Common Sense, Profound Sense: A Message from Ireland

Liz Lerman has just returned from a jaunt to Ireland and England where she led workshops on Critical Response and other methods. At the Abbey Theatre studios, through the cooperation of Create, she taught and facilitated a CRP session with Irish choreographer Ríonach Ní Néill. Rionach presented her work Seandálaíocht (Archaeology), which she describes as “a highly personal exploration of the paradox of a language only spoken by one person.”

Rionach reflected on her experience with CRP in a message she sent to Liz and some of the workshop sponsors, and graciously granted permission for me to excerpt it here. I especially appreciate hearing her “next steps” and her reflections on the implications of Critical Response in an Irish cultural context. Thank you, Rionach.

“It was a privilege to me to present my work for the critical response workshop. I knew that, concerning identity and the Irish language, it dealt with a very sensitive issue in the Irish psyche and that everyone would have an opinion and an emotional response to it…. The workshop gave us the tools to engage with each other and the work, the method providing a safe place for the audience to give, and me to receive, feedback, and yet for us to be as honest and direct with our opinions as we needed. It was such an enriching experience for me. I have so much information to process and perspectives with which to revisit the work with further clarity and depth. I will be viewing the work as starting from the programme note. I will be examining how, without compromising its and my truth, it can communicate more precisely across a language barrier. And I will be enjoying performing it, as I now realise that it can say what I want to convey.

“I think the method is of particular use to us in Ireland, a point that arose in the workshop. Although words and the Irish are intrinsically linked, I think our love of the beauty of the sounds, the verbal landscapes and dances we can create with words, sometimes obscure the meanings. We use language to delight, to amuse, to dazzle, but maybe not so well to communicate. And so we are not so good at criticism, in fact, criticism here is usually equated with negativity. The method, in its polite neutrality, made us take responsibility for our thoughts, and made us focus on what we were really saying and really hearing. Common sense maybe, but a very profound sense.”

Notable Quotable: Woody Allen

This master of mordent humor might be answering the question: How do you measure success?

If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.

The Lens of Love

Yesterday I was in Manhattan working with fabulous colleagues from Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and Facing History and Ourselves. Our two organizations co-facilitated a workshop for New York City-area school teachers.*

As with many Dance Exchange workshops, this one culminated with teams of participants showing short text-and-movement studies that they had created using tools and content shared in the day’s activities. Fabulous colleague Elizabeth Johnson (Associate Artistic Director of Dance Exchange, seen at far right in the above picture) facilitated the presentation of these Build-a-Phrase dances. In her introduction she said something like this:

You’ve worked quickly. None of us have had enough time. When you do this with your students, they will not have enough time. So, as we watch I’d ask you to keep in mind the idea of work-in-progress. I’d like you to look through the lens of love and set aside judgment for the time being. After each showing we’ll talk about what we saw, so be thinking about what is meaningful, surprising or memorable about what you are watching, or what you might want to take away.

As I listened and watched, it occurred to me that here was another answer to the question “Can you just take parts of CRP or do you have to do the whole Process every time?” For in moments like this, we often employ a modified Step One as the primary means of reflecting on the choreographic quick-studies that people have produced. It affords a shortcut to insights and learnings that both makers and watchers have gained in the course of their shared experience.

“The lens of love” is a phrase I’ve heard Elizabeth use before. Later she reminded me that it was former company member Marvin Webb who was the first to use it at the Dance Exchange. These words struck me afresh as being just right for the moment we were in. While I wouldn’t recommend it for use during a formal CRP, I think it’s a great fit near the close of a day in which a group of people, primarily new to each other, have made themselves vulnerable, stretched their comfort zones, and built community. Its affirmational spirit is balanced by the rigor of the questions that accompany it. And it names the moment nicely, because when you’ve got a room full of teachers as committed as this group, you’ve got a room full of stong, active, no-nonsense love.
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*This workshop was part of an ongoing program in which we’re combining aspects of Dance Exchange’s Small Dances About Big Ideas with Facing History’s Choosing to Participate curriculum. It offered methods for applying movement and artmaking techniques to teach about active citizenship and standing up in the face of injustice. Dance Exchange’s work with Facing History is supported by grants from the Covenant Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and the Maxine Greene Foundation.

Build Feedback and They Will Come

On Saturday, as part of FotoWeek DC, I was at my photography home-base, Photoworks Glen Echo, taking part in a digital portfolio review session. Photographers, both fledglings and veterans, had the opportunity to show a selection of images that they brought in on discs or flash drives to be projected on the wall. I was invited to be one of the reviewers, a new experience for me. Here, in no particular order, are a few observations from that experience:

1. People really want the feedback experience. We had high participation in this event, much of it from folks who'd never been to Photoworks before. It seems that if you just hang out the shingle and say you are offering critique, folks will show up. Why? Some of it is a desire for guidance, since most of the photographers were asking for advice about organization or how to shoot better. But a lot of it, I believe, is the desire to connect, to get the artwork out of the realm of the personal and into some kind of forum where it is connecting. It is so interesting to note how keyed up, excited, nervous, just plain alive people are in the moment when a room puts its undivided attention on their work.

2. It is strange to be positioned as an authority. This was a situation where I was one of two, sometimes three, people in the room designated to offer comments. At times I felt much more qualified as a kind of articulate audience member than as a person especially knowledgeable about photography. In a way it was freeing to be set up as an authority, kind of like putting on a mask.

3. In some ways, it is much easier to be asked to comment as an authority figure than it is to take part in a feedback dialogue of multiple, equalized voices. It's easy to rattle off your reaction to something. What we ask responders to do in a CRP session actually requires a level of listening, thinking, processesing, weighing, choosing to speak or keep silent, that is highly demanding for those who really invest in it.

4. Questions are really powerful. I felt as a commentator that I had the most chance of being useful when the photographers brought not only their images but their questions to the table. And I had the most chance of getting through to something valuable for the artists when I was able to form a good question for them to think about. But we knew that, didn't we?

5. Editing is artistry. Photography is an artform that puts this principle in high relief. What you create is just the beginning. How you choose from what you create is where voice and meaning truly emerge.

Stop the Misery!

Sometimes you just have to go negative in order to make a point. That was my reaction upon reading “How To Feel Miserable as an Artist,” a ten point list that is currently going viral in the arts world. It arrived at my desktop courtesy of Dance Exchange artist Ben Wegman, and I’ve traced it to the blog of artist/author Keri Smith – someone who is new to me, but whose work I definitely plan to check out in greater depth.

Looking over this list I’m struck by how many of these sources of artistic misery stem from two questions: How do we measure success? and What constitutes approval?: Ultimately, while acknowledging all the external forces (family, money, clients, society) that bear on an artist’s sense of self-worth, Keri Smith is clearly preaching that artists need to look within for the final measure of their own value.

What does this mean for critique? Maybe that it’s overvalued. Maybe that artists need to strengthen their own internal voices within the dialogue of criticism. Maybe that we can take nothing for granted in terms of how we measure quality.

Notable Quotable: John Steinbeck

A guy at my gym this morning was wearing a T-shirt that read:

"No one wants advice -- only corroboration."
--John Steinbeck

I wonder if Steinbeck was thinking of creative matters. It certainly holds a grain of truth when applied to artistic works-in-progress. When we put such work forward for comment, there’s often a part of us that wants most just to get confirmation that what we’ve done is brilliant and doesn’t need any fixing.

Can we manage that desire? Can we channel it constructively? Should we just get over it?

The theory of the Critical Response Process on this issue might be: Step One provides the corroboration that something, at least, is working, something is conveying and communicating. Having that impulse fed, even to a limited degree, helps open us up to hearing more -- even advice.

Well, Yes and No...

Here’s another reflection about Critical Response Process emerging from our recent work in Boulder, as passed on from an artist in that community by ATLAS’s Rebekah West:

(some artists) argue people use "parts of it." My thought is that you either use the whole "container" or you do not use it. Using convenient "parts" does not get it done!!!!

This comment raises a stimulating question: Can you use just parts of the Critical Response Process and still have an effective feedback experience? I’ll offer the Yes answer and the No answer:

Yes. Once you’ve learned the Critical Response Process, you may well find such concepts as the Step One comment, the neutral question, and the permissioned opinion to be very useful on their own. They can be effective when used with colleagues who are versed in CRP and who grasp the bigger context, but they also can be applied “stealth style” with people who may have no idea where you are coming from. (Using Step Ones in particular – naming meaningful details and citing stimulating connections – may lead you conversation partner to decide that you are very intelligent!) And once people get their legs in CRP, it’s possible to jump from a step one to a step four in a quick exchange. But beware – and this is the caveat on the “Yes” answer -- when the Process is thus “sampled” you may have useful tools for a feedback conversation, but you don’t have a full-fledged critique process. Every now and then you need one.

No. The elements of the Process have been refined over time and sequenced for a reason. Mess with it at your peril. Now, maybe there’s been some cherry picking of CRP somewhere that has effectively combined it will other elements, but I haven’t seen it. I have seen some train wrecks, though, when folks have played fast and loose with the Process.

My final advice? Do the Process in its full form a bunch of times. Get to know it well. Stay curious even as you encounter challenges with it. Don’t try adaptations or extrapolations until you feel secure with CRP in it four-step format.