Tallahassee Tuning

I am currently in Tallahassee, FL in a project organized by HIJACK Dance in collaboration with the MANCC Residency at FSU. What all the letters mean, is a group of us had the supported opportunity to practice Tuning Scores altogether; Arwen Wilder, Karen Nelson, Kristin Van Loon, Lisa Nelson, Morgan Thorson, Naomi Joy, and myself. It has been just one of those experiences….. from the beginning, “go” ~ we worked specifically with single image scores, blind trio unison, and the Go score…. and experienced how Go manages to contain the rest, and how in the “Aftermath” of one (to quote HIJACK) the next is effected…..

I am deeply in the practice of the call “Delay,” — of consideration before action, of feeling the space of waiting, the potentiality, the movement around that continues even despite the delaying, the possibility for being in action while still delaying the action at the moment of the call. Also reveling in how much is seen the slower we get, how in this “Theater of Opinions” (an earlier term used by Lisa for the Scores) when people have strong and clear desires, it is so damn exciting, and how liminal space offers polar tone in relation to organized, singular action. And what it feels like to be along the spectrum…. the clarity of the shared image space helps to register where one is along the slide.

We seemed to have this alternating experience of complexity <-> clarity and back again…. so the complex “improvisations”  — when we weren’t all clear where we began, one time making calls from within warming-up rather than setting up a shared intention — managed to help invoke a desire for clarity which we all followed that then in turn led to the next curious confusion, back into the sublime sense of being in something together that tuning can provide. Why is this a familiar patterning, the alternation of clarity and confusion?

Thanks to the visionary HIJACKers for bringing us together, to Lisa for editing us all, to Carla Peterson for helming the operation, the whole MANCC crew, and particularly Chris Cameron, who took the stunning pictures below, all from the first day, from where we kept on going:

From Behind the curtains

Blind Trio Unison with students at FSU Dance, at the Forum where Lisa facilitated an exchange

Morgan working magic with a big table object/subject

Lisa at the Forum

 A recurring theme

All photos by Chris Cameron

 

Up next: a week of receiving the choreographic process with HIJACK in a trio, in the “Aftermath” of our Tuning week….

Tuning at the Starline, Relay

This past weekend, I performed with a group of art brilliants at the Starline Ballroom. This was part of a larger research in dance poetry, called the Relay Project. To introduce the evening-length solo, a posse Tuned the Space. As people entered into the Ballroom, we were in the midst…. the intention was that they would be able to experience the space in a way that revealed its architecture, tone, the space iteself, perhaps to open up a world of viewing for the full evening, not unlike reading a good poem. Below are some of the beautiful images taken by Chani Bockwinkel. She somehow captured the mystery and the spaciousness of the tuning investigations, and warmed the view of the solo.

Tuning the Space, with Aarian + Armaan Chacko-Whiting, Asia Wong, Frances Rosario, Kathleen Keogh, Mara Poliak, Maureen Whiting, nicholas andre sung, and MG:

 

 

the Solo – Discovering New Species:

Let the light in, ring it in, let it move us, move and be moved….

And I honestly don’t really know what all actually took place in the solo, but that it was an amazing experience this run to let it unfold, to open up with and for the audience, with whom we had tuned…., I was tracking, felt it, felt the feltedness. Tuning to the environment, the space, the Dance

To share the odd state of post- performance, through a performed conversation with Justin Desmangles – a composed presentation of talking, choosing quite consciously to not invite in others to be in the dialogue, which would have made some other kind of alchemy, rather to let people see/witness what it means when two people engage in the meeting of minds + ideas….Even as mine was so mottled from the dance.   A kind of Tuning

It is so wild now, after a show, to experience its dissolution, disappearance, integration (so much nameless), and watch reflections rise up.

I am so looking forward to performing again this afternoon at Ellen Webb’s studio with Denise and Violet, ….and you, might you join us?

 

 

Tuning Relay at Berkeley Art Museum

Sunday, May 4, a posse of movement artists Tuned at BAM. The event was part of the Possible, a unique experiment in participatory art-making taking place these months. This particular iteration of Tuning was curated by Asia Wong. The event was a great way to begin to enact a tuning that will take place on MAY 31, as part of the Relay Performance series. Thanks to all who participated, including Sarah Pritchard, Kathleen Keogh, Cathie Caraker, Katarina Eriksson, Qilo Matzen, Renee Rhodes, Jennifer Marie Hoff, Marcia Scott, Maureen Whiting + her sons Armaan + Aarian Chacko-Whiting, Catharine Brook Anderson, Asia Wong, and MG. Here are some of the many fantastic images by Greek photographer Nicholas Komodore.

 

   

 

For more information about Relay, read here: http://relaydance.wordpress.com/

The LINK: http://mayakov-plus-sky.blogspot.com/2014/05/studies-in-somatic-architecture-and.html

A brief tuning video experiment

Ray, Margit and Sheri on video

https://vimeo.com/86353077

In January, Sheri Cohen came down from Seattle, and we got together with Ray Chung and had a Tuning session. It was very open in the dancing, and we began to make calls from a kind of open movement run.

At some point during the session, Sheri brought out her portable video camera that attaches to the ear, so you can video from moving, hands-free, in dance. This one clip is a small piece of our tuning, through her moving eyes. Once thing that I like about this fuzzy little video is that there seems to be no formalized up and down, as if the image space here is formed through a moving perceiver, in action.

To quote J.J. Gibson in Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966), an inspiration for Tuning Scores:

The ways in which animals and men pick up information by looking, listening, sniffing, tasting, and touching are the subject of this book. These five perceptual systems overlap one another; they are not mutually exclusive. They often focus on the same information – that is the same information can be picked up by a combination of perceptual systems working together as well as by one perceptual system working alone. The eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin can orient, explore, and investigate. When thus active, they are neither passive senses nor channels of sensory quality, but ways of paying attention to whatever is constant in the changing stimulation….

 

This quote is invoked in the moving body beings picking up dance, and in our states as we tune.

 

Point Reyes Poetry

Here is a poem written by Deidre Martin in response to her time attuning into Point Reyes:

Tuning Point Reyes

 

TUNING POINT REYES – An Overnight Dance Experience 

with Margit Galanter

November 9 – 10, 2013

At the Dance Palace, Pt Reyes 

 

        “There are no images without participation…” -Lisa Nelson

In this workshop, we will practice the brilliant Tuning Scores. Originated by Lisa Nelson, the scores are a kaleidoscopic set of explorations that reveal how what we see is inextricably linked to how we see. The scores offer a set of tools that can change how you make, perceive, and do, in any creative medium. 

Through the workshop, we will research our senses of imagination and our memory. We will move and watch movement. We will develop a language. We will remap our senses and perceptions. We will experiment with timing, movement, touch, and verbal cues as ways to attune our desires and invoke the image space. And with this material, we will compose live art, together.

The gathering will start on Saturday at noon at the Dance Palace with a BYO lunch, and end with a morning workshop on Sunday at noon at that very same place. In between, we attune to Point Reyes. 

 

MARGIT GALANTER is a movement investigator and dance poet living in Oakland, CA. She has worked with Tuning Scores for 15 years through practice, teaching, and performance, and has shared the scores extensively throughout the U.S. and abroad, bringing her unique interests to its rich research. 

Art Site: www.margitg.wordpress.com * PI Practice: www.physicalintelligence.org * Tuning Blog: https://tuningscoreslog.wordpress.com/

  

Details:

There is some housing available overnight in Inverness, and others will camp or find their own accommodations. We will provide you with housing options and ideas. Delicious meals cooked by Asia available.

Hosted through creative inspiration of Asia Wong 

Workshop: $75 – 100 sliding – Housing Not Included

Early Bird Workshop Rate: $60 – 100, by NOVEMBER 1

Meals (Dinner and Breakfast): $15

Contact Margit with questions, or you want to sign up today: margit@physicalintelligence.org (510) 761-6097

 

At the edge of water Tuning

This summer in July, I had the opportunity to practice tuning with Sheri Cohen in Seattle. (Surprise), it was an overcast day, and we found ourselves trading solos and replaying at Stewart Park by the water’s edge. Some basic calls were made, but more silence, listening, crossing with passersby. Somehow, the effect of the images in my memory are a mix between an ancient crawling spaciousness, Isadora Duncan flow expressed, and a quiet waking up. The space of listening. Amidst the other activities of living, what awakens through Tuning is a vast sensibility of the space, the image space, one’s own spaciousness as layered, multisensorial. Vivid.

I was holding the camera mid-way through our session, and later on she took a whirl, as well. Some images:

sheri isadora

 

in go

to the aperture

Karen Nelson’s “Tune a Banana” Workshop

Karen Nelson came to the Bay Area March 2011. It was a wonderful immersion; we lived in the embodiment of CI into Material for the Spine rolls into her unique sensation and design that is Tuning. You can really see the practice in the forms thru our actions in the image space- that clarity that comes from the specificities of rolling with Steve’s “perfect forms”. On the second day, we ended up in a run that had a delightful score;  it had an accumulation from a solo who called “begin” into a pause – an invocation for the next to enter in….  Here are some of the pics from that finale:

pics by the group

must tune again.

Tuning Lab 2010

Ray Chung and I put together a tuning lab for the month of November in the Bay Area. It was great to have the opportunity to work consistently with a group of core people, to get into the scores in an introductory kind of way, to feel the time-sense of tuning and to work with the single image score as a trajectory. It’s a good part of the process of building the ground here and having a way to practice tuning at home. I took some pics the last night, which was an intimate group of Jai, Abby, Mara, and myself. It cut close enough to holidays and flu season that we were 4. Our work was its own kind of culmination.

Something about being behind the lens; I literally am moved to make an image from the view of the viewer. My own motion and framing are elements of my trace in the image.

Indeed, new language develops, even that which is nascent. In the end of our final lab, I was invited to mention some other ways we could be working, and we took the bite and closed our eyes and said “go” – the world opened up.

MPLS Tuning Hardcore

Minneapolis, September 2010. KVL presents. Photographic images are so selective. They require the recognition and desire to pick up the camera, the camera being readily available. They show an individual’s momentary eye, and possibly the whole organization and flight. These images invite so many more moments: duets, the soft skin of partners, of the roughness of the brick walls, days of working, the development of our scores. These pics are a small offering to jog the sensorial in a project – enter into the movement, bring on the deluge.

We were delving into what it means to make a phrase from the multisense, using solo propositions, replays, holding back on the calls over and over, working with “phase” and “phrase.” We discovered a “resituate” call after the solo situates itself in a single image, before the the mover calls begin as a way to show the communally-observed image space. Found the desire to remove it once shown, then to remove it altogether. Pairing down. Little by little the tuning grew. A big hearty group in the middle of the country – the generosity of an independent dance scene felt in the daily practice.           -mg

solo replays:

calling “phase”:

on break:

In the replay of Morgan and Chris’ memorable duet:

Final Evening. As I recall, this below was a version of solo replay wherein once the solo was established, an individual could enter to make a duet, after which “end” would be called. I entered with the camera… then later came a replay, or was it a replace, where Tristan decided to remain in the image? The simplicity of the initial proposition, after the wild physicality of a hair duet with Robert dancing, perched above on a radiator:

September Tuning HardCore Participants:

Arwen Wilder

Chris Schlichting

Cindy Stevens

Deborah Jinza Thayer

Hannah Kramer

Jeffry Lusiak

Jen Johanneson

Jennifer Arave

Justin Jones

Karen Sherman

Kristin Van Loon

Margit Galanter

Megan Mayer

Melissa Birch

Molly Van Avery

Monica Thomas

Morgan Thorson

Robert Haarman

Sam Johnson

Sarah Jacobs

Sophia Rog

Taja Will

Tara King

Theresa Madaus

Tristan Koepke