hi.  hello there :)  I was just wondering if you remember the first time we met.  I think it was a few years ago now...and I had been driving for days, and you were sitting there.  or no, you came outside to meet me.  yea, that's when we met.  you were standing and walking, not sitting.  But you had been there already, before that.  and my hair was longer and I smelled like I had been sitting in the car for too long, which I had.  and you were probably wearing a red shirt.  and your short thinning hair was cute and funny.  and you were cute and funny.  and I think we had tea, maybe.  perhaps I'm not remembering this perfectly...hmm.

so, we met and we stared and we felt and we touched and we, I guess, decided to travel alongside each other for a little while.  and we did travel.  and we looked and ate and experienced and saw.  

i learned.  i think you learned, too.

I find myself back at the American Dance Festival for the fifth time in six summers…that seems a bit much.  It’s strange for me to think about all that has come to pass since then.  People in the ground, companies emerging and folding, elections, recession, all that external mess that is context and environment and a certain kind of life.  More shocking, of course – and this is no surprise as it’s my own acute experience – are the changes which have taken place in my own life, internally.  When I came here for the first time, in 2004, I had just started to dance.  I knew what a tendu was, and a contraction…grande plie and battement and all that…but there was no talk of soul, there was no real thought of DOING this full time.  I hadn’t been to Russia, hadn’t performed in Poland or Hong Kong, had yet to begin developing ‘my own’ technique class…I was learning who Ohad Naharin was, and knew only one thing about William Forsythe – that I didn’t like him.  Pina Bausch was a faint whisper on the wind and turn out and extension remained, in my mind, paramount.  That summer I danced for Gerri Houlihan and took class with her and Brenda Daniels…of course that was also the summer that I met Tatyana Baganova…the crazy Russian who would drastically change my life (or at the very least my 20’s).  I return to the festival this year to teach one master class, visit a Russian who I last adventured with to the Arctic, and to visit another long lost friend…one whom I had met that first summer at ADF.  I come back here with some experience, some knowledge, perhaps too many opinions, and more questions than ever.  I seem to waiver between wanting to do great things, to BE something great, and having a much more peaceful and perhaps more realistic expectation for myself…that my true task in life is to simply be kind and empathetic, to help people (including myself) along their ways…to beautify the world in every way possible.  Not to be a revolutionary…but to be some sort of gardener.

Amidst the craziness of 200+ students at ADF every year…each visit has been accompanied by, for me, a fair amount of loneliness and reflection.  Maybe this is why I keep coming back here…it’s a sanctuary of sorts, with the slowing heat and deep forests…with teenagers buzzing about like flies on dung, and the occasional beautiful person/dancer/human who has some perspective, and may be a bit jaded, but who still chooses to come here and fly across the Ark and applaud the efforts of so many hard workers.  

Dancers are workers, after all.  The greater working force might not want to acknowledge this…as the dancer works alongside and with their art, all the time…their work is soulful and deep.  In some cases (unfortunately, all too rare) the work is accompanied by a living wage – but most importantly it is accompanied by rigor and fulfillment…something which I think many dancers can find in a simple port de bras, and many people, I fear, never find at all.

I will return to San Francisco, and to my company, in just a few days.  Many tasks will need to be accomplished as we head into our second season…as we prepare to continue.

The days and weeks used to seem too short…now the months and years seem to be spent too far in advance such that I’m planning, already, for my efforts at 30 – five years away.  I bought a new computer recently, that’s been nice.

There are so many choices one has to make amidst two non-options: 1.) we will end up dead and 2.) until we end up dead, we have only to continue forward.  This puts us folk in a tricky situation…I imagine life is a series of choices, navigating that situation…I’m constantly hoping that the questions which plague my 25 year old brain are those of youth and immaturity, but I fear (and suspect) that they persist throughout our journey.

The work with FACT/SF is good work; I only want to make it better.  I believe I can.  I miss Ekaterinburg and the balcony and thought and compassion and nicotine and whiskey.  I feel like I’m so rarely making art, and so rarely thinking about art…which is surprising because I am a full time artist.  Weird.

A good friend recently mentioned how the corporate world has pulled her away from art making…I wonder if the trappings of my own ‘corporate’ world have done the same.  Time to sleep, then go home, and get back to work.

The well-intentioned community discussion last Thursday night at CounterPULSE, regarding the current state of dance writing, began with a sharing of insightful comments and opinions from a panel of some of the SF Bay Area’s better known dance writers. This efficient and informative beginning, however, quickly eroded into a disastrous Q&A of finger-pointing and scapegoating, with narcissistic and desperate explanations in self-defense against a (perceived) attacker which, instead of adding to the interesting conversation that was underway, threw it way off track. This, to a new resident of the fabled ‘Mecca of Tolerance’, was shocking, disappointing, and sad (although I suppose also extremely educational and eye-opening in its own right).

It is all well and good to ‘damn the man’ and talk about the ways in which ‘the system’ keeps people down. At best this can be constructive, helping people to gain a clear(er) idea of where they are and where they need to go. Sometimes, however, these explanations are accompanied by such ridiculous melodrama and outrageous accusations that they, in expressing an urgent desire for understanding, actually highlight a gross short-sightedness. Complaining about ‘the white people’ or pleading on behalf of the ‘immigrants’ cannot rightly be done without an entire series of qualifiers. So when someone stands up and makes a vague comment about these groups, my first questions are: Which white people? Which immigrants? Which definitions are you using? By white do you mean WASP? Or do you mean Greek, or maybe South African? (even these distinctions fall incredibly short and barely begin to get us somewhere useful). Immigrants can hail from Central and South American countries, but they can also come from Cambodia, Poland, Iran (or any where else), so while it is typical (I think) to imagine one type of oppressed group vs. one type of privileged group, we should keep in mind that some South American countries and their emigrants have a much higher standard of living than some European countries and theirs, and that there is not really a ‘white’ people just as there is no ‘black’ people. Racism directed towards the perceived group in power is still racism, and it’s not something you can combat effectively while promoting it at the same time.

Apart from this bizarre boxing of perceived racial/ethnic groups, there was another, similar set of claims that were equally surprising. Two of the artists present at the discussion have done a fair amount of work in Europe, so they would presumably have some important and nuanced ideas about ‘dance in Europe’. It seems to be common for young artists with less experience to talk about the beauty and ease of being an artist in Europe and the sad toiling in the trenches of being an artist in America. Things are great there, and horrible here; American artists are victimized while European artists are hailed as demigods. It is my opinion and experience that the US and Europe are both far too large and varied to make any valuable statements, really, comparing the two in such general ways. Europe does not only include La Monnaie in Brussels or Lucent Theatre in The Hague, but also decrepit, run-down theatres filled with asbestos and other unhealthy working conditions. Dancers in Europe are ALSO dancing for free, just like in the US, and some American companies ALSO have huge budgets and mostly-secured funding. So, when these two artists, who have experience living and working in Europe (these are the people who should know better), start ranting about the glory of Europe and the embarrassing state of things in the US, I wonder how much work they’ve done in poor Europe, or how much interaction they’ve had with some of its less ‘cultured’ communities.

The moral of the story is this, community leaders in San Francisco should be expected not only to be talented, smart, and driven, but also to be aware of their own prejudices, biases, and ill-founded opinions, and to perhaps keep this in mind before they open their mouths and start criticizing others. Preaching tolerance is necessary and wonderful, but it cannot ever be accompanied by blind intolerance or any sort of community-based/supported hatred. It is good to think about the differences between places, people, groups, etc. – but it is also good to realize that these ponderings are always based upon personal experience (and not much more), and so, just like this review, can hardly ever present observations which are both insightful and objective.

My proposal to make the next discussion more effective? Keep the Q&A’s, but limit response times. Jessica did a good job of moving people along after they’d commandeered the microphone for too long, but I think creating a system of order that kept comments brief and focused would move the discussion along more quickly and prevent community members from getting side tracked by their own personal issues, which frequently have little bearing on the topic at hand. It will be an exciting day when/if community discussions move away from ‘poor-me fests’ and become better at utilizing the intellectual wealth of the SF Bay Area to really do something, instead of just complaining about things not getting done.

Looking forward to the next one,

~Charles

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAHMaBz_NCI

            I undertook reading Naked a decade after its publication and surely after much hype surrounding the book had died down.  I knew, however, that author David Sedaris had already been hailed as an important American voice and that this book was quite popular amongst his many fans.  I started with a bit of apprehension and a fair amount of enthusiasm – knowing that it might be a challenging task to form my own opinion of the book after having heard so many others’.

            Naked partakes in the increasingly popular genre of the ‘memoir-as-novel’ and, says the description on the back of the book, is one in which “Sedaris turns the current mania for the memoir on its proverbial ear, mining the exceedingly rich terrain of his life, his family, and his unique worldview – a sensibility at once take-no-prisoners sharp and deeply charitable.”  This book, as a departure from or mockery of the memoir genre, may be on target (as I’ve read very few of these and can’t really say), but, nonetheless, the text did not generally strike me as anything other than flippant self indulgence.  Making fun of people, as well as making fun of one’s self, can surely elicit a good chuckle and the occasional roar of laughter, but I’m not sure that, at the book’s close, it amounts to much more than a collection of jokes and observations that one might otherwise encounter at a typical house party for the queer, urban elite.  Witty repartee is, no doubt, a necessary survival tool for any gay man, and while it does occasionally illuminate a truth or two, it often does so without any sense of humanity or relevance - it is, essentially, the ability to express that one is astute enough to notice, but smart enough not to care.  This in itself provides for a very entertaining read, as Sedaris introduces us to the clumsy, idiotic, and often racist, homophobic, or otherwise prejudiced characters he has apparently encountered on his journey, but it fails to execute any meaningful task or tell us much about ourselves as humans (or even about Sedaris as an individual), other than that we’re delusional egoists.

            What we get, on the whole, is something neither touching nor sincere, at least not in the way I expect it from works of art (or nearly-art) but instead something that proposes life and its undertaking to be not much more than awkward situations, missed opportunities, and random happenings…all with no meaning and purpose.  Perhaps this IS what life is about and perhaps it’s also what we should be trying to grasp…that existence is some big joke?  What is often more exciting, however, is the oscillation between the meaningful and the meaningless, that, in our struggle to ‘understand it all’, we continuously go back and forth between ‘everything matters’ and ‘nothing matters’, residing most of the time in some sort of middle ground where things exist and pass us by.  Surely, being able to laugh at ourselves and our situations is important, but doing so at the expense of depth and meaningfulness reduces this book to mere entertainment and prevents it from being elevated to any higher level.  Maybe this is Sedaris’ intention; maybe this is all I should have expected.

            Despite my ranting and general disappointment with the text (expecting it to be something more than a joke book), I was able to identify that I too, as a young gay man, shared (with Sedaris) the inability to comprehend why everyone didn’t see my greatness all the time, or how people could be so inconsiderate of my, supremely important, needs.  The difference is, of course, that though Sedaris may have struggled to get a proper audience in his youth, he now bends the ear of countless readers and thus, his holier-than-thou attitude is somehow justified.  Instead of indicating that I (as his trying-to-identify-with-the-author reader) should give it up and recognize my irrelevance, his example encourages me to continue on my path of self-importance until I too wield some significant, greater power in society.  This is not the lesson my already over-inflated ego needs, but it sure makes me feel good about myself.

            I do not disagree that the text is funny, only that it fails to live up to the hype.  I’d recommend this book only to those who have nothing better to read, have procured headaches from reading ‘serious’ texts, or are depressed and need a good laugh.  After reading – pass it on, resell or recycle…but please, don’t let it muck up your library.