My Rabbi Danny Zemel often says “if it is not broken, break it.”
There are two things people have said about me that I actually like:
- Question everything. Liz Lerman does.
- Liz Lerman can talk a hound dog off a truck load of meat bones.
Both of these ideas required me to behave outside the boundaries of the dance training I received in my earliest and most formative years. The beauty and disgrace of orthodoxy is that it isn’t questioned. You learn your place and you stay in line. You just do it as best as you can, or better yet, better than anyone else in line. When I first started to wonder about another way to do things, I literally shook with fear. When I first opened my mouth to speak in a dance class, I cried first. (To be perfectly honest, it was a theater class and we were required to speak. I cried anyway.)
My colleague and college friend, Wendy Perron, told me that she remembers me complaining constantly, and more than anyone else. It took me a long time to learn how to turn my complaints into questions. It narrows down to asking “why?” “Why is it done like this? Why is that better? Why am I supposed to do this? Why …?”
Once I started asking why, it was a lot easier to move from New York to Washington, to drop out of college, to go back and finish, to get old people to dance, to start talking on stage, to get people to say their names before an advanced technique class, to insist that dancers in the company – not me – teach the master classes, to do dances with political or spiritual content, to share in making something, to speak in public about art, to do a founder’s transition without leaving the company I had founded.
Although I’ve made a point of questioning orthodoxy, there’s plenty that I believe in. Here are a few ideas:
- Try to give dancers something to do, as opposed to something not to do.
- Try to create an environment of respect for all the collaborators, including the dancers.
- Sometimes the choreographer leads the dancers, sometimes the dancers lead the choreographer. Pay attention.
- There is a finite amount of emotional space in a theater. If the performers take up too much of it, there is not enough left for the audience. Choreograph accordingly. Check in with the performers to make sure they understand. Sometimes they need extra rehearsal for the emotional part so that they can discover how to let it go later.
- Performers need the most time to experience something. Choreographers need a little less. The audience needs a lot less. So edit.
- The problem isn’t being literal. The problem is being redundant. It is okay to be communicative and even expressive. Maybe we want to watch being illustrative or overstating. Be wary. The program notes, text, music, movement can all say the same thing (a problem) or all say something unique leading in a similar direction. Just to confuse matters, sometimes it is good to be redundant to make a point or to bring an audience to its experience of literacy for the night.
- Keep track of everything that is generated. It might come in handy.
- It is okay to talk about stuff outside of rehearsal. It won’t jinx the project.
- Sometimes the dancers know what is best to do next. They know it first. But sometimes they are wrong.
- I like to think of structure as a constant companion. It is always on my mind way before we go into rehearsal. Generally, it is still there by the time we are in tech rehearsals. Structure might reside in the content. Structure might need to be imposed. Structure is the choreographer’s business, domain, and personal playground.
- I like to discover new processes for each dance. I can fall back on old faithfuls — things I know will work. But I love it when I find something new to try.
- When people complain that something is “touchy-feely,” I always want to say: “ Well, yes, of course it is about touching and feeling.” I think when they say that, they are actually worried about rigor or the lack of it. If that is the case, be sure to be rigorous and be sure they know it is.
