Appreciate Theory (Why Get an MFA Part 4)

Why get an MFA and what practical use does it have in advancing my career? After completing my first year of graduate school at University of Michigan, here are the benefits I’ve experience so far:

1.    Resources for training and research

2.    Networking with industry and academic professionals

3.    Pedagogy and curriculum development

4.  Greater appreciation for theory, especially concepts regarding PERFORMANCE, PRACTICE, and PLACE

My students and I performing at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market in Kerrytown for Site Dance.

4.    Greater appreciation for theory, especially concepts regarding PERFORMANCE, PRACTICE, and PLACE

Prior to entering graduate school, I worked as the nutritionist and foodservice coordinator for the adult services program at Breakthrough Urban Ministries located on the west side of Chicago. I was in charge of planning, preparing, and serving over 200 meals per day for men and women experiencing homelessness. If there was a battle between the practice and theory, I was on the frontlines of practicality. Therefore, I knew that one of the biggest challenges for me entering graduate school would be grasping concepts and theories surrounding dance and performance.

Why do we need theory?

I’ve come to appreciate discussing theory because it offers us a lens to understand and evaluate our past and present. Theory builds connections between different ideas to help us create or at least consider a path for a future we want to see.

Here are three concepts I focused on during my first year in the MFA program:

PERFORMANCE

What is Performance?

Prior to graduate school, I understood performance as a show, something done on a stage or on the dance floor like in a battle or cypher. However, I quickly learned from my Performance Theory course with Mbala that the field of performance studies extends far beyond the stage and into our everyday lives.

First, let me share my current definition and understanding of performance: Performance is any intended action for the viewership of others. The difference between a performance and daily movement or action is the presence of an audience.

Why can’t one perform for thyself, you may wonder? The performer responds to the audience, whether they’re sitting silently watching in a concert hall, watching online, or cheering loudly during a dance battle. There is an exchange that occurs that does not exist when you’re alone. A performance is also an intended action, whether it’s rehearsed or improvised.

My ideas around performance were developed during my Performance Theory course made available through the Center of World Performance Studies (CWPS). The first book we read in was Simon Shepherd’s (editor) The Cambridge Introduction to Performance Theory, which traces the genealogy of performance theorists from the 1950s to 2000s. As discussed in the first chapter, literature studies around performance in the 50s was mostly text-centered, presuming that the texts itself has a storage or wealth of “enduring insight and value.” Text may include play scripts, music charts, or something that can be read, interpreted, and reproduced. In the 70s, verbal art was finally recognized in performance studies by Richard Bauman through his study of folklore.

Dance workshop and performance with Taiwanese indigenous students from the Seediq tribe

During my summer research in Taiwan among the Atayal Indigenous community, I finally understood what Bauman meant about verbal art as performance in folklore studies. The Taiwanese Indigenous people do not have their own written text. Traditions, knowledge, and tribal expectations - which the Atayal tribe calls “gaga” - are passed to the next generation through song, dance, and storytelling. They relied on the verbal and physical arts, rather than texts, to pass down knowledge and traditions to the next generation.

In the 90s, a new trend in performance studies immerged, expanding the definition of performance to everyday routines. Movement such as brushing your teeth, walking, standing and sitting became included in performances studies. While I believe many aspects of our daily life to be performative, I think this new definition is too broad and cheapens the value created from a performance. Therefore, I believe a performance still requires intentionality and viewership. For instance, sitting can become a performance if the sitter adjusts into an upright position in a board meeting and in front of their boss. Simultaneously, without the audience in the boardroom, it simply becomes a position and not a performance.

So, why is defining performance important? Redefining performance has led me to value on the process of a performance even more than the event itself. This approach democratizes the field of performance by allowing greater participation by the performers and viewers alike. Through the act of performance, individuals can exchange ideas and develop new ways of thinking and moving forward together.

PRACTICE

Another concept I wrestled with was viewing practice, the physical act of dancing, as research. I was first introduced to this approach in Amy Chavasse’s Performance Improvisation course. I was familiar with improvising from my training as a hip hop and street dance. However, Amy challenged us to create the unexpected and to not depend on the set rhythm of the music. If music was played, Amy guided us to dance against the rhythm or create harmonies/melodies to the music by our movement. How could we create the unexpected? How can we use stillness and repetition to build tension and anticipation? What would it look like to perform not for an audience, while knowing full well they’re watching? These questions were discovered and re-discovered as we researched and created while dancing in the moment.

Another way of describing this approach is practice-led research. As dancers, we know that performance itself is knowledge, and intelligence-in-action. Dancers have been practicing this through somatic practices, choreography and improvisation. Hazel Smith and Roger T. Dean refer to this creative practice through embodied experimentation “practice-led research.” Practice-led research argues that creative work acts as a form of research and suggests that creative practice can lead to research insights that can be generalized and written up as research. Paul Connerton further discusses embodiment and the relationship between body and cultural memories further in his book The Spirit of Mourning: History, Memory and the Body. He argues that traditions can also be received bodily through “re-enacting it with lips and larynx and limbs…” In fact, “Kinesic, acoustic and metrical behaviours are all structured together as mnemonic devices in an embodied performance” (Connerton, 2011). If there’s anything Connerton and I agreed on, it was this fact that embodied, corporeal aesthetic and approach provides a deeper understanding of life and memory beyond words can describe.

Interactive section during our Site Dance Performance in Kerrytown

Embodiment as a method of research was also discussed in our Research In Action (RIA) graduate level course with Angela Kane. My favorite reading assignment from RIA was an chapter in Royona Mitra’s book titled Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism. Similar to Yolanda Convington-Ward’s understanding of embodiment, embodiment is “our corpo-reality or bodiliness in relation to the world and other people” (p.4). However, Covington-Ward goes a step further by focusing the term from affective states and feelings to how bodies are used in everyday life.

Her definition of performance is also specific to her agenda. In her book, Gesture and Power: Religion, Nationalism, and Everyday Performance in Congo, she defines performance as “restored behavior enacted with a heightened awareness, consciousness, and/or intention with capacity to transform social realities” (p.5). “Restored behavior” is another way to say our bodies are able to store history, stories and behaviors. According to Convington-ward, performance is a “heightened awareness” because it is reflexive and based on the awareness of being observed. I would absolutely agree with that. When I am “performing,” whether for myself or in the presence of others, I make certain choices in movement that I may not otherwise if I wasn’t “performing.” Movement without that heightened or intentional awareness is simply movement and not performance.

Realizing the importance of embodiment and practice-led research has given me such a greater appreciation for all aspects of dance including as a choreographer, performer, and an audience member. By the end of the semester, I was able to look at a performance differently. I practiced looking near and far, and in between things. When there was chaos, I noticed my attention is more withdrawn. When there are points or moment of focus, I leaned in. Moments of stillness contrasted, partnered, or disrupted by fast movement or noise was very satisfying. Understanding the theory of practice-led research gives me a difference perspective that engages my mind along with my body and soul. The ability to see anew and use space, dynamic, and time differently are tools that will serve to enhance my role as a creative and choreographer.

PLACE

I believe the intersection of theory and practice rests on the place of a performance. The ideas of place and “no-place” were discussed extensively in our Site Dance course with Jessica Fogel and Screen Dance course with Charli Brissey.

What is no-place? In the chapter, “Media and the No-Place of Dance,” Harmony Bench articulates a notion of a site that would leave many traditional site dance choreographers turning over their graves. That site is what Bench calls no-place, “an abstract space, a blank or evacuated scene” (p.37). Her argument aims to relinquish places of performance with any political or spatial affiliation or markers. In doing so, she hopes to open up spaces of movement and expand dance to new sites, especially in the digital realm. While her effort to broaden the “seemingly global flow” of movement is commendable, Bench’s theory of no-place is an illusion. Perhaps it’s my literalness that prevents me from grasping this super abstract concept. However, I find the idea itself dangerous and risk the appropriation of place.

The issue with this theory is that blank scenes or new places do not exist. I questions if the internet can be considered a no-place since we have to purchase domains or give away personal information in order to store a page on a free site. Does no-place exist in the digital world? If not, any place the dancer steps foot on already has preexisting cultures, traditions, and characteristics. There are no places uncharged and no spaces unclaimed. Only a Western-centric mind would consider such. This is why Bench links no-place with the “imperial over-writing” effect of colonialism. Even from the examples of screendance films observed in class and the ones Bench provides, digital space relies on images of preexisting media or clips filmed on physical locations. To take images of preexisting sites while vacating its cultural and historical significance is a form of appropriation of place. Despite recognizing this consequence, Bench offers little to no theoretical solution to address this conflict.

Rather than denying the context and relationship between place and performer, a more effective method for expanding dance spaces physically and digitally would be to do an even closer examination into the sites of performances. As argued previously, decontextualizing is a futile effort and unethical form of appropriating space. By examining the numerous layers of history and stories within a site, the choreographer can find new and rich insights on how to engage with that space and find connections between spaces. This was what we learned and practiced in our Site Dance class.

With a closer examination into the place, a performance has the potential to transform reality of the space as well. I saw this theory being applied in Martha Bowers’s works at Red Hood Waterfront in Brooklyn, New York. When she created her first work called On the Waterfront in 1994, Red Hood was still seen as a dangerous place that no one wanted to go to. Due to the community involvement and publicity from that performance, community engagement and economic development began to increase in that space. It literally transformed the way community members and outsiders saw the space.

Site Dance photos taken by Kirk Donaldson

Performance is a powerful force when theory is applied to practice. I used to think academia needed hip hop more than hip hop needed academia. I had the perception that academia (higher education in general) was dominated by researchers who receive tons of funding to write about theory more than actually do anything to serve society. In some ways, that’s still true. However, I’ve met some scholars who are both researchers and practitioners of the culture they study. Many apply their research and utilize their theories to find solutions to address social issues such gender inequality and gun violence. We need more researchers and theorists in the hip hop community to imagine new possibilities and find more solutions to better serve our communities.