Sept. 24th after 6:30 Show

Bertie Ferdman: To begin, I’d like to get your reactions from your experiences and what you saw. Any thoughts or changes you’d like to share?

A: Initially it felt like we were being begged to enter or do something. Any movement you take everyone is looking at you. It was a beautiful way to bring us in because by using the simple things to establish vocabulary. By the end, I felt like I had to do this.

Dancer: It’s really exciting every show we’re getting all this new information from the audience. It’s different to be inside. You’re just as much a part of the show as we are.

A: I still don’t know exactly who the permanent cast was, because my person doesn’t have all black on – their lying down. How do I control myself, because I didn’t want to jump in. I don’t want to destroy something here, what’s the vocabulary here?

A: I thought it was an exercise in conformity. I wanted to be a nonconformist and resist, but felt a lot of pressure to conform.

A: I was against conforming, but when we were all in that corner, I just gave up. I felt by non-conforming you’re standing out and performing more than others.

Noemie Lafrance: It’s interesting that the non-conforming was coming back this show. The first week no one participated and non-conformity was the big theme. People thought ‘you want us to join, but it’s obvious, so we don’t want to’. It was people being stubborn and going against what we were doing. Last week it was a merge - you couldn’t distinguish any lines of performer or audience member. This week it’s tipping to the other side. There is so much conformity that it is coming back to this desire to not conform. What if I don’t conform, what will that do?

A: Can you tell us how many are permanent?

NL: 17

A: And how many here tonight?

NL: About 80

A: I was doing the coat check, and there were 105 bags that were in there.

NL: So maybe there were closer to 100. We had a show last week that was over 120. That show was different. You couldn’t see anything or tell who was the performers.

BF: Did anyone feel different when they participated? Or felt non conformist and observing? Was participating observing and was observing participating?

A: By the end everyone was reading the room and it’s such a skill I think New Yorkers have. By the end when you were deciding whether or not to join, everyone was waiting and seeing what the group’s behavior was. It was set up well in the beginning because of this level of paranoia with everyone walking and uncertainty. By the end people made choices to conform or not conform because they could read the room and make decisions quickly.

A: I want to see total anarchy break out. During the ‘coming through’ section, I wanted to say ‘walking, walking’ and wondered if more people would go against it.

NL: Last week this part, should be different. The idea is different because when people are making lines, and as we go back in and out it’s ironic because people that don’t want to participate are now being turned into lines. The more participation there is, the less it works because everyone is just following us back and forth.

NL: There was a group that blocked last week. I told the dancers if someone does something then you can follow it because then you can do more in different directions. It’s difficult because they have to hear you and catch up. There’s the question of time, if there is more time then people could catch up. That is the idea we’d like to follow.

A: It’s hard to balance the chaos and spontaneity of space and choreography.

NL: Interesting to observe how obedient people are, and they want to do what they are told. Even though inside you are thinking ‘I’m not going to do it.’ The idea of ‘if you do what mama says’ or ‘you go against what mama says’, either way you are still working in relationship to mama. Doing against is also relative, but breaking out is another world and taking over. I’m waiting for the moment for the entire audience take over- it’d have to come from a real strength. There are some people who are on the edge, and willing to do stuff. I wonder if the dancers are following the audience members if it may validate the statement the audience member is making, and in turn to help it grow.

A: So NY to think that participating is conforming and not-participating is not-conforming. I kept wondering what would other age groups do? Would they have these barriers? What if we brought a group of five year olds in here?

A: Lots of different factors will affect it - the number of people and size of the space will dictate whether a Saturday night or Sunday afternoon. If you come alone or with a group of friends. With a group you may do more or less.

A: I have think about the daily commute; we are all so trained and conditioned. We go forward then we back up. Cattle herding and crowd control is typical of America. I’m told to go left, I go left.

A: Our unconscious living of moving forward and walking through our day. Until you get to the end and say I want a drink, or I need to go have lunch. Your unconscious living continues until you specifically break from it – it happened in this piece.

A: What do you think has changed that has brought it to this level of participation?

NL: The order of our sequences changed and also the biggest element that made the jump is that you couldn’t tell who the dancers were. The first shows we just had the dancers jump in and do stuff. So, then the audience members saw the dancers and then there’s no reason to participate. Now, we have groups of dancers; Some groups are visible and some are acting as audience. When they participate they are always acting as if other dancers told them to do stuff. We opened up a puzzle with people lying down that didn’t exist in the first week. That’s the start of this openness. I asked the dancers to wait until the audience a member participates in this. It can take a while, but it’s worth it. It begins to break the wall. Also, as the insiders we start to see things we don’t know. Especially 5:30 last week, an obvious audience member was participating. After that everyone began participating. It created confusion and uncertainty of who is who.

Jennifer Carlson (dancer): The piece also became more personal. We had individual connections and having real moments.

A: That’s where I made my switch, because when someone asked me on an individual level, then I’m willing.

NL: My first idea was to have it happen naturally. Naturally it would grow and people would join. The feedback said people liked the touch on the shoulders. It helped to know people wanted to be asked personally and have one on one. They want to feel like it’s approved.

Tiffany Watson (dancer): One person was participating who was an audience member. I don’t think people recognized that because she was just doing everything the dancers were doing.

NL: I’m curious to hear from John, because you were at the first week.

John Cooper: It was clear to me that the performers had become far more skilled about what they were doing. That reassured me. It gave the performance slickness that in hindsight it was lacking before. I noticed conformity that has come up again and again. While it’s a good place to start, I think it doesn’t do the piece justice. It simplifies it too much. I’m wondering what is at stake with this idea of conformity? When an audience member is required to make a decision about whether to participate or not, what comes into play or factors in that decision? Is it going to be purely to enter into this simple dialect of conformity or non-conformity, performer audience. Or will they participate to avoid being anti-NY non-conformer? Are they going to join in because it’s the easiest? Or are they going to join in because they think by participating they’ll come into position of a more desirable form of behavior than standing outside? In other words, do they see in the role of a performer a set of non-arbitrary actions? It’s not that they’re arbitrary or for the sake of politeness and ease. I stood in the corner for almost all the performance. The corners were real special places in the space. They give you a critical distance to the object far more than the performer, but no one seemed to identify and occupy that space. I ‘d be interested to hear about reactions about if they though by entering into the performance brought them into strategies, experiences, vocabulary, rules, attention, or critical thinking that was particular special in some way or a simple arbitrariness in conformity, or non-arbitrariness in nonconformity?

JC: What is at stake in participating or not participating? I’m suggesting, not a simple matter of conformity or non-conformity, but what’s at stake is the status of the language – the moves, the responses, the kneeling down, or the form of expression and what is that giving to people? How can we interpret that language, what is the content?

A: The point I settled the most as a participant and observer, was walking in the circle after the turning part had stop and our group continued walking. We were in the corners and we had all these perspectives. We knew we were conforming. We knew what we were doing. We were not being guided by dancers, but we had a job and that job was very settling.

ZS (D): The part we call chaos to unison, I went to a group and the audience just started creating their own movement. Then the strong group came by and said We’re going to win. I got confused, on the edge with my group, confused chaos, I can’t get my beat or my arms, but they were so strong. They were having fun and thinking ‘What are we doing’, but in the end they won.

NL: That is part of the Darwinist exercise we’re doing. It’s survival of the fittest and we didn’t tell the audience the premise. We told them you’re doing these 4 counts movements. However, once the different groups are formed, if you persist then one group will take over. We know it, so we do it.

ZS (D): They were so involved, that they didn’t know what was happening, so they won. To your question about conformity, it’s not conformity or non conformity, it’s human impulse that’s related to something that’s what creates these ‘Wild’ people, they’re not contemplating much at all just vibing and something happens.

BF: John said to me, you no longer choose you are being watched by someone else – you’re a performer either way. You’re stuck no matter what. Everyone is hyper aware. Someone is watching someone and someone is watching you, even if you are in the corner.

A: I enjoyed the slow start. It was condensed in that moment. No one knew what to look it. My favorite part was looking around, and watching what others were looking at. I don’t think that performance ever lost that element. No matter how involved people became it was fun to see reactions and who chose to participate and how they chose to define themselves. You could see how they’re defining the performance itself. There’s enough time and space for that. It’s unique.

JC: John mentioned what’s at stake, but I think its individual for everyone. There’s no single answer. You’re experience is at stake. Your choices to either stand in the corner and watch or participate, what you gaining in your experience?

NL: In life we very rarely appreciate our experience as our top priority. Its how much money am I going to get, how much time am I going to save? It’s rare that your experience, It’s interesting to think, is that a choice for a sake of having a better experience. Is there a choice being made based on your self expression? Your desire to self express freely? , or to contribute to creatively to an organism. That’s at sake – organisms and how they warp and change. How can you have an effect on it, and does it matter? I’d like to answer these questions, but the questions of conformity and non-conformity are the dominating questions. I’d like for them to lower and people to think my experience is important to me right now. Can I impact this thing? Can I be creative?

A: That brings us back to the conformity question and what was at stake. I was hanging back out of sheer will to be different. When I joined I thought ‘I want experiences and to try it’, but the deeper side wanted me to do something totally against the grain and off the wall altogether.

NL: What stopped you?

A: Peer pressure, conformity.

NL: You think it’s not your self and your own judgment?

A: Isn’t that what conformity is?

A: If you had more time, do you think you’d get over it?

NL: Pressure from the inside and from the outside are two different things. The peer pressure would be from us to have you conform with us. Or the conformity like I want to be like other people and I don’t want to be different or crazy and do something off the wall.

A: I didn’t know what the rules were. If I do ‘blocking blocking’ in my area I wouldn’t be a spectacle in front of these people. How much would I rock the boat of what is choreographed and end up being the asshole?

NL: If you are given the attention in that moment and we follow you then we validate this idea. You may start feeling powerful and like you’re succeeding. You may want to do something else and maybe other people may want to do something else?

BF: Are the performers allowed to surprise each other? Are performers allowed to do anything total off kilter?

NL: They are now. It’s still very fresh. It’s starting to happen. Tonight’s show, the puzzle wasn’t what it was supposed to be and they started following each other. That is something we can introduce. We can be radical. It’s the start of something that can be kind of scary, but exciting.