What does it look like when these people say 'us'?

What I saw at two performances of the White Box Project on September 10th and 24th was this: the spontaneous creation of a social organism. A kinetic organism, sustained by relations of mutual trust, co-operation, interest, respect, enthusiasm and collaboration. These relations were carefully choreographed by deceptively simple-looking forms. From what I 

remember of the 24th September performance, some of these forms were: speaking quietly,

speaking with a raised voice, walking along a fixed route between two walls at an increasing speed whilst talking, lying down gravely flat and straight, assembling in attentive circles around supine performers, shuffling along the perimeter of the courtyard, walking or running around it in switching directions—and so on. I think an exhaustive and ordered list is worth making—it would be part of the archive—though here is perhaps not the place to attempt it. Nevertheless I want to point to the subtle complexity of this performance’s logic, its accurate execution by a group of skilled lead performers and its deft development in response to the thoughts of public collaborators over a number of weeks.  

I think the White Box Project is a critical, social work of art. It flexes, tests itself, experiments, makes room for change, and accepts the incompleteness of process. It takes the social conventions of the proscenium theater—the passive / active, consumer / consumed, work / leisure divide between performers and audience—and asks everyone to reinterpret their roles. It does this testingly through a vocabulary of movement which was just about within the bounds of decency and permissibility tolerated, at least, by the participants of the two performances I saw. The forms of group movement offered by the piece created a small self-elected society in which it was, for the half hour duration of the work, normal to participate democratically. This sense of normalness was partly created by the few who acted differently: especially by those who participated with an individual expressiveness over and above the norm. In the two performances I saw two individuals stood out as abnormally interesting personae—for their self-fashioning and investiture as much as their actions and speech. But there were also those who opted out and whose position was uncertain, ambiguous, potentially a bit divisive. They were attracted especially to the security of corners.

Did the willingness of most people to participate speak to a basic shared desire to enter into relations—sometimes with only vague associations attached—with each other? Was there a sort of latent collaborative spirit waiting under the cover of conversing friendship groups and lone individuals in a courtyard in Williamsburg? A collaborative spirit that basically desired a form to express itself? And a spirit that found—perhaps with a little tentative persuasion—just such a form in the choreography of the White Box Project?

I think so. I think what the choreography unfolded was the organic shape of a shared class identity. I think the choreography described the limits within which a public desired to know itself, to incorporate others and to experience this feeling of incorporation and its possibilities for action.

Some more of the choreography: screaming all together at the top of everybody’s voice, kneeling at a touch upon the shoulder, assembling in groups along opposing walls and moving in formation towards an opposite group. Do these shared choreographic forms represent essential ways in which humans experience their co-operative relations with one another? Or do they represent a crowd in Williamsburg, in evenings in September, a crowd with histories, money, tastes, beliefs, desires, looks, fears, bodies, names? In short, I think, the White Box Project asks: What does it look like when these people say ‘us’?


John Cooper

I had the pleasure of attending four performances of Noemie Lafrance’s White Box Project Installation this weekend. A couple of questions figured prominently for me throughout the piece:

When is the desire to participate in something become strong enough for me to actually participate?

Is spectating, as opposed to participating, a form of doing? How active does the “spectating” need to be?

Is doing something, being a part of something, cancel out the power of observation?

Is it necessary to know who the performers are?

Where is the event and who creates it? Who makes it happen?

Can the audience control or even own the piece- change what the performers had planned? If yes, how much? In other words, how does an artwork balance structure, meaning, and playfulness?

How important is reception to the piece?

As the piece began with the crowd’s murmur getting ostensibly loud, I could feel the tension in the space as the crowd instantly went silent. “Why is everyone quiet?” whispered my 7 year old? “Did it begin?” She didn’t know where to look, and that was part of the suspense. Expectations of what “it” was, and who would actually do “it,” were immediately altered. Onlookers (some of whom were the dancers themselves pretending to be onlookers) looked around for something to happen. We all sensed each other. We began to sense the space, albeit with a heightened awareness, as if we, too, were performers. An airplane, as it happened, coincidentally flew over in the same moment in three of the four shows I saw.

This was a game. But who the players were and what the rules of the game were was still to be decided.

Each crowd was different. Some welcomed the invitation to lie down on the floor. Others hesitated and others visibly rejected it. Why conform to something, these latter seemed to be saying, they didn’t agree to? Of course by choosing not to do something, they were already playing the game.

What is at stake when participation defines the work? Is this simply an experiment in herd mentality?

Noemie has chosen to describe this piece as “a dance installation,” and by situating it in the space of an art gallery, frames this choreographic experiment within a visual art context. It seems clear to me then that there is a desire for a connection of viewership from both a dance and a more formal art perspective. It is also no coincidence that Noemie comes to the White Box (a gallery space) to experiment with audience participation, given that she defines herself as “site-specific” choreographer. The term “site-specific,” as Nick Kaye argues in his book Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation, is directly linked to the incursion of performance into visual art and architecture. The fact that the meaning of the artwork resided in the viewer’s reception of it, gave the spectator a new role in defining what an art object was. The encounter with the object became more important than the object itself. Noemie describes The White Box project as “minimalist dance,” referring to the minimal framework necessary for the piece to take place in terms of props, costumes, lighting, sound, etc. But the word minimalist is also a clear reference to the Minimalism taking place in art practice of the 60s, which coincides with the emergence of site-specificity. As art critic Douglas Crimp recounts in On the Museum's Ruins (1993 essay) "the condition of reception," is what came to be known as site-specificity. Minimalism was an attack on the autonomy of the artwork— on the prestige of both the artwork and the artist in favor of the spectator’s perception, or awareness, of the minimal object. In Michael Fried’s famous attack on Minimalism as the end of art, at least from the modernist perspective, titled Art and Objecthood (1976), he argued how "the experience of literalist (minimal) art is of an object in a situation- one that, virtually by definition, includes the beholder.” It was exactly what Fried predicted and abhorred, the intrusion of performance into the autonomous work of art, that is at play in site-specific practice, which began with minimalism, and which Noemie formally engages with in The White Box Project.

The White Box Project is ultimately a piece about site-specificity, about the conditions of reception in a given context, engaged in formal structures of viewing, interaction, and participation.

-Bertie Ferdman

Whitebox by Raphael Moser

we are
parts
moving
in the subliminal space
the breakdown between
being and watching
proves centrifugal
leftright
cues
assemble our affinity
the pleasure in sound
if not direction
l-shaped parables
reversals rapt in assurance
urgency
splintering on the diagonal
materialization of time
notes on the edge recast
gentle war untenable
between unforeseen alliances
community
filtering down to two
arrested on the brink
of the pure turquoise sea


----
Raphael Moser was a participant of the September 17th show.

Outside the White Cube: A Short Essay by an Interested Outsider

by Megan Nicely

In his 1976 essay “Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space,” an indictment of the hermetically sealed and supposed blank—even mythic—space of “pure” human art experience, Brian O’Doherty poses problems of deportment as intrinsic to modernism. Under this system, as the artwork itself becomes active in our perceptual field, human senses are called into question, thus rendering our own identity problematic. We are unsure where to stand in order to have meaningful relationships since the Eye stands for both the fragmentation of the self and the illusion of holding it together. Vision’s function is paradoxical.

Choreographer Noémie Lafrance addresses these modernist issues in her new participatory work The White Box. She is interested in how audiences both follow movement in flashmob-like mentality and how they choose to participate by invoking their own individual creativity within a set performance structure. Lafrance wants her audience to be comfortable, feel they can make choices, and thereby create their own experience. However, her motivation seems more based in formal principles than personal psychology. She asks how the performers’ actions might elicit responses that choreograph the audience without their necessarily knowing, and how in turn audiences can then become aware of the greater structures to which they contribute. How are spatial arrangements established or broken? In early iterations of this project, Lafrance told me that performers attempted to address this question by repeating certain movements that caused audiences to relocate to particular areas in the space (or refuse to do so), while other gestures followed with the eyes and accompanying head turns created a pattern in the audience that the dancers then used to incite their own performance.

Vision is a powerful identifier whose rule much participatory performance seeks to disrupt with prompts for unpredictable human encounters. For instance, participatory performance artist Karl Frost, who directs Body Research, works to create environments that invite audiences to explore multiple levels of the self by listening to quieter voices, not merely the most outspoken ones. In his piece Axolotl, audiences are blindfolded for two hours while they navigate multiple spaces—the room, social interactions, sensorial and emotional experiences, and objects. Frost calls a “meaningful experience” one that instructs in ways to live better in the world, where agency is less within the performance than in how what is noticed during the event is then practiced beyond its confines.

There are as many kinds of participatory performance as there are artists, but a salient feature of this genre might be waking people up to their own agency by interacting directly with the human need or desire to shape our own experiences. Variation then lies in how this question is answered. When I spoke with Lafrance regarding The White Box before the opening, she stated she wanted to put both the performers and the work at risk. As a piece that changes composition from week to week based on audience feedback, this work is a study in indeterminate structure. Speaking with her after the first weekend she said, “I’m trying to create a system to limit the reaction to what’s happening, and that creates a pattern.” By creating events that suggest audiences look first left, then right, a rhythm is created and then adopted by the dancers. “I’m making them [the audience] dance without any kind on instruction,” and I want them to “realize that everyone in the room is the art, but without their creative input, nothing is going to change.” In this view, groups transform not when individual desire is followed, but rather when shifts cause systems themselves change, and we then notice what was not apparent before. The cube-as-change may then be better understood as a temporal unfolding rather than a spatial experience, and Lafrance seems to recognize this when she says, “Actually, the show is never finished.”

**thanks for all the blog postings, wish I could be there in person!

Sept. 17 - Talk back after 6:30 Show

Noemie Lafrance: The piece changes every week based on your feedback last week, there wasn’t much participation and more dance and more separation between audience and performer and now I wanted to go further with the participation so I changed a lot and this was the largest group and some of the things we cant even see anymore, but I’d love to know how it feels on the inside and during the performance…

A: I love that at the beginning there was so much confusion. I enjoyed the curiosity and great way to enter because it felt natural to participate once you approached us.

NL: Maybe a dancer would like to talk about from the inside how it’s working and feeling?

Zoe Schieber (Dancer): In response to that as a performer, I was lying on the floor. It took them a while to realize that something was happening right behind them.

NL: Since I’m the choreographer I’m so worried about people actually getting it and seeing things I see sometimes there is a relationship between an audience member and a performer, but I know who the performers are - Did you feel like you were looking at your own show?

Sam Petersson (dancer): Yeah, the confusion part – you become hyperaware, everything you question, like the truck sounds during the humming – I thought that might be part of it. I thought you (Noemie) had piped in that sound. You become hyper aware.

ZS (D): As a performer as well, in a smaller group I feel like I’m performing for everyone. But because it was so full, my circle of influence was a lot smaller. I was quite content to perform for a couple of people. People around me had no idea I was there, until they turned around then I was there to interact with. The one on one made people extra aware and feel more special.

A: It’s hard to have intimacy in many dance performances, but because of the nature of the piece of the large group and curiosity you got intimacy. And have that kinesthetic feeling (especially during the running)

A: It was most magical before we were moving all together, you really didn’t know what was going to happen and felt on edge – I felt more participatory in that moment than later on

NL: Since it wasn’t working last week, and we got feedback saying they wanted more one on one, and my intention was not to instruct the audience at all –but that didn’t work. It really depends on what is presented - there was a lot more dance in the last one, and that affects the relationship – What we’re doing now is what you could do – I decided to push that, I told the dancers, we’re going to ask them, and if they haven’t participated in the end then they will. We’ll push it all the way to the end, but then I might fix that – it’s becoming more balanced. There’s some initiative from the audience and dancers, but the door is kind of open and then things happen. But I’d like to bring it to the point of where you can donate aesthetically and allow your imagination to produce what you can see potentially happening in the piece. Is that happening?

A: At one point, Natalie and I decided to go as two, as opposed to just one and invent our own scenario and words – but there were no words to say, and we invented it to get in without instruction.

A: It brings up either a rebel or following rules and as soon as Fabio asked what group are you in, and of course I could have just joined a group, but I wanted the personal invitation to be told what to do. And so it really brings up the kind of person you are and our impulse and reaction, and I wanted to follow the rules and be invited.

A: I wanted to participate in everything, I wanted to do all sorts of things, but I didn’t want to mess up the performance or disappoint and it takes a lot of courage to just go off and start doing something - Is Noemie going to be bummed out if I just begin doing this thing?, But I wanted to – the desire was really strong.

A: Likewise, I found myself starting to participate early but feeling like I shouldn’t do too much, because I didn’t want to take the attention from the real performance, til later when all the barriers went away, but in the beginning there’s a question of how much is too much and I knew it was a participation event and that you could do everything, but you still wonder – it makes you look at yourself, like you were saying follow rules or break them?

A: Our organic impulse to do something – it was different than being tapped and go down, and I had an organic impulse to do things but I didn’t want to mess things up and if something happens I either had to be part of the group or rebel, and that was a different impulse – am I going to do what this person is saying and participate or am I going to follow my impulses? I might want to make this crazy sound, but I was really scared to do that. But when I was told what to do, whatever it was, I felt like that was less of an organic impulse.

NL: At first week, we were moving the audience around and heard them – because we were trying they didn’t want to, but this week everyone is being heard-ed too much, and people naturally heard – the section where we enter the audience was in one place and we’d form the lines, people were following us and so we weren’t able to make the lines – the conditioning as we go along, people are getting the license to participate and they assume they have to do everything we do.

There’s a shift in the show, and at first it’s great because you don’t know then you see the leaders, and a strong influence the dancers can have without instruction and reassurances, like a stare or a touch because they have a strong communication – and you get intimate at first, the crew is identified, you become willing to obey and you can play with that energy and make it a part of the performance. Because in the beginning you are introduced then you’re ready to enjoy and play.

Fabio Tavares DaSilva (Dancer): Last week we were trying so hard to get the audience to move, and if we were speaking then we had to speak louder and use more energy – please move!! This week is much gentler and so much easier to get you to move around with us, we gained your confidence early on, and we gained your trust and it becomes so much less work. Now, the gentler approach can be way more

SP (D): To add, as a performer we weren’t putting as much energy, but we had to let things be and have an intention so we were doing something but everyone was doing it as well

FTD (D): You guys – the couple sometimes I looked and said that’s Omar and Dages, but they blend so well in the performance until the end.
Is there something you would like to see happen that would bring it to another participation level?

A: I don’t ever participate, and if you would have told me an hour ago that I’d be moving around and dancing I would have said you’re crazy. But it was the gentle intention and it makes you feel like you’re either going to rebel or not, but then you think what the hell – you do it.

NL: I was trying to establish that you’re looking right and to the left and to the right and the left right is a result of you moving – did you feel that connection?

FTD (D):I was charmed by the fact that it didn’t align the movement. The changing back and forth – sometimes aligned and other times - it stopped making sense. That was a turning point in the whole piece, the enrollment of the audience, everyone felt like they had permission, because the performers were making eye contact and chanting and moving and encouraging and it became like a dancing chanting moment and after it felt like everything was easy.

NL: That’s a good cue – good to know.

A: At some point you had dancers really interacting one by one intensely and intentionally and I was wondering did you ask what other thing could be done? How could another dancer do to also pull and engage another 10 or 12 people to be also engaging another one person?

NL: A second generation to engage the audience…

A: But in a way it remains one on one, but I don’t know how to do it.

A: But you can come again right? I saw that in the email like ooh, and now I know the dancers – there’s a lot, If I saw it a second time then I would know. Is that true?

NL: Yes, In the program it says you can come back for free, and bring your program and ticket – so you won’t know all the cues but you’ll be initiated.

A: The turning point, at left right left, turned into trust – I felt very suspicious like ooh who’s the performer and who’s not - don’t come to me yet I’m not ready. But then it became comfortable to participate in

NL: From our perspective, we began doing this left, right, left thing was something we did as a show, like choreographing with the intention you can change it and doing it with people it becomes so different – and last week we did the same but without intention, well we were hoping people would do it but of their own, and we were doing it like a song and music and nobody was joining.

A: At many times I felt like I wanted to, but I didn’t feel like I was getting a chance, I kept feeling pushed – as if I didn’t have much freedom to gather a chance to come in. I’m sorry…

NL: More time? No no no, We love to have negative feedback we want to know what’s going on.

A: I’m happy and enjoying by trying to put the audience and enjoying, but how much freedom do you really keep for the audience – do they have the chance to say no, or change? Because after you say you want them to grow and be initiated, but how many chances to we have

A: That’s also a question that comes back to us – how much freedom to we have is in our minds…

A: I have the chance to go in, and I watch myself and try to figure out why I am moved or not and I appreciate it. But at some moments I think – no no don’t come to me

NL: There are options, the walking around - you don’t have to do it, but there are chances…

A: Would it be possible that some audience get into doing something that the dancers pick it up and bring it further – from the audience.

A: The timing is key, I feel the performers keep watching, but I don’t get the chance to put my opinion in before they move in. I only have the option to follow or say no.

NL: I’m wondering how much time do we have to give you to get the idea and get warmed up, and then go and It’s so long it feels like the idea is done.

A: After you say each time the show is changed, but it depends on who is your next audience. But if you change the next show from 5 minutes

A: Problem is we are 20 dancers trying to figure out when to move on, but we can change the way we call the cues. We might call the cues live, and move us to the next thing.

A: We talked about how long each idea takes a certain amount of time to click – The volume raising took longer to click than the L shape. That was an instant.
I was pulling it back to the timing and whether you want to be in it or not.

A: There was a moment, the humming where people were looking was so strong and I wanted to join in and it felt like people were joining in. If it’s timed on a single cue, but I understand that it shifts on how the performers shift. I felt like that was early after people stood up and was strong

A: The faster it doesn’t have to be looking at someone, but it opens up doors…

A: The humming was so magical because we weren’t all on the same page yet. And once you could see everything, it lost some interesting qualities to me – maybe keeping it so not everyone can see it at the same time would add some vitality.

Heather Hammond (Dancer): The bigger the group, the more time everything takes – the longer it takes to build trust and then when the audience is invited to be free it may have to happen later once trust is established and in a smaller group that will happen sooner than a bigger group.

A: The trust curve isn’t like that – it’s not us getting more and more comfortable. It’s not like that - at one point it was a real insecurity and I decided okay let’s go – and the dancer gave me something and it was amazing.

NL: And that depends on each individual – each person is different…

HH: But I don’t think we can get the audience to start initiating things within 5 minutes, We can get the audience to feel comfortable enough and understand the game – but for the audience to create something they have to do that later they need a specific and special invitation. It reminds me of break dancing crews, someone goes in busts a few moves and then comes back, and someone else does. That type of nonverbal or verbal invitation or instruction, the audience needs the cue if you go we’ll follow.

A: No No, That’s the freedom, I choose whatever or who is the initiator – That may not be a performer, I can follow the audience. I don’t need to wait for an audience member to do something. I’m already here and that is the initiative. If you have the patience to wait for me, I will do something.

HH (D): And if we designate a specific time to follow the audience then it doesn’t have to be so formal…

A: Different little things can happen in other places and you don’t have to wait for the whole audience to do the one thing…

NL: It’s hard to know what to do that we can ride on because we don’t know what they are going to do – They may not do anything

A: It feels like it all about the discomfort of not knowing what is going to happen next or who is going to do something is there, but the pleasure of just having a moment with the dancers and a chance to look. If you want the audience to participate more, just return to right left right because they know the game, and asking people to come back will know the game and will join in.
But, it feels like you don’t really want that, because you could make that happen if you had shaped that to allow that sort of freedom you’re talking about. Really, we’re being very polite because we know that there’s a conception you have about the subliminal space about who the performer is and who’s not. But not that much happens, so it’s surprising when the company finally does something organized and then it’s suddenly it’s over. And we’re like but wait wait - are we going to get to do stuff and get freedoms? And then just return to right, left, right, and then we’ll do it and now we know that we could initiate. Out of respect that we don’t mess with it –

NL: Makes sense - we have to demystify that point…

A: Only if you want to – or stay in the mystery. Right now it’s about the in-between place and tolerating not being in the in-between place and tolerating not having a performance given to us nor given the freedom to become fully a part of a break dance or your world. It’s not as if we’re really shaping it with you yet – it’s very indirect right now.

NL: That’s very helpful – Insightful and detailed, Thank you. So informative!
Thank you so much! Enjoy the movies and the drinks!

Sept. 17 - Talk back after 5:30 Show

Laura Diffenderfer: Can one of the dancers talk about the moment where you get really quiet in the beginning? Was that intentional?

Dancer: Yes, we gradually raised our voices. That happens naturally in any group setting, if other people begin to get louder then you start you talk louder - So we did that intentionally, then we sort of drop our voices down.

Audience: The people that were talking so loud just stopped and then we started speaking softer in a whisper

A: It was absolutely quiet wasn’t it?

A: It was sort of like chanting, the sacred moment where everything came to fruition and then it stops and you hold the space

A: I felt invited to participate as soon as I couldn’t tell who was officially in the piece, so when you (points) laid down and I thought okay, she has kind of a stylized dress, but I don’t think she’s a dancer, but she could be, and well perhaps I am the same, so I lied down. And actually,.

A: I didn’t lie down, but I was standing among them

A: And then she started laughing and that’s when I felt like I didn’t know who was on the inside and who was on the outside and so I thought, okay I could be on either side - so I laid down.

A: Interesting combination of us an them, from a dyad to a group I’d like to see more of a A triad, and most of our world is based on a dyad, yes no up down so it’d be interesting to have the 3 groups

A: I loved the moment where we were all sitting and suddenly I looked at people and saw people, and saw people and openness when we all sat, we were all at the same level, it was great

Noemie Lafrance: It was the only moment we got participation last week was the lowering down, and feedback after was that they liked that moment when touched and so I decided to keep it and move forward with that concept.

A: I did notice that I never felt ignored by the people in the piece, and not be courted.

A: Just at the end – when there was no way to participate

A: I couldn’t join that – even if I tried…

LD: Noemie and I spoke before the performance - The feeling some people had in last week’s performance, was that they wanted to rebel, Did anyone feel that way? and dancers how was it to have an audience who wanted to be included and a part of the piece?

A: I felt it was a piece about examination of power and movement, and I had moments where I said I’m not doing this, not to be contradictory but there are moments where I didn’t want to follow all the time,

A: Setting up the ride was divisive, by excluding other people because only some people got to go on the ride and it was like ‘oh, I want to go on the ride’ or ‘eh I don’t need to go on the ride’

A: The walking back and forth with the words on the side – you had to jump in, I call it the ‘ride’

D: Oh, the L… We call that part the L.

A: I was told oh, you have to go and meet someone by the window, so I said okay – but I didn’t know who I was meeting by the window so I started introducing myself to random people, like William, and then he was confused and didn’t know – neither of us knew who was in on it or not.

A: I’d be interested in finding out how one might be more invited and participate because the idea is that everyone participates in someway, right?, and so the association between the audience and performer is almost indistinguishable at some points.

NL: Yes, and I was wondering if you wanted to add something to the piece, do you have an aesthetic input that you want to add or the idea or you actually did it in certain moments?

A: I was enjoying stillness and moving, I liked the change that allowed me to break. I would further investigate the stillness vs. moving

A: The text vs. silence, was there a when people where walking, was there a motivation behind what people said ‘Hi nice to meet you or I like grilled cheese sandwiches, was there a certain? Because I liked the quiet moments, rather than using text. I enjoyed being able to communicate with others without using words.

A: Were those words given to the dancers? But they started off saying something…?

NL: We gave them the option; but the point is you have to find 5 words, but if you can’t find the words then we will give them to you.

A: I wanted to be invited to join the documentary part of the performance because you had the camera and I didn’t know who was in on it – and at a point the guy with the gray facial hair said ‘sir, I’m going to need you to move faster’ and I thought it was coming from the guy upstairs. I realized, oh there’s a whole separate component to the group that’s documenting. And I wanted to be given a mike or something and asked to join and go up there and hold a light reflector.

A: I wanted to be given permission when it was the talking section to ask other audience members to join in, because it was only the people that were asked and so it became like these 3 groups, the dancers, the audience that was asked and the watchers.

A: It’s easier to join the movement.

NL: Yes, at that point you’re excluded, if you didn’t get the secret then you’re excluded, but that’s good. I found it interesting during the party where they all come forward saying ‘entering and withdraw’ normally all the audience is over there and we move through and make lines out of you – we call it ‘combing’ and because you were so enthralled you were all following and so it was strange and I realized ‘wow, something has really changed.’

A: Did anyone have thoughts on the good part of participating vs. the military feeling when walking around the wall, and I thought maybe I should choose not to participate.

A: I liked the more dynamic aspect – the walking back and forth didn’t appeal to me, the dynamic appeal of movement

A: When people began to sit on the floor – I thought were going to play ‘duck, duck, goose’

A: It was great as an audience member to have that choice of when to participate – when everyone was walking back and forth I chose to walk straight across so I could hear what people are saying. And I didn’t have a secret, so I tried to hear as many as I could. Also, for the L walking part - I wasn’t close to the participation zone, so I took a moment to watch what happened with the bodies, and thought, okay I’m here to see dance and it was nice to have the moment of not having to participate. Maybe other nights had more moments? But today because it was super participatory there weren’t as many moments to watch the bodies move. And it was great choose how you view the show.

A: It felt like a huge game to me, where the rules kept getting messed up and changing. Some people were upset that were excluded, but I loved those moments because you had periods where anyone could join or you had to be invited, and it created a dichotomy between the two. I liked the game theory.

A: I liked when people lied on the ground and it was quiet and strange and it felt like still images, and a strange contrast because I didn’t get in the L either so I got to stand back and watch again. I thought that was the prettiest part. And the lying down.

A: Maybe, if you gave out brochures or envelopes that said don’t open this until someone comes up to you...then nobody knows what I have and I’m special, and won’t open it until a dancer comes up to you, and inside can be lines of script.

NL: That’s a great idea.

Sept. 10 Talk Back after 6:30 Show

Noemie Lafrance: So, we’ve had two shows last night that were in the context of a real gallery opening and there were drinks and a bar and lots of people and people didn’t know it was going to happen

And we’ve had 3 shows today that were more like buying a ticket and you come to see a show and you expect something and they are very different settings for this performance to happen and also the number of people in the performance have affected a lot what happened.

Our conclusion as of yesterday was what drove what we did this morning and we are going to change the piece based on what you guys are telling us and next week before the show we have a 3 hour rehearsal and make changes based on the feedback from today.

Our decision based on last night because it was a difficult to move audience and we realized after the first performance that if we weren’t more assertive about the spacer we needed then nobody was moving and it felt like we were losing and it was a contest between standing people not wanting to move and us wanting to get through, so we decided to bring that up and be more assertive and in the 2nd performance in the gallery it worked, now with an audience that is more aware and it feels almost to me, moving you around becomes too much of a burden and too obvious.

Yanira Castro: I should be completely transparent and say that I have a lot of questions because I am also a choreographer, but through the piece I was often thinking about audience agency and choice and the openness of that choice and obviously you can’t force me to do anything, like "get off the wall! get off the wall!"

But I may decide to not to get off the wall - so I had all these questions so the audience always has agency, you can always decide to not do what the dancers are asking you to do but I definitely felt that there is a feeling that you were choreographing the audience and I had a question about whether or not you were really wanting to be that specific about how the audience is placed or did you want it to have a more openness?

NL: I'd like to become two groups playing off each other so in a place, for that me that is very successful, is when we’re coming through in two lines, and then it becomes clear that we are choreographing the audience the places where it’s difficult when we are running in the circle and we want you to move this way so we can do this piece this piece and its like I want to occupy different parts of the space, and the L around the periphery of the space doesn’t work, well in my mind it doesn’t work if there’s people on the wall to go around, so yes I want to choreograph the audience and keep it open to whether or not people choose to participate. We were going further than what I initially wanted to do, you know telling people to get off the wall, we weren’t initially going to do that, but nothing was happening so in a way I’m introducing this idea of urgency, we just need to get this done, we just need to keep them off the wall, so it’s not aggressive, but urgent.

A: It didn’t feel aggressive but it did feel as if there was a right thing to do and it did feel and that if I didn’t then I wasn’t making a choice, and that was as my question about the agency so is it really about the relationship about me and the performer or just the performer telling me what to do and so I think the question about what the relationship between the audience and the performer is a really difficult want, because if you’re asking me to move and you’re not and they have a task then that task and that relationship becomes a focal point, I have to do this and you’re not letting me, I have to do this and you’re not letting me, when are you going to let me? Do I try 5 times and stop or keep doing it until you let me and how does that play out as an experience.

NL: We’ve had these conversations with the dancers, about perseverance. I said you have to continue doing these lines until the lines are formed. Someone said I don’t want to move, you have to tell the person you have to, but its just one place where were are in our process but that doesn’t mean it’s the answer

A: We were also curious about to what degree there was a tension in piece between well I can do anything and I want to or I think I’m supposed to or if the audience is in certain places on the edge where they want us to get in involved and move in a more spontaneous but is the piece giving them the space to do that, or is it closing down the opportunity to do that, and if you could be more specifically it would be more interesting are there spaces that open up for you the right amount?

A: He really took that freedom, and was really much a part of performance to me, it will always be the group and him, it’s our experience, to us he was equally part of the piece because of the choices he made and what would it be like if all of has attempted that

A: And would you want everyone to?

NL: It’s interesting because he asked me yesterday during the opening and said I hope I wasn’t disturbing your performance, and I said no, you can do whatever you want, everyone can do whatever they want and that was my reaction but I think it raises a good question, it would be interesting to se if everyone went and did their own thing, if our performance would even survive?

A: Right – what’s your choreographic control?

Sam Petersson (dancer): If everyone did as well as you did then no problem

A: I thought he was part of the piece until

NL: No no he just came this time

A: He was inspired to dance

Warren: I’m an audience participant

A: But it does raise that question – where can you move your audience and where can’t you move your audience? And how does that desire affect it?

A: It’s so tricky because when you go to a dance performance you’re set in a role, I’m the audience, you’re the dancer and when you try to push the boundaries, like here, yes you feel like interacting but it’s a constricting space – 4 walls, I’m the audience, so I feel like there’s always a tension and it’s not so easy to erase the lines, and I’m not a dancer, and no matter how I move, this is what I find interesting, because no matter how we all move, through movement I am reminded that I am not a dancer (laughter)

A: But experience and awkward, like okkk quick quick I’m not gracious or flexible but I thought that was interesting. 2 things quickly: Really Became aware of sound tricky in this space, but also came to my mind that perceiving this space and your ears and what you hear struck me this time for me and my protection I felt a tension all the time like we were forced to move. And people lining up against a wall – it’s how you execute people and kill people and ending the show with corpses, I couldn’t help but see corpses, like okay are they killing people?
And we are always being forced and then we’re all lined up against the wall – what is going on here? The space is constricted. Yes, you have a blue sky but we can’t get up there

NL: Interesting you say this – it’s the first time we succeed with moving people with the wave, it didn’t happen any of the other times and last night it wasn’t happening at all but I also mention between the shows I mentioned to one of the dancers – no no no this is not the army, think more like a kindergarten or friendly but lots of change and drill

A: Interesting take as well, because I’m here with Warren and he was kind of doing the opposite of what they were doing and in a provoking way but my natural tendency, my natural tendency is to do the same thing as everyone else and not to stand out, and so I was wondering do you want people to do the same thing almost as a directive follow us or are you expecting people to really do something else?

NL: We didn’t think of it – originally we wanted people to do what we were doing

A: Like follow the leader?

NL: Well yes and no actually, there’s moments like coming through the lines - we want to use the spatial rearrangement where we’re coming in and creating holes and you come in and we make lines out of you and so some things are audience vs. dancers and sometimes we merge, but it’s more like the audience is the canvas and he was being the paint over the canvas over the canvas. There was the audience canvas and then the dancer canvas and then him.

A: I feel as if this whole thing is just a big experiment in group psychology – more direction move parts inspired the most oppositional reactions from certain individuals (laughter) – the parts with the wall, well this is obviously where the next thing is and so it’s interesting finding the finesse of the audience is supposed to do and what invites them and it’s not going to be 100% no matter

NL: And this isn’t what its going to be in the end I’m playing with structure and we put a lot of ideas on the table and how we created this piece and then we ordered them
It’s about the atmosphere that would let you be and creative and inspired to participate, dancer or not – if you can do it or not - so that’s why I’m trying to use simple dancer vocabulary
I’m also thinking about the blog we created to use your feedback and transcribe it and posts from scholar authors – I’m thinking about putting more instructions of there this game works this way and etc and then

A: I came here to see a show and be part of a show and found it entrancing I was disappointed at the end, if I can say so. What am I supposed to do, what is the right thing to do, and then I realized that there is no right thing to do and I expected the actors, the performance to be more to be more taken as part of the show, more interaction from me and them because if we destroy the barrier, or wall then I can be a spectator again and so I can stay here and see people performing because in the moment I start to be an actor as well and I expected something to happen but if you have to let the interaction pass over me in a straight line and I’m in the middle you have to find a way to remove me because in the but to for more interaction, I expected more and more but it didn’t come, I’m not disappointed I’m very happy, but it’s not personally

NL: We’re not taking this personally, even though that’s always really a lie (laughter)

A: I’m forced to be so straight because of the language barrier – the idea is there so I apologize.
There was an escalation of things moving and going up, but how could we do that?

A: Times where you felt there was intensity and a desire to be a part of it, did you join in?

A: Yes

A: From my wife to me I said yes let’s do it I felt this kind of energy and without the interaction I felt pushed back.

A: There was this section where I though you guys wanted us to do what you guys were doing, like the jumping jacks but then I thought ohh, noo you guys have to go longer for me to really commit to okay fine I’ll do them because you have to get past a performance tendency to not want to perform

W: When I was participating when there was no interaction or reaction or stimulus I felt totally free to do whatever I wanted to when I was encountered or invited I found myself more closed down, but I had to work through the closed but it was this is what you need to do

A: The comment – if it had gone on longer – if maybe an invitation would have convinced you to do it earlier?

A: I knew exactly what you had wanted from me, but I didn’t want to give it to you. And I did it because I know you’re going to stop so, but how did you know I feel it in the structure.

NL: I mean she’s a choreographer she knows a lot of stuff. (laughter)

A: Haha, I just mean, it felt like okay you’re not going to take me there or wait something about that and it’s fearful you’re afraid and so you don’t want to be first person to say ookkkkaay I’m not one of you but I’m going to do it, but all you need is one person and then everyone would start

D: What were the moments where you felt had the entry way?

A: Sitting down, I felt like doing it

A: I think that had to do with the touch – that was actually what I wanted more of was those tiny moments of intimacy, that really do succeed in breaking the wall because the rest of the time it feel interrupted.

A: Yeah I felt some of those moments of intimacy, but I made direct eye contact with several performers so I got an intimate feeling from a few of them so it made me want to participate at moments but then there were moments where I didn’t want to move, like I know you want me to move, you’re running right for me, but I’m not going to move, but I think that’s part of my personality, I think for everyone there’s parts that are like okay I’ll do jumping jack or sit on the floor but also nope I’m not going to do that, run me over. (laughter) I liked that there was tension of wanting to and not wanting to

A: Every time I got somewhere where I thought okay this where is where I’m going to stand watch the piece, I had to move, and so I felt like everyone was participating whether you knew it or not and you had to make that decision and there was a moment where I thought you were a dancer, because he was writing and he was staggered, but you couldn’t tell who wasn’t and was,

A: Till later on

A: My one disappointment was that finally I could tell

A: A plant –

NL: I’ve done that a lot to put plants in my other work…and it works beautifully

A: But it also feels like a cheat

NL: But it works because it breaks the ice, because it works because of what you said if I see other people doing it then I’ll do it, but I’m trying to not do that with this one to not do that because we could reveal the number of more slowly…show 5, then 6, 7 10 because there’s 18 total but right away we go to it, because we were dealing with different sections and we had to decide what order to put them in and how are we going to work that out

A: I began to accept to forget about the long time about who was a performance – that produced a feeling of equality between, in the social space, what did that entail? since whatever you did was, by the audiences accord and interpretation, permissible – you didn’t violate anyone’s sensibility or rightness or permissibility and that must have testified to some comment sense of sociability and to me that speaks to a quite a specific set of symmetry and so I was wondering if your piece credible o the assumption that the audience and the performers agreed on this basic sense of affinity and what would happen if it took place with a public with your dancers, seemed to me as quite homogenous based on their appearances, take it into a place of non-affinity

NL: The dance, they would be doing something less unisons, more individual and more different

W: Agora was like that

A: The performance today there was a 2year old, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to be doing this piece with a bunch of 2 year olds in the audience. He was less inhibited and he danced because it provoked this very innocent sense of our body and our need to move it and all this imitation and basic human things – my personal moment And so it does raise the question of the context, who the audience is whether it’s a 2.5 year old or a different neighborhood or different whether the sighting of the white box that has a sort of prison like feel, maybe it’s the sky and the walls, and the proportions of this space and pushing at those possible association the abstract or task space moments and direction

It’s also who the performers are, in response to what you’re saying, they all look like dancers,

NL: Yeah it would be great if I had older people

A: What if they’re not dancers? Because that does create oh they’re dancers and were not, and even if you are a dancer you feel a bit standoffish.

NL: I think that would be great.

A: Even some of the audience members look like dancers…

NL: Maybe I should recruit a couple of people for each show, maybe some people want to be in the next show?

W: Yeah, I know you do.

NL: Any other?

A: I just want to echo the, couple of people mentioned, I shared the feeling when I felt like everyone wanted me to do something I distinctly wanted to do the opposite. I just did.

NL: Yeah there are a lot of people like you (laughter)

A: When you got us to move back at the wave part, I was thinking that there was a part where some of the performers were among us… or maybe you were?

NL: Yes, half of the performers were among you when you were moving back.

And that – I remember on this side we know were’re supposed to be moving back because they’re (the dancers) moving back, and maybe that side isn’t going to get it quite yet becaue I don’t see any dancers over there. And so if you want us to do something maybe having a couple of the dancers model it, it

NL: Yeah that helps

A: That made me be like okay that’s what I should do

A: Is that participatory if it’s about modeling or is that the notion of participating and interaction

NL: Certainly it’s one of them that I’m interested in…

A: So if you want us to do specific thigns and then you get us to do thoise specific things is the task

NL: But the idea is interesting where the moment because we want you to do this and you can see that then you’re like no, we don’t want to do that and that foer me is the idea , oh I have to make a decision on whether or not I should do it but you’re also aware that there are two groups and you have to decide what group, and so it’s making kind of a war between the two groups, and that’s what I was bringing up with the dancers uyesterday
I said you have to win, they can win, there’re not sdoing anything but standing but you have to win this contest but its interesting tjhat it provookles this idea that they want to also win, and that’s interactive

A: It feels like they’re playing eachother – dancers vs audience audience vs dancers and makes the audience actually think and participatory and the idea that you can say I don’t want to do that or I do want to jump up and down, that conversation si really what is most imporatn and the conversation of playing the game an d the game between the audience and the perfmoer

A: And you can’t ever really force ther audience to do something, and that’s why it is live performance you know if someone doesn’t want to do it then that show is that show

A: I feel like I theatre that’s a problem that there are seats and people can shut off and that’s why I like work that challenges the audience to participate becausr they shouldn’t shut off

A: I agree

A: You said you realized this was like a war, I prefer to speak about an interaction a theologic interaction, in lingustical interactions, you can speak voer someone with your body with your languyar and the order can be silent or response and this is the point some were responding to you and forcing another interaction , I am here and interacting and negating the interaction and I like this idea and when I say I expected to be more into the show, I mean more interaction like bodies and music. And it’s interesting because after the show I can go on and speak in my language, but when I come in here and enter the space I now who is the dance and audience and so I discover who is the actor and audience and everything just collapses because it destroys this idea

A: That’s an idea in theater and if you want to break that 4th wall so badly, if you want them to come and get you and participate.

(laughter)

A: When that happens and they come to you, then you don’t want it…

A: But you’re reaching that threshold

D: People have talked about the space itself like a holocaust camp, or something

A: I was exaggerating but yeah…

D: I see where you’re coming from but I think the parts that felt most inviting were touch and intense eye contact, but in the rehearsal process here is an opportunity for the complete opposite where it it’s a privileged space where you have the chance to look into a complete strangers eyes for an extended period of time, and maybe it’s how you create that space and so instead of being in a prison - I’m in a gallery and I am art, I am living art in a gallery with you, so the complete opposite

A: What if the performers wore there normal street clothes, the way we do…

NL: Well that’s what they’re wearing… (laughter)

A: The shoes give it away… maybe if they wore cocktail dress?

NL: I know it’s a lot for running and things, I know, It’s tough to get the best of those few things because some of them are wearing dresses and more casual. We tried to get away from dancer/rehearsal clothes. I told them, ‘dress the way you would dress if you were going to an opening’ but their still dancers going to an opening (laughter) – they have dancer fashion.

Well thank you so much for all you’re fantastic feedback.

Sept. 10 Talk Back after 5:30pm Show

Susan Rosenberg: Now before you turn the tables on your audience: I want to ask you to just say a few words about the third run, and you’ve been getting feedback along the way, so about how you're choreographing the audience and how the piece keeps changing the different tasks, and personalities, different relationships between people who are performing and in the audience as well

Noemie Lafrance: Yeah, so yesterday we did a first go of the piece in the context of an opening so people didn’t know and there were drinks and bars and was very crowded so it quite different and I had expected it to be and today we had a smaller audience at first, but this is, I think, a good sized audience for the piece wants to be. It’s always different so far, so it’s hard to tell. We would like the audience to participate, but we would also not like to tell them to participate so that’s one of the ideas we’re working with. One of the reactions from yesterday to the first performance was that if we didn’t move the audience then it felt like it just didn’t come through at all, so we started to become more demanding without aggressive but more firm, but now in this edition it feels like we could be more flexible perhaps or it becomes a little bit obvious that we’re trying to move you and I don’t know if it’s only a question of moving you around but I do like the idea of, it seems at least yesterday, that people appreciate the feeling of transformation like the space was being transformed and they were a part of that. So that’s kind of where we’re at.

SR: So you’re interested to hear from the audience about when they felt like moving or felt moved upon or when they felt separate from the performers, if anyone is willing to talk about that. The last conversation we had there were points of tension in the performance where people felt that didn’t know if they were being invited in or pushed out, and in ways that became an interesting experience in that moment for the audience because they w ere caught in their own mind of did they want to, or were they willing to take the risk of breaking through and entering the performance, but they didn’t know from the choreographer or the dancers whether they were welcomed or not and that was an interesting thing, but watching as I am it’s hard for me to tell, what you’re all experiencing and we also talked about how certain points of the piece really want to move the audience as a mass, or as a group or break them up into group and the performers are interacting as a group with another group and that becomes a special thing or an object like thing And another point there seemed to be more one on one interaction.

A: I had some one on one interaction I really enjoyed. A lot of eye contact, extended eye contact with pretty dancers And I felt really invited when it was the simple touch and squats – that was really direct thing I feel like if that as introduced earlier somehow giving us the space to be more interactive

A: I feel like at the beginning I was really excited about being interactive and then I was like ehh I don’t know but then I got invited again, so I was a little unsure.

A: Related to that, the point of tension, I was almost lacking with a little interaction with the audience, it was only moving as a mass with the audience – there was almost an increased intensity when you have that confrontation with another audience member instead of a dancer. The movement of the mass can create the stranger confrontation and in the dynamic of New York City or any city where you have this intense proximity at times but there is also anonymity and so you can force the contact with strangers when you’re moving as a mass

A: To go off of that, Fabio came and other people were doing stuff and he came and he stood next to me and someone else in the audience, then he went off and did other stuff but then he came back to that exact same spot. And somehow to me that felt oh, he’s with us. And that felt more inviting than just the one time inviting. Felt like not so much chance that he was there, like he was set to be with us.

A: I’m set to jump off the gentleman’s comment about the squatting I think that the squatting works for those who figured out the rules of the game because as audience members we could do the same thing as the dancers without feeling lesser or like we were missing some part of the overall picture or some secret, you know I think it s a very difficult thing to engineer audience participation with them feeling like participants on equal footing without feeing like the subspecies (Laughter) among these higher more evolved beings who are running around them, it can be intimidating and nerve racking but there, for some reason, probably because of the simplicity …

A: I think it was because of the repetition of it, like it became clear that something was expected of us as they came around and touched us and kept doing it was clear and was being shown when they touched each other they were sitting down so it was like oh

A: I think it’s also about the relationship because I know I was touched many times and never squatted. I think it was sort of snarky, like ‘I know what you’re doing, but I’m not going to get down there too” but if there’s that relationship where if one person dances with me and I can tell it’s an invitation, and I did dance back, so I think, it is definitely about moments between you and dancers.

Risa Steinberg: I was wondering if you care about the amount of time you give us permission to disengage?

NL: Disengage with the performance at all? Well, right now the structure is very loose, it’s like everything but the kitchen sink in there, so I put everything, and we’re going to change the piece over the weeks based also on your feedback. So we’ve struggled over the past couple of weeks with the order, because we have all these parts and we didn’t know how we wanted to put them together, and we didn’t know what should come first and I was struggling with ‘if I reveal all these dancers too early, maybe that’s not good, and then there’s certain things that seem to open and close the space better or more contrast in terms of how we are using the space. So things seem to lead to another

It’s not perfect yet, well it’ll never be perfect, but it’s not working the way it is but it was the best order we could find and I found some holes and dips – moments that are strong but we kind of have to get from this to that. So I’m interested in hearing what moments feel strong regardless, maybe they are not that interactive but that maybe they don’t succeed at bringing the audience in but maybe they succeed at something else…

RS: I think someone should, when standing in your face, but there were a few times if I didn’t move, I just became more interested in something else. Especially one time when I was here and all dancers were there. And there were lots of people…

NL: and you couldn’t see…

RS: Well I’m very tall but (laughter) no, right and I thought okay I could move forward or I could look at the sky. Do you want that, are you giving me permission to not care about being disengaged?

NL: Well I think that’s very interesting because yesterday because it was in the context of an art opening it felt and it wasn’t the a performance that you come to and buy a ticket and this and that – it felt more okay to be that way because there isn’t that expectation of okay I need to be entertained every second, and it was great because some people didn’t care and other people were really curious about what was going on and people were getting amused and different reactions…and I think in that context that felt good because there were some moments of emptiness, moments where you would disengage and it’s like you’re allowed to talk to your friends in this piece. I want to take everyone’s phones and keep them with the bags, but we’ll see if we get there – maybe by the third week.

RS: And I think you have the right as a creator to not care if we stay engaged, you get to have that power in a way I was just curious if you made that choice?

NL: Yes, partly – There is this idea of if you succeed or not if you’re not sustaining the audience attention, but I feel like in this work it should have that flexible that you can kind of wander and get interested again and wander…which is kind of how life is – if you’re walking down the street and something interesting oh watch that and go on and be in your head or whatever.

RS: So it’s still not a theater perspective

NL: No, right – We’re working to break that.

A: I feel that many times an urge to want to participate and was hesitant but then one of your tall male dancers, that handsome one over there, several times he would look at me and go like this (a welcoming gesture with his hands) it was the only indication that I really felt and I thought if more of the dancers had actually done that, I might have joined in, but that was very inviting.

Sam Petersson (dancer): I’m not supposed to even be doing that (Laughter)

A: But it I caught you doing it, and so then I thought maybe I should start then, but I thought if there were a few more instances, I mean it was subtle enough; I might have gone in and walked around with the group or danced.

NL: You know it’s funny, because this is not the first time that someone has brought up this idea of one on one and intimacy, and I think we are reaching out for the intimacy in the looking and things and I did tell the dancers to not go up to anyone and be like ‘heeyyy…join us…come participate.’ It’s all about the subtleties. He got caught, haha.

A: It sounds like there’s a wish for some cues almost, well if there were cues would I perform with them or not, maybe, is that how you’re reading the cue, kind of, a verge of a cue?

A: No cues.

Heather Hammond (dancer): We’ve talked about that, about how an audience in a traditional audience wants to be told what to do and what to expect. And so with this piece that is completely broken down and that’s really the question and so coming to this piece you’re experience is really something quite different and extraordinary and that really engages the audience in a new way and exploring those ideas as a dancer and it’s not like And so you’re the audience and we’re the performers, and now it’s time to applaud, but I do think it could be more comfortable for the audience if the cues were more direct. Now it’s your turn to join and now your going to watch.

NL: But then it would be obvious

A: But there might be a way to spilt the difference.

A: Excuse me; I liked the confusion, of who was the audience and who was the actor. Because I didn’t know who exactly who was the actor and who was not and so in a way I was participating without knowing I was.

NL: I would love for this confusion to get even more confusing, but so far we have more or less a homogenic group of dancers, and it’s kind of inevitable.

A: The piece has a rhythm a start stop and changes and I wonder if playing with that rhythm might actually be another way to solve that problem of participating the rhythm of getting the audience, you might be able to if you have many more rhythms happening if that would be the cue you’re looking more in a much more subtle flirtation way…

NL: We have this inside joke, when I was telling dancers not to go up to people and tell them to participate I said ‘Do you go up to someone and say, Hey do you want to have sex with me? (laughter) So it’s sort of the same thing. No - you have to work it out. So we’re trying to find these subtleties. I couldn’t agree more – the rhythm has been hard to establish it because there times when we have to continue doing the thing until it yields results like moving or that thing or then the timing in terms of choreography or theatric substances is distributed so maybe it would gain from being simpler and less stuff and just going at it with perseverance.

A: I don’t think there’s too much stuff.

NL: Okay, good. We have more stuff. (laughter)


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Audience Member: Two things - I personally enjoyed very much when the ratio of the activity of the dancers and when there were a number who would fill were observing and then it was more even within the group because it felt like they were a part of the audience, when the ratio was a little more even it almost felt like they were a part of us. As opposed to us being a part of them.

Noemie Lafrance: So when you say ratio do you mean 20 people dancing?

A: No, like 20 people watching among us and 10 people running

NL: So less dancers doing stuff

A: So like unmasked. I actually got into moving around when they were engaging with us and at different angles. But at one point it felt like people, including myself, were participating without doing anything, the act of actually deciding I’m not going to do that. One lovely participant at one point behind me sat down when everyone sat down and when everyone stood she stood and then she didn’t sit down the next time - I saw the looks of her partner/husband and give him the cue that I’m not going to sit down and I should help her up because she’s pregnant, but I thought that as actually a lovely moment for her because she decided I am not going to sit down. But I thought that was participating because it’s hard for me to discern whether it’s disengagement…

NL: There was someone in the first talk who said I like to have to decide in my mind, ‘Am I going to do this? Am I going to do this?’ And this is part of the experience definitely. ‘I like this part - I can do this, Oh I’m doing to do it!’

A: Well, this was just wonderful. It was lovely to meet you. Thank you.

NL: You’re welcome. Thank you.

Sept. 10 Talk back after 4:30pm Show

Noemie Lafrance: So we’ve been working quite a bit on ideas of space and also ideas of how to use the space as if the audience was a canvas and also how to leave space for people to participate without asking for it

Dancer:
So I want to know from the audience what moments they thought participated more or what moved them?

NL: Yeah we want to use your feedback to change the piece and we are willing to change it drastically– next week obviously, we are going to change it for the 5:30, because that is in 10 minutes, but on Saturday before the show we have 3 hours and this by the way was a piece that was made really fast like in the last week but um we finished it this morning after we had the chance to try it with people last night, but yeah we love to know where you’d want to go with it if it were your choice?

Audience: And your goal is it that you want us to be involved with the dancers, participating?

NL: That is one of my goals but I want it to be free, that its more inviting that anything else not that you’re asked to or have to. You already to participate inevitably because you’re moving around and things are being moved around and in some moments your sort of forced to participate but its all without saying do this, it’s implied, so yeah the goal would be that you would feel comfortable to participate.

A: I found interesting that the when you use the word the audience is not one thing, the audience can be moving unmasked like a group and oat other points, I felt, I was moving in a more intimate interaction with a dancer. I was wondering if other audience members felt similar observations or certain moments were more charged or observing or interesting?

A: I think that the dancers’ proportion was strange to me. I felt immediately that this was designed for a mass.

NL: Right

A: That you wouldn’t prefer more dancers than audience members. In public, that’s probably not what you’re going for. I felt that that was strange for the audience members and the performers.

I felt like my other immediate reaction was that it was so obvious to me who was going to perform and who was here to watch. And so that immediately set up such a division

NL: Yea right, you guys were all on this side and they were all kind of on that side.

So I guess my question is - Is it part of the goal to try and challenge that division between performer and audience, and the choice of the performer seemed to e, I wondered by you didn’t make different decision about the performers aesthetically

NL: in terms of their costuming you mean?

A: in terms of the of maybe using a group of people that wouldn't immediately stand out as performers

NL: Right, right

A: Like someone that looks more like a lawyer than a dancer

NL: In costuming and in attitude?

A: In body size, age…

NL: but yes we were thinking and talking about that to build it gradually so that we’d only reveal a couple of dancers and than more dancers - is that partially what you’re saying

A: You could tell the dancers immediately

NL: yes yes I got that, I could tell that too today, especially because there were a few people and also just btw if you’re interested you can stay for the other performances that is not a problem so you can see the differences

A: I could tell who was the dancer but I like that because I’m here at a performance and I’m seeing a performance and I felt it was really possible to me to become one of those performers without any special I just had to be present and willing

NL: And then you decided not to do it?

A: Well I…
(Laughter)

NL: Okay cool

A: The volume going up, that was the moment I felt surprise and it felt very effective and it felt like a true way of making he audience participate by necessity because if someone starts talking to me or one of the performers who I couldn’t tell it she was a performer or not, I gathered she was, and without noticing we all started talking louder, I thought that as very effective there were moments of that – the mixture between the organized choreography to the mixing in with the audience and that in and out I thought that as very effective. I think the participating is very, I think for him it was not a big deal, I think its about the audience showing us the blocks we feel, like embarrassing, I felt the moments were more exciting and made we want to participate, moments were going on and that group doing things together and repeating it and as an audience you do want to participate but I also felt like it was made for a bigger audience maybe

I think it’s interesting to the moments like when you walk in the u shape around the wall, that would be a moment where I felt like I wanted to jump it but because its so stylized at that moment its not clear if that is what you want, for an individual, and probably most people will be who are coming here, is one who is used to going to s performance where it was the less structured places that felt more open by design, but not necessarily that were the more inspiring to want to participate and although I really appreciate the whole setup of not necessarily asking anyone to participate because it’s not incredibly clear you want participation, that those moments that were less structured, I wanted, I would, like to get into that line but I was less likely to because a there wasn’t enough space, so I could have completely jumped it, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be watching at that moment,. So I wasn’t sure if there was anyway to let people know that, that would be something to discuss amongst you, without attempting to design it from the outside so I think that is a fine line to cross. But I also think that as an audience member, should I should I should I should? Will I will I will I will I? I think that is also very telling about your self to yourself, so I think that is also a very interesting aspect about it also?

A: I agree with that - I was wondering when you did it last night if people jumped into places in the other show?

NL: So it was a fine line of it being people being a lot of people, little drunk (laughter) and the bar and there were literally people who jumped in, and interesting the 7:00 was different than the 8:00, but interesting when we were ‘coming through coming through’ and there was a woman coming through with us, and she went in on that I thought she was trying to leave and because they started backing up, and she was like ‘whoa whoa’, but she told me later that she intentionally was doing it, and there were other people that participated who came and actually asked me was that okay that I did that?

A: There was moment where he was going and I decided to just because, but if it wasn’t him I probably wouldn’t have done that because I know him, but I didn’t feel like moving but I wanted to see what happened if I didn’t, but I wasn’t sure, so I asked him after was I supposed to do that and he said no you’re supposed to move. (Laughter)

D: Because I know her really well, that’s why I said that (more laughter)

A: Another question: I’m standing against the wall because I don’t want to move and someone says excuse me but you have to get out of the way - am I being invited to participate or am I being told what my role is?

NL: I know

A: Another dance came up to me and said we may ask you get off the wall, so I thought (laughter) and so that immediately creates the distinction between audience and performer, so really the line should walk around me shouldn’t they?

NL: well, no – and that’s the thing - so yesterday we had this experiment where the first show we did walk around people and it really felt like the performance was not achieving what we were supposed to do, and so I made the decision that we would, in cases like the L shape that I call it all around, we would just say ‘get off the wall it was a question of we are either not going to be able to do our performance and the public will win over by not moving or we have to take over the situation and make it happen and so we decided to go for the more firm without being completely aggressive

A: Which also creates the distinction between audience and dancer, I think

NL: Yes, you’re right it does and I’m still thinking and so I don’t know but it’s a choice of like a game we want to win the game of us being able to do our performance, but we want to use the audience as a canvas, but we want to have a response

A: Its nice to, like what Kathy said, I came to a performance and I wanted to know & saw the performers and I enjoyed that. When you’re doing the L, It was a beautiful moment and one of my favorite so I wanted to watch it; I also wanted to do it. It’s just a moment and maybe that just goes unanswered and you see what happens.

It’s an aspect of it; part of it too was everyone was so real and in real time and everyone was really gracious types of people and so that really made it

I sort of think that the idea and the goal, and maybe there is several goals. But at a certain point this is the performance and this is the move and we going around the outside and at that point we are acting as a group and you guys are acting as group

NL: We’re like two groups kind of playing off each other.

A: And that is a distinction - but If you’re wanting us to join you and if you’re wanting us to actually join us. its almost like we need actual eye contact and more subtlety of movement so that you’re like oh I’m having a connection with this person (right) so then if everyone is having a connection with someone its all a movement like swaying and then suddenly oh, everyone is swaying and the effect is a little more, but if you’re wanting us to connect then an individual connection will help actually help us connect.

NL: From the beginning kind of?

A: Yeah, because I didn’t know that I was supposed to participate, I thought my participation was oh, they’re herding us around and like I’m over here now.

NL: Right right, there is definitely that. And right, you see the thing is we weren’t able to achieve the moving people around last night completely we didn’t achieve it and then this time we are trying to achieve it and it seems like people in the end if they weren’t getting moved around like they weren’t getting results it was as if the audience wanted to feel as if the audience wanted to happen has happened to them,
But I think that’s all really good feedback in fact I really like that.

In fact we have a blog that we put together for the audience that are more snoopy and want to know more about how they should behave and what is going on in the change of the performance, and they can go and look at the blog and there will be more and more cues in there as time goes by, we’re going to put the recording of the conversation and some writings from different writers and stuff from me and from the dancers

A: Where is it? On your website?

NL: Yes, the blog can be found on our website – and at thewhiteboxproject.blogspot.com
It’s on the program which you get when you exit

Thank you so much everyone! Thank you for the feedback!