Sometimes someone can't perform a solo for some reason or another: either the performer or the spectator is sick, had to leave town, or simply couldn't make the time, date and location of the performance.
In this case, the solo still exists but only as a conceptual solo. It exists in a shared imaginative space of the performer and the spectator. The performer basically 'tells' the spectator the solo, letting the telling (talking writing emailing) become a performative act. It is an 'as if' journey. If I could have given this solo, then this is what would have happened. This is what I would have done for you. There is a stream of longing there, but it is also an experience in and of itself, as well as the failure to enact the original intended experience. The notion of failure is built deeply into the nature of this project, so much so that failure itself as a notion evaporates. Failure transitions to opportunity. A performance can still be given, albeit differently from the intended one. This is the heart of improvisation practice for me. So we find ways to practice failure.
I want to share a conceptual solo, born of failure.
CHRISTINA'S:
She couldn't perform her solo for me because she was a single parent care-taking her two children and had no time or childcare. But I did answer the questions and this is the solo she gave/told/emailed me, to exist in my imagination:
"It’s dusk and the sky is just starting to shift to those muted shades of pinks and blues. I am in a huge field of tall grass and wild flowers. I can see nothing but this field extending in all directions around me and I can hear the wind rustling through the grasses. It’s warm and pleasant. I begin picking flowers.
Minutes pass…
I continue picking…
More time passes…
This flower is bright yellow and has leaves with rounded edges. I remember that when I was little, I would hold it under my sister’s chin. If I saw a yellow reflection on her skin that meant she liked butter.
This purple one I will call a lilac. I don’t know how to identify flowers, so I just guess. This one smells like a delicious soap- that fresh smell, like your skin when you just step out of a shower. When I was 10 years old I did a book report about a cat that sat under a lilac bush. My Mom helped me draw a tree and we took shavings from a bar of lilac soap and glued them on to the branches.
To my left I pick a bluebell (or at least that’s what I call it). The thin stem holds 6 small buds that resemble church bells. I can almost hear them chime as they clamor in the breeze.
I keep picking flowers and my bouquet is getting too big to hold. All of the sudden I realize that the sun has finally dropped down and the details of the flowers are getting lost as the sky darkens.
Have I lost you in the darkness?
Is this a natural blackout for the piece?
Am I prepared to be in a field in pitch black darkness?
This isn’t just an improv in a dance studio with your eyes closed where I know I could open them at any moment if I wanted to.
Do I know my way back?
I start to worry. Hyper-active mania.
I smell like Jasmine.
I whisper into your ear:
You gotta light, you can feel it on your back
Just as you dance, dance, dance
I take your hand and lead you to the edge of familiar ground."
