Footloose presents
Women on the Way Festival
featuring Pluto in Capricorn by Anne Bluethenthal & Dancers

Fri, Jan 22; Sun, Jan24; Sat, Jan 30—8pm; Sun, Jan 31—5pm
ODC Dance Commons, 351 Shotwell St. (17th/18th), San Francisco

 

 

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Tickets: $15-$20; Info/Reservations: 415-289-2000
Advance purchase: brownpapertickets Or call 1-800-838-3006

Performed by Heidi Buehler, Chin-chin Hsu, Liz Tenuto, and Anne Bluethenthal Music by Marc Ream; Text by Carolyn Cooke, Judy Grahn, and Anne Bluethenthal; Set by Matthew DeGumbiaFootloose presents the 10th Annual Women on the Way Festival at three venues in San Francisco during January, 2010: Each night female artists share the bill in a different combination of innovative theater, dance, comedy and music. For full program info and more details: www.ftloose.org

ABD is delighted to share the stage with Amy X Neuburg, Koechlin Sisters, Sonya Smith, and Christine Cali.

SPEAK COLUMN IN DANCE

Pluto in Capricorn
A choreographer’s thoughts on aesthetics and aging

The choreographer aging…..
yielding the bold energy of youth
that flings itself fearlessly into space
surrendering the agility garnered from
thousands of tendus and ronds de jembe
new unexpected dexterities emerge
habits, even personality dissolve out of necessity
fall away like old snakeskin
reinforcing this tacit insight:
we don’t really change
we arrive in a moment when what was becomes untenable
step effortlessly out of old skin and into what is now bearable
at last you find the courage of your own convictions
and realize you no longer hold convictions
this is not cynicism – this is liberation
my body finds nuance in a narrow but rich corridor of motion
every year I pour my self into the bodies of young dancers
who paint my work across the floors of theaters
and then go
and grow into the painters of their own lives
my work tracing a broad brush stroke out the door with them

Some thoughts on a personal aesthetic….

“… it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it…” 1

I love to scrutinize the syntax and meaning of the dance language. As a young dancer, I saw that dance training involved pulling one’s self apart, one part struggling against the other and all parts against the ground – away from the ground. The meaning and implication of this as a practice seemed contrary to the principles I had embraced in my budding feminist consciousness (this was the mid 1970’s).

I have wanted to bring Audre Lorde’s imperative—that we cannot dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools—to the art of dance, questioning how we can create work that awakens consciousness and promotes social change while employing an idiom that is rooted in imperialism, patriarchy, and self-denial. My body of work emerges from a continuous meditation and active grappling with these issues.

I enjoy cooking up raw, free, woman centered, human, visceral-yet-content-driven dances.

I place my political obsessions into my movement vocabulary, use of dancers, use of space, subject matter, music, visual and textual work.

Undoubtedly, the civil rights movement that I was born into and participated in throughout my youth is the single most formative political consciousness operating in my life and work.

My choreography tries to undermine, feminize, queer, and ecologize the language of dominance while conceding its occupation in my body and while shamelessly using it whenever it can support my intention.

I am working on how to age inside this art form.

Right now, my most intimate agenda is to create community around my work, collaborate with brilliant friends, and to make dances that “the soft animal of my body”2 loves. My most high-minded agenda is to raise important issues, rage beautifully, and participate in a global eco-feminist artistic movement.

Pluto in Capricorn

I am working on how to age inside this art form.

New dexterities are emerging.

This year is the 25th birthday of my dance company. As I prepared to launch a celebratory concert, and during a persistent period of mild depression, two friends in separate conversations remarked to me that Pluto was in Capricorn. This was supposed to comfort me.

We fall apart. We fear for our livelihoods and that of our colleagues and dancers. We wonder how we keep our self worth when the culture abandons us. We keep making dances. I turn 51. The market economy goes the way of the arctic ice and to the extent that our accomplishments bring us a sense of identity, that too crashes into frigid seas.

Pluto, the planet (or not) of death, transformation, and rebirth has settled in Capricorn, the constellation of materiality, identity, and action. During the residence of Pluto in Capricorn, one can expect personal and global infrastructures to undergo major renovation. Any system or aspect of identity or career, etc. which is lacking in integrity or usefulness or which is not operating according to our values or which has outlived its function, will be destroyed.

SF Hotels are practically giving away rooms, decimating our hotel tax, which means city grants to arts organizations will be slashed. We are all connected in this moment of dismantling. I hope we’ll rebuild in solidarity, not in fear, and with renewed commitment to a more radical, artist-centered sensibility that reflects the true emancipatory nature of west coast art.

I am working on how to age inside of this art form.

UPCOMING SHOW: July 10,11, 12 at ODC Dance Commons Pluto in Capricorn: New, Reconstituted, and Spontaneous Dances for the 25th anniversary of Anne Bluethenthal and Dancers/ABD Productions. Spontaneous: Judy Grahn, Carolyn Cooke, Pamela Z, Allen Wilner, other surprise guests will join Bluethenthal to perform improvisationally with text, lights, music, movement and visual art. Reconstituted: guest and veteran artists Robert Henry Johnson, Laura Elaine Ellis, Alyah Baker, and Chin-chin Hsu will perform signature Bluethenthal solos in a live retrospective look at 25 years of work. New: Pluto in Capricorn, a new work for 3 dancers and Bluethenthal will include contributions by Remy Charlip, Judy Grahn, Carolyn Cooke, and Mercy Sidbury. The program is rounded out with three recently created solos created and performed by myself with text by Bluethenthal, Grahn, and Cooke.

Anne Bluethenthal, founder and Artistic Director of ABD Productions, has presented work on subjects such as Palestine-Israel, globalization, the environment, genocide, and the gift economy. ABD has received numerous awards for her achievement in choreography, co-founded and co-produced the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Dance Festival, and created the Dancing the Mystery series, celebrating women’s spiritual traditions. Bluethenthal maintains a private teaching practice in the FM Alexander Technique, and is on the faculties of the MFA Creative Inquiry Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, the MA Women’s Spirituality Program at Institute for Transpersonal Psychology and the Acting Program at Academy of Art University.