s o l o s t u d i e s p r o j e c t [ 2 0 1 6 ]
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When we first began this project, we found it was important to encounter each of these dancers in a studio alone to watch and document their solos. We then talked with each of them about their interests and desires surrounding their movement so that we could get a better understanding of what we would adapt; knowing that we would eventually be displacing their authorship over the movement onto ourselves.
Our conversation with Jesse was that these films would not be a document but rather a translation of what we perceived and wanted the movement to communicate. Our process quickly dropped us into a confrontation with the aesthetic and personal values we place onto movement, and highlighted the multiple ways this project engaged the role and responsibilities of directorship. How far could we manipulate the choreography given to us, if at all? It made us question what it is to value certain movements over others and what it is like to be making with things that aren’t ours.
|Marc and Stephanie Crousillat|
Our conversation with Jesse was that these films would not be a document but rather a translation of what we perceived and wanted the movement to communicate. Our process quickly dropped us into a confrontation with the aesthetic and personal values we place onto movement, and highlighted the multiple ways this project engaged the role and responsibilities of directorship. How far could we manipulate the choreography given to us, if at all? It made us question what it is to value certain movements over others and what it is like to be making with things that aren’t ours.
|Marc and Stephanie Crousillat|
The Solo Studies Project came into being because I wanted to continue to test the possibilities of solo performance, but I no longer wanted to do it alone. Connecting my dance communities in New York and Philadelphia, I gathered a group of fellow dancers to examine solo dance practice with me.
I began our time together by leading a process through which each participant was guided through the creation of a 2-5 minute solo. These solos were made through research on the particularities of our identities. We asked: how can we renegotiate the terms of our belonging within a given culture? In what ways might dance engage our bodies to discover multiple critical and ethical modes of participation in social and political life? We wrote in response to these questions; I led us to source movement from the resultant texts. Each solo, with its distinct formation of movements, became a vocabulary of the self.
I then guided each participant to apply their vocabulary of the self in different contexts: we performed our solos as therapy, as graffiti, as site-responsive dances, in group improvisations, and we made them into short films. In every instance of performance, our solos were re-made/re-authored through a dialogue with something or someone other to us. In each new encounter, we tried to figure out how our movement could make change in our bodies, in the bodies of our viewers, and in the body of space (both physical and filmic). Central to this work was learning how to allow the solo material - the vocabulary of the self - to be radically responsive to each new context.
The videos on this site represent the meeting of each participant’s vocabulary of the self - their choreography, with the editing, framing and filmic directorship of Marc and Stephanie Crousillat.
|Jesse Zaritt|
I began our time together by leading a process through which each participant was guided through the creation of a 2-5 minute solo. These solos were made through research on the particularities of our identities. We asked: how can we renegotiate the terms of our belonging within a given culture? In what ways might dance engage our bodies to discover multiple critical and ethical modes of participation in social and political life? We wrote in response to these questions; I led us to source movement from the resultant texts. Each solo, with its distinct formation of movements, became a vocabulary of the self.
I then guided each participant to apply their vocabulary of the self in different contexts: we performed our solos as therapy, as graffiti, as site-responsive dances, in group improvisations, and we made them into short films. In every instance of performance, our solos were re-made/re-authored through a dialogue with something or someone other to us. In each new encounter, we tried to figure out how our movement could make change in our bodies, in the bodies of our viewers, and in the body of space (both physical and filmic). Central to this work was learning how to allow the solo material - the vocabulary of the self - to be radically responsive to each new context.
The videos on this site represent the meeting of each participant’s vocabulary of the self - their choreography, with the editing, framing and filmic directorship of Marc and Stephanie Crousillat.
|Jesse Zaritt|