The Seattle Dance Map
The Seattle Dance Map was commissioned by Velocity in January 2013, and launches in an installation by Lexi Hamill at Next Fest NW 2013. The online Seattle Dance Map is a visual representation of where dance happens in Seattle. This version of the project represents the core of the dance community. In future versions we hope to include even more non-conventional spaces where dance occurs in this...
Do not imagine a pink elephant. Too late.
This piece is one in a series of critical, contextual essays by Christin Call in response to Seattle performances. Here she responds to Daniel Linehan’s guest artist residency and performance at Velocity in September 2013. Cartesian skepticism is a method of philosophical inquiry that was used by Descartes in his famous statement, “I think, therefore I am.” In order to arrive at this conviction, first Descartes began...
Gregory Maqoma: Moving History
My direct maternal ancestor Robert Cushman chartered the Mayflower. This is really cool from a historical perspective—and could be cool from a spiritual perspective, if it weren’t one of the many catalysts for the violent destruction of entire civilizations. Maybe it’s because of this that Gregory Maqoma’s story hit me so hard. Gregory Maqoma is the direct descendant of a Xhosa chief, also named Maqoma, who fought...
Reflections on a conversation with A K Mimi Allin and The Hunger of the Artist
This post is Emily’s response to A K Mimi Allin’s project hunger. Learn more about hunger here: thehungeroftheartist.blogspot.com I am late for my meeting with Mimi Allin at Café Fiori in Ballard. I arrived at the café early as I want to read and have a snack and some coffee. I don’t want to eat in front of Mimi. I want to respect her process and not tempt her by eating...
hunger
This poem arises from A K Mimi Allin’s project hunger. Learn more about hunger here: thehungeroftheartist.blogspot.com Photo of the artist performing hunger at the Nepo 5K Don’t Run 2013 by Kari Champoux. four weeks ago i began a work called hunger about being dead and coming to life again for this i fasted 14 days i took only water and salt then i opened myself to...
The thoughts you made me think: Post-Show Q+A with Daniel Linehan
Recorded on September 13, 2013 after Velocity Guest Artist Daniel Linehan’s performance of Not About Everything and The Karaoke Dialogues: Seattle Trial at Velocity Dance Center in Seattle, WA (September 12-14, 2013). This post-show conversation was part of the Velocity Open Forum: The Good Life, a week of supper clubs, book clubs, workshops + community conversations with a focus on ethics and sustainability, taking place alongside Linehan’s...
Chris Aiken’s Pedagogy of the Present
Henry Holmes responds to Chris Aiken’s intensive and Lightning Talk at Velocity’s 2013 Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI) Conventional wisdom accounts for kinesthesia–the body’s innate sense of its own form–by the geometrical measure of joints in space. As a rudimentary interpretation, we triangulate points in space (wrist, elbow, shoulder) and fill in the betweens by an intuition of our limbs’ dimensions. We are a sum of...
Beth Graczyk + Alice Gosti Interview Sara Shelton Mann
STANCE is delighted to share another artist2artist podcast, produced by Beth Graczyk. In Beth’s words: This is an interview with Sara Shelton Mann conducted by Alice Gosti and myself, Beth Graczyk. Sara taught an intensive during Velocity’s Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI) focusing on enlivening the body and its potential through multiple avenues of energy work. Utilizing Qigong, contact improvisation, imagery, biomechanics, bodywork and full-body dancing...
Being in the Room
Johanna Gilje responds to Shelly Senter’s intensive at Velocity’s 2013 Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI). There is no “self” without the “other”. We create each other. Performance is necessarily an act of collaboration: a complex communication between bodies in time and space. Isn’t this also the thing we call “Community”?, “Being together?” Or according to Heidegger’s poorly translated “Dasein”: “Being (together) in the world…ness”…? When I...
Buoyantly Encountered Issues at SFDI
This piece by Christin Call is in response to two workshops at Velocity’s 2013 Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI). Vanessa DeWolf’s Workshop: Unfortunately this happened in the darkness and was mostly lost Part 1 I had a knee named Neville, a cauliflower called Corrinda and the saliva of the sallyforth slurping up the difficulties that arise from the layering of experience as a practice, as a mode...
RE-POST: On Looking (Toward a Reboot)
This piece by Jeremy M. Barker first appeared on Velocity Creative Resident zoe | juniper’s No Ideas But in Things on August 20, 2013. No Ideas But in Things is zoe | juniper and embedded critic Jeremy M. Barker’s collaborative attempt to reconsider the process of making performance while creating their evening length work, BeginAgain, premiering at On the Boards in March 2014. Velocity presented zoe | juniper’s fourth chamber study...
Toward the Use of Hunger as a Control Mechanism for Dancers, Performers and Prisoners
According to Aristotle’s Physics, Zeno’s Dichotomy paradox states: “that which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.” In order to travel from point A to point B, you must travel half the distance between them. It follows that, halving the remaining distance, you then have to travel a quarter of the total distance, followed by an eighth, then a...