DANCING THROUGH LIMINALITY By Ariel Osterweis
Anthropologist Victor Turner described the liminal period during a rite of passage as “betwixt and between.” Liminality characterizes for Turner the power and potentiality intrinsic to the ritual process. Central to the efficacy of ritual is performance—how it is enacted, enlivened, and believed. When performance creates change from one state to another, it functions as a performative; it does something. Liminal space, both precarious and in motion, affords us an opportunity for transformation, and this year the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts—as a community between deans, as it were— found itself inhabiting such a space. 2016 bid farewell to School of Dance Dean Stephan Koplowitz, and a new dean will be welcomed in 2017. Laurence Blake fulfilled the interim role in the fall, Cynthia Young in the spring. 2016-2017, in its very hyphenation, served as a bridge, an occasion to question CalArts’ dancing past and envision its possible futures. As such, we inevitably returned to a foundational ethos of CalArts, asking ourselves what it meant to cooperate as an artists’ collective within a culture of shared governance. Although we look optimistically toward tomorrow, we pause today with the publication of this newsletter to share with you the creative accomplishments of 2016-2017 in the School of Dance.
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As the year’s performance highlights illustrate so clearly, liminality actually defines our way of being in dance. We are always in motion; our most memorable technique teachers often reiterate that the dancing occurs “in the transitions.” Almost always exercises in transformation, whether lasting or fleeting, dance performances invite us to conceive of the world anew, spatio-temporally and kinesthetically. This year’s choreography and performance-making took place in concerts such as Open House, the BFA2 Solo evening, Noonish, Winter Dance, and the Next Dance Concert. In addition to pieces by faculty members Julie Bour, Andre Tyson, and Nina Flagg, the School of Dance was thrilled to invite phenom, Juel D. Lane, to choreograph for Winter Dance and alum, Ryan Mason, to choreograph a piece for Next. Gustavo Ramirez Sansano also created a piece for Next, featuring the graduating BFA4s. Mason and Sansano’s challenging pieces were joined by stellar choreography by BFA and MFA students over the course of three Next Dance Concert weekends. Demanding, refined pieces by Kelsey Long and Manuel Maza (both BFA4s) were featured at Redcat. While Maza’s piece offered a particular aesthetic of lyrical vulnerability evocative of Pina Bausch’s work, Long’s piece sustained a charged, driving pulse, generating an inventive movement vocabulary of contemporary dance subtly influenced by hip-hop. Evidenced by the rigor and risk-taking of this year’s imaginative pieces, it has become ever-apparent that our student choreographers have benefitted from the opportunity to spend time steeped in the creative process. Other offerings this year included the protest piece, Mother Earth, site-specific experiments, and MFA2 theses. Herb Alpert Award in the Arts winner, Ishmael Houston-Jones, joined us this spring, visiting classes and conducting improvisation workshops. He discussed his experiences with recreation and improvisation,