Clear Eyes, Full Hearts with Gillian Walsh
This is a temporarily unpaywalled post; read it for free through Monday, Nov. 18! For full access to posts like this and the complete Danceletter archive, sign up for a paid subscription. A special discount for artists, freelancers, and students is available here.
One week before the election, on a crisp evening amid a stretch of disconcertingly warm fall days, I met up in Riverside Park with the choreographer Gillian Walsh. We happened to find a bench overlooking an athletic field at dusk, a tranquil setting not unlike the one where her latest project, Friday Night Lights, will unfold this weekend.
Gillian is careful not to refer to Friday Night Lights, which will take place at the Chelsea Park soccer field on Nov. 16, as “a show.” It is, rather, the culminating public event of a workshop she’s been offering at the Chelsea Recreation Center over the past six weeks, for around 50 participants from many walks of life. Part of Dia Art Foundation’s Activations program, in which artists design workshops in response to civic spaces in New York, the series of classes began with an open call from Dia and the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation; anyone could take part. The group that’s come together includes mostly people with no performing experience. But the drive — or the dream — to perform, and how that varies from person to person, has been an animating theme of the workshop: What’s behind the desire to be seen?
In the New York dance scene of the 2010s, I came to appreciate Gillian’s work for its almost mystical use of the slow and the still, and its stealthy engagement with references from pop culture and postmodern dance. She has been commissioned by venues like the Kitchen, Danspace Project, and Performance Space New York. But over the past few years, she’s moved away from the typical structures of making dance, turning her attention to the study of theology, another outlet for questions about time and presence that she’s long asked through performance. She graduated from Union Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity last spring and is now earning a Master of Sacred Theology at Yale. She also has her own craniosacral therapy practice.
“I’m hoping this is the beginning of what will be a more full-scale thing,” she said of the Activations workshop. “I love working in this way.” As the sun set over the Hudson, we talked about what she’s been up to at the rec center, how theology and performance converse in her life, and the allure of the motto from Friday Night Lights (the TV show about football from which this project takes its title): “clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” For a bonus segment, I also asked her: What’s in your bag?
As always, at the end of this convo, you’ll find my quick recommendations of shows to see in the next few weeks (under “Mark Your Calendars”). For more November events, see Dance List 14, and stay tuned for the next Dance List, coming later this month.
How did this project come about?
I participated in my friend's Salome’s work that was also part of the Activations program, last winter. She made a play with people at the Chelsea Rec Center, and I helped out with that. So that's how I became familiar with the program and met the curator who organizes it, Stephen Kwok. I got really excited to work with different communities from across the city. For a long time, I haven't wanted to work within the siloed community of experimental and professional dance. It makes me feel claustrophobic, and it just doesn’t interest me that much.
This workshop is geared toward non-performers, and there’s a huge range of people as far as age, experience, interest, career, all of it. There are people I know from seminary, people from bodywork, people from divinity school, people from dance. There are people I had never met who just go to the Chelsea Recreation Center. The initial open call went out to 30,000 people on the parks department mailing list. I haven’t worked with this kind of synthesis of participants before, and it’s very cool.
How are the classes structured? How do you spend your time together?
It’s a really indeterminate situation with very few parameters. I made a decision that I'm letting everybody come in and out whenever they please, so I have no control over who shows up when, or who's going to be there the day of the public event. Seventy people signed up, and we’ve had three classes so far, with about 20 to 30 people in each. On the first day I made sure to identify myself and my intentions for the program very clearly. And then people could make a decision about whether or not they wanted to engage in that and stay. Some people come in wanting to get a workout and exercise and really dance. We do that sometimes, but other times we might lie on the floor for a really long time. We do perceptual or sensory exercises, which are informed by meditative practices — practices I've cultivated around what it means to listen, to be present, to watch and be watched. And then we work on making our dream dance, which, it turns out, means something really different for everybody.
What is a dream dance?
The first day, I asked everyone to take time to think about what their dream performance would be, their fantasy performance. Every single thing about it, every detail. Like, is it at night? In the day? Are you in the center? Are you even onstage? Did you make it? Is it cold out? Is it on film? Are you dancing? Are you singing? Can I see your face? Are you playing the guitar? Who’s watching you? How are they watching you? Maybe you know what you're doing, maybe you don't.
I want to get in touch with a core drive around desire and performance, and to have people try to connect to that. I love getting closer to understanding people's drives to dance, to perform, to live, to be together in time. Each week is a total surprise, and it's such a blessing. I'm obsessed with this project, to be honest. It's really fulfilling. And it's changing the way I want to work. It's beautiful to have such a range of people in the room who are working through a lot of different things regarding performance, dance, being seen.
What are you envisioning for the public event?
I’m obviously not going to tell you that. [Laughs.] What I can say is it’s a conversation between my aesthetic taste and methods and what this extremely wide range of people is bringing and wanting. That synthesis will create what we do as a collective.
We don’t have much time, so it can’t be too complicated. And I like that simplicity. There’s the impulse to be like, “We only have five hours to make this, so I'm going to design you, I'm going to take control of this.” But I tried to take the opposite approach.
Also, everything I do is just a continuation of everything else I've ever done. In the initial open call, I kind of warned people that we would work a lot with stillness. It can't be stopped. Stillness and movement. They’re part of the same conversation.
Talk about the title Friday Night Lights.
Friday Night Lights is, famously, a TV show about sports. “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” That’s the slogan, and I just love that. I'm really interested in sincerity in this workshop. I don't care at all about, like, a cool or smart choice. I want to dig into drives and presence. The public event is also the week after the election, so I'm keeping it really open, to leave space for what we all might be going through. I chose 4pm because of the time of the sunset. So I think we'll sail into the night together.
Is there anything you want to share about the space, how you plan to use it?
Well, it’s big. It’s a soccer field. And it’s not grandiose. It's not a stadium, you know? It’s not Friday Night Lights in that way. There’s no sound system. It's not slick. It's a community public park with some street lights, where people play soccer or work out. I've been spending a lot of time at a different field near my house, just observing people there. The feeling of it, as the sun sets, has been telling me what to do.
When you were talking about your interest in drives, I was reminded of your piece Fame Notions from 2019, in which you were exploring why dancers dance. Does this project feel related?
It does. During the time of making Fame Notions, I was thinking about what it means to be a dancer, the pain and torment of it. The really complex friction of contradictory drives to dance, the despair and the pleasure, the persistence, the psychic and material consequences. I've done more thinking since then about being a dancer as a permanent condition, because I’ve made a lot of turns elsewhere in my life, but it just stays with you. For me, but also I think for everyone. If you’re a dancer, you're a dancer.
With a lot of the conceptual frameworks about around my projects, I just happen to choose one to say at the time, but they're all active all the time. So the curiosity about someone's drives to dance or perform, to be watched by others, and ways of being with others, that continues permanently, for sure. In Fame Notions, it got articulated through a question about dancing in the U.S. and what that means professionally, psychologically, spiritually. I don't feel as narrowly interested in that right now. I work in ministry. I work in healing. People suffer, and people don't do what they want — not anything near what they want, a lot of the time. I do a lot of listening to people about what is ailing them. And that's made its way into how I work in performance.
How has studying theology impacted your relationship to dance?
I feel like I can't even answer the question. It's really deep within.
A lot of the questions I was trying to get at through dance — I found that they were actually better suited to spiritual concern. They don't necessarily belong in dance-making. Or they can belong in dance-making, but they can't only exist there. They’re bigger or more multiple than making a dance or being a choreographer. In my mid-20s, I had a very specific turn toward more spiritual concerns. I basically had a giant awakening at 26. And that put me on a course that will likely last me the rest of my life. It also changed my interest in dance and choreography as a scene, as a profession.
I study theology. I do bodywork. I make art. They’re in conversation. The conversation between theology and performance is basically how I make meaning in my life. I’m interested in suffering. Healing. Meaning-making. Creation. I'm obsessed with emptiness. I'm obsessed with time. And I'm a dancer.
Friday Night Lights takes place on Saturday, Nov. 16, beginning at 4pm, at the soccer field at Chelsea Park, 450 West 27th Street. Free. RSVP recommended; register here.
Bonus Q: What’s in Your Bag?
Water: This is my Fiji water. I got a large Fiji today because I was really nauseous, and tap water made me feel like I was gonna throw up.
Phone: This is my phone, it has a Hello Kitty case, and there’s a mirror on the back which is really cute. I like Hello Kitty. I don’t accept the argument that she’s a girl.
Headphones: These are my headphones and keys. I keep my headphones in a Dunkin’ case. Dunkin’ comforts me a lot. I love it. My dad was a big Dunkin’ head when I was a child, so it makes me feel connected to my dad and to myself in a nice way. Do I have a go-to order? That feels private. I have a private personal relationship to Dunkin’, but it’s important to me on an aesthetic and spiritual level, and on the level of drinking coffee, and on the level of my relationship with my family and ancestry. It’s very Irish Catholic I feel, which is what my dad’s family is. He’s from Rockaway, Queens. It connects me to my Rockaway self.
Reading: This is a book called The Difference Nothing Makes, by Brian Robinette. It’s about creation and nothingness and Christ. It’s also kind of about contemplation and emptiness, a huge passion of mine. And this is Indecent Theology, by Marcella Althaus-Reid, which is basically about sex and perversion in theology. I guess I don’t have to go into the arguments of these texts. But those are the books that are in my bag.
Miscellaneous: I have an extension cord that I purchased today at the deli, because I need it. What else? A phone charger, Klonopin, sunglasses, cough drops, lip balm, my laptop, gum, and sour power straws — wild cherry. Do you want a sour power straw?
Mark Your Calendars
Here are five shows (in addition to Friday Night Lights) to have on your radar in the next few weeks:
Yvonne Rainer, A Program of Film and Choreography: Nov. 21 at Judson Memorial Church (note: this was rescheduled from its original October date)
Ayano Elson and Wendell Gray II, A shared evening: Nov. 21-23 at Danspace
Caleb Teicher & collaborators, A Very SW!NG OUT Holiday: Dec. 3-15 at the Joyce
Amelia Heintzelman with Dorothy Carlos, Cavity: Dec. 5-6 at Pageant
Anna Thérèse Witenberg, Heat: Dec. 6-8 at Kestrels
And some reminders from last time (still coming up):
Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, Prairie Dawn, Nov. 14-16 at Roulette
Ralph Lemon, Tell it anyway, Nov. 14 and 16 at MoMA PS1
In personal-professional news, I’ll be taking part in a post-screening panel discussion at Metrograph tonight, Nov. 14, about Laura Kaehr’s documentary Becoming Giulia, which follows the ballerina Giulia Tonelli’s return to the stage of the Zurich Opera House after maternity leave. I’m excited to be in conversation with Laura, Kyle Bukhari, Marina Harss, and Nicole Duffy. More info and tickets here.