10.17.11


"I have a dream about you and me..."


So goes the first line of text in Reves, the collaboration with Rebeca Medina and Carolina Van Eps.  After playing them a song I had written, Carolina misquoted the lyrics and began improvising with this simple, banal phrase.  Of her  affected pronounciation I was fixated.  I have often considered some of my post-academic song writing as "post-ironic."  I know that in my work I have been striving for the right representation of this idea.  Could this foreigner, in her total ignorance of language cliches be the answer to my prayers?   I remember the first time I talked to Lindsay Clark about my work.  "I use singing," I said.  She said, "me too."  And I said, "No, but I use it... like, un-ironically."  In a generation so influenced this now cliche'd ironic singing-of-the-pop song, I feel frustrated with this stale representation of our secular spirituality.  But wait, listen. I'm not talking about a return to blind earnestness.  I'm talking about a self-awareness about the implicit conflict present in irony.

In a biography I am reading about Sondheim, I found a criticism of his earlier work in a review by Clive Barnes: "A non-hit parade of pastiche that trades on camp."  I have always connected deeply to the work of Sondheim, recognizing in his work a deep reverence for the power of a form, and an avant-garde approach that would distance the viewer from the immediacy of the impact, only to create something much, much, more powerful as a conceptual work.

So, here's to post-irony.

But back to Rebeca, and to Bogota.  Our daily conversations have been food for thought in so many ways.  This experience has taught me so much about what I crave in a dance practice, and has allowed me to contrast my experience as a dance maker in NY with what I observe here.  We discussed the state of academia in relation to art-making, writing and doing, critique (and lack of constructive critique), and embodiment.  More thoughts to come... for now, Rebeca and I (above), with a dream about "you and me."

un abrazo.
Tatyana