Danceletter 12
After an unannounced summer hiatus of 2+ months, Danceletter is back! I have no real reason for its absence, other than an intuition that it was time for a break. The official first day (or night) of fall — which also happens to be the day/night after I saw Patti Smith at McNally Jackson in SoHo, what I take to be a good creative omen — seemed like the right moment to start up again.
In this edition I bring you Danceletter’s first guest contribution, from choreographer / dancer / writer / teacher Emily Wexler, who offers a meditation on the numerical sequence 5-6-7-8. But first, here’s some of what I’ve been up to in the past few months:
A highlight of my summer was taking six straight days of dance class (that’s a lot for me) for this story on the Merce Cunningham Technique — my personal celebration of the Cunningham centennial. In an ideal world I would take this class (or at least the warmup) every day. In practice such a routine is much harder for me to maintain. But I was grateful for the reminder of how good it feels to dance on a daily basis.
Shortly after her premiere at New York City Ballet’s gala last spring, I talked with Pam Tanowitz about the many projects she’s been juggling (and about her morning gym routine), for Dance Magazine’s August issue. Did you know that Pam was turned away from NYCB’s Choreographic Institute five times? And now they (and we) can’t get enough of her. A lesson in continuing to do your thing regardless of rejection.
Another summer highlight: the release of Normani’s “Motivation” music video, a tour de force of start-to-finish dancing. (If you haven’t seen it, what are you waiting for?) After watching it obsessively for about a week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Normani and her choreographer, Sean Bankhead. I joke about writing being “fun”…
…but this really was. And because of my tight deadline and their busy schedules, it was actually a very speedy process. No time for agony!
In July I met with the artist Paul Chan to talk about his choreography for nylon and air, or the sculptures he calls Breathers, born in part from his exhaustion with screens. My profile for Cultured magazine is now online and in the fall print issue. You can see Chan’s show, The Bather’s Dilemma, at Greene Naftali in Chelsea through Oct. 19.
I also wrote about Ebony Golden’s processional “love poem to Harlem,” Madeline Hollander’s four-hour flood preparation ritual at the Whitney, dance on Instagram, and two new works by Kim Brandt. It was at Kim Brandt’s show in GreenWood Cemetery that I ran into Emily Wexler, who at some point in our conversation, as we were seated against a tombstone waiting for the performance to begin, mentioned her love of the phrase “and 5, 6, 7, 8” — not just for its practical applications but for all it represents. I asked if she would elaborate for Danceletter, and she generously sent me these thoughts, which feel appropriate for the cusp of a new season:
Hold On: Emily Wexler on “and 5, 6, 7, 8”
The thing about “and 5, 6, 7, 8” is that it both announces that something is about to happen while acknowledging that at least four counts of something already has. No one knows what precisely will or could have occurred in either direction of time. This tension creates an anticipation which feels less like it is coming from the expectation of what the dancing that follows could mean, but rather from a collective visceral reaction to what it feels like to be the pulling back of the rubber band of time. The announcement “and 5, 6, 7, 8” is like a full moon wave where the force of its urgency creates the meaning itself. This urgency, when manifested through the count-off, could have a usage beyond the authoritative purpose of telling dancers when to get going, one which awakens a preparation for any and all things to happen. In this way, it behaves more as a directive to get ready, hold on, brace yourself, pay attention, here we go, 5-6-7-8!, and see the vibrational undercurrents of every passing second with the assumption that what you are about to witness has already begun and may continue after you are there. It is an incanatory call to conceptually gather in agreement with other people and allow for something big and unknown and important to happen. The precipice of that agreement, when enacted through dance, ignites a thrill and a charge which shutters within each of our phenomenological selves.
It can also be fun. One of my favorite jokes is to say “and 5, 6, 7, 8” and then do nothing. I say it when things aren’t counted in an eight. I say it when there are no counts at all. I say it before I walk out the door in the morning. I say it before reading my students’ research papers. I say it to strangers when I don’t know what to say. I just love saying it, in part because it reminds me that I belong to a tradition of different kinds of people who all inhabit and are inhabited by dance. I use it sincerely while choreographing and teaching, and savor each ripple of movement that comes out after its announcement. It makes me laugh and makes the others I am dancing with sometimes laugh too. I would guess it may have escaped from the mouths of many of the abusive teachers and choreographers who are cemented in our dance history — and when I say it now, I hope to take it back.
It’s hopeful, too. After each “and 5, 6, 7, 8” when I am dancing I feel like I have been given another chance, each time, to try to do it better, deeper, larger, smaller, softer, fiercer, or just somehow more, to get closer to a place of transcendence. Maybe that is why catching myself saying it is always sorta funny. Because the discrepancy between the joke of the choreographer in the seat of a theater screaming “AND FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT” and the reality of when a dancer/choreographer earnestly tries to reach transcendence is pretty vast, but that effort is so genuine in its attempt and quotidian in its insistence that whenever I witness a person’s clarity with that pursuit (or feel my own), the ways in which I have come to conceive of “and 5, 6, 7, 8” become really fragile and heartbreaking and necessary. It is a carving in space with a sound whose utterance will be followed by something that matters, even if it is not tangible or decipherable or does not belong in any value system other than the one the artist has determined themselves and it will be impactful in some way even if bad and you will see it and know it because everyone would have decided to watch.
What You’re Watching
This one comes from writer Angela Chen, who says: “OK, this is a ‘dance’ video that everyone has definitely seen, but I have been obsessed with it since I was a teen. It’s both very natural-looking and very weird.” I confess that I actually was not familiar with this entry in the Kate Bush dance canon . . . so thank you, Angela.
As always, you can send me what you’re watching (i.e. a dance video you love) by responding to this email or writing to danceletter@substack.com.