Good Nature (Joy Dances)(Part 1)
What is needed in our chaotic world
I originally started writing this after I had returned from my week long Dance Base residency at Jupiter Artland in November 2021. It is a reflection on my practice as an artist in the context of our changing and challenging hurly burly world. It speaks of service and fun. It questions and challenges the status quo, including our arts world. This is part one of two.
GOOD NATURE (JOY DANCES) (2021)
on reflection Jupiter Artland Dance Base Space Nature Nurture Residency Kate E. Deeming
evolution….
I was speaking to a good friend about my work at Jupiter Artland in November 2021- a residency which resulted in a
Film Pentaptych I call ‘Good Nature’ (Joy Dances).
“It’s the perfect evolution of your work, Kate E.”, she remarked. Having been privy to my life and my artistic practice for decades, she has followed the seen and unseen, the formal and informal of my work. From my official Masters Training at the Royal Conservatoire, to my many many dozens of public ‘happenings’ staged before social media was on the scene as well as the ones that have circled the globe and back again.
The majority of my practice and work as an artist these past decades is not as the result of planning for ‘the perfect moment’ (or the funding) to stage an intervention or performance in some future time. Now is the moment that is perfect is you choose to see what it around you, in this way reinforcing what is possible even in the most challenging of circumstances. I am vested in supporting a joyful and loving world, reminding us all we have infinite power and miracles in ever cell of our being. It maintains a childlike curiosity and sense of can do, with (as time has passed) an awareness of what is needed at that time in broader context.
family….
This probably stems from my early childhood in a (non-professional) performance oriented family where shows would happen ‘just because’. These were not fancy (though often complicated and absurd lol), and drew inspiration from the moment, be it in family jokes, or a television show we were into. We had a walk in cupboard of costumes. Thanksgiving would be our most elaborate affair where one side of the family would spoof/celebrate the other side of the family. My memories of that time were of laughter, silliness, wigs and total all encompassing love. I was so lucky to have that.
It was this grounding that led me to start producing my own shows with my neighbours as a small child. At the time Philadelphia was experiencing great upheaval, with a corrupt police force and politicians- our neighbourhoods were starting to be unsafe as gangs were seeding. Because of this, my childhood play was mediated. I did not have freedom to ‘play out front’ as my family had in the generations before. My ancestors had migrated to the Roxborough/Manyunk neighbourhood a hundred years previous and were rooted in it’s tarmac and soil but things were changing rapidly. It was no longer safe for play in that way.
We didn’t have (much) tv then but we did have an enclosed back garden and long Philadelphia summers, so our theatricals staged by recruiting local children, and then inviting audiences (and charging admission) was a natural progression. And it was fun, I never thought about what was happening on the ‘other side’ I was too busy making stuff with my pals.
In a way this model of gathering and reinforcing social and familial bonds continues to resonate in my work.
Where formal and informal meet…
It is interesting to link this to the field work I did in India in 2007 (which was charted in my Herald blog ‘Notes of an Itinerant Artist’) as I put myself in situ with the Kahlbelia Tribe in Rajasthan to learn their dances and subsequently in Puri India learning Odissi Dance. I was curious to explore how mastery and community fit together as a way of understanding how to expand my professional practice in Scotland.
On reflection how these dances ‘work’ in these communities is more reflective of my early family experience then conventional performance practice or training. For sure there was an incredible discipline and beauty to the form (and formal aspects). That said, the local and family bonds, and the development of the form (over many hundreds of years) was in direct response to the building of relationships both in personal/familial, physical/geographic and spiritual (meaning beyond). We can see how this plays out both in the ritual dance in the temples (which are focal points locally) in Odissi to the kinds of costume used which lends practicality in the climate in Rajasthan. Whilst both forms have formalised over the years, they encouraged involvement no matter how messy it was (ie. me trying stuff out was celebrated and welcomed), the attempt to connect to the dance and the people sharing it was vital in strengthening relationships and building community.
Additionally in both dances there is a very strong sense of service. In Rajasthan the Kahlbelia tribe ‘were the internet before the internet’ and would travel from village to village sharing news, stories and entertainment. Odissi dance was learned and practiced in reverence to the gods, wherein the priestesses would perform their dances in temple with no audience save the gods, the sense of ‘how good’ one was came from an innate self awareness of if one was living one’s true potential in that moment. Was one trying her best? Who would do lesser when viewed by the great Creator of all?
Both these ideas of dance and performance are counter to how we place value and importance onto arts practices here in Scotland and indeed the Western World. Service and community are terms used in the context of performance practice to indicate something lesser than “real” performance. The idea of excellence strived for within, rather then an award given without, I have never heard spoken of in the arts world. Although populated with good people the model rewards selfishness and often leads to narcissism.
As I trained formally in performance through my undergraduate and graduate training as well as working professionally in conventional theatres in between I was always frustrated by how limited in scope it was. I always felt we were spinning our wheels to get people involved and interested in a way that was not useful. So many good and talented people misplaced in a structure that limited them and excluded so many more.
Despite words like ‘inclusivity’ being bandied about as a currency of welcome they rarely achieve their mark and instead encourage conformity within it’s strict definitions of who needs to be included which by it’s nature excludes those who are different.
Glasgow 2000…
When I moved to Glasgow in 2000 it was a thrilling place. So much performance, music and art was happening, and it seemed to be for everyone. Andy Arnold ran the clubs and theatre at The Arches and was always happy for me to ‘try stuff out’ at clubs. I’d rock up in costumes and weave my way through large club nights like ‘Colours’ or ‘Inside Out’ full of thousands of folks who probably had no interest in what was being presented on theatre stages. This was done without fanfare or expectations, it was a great space for play. Social media didn’t exist then so every happening, intervention, performance travelled by word of mouth or you’d just ‘find’ it. And when you would find it there would be such a vast array of people there, I loved it.
I met Karen Wood, then Artistic Director of Dance House, a keystone into the development of dance and performance here in Scotland, who also seamlessly nurtured and encouraged my practice, maintaining the thread to the professional world whilst I strived to root into the spaces I was. She also provided easy space for artists to ‘try stuff out’, whilst building a network of dance classes for ‘regular people’ to try out various dance forms.
In that time I was creating dozens of performance interventions seen by thousands and totally undocumented except by people’s imaginations. It had a kind of magic to it. It started a trail of chinese whispers, where *sometimes* the stories of my shenanigans would come back to me in inadvertent way. There was something precious and powerful in engaging with people’s lives in such a way, having an awareness of these invisible threads of connection.
For example I would wake up and think ‘I need to wear a pink ballgown and walk 9 miles down a commuter route’ or similar. I was interested in creating moments that were familiar but out of place. Then some days later I would hear from someone who had seen me and made up a story of why at 630 in the morning on a Tuesday a woman was walking down the road in a glamorous pink gown….
Waking up….
In 2002 I got a one way plane ticket to Prague and told myself ‘I am going to allow my artistic truth to manifest itself in my living’ (because they were the kind of pretentious statements my young artist self would make lol- now it’s just ‘let’s dance, laugh and have fun’). With fifty pounds in my pocket I rocked up and somehow managed to stretch it to a three month tour including six weeks in Prague, then Lorrach (Germany), Basel (Switzerland), and Bologna and Rome Italy.
I wandered the streets of Prague surrounded by the great statues of opera and literature, the fairy tale spires, and lots of teams of tourists taking pictures of these ‘official’ spaces. I observed they were not present instead living according to schedules and ‘things to see’.
One day I found myself in a shop surrounded by beautiful glass beads. I got the inclination to make a costume with these beads. In the end I established myself in the main public squares with reams of fabric, light framing me and jars of glass beads glittering in the sun. People would scan the environment and my presence would create a pause. Something familiar but out of place. And hundreds from many backgrounds and cultures came and sat and spoke with me. This was after 11 September. People felt very afraid to speak in that time. It was odd. There was something cathartic about working under the fear to find humanity and connection again. The costume was finished after six weeks and then I proceeded to create ‘secret dances’ in Prague and subsequent cities. I wanted people to catch flashes out of the corner of their eye, not like a performance but like resonances of what was before or maybe what was in their hearts.
Of course time marched on a social media came into the fore. And my practice evolved with that. And I did start to engage with that medium, as it was (and is) what is present. But I never lost site that whatever I made had to have it’s roots in the physical world that I occupied.
Stay tuned for Part Two “Lockdown & Children and Healing the Chaos Wrought”
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