Learning repertory from Akram Khan and Reggie Wilson, but particularly from the former, has felt like an intensive language-learning immersion program. I dove into Reggie’s unembellished, minimalist (but above all unnaturally natural) world in which the pelvis is at its core before navigating a dynamic space with lightning flashes of power, whirling energy, and glittering details in the fingers and hands. These long, arduous sessions of learning and practice would leave me thinking about the work and the philosophy behind it long after walking out of Broadway Rehearsal Lofts. Hearing the music or reviewing (both theoretical as well as choreographic) material in my suite reminded me of when I would listen to French television programs online or read newspaper articles online to get more practice outside of class.

But after the immersion session is over, in the contexts of both language-learning and YDT-dancing, I’m at a huge loss for what to do. How can I communicate in French to maintain that level of knowledge? How can I continue practicing Akram’s style beyond that which I’ve learned with Lali and Young Jin? I already have holes in my memory about Reggie’s choreography and feel anxious about losing Akram’s choreography from my memory too.

Language fluency comes and goes in waves. When in France for a week, my Spanish died. But it came back when in Spain. And then in French class, my French came back, too. The environment, and above all the mindset, can help flesh out what may have been feared as forgotten. And I think the same is possible for my inimitable, unbeatable dance experience with YDT. The tide of memory may recede but it will come back because it never really went away to begin with.

But beyond choreographic memory, I think I’ve developed a more deep-seated knowledge about the choreography, in learning about the creative motivations about it, that I think will last longer than my muscle memory about the choreography, for this deep-seated knowledge doesn’t apply to only certain repertory, but also any and all work that I do from now on: with YDT, A Different Drum, or at an open Contemporary class at Steps. My awareness about dynamics, the pelvis, appendage-related details is so much higher, and I’m slowly improving in the ability to stop being so cerebral in my dancing.

They say if you learn one foreign language well, picking up other languages becomes significantly easier because you’ve worked that mental muscle. Perhaps one can compare a talented dancer to a polyglot who is well-versed in a couple of corporeal languages and can easily learn others to achieve fluency. I’m still very much in the process of really digging into Contemporary dance, which is my foreign language (or language family since it’s such an umbrella term), while Ballet remains my mother tongue. But I’m glad that I’ve picked up phrases and structures from different corporeal languages to help me adapt more easily to other tongues. I mourn the brief but wonderful time I learning everything I could from Lali and Young Jin, but even if my memory of the work fades, I’ve gained much more than I will eventually lose to time.

It’s the image that always comes to mind when I see Young Jin and Lali demonstrate the movements. Their arms and torsos move with a sinuous grace before they, like a preying serpent, attack a pose, from which sparks appear and vanish in a matter of a fleeting instant, as if their previous movements came together like pieces of flint to create that exceptionally striking pose. And yet, that strike doesn’t signal the end of the movement, but merely a part of a continuous phrase. Like a whip, there is a kickback that keeps the movement going even after you’ve reached that the peak of a movement.

I find that to be my biggest challenge when engaging with this choreography. Another image that comes to mind is a cross between a sin curve and an EKG/ECG heart machine, such that I need  to maintain this continuous curve in my movements before and after certain peaks in the movement that are brief but powerful.

As you can see, I’ve found myself trying to understand this movement style through a lot of imagery to help me develop that texture in my movement, whereas with Reggie I found myself focusing more on following an internal monitor of my weight as it rises and falls to guide my pelvis and keep it in timing with my co-performers. But that isn’t to say that this choreography doesn’t also require an immense amount of awareness regarding weight changes. In fact, it’s more emphasized but in a less muted way that with Reggie’s choreography. For me the marked changes in weight and pivots helps me create a skeletal structure or outline of the choreographic essay before I can add the details of hands and arms.

With Reggie’s work, we were told that we needed to feel each other’s pelvises and use that as our guide to timing. I relied solely on that. With Khan’s choreography, I need to keep both an internal metronome (my mind ferociously keeping time for fear of breaking the beautifully delicate house-of-cards-like composition of our spacing), but also an external, jazz-like timing in that it changes all the time but we all remain in unison because of our breath. We develop distinct, but compatible inflections in our breath that allows us to understand the accents and transitions. Because I have to focus more on breath here, it definitely translates into a more spiritual experience for me.

 

I struggled to enter this extreme state of concentration when working with Reggie Wilson choreography, but here it seems as if it’s required in the movement,  especially w

Think DOWN and forward, the slight rise and fall back forward will drift naturally, just as the waves crash down, the water jumps up and then cascades down to the sand.

But don’t say “down and up,” “stage front,” or “1 and 2, 1 and 2, jump.”

Don’t say “arms out,” “elbows back,” and “turn around.” Invisible ropes peel your arms from your sides outwards before a giant being picks you up by your elbow and moves you back as if you were a mere paper doll before It whips you around and you face him before plunging in fear into a tombé away from him.

Stop thinking. The voices in your head need to stop instructing you. That moment when you are really dancing is when the voice of perfectionism and precision, that rigid, rational voice, simmers down to a mere whisper that I barely hear because the gust of movements are just too loud. That voice in your head takes over the natural non-silent silence that marches to the beat of physics, the thump of your heart, your gasp for air, or the down beat of your fall. Action and reaction are the rhythms you heed and the its music must consume you.

As you bend your knees, gaze at the floor, and shoot you right then left arms out, exhale that accent down before you breathe in at the moment when you thrust so that you almost hear that crack of the whip as you snap to that position. And your movements must embody the soundwaves that result from that crack as you enter a flow of motion by turning around, sautéing up, and gently explode into a double leg jump before crashing down twice on one foot and exhaling that strength as your back bends in exhaustion and your collarbone turns to the heavens for air.

Your hands suddenly superglue themselves together as you slight bend your shoulders and stare at your feet with pliéed legs. But like a snake, your right leg glides away from your body towards the back corner as if running away. And you turn around to run after it only to see that the vision has escaped and it’s just your own two legs that give way to the disillusion as you catch yourself before your fall and then step twice to assure your balance. But you’re fine. Assert your control as you tightrope with relevéed feet stage left then stage right and extend your arms upward as if you’ve transfigured into a needle in the blink of an eye.

But that needle unravels like an onion peel as your spiral out of that erect image into a circular, graceful mess. And yet, spring up! You didn’t dissolve into matrix spiral, your energy pops up in the air and your excitement is evident with the flourish of back attitudes before your solemnly enter that arabesque. Don’t stop, but slow down. Slow. And soft, like dust in a windowless room. It moves so slowly, but moves with grace and energy, before you melt. Your biological clock, your body, melts like a Dalí clock in The Persistence of Memory. Make your movement a continuation of that clock’s trajectory as it melts off the branch and sinuously caresses the ground.

Hear everything in the air and nothing in your head. Move quickly like a gust or slowly like the dust. Energy never stops, it’s either kinetic or potential. Never erase the potential. Even when “still,” you can’t be still, for your feet push down to the core and your head reaches up to the cloud; or you stop existing. I move, therefore I am.

I was really intrigued by the idea that a body holds not only organs, veins and bones, but also history, culture and experiences. Before working with Reggie, I assumed that the latter three were stored in the mind: we remember our history, contemplate our culture, and recall experiences. And yet I failed to realize that muscle memory, that which is so crucial for dancers to develop, remembers more than just choreography. It actually inhabits my history, my culture and my experience.

I made this connection between mental and corporal recollection during the first week. Our first class consisted of footwork and hand clapping. At first I was a bit crestfallen about the fact that we weren’t going to plunge into full-body, sweat-inducing contemporary dance. But then it hit me that I had previously studied a dance genre that also concentrated on footwork and handclapping: flamenco. Coordinating my hand- and footwork tickled my brain at first, but then I realized that my mind and body were engaging in a form of movement that was vaguely familiar and becoming increasingly more so. It’s as if I had been assigned to flex a muscle that hadn’t been activated for many years. My flamenco memory was dormant but had been awakened with the gumboot choreography.

But the culture that is instilled in my body has been alive and well. I’m in love with the music that Reggie uses for class and the primary reason is because it’s so familiar to me. Puerto Rico, where my father is from, is a Caribbean island whose music and culture was very much influenced by Afro-Caribbean music so what is a popular African pop song sounds a lot like a merengue or a Brazilian samba. When I don’t even think about my, my body just enters Latin-mode and I’ll instinctively start doing some merengue or samba steps before my mind realizes that the music isn’t actually from Puerto Rico or Brazil. It’s fascinating to hear it though because one can see the rhythms and singing styles that crossed the ocean along with the slaves long ago.

But with Reggie’s repertory, particularly with Clement’s solo, I feel the ballet muscle flex too much. One of the challenges has been letting go without letting go. A chronic problem for me is that I grip just about everything , but when I “let go,” my alignment and core go away too. It’s only recently in ballet and modern classes that I have increasing the strength of my core and using it to liberate my movement. With Reggie’s work, though, the focus is less on the core and more on the pelvis. Because my pelvis and I don’t really know each other in a studio context (we’re best friends on the dance floor when it comes to Latin dance!), I fall back on my default problem: grip my quads and glutes. It’s become a challenge to realize that focusing on the pelvis is key to being able to let go in the proper sense, to be able to enter this state of flow and inhabit the dance that is embedded in the music without losing the base level of control that allows you to keep your balances and shift your weight successfully.

I initially thought that this emphasis on the pelvis was particular to Reggie’s work and movement style, but after taking my first Limón technique class today, I realize that the pelvis is like a passport into a whole new world of fluid movement, and I’m still filling out the paperwork to understand what it means and how to use it so I can explore this new world. I’m curious to find out how the pelvis guides Akram Khan’s work in the next segment of the workshop.