January 15, 2021
Megan Bridge and Katherine Desimine on A Steady Pulse
Megan and Katherine chat about Megan’s experience working with Lucinda Childs during “A Steady Pulse: Restaging Lucinda Childs, 1963–1978”, and how the process has impacted the work she’s made as a choreographer since the project.
*Link to interview with Megan Bridge and Josie Smith mentioned in the audio.
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Transcript:
Katherine: Hi, Katherine here! I'm one of Fidget’s administrative assistants and I'm usually the person that you hear chatting with Megan for our food for thought Friday posts and I'm here to give you a little context before you listen to this week's Food for Thought Friday. So back in 2013 Megan was part of a process called “A Steady Pulse: Restaging Lucinda Childs, 1963–1978”. Megan was one of a number of Philly dancers who learned and performed a number of works choreographed by Lucinda Childs. As part of that process Megan was interviewed by Josie Smith (we posted a clip of that interview yesterday.) So for this week's Food for Thought Friday, Megan and I re-watched that interview and then chatted about Megan's reflections on that process with Lucinda Childs, looking back at the project now, about 8 years later. If you want more info about “A Steady Pulse”, check out our Throwback Thursday post from yesterday. Ok. Here we go!
Megan: Cool that was fun to watch. I've only watched the very beginning of that… and it’s been a long time since I’ve watched the whole thing through, so it was interesting. I have a couple things... that it makes me think. Most immediately, I'm reminded again about the fact that working on that project with Lucinda Childs was a major turning point for me as a choreographer, because I formerly thought of myself as someone who... wasn't interested in minimalism or formalism or structure as much as I was interested in presence and expression and... juiciness and… weirdness and you know, content generally speaking and... what I was talking about in that video where Lucinda's work, her scores, are so precise and repetitive and... upon first encounter her work has this like ascetic-ness. But her personality within the work, for me as a participant, really changed the way I was able to embody it and understand how her work functions... And I think for me, as a choreographer it was the first time that I was really able to embrace formalism in a more deep way, in a more integral way, that made me realize how much of a formalist I already was, but wasn't able to see how that could merge with my interest in presence and more juicy, embodied kind of research. And I was at the same time or like around the similar time, you know I had had workshops of Deborah Hay on both ends of my work with Lucinda and so... that was where I was exploring some more of this expressive... and also my history with GroupMotion was where a lot of my more improvisational, expressive kind of proclivities were coming from. And so working with Lucinda and seeing her playfulness really helped me figure out how those things could co-exist.
I very much see working with Lucinda and Deborah Hay… as really important precursors for me in being able to make a piece like Dust, especially Lucinda... and also David Gordon [laugh]... But I really see a huge impact for myself by being able to work and study with those choreographers because... I wouldn't have been able to make a piece like Dust, like Dust has a lot of formalism and repetition and I made scores on spreadsheets and like really nerded out with making Dust... And it was like very spatially precise, like organized bodies in space and… all of that came right out of working with Lucinda.
Another huge thing that came out of me with the Lucinda process, that I kind of alluded to but didn't really go into much in that video, is how process based it is, and you would never think that. And maybe Lucinda herself wouldn't even claim that as an interest or a value, I don't know... because it is so kind of clean and finished and it's so organized and so structural but… what it does to the dancers when they're working on it is it instantly builds... or not instantly but over time over the working process, builds this community of deep trust, because it is so freaking scary to do these pieces, and you have to be at the right place at the right time. And you have to rely so much on others being at the right place at the right time, like I think I said in the video the thing about like… starting to understand the structure of the work from the inside and knowing... ‘Oh that person’s not supposed to be there, something must be wrong or I must be wrong’ and that there's this kind of relational knowing that gets built through the interactions of the community of dancers...
And this was kind of my first acknowledgement to myself… or like articulation or something for myself, of understanding how dance builds community and then that community, that shared culture that is created by the working process, becomes part of the piece, and the choreographer can choose to acknowledge that or not in the performance, but the residue of that community remains in the piece... And again you know if the choreographer chooses to play that up or acknowledge it then maybe that's more transparent to the audience. And to me I think the way that Lucinda’s work... I don't know, there's something about like the face of the dancers and the way that the dancers are present... or… their only choice in the moment, because their brain is so full and there's so many things that you're tracking when you're in those pieces… you don't have time to do anything extra with your face... it's all very very bare, and very human.