A House Unbuilt: In Residence

Every Day a Dance

(2012)

Date

April 27-May 17, 2012

Place

Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, IL

Lead Artist

Victoria Bradford

Contributing Artists

Maya Shaffer, Laura Forest Foglia, Helen Ascoli

Photo/Video

Joshua Slater, © A House Unbuilt

This and subsequent posts document my MFA Thesis work at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. For the 20 days of the exhibition in the Sullivan Galleries, I structured a residency of my dance theatre company A House Unbuilt. 20 days. Every day a dance. Every day building a new dance out of the residue of dances past. What does this mean? How does this work? Practically speaking, I assembled some packages. Each package contained some items related to a dance the company had previously performed, a manifest detailing those items unable to be included, and some brief instructions or reminders drawn from the performance. Each package was left unmarked, and each day an audience member was allowed to choose a package for the next day’s work. The contents of the package were not imperatives; the past dance was not a script to be re-performed. Instead, these things were treated as knowledge, a body of knowledge explored, shared, discovered. Where could they lead us here and now? In response to our current conditions? In a way, Day One was devised to show the answers to these questions…

We say it was 20 days, and 20 dances—but perhaps it started long before Opening Night on April 27th, 2012. Perhaps it at least began a few weeks prior, on that day of the first run of Dance with Me, our final Invitational. My mother had come to town and spent the day with me in the studio, packing and prioritizing, making an inventory of the items to be moved to the gallery. Maya joined us mid-day and we work-shopped the piece to be staged that evening, a piece later to be boxed as well, and later still opened on Day __ of 20 in the Sullivan.

We didn’t move the entire studio across Wabash Avenue and up the seven flights to Sullivan, but it sure felt like it—and many people thought it so upon seeing the installation. Thank goodness for a lunch date unwittingly scheduled for the same day as the move, an old student of mine was surreptitiously transformed into a day laborer, carrying crates and boxes, “borrowing” a dolly, laying down floor. We were nearing the end of “clean install” and the roller coaster was finally careening to a stand still at the top of the summit. We would launch at full speed soon enough.

These ideas are not just about making dance, but also about reconsidering dance and artistic production, about how we see ourselves in contact with one another as making. I cherish each and every opportunity to work in the company of others, to connect and share, to move with others as we endeavor creatively. In particular, I would like to extend my thanks to the “company” of A House Unbuilt for the time spent cultivating these 20 Days. To my principal Maya Shaffer, dramaturg Laurel Foglia, object-maker and performer Hellen Ascoli, photographer Joshua Slater, and audience-contributers David Jude Greene, Andrew Bloustein, David Rueter, Rob Hunter, Katie Navarro, Moe Boetiks, Sabri Reed, Jason Lazarus, Robin Deacon, Werner Herterich, John and Dinah Bradford, and many names unattended.

Special thanks also to Candida Alvarez, Mary Jane Jacobs, Trevor Martin, Todd Cashbaugh, [safety and security names], and all the staff at the Sullivan Galleries who supported the residency for the duration of the exhibitition.

A House Unbuilt is part studio, part stage, part house as body, house as world. A House Unbuilt is a company, is we—and the shared experience of witnessing and performing in the same space is the most important thing. A House Unbuilt approaches the body as a site that houses a knowledge otherwise unreachable but for the unbuilding of that architecture through dance. Thus we say that we create conceptual dance because we see movement as the way to connect with those concepts gesturally inscribed in the body. Such concepts (because of their housing), are often the most connective of tissues between one person and the next, no matter what background, culture, ethnicity, and so on. These qualities allow the work to tether bonds deep within ourselves instead of on the surface.

As a practitioner and choreographer of contemporary dance, I am always thinking about what the dance can be. I find the social deeply rooted in the work of my choreography, the work of mentorship, the work of being in company with others. Through a House Unbuilt, we come together to compose, arrange, and manage projects AND people—connecting and communicating intimately and on a grand scale.

We are not about virtuosity, but we are not against it. We are not about tradition, but we see it as a text ripe for excavation. We are about the body, the body alone, together, other bodies, the gendered body, the sick body, absent body, violated body, fragmented body, forgotten body, new bodies, that lead to whole bodies, that lead to a bodily foundation for communication, for encounters, for response. My interest is here, in this WE, in this connection or contact, in this shared, sticky space. My interest or agenda is about a methodology toward this, and content is flexible. Content is in response. I am fascinated by what fascinates you, what moves you, and how we might come to share in that. This is an adaptive choreography.