For the second year in a row, Paufve Dance invited 8 people to write and respond to its annual 8x8x8 performance. The event on January 24, 2019 at The Uptown in Oakland, CA was its 13th iteration. These 8 writers include audience members as well as performers in the show.

Dazaun Soleyn and Hien Huynh. Photo by Hans Holtan.

Aviva Rose-Williams

Many thoughts leaving 8x8x8…

A cacophony of reflection.

I receive this performance as a gift. It is planned, ordered, well-thought out. Hours of studio time weave themselves through the performers’ physicality. Thoughts emerge as momentum. Sound. The environment and its audience are wrapped around these delights, coveting them, witnessing them, giving them reason to exist. Creating a space in which they can resonate. Finally.

Though the presentations hold their own valuable wonders, I experienced 8x8x8 this year like most 1 year olds experience birthdays. Nothing could snag my attention and get me more reeling in excitement than the colorful, crunchy wrapping. An audience practically humming with energy, I was taken with how powerful the simple presence of witnessing can be in terms of justifying a piece of art’s existence. How the mass of people ironically adds to the intimacy, how the exposure in-the-round can create such a feeling of shared experience.

I leave in deep question within my own practice about the strength and necessity of others to create a framework in which my work can resonate, in this top-secret collaboration. 

Molly Rose-Williams and Aviva Rose-Williams. Photo by Hans Holtan.

Molly Rose-Williams

My sister's body next to me, my beating heart, attentive generosity on a round sea of faces. Not hard to keep a straight face; easy easy easy to smile.

Heather Stockton of Wax Poet(s). Photo by Hans Holtan.

Garth Grimball

On January 24, I attended my first 8x8x8. Randee Paufve, creator and curator of the annual event, invited the dance collaborative I co-direct, Wax Poet(s), to perform. My best friend and dance partner, Heather Stockton, performed an excerpt from our upcoming show. Usually when part of a festival or mixed bill I don’t get to see the work of fellow performers. Being part of the artistic line-up, but not performing, allowed me the unique experience of all-access backstage and a front row seat for the show. On this night, the comradery of the artists and the generosity in their performing reminded me of Jerome Robbins’s commentary on the counter-culture of the 1960s:

“What’s the matter with connecting, what’s the matter with love, what’s the matter with celebrating positive things? Why – I asked myself – does everything have to be so separated and alienated; so that there’s this almost constant push to disconnect.”

To be completely genuine can be the most transgressive act. It is disarming. Few are the daily conversations not laced with sarcasm or glibness, fear or self-deprecation. Casualness passing as caring. It is easier to put yourself down than declare your vulnerability. 8x8x8 felt like pessimism Febreze; each dance a spray dissolving my own dismissiveness, revealing the love that brought me to dance. Whether it was creating rhythm on and through the body, piercing the commodification of activism, or dissecting the bond of twinhood, the art was vulnerable, the performers genuine, and I drank it up.

Which brings me to another highlight of this event – intimacy. The audience surrounds the performers on all sides, just a few feet away, drinking, laughing, snuggling. It’s a performance surrounding a performance. Like Christo and Jean-Claude wrapping the Pont-Neuf in fabric, the container of the audience transforms the familiar into the fantastic. Contours merging and emerging. It’s not distracting. It’s liberating from the constant push to disconnect.

AXIS Dance Company. Photo by Hans Holtan.

Raven Malouf-Renning

This was my third 8×8×8, and my first being a member of the audience. Being on the other side this time afforded me a different perspective on how the space and the immediacy of the audience has an effect on the performers and the work. AXIS Dance Company – Quartet No. 1 Excerpt What struck me the most about this piece, aside from the fluid technique, strong partner work, and palpable onstage chemistry between the two dancers was just how normalized it was that one of the performers was born without a left arm. She was able to give and receive weight from her partner, and the way her partner touched the limb – no hesitation, no skirting around the reality of it, was beautiful. Antwan Davis – Commitment to Fire Antwan Davis has a knack for taking to the stage and weaving together a symphony of textures of movement, sound, and audience participation. He ably wove together complex patterns of tap dancing, body percussion, and the sound of his voice, and made it look graceful and effortless. At one point, he asked the audience to inject a few overlapping and interlocking clapping rhythms so that we were not merely voyeurs, but part of the score. Molly Rose-Williams and Aviva Rose-Williams – Mind The Gap This piece was particularly poignant for me, as I am an older sibling of identical twins. So many times over the years, I've witnessed my sisters being so telepathically linked that they appeared to be sharing the same brain. Seeing a very similar dynamic play out onstage felt like being home. Partnering work requires being intimately in sync with the partner you're working with. Molly and Aviva took advantage of their unique link as "wombmates," and with their strong mental link, they were able to take more risks with their partner work than most dancers.  Heather Stockton/Wax Poet(s) – fey/done/a/weigh Speaking as another dancer of size, it was truly gratifying to see Heather Stockton take up space on the stage and own it. There was a strength and clarity to their movement that I especially appreciated. Fog Beast – A Little Bit of the Big Reveal At times, this piece was difficult to watch, which was rather the point. When one of the dancers arrived onstage shirtless, he was described by another performer as an intricately designed AI. This felt to me like commentary on the objectivication and fetishization to which we often subject members of marginalized groups. What struck me about the dancer being described was that he seemed to be looking right into the hearts and souls of every single member of the audience. That, ironically, was the part of the piece that felt the most human. Julie Crothers – Second Hand At first, this piece felt like a simple, garden variety solo dance. After a time of watching the dancer emphasize her left hand, it struck me that the fingers never moved. Just as I thought to myself "Is this a prosthetic?" – her forearm and hand disengaged from her upper arm, hanging from her sweater, and exaggerating the length of her limb. Watching her duet with her prosthetic, and then later removing her own clothing and using it to dress up the prosthetic, spoke to me as a commentary on the lengths we go to in order to make ourselves "acceptable" to the average person on the street. Seeing Crothers standing in her underwear, wholly and unapologetically herself, was a powerful moment for me. Dazaun Soleyn – Emergence It is still such a rare thing in the dance world to see two men partner with one another with such a feeling of tenderness. It was so gratifying to see. Bandelion – Room to Fall Apart Reviewing a group that I've been lucky to perform with as a guest artist is tricky at best. One of Bandelion's strengths is its ability to explore emotional landscapes that most groups don't quite touch. Seeing each performer show up in the space as themselves, with whatever rawness they were feeling in the moment, rather than putting on a brave face and "making it work," has beautiful potential. The constraints of time and space inherent to an event like 8×8×8 tends to hem in the group's long-arcing, exploratory style, and so we as the audience merely got a taste of what the full scope of the piece was about. I look forward to seeing this piece in its entirety, where the group will truly have room to fall apart. Antwan Davis. Photo by Hans Holtan. Antwan Davis

How does an artist know if their work is landing/resonating in their community? And what does a community response to art look like?

Hmm, great question. I believe as an artist you embody your artistry. Your passion, intentions, and creativity are reflected back at you when you give your essence, either in class, on stage or in daily interactions. You can feel the energy in the room, see their faces and hear it in their voices if your creativity had a positive or negative effect on them. I feel as artists, what we reflect to our communities is light, the possibilities, and a gleam to our higher selves. Now, what does it look like? Inspiration is a muse that will propel you in many directions. After performances you can see it in body languages. For me personally, I had people feel open and free enough to share their personal passion with me. It’s an energy and light I don't believe we as people get to live in or share in enough. It's fresh and a pure joy when you get to do so.  

I also believe when you are talking about the artist community, knowing if your work resonates and seeing the types of community responses can be a positively monumental experience towards moving an art form and an arts community forward. I know for me, when I see art that really moves me. I'm inspired to share my love and passion more. I am a student again, relearning, restructuring fundamentals and looking to progress the art form I represent the way I experienced it the night before. Or, I've been inspired to go vote, teach as many children as possible and call my mother to remind her, that everything I am, is an extension of everything you are.

Fog Beast. Photo by Hans Holtan.

Rebecca Johnson

8x8x8 was a marriage. I am now a single married woman.

Every moment of movement allowed for a peculiarly delightful voyeurism, watching each other watch the dance. Watching the photographer capture an even closer view of what was unfolding.

The union multiplied throughout the evening as I fell in love, not only with each dance, but with each person watching the dance. It was a knowing that each moment of movement shined brilliantly because it was fueled by dedication, courage and honesty – but also because it was received and regarded with deep respect, beautiful attention and a willing levity.

What was dark became light and the light became dark in the dialogue between dancer and recipient. The electricity of so many intimacies happening all at once, like the architecture of a protein: miniature, delicate, mutable, temporary yet powerful enough to sustain a body. “Proteins form by amino acids undergoing condensation reactions, in which the amino acids lose one water molecule per reaction in order to attach to one another…"* Each molecule of dancer perspiration shed that evening fueled a bond to hold onto.

*from the Wikipedia page on “protein structure”

Julie Crothers. Photo by Hans Holtan.

Ramona Nadaff and Sima Belmar

Last year, Ramona Naddaff and I live tweeted 8x8x8 together. This year, Ramona couldn't be at the show, so we met after the fact to talk about it. Some of the questions I pose in our discussion have since been answered, but we've elected to leave the mystery in tact here. 

Sima: There was one element of this 8x8x8 that I had never seen before. They had a photographer who was on the floor for every dance, but I mean all up in every dance. And I don't know if that was on purpose but he was like a bug that was literally like really close, really moving around, really a presence in every dance. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. Apparently, it really bugged (ha ha) a lot of people. They were like, What the fuck is he doing? He's in the way. And he was sometimes literally in the way. Melecio at one point had to move him out of the way as he entered into the space to do his thing. I loved it. I was like, When does that happen? So I spent a lot of time enjoying that negotiation.

Ramona: I'm going to push you with your verbs and adjectives. What did you love about this?

Sima: Well, he didn't belong there and he became part of every piece. And it surprised me that no one caught that in advance. How did a dance photographer get all up in the dance? Was that an 8x8x8 plan? And so what you had in the first piece, two women doing dancey movement with arabesques and legs and partnering and dramatic music, in stretchy Lamentations-style skirts, with big bounding rhythms, and then the photographer was going [here I offer a series of sound effects in the effort to produce the photographer's skittering bug or flitting fly rhythm]. 

Ramona: So in some ways he was the weird body –a sort of out of place body. Did he have any rhythmic sensitivity to music, sound, body?

Sima: No. He was like a quarterback. He was finding the holes. He wasn’t on the periphery. He kept scooting into the middle. It was so funny. He held the spirit of 8x8x8. I think 8x8x8 is meant to be messy, surprising, even awkward. 

Ramona: I am trying to give him another name than a bug. Could have been the stranger? The interloper? The uninvited?

Sima: I don’t know. As a viewer I'm disinclined to make a story out of it. The material reality of him was interesting to me. He was the photographer, he was meant to be discreet. He was the opposite. If 8x8x8 is meant to re-contextualize and reframe concert dance so we see it differently, he added another layer of that. He made me think about the labor of capture and of documentation and he made it look like it was hard to do. Which it is. Few take good dance photographs. He was like a TV version of a fashion photographer, the one running around saying, "Yes yes yes! Do it again! Gorgeous! Just like that!" but silently. I am kind of obsessed with him. 

Ramona: Two free associations about that night. 

Sima: Words?

Ramona: Whatever you want want—words, movements. Asking questions is not fee associating.

Sima: I don’t know!

Ramona: Okay. Here’s a word: Hand.

Sima: One or two.

Ramona: Rhythms.

Sima: Concatanated. That's all I got.

Ramona: Title you would give it.

Sima: Dreamboat. I’m really bad at this. Dreamboat has nothing to do with anything.

Ramona: Moving on.

Sima: It's difficult for me to talk about 8x8x8 because it's run by one of my best friends. I was there at its inception. I feel excluded from it, but by my own design. No fault of anyone's. One of my former best friends was there, and it was awkward. There's so much history, so much that is personal and emotional at stake.

Ramona: Maybe I should have talked to some one else? [laughs]

Sima: What were you wanting to know? Did you have an agenda?

Ramona: Not really. I only knew I did not want you to describe each dance. I wanted elements that remained in your mind and body. That’s all I knew. I do want to ask you this and I knew this: How or did it affect how you taught your class [at Cal], your thinking on writing and embodiment? 

Sima: I think I am gone from any kind of dance writing I did in the past. I can barely describe a dance anymore. Patricia Hampl, in her essay "The Dark Art of Description," talks about how description leads to memory, history—a recursive, dialectical relation. You describe something and it tells you what you are interested in. With dance, I am already so meta. Like with 8x8x8, it’s a discursive project. I don’t’ know what I am trying to say. I have such a personal relationship with 8x8x8, anything I say would be mostly about me and my lens is so particular. So for my class, I suppose my experience thinking about writing about 8x8x8 reinforces my belief that writing practice, even academic writing practice, is about discovering the "youness" in your writing and being responsible for your perspective, your interests, to let us know what your relationship is to your subject and get out of the garbage of objectivity.

Bandelion. Photo by Hans Holtan.

—-

Related posts:

CriticalMasses (2018)

—————————