Last Free Group Dance (Friday afternoon)

Rob Dobson, Facilitator

Although I distinctly did not want to serve as a “presenter” at this Congress, I did agree to facilitate our final free group dance. In my thinking about it, I failed to remember that it would be preceded by our group evaluation of the Congress, so when it came time for my introductory comments, we had already been sitting on the floor of the smaller wooden-floored studio for at least a half hour, and I, for one, certainly felt the need to move. I suggested that we get up and close the curtains over the “Breaking News Gallery” taped to the mirrors and begin just moving and milling about while I talked a little bit. This is pretty much verbatim what I remember saying:

O.K. this is fine. Milling about. Milling’s good. I’m totally improv-ing this, so bear with me.
I’ve had the privilege of dancing with my colleague Jeff Pike at Harvard weekly for something like seven years now, and we’re always amazed that it doesn’t get boring! It’s always interesting, always fresh, always intriguing. And we keep growing in our sensitivity to each other and in our skill. I always wanted to believe this about this kind of dancing—that it could be constantly new and interesting—but now it has actually been proven to me. And I still think it’s an amazing thing.
Now you’re all standing around looking at me. This isn’t good. Keep moving!
I want to talk a little bit more about innovation. In one of the video interviews of Barbara Mettler late in her life—it might be Faces of Wisdom—someone asks her what she would like to be remembered for. She said, “Well, for many years I used to say ‘improvisation.’ But now lots of people are using improvisation in all kinds of ways. So now I think I would like to be remembered for innovation.” Yes, she said that.
I also like to think about the other use of the word improvise. What do we do in a pinch? We improvise. You’re cooking and you realize you’re out of some ingredient. So you’ll have to improvise. Say you don’t have a particular tool for some job you’re doing. Well, you’ll have to improvise. Today at noon it was raining when I needed to walk back from the dance building and I didn’t have my jacket or umbrella. I grabbed a big plastic bag and just draped it over my shoulders. It’s a frame of mind. It’s a way of life, right?
Barbara had to improvise many, many times in her life. She was forced to leave Mary Wigman because of the political situation in Germany with Hitler’s rapid and unexpected rise to power. She wasn’t ready to leave, but she had to. She landed in New York City in 1933 and had to dig in and start investigating the principles of movement all on her own. It was hard times, artistically and economically, just as it’s hard times now. But I remember that Barbara always said she felt that hard times were the best times for artists because that’s when you have to really go deep into the basics of your art and see if you can do without what you thought was essential.
What do you do when your huge, beautiful barn studio burns down almost immediately after completion, with your entire large collection of instruments? Well, you take a deep breath and head for the local hardware store and see what you can find to make some instruments out of. You thought you were going to have this fantastic indoor studio space to use, and you end up having to work outdoors for several years, and it changes your work entirely.
In fact, this approach to dance has always been about keeping it new. “Try standing up in some way you’ve never stood up before.” “See if you can move in some completely new ways.” It’s always been about exploring and keeping it fresh and interesting for ourselves.
O.K., so now it’s time for our last free group dance. It was a great opportunity for me this morning to observe that last dance facilitated by Yael on the theme of holding and letting go. The group really stuck with the theme! But it was a very tightly controlled theme. And it seems to me that what we need now is a totally free group dance. Do you agree? O.K.
As always, try to get the big picture, sensing it as a group dance. Keep your antennae way, way out.
And you know, this doesn’t have to be our best dance of the week. Or our biggest dance yet. It doesn’t have to go on forever and ever. It doesn’t have to be amazing and fabulous. It just has to be the right dance for right now. So let’s do it.

[This dance began out of individual movement in the smaller studio, growing into a very friendly feeling, smiling and bumping and laughing, evolving into a hysterically laughing group in the middle surrounded by a circumambulating finger-shaking ring of “Uh-oh!” and then eventually taking off into the larger studio, with two different camps arriving by different routes and reuniting, waving happily to each other. There were lots of other fairly energetic movement and sound themes that emerged, and the dance went on for perhaps 30 or 40 minutes altogether, ending with delicious total quiet as we all lay down together gradually and just listened to the quiet.]