold from them.
Albert Camus
Stanford TAPS Choreographers
One clashes with stupidity of all kinds. And then how much money must be spent in advance! The way in which artists are treated is really scandalous. I am compelled to give a third of my receipts to the manager of the theatre and a fifth to the hospitals. Devil take them! As long as these abuses exist, I shall always ask whether music is or is not an art that may be freely exercised. Believe me, there is nothing to be done for artists in times like these.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Stanford Choreographers:
Robert Moses, Aleta Hayes, Diane Frank, and Alex Ketly
Chocolate Heads: Spring Charrette
A photograph is neither taken or seized by force.
It offers itself up.
It is the photo that takes you.
One must not take photos.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Anna and Tonyanna
Anna Halprin Museum of Performance and Design (MP+D_: Anna talking with Tonyanna at the opening of her exhibit at the Museum in San Francisco.
Every experience I’ve had in my life is a resource in my body.
Anna Haprin
Hunters Point Shipyard, San Francisco
Hunters Point Superfund: Hunters Point Shipyard the Superfund Site in San Francisco’s backyard…
Buildings without foundations will inevitably come down.
I can be fooled, but my kids won’t be…
either we will correct what’s wrong,
it will be corrected for us.
James Baldwin, Take This Hammer
Mothers Day…
To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.
Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.
Maya Angelou