2/5/21 FFTF Transcript

Megan: So here we are, Megan and Peter... Fidget co-directors, and we are talking about a work that we created in 2005 and 2006 called The Fold. Which was a solo dance piece that I choreographed and performed, and Peter you did the music and the video design... and we posted an excerpt of this piece from our performance in Berlin in 2006 at a space called Dock Elf, or Dock 11, in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. But anyway so yeah, so we're just having a little brief conversation about what we just watched. So what struck you Peter, about seeing that excerpt of a piece we did more than 10 years ago?

Peter: What struck me about that is… that that piece is like really very narrative, you know? 

Megan: That’s exactly what I was thinking about when we were watching it!

Peter: And its narrative in a lot of ways and we had such a backstory for that story, that piece, because it was this whole sci-fi scenario and... everything that happens to this solo character is part of that story from the beginning. And this section of the piece in a way is both the abstract and the most narrative.

Megan: So what is going on in the narrative for you? Because honestly I don't... of course I remember that it's about this solo character, this woman, who's kind of dislocated in time and she is slipping back and forth between the Baroque and the kind of like near future, maybe like a century, future from now, or something…

Peter: Right, cause we were doing a lot of talking at the time about how the unitary sense of the subject was really falling apart as we get enmeshed in technology, particularly in artificial intelligence processes, and that this unitary subject sort of started, or first solidified, in what we now think of as the Baroque, and so that’s why we had framed it that way... And then on a more directly narrative level it was the idea that this woman was having some kind of crisis, she was losing her sense of self, and with that she was slipping back and forth in these timelines.

Megan: Yes. Yes, exactly, and just to unpack or translate what you started this statement with, the unitary subject is the idea of a single self that you kind of own or have authorship over. And so our thinking in The Fold was going deep into-- Well when did that idea of the sense of self start? And it was in the Baroque and that now, and imagined near future versions of now, is when the idea of the sense of self falls apart. 

(Pause with music from The Fold.)

Peter: There was lots of things happening with video processes, but that was the only time where there’s source from a camera, of you dancing. And so that also makes it stand out in a particular way. Like in a way it feels like other parts of the piece are sort of the presentation of the narrative of this character, but in this section it’s almost like you experience it from her falling apart experience... or from the point of view of something like an AI that's trying to make sense of her all the sudden nonsensical behavior falling out of its usual patterns.

Megan: Right and that sort of fragmented multiplied video projections are… sort of the device that's forwarding the narrative in that moment... I also… I really love the sound in the section where the video is kind of multiplied. I love all the whispering and sort of textural samples in that section…

Peter: Yeah I think that… and I'm trying to remember what the source was…

Megan: It was me whispering…

Peter: Yeah I know but-

Megan: What the text was? I know what the text was. The text was from the book…  the trilogy of novels that I was reading at the time that you got me when we started that project, called ‘The Baroque Cycle’, by my favorite author Neal Stephenson, who has come up in another Food For Thought Friday actually a few weeks ago. But yeah he has this fantastic trilogy, fictional sci-fi trilogy, that takes place in the Baroque, so it's using the Baroque Era as like this imagined sci-fi world... and that is where some of the text came from, and you recorded me whispering it.

Peter: Cool. And I know I broke it up enough so that it was mostly unintelligible, but there’s little bits that come through.

Megan: Yeah… Yes, and speaking of unintelligible, it was fun for me watching the movement… the choreography and the dancing. I’m really struck, I think I mentioned this to you last week when we were watching the whole piece, I was really struck by seeing some seeds of movement stuff that I was starting to work on then and that I'm still processing now... And then other very specific examples of things that I was doing then that I've let go, and that kind of just make me smile and think, ‘Oh yeah, that move.’ There was a couple of those that I recognized. So it's really interesting for me to see the movement and have this 15 years later perspective on myself as a mover and like how that feels very fragmented and layered and... constantly falling apart as it's being built, in this very tangible way, which has to do with my body and my physical experience... and how I literally inhabit the world. The shaking stuff... like I'm still doing a lot of that shaking stuff now, but in this piece it was really apparent to me how external the shaking was and like really coming from grappling with the costume and the panniers... whereas the stuff that I do now in my performance is much more like almost vibratory, like coming from the inside of my body. But, that reminds me we should also mention the costume, which is magnificent and glorious and was designed by Heidi Bar.

Peter: With the panniers.

Megan: And the panniers… well the panniers, which are the metal skirt piece, were designed by Heidi in collaboration with a metal artist Daniel Dolsef.

Peter: I think this section of the piece we used to call the panniers section.

Megan: That’s right. Cause it was really the time when I interacted the most with the panniers as an object and I was really stuck by that watching this too, is how much... I don't know, to me, I feel like the stuff that I'm most interested in seeing from that time period, from my own movement explorations, are the parts where I'm really grappling with an object that's kind of offering restrictions or parameters to my movement…

Peter: Well there you go, it's been nice talking.

Megan: It’s always nice talking, Peter, always a pleasure. 

3/19/21 FFTF Transcript

[About 10 seconds of intro music (Hildegard von Bingen- Canticles Of Ecstasy, Quia Ergo Femina Mortem Instruxit).]

Katherine: I guess I'm just curious about how the theme of the upcoming event, Equinox: A celebration of the Divine Feminine, relates to you specifically… specifically in your work as a dancer and/or choreographer... Or also, other artists that you've seen be in conversation with... with the idea of femininity or the divine feminine, that have been interesting to you.

Megan: Well... where to begin... For sure the concept of the divine feminine really shifted for me when I was dancing burlesque... [for] a very short amount of time in my career. But in the year 2006 I was a member of The Peek-a-Boo Revue, and it was a huge turning point for me as an artist because... doing burlesque allowed me to connect to a much more playful way of creating, and a much more playful and direct way of engaging with the audience, and... you know contrary to… maybe there's certain people who believe that burlesque or striptease is objectifying  to women or exploitative... To me, I really connected to the way that burlesque and striptease is empowering for women... and that there's this concept... in theory we talk about the male gaze and how in Burlesque there is a very direct confrontation with that style of looking, and the way that the performer looks back sort of invites... invites that, maybe, objectification but in a positive way and in a very empowering way... And then more recently in my work... very recently, especially with our current project The Alt.terre, I've been thinking more about ritual and sacred spaces... And so for me, the body, the physical body itself, whether feminine masculine it doesn't matter, just the concept of the biological body feels like a sacred site… 

When I was in high school we had these sex-ed classes and the teacher would always say, like- “Your body is your temple,” and a lot stuff… [laughs] a lot of stuff that I look back on now with suspicion because I think that at that point and the way that formulation was being used, was a very sex negative message... but I'm really... you know I feel like I'm sort of in this long arc going back to 2006 and doing burlesque dance, to like now and working on The Alt.terre, which is about you know, sacred spaces, and... we haven't used the word divine in that creative practice but for sure it's related to ritual and reverence… So these sort of longer arcs and cycles are connecting for me, that engage ideas around ritual and femininity and the body being a site to explore those concepts together and how they might weave together.

Katherine: Yeah. It’s interesting… ‘cause you're talking about how you engaged with the audience as a burlesque dancer or doing strip tease… and it feels like that is also... like that connects to me for stuff that you do in your work now, in your, you know what you might say is more like experimental or like postmodern. So I'm curious... do you feel like burlesque was the thing that turned you on to being like- “Oh, I'm going to explore my interaction with the audience,” and then also the eyes and the face, there's such an emphasis on that in your choreography... Or was that something that you were already interested in before you started doing burlesque and then... it carried through or?... 

Megan: That's such an interesting question and I actually have to admit I don't think I've really thought deeply about that lineage, but now that you ask... I mean I remember as a very young dancer dancing for GroupMotion and getting feedback from audience members specifically about my eyes, and how the audience felt like I was doing something in particular with my eyes that... One audience member in particular I remember saying that my eyes were shooting out into the audience, or something… [Both laugh.] And recently Sheila's Zagar reminded me of that because last year, well before the lockdown, she and I did a little bit of work together in the studio and she was specifically interested in the way I was working with my gaze, and she reminded me of that, she was like- “I remember you all that way back in GroupMotion days early 2000’s,” and noticing that I was doing something specifically with the vision... So then fast forward to 2006 and burlesque and... giving myself permission to have that more playful eye contact. With GroupMotion it was very old school modern, really almost like staring out into the audience and piercing the audience with my gaze, but then with burlesque it was much softer and more direct and more playful. And then... like I think I really learned a lot from Danielle Currica, Sophie Sucree... Just watching her do burlesque, like she has an amazing connection with the audience through her eyes and the way that she looks and invites look... So I think that that is something that I've always been interested in, and then burlesque sort of freed things up for me a bit in that area. And then after that, like working with Deborah Hay and you know other more postmodern [artists], helped me kind of, ground it more consciously in my more experimental practice.

[About 15 seconds of outro music, same music as the intro. (Hildegard von Bingen- Canticles Of Ecstasy, Quia Ergo Femina Mortem Instruxit).]