Beyond Collaboration: How Interruption Shaped SKETCH 11
Imagery dancers in SKETCH 11: Interrupted. Left (front to back) in Ben Needham-Wood’s Waiting For…: Jenna Marie, Isaac Bates-Vinueza, and Alysia Chang. Right (front to back) in Amy Seiwert’s By Any Other Name: Matisse D’Aloisio and Maxwell Simoes. Costumes by Susan Roemer, S-Curve Apparel & Design. Lighting by Jim French. Photo credit: David DeSilva.[ Image description: Two side-by-side images of Imagery dancers in SKETCH 11 performance. The photo on the left shows three dancers in a vertical line, caught simultaneously in mid-stride. They are bathed in orange-red light against a black background. The photo on the right pictures a female dancer suspended in a lift, her legs extended in a wide split and torso supported on the back of a male dancer. Each dancer holds a flower in one hand. The dancers are lit in bright, warm light against a blue background. ]
Imagery dancers in SKETCH 11: Interrupted. Left (front to back) in Ben Needham-Wood’s Waiting For…: Jenna Marie, Isaac Bates-Vinueza, and Alysia Chang. Right (front to back) in Amy Seiwert’s By Any Other Name: Matisse D’Aloisio and Maxwell Simoes. Costumes by Susan Roemer, S-Curve Apparel & Design. Lighting by Jim French. Photo credit: David DeSilva.
[ Image description: Two side-by-side images of Imagery dancers in SKETCH 11 performance. The photo on the left shows three dancers in a vertical line, caught simultaneously in mid-stride. They are bathed in orange-red light against a black background. The photo on the right pictures a female dancer suspended in a lift, her legs extended in a wide split and torso supported on the back of a male dancer. Each dancer holds a flower in one hand. The dancers are lit in bright, warm light against a blue background. ]
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General etiquette tells us that interrupting someone is rude. However, sometimes interruptions can be a generative force in communicating and shaping new ideas. Interruptions create friction between thoughts, opinions, ideas, and personalities. What we do with that friction is up to us.
So what happens when a dance is interrupted? You can experience the results for yourself in SKETCH 11: Interrupted, which had its live premiere at ODC Theater in August. In case you missed it, the program will be streamed online on October 22nd and will be available on demand through November 5th.
In the process of creating the two new works for SKETCH 11, Imagery’s Artistic Director Amy Seiwert and Artistic Fellow Ben Needham-Wood intentionally interrupted each others’ creative processes with the goal of pushing boundaries and discovering new possibilities. This is right in line with the spirit of SKETCH, which is rooted in daring creative prompts and thrives on collaboration and innovation. The use of interruption as a creative prompt is also drawn from an experimental choreographic lineage: it was inspired by the “wrecking” process developed by choreographer Susan Rethorst and deployed previously by the Bay Area’s own Christy Funsch, among others. Dance wrecking involves a choreographer giving over their work for unfiltered feedback and active restructuring from another’s perspective. For Amy and Ben, interrupting was something of an intermediate process that fell between wrecking and collaboration. The two choreographers have over a decade of history working together, which in many ways makes them ideal co-interrupters.
In the four-week process leading up to the SKETCH 11 premiere, Amy and Ben had regular sessions in which the interrupting choreographer (the “guest”) could rearrange or reconstruct material (without creating new material) and assign tasks to the choreographer being interrupted (the “primary”). Both choreographers were present in the studio during the interrupting sessions, though the primary choreographer was limited from interacting with the dancers. Additionally, the primary choreographer was not obligated to incorporate the feedback or changes from the guest choreographer. These basic parameters helped create a structure, though in speaking with Amy and Ben about the experience, it was clear that many unexpected elements and benefits arose in the process. For Amy, talking together about the work became just as important as working in the studio: “as the process evolved, we were able to say to each other, I'm having questions about this moment, or I'm feeling stuck here, or the choice I made here doesn't feel right. And to actively ask for interrupting of one section.”
Each choreographer had one week to work independently, which Amy said helped them to “establish our own language before having an outside influence come in.” The two have distinct choreographic voices, though Ben did admit that his movement language is the “product of the choreographers I've most worked with, and Amy is at the front of all of that.” Likewise, Amy had a sense of the “Ben-isms” that she recognized from her experience working with Ben as an active collaborator through many iterations of SKETCH and outside commissions. The relationship was reciprocal and almost familiar--for Ben, “It didn't seem like a farfetched idea to walk into her rehearsal and understand exactly what she was looking to do and for her to walk into my rehearsal and understand exactly what I'm looking to accomplish as well.” That mutual awareness, understanding, and trust was fertile ground for safe experimentation and risk-taking.
Interrupting functioned as a generative tool and creative sounding board for both choreographers. It helped Amy overcome sticky points in the process: “In the places where I was creatively blocked, Ben opened the door so I could see more possibilities… and could take the blinders off.” Ben observed some unexpected benefits that interrupting had beyond an aesthetic or structural tool: “it gave us space to discuss more about our intention and our themes and how we want the piece overall to read… or to reassess your vision for the piece on a concept level.” And whether the guest’s interruptions were cemented in the final work was incidental, because an interruption is not a fully-formed thought. In one instance, Amy said “It was like I drew a house on a cocktail napkin at a bar at 2:00 a.m., and he made a blueprint out of it.” For her, the most important question was, “Does this thought get you to the next place?”
This ability to take a step back and see the big picture from another’s perspective is not something that most ballet choreographers get a chance to do--commissioned choreographers traditionally work alone, and as Amy puts it, “the one person in the front of the room is supposed to have every idea and it's supposed to be the best one.” This dynamic doesn’t allow much space for vulnerability, reflection, and dialogue, and by pushing those elements to the forefront, the interrupting process opened both choreographers to new ways of seeing their work. Being pushed to mutually ask and answer the why’s and how’s of their work helped both choreographers stretch themselves far beyond the surface of the work. Ben said that being interrupted “helped me realize the potential in my work in a way that I had not before… it helped me bring my own choreographic voice to another level.”
Both choreographers seem to have enjoyed this process quite a bit. Ben said that “having a partner in the room to help be another set of eyes, another brain on the task in order to help figure out where it can go, I think can be a huge gift.” For Amy, “this process really made me cognizant of the value of having someone else ask those questions… having someone ask you the questions for you to clarify your own thought.” When asked if they would do it again, I got a resounding “Yes!” from both of them, along with some curiosity about how it could be done differently. It seems SKETCH’s spirit of collaboration has a new tool, and it may not be the last we see of it.
Tune into SKETCH 11: Interrupted: live stream it on October 22nd at 7:30 p.m. PT or watch on demand through November 5th. Get your tickets today!