sharon mussen

9 Jan, 2011

The Best Laid Plans…

2016-03-18T22:19:57-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater, Video|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |

A particularly challenging and fertile aspect of being a creator of experimental performance is that I often have to describe a project in detail many months or even years before I start on it. When working with 10 or more ensemble members and needing to plan out schedules and spaces that are accessible for dancing, instruments, wheelchairs, props, sets and more, I have to do a lot of advance planning. I joke often with my husband about how I have

9 Jan, 2011

Synchronicities

2016-03-18T22:19:45-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater, Video|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |

One of my favorite things about the creative process is synchronicity. I follow intuition above all else in my art making and find myself continually rewarded by the ways that relationships I never could have dreamed up appear all of a sudden. Until recently I was planning on making a piece called Don't Suck! Cycle II as part of a four month residency at CounterPULSE in San Francisco. The recent deaths of my close friend Sharon and my grandmother moved

12 Jan, 2011

Public Showings

2016-03-18T22:19:33-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |

We have our first work-in-progress showing for my CounterPULSE residency this coming Saturday, Jan. 15th. Even though we're still at the beginnings of our creation process, I'm very glad we have this showing to work towards. There are many reasons that I find public showings of performance works in progress useful. These include: --forcing us as artists to make some decisions about what we want to show --giving a deadline to a particular segment of our creation process --encouraging everyone

12 Feb, 2011

Birthing Pains

2016-03-18T22:19:07-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |

I see the creation of each art work as a kind of birth. There's both great connection and great pain in this process, and I often forget that the magnitude of how connecting a piece is directly relates to how painful its birth can be. Last week we tried out a structure for performing a lot of the most salient material we've been developing in our Friend project. It's a difficult feat to imagine how to collage together all the

13 Feb, 2011

This One’s For Friendship

2016-03-18T22:18:42-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |

One of the things that is shifting in me in response to the recent death of my friend Sharon Mussen is a re-prioritizing of friendship. I had a professor in grad school tell me once that I should never direct my friends in my projects--that the roles become too confusing. Even though I respect this professor very much, that advice somehow confirmed for me how much I operate from exactly the opposite view. I love creating experimental performance precisely because

13 Feb, 2011

2nd Work in Progress Showing

2016-03-18T22:18:25-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater, Video|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |

I was reminded yesterday of how helpful work in progress showings are. I often forget that this is an experimental form we're working in, and that experimental forms need actual experiments. While performances are experiments, they are high-pressure ones, and I learn as much, if not more from showings along the way. Here's some excerpts from ours yesterday:

14 Feb, 2011

Investigating Mysteries

2016-03-18T22:18:11-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |

I love mysteries. I love mystery novels and movies, and mysterious stories and myths. I love when spiritual teachers refer to the divine as the "Great Mystery." More and more these days I'm seeing my performance work as a series of mysteries I'm immersed in. Each new performance project at times seems like something I've conjured up with my collaborators, and at other times like something much bigger and mysterious that we are entering into. I much prefer the latter

3 Mar, 2011

Surprise Gifts

2016-03-18T22:17:32-07:00By |Categories: Archive, Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater, Video|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |

There always seems to be surprise gifts that come from creating a performance work--things that enhance my life and/or art making that I didn't expect to receive from the project. With the Friend project, a major gift has been a reminder about the joy of making stuff. By stuff I mean visual art (sculpture, collage, installation, etc.) This gift has come at me from two sources. My friend Sharon was a visual artist at heart, always making sculptures of various

25 Mar, 2011

Falling Apart / Piecing Myself Together

2016-03-18T22:17:21-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |

It's been longer than I would have liked since my last post. I'm in the final stages of "birthing" our Friend project, and these past few weeks have felt like the major hump to get over. As I catch up with myself and the work, I'll be posting some eclectic reflections from the adrenaline-fueled final phase of this particular creation process. Here is a post I started two weeks ago, when I felt right in the middle of the fire,

29 Mar, 2011

Showings, Feedback and Protecting Clarity

2016-03-18T22:16:59-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater, Video|Tags: , , , , , , , , |

The showings that Dandelion has been doing as part of our residency at CounterPULSE have taught me a lot. Here's an incomplete list of insights, reminders, clarifying moments that I've gathered so far from the three monthly public showings of our Friend project: 1. Public showings are crucial to the development of the kind of experimental performance we create. They force us to get things together on a deadline, to try them out and then to retreat and re-tool. There

30 Mar, 2011

Entering the Temple of Tech Week

2016-03-18T22:16:47-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater, Video|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |

I've come to love tech week--the week leading up to a performance run in which we have tech (technical) rehearsals, dress rehearsals and last minute scramblings to finish. I notice that during this time I am highly energized with a mix of anxiety, anticipation and joy. And I notice that the main thing that keeps me grounded is spending as much time as possible at the theater. I like to get to the place we're performing hours before each event,

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