Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes from a Choreographer

by Liz Lerman

dance is a birthright;

I wanted to live in a non-hierarchical world.

take the long highway between the sometimes opposing forces,

“Art in general, dance in particular, is too powerful to keep in the hands of only a few.”

not knowing is fuel for the imagination rather than fuel for humiliation. There is nothing to hide.

to make change at all, you first have to notice what is going on around you or inside you.

“turn discomfort into inquiry”

Inquiry became liberating.

Often you will throw out the plans, but not the thinking.

You will speak your mind. You will be delighted by your condition and exasperated by the responsibility. Real Work, Real Reward.

the more I think I understand, the more mysterious the road in front of me becomes.

“We birth the babies, we change the tires”

I didn’t need to know the ending before getting started at the beginning. This is a great life lesson.

What do we do if a defendant is found not guilty? Do we conclude then that an atrocity has not happened?

I Met a Physicist Once I met a physicist who said to me, “The world exists so that I can do my math.” I thought about that for a split second and then said, “You mean the world exists so I can make my dances?” He grinned and said, “Why not?” Actually I think the dances exist so that I can live in the world.

The kids were doing what human beings do when they want to understand something. They were putting the experience in their bodies.

the movement itself might be enough,

being literal is not the problem. Pretending and redundancy are the problems.

often abstraction can only emerge after a long and sometimes torturous route involving many attempts at specificity and much grappling with idea, subject matter, meaning, and legibility. Abstraction is a hard-won skill.

In site-specific choreography, the audience is not just observing the dance, they are the dance.

Sometimes we are drawn not to a site as an attraction, but to a site for what it means to us.

Where in the room do you feel safe? Go there. Where in the room do you feel most prayerful? Go there. Where in the room do you feel holy? Or what part of this space do you think is most holy? Go there. Where do you think paradise is? Go there.

When asked about a holy spot, they moved closer to each other. When I asked about paradise, they went to find their mates and family members, and there was a lot of kissing and holding of one another.

“You might have trouble describing what happened to you tonight. Just because you can’t describe it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

I continue to change things until the piece is put away. And I’m usually ready to put it away as soon as I have no more changes to make.

Shape-shifting and reinvention are daily activities.

“You get work because you are a good talker,” and I said, “Well actually, no; I get work because I am a good listener.”

So how do I structure work, and why do I consider structure my lifelong companion? Structure is for me the heart of dialogue and dialogue is a source of inspiration. It begins as internal conversation between me and the subject matter.

Structure is the edge against which everything pushes, the wall which allows for a full body press between ideas and the word “no.”

Structure is the shell

the strange and mysterious voyage that requires leaving the body as a principal tool of negotiating and taking up sight, mind, and giving direction.

Shape shifting/transition ---> resurrection and rough drafts (Bachelard)

the tiny tragedies of our personal histories and the larger tragedies of some of our best intentions as a society merge

This is a clear case of the structure forming the pathways or walls of the journey forward. As I build a dance

The shell builds itself

can’t always know it will be there in advance. It just shows up one day if I wait long enough.

structure is my domain, my business. I can wait or I can hunt. I can impose or I can meander. I can greet it as my guide, my muse, or my torturer.

Why do people think that as soon as there is subject matter there must be a message?

one of the most significant notions in art and community is that we can use artistic process to help us understand and negotiate issues in our lives.

it has value even though it is hard to measure.