Located in SOMA in San Francisco, CounterPULSE is a non-profit theater, performance space, community center, and gallery with roots deep in the Bay Area’s provocative performance and dance scenes. CounterPULSE produces its own shows, helps support local artists and activists with its programs and can be rented for productions and rehearsals.
Special thanks to Lynn Huang for writing and contributing this post to the Murakami conversation. Lynn is one of the four talented performer/collaborators in Hotel in a Bottle, which opens next Friday!
“Portales! We’re doing portales piquitos and then portales grandes, right?” Erin asked. “Si! Si!” we replied in turn. Despite the fact that none of us actually speak Spanish, in the context of our rehearsals, we did. The five ‘portals’ scattered around the perimeter of the stage in our structured improvisation became ‘portales.’ We had slipped into another language, just as we slid down the oil ramps of our ‘portales’ to enter into a new state of being where we had no skin—just blood, bones, and muscle exposed to air.
Breaking out into a foreign language was the perfect metaphor for dancemaking, which is essentially learning to speak another language. It was easier to put it in another language; that way, words, movements, and concepts were expectedly unfamiliar, and therefore liberating. Speaking Spanish in rehearsal was novel, just as the ideas we were working with were foreign. We were creating a new language through our bodies, embracing and reveling in its inherent strangeness.
We fell into the varied landscapes of Murakami’s novels, shimmying down to rest for a moment beneath their skins. Taking a line-by-line approach, we held photocopied pages of his text in our hands as we stepped onto the smooth studio floors and allowed his words to direct our movement. We climbed across ladders on the painted white wall of the stage and constructed wells within our minds. I felt the cold on my skin and the blackness around me within my own well. The darkness was total inside and outside and in that moment, I could not remember the shape of my face. We translated our internal landscapes into physical movement.
And then the movement ceased to matter. We had been transformed. The piece developed a life of its own, with its flickering walls, the projected images that would engulf us or replace us. We became its willing or perhaps unwilling inhabitants—isolated, observing, waiting.”
If Murakami’s works came to life, and you could suddenly take a stroll through them, chances are music would be everywhere. Chauffeured in a car, you would hear “the classical strains of Chopin.” In the bathroom of Denny’s, Hall & Oates’ I can’t go for that would be playing. And jazz would fit into the small spaces everywhere else.
I knew when I started this piece, music would figure in significantly to it, and my musical selections might not match audience expectations. When you think of a soundscape to define Murakami, your first thoughts may tend towards atmospheric, mysterious music. Check out Murakami’s website, and you’ll hear what I mean.
However, that sound is rarely found within Murakami’s novels. Instead, he uses a great deal of specificity about music, down to the conductor, artist, soloist or label. He incorporates various genres of music inside each chapter – ranging from jazz to American pop in the 60s and 70s, classical and J-Pop.
Most of Hotel in a Bottle has been created in silence, with music entering into the process only in the last month. Because music can have such a strong effect on movement choices, I wanted to develop the dance first. Hotel in a Bottle incorporates a sonic pastiche, with music and sounds taken from several different novels. Typically, I incorporate a wide variety of sound into my work, and it certainly has been a pleasure selecting from such a broad playlist.
Working with Bert Bergen has been a treat; he has opened my ears to new sounds and genres in this process. He has helped me to find the sound of Murakami without always going for the most well-known songs. This allows the piece to create new connections to Murakami without necessarily triggering memories associated with popular songs.
Two weeks to go!
Erin blogs regularly about her process at erinmalley.tumblr.com
In the previous post, we made centipede yogurt stew. Yum! Now onto the video portion. Except, maybe we’re not talking about a plate of food anymore. Maybe we’re discussing a table with legs sharply angled away from the center…
When I set out to integrate video with dance, I had this idea in my head that I would let inspiration come only from video – that somehow there was supposed to be ONE foundation in the work, end of story.
I quickly discovered that sometimes we just needed to work on sections of the dance, and integrate a design concept later on. Or sometimes the video design really did feed the movement, and I needed to let that be the impetus. Either way, I got a taste of how integrated the project really is when we had our fundraiser on Saturday and the video that I showed was…a little boring.
Okay. It wasn’t REALLY boring, but without the context of the dance around it, the video just didn’t stand up on its own. And while I was slightly embarrassed at how tepid the response was to the video, I realized that this was ultimately a successful design – for Hotel in a Bottle. The scene leading up to the video – and what happens during the video – is what makes the video work inside the context of the piece.
If I may examine this from another angle, I am constantly hearing about how important it is to be able to see a dance work “on its own” – that it is somehow the measure of a piece’s success. How could that be possible in an interdisciplinary piece, if the intention is to blend the elements in a cohesive fashion? To create a dramaturgical arc, or special “moments” within a piece, sometimes you absolutely MUST lean elements against each other. Sometimes when the elements stand too much on their own, they never quite cohere together. Food for thought.
And with that, we’re back to the creative plate. Next up: the integration of music choices!
Erin also writes about her process on her own blog: erinmalley.tumblr.com
We are very excited for Vangeline (NYC) to open for KATSURA Kan’s Oracle & Enigma with her solo “Spectral,” on Feb 24th and 25th 2012. These two performances together will premiere diverse interpretations of the avant-guard body expression of “Butoh.”
The Butoh work has been described as the “Dance of Darkness,” or the “Dance of the Dark Soul.” The definition of Butoh is controversial and by its very nature defies definition. Vangeline approaches this work with a desire to transform. Butoh for her is a rebellious undertaking to challenge and shed layers of conditioning and social masks to offer rigorous honesty to the community through performance. She is uncompromising as she invokes a desire to expose and confront our private wars, wounded selves, and through this process bring what is hidden into the light.
Vangeline is a Butoh artist from NYC, soon to be seen in the feature film ” the Stare” with Winona Ryder and James Franco. She is also Artistic Director of the Vangeline Theater, a New York Dance company founded in December 2002. The Vangeline Theater has consistently pursued the advancement of Butoh as a 21st century art form capable of transforming the meaning and the relationship between dance and community. Vangeline is a long time student of Diego Piñón and Butoh masters, Yoshito Ohno, Akira Kasai, Yumiko Yushioka, Ko Murobushi, Daisuke Yoshimoto, Tetsuro Fukuhara, and Butoh master Katsura Kan.
“ Vangeline moves with the clockwork deliberation of a practiced Japanese Butoh artist”
- F. Kathleen Foley, Los Angeles Times, 9/15/ 2011
Butoh Master KATSURA Kan will premiere his work "Oracle & Enigma," Feb 24th and 25th 2012.
KATSURA is a native of Kyoto from among the ranks of Japan's senior generation of Butoh. He worked with
Tatsumi-Hikikata / Butoh Founder (1929-1986) at his last moment in 1985. KATSURA performed with
the seminal Butoh troupe, “Byakkosha” 1979-1981 and then researched in Indonesia and Thailand for
20 years. KATSURA Kan describes Butoh to be "based on the body as a costume and landscape which
has the potential to recover, activate and revitalize humanity and the community." KASURA Kan asks
"what is natural," what is neutral," "what is the curious body."
Oracle and Enigma is a Butoh dance theatre work directed by Master KATSURA Kan.
The work explores our human relation to earthly and cosmic elements through the movement of the
"curious body." It is a journey towards the celestial horizon to see ourselves as an Oracle.
The work explores knowing and not knowing, walking and listening, prison, paradise and dreams.
Choreographed and Directed by: KATSURA Kan. Dancers: Christina Braun, Heyward Bracey, Michael Curran,
Shoshana Green, KATSURA Kan, Azumi Oe, Sarwang Parikh, Martha Ratlif, Sharoni Stern Siegel, Bob Webb.
Costumes by Anastazia Lousie from Bad Unkl Sista & Live Visuals by Kio Griffith.
Picture it now: there is a plate on the table in front of you, full of creative, Hotel-in-a-Bottle-icious food to eat.
So let’s talk about the text. Some of the lines in Murakami’s novels are so poetically delicious, you could just eat them. To whet your appetite: “As much as he might try to lose himself in a crowd, he was as inconspicuous as a centipede in a cup of yogurt.” – from 1Q84
I love the imagery in a simple line of text. And who doesn’t love centipedes with their yogurt? But in seriousness, an image like a centipede in a cup of yogurt has numerous possibilities for movement generation. Imagine for a moment that you have 100 legs. Express yourself using all those legs. Let your movement be driven by your legs rather than your head. See where your 100 legs can take you. Now get in a cup of yogurt. Let’s have Greek yogurt! How does the yogurt feel on your legs? How can you travel through space, with 100 legs, through yogurt?
By starting with a simple, poetic line of text, we can collaboratively create a movement sequence or a score (rules for movement arrangement). Next step, add video!
Erin also writes about her process on her own blog: erinmalley.tumblr.com
Rosemary Hannon in rehearsal for The Crane and The Crocodile… it hatches January 13…
Well, hello there, CounterPULSE blogosphere! My name is Erin Malley, and I’m one of your Winter Special Artists. I’m also a new face in San Francisco, please don’t hesitate to say hello. Better still, take me out and show me your favorite local spots! I relocated to SF just a couple of years ago from NYC, and have already fallen in love with the left coast.
My show in the Winter Special series is Hotel in a Bottle, which takes inspiration from Haruki Murakami’s fiction. After seven years of reading Murakami: longing to see his images, see his characters take physical form, to hear the music of his words and the soundtrack of his world – I took the artistic plunge and am creating this piece, Hotel in a Bottle, the manifestation of a long-term artistic desire.
At the onset, I wanted to transpose the imagery blooming in my head directly to the stage. But once I began to sift through all of the novels (good thing I like to read) to re-capture those pictures, I saw tropes running through all of his work. Characters all drank Cutty Sark whiskey, there was always a talking cat present, people descended into wells to reflect on life, and figurative parts of themselves went missing.
I decided to use those tropes to construct a new narrative. Extracting the essence of each story (“Eau de Murakami”) and transposing it to the stage has changed so much about what I had originally imagined for this piece. Over the next month and a half, follow me as I write about the journey I’m sharing with my collaborators: the new artistic processes we’ve encountered, and how they have ultimately led us towards the creation of critical fiction – a story that examines the role of media in society – for the stage.
Erin also writes about her process on her own blog: http://erinmalley.tumblr.com/
In doing research for the performance, Precious Drop, we have found a number of compelling stories about water issues and water rights activists around the United States. We’d like to share some of these stories and organizations that have influenced the music and dance production, Precious Drop.
The first story that we’d like to share is about people of the Navajo Nation referred to as, the Forgotten Navajo People. I recently interviewed a woman who worked with an organization to provide safe drinking water to people of the Navajo Nation. She reflected on some experiences she had on the land and with the people, and their conditions, as she described them, were comparable to third world…. No running water, contaminated water that was transported in, lack of infrastructure, and high costs of accessing safe drinking water due to commodification. This is one of many stories that reveals how lack of access to safe drinking water affects peoples lives in the United States.
Click here to read the full blog.
By: Katie Bolger
…”no corporate entity has ever been prosecuted for uranium contamination on Navajo soil, and yet as far back as the 1930s there was an awareness of the health risks associated with uranium. Somehow the message never made it to the Navajo. As recently as the 1980s — half a century later — U.S.E.P.A. scientists were putting Geiger counters to the wall of hogans near abandoned mines to measure radiation and seeing readings that were off the charts.
Florabell Paddock, 76, attended the Forgotten People meeting with her companion of 40 years, Jerry Huskon, 68. Like the thousands of others in the Western Navajo Nation, Paddock, a tiny, frail woman, has never had running water, instead having to haul heavy jugs from a nearby well to her home — something she won’t physically be able to do for much longer. And like so many others, her ailments are multiple.
“I drank water from the Tochachi Spring,” she said in her native Navajo, interpreted by the president of the Forgotten People, Don Yellowman. “My doctor told me my gall bladder was not working and I had internal bleeding. I have asthma, seizures, a problem with lung and liver,” she added, alluding to the cancer that has spread throughout her body.
Pauline Lefthand, 41, also came to the meeting, albeit slowly and with help from a daughter on one arm and her husband on the other. She sat heavily in a metal chair and often nodded off during the meeting. She takes 15 pills a day, including strong painkillers.
“We did. We drank a lot of water from the well. That’s what we lived on. It’s one of the best waters,” she said, referring to the cool, refreshing taste of the water, which nonetheless was poisoned by the tasteless, odorless radionuclides.
Ten years ago, Lefthand began going “downhill.” Her legs became purple and swollen. She went to a doctor who told her that both her kidneys were “gone.”
“I went on dialysis,” Lefthand recalled. “I have arthritis, I have had my bladder and appendix removed. I had stomach surgery; they took my large intestines out.”
The medicine she is prescribed also has taken its toll.
“When I started, I weighed 135 pounds, then I went up to 247 pounds. Now I weigh 192,” she said.
Lefthand’s daughter Deidre Walker, 18, was there to support her mother, whom she said has had “kidney failure, diabetes, seizures” since Walker was eight years old. Two years ago, Walker gave her mother one of her own kidneys.
Despite decades of contamination, the U.S.E.P.A. began posting warning signs on drinking wells and in local post offices three years ago. Other education has been more grassroots, such as the recent community meeting. Local and national environmental groups are actively reaching out to educate Navajos about the drinking water and to build a consensus against new coal mining and power plants.”….
Click here to read the full story.