An overview: I do a dance everyday at 3:15pm and intend to do it for an entire year, documenting my experiences here, on my quiet little site in this neck of the internet. That’s it – there is no time requirement or further parameter than to do a dance wherever I am at 3:15pm, everyday.

These past few weeks, I feel as if I’ve been cheating even though there are no rules. Perhaps it is because I have not been writing about it and so am not making myself to accountable to anyone. Or maybe, and I think this is more likely, I haven’t been “trying” hard enough. Where trying is defined as giving myself over to the dance fully. See right there, that reveals a lot about how I define a “dance”. This saturated, fully self-aware experience – rich with itself. Anything unconscious or unattended to is insufficient or feels unsuccessful.

Related to that, I saw Jan Fabre‘s Prometheus at Montclair University a couple months ago and the thing that struck me most, to reference the movie Spinal Tap, was how the piece and the performers are always at 11. Like lights up, and BAM full throttle. Which is exhausting and at times thrilling to watch, but also becomes its own white noise. And I began to wonder if I ever work at 11. (First definition of 11: Am I doing my “best moves”, like “fuck yeah i’m dancing watch me toss myself around, throwing myself, my dominion, and my experience at you”?)

Thinking further – How am I defining the scale of 1 to 10 and thus the graduation to 11? Because I will say that I’m interested in performers paying 200% attention to their actions in performance but in some ways the direction of that attention is inward – with their presence and responsive emotions radiating and off-gasing out, towards the viewer. but it’s not shot out of them like a canon the way it is when a child has a temper tantrum, a person is in an ecstatic trance, or a Jan Fabre dancer seems to do anything. Hmmm…. please chime in if you have something to add.

But so today. in an effort to not cheat – I was in my living room. Again being reminded of how I can subvert this basic 3:15 score in so many ways. Do I begin the dance exactly where I am, with whatever is in my hands, or do I shift to a more “suitable” and desirable starting place? There in lies the first rub. It highlights how so much of my work stems from responding to interior space and feeling and how much a dance studio – empty and spacious – helps with that. Do I ignore the odd environment I happen to be in at 3:15 or embrace it? Today I ignored it, walked into the center of the room and at a certain moment I decided the dance began and (cue sound effects) shooooooom my attention is completely different. I imagine being seen. But from what angle? I let the audience viewpoint shift throughout the dance, determined by the sensation in my body. it was pretty dancey, lots of tiny circles, wrenching the body in one direction just to reverse and redirect. My mind wandered and evaluated what I was doing both in regards to whether it qualified as a dance and in terms of whether what I was doing exhibited technical prowess. My mind wandering feels like further evidence that it was not a dance, not my best. Huh.

If this is an exercise in not knowing, in letting labor accumulate, how will it all reveal itself? You can’t “win” them all. But perhaps I see which 3:15 dances feel like “dances” and which don’t and learn something about myself. Or get better at checking myself in terms of my assumptions about what qualifies as a dance.

If you are always trying to name and tease out your defaults in an effort to not unconsciously fall into them, do you eventually unravel the entire proverbial sweater so that nothing of any consequence exists anymore? To go with the analogy, is it no longer an object with function and an identified aesthetic (pointing to the creative author), but a series of homeless strings laying beside one another. Whoa…. I just got all existential. Ok, on to the next one.

Thursdays April 14, 21, and 28 I will be teaching Work It Out from 10am-12pm as part of PARD at Chi MAC (1316 S 9th St). $7 gets you moving. Class description….

Work it out is a movement class that blends club dancing, Hip Hop, and Meg Foley’s version of contemporary dance vocabulary. The class will focus on having fun, being bold, movement as attitude, being super precise, and moving faster than you thought you could move – to the point that maybe precision evades you? Please put those dancin shoes on and wear em to class!

First up, check out Nichole Canuso Dance Company’s Benefit this coming Thursday, June 17 at Triumph Brewing Company.  Yours truly will be performing an excerpt of Natural, and as is in typical in my work, there have been so many iterations and various explorations that maybe you haven’t seen this version.  eh?  Also performing will be Martha Graham Cracker, Johnny Showcase, The Mural and the Mint, and Charlotte Ford!  Tons of awesome stuff on auction.  Seriously, don’t miss out… advanced sale tickets are only $13.  Click for details.

And it keeps coming… Saturday, June 26 I’ll be performing Orienteering=you getting lost in the woods. or walking into a fence which is still in its fully infantile stages so I hope you’ll check it out and give me some feedback.  That will happen at Nicole Bindler’s Studio Series at Studio 34.

Hope to see you there!

The schedule goes as follows:
April 2 me
April 9 Shannon Murphy
April 16 Shannon Murphy
April 23 Shannon Murphy
April 30 Shannon Murphy
May 7 me
May 14 Shannon Murphy
May 21 me
May 28 me

More details to come…..

There are two ways to donate – you can donate here through PayPal, which is quick and easy but not tax-deductible. Or if you’d like to make a tax-deductible donation, you may do so by writing a check, payable to Susan Hess Modern Dance, my fiscal conduit, with Meg Foley in the memo field and mailing it to:
Meg Foley
1723 S Chadwick St
Philadelphia, PA 19145

It is the mission of Moving Parts to illuminate the power of movement and of the body, as a signifier of life and as the home base for all people, by making meaningful dance available to a broad community. And it is of the utmost importance to me to pay the artists involved in the process. In order to continue making and presenting dances, I need your financial support. Your donation can ensure that art will continue to be made and that Moving Parts will go forward. I’d be honored if you’d be willing to help me.

LEAH STEIN / TOSHI MAKIHARA
EUN JUN CHOI-GONZALEZ / ALBAN BAILLY
MELISA PUTZ / JESSE KUDLER
MICHELE TANTOCO / CARLOS SANTIAGO
GABRIELLE REVLOCK / JACOB MITAS
MEG FOLEY / ERIC CARBONARA
NICOLE BINDLER / GENE COLEMAN

@ Plays and Players Theater, 1714 Delancey Street.  $12 ($10 in advance).  Come support the cause and see some kick ass improvisational and set work based in collaboration across mediums.  what what.

What began essentially as a dare – Natural sprouted from an assignment given to me by Jumatatu Poe in the 2008 48 Hour Dance Project – spurred the most in depth solo endeavor I’ve ever embarked upon. Below is a video of the first iteration of Natural, performed at the 2009 Rocky Dance Awards in Philadelphia, PA. It is now a larger improvisational score that pretty consistently makes me incredibly uncomfortable, angry, cocky, bold, sorrowful, and confused – all in the span of a couple minutes.

check it out…