Photo by Edward Casati- Jul 2009
Just to break into the land of blogging, I’m posting a piece that I wrote last July . These were some meandering thoughts as I approached the 25th anniversary of my dance company.
Pluto in Capricorn
First published in In Dance by Dancers Group 2009
By Anne Bluethenthal
The choreographer aging…..
yielding the bold energy of youth
that flings itself fearlessly into space
surrendering the agility garnered from
thousands of tendus and ronds de jembe
new unexpected dexterities emerge
habits, even personality dissolve out of necessity
fall away like old snakeskin
reinforcing this tacit insight:
we don’t really change
we arrive in a moment when what was becomes untenable
step effortlessly out of old skin and into what is now
bearable
at last you find the courage of your own convictions
and realize you no longer hold convictions
this is not cynicism – this is liberation
my body finds nuance in a narrow but rich corridor
of motion
every year I pour my self into the bodies of young dancers
who paint my work across the floors of theaters
and grow into the painters of their own lives
my work tracing a broad brush stroke out the door
Some thoughts on a personal aesthetic….
“It is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what
we speak, but the truth of that language by which we
speak it.” — Audre Lorde
I love to scrutinize the syntax and meaning of the dance language. As a young dancer, I saw that dance training involved pulling one’s self apart, one part struggling against the other and all parts against the ground – away from the ground. The meaning and implication of this as a practice seemed contrary to the principles I had embraced in my budding feminist consciousness (this was the mid 1970’s).
I have wanted to bring Audre Lorde’s imperative—that we cannot dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools—to the art of dance, questioning how we can create work that awakens consciousness and promotes social change while employing an idiom that is rooted in imperialism, patriarchy, and self-denial. My body of work emerges from a continuous meditation and active grappling with these issues.
I enjoy cooking up raw, free, woman centered, human, visceral yet content driven dances. I place my political obsessions into my movement vocabulary, use of dancers, use of space, subject matter, music, visual and textual work. Undoubtedly, the civil rights movement that I was born into and participated in throughout my youth is the single most formative political consciousness operating in my life and work. My choreography tries to undermine, feminize, queer, and ecologize the language of dominance while conceding its occupation in my body and while shamelessly using it whenever it can support my intention.
I am working on how to age inside this art form.
Right now, my most intimate agenda is to create community around my work, collaborate with brilliant friends, and to make dances that “the soft animal of my body”* loves.
My most high-minded agenda is to raise important issues, rage beautifully, and participate in a global eco-feminist artistic movement.
Pluto in Capricorn
We fall apart. We fear for our livelihoods and that of our colleagues and dancers. We wonder how we keep our self worth when the culture abandons us. We keep making dances. I turn 51. The market economy goes the way of the arctic ice and to the extent that our accomplishments bring us a sense of identity, that too crashes into frigid seas.
This year is the 25th birthday of my dance company. As I prepared to launch a celebratory concert, and during a persistent period of mild depression, two friends, in an effort to comfort me in separate conversations remarked that Pluto was in Capricorn. Pluto, the planet (or not) of death, transformation, and rebirth has settled in Capricorn, the constellation of materiality, identity, and action. During the residence of Pluto in Capricorn, one can expect personal and global infrastructures to undergo major renovation. Any system or aspect of identity or career, etc. which is lacking in integrity or usefulness or which is not operating according to our values or which has outlived its function, will be destroyed.
We are all connected in this moment of dismantling. I hope we’ll rebuild in solidarity, not in fear, and with renewed commitment to a more radical, artist-centered sensibility that reflects the true emancipatory nature of west coast art.
I am working on how to age inside of this art form; new dexterities are emerging.
* Quoted from Mary Oliver’s, “Wild Geese”
- Photo by Edward Casati
