PR
Topic: Main

Come see "Elements", an interdisciplinary digital media performance sponsored by the Dance Department 8pm Feb. 3 & 4th (free admission) in the Dance Theatre of Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

This new work was created through collaboration between artists and scholars in Art,Dance, Music, and Theatre utilizing teleconferencing, motion triggering,animation, and video projection to stimulate creative conversations between movement, words, sounds, and visual images. "Elements" represents the Digital Performance Group's cumulative exploration of technology as a connection between each other and our environment, and expresses elemental interpretations as diverse as the breath of life, personal relationships to the land, our current fiery political climate, and the fluid currents of change.

For more information email pdj@umd.edu or nadjam@comcast.net.

Topic: Air
Photos from Air in Rehearsal

Topic: Earth
Photos from Earth in rehersal

Topic: Fire
Photos from Fire in Rehearsal

Topic: Water
Photos of Water in rehearsal

Topic: Project Mgt
Calendar

Thurs Jan 26
7-10 Theatre
(N &P)
(not B)
K +dancers
A
M
Mk

8pm Dancers
8:30 Earth AG

Friday Jan 27

(11-11:30 Farr)
(12-1 Interplay)
1-2 Earth AG
(1807)

7-10 Theatre
K, M Air
(A, P & N)
(Brandon poss.
Available.)

Monday Jan 30

5/6-10 pm
Theatre
K, A, N, P, M,
Brandon (not
Mk )

6-7 Earth AG


Tues Jan 31

7-9 Earth AG

(6-10 Theatre
available)

Wed Feb 1

6-10 Theatre
All

6:30 Dancers
(not Karen)
(not online AG)

walk/run show twice

Thurs Feb 2

6-10 Theatre
All

6:30 Dancer call
7:00 online call

run show twice

Friday Feb 3

Performance
All

6:00 Tech
6:30 Performers
7:00 Online
run show once
8:00 go

Saturday Feb 4

Performance
All

6:00 Tech
6:30 Performers
7:00 Online
run show once
8:00 go
9:00 strike (All)

Topic: Earth
Were so happy to have Beth and Jimmy from Utah joining us in the project!

The Spiral Jetty
by Beth and Jimmy Miklavcic

Beth
We drove out to the Spiral Jetty. It takes two hours from Salt Lake City driving North to Promontory Point – the Historical Monument representing where the Union and Pacific Railroads met in 1869.

Jimmy
May 10, 1869: The "Wedding of the Rails!" Many of the journalist of the
day recount the events of the ceremony and record the event as happening
at Promontory Point - when actually the rails were joined and the ceremony
held at Promontory Summit - 35 miles away. As a result of this inaccurate
reporting, most people today, more than a century later, still believe the
rails were joined at Promontory Point.

Beth
It takes another hour on an obscure dirt road with ruts and boulders to get out to the Salt Lake. On the way we passed by an abandoned disintegrating amphibious vehicle with peeling green paint. It was rusted and lonely sitting out there partnered with an old trailer – signs of someone’s faded dream from long ago.

Jimmy
It was October, but still 90 degrees. The lake has felt the effects of the long drought. The boulders of the Jetty are made up of black lava. With the receded lake the pocked round lava looked as if it was covered in snow, but really it was salt left behind by evaporation.

Beth
Colored pink puddles of water filled with brine shrimp remained in pockets of the white salt plane.

Jimmy
We walked the spiral, laid down, and looked up at the sky in the center of a small universe.

Beth and Jimmy
And when it was time to leave we unwound the spiral, forever changed by the primitive beauty of this surreal moonscape vision created in 1970 by Robert Smithson.

Topic: Main
So far so good. Thanks everyone on meeting for the workshop 10-3 M-F. Three screens, two projectors, three computers so far and two sets to go. :) Soon we get to play. Paul, Brandon, Karen, Moira, Aaron, Nadja, & Mike Rock! Bless the Dance Dept. for their lovely theatre.

Topic: Earth
Earth Section Work in Progress- 1/10/06

(Please note that Compass Points spoken by each person are still shifting as to where they will be placed in the text and we are still open to new local and online participant entries. We still need to work on keywords that take us from one speaker to another.)

Nadja (Compass Points):
To the North are the redwoods,
To the South is the city,
To the East are the hills,
To the West is the Pacific.

Nadja: Following the road home
the highway that stretches North between gold hills and the Pacific
I am anticipating the smell of Redwoods, dirt and gravensteins ripening, the taste of blackberries and the touch of fog.
I can hardly wait – watching the landscape of farm and field unravel into warm daydreams of familiar places, peopled with woods, creaks and houses I’ve known.
The road, snaking between the hills and curves until, like a blessing, I find my dirt lane, my passage home, and the path to my heart.

(Can Moira add something to do with “heart”?)

Moira (Compass Points):
To the North _______
To the South _________
To the East __________
To the West _________

Moira: Camping is the best…
I love sleeping on the earth
Recreating sleeping in the earth mother

Aaron: It’s one of those rare places on earth where I imagine it’s damn near impossible to be an atheist.

Moira: My joints ache
So the tradeoff will be comfort over closeness

Aaron (Compass Points):
To the North _______
To the South _________
To the East __________
To the West _________

Aaron: On May 18, 1980, a magnitude 5.1 earthquake triggered the largest landslide in recorded history. In a matter of seconds, the entire north flank of Mt. St. Helens slid into the pristine waters of Spirit Lake, sending waves more than 300 ft. up the valley walls. Thermal vents, which had been feeding a bubble of pressurized gas beneath the mountain for the past several centuries, were suddenly exposed. The resulting eruption blasted a wall of super-heated gas and rock that vaporized trees up to 5 miles away, and leveled the surrounding forest to a distance of 17 miles. It was my second birthday, and I spent it standing in front of my grandparent’s television.

Moira: Every kind should have a sand box.
No better place to build your first castle…
Make your first cake.

Aaron: I’ve been told I took great joy in pointing at an image of the enormous ash plume that would eventually circle the planet, and saying “Boom!”

Nadja and or Moira: “Boom”


(I would suggest we move Moira’s first compass point to here.)

Moira: North Dakota earth is black, heavy, rich. It can suck you right down. It can trap you.
Don’t ever go walking across a new plowed field after a heavy rain…you’ll never get across. The earth will eat your boots, and hold your feet fast, if you’re not careful and it will never let you go.
Best farming land in the world

Nadja: A gardener’s hands are never clean
The soil stains them,
The earth marks them as her own. (He'd have to scour them clean them with pumice soap.)
Everyday in the early light and at sunset, in sun and in shade,
He knelt, muddy knees, bending back, warm hands kneading the soil-
Busy covering lettuce, planting seedlings, pulling pigweed, fighting gofers, aligning hoses,
Rising slowly to the triumph of tomatoes, beans, carrots, and melons.

(Moira comment on planting?)

Nadja: I can imagine someday, in my own home, I’ll have my own little spot of earth to dig in, to tend like a sister, or to cherish like a lover, to decorate with dahlias, to plant my own apple tree.

(Add Compass Points):
To the North _______
To the South _________
To the East __________
To the West _________

(Need transition from Nadja to Aaron apple trees on slope of mountain? )

Aaron: The last half mile of the ascent is a slope of fine pumice, sort of like a beach tilted at 45 degrees, where each step forward is half a step back. It’s one of those geographical oddities, where you can ask a descending climber how far you are from the top, and be told it’s only another 45 minutes. You can ask the same question after hiking another twenty, sweaty minutes, and be told, amazingly enough, you’re only about 45 minutes from the top. It was here that I saw my father confront the physical compromises of his own mortality with a humbling grace that brought tears to my eyes.

Nadja: My grandfather died at 97. I watched as they planted him
with ceremony not unlike those I conducted as a child, when I buried a cat or its prey, a baby rabbit, with forget-me-nots in the backyard.

Moira: When I buried my dog I just wrapped her in her favorite blanket.
Eventually blanket and dog will be earth.

Nadja: They planted him like he was a seed waiting to grow,
Like he were a new hydrangea bush, pot-bound and ready to bloom
Like he were a tin-lunch box or arrow-head buried down by the creek waiting to be found, like a human secret
But as I watched, all I could think of….is that he was a man.
And I was afraid, when the truck backed up and emptied all that earth
Filling the hole where he was laying.

(This might be a good place for the body=earth rented text Aaron is thinking of.)

Moira: A funeral is laying claim to your own forever, little patch of the earth.

(Better transition earth/step?)

Aaron: Every step I took over that scoured landscape was a promise, each breath a defiant cry that my life would prove me the exception to Thoreau’s maxim that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. It was the quiet part that scared me. But I kept coming, because I knew that that landscape, so barren to some, was actually vibrating, literally pulsing with life. I felt like it was a secret that only I knew.

Moira: Making things out of clay is like being God in a way. Moist clay, so malleable yet fragile. Centering clay on a potter’s wheel requires constant, “just right” pressure. Too much will throw the clay off center; too much and nothing is accomplished.

(Nadja on fault line making rich soil for planting?)

Aaron: This is a place that reminds one there’s an entire world below our feet. That we’re all just living on chips of earth floating on a sea of molten rock. It’s a vast testament to the fact that what we see and hear and taste and smell is only the surface, and that all we call real is just a dim reflection of a terrible beauty we’re too proud and too scared to see.

Moira: Dust gets in your hair, your eyes. Blowing earth. Being in the center of a dust storm is as close to being in the earth as you can get with out dying.

Nadja: (erosion or compost ?)

Aaron: Each time, the life does come back. And it does so with an awe-inspiring lack of intentionality. It doesn’t see itself as part of some great narrative, as one element in a cycle of life, death, and rebirth. It just lives, only knowing that it must continue because that is its sole responsibility. Just to live.


(Compass Points All):
Nadja: To the North is______
Aaron: To the South is______
Moira: To The East is ______
All? : To The West is ______
(…..Just to live……)

FIRE SCRIPT
Topic: Fire
FIRE:

(Hamburger cooking—sizzles, a spatula presses on it, so steam escapes; the sound gets louder)

Man’s Voice: Great fire, there.

Woman’s Voice: How soon, Paul? We’re really hungry in here…

Another man’s voice: Keep yer pants on! (The two men snicker.)

Woman’s voice: (no sizzle in background): What do you do for hot flashes?

Another Woman: Order takeout… (The two women giggle)

(Dancers walking, encounters, catching, springing back , touch/guided falls, shape-flow/directional)


Voiceover: In comparing equations one and two, you can see that in incomplete combustion, a smaller amount of oxygen combines with methane…”

(Dancers add pushes, trips)

Chants and video from protests: BUSH MUST GO, marchers, signs 30-40 seconds worth

(During the video and chanting, the dancers organize, reorganize, find places within the group, fall away, tension increases, strong, direct, bound)

Voiceover: Incomplete combustion is not only a less efficient use of the fuel, but because more CO is released, it can be very dangerous. CO is poisonous…

(on “poisonous”, dancers are still—frozen—held)

Woman’s voice: I remember the demonstrations of 1969-1973. We would all gather on the Boston Common, or wherever one of the warmongers was speaking. We would chant, 1-2-3-4 WE DON’T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR! 5-6-7-8 KISSINGER NEGOTIATE!!

(Dancers listen)

And worse…The same people were always there: Jim from the Weathermen, Mike from the Student Mobilization Committee, the RCYs (Revolutionary Communist Youth)—we had to throw them out of a building we had taken over because they would not SHUT UP about Mao. And Vicky was there. Vicky the Torch, we called her, because she was at every demonstration, and at a certain point a scream would come up from somewhere deep in the crowd—she was REALLY short—“BURN IT DOWN!!!!! BURN IT DOWN!!! “Vicky’s here”, we would say to each other.

(During above, building the Tower of Babel, increasingly frantic, one person does yoga poses off to side and is brought in, another meditates, is engulfed, one person lifted up—attributes and pre-efforts)

Projection of mushroom cloud on the Tower, held, then dancers climb down, 3 walk away (someone mutters “fuck that shit”), someone starts ohmmm-ing, one rolls back-and-forth slowing down, in silence, until sound of water trickling comes down.