::"to think the thought"::
::innocence of creative inquiry
::into process and product unknown
A scientist walking along the beach comes across a small child throwing stones into the
water, never getting them to skip more than once or twice. She picks up a stone
and throws it skillfully over the surface of the water so that it skips 6 or 7 times.
"See, this is how you make stones skip across water."
The child pauses, then confesses:
"Yes, that's very good. But that's not what I'm trying
to do. You see how your rock makes ripples in circles?
Well, I'm trying to have mine make squares."
Upon hearing this story, Albert Einstein responded:
"It doesn't matter that this child will never be able to make
square ripples in water. The important thing is to think the thought."
TO THINK THE THOUGHT PERFORMANCE PROJEX is a vehicle to bring together collaborators working in movement, word, materials/media, sound, and design as an interdisciplinary artistic forum/research laboratory for experimentation towards new performance works under the direction of MELINDA LEE.
The work is fueled by the concepts of open source creativity, free association, and energetic & dynamic transfer (verbal, sensory, sonorous, athletic) as communication.
The freedoms, impasses, and psychological strategies of human communication are at the crux of an approach to making meaningful scenographies of movement and bodies in space. The crafting involves the re/play of honest proposal, exploration, self-awareness, and adaptation/manipulation, using the techniques of quotation, repetition, irritation, aggression, irony, insult, narrative, destroyed narrative, posing, touching, etc, etc.
Tandem to this artistic vision is a social one--that to think is to act, and that social change begins with self-knowledge and the courage of presence.
We aim to make works that are not only processually, conceptually inventive + innovative, but works that provoke imaginative experiences exposing the epic in the everyday, the empowered in every person.
coda
Art is for everyone, whether a shuddering cry to awareness or a depiction of life's simplicity through the pure physical efficiency that is the human body in movement. Dance-making as the creation of embodied metaphor is an investment in human capital--the capacity of an individual to affect change or achieve success in as little as a footstep (or a flick of the wrist). Dance-making as practice is also a distillation:
love
blood
sweat
t e a r s
epiphany
.... p.s. are your eyes dancing?