DANCE STATS

On November 7^th and 8^th, 2014, I explored my very first “dance experiment” in front of a live audience.  Here’s how it all went down.  (Note: if you're like "snooze, I was there I know what's going on" you can skip to the results.  I made that header nice and big so you will see it as you scroll.)

The Premise

The audience views one minute of dance work.  They rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is “I would not like to see this” and 10 is “I would pay to see an evening of this.”  There are sixteen one-minute works.  Based on audience responses, a regression is fitted to the data to predict what that audience is responding to.  The performers create an optimized piece of work to present as the “finale.”

Hypothesis

the show flyer was on engineering paper. it's the little things.

My hypothesis, going into this project, was that there are so many nuanced factors that affect an individual’s perception of a piece of art, and there are so many different opinions, that we would find no statistically significant factors that influence an audience.

First, a mini-primer on Experimental Design

At Northwestern, one of my favorite classes in the Industrial Engineering department was a class called Statistical Design of Experiments, and in it we learned a statistical method for testing the impact of a large number of variables using a relatively small number of resources. (Doesn't that sound like an amazing class?? Nerd alert.)

Glossary

run = a one-minute dance piece

factors = controllable variables = the things we can change in a piece of choreography

output = results = what the audience wrote down

main effect = how a factor affects the audience

2^nd-order interaction = how two main effects work together to change the audience's opinion

(example: if factor A is unison movement and factor B is number of dancers, a positive 2^nd-order interaction between the two means the audience likes unison movement when there are many dancers on stage; when there are only a few dancers on stage, they prefer to see non-unison movement.) 

The sixteen runs (pieces of dance) were created to fit a 2^k experimental design with eight different factors.   A 2^k  factorial design basically means that you have k factors, and they are each at 2 levels.  We’ll call these “high” and “low” levels, noted by a + or a -.  (All of the factors themselves are explained in full, later, so don’t fret.) I chose a 2^8-4_IV fractional factorial design, because I wanted to keep the number of runs down while keeping the number of factors tested relatively high; additionally, this design creates overlaps only between main effects and 3^rd-order interactions.  I assumed that main effects and 2^nd-order interactions might be significant, but our results probably wouldn’t be more complex than that.  You don't have to worry too much about what that means, but if you must know, you can read a lot more about experimental design and specifically 2^k experiments here and here and here for more full explanations of the math behind the design.  I’m guessing many of you don’t really care about fractional factorial experiments as deeply as I do, so we’ll leave that reading extracurricular.

i'll keep adding photos when this gets dense.

The 2^8-4_IV design was also chosen for experimental logistics.  Artistically, I chose one-minute dance pieces because it felt like enough time to get “into” a piece, but not enough time to get bored. Logistically, I chose 2^8-4_IV design because it only requires 16 runs; I figured 16 one-minute segments was an acceptable amount of time for an audience to sit, while 8 would have been super short (and statistically limiting) and 32 might have felt long or confusing.

Typically, with a high number of factors (eight is considered high), it is helpful to have multiple replicates of an experiment.  This means for each level of settings (or for our purposes, each run, each dance piece), you need to see the output multiple times.  Fortunately for us, this is built in!  Each audience member records his or her own response, so we have as many replicates as there are audience members. 

For each of the sixteen runs, I assigned a level for each factor A, B, C, and D, and used the aliases E = BCD, F= ACD, G = ABC and H = ABD to assign the remaining factors for the 2^8-4_IV design.  Here’s what it looked like.

For this experiment, I kept it really simple and ran the experiment in order, from run 1 to run 16.  More on that later.

Assumptions & Limitations

We are operating under several assumptions, and there are also limitations in the experiment itself.  Here they are.

1. It’s all my choreography.  You can only get so much differentiation in one person’s work, and while I like to consider my tastes pretty diverse, it is necessarily an extremely limited sample of choreography as a whole.

2. We stayed in the realm of “contemporary modern dance.”  I chose to stay within one (albeit very general) “style” of dance for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s what I do.  (Other than a significant amount of tap dance choreography in college – hey TONIK! – and dorky hip-hop mostly for eleven-year-olds, that is.)  Secondly, though, it also brings the performers’ talents to the same level.  I had an amazing cast of dancers; the differences in their strengths/preferences may have been more apparent to the audience (and therefore may have affected results) if we introduced different styles of dance. 

3. The order wasn’t randomized.  We ran the show in the same order every time, largely because it was much easier on the performers.  As audiences were filling out their forms, they were understandably using the first few runs to “calibrate” their results.  The first few runs will skew to the middle for most audience members simply because they haven’t seen enough to be really comparing them yet.  A few of the audience members called this out on their response sheets:

“I would have rated differently, in retrospect.” – regular dance watcher, age 29

I did create a “normalized” version of each audience member’s responses to combat this, which I’ll explain later.

4.  We’re only measuring what we’re measuring.  This is a limitation inherent in any of these types of experiments.  Experimenters do their best to select and test variables that can be controlled and that likely have an effect on the outcome.  I did my best here, too.  As we began rehearsing, though, there were already factors I wanted to change and add.  And I know there could be factors out there that I never even considered that were affecting the outcome, but that I wasn’t measuring. 

But anyway, onward with our experiment!

Artistic Goals

I get asked all the time, “where did that idea come from?”  The answer is a meandering one. 

First off, I was poking fun at what I see as a division in the dance world.  On one side, there’s academic modern/postmodern/experimental dance.  These folks have devoted their careers and lives to learning about the language of movement, how we interpret things, the cultural and gender-specific implications and ways of viewing, etc.  I have the utmost respect for dance scholars and the work being done at the academic level, and I think it's crucial for artists to also be scholars. I also think (blasphemous, I know) that parts of that world and that mode of thinking can be a little ...silly.

On the other side, there’s the dance competition/reality TV/acrobatics/cheesier musical theatre side of the dance world, where how high you can kick and how you can throw your partner around are marks of success and unison jazz hands are a given.  There’s nothing wrong with that – it’s often physically impressive, and I’m happy to get dance in front of larger audiences even as weekday-night TV entertainment.  As an exposure to the art form, though, it’s extremely narrow, and I do think it sometimes undervalues audiences and what they want to see.  It can be an effective “gateway drug” to the dance world (“ooh, I saw that choreographer on So You Think You Can Dance, let’s get tickets to her show in NYC!”), but I believe producers and audiences themselves might be surprised by how much higher the average dance-watcher’s threshold is for the art of movement. 

I consistently find myself at what I see as the crossroads of these two extremes (as I suspect many choreographers do), and this project was a way to play with that, and potentially strip down some of the style elements (lights! music! costumes! stars!) that affect a viewing of dance.  We’re forcing folks to look at the movement, and it is my wager that audiences dig it.

Also, when I go see a dance work, I can easily identify choreographic choices that I respond to emotionally (musicality/rhythmic interest is a big one); however, speaking intelligently about the work is difficult with friends and colleagues of mine who don’t share my educational background.  There are so many ways of talking about dance, so many frames to put on it, and so many layers of experience.  This isn’t unique to dance, of course—this happens with any art form, or arguably, any subject at all.  My goal in creating this project was to illuminate for audiences what they’re responding to, and to provide different ways of viewing/talking about dance, particularly for non-dancers.  This, again, is a pitfall I see in art all over the place – a high percentage of dance audiences are often made up of dancers.  And isn't that boring?  How do we bring more diverse points of view into the dance process?  If I can give even one person a more specific vocabulary for speaking about dance, I think this project is a win.

The Factors

Right. Back to the nitty-gritty.  

As I started coming up with a list of potential factors for the experiment, I created a big ol’ brainstorm and wrote out three notebook pages full of things I considered influential in dance viewing.  Then I combed back through the list and began categorizing the factors.  I also rolled similar factors together to create more universal/applicable versions (for example, I chose to combine “pedestrian movements” and “gestural movements”).  Three categories emerged: movement factors, which were about the actual vocabulary each performer was using, speed, dynamics of the movement, etc; compositional factors, which dealt with how movement was put together for the stage; and musical factors, which I included because I expected the choice of music to produce opinionated responses.  I chose a few key factors in each category, and ended up with this:

Choreographic Rehearsal Process

I worked with the performers twice a week for five weeks.  We used some improvisation and experimentation, but largely I walked in with specific work to set on them.  I shared the factors we were testing with each piece and used them as a basis for coaching their performance.  I chose roles for each performer within the work that I felt were natural for them to perform; I also structured it so the audience saw each of the four dancers for a roughly equal amount of stage time. 

I also think it’s worth noting up front how much time and attention we took to remove personal bias from each piece.  I took care not to place judgment on the pieces I created, even though I loved some of them and really disliked some of them; I gave each work a specific intention in terms of focus in the face and body, facial expression, attack of the movement, etc—we wanted to present, as much as possible, and equally committed set of sixteen pieces to each audience. 

I believe a huge part of the success of our first showing was due to the dancers and how willingly they jumped in and engaged with the process.  A number of audience members noted how much the dancers seemed to enjoy working together, which is basically a dream come true.  They are individually wonderful artists and it was a treat to have them all together!

The Results

you know i'm serious because i'm wearing a blazer.

Now that you have the history, it’s time for the exciting part… results!  We’ll start with what the final regression was for each showing as is, and then I’ll present some other slices of analysis.

Friday Showing 1

The first showing on Friday had eight audience members (starting nice and easy), with a median age of 29.  This crowd found none of the main effects to be statistically significant; however, there were four second order interactions that were significant: 

AG: classical shapes and syncopated movement or unfamiliar dance movements and arrhythmic musicality
BC: many dancers dancing to pop music or a solo/duet to non-pop music
DE: full-body big movements in unison or isolated movements in the dancers’ own time
FH: fast music and dancers interacting with one another or slow music and dancers in their own world

Now, this allowed us to create a final piece of movement to present on that evening, but it doesn’t really give us that much information.  Because of our alias setup (remember, factor level E = BCD, level F = ACD, G = ABC, H = ABD), main effects of factors don’t overlap with 2^nd-order interactions, but 2^nd-order interactions do overlap with each other.  And while it’s exciting to think that there are four interactions that are significant, the math deflates us:

AG = A(ABC) = BC
DE = D(BCD) = BC
FH = ACD(ABD) = BC

… so they all overlap.  We can’t really tell what’s significant here.

It’s also worth noting the other alias-generated overlaps:

CD = GH = BE = AF
FG = CE = BD = AH
EH = BG = DF = AC
EG = CF = BH = AD
EF = DH = CG = AB
DG = CH = BF = AE

Whenever one of these shows up, all of them show up.  (This happened every time, dang it.)

Friday Showing 2

The second showing on Friday had thirteen audience members, median age 31.  This crowd, too, had our same four significant 2^nd-order interactions… However, they also had a significant main effect – they enjoyed movement in unison and/or canon (factor E).

Saturday Showing

On Saturday, our sample size was a bit larger at twenty-two responses, and slightly younger, too, with a median age of 27.  They were also a little more consistent with what they liked, and had four significant main effects:  they liked unfamiliar/gestural dance movements, they liked pieces to pop music, they enjoyed unison dancing, and they liked syncopated movements.  Of those effects, pop music and unison dancing had the greatest positive effect on the piece’s score.   

Since each showing was pretty close to the same (the same dancers, wearing the same clothing, doing the same movements in the same timing in the same order), we're gonna lump the data together to one superset.

Data Totals

Pooling all of the demographic data together yields a result that’s almost the opposite of my hypothesis; not only were there statistically significant factors, almost all of the factors were significant.  We start with null factor β(0) = 6.15, which corresponds to the overall mean of all the responses.  Then, the significant factors have a certain effect on that score, either raising or lowering it based on what the audience likes. Mathematically, it looked like this:

OUTPUT = 6.15 – 0.328(A) + 0.402(C) + 0.534(E) – 0.216(H) + 0.280(AB) + 0.297(AC) + 0.310(AD) – 0.221(AE) + 0.229(AF) + 0.573(AG) - 0.254(AH) + 0.573(BC) - 0.254(BD) + 0.229(BE) – 0.221(BF) +0.297(BG) + 0.310(BH) + 0.229(CD) – 0.254(CE) + 0.310(CF) + 0.280(CG) – 0.221(CH) + 0.573(DE) +0.297(DF) – 0.221(DG) + 0.280(DH) + 0.280(EF) + 0.310(EG) + 0.297(EH) – 0.254(FG) + 0.573(FH) +0.229(GH)

…Which is a lot to look at.  The standard error in this experiment meant that anything with a main effect larger than 0.4 (or smaller than -0.4) was significant.  If we bump that up and (kinda arbitrarily) say that we’re only looking at factors and interactions that are significant assuming a higher error of 0.8, we get a little more manageable equation:

OUTPUT = 6.15 +0.402(C) + 0.534(E) + 0.573(AG) + 0.573(BC) + 0.573(DE) + 0.573(FH)

Much better.  And we know that those 2^nd-order interactions overlap; but for fun, let’s assume that because C and E are significant, the interactions involving these factors are the ones driving the 2^nd-order significance, too.  Qualitatively, this translates to:

Audience starts at an average score of 6.15.  If the music is pop-y, add 0.402, and if it’s not, subtract it.  If the dancers are in unison, add 0.534, and if they’re not in unison, subtract it.  If there are many dancers on stage and it’s to pop music, or there are only a few dancers on stage and it’s not pop music, add 0.573.  If the dancers are using full-body movement and moving in unison, or they’re using gestural movement that is not in unison, add 0.573. 

i promise we're still talking about art

Statistical Means by piece

Now that we have all this data, we get to nerd out with secondary analysis!  (Don’t all choreographers feel this way?! ….no?)  One of the most common questions I got from my dancers and from friends was “which one was the favorite?”  Here is each piece and its mean audience response:

(I grant this means a lot more to you if you actually saw the pieces.  If you didn’t, here are the means lined up with their factor levels.)

Normalized results

Another very common question, and one I grappled with quite a bit in the rehearsal process, is this: How does performance order affect audience responses?  And also, related, a scale of 1-10 is so subjective!  I asked audiences up front to be harsh with us—a response sheet full of 6’s and 8’s doesn’t help us.  I believe our audiences did attempt to show a range of responses, but many ranges were limited—some audience members never rated anything below a 6; some never rated anything above a 7.  One responder kept hers between 10 and 6; another was between 7 and 4. 

To combat this a little bit, I created normalized responses for each audience member, using this conversion for each data point:

y = 1 + (x-A)*(10-1)/(B-A)

where y is the normalized response, x is the audience member’s original response, A is the audience member’s personal minimum, and B is the audience member’s personal maximum.  The result is that each audience member’s highest-rated piece becomes a 10, and their lowest-rated piece becomes a 1, and their middle-rated piece ends up at a 5.5 (halfway between 1 and 10).  For example,  our middling audience member number 57 gave these responses:

6
4
7
6
4
6
5
5
7
6
6
5
7
5
7
6

When we normalize them, they become:

7
1
10
7
1
7
4
4
10
7
7
4
10
4
10
7

 

The highest-rated pieces (7s) became 10s, the lowest-rated pieces (4s) became 1s, and the rest of the numbers effectively “stretch out” to fit the new range.

How does this change our regression?  Not too much.  It does emphasize the effects of our statistically significant main effect factors, and, interestingly, it adds one more factor.

Our β(0) factor reduces to be a little closer to the middle of the range at 5.94.  (The audience liked us!)  The effects of factors A, C, and E now create a difference of almost half a point each, when before they were more subtle.  We can additionally eliminate the effect of factor H (the amount of interaction between the dancers), while factor G (level of syncopation) emerges significant.

Artistically, that makes a lot of sense to me – I could see dancer interaction as a 2^nd-order interaction, maybe tied to non-unison movement, but I was a little surprised that it was significant by itself.  (Full disclosure, I also think dancer interaction was one of the least clear elements in my choreography, which surely didn’t help my results, while syncopation/musicality is something that matters a lot to me and is something I consider myself good at.  It's hard to hide that.)

Cross-sections by demographics

I also wanted to take a look at results for different demographic groups.  (I used the normalized data for these results.) I threw out two responses because they chose not to provide demographic data.

Gender

Do men have different preferences than women?

The results for male responses contain the same significant variables as the group as a whole; however, the greatest predictor of a higher score was the amount of unison movement there was in the piece, with a regression coefficient of 0.894 (if there’s a lot of unison, the men in the audience ranked the piece almost a whole point higher, on average).  The highest mean score was awarded to piece #9, a quirky, gestural solo.

The women keep significant factors A (prefer unfamiliar dance shapes), C (pop music) and E (unison).  We drop G (level of syncopation).  Each factor has a smoother effect – nothing singularly jumps out the way it did for the men.  (This, however, could also be due to the fact that the majority of our audience was women; 29 female responses vs. 12 male responses-- more data tends to be smoother.)  Interestingly, the highest mean score was a tie between #15 and #16, two group pieces with lots of unison to pop music—as predicted by the regression—while the male favorite #9 was merely average. 

Age

The vast majority of my audience was in their twenties.  (Like the performers and the choreographer, so … not shocking.)  For fun, we’ll split it at age 35. (GenX + Boomers vs the Millenials?)

For the under-35 crowd, the preferences are nearly identical to that of the group of women; therefore, also pretty similar to the group as a whole.  Mean favorite, a hearty .7 points ahead of the pack, was #16, easily the cheesiest number of the bunch.  Sigh, youth. (Kidding!)

For 35+, something kind of fascinating happens.  Almost all of the statistically significant factors fall away—we are left with a highly significant preference for unison/canon movement, and two sets of our overlapping 2^nd-order interactions, including a preference for classical dance shapes to pop music and unfamiliar dance shapes to non-pop; also, many dancers moving with high syncopation and few dancers moving arhythmically.  The older crowd had a mean favorite in #8, a group number with classical shapes to Billie Holiday.  Also interestingly, the mean favorite here was really set apart from the rest – a mean score of 1.2 points higher than the three second-favorites. 

Dance-Watching

This is the demographic comparison I was most interested in before this experiment began; my expectation was to find that audience members who are familiar with the art and see it regularly might have a more unusual preference, veering away from the “flash” of familiar pop music, unison group dancing with classical dance shapes. 

I was half right.  The group that self-identified as watching dance “very often” (there were 11 of them) fell beautifully into my original hypothesis – none of the factors and none of the 2^nd-order interactions were significant.  This is the only group that broke down this way!  These experienced viewers had completely varied opinions that didn’t create any trends.

For the moderate dance-watchers who said they see dance “regularly” and “occasionally,” the data matched the group as a whole with one key difference… they dropped their preference for pop music.  I’m really not sure what this one means, but I think it’s very interesting!

For the newbies, who identified themselves seeing dance “rarely” or “this is my first time!” had an extremely strong preference for unison movement (high levels of unison bumped their average response up a whole point).  This makes sense to me artistically – unison movement is organized and easier to take in and follow quickly, so it was likely pleasing to those who don’t watch much dance.  This group also had a very strong preference for pop music… again, I’m not really surprised by that.  They ranked highest the numbers that had both of those qualities, with sassy #16 in solid first place.

So there you have it – all in all, the short answer: my hypothesis is still inconclusive with this smaller data set.  

So, what’s next?

Analysis

Even with this limited data set, there are so many ways to analyze and glean results.  My next step (stay tuned!) is to remove the variables we know not to be significant and use the data set as additional replicates for a “smaller” design.  I would also design it so that 2nd-order interactions don't overlap with each other.  

PS. I made a version of my spreadsheet available to the public, so if any data nerds out there wanna give it a go with other analysis, I welcome you!

Further experimentation

As I mentioned above, even early on in the rehearsal process, there were some variables that I wanted to adjust—specifically, the lack of choreographic clarity between “isolations” and “syncopated movements,” and a clearer representation of interaction between dancers (more partnering, for example).  I'd add a factor to measure level of repetition/motif.  

I also want to explore more about the effect of music on an audience perception, which could be an entire separate presentation!

There is additional power in simply gaining more data—I want to go through another rehearsal process to work out some kinks and then get this in front of larger audiences and more opinions!

I see opportunity to go bigger with this in three main settings:

Dance/Theatre presentation. With a larger audience, the typing-the-responses-into-a-spreadsheet method of calculation isn’t scalable; I would gather responses electronically through a voting system, or I would develop a free app for audience members to put on their smartphones and collect responses that way.  

Schools. I am passionate about connections between the arts and science, statistics, and data.  Blended projects like this are a wonderful opportunity for students at the high school or university level to work together with students with completely different strengths and interests.  What if this exposes more engineering/math/statistics students to artistic applications?  What if this illuminates the power of data analysis for artists?  I want to travel down that path! (If you are interested in collaboration, get at me.)

Online.  This question came up in almost every post-show talkback – what if the one-minute videos were online, and there was a massive collection of data from all over the country? The world?  I've hesitated on this one because I feel like the anonymity of the internet allows biases like “that girl is hot, I’ll vote for her” and “Sia fans unite!” to skew the voting; I also think there’s something imperative that is lost when dance isn’t seen live, and when there isn’t a human face in front of the audience asking them to be impartial and to look carefully at the movement.  I do see, however, the power of so much more data, and I’m interested in exploring it.

Unrelated Observations

• There was one audience member who admitted that this show was his very first live dance experience.  I wonder what this will do to the rest of his dance-viewing life!
• It’s fascinating how many people went for it with the feedback – not only did they score each piece, some audience members wrote me full out choreography notes for each piece, including things they thought were interesting, what they would have done instead, and how the dancers could step up their performance.  None of that affected my analysis, but it was informative for my process!

From audience response sheets:
“Probaby not an awesome critic, but the music impacts me for sure.” – first-time dance watcher, 29
“[I look for] a depiction of emotion through movement.” – occasional dance watcher, 23
“Something that moves me – gives me a gut reaction.” – occasional dance watcher, 27
“[I love] ugh, commercial trick-heavy dance! I’m a heathen!” – dancer, 26
“Teach me something/REVEAL something” – regular dance watcher, choreographer, 63
“I look for work to wake me up – something that transports me spiritually. Also, an appreciation for ‘time’ as an element in the art work.” – dancer, 46
“Character development, athleticism, musicality.” – very often dance watcher, choreographer, dancer, 39
“Correlation between emotion & music” – occasional dance watcher, 23
“To be exposed to new ideas/perspectives.” – dancer, 24
“I look for something or someone to inspire my own dancing.” – dancer/choreographer, 30
“I look for a clear movement vocabulary that helps me compare moments.” – non-dancer, regular dance watcher, 29
“A depiction of the way the music makes me feel.” – occasional dance watcher

Thanks for reading along! I'd love hear your thoughts/reactions-- comment here or email me at info@jaemajoydance.com.

Much gratitude for all the photos on this post, by Travis Magee Dance Photography

show up and be honest

i stumbled across this article today and totally identified with it.  as a side note, i loved it before i realized it was written by one of my favorite dance articulators, lauren warnecke (follow her @artintercepts on twitter, really valuable).  and like i usually do, i got thinking, and thinking got me writing, and here i am.

she's talking about the grey, wavery line professionals in the dance world walk every day.... dancemaker? dancer? dance critic? dance teacher? theatre choreographer? social media manager? grant writer?  mentor?  mentee?  producer? director?  i find myself in any (usually many) of these roles on a given day; we all do. she also discusses what she likes to see, as a dance critic, and asks what dance artists are looking for from their critics.

ah, the many roles of "dancemakers."  i am fortunate enough to live in new york city, a place basically teeming with performers and artists.  i know teachers at basically all the major studios in the city; i walk into any given class at city center or at mark morris and see friends and acquaintances.  i run into people i know in rehearsal at 100 grand dance and gibney dance center.  freelance dancer life, you know how it is.  but nearly all those people, all the wonderful artists i consider friends, are hustling their way through various jobs, and roles, and tasks.  and for most of us, those roles are part-time or full-time jobs on top of the other part-time or full-time jobs we take to make us money.  i don't need a degree in process efficiency to know that this is not optimal.  this is just plain not working.  is it any wonder we, as a field, aren't great at marketing?  at showing our communities that art is worth paying actual dollars to see?  at taking care of our performers and our critics and our administrators?  at preserving our culture and our history?  it's actually ridiculous!

we are smart people.  we are artists with a plethora of strengths and talents.  i propose a new model for the dance world; one that supports diversity and allows individuals to specialize without jeopardizing their status as an "artist."  i'm envisioning a dance world in which the marketing is slicker than the ads for silicon valley.  i'm envisioning a world where venues small and large are sold out all over the country; where the "cool" date night is seeing a performance of an emerging dance company (and you don't have to know someone in the company to know about it).  a world in which performers make enough money to take care of themselves.  a world in which dancemakers feel they have the space to be generous and supportive of one another with time, talent, money.

we are responsible for this.  this community is filled with beautiful, brilliant, hardworking individuals.  i propose we work smarter.

how do we create in a way that fulfills ourselves and that fulfills our audiences?  not everyone is going to love watching dance, of course, but i see so much opportunity to make our art a bigger cultural phenomenon -- without watering it down.  i believe audiences want to be challenged.  they want to be trusted.  they want to learn, be touched, form their own opinions, take big bites of juicy delicious work.  how do we support each other?  how do we change the way WE think so we create the dance community we want?

i'm not really sure, but i'm all in for working on it.

and in response to the question about what i'm looking for in a dance critic... just what i want from any dance professional: show up and be honest!  feedback is crucial to what we do and how we connect.  the more i can learn about what other people -- friends, colleagues, random folks -- see in my work, the more specific and sensitive an artist i can be.  the clearer a communicator i can be.  the easier it is to see where my work can make a difference.  the more intentional i can be about my contribution to the community surrounding the art form i adore!

i guess basically my thesis is this:  let's get accountable, show up, work smarter, and actually collaborate on creating the community we want.

in the meantime, i'm gonna go post this on facebook and twitter and then work on this grant application i'm in the middle of...

THE SEVEN by Will Power, Directed by Carl Cofield, choreographed by ... (you can guess)

as many of you will remember, 2013 was all about the decision to be big. as the year came to a close, i was presented with one more opportunity that's taking me into 2014... choreographing a musical!

i am always interested in the ways we use movement to create characters and tell stories; working on a musical seemed to me to be a natural extension of the work i've been up to.  and so it is!  granted, i didn't expect my first foray into musical theatre to be a rap/hip-hop musical retelling of a greek tragedy by aeschelus.  but i mean, go big or go home, right?

so how is it?

first, i have to tell you, it is a thrill and a relief to be working on a project that doesn't need me to be the sole propelling force behind it.  there is incredible freedom and pride that my self-produced work has given me, to be sure, but it's been pretty fun to have a stage manager who calls actors when they're late, and a producer (and heck, a university) to handle space rentals, lighting design, etc.  my job is literally only the movement.  and the team and the cast are so wonderful.  there's also the more subtle and personal pleasure of people i've only just met actually taking the movement i'm giving them and giving it back to me.  that's just really cool.

secondly, this project lies in contrast with much of my career in that most of the performers are actors and singers first.  for choreography projects, i typically work with dancers with similar training to mine; on the same note, i am usually hired to perform by those who value working with a skill set and training that i have.  here, though, the important thing is each person's character outside of the movement.  then it's up to me to translate both the character's essence and the quality each actor brings to his or her character to create a set of gestures and a movement personality for that character, played by that actor.  it has forced me to be more specific with how i speak about my movement.  it has illuminated for me how i cue improvisation, how i specify an emotional motivation with gesture, and how i teach movement with maximum efficiency.

and i get to enjoy some pretty cool moments: the very first stumblethrough in rehearsal, i got to see my work (and the work of the rest of the team) in order for the first time, and the arc i created in my mind played out in front of me... there's magic in that.

and i know it's dorky, but i still can't discount these old new york theatres.  there's a little magic in the space.

(another personal note: actor's equity is sweet.  breaks for everyone, all the time!)

anyway.  it's about time for you to see all this for yourself!

THE SEVEN
February 12-15th
The Connelly
(E. 4th Street between Ave A and Ave B)

get tickets here (super affordable - $15 or FREE with any student ID!)
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intrepid abberation: a collection of thoughts on dance & film

it's been a little over a month since i finished intrepid aberration, a short film i have written about here before.

now the film has been out there on good ol' youtube for the world to see (below), and after just now watching it again, i have some stream-of-consciousness thoughts and associations to share.

1. "improvisation" vs. "choreography"
what ended up in the film is probably 70% improvisation, 25% improv-based material from the rehearsal process, and 5% material that i "choreographed" in the sense that i went in a room, made it up, and then taught it to kim and britt.

i nearly always work in an improv-based way; it's a great way for me to get a pulse check with my dancers on whether material is resonating with them.  it's also a great way to steal inspiring authentic things from my dancers (my secret's out, i'm a thief).  i think i used my improvisational tools similarly for this project as i have in the recent past.

in live performance, though, i would say it's more like 60% "choreography," 35% improv-based choreography from rehearsal, and 5% live improv.   why?  ... probably because i can control it.  with live performance, i love happy accidents, but i usually have something specific to get across, and in order to communicate clearly i choose to shape the events the audience sees with a steadier hand.  on film, and through the editing process, we could just let it all happen, and i could choose the moments that i loved - the moments that otherwise i might see in rehearsal but would never quite be recreated on stage, or the moments that half the audience would never see in performance because they were looking at someone else, or the moments that are otherwise overshadowed with what comes immediately after them... etc.  i could curate.

it allows me to immortalize choices i only made once out of the sixty times i picked up some sand, like tossing it (at 13:50).  it allows the viewer to be surprised when kim kicks up a little sand (at 14:37) instead of allowing an audience to watch the movement of her feet that inevitably led to it.

a thought.... is it really improvisational once it no longer lives in space and time?  since i'm editing it?

really, it's about ME as an artist being in control, which was the point of the whole project.

2. collaboration/ownership
with this higher proportion of "chance" that made it into the final cut (so much of the improv was so much more interesting than the macro proscenium shots of the "choreography"), i started to wonder more about the ownership of the creative material.  a shot of all of us included direction from me, movement from each dancer, a cinematic eye from eric, and an edited beginning and end from me and eric together.  so who "owns" that?  is it really "my" art?  i credited each person as a collaborator.  it feels more accurate to call it a "jaema joy dance film" (translation: this wouldn't have gotten created if i hadn't decided to do it) than a film with "choreography by jaema" (translation: i made this up), because it was my "choreography" sometimes, but it often wasn't, in the closed definition of choreography i mentioned before, at least.

now i'm comparing this to live performance.  if i credit eric with creating a beautiful shot for the movement (choosing to let a dancer slip out of the frame, ie at 5:50), which feels like some "ownership of the art" of that moment, do i also credit an audience member when she allows a dancer on stage to slip away from her focus while she watches another?  it creates a different experience than her friend's, who continued to watch the first dancer.  it could be a whole different piece.  do they have some ownership in the art, then, too?

or maybe not, because they are taking responsibility for their own view, not affecting the piece of art for others, as eric's lens was?

anyway. i'm sticking to "ownership" of this as shared with my fellow creators, and the fact that it's out there at all means the world has a little bit more of my point of view in it.

3. why do we choose to move/act/stay
as friends and family have watched the film, and for me as i rewatch it, i notice viewers struck with the question "why did she decide to do that?"  why did kim decide not to go through that door?  why didn't britt just walk away after i ran into her?  why did we get on that train?  why did we all go to the beach and play in the sand?

this is really satisfying, because part of what i was exploring is what it takes to NOT do what you always do, and choose to do something different instead.  you go dance on the sidewalk by the high line instead of continuing on with a busy day and a full bag.  you decide to get on a train instead of letting it pass by.  you choose to create something instead of just going to work and going home.  et cetera.

4. a time capsule
in a different way than just a video-taped performance, the film allows me, as an artist, to remember very viscerally what some of that movement felt like.  what it felt like to start sweating on the beach and have sand stuck to my whole back (i can see it).  to remember what the scrape of my sneaker felt like on the pavement (i can hear it).  it allows me to travel back to the moments of creation, which are the feel-in-your-gut moments of rehearsal and performance that artists are constantly chasing.  the memory of the art doesn't lose-- or gain-- as much when it's always there to be re-experienced.

5. what's the point of this being out there?
another part of what i was exploring with the film medium is something that was "dance" that still exists after the fact.  it's not just over, like all live performance is.  it was created to be recorded; it doesn't exist without the recording, and it was created to be out there any time someone feels like looking at it.

but let's say no one ever watches it.  is the world different?  i think so.  i think it's somehow different because a bit of me, and a bit of kim and britt and eric, has been expressed in a new way.  i think that changes something.  of course, there's also the potential for a change in someone's moment, or day, or how they look at a certain subway platform, when they watch.  and i think the existence of that "potential energy" changes something.

isn't the world just better when folks are creating rather than coasting?

getting uncomfortably uncomfortable

i'm working on this project.  it's one of those pieces of art that's about art.  i never thought i'd make one of those.  but here i am.  the thesis question is "what holds you back from making the kind of art you want to make?"

now, the more appropriate question might be "what doesn't hold you back," but i digress.  despite the news about struggling dance institutions, lack of public funding for dance, lack of time, lack of space, 99.9999% of what holds us back is us.  we all know that. and that's what i'm interested in.

so i've boldly set out creating a dance film (a medium i've never worked in before) to explore a creative-process narrative (subject matter i've never danced about before) with a sports-media-video-journalist (who i've never worked with before and has never filmed dance before) incorporating more improvisation and less rehearsal than i've ever worked with before.  all in the name of NEW ART. and PUSHING MYSELF.

and you know what?  i hate it.

in rehearsal today i felt confused, frustrated, unclear as a director, uncertain if i should be doing this project at all, unsure i can pull it off/do it justice, embarrassed, sorry for my dancers, and sluggish.  for the whole two hours.

pretty sure i can see the discomfort in my eyes even here.  it was that kind of a day.

i like to play the part of a high-minded artist.  it turns out, i feel a lot better when i'm engineering-school-prepared.  but i mean, that's not really a surprise.  and when i decided to try this very un-jaema creative process, throwing myself into things i don't know, i knew it was going to be uncomfortable. that was the point! and still, STILL, when discomfort creeps up during the artmaking, i freak out.  i knew this was coming, and somehow i expected the awareness to be enough to fight off the anxiety and allow me to create freely.  it doesn't work.

so here i am, slouched on my couch on a wednesday night, stressing about rehearsal in the morning and two filming sessions next week.  i see three options.

1. i cancel everything.

2. i get out a notebook and do what i've always done for every piece i create... write out everything that happens.  stage directions.  choreography notes.  music cues.  i go to rehearsal comfortable, prepared, and confident.

3. i show up to rehearsal tomorrow with an open mind, plow through the blegh in my mind, film a bunch of stuff next week, and hope for the best.

okay, so, we throw out number one, because it's totally lame.  now number two... is very tempting.  i know how that works.  i'm pretty good at that one.  but how do i create something completely different and completely new and completely uncontrolled if i do what i've always done?  alrighty, so number three.  that's a scary option, because it didn't work today at all.  and how smart is it to walk into rehearsal tomorrow with the same kind of preparation (lots of thought, not a lot of specifics) that i had today, knowing how it turned out?

i suppose my bigger question is: how useful is the discomfort i feel?  is the battle about letting go of control (which i consider positive for this project)?  or is it discomfort of ill-preparedness and therefore mediocrity?  am i so trapped in these questions that i'm not even creative anymore?  is this really even my project?  is it really even dance?

who knows.  i'm not sure.  for now, i commit to you, internet, to lean into the confusion and see how it goes.  fortunately, the only thing i am certain of happens to be my definition of an artist - i refuse option number one.  over and over again, i refuse it.

eight hours of creative time

isn't it interesting how what you put out in the universe comes back to you? after i finished TWWDTT last year, i found myself yearning for collaborative art.  i also got so curious about the impermanence of my art form.  live performance is there, in time, and then it's gone.  this is why we love it, of course.  but it also creates a bit of sadness for me -- we work so hard for so long on a project, and in four hours spread over two days, it's over.

so fast-forward to about six weeks ago: a friend called me up and said "i was given a certificate for eight consecutive hours of rehearsal space in manhattan.  do you want it?"

um, yes i do.

i decided to take this as a sign.  the vague project idea (a dance film?!) in my head suddenly had a start date: july 13th, 2013. 

more on the project itself later.  for now, stop and think about what EIGHT CONSECUTIVE HOURS in a dance studio means.  that's an incredible opportunity.  it's like going to the office for the day.  some of my dancers were out of town, so i had short rehearsals and ended up with a lot of time for myself.  alone.  in a big studio.  staring myself down in the mirror.

in the spirit of embracing things i fear, i'm sharing the experience with you.  i took notes, and i took almost an hour and a half of video footage. (which i conveniently edited down to a bite-size five minutes, don't worry.) i have to admit, i'm a little wary of the "artist showing the process" thing, because it can take away the mystery of the creative process and let an audience in before you want their input.  but i trust you.  and bear with me. this is not a finished product - this is an experiment to develop something new, and an exercise in sharing the thought processes that are the less-charming part of the artistic brain. here's what the day was like:

eight hours to create.
9:30am - I am on the C train. i want to go back to bed. "Resistance" is going for the kill. My body doesn't feel like moving. There seems to be an inordinate amount of that kind of resistance with this project.  It's always hard to know the difference between the kind of resistance that is helpful, guiding me steven pressfield - style towards the projects my soul needs... And the kind of resistance that means you're not supposed to be doing this, you're in over your head. Maybe thinking the latter type exists at all is a construct of the former type. 

I'm scared that this venue will kick me out because they'll see I'm a fraud, not deserving of nice rehearsal space. 

I'm scared that no one will give me any trouble but that I won't get anything productive done. Or anything innovative. Or anything worth showing to anyone. 

As of yesterday, all the ideas and music concepts and shots I wanted to put into this project seem suddenly flat and boring - and/or too logistically challenging. But I didn't think that last week. 

And there's no deadline. So I can take all the time I want! I wrote August as an initial deadline. But really for me the final cutoff is before I leave for the wedding. So let's say: this film is created, edited, and posted by September 15th 2013. 

9:45am - thinking through the phrases I want to create today (at the very least, a draft of them) - a gesture phrase for the recognition that your facade has broken. It's like when you run into someone on the street who you didn't expect to see in that context. Does that make everyone else uncomfortable like it does me? 

Sometimes in dance classes, when I surprise myself with what I can do... in a physical way that happens in dance, in yoga, during a workout, on a run. Sometimes it's the intangible feeling of energy during a thunderstorm, or after a really great conversation, or when I find myself doing or thinking something I wouldn't have dreamed possible 2, or 5, or 10 years ago.... That's the feeling of the second phrase.  It should be gooey. 

Logistics for today as well: 

-one more rehearsal or two to learn the second phrase 

-practice camera shots/plan out camera shots for whole film 

10:02am- I'm in! Intimidating entrance. It's right on 43rd street and there was this slim French girl smoking a cigarette outside.  I followed her in and on to the elevator with like seventeen other people.  We get out on the 8th floor, and everyone strides confidently past the reception desk while I'm all like high-pitched "hi there... i think i have a rehearsal booked????"  The girl at reception took pity on me and was super nice. 

I'm glad there's lots of furniture to move. Gives me a way to get started. I'm also glad it's just me for the first hour. 

10:36am- there's no way to play music in here. Interesting. 

10:54am- I wish I had some chocolate 

12:22pm- First dancer just left. Felt so great to move! And to try to articulate what I'm going for here. With varied success. She talked about control vs release. I think this piece is more about control (and lack of it) than I originally realized. 

12:36pm- I want to do this every day.  

12:55pm- watched the video while I scarfed a little lunch. There's some good stuff in there, so today isn't a total bust. 

I better do a second warmup so my body doesn't fall apart.  What up, central air. 

1:21pm- warm. And now nervous again. Now what?!? 

1:42pm- I have about 5 seconds of choreography that I like. I'm feeling scared. What if I get super bored?! I still want chocolate. I settled for water from their filter... it's not as satisfying. 

2:09pm- it's better when I'm warmer. Layered back up. Didn't Twyla Tharp say that too? 

2:39pm- almost 45 minutes of dance footage recorded. I'm taking that chocolate break.

and that was it until 6pm! no more notes, just video.  and as it turns out, after watching an hour of myself dancing (where most of the time i was like "wait, i don't remember doing that!!"), phrasework did appear.  here's some of the video.

untitled july 13 from jaema joy on Vimeo.