I'm giving a solo later this afternoon at 4:45. I'm nervous. I've been preparing all day yesterday and today. And not preparing. But thinking myself into the state necessary to remember and inhabit this solo, and to climb out of the anxiety that gets kicked up worrying that I'm not going to hit it right. I remind myself about devotion. How does devotion work? It's its own force, it's own motor, and you can keep coming back to it for fuel and material.
In my rehearsals in preparation for this work, we talk a lot about devotion. We talk a lot about legibility. In fact, those are the two main concepts we consider when we try to shape a solo. Performing a solo for one spectator is a devotional act, and it has to be legible in order to be received as devotional.
If I'm PERFORMING for you, then it's about me sharing something I've made, am making, am thinking, am feeling.
If I'm performing for YOU, then I'm trying to give you something about you. AND me.
Or at least that's the premise, the question, the score.
I do think that if I can pour myself more completely into devotion for my spectator (whether I know him or not--though I do know his answers to my questions and therefore I know a chunk about his interior) I can climb almost totally out of the fear of failure/fear of lack of connection that can injure a performance. It's the old conduit thing again--be a raft, be a door, be a bridge, be a portal. It's not the thing itself (I don't have that) its access to the thing (he has that). My job is to do my performance, to pay attention, to witness, maybe to entertain, to be the door.
my brief solo for you last thursday night on the street on the scooter singing "What if" by Bongwater, was perhaps more devotion than legible. that's where my head was at when i was performing for you. i was trying to just completely go with this gig and let go of any questions about it or its legibility. allow it to fail even. i thought if i went all the way in (with devotion to you, me, the idea), that it would be legible.
ReplyDeletebut i think that edge between me as me and me as performer was too thin, and it wasn't clear that i was performing. the devotion wasn't legible.
i was thinking about exaggeration and how that reads....somewhat like how abstraction can read and provide new information, context or contrast. so, the use of exaggeration or abstraction as a tool to help with legibility. which is essentially what you had us working with in preparation for the solos...
hmmm....just thinkin lincoln...
devotion
the legibility of devotion
exaggeration
abstraction
intention
the legibility of it all....