It ain't easy what we have asked these performers to do each night. Loop Diver is not a pleasurable piece to perform. It is physically demanding, obliviously repetitive and (perhaps) emotionally numbing. I don't know what the physical or emotional sensations are but I know it's not "fun". I know it because I feel it from the performers when they are not performing. When they show up at the theater each day, I feel a kind of fatigue? Hesitance? Disappointment? Not sure exactly what – and this is not a critical statement just an observation. But I sense that it takes a very different kind of preparation to perform this work (one of the dancers told me so tonight). Another of the dancers asked me a few days ago what I thought this piece was about, for me. I told him that it was about my life. I said it in a kind of glib way and laughed and walked away. I laughed because it's scary for me. I realized a few days later that, while that answer is true, it is useless to the performers. They don't know my life really. So, to put it in a more universal frame, I told them tonight that the work is about " the emotional repercussions of being caught in a loop, a pattern, a cycle with the intention of transcendence". Transcendence can be escape, or acceptance. It can be resistance or comfort. It can be and already is, actually, a personal response by each performer to the imposition of the loop, pattern and cycle. So, while the imposition of the structure is me, the journey and response is theirs. And they are doing a PHENOMINAL job of embodying the subtle responses to this imposition as set upon them. Everyone that gives me feedback on this work talks about the performers and how committed and precise and intense and involved they are. I know this. I know that this work IS the performers. Their interpretation is what makes it powerful for me. And personal for me. Isn't that funny that a piece about my life can be so beautifully expressed by people who aren't me.

So, while we are still working to make the personal and the theatrical fit together, and work on details and intonation, I am deeply moved by these performers willingness to go through a not so pleasurable experience each night. Of course, I am making an assumption that it's not pleasurable. I may be wrong. I do hope there is a kind of pleasure in the process and discoveries that can be made on stage in the moment – an exquisite pain? And, I have to say it isn't easy for me either. Last night I had the sensation that I have seen the work too many times and have lost all connection to the decisions that were made along the way. That's normal. But, tonight I sat in a different place in the audience and was again refreshed. Phew.

Well, in closing I will say thank you JJ, Ben, Rob, Johanna, Lucia, Daniel for inhabiting my personal space and seeking to find the you in it. I will continue to help of course But you're doing a good job already. And it hasn't gone unnoticed.

Good night,
Dawn

Well, we have had three shows so far. Houses have been small but enthusiastic. I am now thinking about the benefits of feedback. Which are not always beneficial. I do want to hear what everyone has to say. But I have to remember that art is not made by committee or democracy. It has a a director (or three). So, I have to stay true to my beliefs about this work and not be too swayed by the whims of others. I have to wait for the body shift that tells me when a comment is in line with my feelings and direction and should be investigated and when it should be let go. When its about the taste of the individual saying it and doesn't actually resonate with what I think the direction of the piece is or should be. I guess all I am saying is that its hard to put it out there for judgment but I have asked for it, and so I need to be prepared to hear it. Most of the feedback has been positive and supportive of what we thought was visible in the piece - that's validating. Other feedback has been deeply insightful and needs a few days to process before addressing. Other feedback feels like its coming from personal taste and may not be relevant. Sifting through it all is important. I have to fight my desire to "please" everyone in the room.

A good, old friend of mine was at the show tonight and we talked a bit about a piece of his that he felt was destroyed by his trying to take in too much of the feedback that came to him. It is a fine line between valuable insight from fresh eyes and the personal style of individuals who are creators themselves who may be talking about the piece they would make. Anyway, I don't have anything to brilliant to say about this topic except that it's another challenging step in the process.

We had another dear, old friend in the audience tonight - Woody Vasulka. He always has provocative things to say. One thing he said (as an audience representative) was that we had presented him with a code that is an unbreakable code. And is that fair to do to an audience. To leave them hanging in this unsettling place of knowing there is a code that cannot be decoded. This I will ponder for a few days.

Peter, Mark and I have this feeling that the end of this version is actually the middle of the piece. Perhaps we are making a two hour long piece with an intermission. A first for us. We'll see.

Good night.
Dawn

Well, we made it to opening night, fatigued but intact. I think we've achieved much of what we set out to to do... and the performance went very well last night.

But, I'm posting here primarily to allow those who have seen the show to share their impressions, thoughts, comments, critiques. You can add these thoughts as comments to this blog.

We are all very curious to take in this information as we start changing the piece over the next three weeks. So if you have something to share, please let us know.

Best Wishes,
Mark

I need to say how I never cease to be amazed by the creative process. One starts somehwere and ends somwhere else. Archeology. You know what you are looking for, but you don't really know what it looks like unitl you see it. On July 23rd we all walked into the theater space with what seemed to be a kind of strait forward idea for a process and were taken into an unexpected labrinth with more personal emotional resonance then I had imagined. Tonight I reflect back on the past four weeks and see all the detours, insights, surprises, mistakes, tangents and know that even though it wasn't a strait line, it was a line that we stayed on and that has gotten us here - to the beginning of the end of the first intensive creative push towards the making of this new work.

I think we got to the end of the piece today. The end for the opening night performance anyway. I had such a sense of satisfaction after the full run in today's rehearsal. I knew it was right. This piece has come together in a kind of mysterious fashion. But, not mysterious in the sense that we all simply worked really hard to find it. The piece feels highly personal - you can ask me why when you see me in person. But, I am happpy about that.

I am so grateful for the creative people in the room with me. For the six dancers, who have suffered the rigor of learning loops from computers day in and day out, who shared their frustrations with some of our vagueness as we searched for the gems in this work and caused fruitful discussions that eventually lead to clarity.

For Peter, the dramaturge (AKA the enforcer) who has pushed me past my usual backing down places, my fear places, helped me to step up to the plate in my own quest for discovery and specificity.

For Mark, who needs to be there for me to feel confident in the work I am doing. And who took moments that I had made that were not quite there and got them there. And whose music and visuals still inspire me. A lot.

For the incredible team of interns who have taken so much of the "other" work required to pull off a performance (advertising, donation of goods and services, design work, wax paper screens, video taping, phone calls, emails, coffee, and on and on).

I know this sounds like a bit of a love fest - but the creative team talked often about how only you can be your own "loop diver" but that others provide the environment for you to do it, to take that risk. Others provided me with that environment, and I dived. Dove.

Excellent. I can go to sleep now.

Good night,
Dawn

So it's been nearly over two weeks since I've posted here... there's a lot to catch up on.

The previous two weeks were a big search for the right material. It was a bit like wandering in the desert... you're desperately thirsty, so you keep seeing mirages only to find out they are not real. This week was far more satisfying. Far fewer mirages, and a lot more water to drink. And the piece is now taking shape. Sometimes the wandering is frustrating. But the successes of this past week could not have happened without the previous missteps and wrong turns.

The artmaking process is an accumulation of failures and successes that lead to insight and provocative revelations. I am quite proud of Dawn and I for taking more risks in terms of being willing to take those wrong turns along the way. Peter, our dramaturg, has been absolutely crucial to our ability to take these risks. He never ceases to keep us on track and moving bravely forward, and has provided many important ideas of his own.

MOVEMENT
--------

For the dancers, the process of learning the looped material was both time consuming and tedious. And not all of them worked... it was interesting to see which movement material worked within the computer loops created in Isadora, and which didn't. In the end, it seems that the more "pedestrian" the movement, the more interesting the looped version; the more "dancey", the less well it worked. But, all theories of accumulation aside, I will say it was hard to drop a piece of material after one or more of the dancers had given so much energy to learning it.

Perhaps the most important development recently came from discussions between Peter and Dawn. There was a pattern of six positions and postures (ABCDEF) that the dancers move through at the beginning of the piece. Peter and Dawn decided that this structure would become the basis for the whole piece... that the movement through these positions would never stop -- from beginning to end. This was critical because it 1) again reinforced the notion of the loop/cycle/repetition, and 2) it supported the theme of violence, imposing a relentless and unforgiving structure upon the performers. It is also physically fatiguing, something that everyone watching will feel. But, for us as creators, it gave us a clear structure with which we could push/pull/struggle with as we brought other material to the piece. I offered to Dawn and Peter that it was much like an "ostinato bass" -- referring to the musical idea of a repeating bass line that goes throughout many baroque compositions. And it was upon this ostinato that we would build the remainder of the work.

At this point it was Dawn's job to implement the material that rode this wave, interjecting and disturbing the ever present ABCDEF pattern. It was upon this form that she began depositing the solo and duet material generated from the computer loops. This process is working... and continues now as we enter our final week of preparations for the first shows.

In addition to the movement material Dawn was creating, I directed several of the interns (most of whom have dance training) do quite small movements or very particular gestures. Several of these were successful, and allowed us to create some small "atomic units", little non-sequiturs that could be dropped in at various locations in the structure. These are like little filigrees, tiny details that can enrich the material and fill it out as needed.

THEATER
--------

Another thread that we have followed was working intensively with our performers on the Scott Kelman techniques mentioned in a previous blog. This mostly has focused on the "raps", the improvisational speaking technique. In addition to daily exercises, we had the performers do two long raps; one that was twenty minutes, and another that was a full hour. Both were videotaped, allowing Dawn and Peter to review the material and pick out the most compelling phrases and other bits of text.

Peter in particular did an enormous amount of work, transcribing all of the spoken text from the twenty minutes raps (120 minutes total). From this we culled little chunks that the performers could speak.

What is interesting about the "rap" technique is that it becomes a method to access the sub-conscious... after a certain amount of time improvising, you can no longer edit yourself.. and the ideas and inner thoughts begin to pour out. Upon reviewing the tapes, we found there was a lot of material about control and repression. Clearly this was a deep reaction by the dancers to the rather vicious process of learning the loops... but, it was also totally germane to the theme of the piece.

An example:

"in a lake… a numb cage… filled with unnecessary birds… redundant… their blinking eyes… watching me… forcing an image… crashing into yesterday… dragged back… blinking eyes… the life in me… continuously… reducing… "

Then we began attempts to integrate this into the work. At first we had the performers dancing and speaking... but it was instantly clear that this was not the right road to follow. It is has been done so often, that it feels like a always seems to feel like a cliché. We struggled with various modes of presenting the text, trying various combinations of the ABCDEF pattern and speaking... and basically nothing hit the mark.

But then I had an inspiration. One of the points on the ABCDEF pattern is a position where they sit in the chairs along with the audience. (Each half of the audience is positioned on opposite sides of the stage looking at each other, sort of like at a stadium or football match.) I directed the dancers to create a very complicated process of adjusting their microphones (each on a stand with a boom attachment). Then they read their text, performed a retrograde of the stand adjustment, and then stood up and did a miniature ABCDEF standing in front of their chairs. What was more of a dance form became much closer to a pure theater form, with a movement bit inserted to maintain the ABCDEF ostinato. And it was in this moment that the whole thing came totally to life.

One problem remained... the text itself. It was wordy and long. So quickly made a rough distillation of this into a much smaller text, an example of which is given above. Now the words could be read much more slowly, and the whole thing fell completely into place. It totally worked... and once we'd gotten there, we all knew it instantly. Phew!

MEDIA
-----

At this point, the media for Loop Diver is quite simple. A series of images projected on three screens. Finding the content that matched the theme had been an issue since the moment we devised it. But one our interns, Adrian Hart, did some incredible research into abandoned buildings in and around New York City, and eventually made an amazing find: the Kings Park Psychiatric Hospital in Long Island, about two hours train ride from Manhattan. (You can see images at http://www.opacity.us/site3_kings_park_psychiatric_center.htm)
As it turns out, it is quite a popular destination for "Urban Explorers", and you can find loads of images and video clips showing this rather amazing place. Once I saw these images, I became obsessed with gathering my own material from this site.

With our chief intern Jennifer, I set out to get these video tapes. This adventure deserves a blog of its own, but suffice to say that the huge amount of urban exploration there, along with buildings that are literally falling apart, had led to the place becoming far more sealed up than it seemingly was in the past. Nevertheless, Jennifer and I got into some pretty intense places, and shot about 45 minutes of material. I've uploaded a short clip of this to our YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/troikaranch and you can see documentation of me videotaping in the Pictures section of here on myspace (see http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=217642384&albumID=265546&imageID=4078593) Unfortunately, I was not able to get one key image: walking down one of the numerous a long hallways shown in the photos mentioned above. But, I am in contact with one of the urban explorers whose video material is on the web, and I am hopeful I will get this from her, as she's agreed to let the video be used in the piece.

The environs of these images create an incredible sense of "place"; and because of their decrepitude, it strongly implies that this is the place where the violence occurred.

So these were added along to the images I already had developed. Specifically, there are three "worlds" I'd created. The first uses combination of video effects in Isadora to create ghostly versions of the looped material of the dancers' solos. The lovely thing about this patch is that whenever you reach an edit point in the loop, you see a visible "flash" which emphasizes it. The second was of extreme close ups of various body parts, their gigantic scale turning them into landscapes and towers. And finally, an image of myself, nude and suspended from the grid of the theater. In this clip, I gyrate wildly while "rapping". I find the looped version of this material extremely disturbing. (The latter two I considered to be the same "group", as they were both of the body.)

So, I came to some conclusions about how to organize the material into a kind of journey:

Place -> Ghostly Place -> Ghostly Bodies -> Close Up Body Parts -> Real Body

For the "Ghostly Place" video, I simply applied the "ghosting" effect previously applied to the bodies to the videos of Kings Park. The gyrating body forms the terminus of this, because it is so disturbing.

Let me interject here that this issue of the notion of the "disturbing" has been on my mind lately. So many recent dance and technology pieces I've seen are full of "beautiful" imagery... and by that I mean computer generated imagery that has little emotional impact, because it is often simply abstract forms. I have a theory that the only time we can feel truly disturbed is when a human body is attacked, maimed or killed. (It can work with animals too, but mostly because we've anthropomorphized them.) Sitting here at the 3LD Theater -- a scant two blocks from "ground zero" -- I'm inspired to say that if the World Trade Center Towers had been empty on September 11th, it wouldn't have meant much that the buildings fell. We naturally empathized with the horrible moment of death for those victims... and multiplied that feeling by 3000 as the towers fell to the ground.

So I have a plan, and have already implemented about 25 minutes or so of stuff that works. But I have a lot of work to do this week. ;-)

One concern of mine. At this point, there is no interactivity in the work per se. Of course, this is Troika Ranch's calling card, and so I put some internal pressure on myself to make sure it is present in every piece. Furthermore, I had come into the process with some very beautiful interactive graphics that I planned to use. These were similar to those seen in 16 [R]evolutions, but go much further in their sophistication. Yet, as much as I try, I cannot see a place for these graphics in the piece. The are beautiful -- not a place of violence. Peter and I theorized about these images, in that they move for a long time after being disturbed, and that this represented the echoes one feels after a violent event. But it just didn't "cut the mustard" as we say here in America, because they are beautiful, not disturbing.

I worry that somehow, with the very serious nature of this piece, that these kinds of interactive techniques might feel a bit like a joke. While I remain convinced of the importance of interaction, that it is meaningful for the dancers to use their instincts to change the timing and dynamics of the music. But I just don't know what it means in this piece yet... finding the right imagery and the music seems far more critical to me now than attempting to force the issue.
The one clear metaphor for interaction in this work is that, at some point, the people in this imaginary world reject the imposition of the loop (i.e., reject the violence) and push out against it. For them to start controlling the media could be a clear indication of this. But that moment has not come... yet.

I try to remember that we have two years before the premiere of this work, that this is the first pass. We have months of residency time at the Lied Center in Nebraska with our partners there, and focusing on the interactive technology is a big part of that research. The answers to the question about the interaction will probably just have to come later.

OK -- that's probably more writing than allowed in the blogosphere. But I had nearly three weeks of experiences to recount, so if you made it this far, thanks for being a trooper.

More to come...
Mark

Doug Fox of GreatDance.com asks me to clarify some specific techniques and approaches we are using regarding the loop structures in "Loop Diver". These are the questions he asked:

• Q1: "how does a computer lock performers into a "strict rational pattern"? How do performers than "shatter the loops' structure?"

•  Q2: "What specifically is this module created with Isadora [that creates the loops]? What do these loops look like? What would be two or three examples of a 'rich and complicated loop structure'?"

•  Q3: "What does it mean to 'impose the looping structure using Isadora'"?

•  Q4: "What exactly is a 'shifting loop'?"

•  Q5 "What does it mean for dancers to learn material from 'looped videos'?"

Here are my answers... not necessarily in the order of the question asked.

The module I have created in Isadora is called Movie Player++ -- it is not available to the public, as I have created this module specifically for use in our private creative practice. That being said, you can create several types of loops. It's a bit difficult to explain without showing an example, but I will do my best to do so here.

Let's create an imaginary bit of material:

A B C D E F G H I J K

We could say that each letter represents a 1/4 of a second of video.

A "standard" loop might look like this:

A B C A B C A B C A B C

That would be the first 3/4 of second, repeating for a total of four times. This is the loop with which we are all pretty familiar by now. Of course it could be any duration, and any number of repatitions, but here I chose to play the first.0.75 seconds four times in a row.

A shifting loop might look like this:

A B C B C D C D E D E F E F G

As you can see, the start time of the loop shifts later in time by 1/4 of a second on each iteration. In this case the loop shift is positive; it could also have been negative, shifting to earlier moments in the clip.

A growing loop might look like this

A B C A B C D A B C D E A B C D E F

Now the loop start is fixed, but the duration is growing by one unit per repetition. The duration shift could also be negative.

You also have the option to palindrome the loop, i.e., to move forward then backward back to the start point. So the first loop I described, when "palindromed", would become

A B C B A B C B A

So, these are some of the basic options. You may also simply jump to any other portion of the clip at any time, and may play back each loop step at any rate you desire (forward, slow motion, fast forward, etc.) An advanced feature is to take any number of "loop steps" (the examples above would all define one "loop step") and repeat them any number of times. It is also worth noting that the sound associated with the clip is looped in exactly the same rhthym -- this has become very important to me as I develop the musical materials for the piece.

So, when you start accumulating various loops, one after the other (ones that are "standard", ones that shift their start time, their duration, or both). The patterns of video playback that result can get very complicated very quickly. They define highly rhythmic patterns whose structure would be quite difficult to define with any form of traditional notation. (I.e., trying to write the rhythm of these loops in traditional music notation would be an exercise in frustration for growing loops that start with a duration of 0.05 seconds and grow to 2.0 seconds over 400 repeats -- something that has actually been done when creating "Loop Diver".)

It is possible to take a digital video recording of a movement phrase, and to create a new phrase using the looping techniques described above. And while I said "strict rational patterns", perhaps the word rational is not correct. It has been interesting to watch the improvisational ways that Dawn and the performers have used their choreographic instincts to develop the looped structures in Isadora. Furthermore, changing the tiniest parameter in an one loop step has an incredible ripple effect, completely changing how the rest of the loop structure looks, because the start time of subsequent loops steps change. The results here can often be highly irrational and provide unexpected (though sometimes lovely) results. I see this inability to precisely predict outcomes as a big plus when making an artwork with a computer.

So, this is what Dawn Stoppiello, my collaborator, and the dancers also, have done for the past two weeks -- they use Isadora to create these looped versions of video recordings of themselves dancing.

Now I can finally answer question 1 about the computer "locking" the performers into the loop structures. In our current approach (which is changing and evolving daily) the dancers take the looped videos and proceed to learn them, as perfectly and precisely as they possible. This is a very demanding process, both physically and mentally. But the looped structures created choreographic results that just simply would not come naturally out of a choreographer's body -- and that is precisely what interests us.

Furthermore, some loops, like the simple "ABC ABC" have impossible moments in them, namely the jump cut that occurs when moving from C to A. The performers cannot possibly move their body from one position to another in zero time -- but this has become a key point of investigation in the piece. Even if their body cannot make this move, can they psychologically "embody the edit" in their mind? And if so, is this something that affects the movement quality? Can the snaps of the edit be "morphed" -- sometimes soft, and sometimes harsh? What does this allow us to see? (Now these are somewhat intellectual questions -- but by asking them, and asking the dancers to explore them, we come to emotional responses -- and this is how the emotional qualities of the piece are being discovered.)

Seeing the performer's attempts to recreate these impossible moments was the source of the theme of the piece -- in my blog on MySpace I discuss that forcing them to perform the "impossible move" is a form of violence perpetrated upon the natural, organic movement of the body. And this is why the theme of violence emerged as our central idea for Loop Divers over the past days. This line of flight has led to a completely different inquiry about the psychological implications of what we intend to show, and the meaning of the piece as a whole.

As to how the dancers will "shatter the loop structure" -- this is a question we have not answered as of yet. We are still quite involved with our looping games... including how one "looper" may catch a "virus" from another, adopting movement elements or rhythms from another performer's loop. But, as I said in my blog about the theme of the piece, we _have_ become clear one fact: there is only one person who can make the decision to end the loop of violence within which he or she is trapped, namely, the person against whom the violence was perpetrated. How this decision will play out in the dramaturgy of the actual performance is a major question we will be considering as we continue our process.

So, I hope that makes things a bit clearer. We do plan to post more looped source material soon.. it's just that it's been a hectic few days as we have made all of these discoveries!

Till Next Time,
Mark

We've been struggling with the theme of Loop Diver this past week, as some clarity on this topic will be important as we head into the third week of development. So get a cup of coffee and relax... this is going to be long entry.

Dawn and I decided some time ago that we wanted to discard our previous process of coming up with a single word as a starting point for piece. We have often in the past used this word to develop narrative notions about the work prior to the material being made -- as a kind of guide. For Loop Diver we wanted to work differently.... to start making the material and then to let it tell us what the theme might be. And, specifically, to avoid the narrative arcs we had embraced previously.

Peter, our dramaturg, has been tremendously helpful in this regard. He has helped Dawn and I look at the material in provocative ways. But I must also mention the importance of the performers here... they are the ones "in the loop" as it were, and as such feel it from the inside. They have provided invaluable insights into what it means to be inside this world.

In any case, the key theme that Peter, Dawn and I have identified is one of violence. This primarily came out of watching the dancers attempt to learn the movement material from the looped videos. The imposition of the relentless and inorganic loops of the computer onto the bodies of the performers struck us as a kind of violence. We were forcing them to move in impossible ways... the mental fatigue that we witnessed in them as the attempted to perfect this material seemed almost like a kind of artistic torture. (Well, OK, that's a bit strong... but it was a word we used... perhaps we are entering some version of Artaud's Theater of Cruelty specifically in reference to the performers?)

Peter and I then had a very important discussion, where he explained specifically what he meant by theme -- really it came down to defining a guiding principle by which we could determine the organization, inclusion, and quality of all the materials in a piece. While I suppose I should have understood this already, I think the new angle for me was that a clearly stated theme is _not_ a narrative idea. It is simply a statement that allows you to move towards a coherent presentation of the materials. Lack of coherency has often been one of the criticisms of Dawn and my work, so his guidance in this area is quite welcome.

Our specific look at violence has to do with the resonance, i.e. the ongoing reverberation inside a person resulting from the pertubation of a violent event. Starting with an image of a person who is psychologically balanced, we imagined the imposition of a violent event. We broke this down into two basic categories: the first is an intentional act, i.e., a physical or psychological attack (the key word here being _intentional_, there is a perpetrator in this situation) or a random violent event. (The Minneapolis bridge collapse last week being an apt example; five people's father/mother/wife/husband died because of a force that "came out of no where".) In either case, those experiencing the psychological trauma will be thrown out of balance and then begin a process in which they attempt to regain equilibrium (or as Peter referred to it, a "fantasy of equilibrium"); some will succeed in this process, but others won't. But in every case, the impact of violence is always there -- this is the inescapable resonance of the event.

The dancers noted that we often associate repetitive small movements with those who are unstable or mentally challenged. (I.e., the repeated rocking motion of an autistic.) We also took note of the fact that for someone who is facing deep sorrow, for one person to hold them and rock them is a natural, physical instinct. We inferred that these physical "loops" provide a place of comfort, or at least repose, from the trauma.

Furthermore, for those who don't succeed in rebalancing themselves, there is the possibility that the violence they took in will be passed on to those near to them. This is often seen in cases of sexual abuse, where the initial violent act is then is passed from one generation to the next; another kind of repetition or "loop". This "viral violence" made the meaning of one of Dawn's exercises totally clear: in her "Viral Appropriation" exercise, several dancers attempt to improvisationally capture, embody, and perfectly replicate the highly structured and looped movement of one performer. In addition, I have created several visual systems based on physical modeling of the real world. In these systems, a single pertubation will begin a series of movements that will last a very long time. I was afraid these visuals, which I find quite beautiful, would not fit into Loop Diver. But I know wonder if perhaps they are a metaphor for the lingering resonance of the violent act.

But, the key insight for us was that the "Loop Diver", which we originally imagined as an external person or force that "rescued" the performers from the loops presented onstage, must be dramaturgically considered and dramatically presented internal force only. While one might provide a safe or supportive environment to another who has experienced a deep psychological trauma, the only person who can actualize a break in the pattern of trauma is the one who experienced it. Understanding this marked a major shift in the meaning of the work's title, and how it will be embodied in the performance.

There is more... as the discussion yesterday with the entire group went on for almost two hours. But I think the ending point I will offer today is this, given that one is locked into a loop, there are three choices:

- To Move Inward
- To Maintain
- To Escape

These three statements have clear thematic meaning, but also may serve as guides for creating and realizing movement choices. I think that using these statements both thematically and structurally will provide a rich and powerful source of guidance as we continue creating this work.

One last thought: it also became clear to me that this thematic "line of flight" is going to have tremendous impact on our upcoming residency at the Lied Center for the Performing Arts at the Univ. of Nebraska at Lincoln. One of our on-campus partners is the Madonna Rehabilitation Center, one of the top hospitals for those having suffered serious lower brain stem injuries. Obviously the physical trauma these patients have experienced carries with it an equally powerful emotional trauma. Meeting these patients, seeing their "loops" and their attempts to free themselves from them, will be an incredible new source of information as we continue the development of Loop Diver later this fall.

Whew... that _was_ a lot. As always, more to come.

Mark

Today was a more reflective day. The heat is difficult to deal with and it was time to do some internal work on all of the discussions and realizations we've had on the psychological side of looping. After warm-up I had the dancers do a half-hour improvisation on the "internalized" loop. Being in the state and worrying less about the physical and more about the psychological. To be listening to what goes on in your mind when you loop and whatever else comes up in the minds and bodies of these dancers. Then they wrote about the experience. Then they each, one at a time, went into a small room and rapped alone for 20 minutes, reflecting and "yielding with strength" on the impressions they had written from the mornings improv). A rap is an improvised way of speaking continuously without stopping. There are some techniques that allow you to keep going, such as become the thing you are talking about, speed up, slow down, break the linear line to get away from the "responsibility" of telling an interesting story, and so on. I have not looked at these video taped raps yet, but plan to tonight.

But, last night I was thinking about part of the discussion from yesterday that centered around virtuosity. There is a kind of virtuosity that is required to achieve these loops and loop states that we are engaged in.

The virtuosity will be visible in Precision, Sensitivity and Quality.

Here are some initial thoughts on that:

Kinds of loops (any of these can be combined):
Palindrome or Edit
Forward or Backward Movement
Growing, Shrinking or Shifting Loops

The Edit: Achieving a true edit requires no acceleration or deceleration on the part of the body. This is humanly impossible. But the act of striving for it is fantastic.

Molecular Pauses: It seems there is a need to exaggerate the ends and beginnings of each looped moment to create the illusion that one is actually looping. This requires what I call a molecular pause. It's tiny but perceivable. All body functions stop momentarily. What's really nice is when this can happen but the breath remains and one doesn't "robot out". Practice. Practice. Practice.

Backwarding: Creating the look of moving backward by identifying the initiations of movements when they are performed backward by the computer. We humans move backward in a way that can look forward. The goal is to initiate backward.

Greater then real-time speed shifts: Moving at speeds that are humanly impossible and changing speeds instantly. How does one know when one is moving "fast" or "slow" or "slower" in the way that a computer knows that .5 is half of the original speed at which the movement was recorded. And what speed was that exactly?

Becoming Video: Moving and feeling like video looks. Enough said.

The Virus: Catching the loop from someone else instantly. When doing our group improvisations I came up with the 4I's to indicate some kind of focus for looping together in a human way. They are: Imitate (try to loop like the computer), Internalize (put loop state in your mind/body/psyche), Inspiration (treat the loops you feel and see like a score for other movement invention), and Ignore (don't loop). We are still very much developing this procedure.

That's all I've got in me t-to-ton-toni-tonigh-tonight-thginot-tonighttttt- nightttt-ghttt-gtttt-ttttt-ttt-t.

(I wanted to put a mood in, but I can't figure out how) So, my mood is a tiny yellow smiley face with a half confused smile full of excitement and confusion and consideration, and a wink.

ta,
Dawn

Mark already made so many notes on dramaturgy on his that it seems unnecessary to add anything to that. So I will simply give a voice to my part in the process of research in loops and their disruption.
Basically, my dramaturgy for Troika Ranch consists in taking the stand of a critic and a discussion partner for both the process and the contents of the evolving piece. This means having to perceive and process what is happening, and working on what the potential interests of the team could be. Second, I have to voice this in discussions and follow up its implementation for further feedback. Etc. It is not really interesting writing about it, the excitement comes from the communication itself, not explanation or justification. You sit opposite your partner and feel that he/she can imagine something to what you are saying. In writing you have to imagine what somebody might imagine… Maybe that works for a writer, but I am a dramaturge.
This project began for me with a presentation of the loop and its application on movement, visuals and music. It felt like being exposed to a form rather than a theme. This triggered a discussion on form and content (does a loop per se have a meaning?) that aimed at finding a theme, something you are occupied with, a notion of something that is important to you and has not been put into any order yet – a long way from narration. A theme, I think, is an interest that informs you on your search even when there is a lot of uncertainty about what exactly it is you are looking for…
Part of my preparatory work was finding – actually remembering – a text that works with loops. In a very unexpected moment – between kisses – I remembered Becketts "Not I". It works with a kind of loop. A "mouth" (that's all that is visible from the speaker) speaks relentlessly, maybe trying to tell something, and is caught up in loops that inhibit any (common) sense. There is a sense of oppression in this, and a sense of hidden violence. Compared to what we discovered in search of loops and their meaning so far, this text fits pretty well. "Not I" was, by the way, also used as a source for improvisation as it offers strong and paradox language, sparking strong feelings about what it is – while actually not saying what it's about… As if it could be expected, this resulted in strong dancing.
Working with Isadora and looping videos of the dancers is useful experimentation. The things and puns produced proved impossible to reproduce physically, as everybody expected. But there is a possibility of finding specifically performance-adapted ways of indicating a loop beginning or ending – signs that the performers give to an audience saying: Watch out, here comes (or ends) a loop, or: look, I am in a loop! This needs a high level of virtuosity, as Daniel said – an extreme precision of the movements and the timing. Another interesting thing is what we call the virus: dancers improvise or show parts of their developing solos, together with other dancers, improvising simultaneously and adopting loops of the others, developing them further maybe, and passing the loop on to another dancer, etc. This enables us to tell stories about the impact of loops of one dancer on another dancer and how relations between dancers or loops develop. It is a sort of language for micro-stories. The bigger picture could allow us to show how e.g. an impact of violence is passed on from one person to another – like traumas (the holocaust being the most prominent example) are often passed on from generation to generation.
There are many elements more that I can't grasp at the moment because they are like loose ends of strings, suspended in air. But as we continue, they will fall in place and become objects that we can discuss…

That much for now
Peter

Yesterday Dawn and the dancers again showed the material they have developed so far. She and the group have created a _lot_... which is good because it gives us options. She also keeps reordering things, to see what contexts are created when one chunk is placed in opposition to the next. Questions about "what is a loop", "what is a repetition", and the deeper inflections to be found in the movement, and the potential stories / images they hold are still there. But I believe that will come in time.

But then we had to have a serious brainstorming sessions about the projection surfaces. Dawn and I had made a decision early on to avoid projecting on the back wall, as we had done in 16 [R]evolutions. For that piece, and the graphic ideas in it, this setup had made sense. But we wanted to get back to exploring projections that are more three dimensional arrangements as we had done in our previous work "Surfacing". In addition we had decided, again early on, to have the seating "in the round" or at least on three sides of the performing space. These problems we'd set out for ourselves initiated our discussion yesterday.

How can we disturb the space with the placement of the screens... how can we let some audience members see a dancer, and others see only the projection? (The idea to being to create a sense of desire for the real body over a two-dimensional image). And how do these physical objects intimately relate to the theme of the loop? How can the projections have impact when they are scaled down from the massive sizes we were used to in 16 [R]evolutions? We had learned in our piece "Future of Memory" that having "human sized" screens (of which there were twenty) offered many possibilities -- as the scale allows you to have the image and the performer coexist in a much more integrated way. But those screens were centrally located, offering the possibility of a fractured but still relatively large image. These screens, because of their spatial locations don't give us that.

So we played and played... trying out various configurations, some in our mind, some by actually hanging and looking. In the end, and for the moment only perhaps, we have decided to place the screens on the periphy of the space, as defined by the dance floor (which is 32 ft x 36 ft)... we created an arrangement where the wax paper screens (each about 5 ft wide at this point) start from three corners of the space and curve gracefully upward, with the projectors providing the image from behind. This had a powerful effect of defining the performing area further... and disturbing (in a good way) the rectilinear imposition of the dance floor itself. They also suggest a gathering of energy in some way... or at least a strong focal point. One thing is for sure: the way the wax paper holds the image when it is rear projected, is unbelievable in its rich color and clarity.

We also decided that there will be some less wide strips placed in the performing space, allowing some images to appear within the context created by these three larger strips. This will offer the possibility of very specific contexts in relation to the dancer, where we can place images that are more "human sized" and also in spatial relationships that will generate some meaning. How these will be arranged may be one way into the notion of loops... are these screens placed in such a way that they suggest an evolving repetition, as is seen in much of the movement material?

All of these questions return to the notion of theme. This is something that Peter, our dramaturg, brought up to me again last night. We are still seeking the clear theme of this piece... the deeper and essential meaning of the loop. Is it a prison of the expected? Or is achieving the loop a kind of perfection to which one would aspire? I can see that we will need to find much clearer answer, as it will set our investigations in every area off into particular directions. Yet I am also resistant to answering it, as I myself want the material to give me the answer. I suppose it is like any artmaking experience... we have to ask the question, again and again, and the answer will present itself in the most unforeseen way and at the most unexpected time. I actually want to talk to Peter about this more... as Dawn and I wanted to avoid the imposition of a narrative on to the material as we have done in previous works, and I suspect I don't fully understand his application of the word theme.

More Soon,
Mark