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<div id="audio">
    <div class="element">   
    <h1>1</h1>
    <p>On Ecology</p>
    <p>On Improvisation</p>
</div>

<div class="element">   
    <h1>2</h1>
    <p>On Ecology</p>
    <p>On Improvisation</p>
</div>

<div class="element">   
    <h1>3</h1>
    <p>On Ecology</p>
    <p>On Improvisation</p>
</div>
    
<div class="element" style="/* column-count: 2; */">   
    <h1 style="
    width: -11vw;
">Essays</h1>
    <p>On Ecology</p>
    <p>On Improvisation</p>
    <p>On Ecology</p>
    <p>On Ecology</p>
    <p>On Improvisation</p>
    <p>On Improvisation</p>

</div>
    
<div class="element">   
    <h1>Apendium</h1>
    <p>On Ecology</p>
    <p>On Improvisation</p>
</div>
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<div id="float-right">
  <p>A Lecture on Performance</p>
<p>Ace gallery</p>
<p>Anna</p>
<p>Anna Halprin</p>
<p>Anne</p>
<p>Anne Halprin</p>
<p>Audience Performance \#1</p>
<p>Audience Performance \#2</p>
<p>Audience performances</p>
<p>Barbara Dilley</p>
<p>Beautiful Lecture</p>
<p>Cage</p>
<p>Cagean</p>
<p>Charles Ross</p>
<p>Claes Oldenburg’s Late Happenings</p>
<p>Constructions</p>
<p>Continuous Project</p>
<p>Continuous Project Altered Daily</p>
<a href="#Cunningham"><p id="Cunningham1">Cunningham</p></a>
<p>Dana Reitz</p>
<p>Dance Constructions</p>
<p>Douglas Christmas</p>
<p>Douglas Dunn</p>
<p>Duncan</p>
<p>Dwayne</p>
<p>Eugene Lyons</p>
<p>Flat</p>
<p>Graham</p>
<p>Grand Union</p>
<p>Isadora Duncan</p>
<p>Janis</p>
<p>Janis Joplin</p>
<p>Jill Johnston</p>
<a href="#JohnCage"><p id="JohnCage1">John Cage</p></a>
<p>La Monte</p>
<p>Limon</p>
<p>Louis Horst</p>
<p>Magnesium</p>
<p>Marshall McLuhan</p>
<p>Merce Cunningham</p>
<p>Nine Evenings piece</p>
<p>Robert Dunn</p>
<p>Robert Morris</p>
<p>Robert Whitman</p>
<p>Ruth Emerson</p>
<p>Ruth St. Denis</p>
<p>Salt Lake City Deaths</p>
<p>Satisfying Lover</p>
<p>Seagull’s Farm</p>
<p>Simone</p>
<p>Simone Forti</p>
<p>State</p>
<p>Steve</p>
<p>Suzuki</p>
<p>Trillium</p>
<p>Trisha</p>
<p>Trisha Brown</p>
<p>Yvonne</p>
<p>Yvonne Rainer</p>
</div>

<div class="text">
  <h1 id="tag0"> On Ecology</h1> 
  <h2>A conversation with Steve Paxton and Tom Engels<h2>
  <h3>25/07/2019, Mad Brook Farm, Vermont</h3>

  <p class="introduction">
      What you are about to listen to is a conversation between Steve Paxton and myself that tries to continue a conversation on improvisation between Myriam and Steve in 2001. Some things remained unclear; Did the tape cut off? Was there another tape that went missing? If so, where would it be, who would have it, which life would it live now? 18 years later, we took the lost tape as an impetus for a new conversation. This interview picks up the thread and speculates on improvisation in relation to ecology. Ecology being interpreted in a broad sense and being present in a variety of life expressions: the practice of Zen Buddhism, yoga and aikido, performance as a field of permissions and openness, or an 8-year-old boy climbing granite rocks in Arizona, the pigs playing in the garden of Mad Brook farm. One element keeps on returning, namely that these expressions always embody the oneness of duality. As Zen-master Suzuki once said, “the body and mind are not two and not one.”</p>
</h2>

<p class="sp">
      Great it off in this system. She had found a radio, a radio sender that would send this phone signal to her. So if anybody wanted to talk to her, they would ring and call.
</p>

<p class="te">
Okay.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Just once and then, then if they are not, I would know to not answer.
</p>

<p class="te">
Okay. Yeah. And now it's replaced by Skype.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Well, she doesn't have anything [inaudible] cabin anymore. She has no way to, telephone. The system broke down somehow. It lasted for many years. So it was quite a good invention. But then the technology moved on and so she could no longer obtain the hardware for that system she had made up. It's just a momentary availability of a machine to do it.
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:14)
Yes. Okay. What I wanted to say before is that we would start with the Grand Union.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Okay.
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:26)
But I think there's quite some other things to talk about that happen in that period around 69, 70, 71, 72. You moving here. Um, I think there's notions of ecology and let's say different kind of body practices like Aikido or yoga or the interest in Zen Buddhism that I think are also, um.
</p>

<p class="sp">
It wasn't Zen Buddhism it was Hindu Buddhism.
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:06)
Okay. So it was not a Cagean...
</p>

<p class="sp">
It was Indian. Yeah.
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:11)
It was not the Cagean strand,
</p>

<p class="sp">
No.
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:14)
Okay. Well this already something you could talk about them, but I think,
</p>

<p class="sp">
I mean I knew about his interest in Zen, so I was interested. I mean I also was interested in Zen and was very curious what he was finding in it. How it affected him.
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:35)
And I think, I mean that's maybe my, my thesis or approach to how to read the emergence of these practices, um, in a broader spectrum of thinking ecology as a holistic way of thinking the world. So how would you self relates to, um,
</p>

<p class="sp">
Have you practiced or experienced any Buddhism?
</p>

<p class="te">
(03:03)
Well, I've done some meditation yes, um,
</p>

<p class="sp">
Which have you done?
</p>

<p class="te">
(03:09)
I've been doing it now for a year and a half.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Oh that's sizeable time.
</p>

<p class="te">
(03:13)
But it's not, I think really rendered through, let's say, the, the paradigm of Buddhism. Um, but more, yeah, nowadays, one would call that mindfulness or, um,
</p>

<p class="sp">
So it's not connected to any traditional forms...
</p>

<p class="te">
(03:33)
Exactly. It doesn't have a religious tendency, for example, it's merely about.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Well Buddhism is supposed not to be a religion they say.
</p>

<p class="te">
(03:41)
Yes, it's true, it's true. But let's say that those references, they don't enter the practice, but it is more about, um, an awareness, breath. Um, it's scanning the body...
</p>

<p class="sp">
Right. So just the practice without...
</p>

<p class="te">
(04:00)
The practice... It's about how thoughts enter, how you can let them go, etcetera. So it's actually stripped down from almost like a kind of, um, cultural denominator. But I mean, of course it is cultural as the practice comes from somewhere, but I feel that how these practices emerge or appear today, like meditation or yoga for example, , which are both very popular nowadays are kind of stripped from their cultural roots, I would say.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah.
</p>

<p class="te">
(04:40)
And I think that's also maybe something interesting to, to talk about what, what that actually means today.
</p>

<p class="sp">
I mean we have to do it because we're Americans or you're, you know, Belgian and, and uh, the other references, you know, the ancient, the ancient deities that they refer to in Tibetan Buddhism influenced, you know, the, how the drama of and, and production around it, uh, isn't relevant really to us. But the practices are of course, because they're mind science. They're, anyway, we should.. Are we...
</p>

<p class="te">
(05:21)
We're recording.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Oh, good, good. Okay.
</p>

<p class="te">
I think this is all part of, yeah. Yeah. Or way of approaching,
</p>

<p class="sp">
I mean, I felt in the early, my early investigation into dance that it was a mind science in a way that it wasn't just a physical, you know, performance art. It was a, it had real questions about what a mind was and how it can be, um, utilized. Which is weird cause it's like mind trying to think about how the mind works. So it's got a reflexivity [that] reflects itself. Reflectivity, maybe is.... Anyway, so, I went to India in 71 and there I found, um, a teacher who, um, uh, was a refugee from Burma in those days it was Burma.
</p>

<p class="te">
No, it was Myanmar.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah. And, uh, his family had been, it was originally Indian and moved to Burma at a time when that was common and they had been successful merchants and he had studied under Burmese, a Burmese, um, sect, I guess, of Buddhism, which claimed to have begun under the tutelage of the Buddha. And that's where they got all their instructions and with, uh, um, what do you call it when you pass down traditions by word of mouth. It wasn't ever written down, but it was...
</p>

<p class="te">
(07:46)
Oral tradition.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Oral, yeah, wrote, so that tradition had been passed down to him and the family had been ejected from Burma and come back to India and he was continuing to teach in India. And uh, so I felt, um, vague, very first of all, I, I swallowed that story. You know, that the teachings were coming directly from the Buddha. I mean, I decided, how could I refute it? How could I question it? And you know, just might as well except that that's at least what my teachers thought, you know. And, uh, so I studied with him, not extensively, but about a month total of meditation retreats and, and teachings by him. And, um, the other connection, uh, a different connection was in the States. Um, I was in Boulder, Colorado where Trungpa Rinpoche was teaching and I went to many of the presentations.
</p>

<p class="te">
(09:20)
Okay.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Do you know who he is? 
</p>

<p class="te">
(09:22)
No, I don't know.
</p>

<p class="sp">
He, um, came to the West, wrote a well-received book in English, I think he studied at Oxford or Cambridge, one of those. And um, you know, um, so his level of English was extraordinary. Plus his connection to Tibetan Buddhism, he was a reborn person. So he, um, as an incarnate, he had a very high position and had connection to other very high, um, incarnates. And so he would bring them around, uh, to give presentations in Boulder. And so, and then there was a lot of meditating there and I met Trungpa and talked to him and a little bit and had friends who were very connected to Barbara Dilley who was in Grand Union for instance. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(10:32)
Okay. I think I've seen a documentary about him. It was released some some years ago, didn't he wasn't he first base in India. And then because because of, um, because of it was Gandhi who, um, kind of saw the, so that group of people as almost a political threat and there was, I think an attack committed against them. I think one of their, um, buildings was burned down. And so he sent his secretary to the United States to find a piece of land. And that was Boulder. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Really? 
</p>

<p class="te">
(11:19)
Yes. So it was his secretary. It was his secretary that was sent off with a bunch of money and he had told her, you should only come back when you have found a piece of land where we can all move to. So I think she, she was away for, for about a year and she found, I think an advertisement in a, in a newspaper and someone was selling, um, his ranch and she went and bought the land and then she prepared the land so that everyone could, could move. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
That may not be the same story. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(11:58)
No? 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Because in Boulder, he was, he was living in the city. So it wasn't an a and he, they purchased buildings in the city for the school and the temple and all of that. So, um, it may be a different,
</p>

<p class="te">
(12:21)
It may be a different one, but yeah there are parallels in that time...
</p>

<p class="sp">
Absolutely. There were, um, a number of, uh, yes, uh, implants, into the United States.
</p>

<p class="te">
(12:40)
So you were, you were frequenting those, uh, meetings, um, you were studying with them as well at that moment. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
They started a school called Naropa, which had a dance program and Barbara was in charge of it at some one point she went on to become the head of Naropa. Um, but, um, so I was invited to teach there in the summers and maybe sometimes in the winters, I don't know, for a number of years. And, uh, so I would go and drop into this Buddhist school and it's, uh, uh, may you in Boulder. 

TE:
And what would you teach there? 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Uh, I taught contact I suppose. 

TE:
Okay. Already in, because we're now in.... 
</p>

<p class="sp">
One year I taught composition. 

TE:
Yeah. And which year we are talking about now? Because in 1970, 71, you go to India and then...
</p>

<p class="sp">
I have no way to date those years. I think it was in the late seventies. Okay. Yes. 

TE:
Um, and Barbara Dilley was present there as well. So Barbara. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah. She was a student of Trungpa, so she was there, you know, to do that. And she also had, um, position in the, in the school and they had a building, you know, with a big studio. And yes, I did performances and taught there.
</p>

<p class="te">
(14:26)
And how, if you look back, do you think there was a remarkable influence of studying with these people or being surrounded by, um, by their practices? Their ways of thinking?
</p>

<p class="sp">
I was very intrigued with the whole thing. I had felt from before I had any information about Buddhism, an affinity with it. Uh, just its openness and its, um, the possibility of working on the mind. Yes. So even before I went to New York, I was feeling an affinity with Buddhism, but I didn't know much about it. So then I did, you know, reading and what have you. And, uh, the riddle of Zen Buddhism, you know, how it teaches and uh, all of that was a great interest, you know, and I knew people who were into it. And, um, then the, uh, then this contact in India when I went in 71, um, yeah. So I wanted to find out more about it in a, in a way this, this, uh, reflects also how I went to England later in the 70s, and, uh, worked with Mary Fulkerson. And I went, part of my motive for going was to just to study her and see what it was that this new releasing technique that she proposed was actually doing, how it was taught, how it, what kind of experience it was. You know,
</p>

<p class="te">
(16:13)
I've been very interested in this notion of the, the open mind or um, a physical states where you're ready, you're prepared and that that also requires a certain softness. Right. And I, I was looking yesterday at the recordings of the Grand Union performance in Iowa in 1972 and I was so stunned by let's say the diversity that one sees on stage, the diversity of minds, of aesthetic paradigms, how very different aesthetic strata can exist simultaneously, whether it is
</p>

<p class="sp">
in a way that's the drama of that improvisation that particular night. I remember,
</p>

<p class="te">
(17:17)
I... It starts with a conversation, uh, between David Gordon and Barbara Dilley, um, he's asking her questions, do you need the score? Do you need a choreographer? Do you need some music? And at the same time, you and Barbara herself and someone else are developing let's say, almost like a structural of steps, trying to slowly go forward and backwards and slowly over the course of this conversation, which lasts I think 20 or 25 minutes, you go further and deeper in space. And so you have a very, almost formalist approach there. You have the daily life entering or, let's say, a non theatrical way of speaking, having a conversation, um, then you have very, let's say, theatrical, dramatic acting. Uh, I don't know who's doing it, but, uh, it's a couple pretending to fight and then someone dies and there's like lots of drama. And I thought, wow, there, there's such a diversity, um, that nowadays maybe wouldn't be so thinkable I don't know. Like I don't, I don't see that kind of allowance or the permission to, to really enter questions from various, very different and specific angles.
</p>

<p class="sp">
In that performance, the whole gynecological aspect of David and Barbara, uh, David as the doctor and Barbara as the patient here. In that particular company, at that particular time we were very into very random pursuits in the performance. Yeah. In a way, the more random, the better. The more room you found to relate to things. Yeah. 

TE:
And random as in... 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Random as in a fight between two people, random as in David asking about the structure of, you know, what Barbara needs, David asking her about her organs, her inner organs. There was a moment where I think she laid down and something was inserted between her legs, you know, like a, a kind of mirror object. 

TE:
There's a mirror on stage indeed.
</p>

<p class="sp">
And so, um, you know, kind of standing in for a speculum or something, but anyway, it got quite, you know, how many times has a dancer been subjected to a, at least a reference to a gynecological examination on stage, you know, is that, that's, that's how broad things got in that particular performance. Yes. 

TE:
And how would, how would you deal with that yourself? Because there's so many different kinds of approaches and I assume that, um, maybe the members not always with a line with the others', let's say visions or aesthetic preferences. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
But you didn't have to, I mean, you could stay outside them. Yeah. You can stay outside them, still refer to them. And, um, um, I felt like in that particular performance, I was acknowledging the developing story that was happening, which centered on Barbara. And, uh, she eventually left the stage via the window, which took her outside the theater and, um, and then returned, um, via the, um, back of the theater when David called for, uh, um, an audition, an open audition for replacements for Barbara. Barbara herself came into audition for her part, you know, which was delicious, a twist of, uh, uh, the situation. So, um, how did I relate structurally I think is how I related. I was responsible for an exit which happened behind a screen that we all got behind and then maneuvered and, and, um, exited the stage, you know, sort of mid performance behind. I was responsible for, I was just trying to keep up with the ongoing imaginative structures that we were evoking and also to keep dancing occurring so it didn't turn into a drama with the text, you know, and an ongoing story only, but also that we kept up our freedom to dance or freedom to, um, you know, just walk across the stage or relate to each other in different ways outside the story. I can't, I haven't seen the tape for many years, so, yeah. But I don't have a,
</p>

<p class="te">
(23:28)
I bring this in as a specific example, but I'm, let's say interested generally in like how, how, how that worked, how all these different forms of expression could actually appear together in the same space with a set of let's say, very different people, but there seems to be as a certain trust in each other. Um, yeah, uh, permission and allowance, um, where you could indeed either choose to join something and align yourself with a certain action, um, or step out and, and, and be at the site. And I was wondering, um, how, how a performance like that would be prepared because we know that it is improvisational, but to which degree...
</p>

<p class="sp">
It was not prepared. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(24:30)
Not at all. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Not at all.
</p>

<p class="te">
(24:32)
Okay. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
I mean, maybe others did prepare. David had a, he sometimes prepared extraordinarily. I remember a performance in which he appeared in full Kabuki makeup. I, we had no idea he was going to appear this way. And uh, uh, I don't know exactly what he did in that makeup. I don't know how long it lasted, but, uh, because I had been on stage for the opening and David didn't appear until I was, I saw him in this full Kabuki makeup. Um, you know, uh, only as I was leaving stage. And so, I don't know, I went down to get another costume or something and I didn't see what he did. But he obviously, you know, 
</p>

<p class="te">
(25:37)
He had something in mind, yeah. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
He had something in mind and um, um, but I didn't and sometimes I arranged it so that I arrived at the performance at the moment that performance was supposed to start. So there was no way to collaborate with anybody before it actually began. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(26:00)
So even like the objects or presents on stage, like a bunch of chairs, a piece of cloth that you use... Remember? You have a a fan and you have some piece of fabric in your hand and mouth. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
I don't remember.
</p>

<p class="te">
(26:17)
It's very beautiful. But so that's why I thought there must have been some sort of preparation because it's as if it's not improvised at all. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
And, and uh, one of the performances at Oberlin, which is the time that I did Magnesium and all of that, that residency there, there was in basement of the building, I was staying in a building that was a sports building. So in the basement of that, there was a huge, um, wrestling mat, very heavy. I arranged for that mat to be brought to the back of this theater and dumped during the performance. Nobody else knew this was going to happen. I started asking for that mat. From the audience, I started asking for that mat to be moved over the heads, you know, 
</p>

<p class="te">
(27:15)
Oh wow. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Of the audience and all of them, you know, like moving it toward the stage and got up on the stage. And uh, so I had, I don't know, probably 15 minutes, 10, 15 minutes of, um, encouraging the audience to do this move and they were perfectly willing to do it and, 
</p>

<p class="te">
(27:39)
And together it was possible to move the mat. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
And that was at least for that moment, the spirit in the house was the audience very willing to collaborate and to do, you know, things if we ask them to. But nobody else knew that that was going to happen. Yeah. So there was a whole event, you know, massive event in the theater. That was a surprise. But I did prepare it. I did have to move the mat to get it there. I didn't know exactly what I was gonna do with it. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(28:20)
Did you ever feel that there, um, that there was some kind of tension created within, within a group, let's say when, when you asked the audience to, to move the mat and he takes like 15, 20 minutes of the whole performance. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
10 I would say, let's say 10.
</p>

<p class="te">
(28:41)
Okay. But, so that, that also means that, um, basically you take all the attention in that moment where there was, how would you deal with that in a, in a group with people bringing their, their own things, um, were there tensions or was, was it extremely permissive.
</p>

<p class="sp">
It was extremely permissive. I think we tried not to step on if, if, uh, uh, an event had arisen, you know, say in that same performance earlier on, there was a duet between, uh, Yvonne and David on a piano on top of a piano an upright piano, which was being played by a student. And, um, so there was good light on that. There was spotlight. It had been arranged. David arranged that. And uh, he was singing songs. He was lying like a, like a singer in a bar, you know, he was, you know, they sometimes sat on the piano or something. He was taking that image. And so he was lounging on top of this piano and Yvonne got up there and started lounging on him. And so it was like a stack of performers and he kept singing. And the pianist kept playing, and Yvonne kept, you know, almost falling off. Really surprising, nobody got hurt in that bit and it went on for quite a while and I wouldn't have thought of uh, interrupting that. Although at a certain point, such inventions tend to sort of peter out, you know, they sort of lose their energy and they don't have any place to go beyond where they've established and then it's, you know, appropriate to introduce new material. Let them find their way again or you know, let it fade away or whatever used to happen. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(31:01)
But that's what Miriam and I were so stunned by yesterday because what you see is for example, an action happening in front and something's happening more in the periphery and somehow these elements all of a sudden merge or they swap position or there is something so almost natural about how elements shift space that we were almost convinced that there were a, let's say agreements made before,
</p>

<p class="sp">
No.
</p>

<p class="te">
(31:40)
Because it's so meticulously and meticulously done. And that's why why I brought up that notion of the open mind...
</p>

<p class="sp">
Well don't forget we were all practiced dancers, everybody in the company was a practiced dancer. Everybody had been, you know, we were all mature in theater. So it isn't that difficult. In fact, I think every improv theater in the country would say that it's, it's pretty natural to be able to, um, figure out what elements, um, are, are strong in a moment and which, which ones are weakening and which ones, you know, might come forward, even if they're abstract, you know, after something dramatic has happened, you know, a clear situation between Yvonne and David on top of the piano. To let that, um, to let something else come forward and start inventing, you know, with a new element. It's just very easy. It's a little bit like playing. Did you ever play as a child imaginative games with a friend? 
</p>

<p class="te">
(33:00)
No?
</p>

<p class="sp">
You didn't?
</p>

<p class="te">
(33:01)
Imaginative games? 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah. I used to have a friend, a girl. We lived on opposite sides of a vacant lot. So in this lot there was a tree and that tree was our, one of our basic play things, you know, we would climb up in the tree and she would say, okay, I'm going to be a princess. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(33:30)
Oh like that, yeah, like role playing or. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Role playing.

(33:32)
Yes, yes of course, I did as a child.
</p>

<p class="sp">
And um, but, uh, you know, you have to invent your armies. You have to invent your clothes, you have to invent, you know, all these things that uh, you establish as a reality for the game.
</p>

<p class="te">
(33:57)
Yeah. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Maybe realities, the premise of the game. Yeah. So it's a little bit like that. I mean it's a basic human ability. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(34:10)
And nonetheless it's not so obvious to, um, to share that imagination with someone else. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
If you're all improvising together and you go out on a stage, you agree to go out on a stage in front of an audience and you have no material except your training, um, and your understanding of each other. Um, then, um, it is unusual. Uh, I think you remarked, uh, at some point maybe in conversation about a grant that Grand Union got, with me as choreographer, which I did not propose to the national endowment, but, uh, David and Trisha had put forth this grant in my name. You know, as though I were the, as though I had submitted it. Um, and, um, we had gotten some money and um, I sort of lost my point here. And what was that point? 
</p>

<p class="te">
(35:41)
The ednowment. The application for the endowment. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
But before that, there was some reason that I brought this up. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(35:48)
Yes. You were talking about, yeah. Um, trus,t the trust in each other. There's no material, um, the image, the, the, the game playing, the imaginative games. How to share that with someone else. Um, how unusual it is. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh. We were an improvising dance company. The grant that was put in to the national endowment was for a choreographer because they, there was no money to, for us to pursue what we were really doing. The only money was for, you know, it was a structural choreographer and company thing. So that had to be invented in order to get the grant. And it was a lie. But on the other hand, it was, uh, you know, we just, we were, we were summarily rejected as improvisers that was not at all of a possible, um, um, pursuit. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(37:08)
Pursuit.
</p>

<p class="sp">
So we had to do something else. And wind around the rules.
</p>

<p class="te">
(37:13)
It's very interesting because I stumbled upon this, um, let's say statement that Yvonne Rainer sent to. Maybe it was the drama review. I don't, I don't remember the magazine where she explicitly stated in response to a review that had been written about Grand Union. That Grand Union was not her company. Because I think in the very beginning when the Continuous Project shifted into Grand Union, uh, in some reviews, people spoke of Grand Union as, uh, Yvonne's company. Uh, and so on the one hand, the choreographer that it is publicly attributed to, has to publicly announce "it's not my company". At the same time, you amongst yourself amongst yourselves have to invent strategies to let's say, um, put Steve Paxton as the choreographer of a piece, but obviously like it were other people that had a shared, let's say creative directorship or
</p>

<p class="sp">
I mean, I didn't put the grant forward. I didn't know about it until after it had had been submitted. I was not told that my name was being used in this way. So, um, but it was all right. You know, and I actually think, um, I think the work of the Grand Union had something to do with loosening up the, um, granting attitudes toward, you know, now there are people who are dance improvisors and that's what they do. And I think that's a bit of the legacy of Grand Union there. Eh, you know, a new reality was included in the premises of what dance and choreography could be.
</p>

<p class="te">
(39:21)
At the same time, you already mentioned in 1972, there's the residency in Oberlin college. Um, and you're teaching a workshop with a group of men which results in Magnesium. Um, and I'm interested in how on the one hand you have the work that happens with the Grand Union. You have these residencies in school. Um, so you come as a group, but you also start to teach, um, your individual practices and things start to also develop apart from, let's say, the common project that Grand Union was. Um, although I already saw in, in this piece that we saw before, as I spoke about before also in '72 in Iowa. This is a duet with Alex Hay. That you're dancing. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Alex Hay?
</p>

<p class="te">
(40:20)
Yeah.
</p>

<p class="sp">
At Iowa? 
</p>

<p class="te">
(40:23)
Yeah.
</p>

<p class="sp">
No he wasn't there.
</p>

<p class="te">
(40:24)
He wasn't there. Then....
</p>

<p class="sp">
Alex Hay was a part of a much earlier... 
</p>

<p class="te">
(40:35)
He has blonde hair. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Douglas Dunn. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(40:44)
It's very difficult to see. This is you, I suppose...
</p>

<p class="sp">
Douglas Dunn. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(40:55)
Douglas Dunn. Okay. And all of a sudden you see, let's say a first, maybe it's not the first, but you, you almost see the very first steps of contact entering.
</p>

<p class="sp">
It's precisely in a duet with Douglas Dunn that I had the sensation that I pursued as contact improvisation. I would be interested what performance did we just glimpse there? 
</p>

<p class="te">
(41:30)
That was the one in Iowa. 1972.
</p>

<p class="sp">
That was Iowa. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(41:33)
And so you see, I think it's minute 30 of the show.
</p>

<p class="sp">
By 1972 I had already, I had already started contact, hadnt I? Or was that?
</p>

<p class="te">
(41:45)
Yeah. So this is the show in March. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
I had officially started, maybe I hadn't worked that much. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(41:53)
This was the show in March. It's the beginning of 72. But you see these two bodies colliding trying to support each other. But you've, you, you see that it's, um, it's still a testing ground. It's, it's a laboratory. Um, then I had the same feeling looking, looking at, um, at Magnesium where you see the attempt of swinging people around, but still using, uh, the hand, the grip holding each other's wrists, testing a pivotal force, um, people falling into each other. But there's also still the mat present, which also highlights the notion of, of exercise. Um, there's still a sports element to it. And I, I bring this up because I'm interested in how all of a sudden there's more individual practices that start to crystallize themselves. Um, and I was wondering how, how you were dealing with that, how you let Grand Union exists parallel to the various starts of, of contact. If there were some, uh, is there, uh, some, uh, let's say cross-fertilization of these practices or better, it was for you really the start of let's say, going astray, like something new had started, which you would develop. And also let's say surround yourself with, um, with a bunch of new people that you would, um, 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Develop the material...
</p>

<p class="te">
(43:48)
Develop the practice and material with. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
 Well, so, um, let me see. I think in the Iowa performance, Trisha had already left the company. I think Yvonne had left the company. Is that true? 
</p>

<p class="te">
Yvonne...
</p>

<p class="sp">
Was not in Iowa.
</p>

<p class="te">
It was in 1972 that she kind of, uh, we drew for the first time and then she reappeared later, but she was not, let's say, a permanent member. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah. And, um, um, so what was happening as far as I could see is that out of Grand Union, well, one way to look at it, out of Grand Union, so much was explored and, uh, discarded after it had been initiated that, uh, people got ideas that they wanted to pursue. Certainly that was true for me with contact improvisation, you know, uh, as a part of that residency, uh. I felt Magnesium was, um, an attempt to articulate something but it wasn't quite right. And what, what I felt was that it was dangerous. You know, the level of energy that we were playing with, you know, it was all young men. They were, they were, they had had three weeks training, you know, they were, um, uh, I had to assessed them as the leader. I had assessed their ability to remain stable in a high energy situation, you know, with falling, and rolling and all of that. They weren't going to become disoriented. So we'd gotten that far. But then the actual premise of the touch didn't develop until, um, well until I had reflected on that performance and thought about things like Aikido and its use of touch and, um, and did do that with, uh, Douglas Dunn. And, um, so to refer back to something we said earlier about dance as a mind training, um, what I found in that duet with Douglas Dunn was a way that he and I were working in which we were both following the other and this was not, um, this was not a thought I had had before that. So first I had this sensation, then I characterized it and I said, okay, we're both active, we're both responsive, but we're neither one of us leading. Uh, so, uh, given the fact that we were already engaged in a kind of duet, you know, physical touch in a duet, um, um, at the point where I felt that sensation and identified it, um, it was a bit of a revelation as a, a possible connection between people. Now here we're having one just like it in conversation, you know, it's not unusual in conversation, but in touch, you know, in physical terms, it's a, um, when would you have... In sex you have it maybe. In good sex. Well what I call good sex. Or, just companionship. Or if you're, um, if two people are trying to climb a tree or climb a cliff or something, they might give each other physical support, but then yeah, then it's very much, um, um, aimed at a, a goal. Um, but this was not aimed at a goal. This was, this was the touch. This was the attitudes. You know, uh, each, uh, supporting continuation of the event with no leader, neither one of us stepping into a, uh, now we have to, you know, achieve this height on the cliff or something, you know, 
</p>

<p class="te">
(48:45)
But it's remarkable that you seem to both understand it.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yes. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(48:51)
In the moment it was happening.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yes, that's what it had to be, that's, that's what it had to be. I had to think, at least that he understood it in the same way I did and that he was not leading in the same way I was not leading. We were both willing, you know, we were both available, but neither one of us was saying what to do. Uh, and there was no goal. All of that was needed to reveal the sensation to me. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(49:21)
Yes. You said you felt, um, Magnesium was an attempt, but it was too dangerous. Does that mean. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah it was a bit dangerous.
</p>

<p class="te">
(49:32)
Was that then also the only time that Magnesium was performed or was this a piece that you would tour? 
</p>

<p class="sp">
It was the only time it was performed and people have asked yes. And people have asked to revive it. Yeah. And I've, uh, not been enthusiastic because I found my way with those men to a place where we could get pretty dangerous and it seemed okay. With a different cast and with a different director who wasn't, um, uh, who might have been more interested in the choreography of the situation rather than the training to get the situation to be possible, you know, or just somebody with a different... You know, I was, I feel lucky to have gotten that performance and to have not gotten any injuries out of it. And, um, so I, I've been reluctant to allow it to happen again, you know, under, under my, uh, as a revival. If they wanted to do it themselves, they can do it. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(50:55)
They can do it.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah. But it's not, you know, I can't give permission.
</p>

<p class="te">
(51:00)
It's, um, to me it was remarkable how on the one hand in indeed there is this colliding of people, uh, there's a certain sense of danger and at the same time there's very strong counterpoint created by the very end, which is everyone standing still for, for quite a while. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Five minutes.
</p>

<p class="te">
(51:23)
Five minutes. Um, could you say something about that, uh, standing still? Is this already what you have called later the small dance... 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yes.
</p>

<p class="te">
(51:35)
Was that, that was already conceptualized at the moment? 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yes. And it was part of the training. And it continued to be part of the training because I wanted to expose the students to the highest activity that could safely be performed, which later I think in contact improvisation with a lot more firm grip on what constituted training and what, how to assess students in their problems. You know, with uh, orientation. Um, um, we got quite extraordinarily high activity safely performed, you know, with really, I've seen just in, in contact duets with some of the most remarkable, um, extremes of high energy, you know, um, between two people willingly engaged in an improvised and, you know, but people really swooping up as high as they can be lifted and going to the floor, you know, directly to the floor from that position and safely rolling and tumbling and, you know, not hurting each other at all. So I've seen that. But at the other extreme is what is the tiniest sensation that you can find in the body? What are the smallest, uh, elements or movement? Um, so that, uh, the glamour of high activity, you know, which always gets everybody's attention is contrasted with, uh, underlying, uh, minutia of sensation. And so you always have both things going on and the minutia is not ignored. And the minutia is in every gesture of a hand or twist of an arm or a thrust, little little [INAUDIBLE 54:03] of a leg or, or, uh, giving way to weight or you know, all of these potential changes, um, as a kind of, uh, um, well it's an orchestration. Uh, from, from the, the quietest to the loudest, you know, parts of a symphony, you know, like what, how, how to keep the quietest part of the, um, vocabulary, you know, the most subtle, the most basic elements of time and energy.
</p>

<p class="te">
(54:48)
I think you should tell me when you want to take a break. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
I know. I'm happy talking. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(54:59)
I was, um, because what I think you described now as a certain relationship to micro and macro or the interior and exterior, what is happening, movement that is sensed inside and maybe not visible from the outside or, um, the other way around. But at that, by then you already have moved to Vermont, to Mad Brook? You're, you're living here already. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
71 I came here first. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(55:38)
71 and I, I was wondering about that. Let's say a more political slash ecological mindset that, um, was, was present at the time as well. I think last year when we did the presentation of Lisa's publication, we had a talk on, uh, the back to the land movement. Um, and I, I was wondering how I know Lisa's story, but I was wondering, um, how that decision took place, um, to all of a sudden leave and the urban environment to actually radically rethink a daily life. Um, how to position yourself amidst, I mean, we see it here outside amidst. Um, let's say a very vibrant environment, although it has another vibrancy than let's say, New York City. Um, but there's a lot of energy and how to, how to deal with these forces. So was this a decision that all of a sudden came about? Um, or had there been already some sort of flirtations with thinking ecology before in, in the years before you moved or how were there friends that inspired you? I'm just curious how that, how that all of a sudden happened.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Well, at that point, I had lived in New York for 12 years and I had found my way from being a student into dance companies and dense affiliations and yeah, but I was very poor. There was not, I was not doing something that there was any salary or, you know, Grand Union was, or we got paid for performances and we got travel paid for, but there wasn't money outside of the actual performances. So there was nothing sustaining me. And, uh, so it was very poor and I had lived in New York, uh, in the very cheapest of, uh, apartments. So, um, very bad situation. I mean, I liked them. I, a young man can put up with a lot, you know, it's, I had no social pretentions or you know, even hope. So, uh, I just wanted a place to put my body when I wasn't dancing, you know? So I had that. So I was now at the point in the, in the, in 1970 when I first came here and visited here, I was living in a very small apartment on the top floor of a building. It was, uh, two rooms and you know, a bathroom and a everything else room. And, um, um, and I had a performance in Montreal and I decided to come and visit here. Uh, Deborah Hay and David Bradshaw, whom I knew in New York had moved here at that point. And, um, so I dropped in and uh, stayed for a week and in that week made friends and decided to come back. And, and the autumn I came back and helped build the house up the hill. Not very well. I mean, I wasn't a carpenter, but I was there to do it and um, yeah. And so that period, that second period was a fairly long period and involved living in the main house with about 20 other people who were the only people here. And, um, there was no telephone to make a phone call. You had to drive to the nearest public phone about five miles away. There was no, there was electricity, there was water, there was wood heat, there was a lot to do. There was gardening, you know, we were, uh, it was agreed that we were going to eat vegetarian. So there were big gardens opposite the main house and um, a big freezer and um. Oh and great meals every day. Dinner every day. I can't remember a bad dinner, I cannot remember a bad dinner. It was just remarkable. They were just delicious vegetarian meals or you know, from a... Fresh from our own garden, you know, in the autumn. And um, the group here were leather workers and woodworkers and so craftsmen and they had really nice products, you know, really well constructed, well crafted wares. And so, um, so they had a kind of, um, uh, I admired them for that and I felt comfortable with them because I felt like their work with crafts and my work with arts were, you know, similar, had similar foundations, creativity. And, um, um, so then I had formed a relationship with this woman and I was given, um, an invitation by experiments in Art and Technology in New York with whom I had worked to go to India. And so I took her to India, we went together and she stayed for a couple of months and I stayed for six months. Got into the, into the meditation and generally moved around India, mostly the North and Western parts. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:03:40)
So does that mean that you actually, because, let me put it differently at the same moment, doing something very similar, namely, they're leaving the cities and they're going to the land. Was this something that, that you were, were aware about at the moment or is this just mere coincidence that you actually, by knowing Deborah hay, who was living here that you ended up here and then by experiencing the environment and deciding to stay.
</p>

<p class="sp">
My introduction to the back to the land movement was by coming to visit people who had actually made that decision. But I think I emphasize how appalling my conditions were in New York. You know, these bad apartments and bad neighborhoods and all of that. I came here and the first week that I was here, I experienced a peacefulness, almost a bliss that was remarkable. It was just so this land spoke to me very deeply. It's beautiful land, but mainly it has a lot of running water. It has a lot of brooks and springs. Now don't forget that I was raised in a desert mostly. And this amount of running water is paradise for somebody who has been raised in the South West. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:05:27)
Dry land.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah. It's so dry in some of those lands and the drought was, um, very heavy on my family at that particular time. My father was trying to farm and he had seven years of terrible luck with rain. And so, um, um, that's not an unusual drought in Arizona, you know, and then, then we moved at the end of my time in Arizona, we had moved to the desert. Now when you fly into Tucson, Arizona, one of the things that's remarkable to see is that in many neighborhoods behind every house there's a swimming pool. This is in the desert. Ordinary people can afford swimming pools. And indeed it's a, a kind of, you know, big part of the social life of a family, you know, a swimming pool, grill, you know, outdoor life, warm weather, you know, beautiful nights, not much rain, you know, just the outside, you know, your yard becomes, uh, another room. Uh, with a swimming pool. And so you see all these little blue spaces behind the houses and it just seems crazy because there are so many of them, you know, you know how dry it is. You know, I, I'm not sure where that water comes from. Tucson, Phoenix, you know, all the desert towns, so that era, you know, from the 50s onwards, you know, after, uh, the United States got its economy going again, uh, towards the public sector. Um, um, just, um, yeah, a lap of luxury even in miniature, you know, it wasn't mansions, it was small houses, but it was swimming pools and uh, it's a lot, a lot of water and that water is very valuable and the air extremely dry and, um, the lakes in Arizona are mineralized, so you go swimming and you come out covered with salts, you know, and you need to actually wash off again with fresh water to get the lake water, the salt off. Things like that. So to come here and to have, to live in a green world with a blue sky and with the brooks running was, um, a very big, you know, I, I felt a very big connection with the land. You know, this, it's kind of... Well, I guess New England, you know, comfort beauty, you know, I hadn't yet been here in the winter, you know, starting in may, is when my, my first encounter with this farm. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:08:57)
The comfortable version. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah. It's the Edenesque season of the year. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:09:07)
Um, I think it's remarkable that at the same time that you're developing new skills, um, contacting impro is at the very beginning of developing, you're busy with Aikido, with Zen, with yoga, you also move here to an environment where your body is also exposed in a different way to elements compared to...
</p>

<p class="sp">
But I was 30 years old, approximately. You know, I mean, that's, that's an age where one does, you make fundamental decisions around one's life. And, uh, I definitely had never admired New York City. I mean, you talk about it as the greatest city in the world, but the operative word is city. I mean, that's American's view of it in a way. The greatest city we have greatest and biggest and most expensive and yet, etc. Most powerful in many ways. But, uh, uh, and I, I knew I had to be there for dance education and that was, there was no other place with any reputation. At the same time, um, it's, it's a real sore on the face of the actual landscape. And I was aware that America had been built on the backs of indigenous people and blacks, uh, multi-million animals slaughtered, you know, uh, herds of bison in the Midwest. Um, so I was, I was sensitive to all of that and I felt like being here, was, um, a way of avoiding, um, the worst of a humanity's efforts to civilize itself. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:11:17)
But what I was hinting at is that at the same time that there's a transformation in let's say reskilling your, development of skills in your art making. There is also maybe a reskilling happening in how to,
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah, I was 30. That's what I'm telling you. I'm telling you, this is what happens. How old are you? 
</p>

<p class="te">
29. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
29. So you are in that era of, uh, astrological imagery. Which is called Saturn return. Do you feel different than you did when you were like 26? Yeah, I mean, I had a, a depression at 27. You know, I had, uh, I went through some real, um, mental, um, uh, turmoil. I also was, uh, recognizing that, uh, I was not supporting myself very well in New York, you know. I mean, I was eating, I had a roof over my head. I had clothes, a few didn't have, uh, you know, any, didn't, didn't have any, any, I had a poor life, but a rich artistic life. So that's all I cared about. But, uh, coming here, um, uh, yeah, a lot of the paradox of a city, a modern city, you know, the fact that it doesn't know what to do with its, its sewage, you know, and its waste, you know, the fact that it is just such a generator of pollution here, I felt like I could get out of that system. I could be someplace, find out about a place that was much more alive than the desert I had grown up in. I mean, I love deserts, but this place was green. Green was something you saw only, you know, in a few parks in my childhood. If you play an artificial artificially maintained highly desirable landscapes, you know, golf courses and, and parks, you know, within the city. No place outside the city. The water was not clean here. You can drink water from the Lake. Here water is soft. It feels great to the scan. It doesn't dry on your skin and make you feel like your skin is cracking off. So this place was very beautiful to me. That's this farm and I definitely was in a position of having very little and um, therefore being very free. You know, I think I moved up here. I had a a VW bug. I think I and my cat. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:14:43)
You had a cat. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
I had a cat. Um, and all my belongings came up in that one VW bug: clothes, tools, you know, furniture, whatever I had was in that one very small car. And uh, so that's what I had and that's where I came up with and that's what I began life here with.
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:15:08)
I guess in contrast to the city where things are, let's say provided for you, there's here in other sense of being way more hands on, do it yourself notion of being self sufficient. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
That was very much the ethos of the farm. There was, it wasn't a place where you got a lot of help. In the early days at least I didn't, you know, have a lot of no, and if you think about it, you realize that it would have been to have some form of communal socialism. You know, who people were really helping each other and, and, uh, getting any, each other's lives that way, uh, would weaken the whole structure that the strongest structure we could have is if every member of it were strong. So there was not a communal car, for instance. It would've been very easy to go that route. You know, and have a car, you know, but, uh, people were suspicious that, uh, communal property was, uh, not cared for equally by all members. And, uh, I think we saw that. We saw that actually we lived through it. Um, uh, uh, how, how much people were willing to work for the good of the group. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:16:35)
It's a, it's interesting because at the very same moment, a little bit before 1968, the Whole Earth catalog starts to be distributed. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yes. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:16:47)
Um, which ha, which supports the belief that one has, one has the potential to, um, learn certain skills and by applying those skills, one can actually cause transformation. Um, were you aware of, of, of that document at a time or, did it influence your thinking, your life...
</p>

<p class="sp">
I orderd things from it! You know, yeah, you could order these goods, you know, it was a catalog and uh, of a lot of things that you needed for homesteading or, you know, uh, I don't know. Things like churns from making butter and tools for gardening and um, yeah, um, manuals for mechanics, you know. All kinds of books. And, and what entrees into further research, you know. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:18:01)
Um, that kind of, we talked a little bit about it before in, in relationship to, to Buddhism, which is very much about, at least the strand that I know of it is about self control. It's about perceiving true nature. Um, but at the same time you're also busy with it Aikido.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Before that.
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:18:30)
Which is a way of... It's translated as the way of unifying with life energy. There's also the practice of yoga, which etymologically would relate to yoke, to concentrate, to attach and to join, um, which I all kind of see us certain expressions of thinking in an ecology. Um, in, in yoga, I think it's thinking equanimity between, um, shakras. So within yourself and by finding equanimity there you can find equanimity in relation to the world. With Aikido there's some things, it's not similar, but you, um, there is a notion of not, um, being aggressive to the world, but you deal with the energy that is coming towards you. So you, you, um, you don't aggress but you redirect, you use the energy that approaches you. Do you think that there, there is a certain alignment between these practices and, um, let's say ecological thinking, did the life here, uh, did these practices influence your thinking of life here at the moment or were these things separated for you? Were they interrelated practices? 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Well, the study of all of these practices suggests more inclusion. Any, any mental study that you undertake, you know, be it music, be it mathematics, be it Aikido, um, suggest that you want to, um, uh, influence your growth or influence your development. And all of them will have various influences on you. All of these different studies and you might study many of them. But for me, um, I think the fact that I studied dance with an attitude that it was as much a mental development as a physical, uh, and then, uh, found Aikido and studied that and was and found it very helpful in many ways, but mainly the contrast between dance technique and Aikido technique. You know, what was included as a premise, you know, one to make art one to relate to aggression. And also the psychology in both. You know, it takes a lot of training to become a dancer in a company. You have to have certain skills, like memorizing movement, you know, like, uh, like remembering relationships in space. Like, uh, you know, things in. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:22:26)
It takes 10 years, said Martha Graham. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It takes 10 years or it takes a long time anyway, it takes at least two years to kind of get your head around the basis of a technique. And then after that you have to grow the technique into your body so that you become somebody who's, uh, um, whose growth has been developed by that technique, which is what all the techniques seem to require. You know, like ballet for instance, turns out a body, they start very young and it turns out a body that's quite unlike a normal body. It really a different animal, different tribe. Anyway. So, um, all of that training to have the contrast between two of my major studies was informative, you know, like, Oh, this is, this is a whole package, you know, dance, dance and, you know, the company I was in is one whole package. There is another whole package premised on conflict, but a certain response to conflict, which is a peaceful response to conflict, which I thought was very beautiful the way it's positioned. Um, yoga, you know, uh, is a lot about, uh, integrating yourself, you know, and, and consciously so engaging the mind in integration with the body. Um, Tai Chi, same thing. Uh, Aikido, uh, you know, the premise, you know, if, if in yoga you're dealing with multiple chakras and Aikido you're dealing with one, essentially the root chakra and its a connection to movement and to, um, the geometry of movement. Yeah. Um, yeah, so all of these things are very useful, you know, in terms of getting a, a rounded picture of what a human is. I was still at the, at the time in 61, I started off making, um, uh, quote dances that were about walking, had a lot of walking in them. And I did that for a decade and get 10 years of, uh, walking, um, material. And, um, so then I changed, went into improvisation and uh, uh, it's very, the various branches of that that I worked on. Um, but I still kept, I still had, I still had this fundamental question about walking. And in 86 when I started working on Material For The Spine, I think I finally, um, found a way to, uh, identify or picture for myself what walking is. So that my mind finally, after all those years and after many attempts to work with walking and trying to find out what walking was, maybe I was just incredibly slow, but we're talking 25 years later, you know, suddenly I, it came to me that walking was a matter of two spirals of the body, the right and left half of the body spiraling around each other in a kind of, um, rhythmic, uh, repeat. And, um, that was that was the combination for me of a, uh, something I had been looking for, which is how to find fundamental energies and structures in the body. So you start as a neophyte in any of these, um, endeavors. Um, didn't you say something about yoga being a matter of... 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:27:24)
Equinimity.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Equinimity... But also opening, maybe it was Buddhism. Are we talking about...
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:27:35)
As perceiving true nature. I attributed to and yoga was also to to attach, to join, equanimity, to attach to join and to concentrate to yoke. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
So that sounds like just the discipline side of it, you know, as a definition. But there's another element of it which is to open. What does that mean? What, what it suggests is that human beings are fundamentally closed or incomplete or self deceiving or, um, anyway, they have quite a ways to go after they achieve physical, um, growth, you know, uh, uh, take over their own lives. They then have this next leap to make, which is to open to something beyond their own ego and beyond their own awareness and, and upbringing and family and society and all of that, that there are, there's a lot of space, you know, uh, uh, to continue to, expand into, um, so, uh, I've heard of yoga being called a way to, um, uh, train the self or to stop being suppressed by the ego or you know, a lot of generalities which suggest that the yogis think that, you know, you, you get to be 18, 19 years old, 20, you know, you're, you're an adult, you know, you're grown up, you're, you're able to have relationships that you want and you know, find your own way in life and all that. But you haven't even started to, um, train, uh, the mind to look at the mind. And, um, so, uh, that's very interesting that there's these so-called mental experts, you know, meditation teachers, Zen teachers, yoga teachers, and they all sort of think no human being has potential that they are not, um, able to, that they may never be able to, to uh, fulfill. So, um, I don't know. So I think that was an underlying question too, through all of that part of my life, including coming here and being with other people who were obviously aware of those kinds of things. Nobody was a disciplined meditator here. Nobody was disciplined in any religion and discipline, maybe in their craft, you know, and maybe in being kind of clever about adapting to this new. Cause they were all city people. So if they were, they were all I, I may have is had as much time on a farm in my earlier life as any of them here had had, you know. But, uh, they were, they figured it out, found out what they had to know. But all of that is about opening and all of it is about, and so, so your earlier remark about coming here and also coincidentally working on contact improvisation and Grand Union and you know, all these things that was all about, uh, how to find out more, how to. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:31:55)
Open up. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Open, you know, uh, I mean the word improvisation for instance, I really didn't know what it meant and I kept aware that I didn't know what it meant, is a little bit like, I kept aware that I didn't have cracked what walking was, you know, uh,
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:32:13)
I think that, um, that sense of, of opening, um, actually is present already from very early on in your work. Um, I've been looking at, at one of the first pieces where there's the presence of animals. You have rabbits in Title Lost Tokyo, you have chickens in Jag Ville Gärna Telefonera. There's another chicken in Somebody Else. There's also a dog appearing. Um, I wrote it down in Some Notes on Performance. In Afternoon Forest Concert in 63, you go into the woods, you dress the trees, uh, in the same way that you're dressed yourself into costumes with the dots. Uh, you're dealing with the inflatable tunnels, the plastic in Music for Word Words or Physical Things. And I thought like there is already in all of these instances, elements entering that are to certain degree unpredictable, there's a certain behavior of otherness. So and to think that through that kind of openness that you were talking about or inclusion, it also means, um, to allow elements, whatever their nature is, whether they're animals or whether you talk about materials or also other people on stage in terms of improvisation maybe, to allow things to be, um, to let otherness be, to include that no matter what their behavior might be. So inclusion might also mean to let go of some sort of controlling nature, um, to restrict something, to, uh, to a certain kind of behavior, but to let it be. And I was wondering if I, when I'm, um, of course when I see you dressing the tree, I retrospectively, I start to think of, of ecology or the relationship to animals. Like here in the farm we've been talking a lot about animal behavior, how they appear, disappear, how the pigs play with each other, et cetera. And I, um, I find it striking that, that, that even maybe when there was not really a, a clear thinking of ecology yet, that, that actually it was already almost like an echo from the future, you know, like, uh, that, that the thinking of environment was very much there, I think. Would you agree with that? 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Well, early life involved, uh, at various times living in a lot of different landscapes in Arizona and one of them being a farm in which my brother and I were of an age where we could be left all day by our parents to just, you know, there was a house, there were fields beyond the fields. There were, there was woods and wilderness, you know, uh, dry, a little bit dangerous. Um, but we were trusted to survive. You know, even what age? I guess eight or nine, you know, uh, trusted to spend all day by myself and a lot of wandering around. So I guess I made alliances with nature, you know, as I know, I'm very fond of a certain kind of rock, big boulders to climb on. I'm very fond of the Arizona granite. Um, I know that I, I have this memory of being on a picnic, uh, uh, on a mountain side in Northern Arizona and climbing the cliff. My parents just would let me climb a cliff and it was that exact kind of Boulder that I'm so fond of, you know, as, as, uh, it's, it has granules in it, so it has very good traction and, and shapes. Lots of, lots of nice shapes to climb on. And looking down at the picnic that I had climbed away from and the people were tiny little people down there. I had climbed 200 feet, 300 feet. Uh, and, um, I think until I looked down, you know, and saw how small the people were, I didn't really have any sense of uh, what fear or you know, that that moment of looking down makes your stomach change. But, uh, until that moment I was just fine. Just you know. So in other words, I had sort of primal relationships to nature. I don't know if I... Ecology, I guess ecology sounds like you're taking it up as a, um, way of viewing the world through a kind of filter. You know, like astronomy might be another one, you know, where your, everything is filtered through what you see through a telescope and what you determine the stars are doing. But um, and so ecology sort of sounds to me like you're filtering the world through thoughts of trees and forests and fields and animals and all of that. I'm not sure I had any such thought, so I'm not sure it qualifies as ecology. When I was in New York, you know, anti-natural place as it is. Um, but, um, yeah, I, I, I can see in my life that what I was attracted to was, uh, the, um, [inaudible 1:39:36]. And so I was attracted toward Cunningham and the avant garde arts. I was attracted to, um, pursue an arts career from Arizona where there was no artists around yet. There were no artists in my life at all. I didn't know any artists, um, certainly didn't know any dancers except the ones that kind of enlisted me to be in their local companies, you know, eventually. So I got there by, by, um, being a gymnast. So that gave me a pre-created flexibility from that kind of work. So then dance was a natural. And then, um, but yeah, what is, what is it about gymnastics that has ecology in it? And I would argue that it's the body and the mechanics of the body is how you're approaching ecology is that we're of the body. For example, dance pursues that. And then art starts to turn it into something of spirit and imagination and mind. Um, and then having the contrast with like Aikido, having the contrast with yoga, seeing, you know, all these different premises Tai-Chi, um, having all these different premises to examine, you know, which was the fruits of living in New York where there was a lot of stuff, would not find that in a country. So that was quite fun. That was the ecology in New York, I guess, but it was human ecology. Agnes Martin, the painter who is famous for paintings of lines, you know, kinda grids, told Simone Forti that the only thing left of nature in New York was gravity and yeah, gravity! So what was gravity? You know, what did you know, dancers should have some thoughts about gravity, I would think, you know, all that leaping around. What are you doing? What are you playing with? You know, if it's not your attraction to the earth and its attraction to you. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:42:38)
Of course when I mentioned ecology, like you, you read my reading of ecology as thinking thoughts about nature trees. But for me, there's, I think another kind of ecology. What, what I would call an ecology of practices or where, and we talked about physical practices that you exercise yourself. But by doing so, you can also enter into another relationship with the outside. So I'm, I'm, I'm not necessarily thinking ecology as, um, nature and its systems, but also our systems and how they, uh, interact with environments and to see those maybe, um, as a whole. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yes. I think that's generally what ecology means. You know, like talking about a bird in its setting with the kinds of trees that it depends on with the, you know, kind of insects that exist there kind of thing. Right? Everything, it's interrelationships. The thing about being a dancer is that you, I guess those interrelationships are unnecessarily sort of a scant, it doesn't matter about, a many things don't matter. What does matter, you know, for the dancers, especially beginning dancer is, what would you say? The ecology of the studios, the ecology of the classes, the ecology of the performances. I don't know if you could, you know, I don't know if it's useful to use ecology so broadly as that, but, uh, I, I take, take what you said. Um, and it has always been, there's always been a, an appetite for enlarging, but, um, there's also been this appetite for the marginal, you know, the, the avant garde arts. You know, I, I never ever thought of being a classical dancer or, um, you know, getting involved with being around, seeing, uh, classical arts. I've only seen classical arts, you know, because they're so available and you do see them, you know, and you, uh, um, find out a bit more about them. But, uh, I never studied them nor cared to particularly. I don't, I don't want to know about Renaissance painting. I don't want to know about the English landscape. I don't want to know, aside from, um, uh, yeah, I can enjoy a painting. Had a hell of a time going, um, to the Uffizi and, um, 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:45:54)
In Florence. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah. Walking through and seeing the development of painting as they presented it, which went from religious icons, which were, you know, just really boring paintings, you know, little figures to keep your mind concentrated on the qualities of one of the saints and to in one afternoons', you know, uh, traipse through the galleries and to, um, Botticelli's Venus... 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:46:40)
The Birth of Venus.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah, Birth of Venus. Which is just such a Hollywood production by comparison with these little brown icons. You know, you know, two-dimensional, you know, figures, very small and little brown frames. Yeah. The, the whole explosion of, uh, really florid painting and really, um, uh, watching subject matter go from this is a saint. You must, you know, worship, you know, or want to worship. This is the one to keep you, keep your mind so you don't forget in your life that this saint is your saint or whatever. An aid and aid to memory and, and spirituality too. Um, other religious but still very connected people. Um, and Jesus is, you know, Mary's, um, people right around the central iconography of Christianity and then starting to include paintings of pagan gods. So, yeah. And then starting in the painting gets a little bit more florid and you know, I mean these are gods with quite a reputation for dash and a splendor and all of that. So, uh, and then, um, yeah, somehow the whole thing opening up the space of religion to include paganism, to include primitivism to include. Um, and, and occasionally there had to be ordinary humans in these paintings, you know, to receive the diety, you know, to adore and the figure, you know, Christ on there, there are these soldiers and women and what have you around the foot of the cross. And so then they get to be the subject and then you start to get into, uh, what became quite an ecology in the arts. Would you say that got more and more inclusive of humanity and you know, cause I don't know if there was, I don't know about paintings that I didn't see in that museum. You know, I don't know if there were portraits, I don't know if a portrait was a possibility, but I think a representation was more what was shown to me, not a portrait. Although we did get to Leonardo and it was an annunciation. And this annunciation was hilarious. I really cracked up because after the repression of probably 30 rooms of icons and two-dimentionality and, uh, expressions of, uh, um, dire seriousness or you know, sadness or, or adoration or whatever. Um, Leonardo's annunciation is a very good looking angel, but I don't think, I don't remember that he had wings. So, annunciation is prior to then, it was very clear you wanted to announce it, you know, or show, you want to demonstrate who the angel was, who the spirit of the Lord was, you know, little gold dotted lines going from that angel to Mary, which is the planting of the seed of Jesus, you know, in her womb and expression of, uh, some surprise on her face, you know, like, uh, uh, trembling hands and you know, great moments. And presumably, so Leonardo's, the angel is a guy in robes kind of prepossessing, you know, very intense look on his face. Mary is sitting at a table, apparently having coffee in the morning. There's an open door behind her on one side in which you see a bed and the bed is made up very neatly. Now you know that that had to be a choice. Why is that bed there, you know, unmust. Suggests not much activity. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:52:03)
Exactly. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah. Or something. You know, there's, it's trying to suggest something and Mary is reading a scroll, I assume it's the morning scroll of the news from the village, Bethlehem, you know, whatever. And uh, you know, she wasn't in Bethlehem yet. She was wherever they were before Bethlehem. But anyway, reading a scroll and, uh, she looks up and there's this guy and he's, uh, inseminating her or, uh, announcing the fact that.
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:52:38)
That she's pregnant.
</p>

<p class="sp">
The pregnancy or something. Um, and it's all just done with, um, uh, yeah, I would say, Oh, method acting style of painting. You know, where everybody's enacting their role in a moment. And if you don't get the symbols, you don't get the little gold dotted thing that was happening in so many of the previous enunciations but you get an the intensity on the angel's face or the man's face. Mary is surprised, you know, as it has, if you just looked up and saw him suddenly there. Um, uh, it just struck me as a, in eliminating all the symbolism. He had gone to a different kind of, um, any way to portray the moment of this miracle. And then you'd go around the corner and there's Birth of Venus, which is quite a large painting. Paintings are getting larger and larger. We went from galleries where the paintings were, how many centimeters by how many centimeters would you say...
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:54:05)
I think that's 10 by 15.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah. Sort of. To the Leonardo which was like this, is that, would you say. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:54:18)
That would be 70 maybe, 80. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Just a minute... Leonardo was about... 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:54:36)
It's 80. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah, it's, it's, well. It was at least 80. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:54:43)
I am surprised by my estimation.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah, very good. By 50 let's say, something like that. So that's quite a bit bigger. And then the birth of Venus is a real, um, wall, you know, piece. It's huge by comparison. So things were just getting more and more extravagant in painting. It's very instructive, I must say, you know, for an artist to recognize that there actually was a development, there was a trend. There was, you know, a reason why nobody did landscapes or portraits or, and how portraiture sort of arrived, you know, and, and how spectacle arrived in paintings for, as it turned from purely functional in terms of religious direction too. Um, speculative, fictional, colorful, dramatic, enormous, um, um, cheap.
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:56:19)
Cheap?
</p>

<p class="sp">
Can I say that cheap? Can I say that in the sense that a stripper is a cheaper version of an actress, an actress is a more dignified and serious, uh, artistic, uh, pose. A stripper is taking one aspect of that actress's, um, possible range. You know, the seductress might, might come into an actress's role. Um, and that's all it is. Yes. We're going to have a whole, um, cheap art form of, uh, seduction, which is both hilarious and futile, you know, nobody is seduced by a stripper. There are aroused though, you know, it's arousal that is sought. And I felt like with Botticelli, it was a little bit, the arousal factor was higher than a serious artist would have. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:57:38)
Does, is that something, now you're talking, you're, you're talking about painting, but I have the feeling that, that it's exactly those unpredictable elements that you bring in, into those pieces that I mentioned that bring a sense of real life and real time. And so it's not, um, ornamental in any way. It is what it is right there at that very moment.
</p>

<p class="sp">
But what is, say it again
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:58:14)
For example, like if you, um, put the animals on stage, yeah. They are what they are. And so then we, 
</p>

<p class="sp">
yes, it's true. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:58:24)
There is like a sense of non-ornament, but there's also what I said before, the sense of openness or letting something be or allowing something to be, et cetera. And I, I was reading, um, the, a statement by, by Trisha Brown, I think I saw her hanging on the wall there. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yes. She's up there.
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:58:49)
She was talking, still speaking, the line of, of opening and allowing, she was talking about improvisation as a way to temper the censoring behavior of the brain, um, or improvisation as a mode to allow uncensored decisions which affect movement. And I'm also interested in that notion of censoring, cause censoring implies exclusion. It's in a way going against...
</p>

<p class="sp">
It implies tempering. I mean you used the word temporary and I, I was, I was a little shocked to think of improvisation as tempering and yet, um, yeah, willing to go for the ride, you know, but um,
</p>

<p class="te">
(01:59:58)
Yeah, there's a paradoxical... Like to temper the censoring behavior
</p>

<p class="sp">
We are stuck in a situation as humans, and the situation is roughly this, that uh, if we're functioning well, then we have a number of senses. Um, uh, we have, um, which tell us which inform us about the world and through which we get information, including from our family and from our school and all of that day, the senses are trained certainly by school so that we use eyes a lot and ears a lot and movement is suppressed. And then separately and, and less, uh, we spend less time, um, playing with our bodies, you know, in sports or whatever, you know, equipment. Yeah. Environments. And um, at some point we are informed that our senses don't include all the possible things there are to sense, you know, we don't sense certain light waves, we don't hear certain sounds, we don't taste or smell certain things and etcetera. So that means that we are made aware that we have automatic limitations and that the culture in which we are developed has also certain limitations to do with, um, well what, roughly its architecture. The culture has a structural element. And so as a, as a child entering the culture, the leaving the family for the first time going to school usually is the route. If the culture is functioning. And, um, that school is determined by what the culture thinks it wants people to become. And so you are trained to become a person who can sit in a chair for hours and hours and hours and hours every day who is on time, who's, you know, uh, amenable to the schedules, who, uh, can take information in their heads from other people and from books and films and uh, can, um, at the time when they achieve physical maturity be given, uh, uh, a passport, you know, um, um, a certificate to say that they have done the training and they are now of an age to do what, well, all they have been trained to think of to do is work, home family maybe later on. Support themselves and they're put in a position, I must say in America we have very, very bad transition from school to work for most for some kids anyway. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:04:07)
In which sense? Is there a missing link?
</p>

<p class="sp">
In the sense... Yeah, there's no link. I mean, you would think that school would have the potential to train you for a job which you would get when you graduated. And then, uh, you would have, uh, as a kind of support, but in fact my schooling didn't do that. Did not provide actual useful training to do anything. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:04:43)
Is it, is it so that you would say that in general school is actually way more about reproducing what you've been taught? So like the ways of thinking, viewing the world rather...
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yes that's what you're rewarded for.
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:05:01)
Rather than to actually, ...
</p>

<p class="sp">
They don't know how to teach imagination.
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:05:10)
Exactly. So to break up to find the self-sufficiency.
</p>

<p class="sp">
But they don't want people who are imaginative. A culture can't want to develop people who are going to rebel against its, I mean, it wants, 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:05:26)
Its fundaments...
</p>

<p class="sp">
It wants some of them, it wants some of them, but it wants some very much under control. And, um, it doesn't want too many of them. It wants people without imagination who do the jobs for their lives, you know, and under the best conditions, they then get, uh, uh, put out to pasture and supported until they die, you know? But that's, that's the best that life offers most people. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:05:58)
Um, did you ever, um, 
</p>

<p class="sp">
I was going to say that these restrictions exist for a reason. I was going to say that they're not mandated. It's not mandated that you get a job and start a family and raise kids and put them into school and start the whole cycle all over again and gradually age out of life, you know, into some, glorious old age home, you know, and in your village or town or something like that, you know, and die, that's not mandated. You have lots of choices. But, so the question is how can you suggest or, or permit or, um, encourage even people to see that, uh, the basic structure into which they've been initiated isn't all there is, so then these questions that we started with in yoga and Buddhism in tai chi, in aikido in the arts, um, become more interesting because, uh, they're the keys to, um, even just by the contrast, even if they don't actually promote imagination, you know, they're the keys to, uh, leaving the structure as the structure, as it conformed itself. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:07:44)
You were just saying that of course there's people that are allowed to think differently, but they have to be controlled. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Well to some degree. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:07:53)
To some degree.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Like how did I live? I was not supported as an artist. I made some money performing. The performances weren't very usual. If I had taken a different route and gotten a job dancing in a Broadway show, I would have had a lot more finance or remuneration for dancing. Um, or another kind of dance. You know, if I hadn't been such an avant gardist, if I had been more into the classical, even even the modern dance, I could have gotten a lot more money out of the art. Uh, so yeah, I was an example of somebody who, um, could not be supported because my field had not yet been invented because I was of, uh, of the sort that was going to invent my own field. So one doesn't even I, you know, uh, liberal and, and, um, um, socialistic creature that I am, um, don't think it's a really good idea to give somebody who's just fighting around a lot of money. You know, like, I wouldn't think of giving the kids here on the farm a grant, you know, to do whatever they want when they, when they turned 16 and got their driver's license and could suddenly go off and get really into a lot of trouble because, uh, you know, or a young artist, you know, I think there's a reasonable, um, expectation that they should suffer and struggle. Um, and it just turned out for me that in coming here to the farm, my struggles suddenly turned extremely pleasant. In fact, my life improved a lot. Even as the struggling continued. And so obviously I had some idea that I didn't have to be in a structure, you know, I had some, it was a little bit at least, um, uh, I had the beginning of some kind of, but it's again, about this appetite for marginality, you know, which I always had.
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:10:31)
At the same time. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
I was always looking for the edges of things. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:10:35)
Yeah. And I think there's been a couple of moments where these edges, are very stark in the sense that you have dealt at some points with censorship. Right. And that that is exactly the moment where the controlling instance says "this is not possible". "This cannot be thought. This cannot be seen." 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah, yeah. The naked body.
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:11:03)
The naked body. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Predictable. It's... If you're not Botticelli. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:11:12)
Yeah, exactly. Because visual arts is full of naked bodies. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
And sculpture. But those are mostly representatives from earlier cultures, not from our own. Our own doesn't have such a healthy relationship.
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:11:34)
How, how, how did you deal with that in the very moment like Beautiful Lecture? Its first iteration was um, the pornography had to be replaced. That was the performance in the New School. In New York, there was Intravenous Lecture that was actually a replacement for a performance of Satisfying Lover that you wanted to do with 40...
</p>

<p class="sp">
40 nudes, 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:12:06)
40 nudes. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
42. But anyway, yeah. So yeah. Um, I think, and in its wisdom the culture says that this stuff is, although it exists inside the culture, you know, the culture is in fact, um, uh, anyway, it's in the culture. Pornography or pornographic film is your reference. And then just nudity in the case of the Satisfying Lover performance. It exists, but we can't look at it. It's, this is forbidden material, which was a little bit like the restrictions of the dance world when the Judson came along, you know, and they, they were saying, why would anybody want to make dances this way when we have this other way, which dancers have been working on for 50 years? And, and we have developed it into this glorious American modern dance and um, and ballet, they never could quite sever that, um, connection. But, um, yeah, the, that, um, dance is doing, it is being done this way and these people at Judson are not doing it that way and it's a threat. And it was a threat, I guess. I didn't know. I don't think any of us realized how big a threat it was, but the fact that we at Judson, were not following the line, you know, following, accepting the definition. It's the same. I think it's the same kind of threat that a culture fields, when the language starts to shift, you know, when the, the [inaudible 02:14:09] when new slang comes in and, or a new, a new group, uh, their, their vocabulary starts to become popular. And it is, it is very sad to have a functioning system, which lots of people are struggling to clarify and, and keep pure and, um, you know, uh, defined very clearly and, and usefully. It's very sad when that kind of system is threatened so I can understand the dance world rejecting, you know, the Judson world. On the other hand, the Judson world was riding on the coattails of the art world in which the artists had already started at the beginning of the 20th century to really drift away. Actually the dance started at that same time to drift away from the orthodoxy. But orthodoxy is just something that a culture has to do. That's what defines the culture. I mean, a culture is based on trying to keep the best of what has happened, 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:15:46)
Preserved. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Preserve and to ditch the worst of what has happened. You know, try doing you know, never again for the Holocaust or you know, we have to remember it, but we want to, um, reject it whereas Isadora or who else? Anyway, the dancers of the early 20th century, um, are to be respected and remembered. And, and in so far as we can, even their training continued, I'm sure you go to New York and find Isadora classes, at least you could. And in 1960, when I first saw them, they were still going into a studio with scarves and you know, doing, Isadora dances. Amazing, you know, amazing. And, uh, so there's this tendency of a culture to focus on the past, you know, it is, it is that, that's how it is defined, is achievements as to its future an extreme focused on the past is going to result in stultification. So then you get to be stuck and you don't develop and you don't find out more things and you don't have new art forms. And so there's a basic tension in time. People like me with no basis. And what a lot of, um, 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:18:04)
What do you mean with no basis? 
</p>

<p class="sp">
I had no basis in arts. I had no very little basis in dance and I was a white male in a culture or that, what's the word? Um, where the status of white men in this culture there. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:18:33)
Privilege. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Privilege. Thank you. As a privileged person in this culture, I could and, and one with an appetite for the marginal, I could, um, pretty much shake myself free. I didn't have connections to the culture. Arizona is, was not highly cultured. The dance was the only art that I got into. But there I didn't see anybody painting. I had one friend who took art classes. There was some stuff happening. I'm sure there was a lot happening, but I just didn't see it. You know, I lived on farms and in the country or in subdivisions and kind of a art poor life. So becoming an artist or, or getting into the arts, I was not well prepared and at the same time as a privileged person, I didn't have to struggle very much to do all the wrong things. So, uh, uh, I could come to New York and live badly and um, nobody was going to tell me anything really. Nobody, nobody said, why are you doing this? What, what is your point here? You know, wouldn't you be better off, you know, any one of, under the ways that the culture provides for people to occupy their lives? I think that was because of privilege. I think I could just do whatever I wanted to and I was too culturally impoverished to have any other goals other than the ones that I found in dance. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:20:39)
Was it something you were aware of at the time or is this.... 
</p>

<p class="sp">
No, this is something that I suspect now, you know, after all these decades. This is my current assessment of what happened.
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:20:56)
All right, thank you.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Do you want to go on any further in time?
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:21:07)
I actually had in mind to, um, stop at 72. With Magnesium, actually that pivotal point of start of Grand Union start of contact, having moved here. But there is one thing that I, I forgot to ask. Um, in relation to, let's say you were in the Cunningham company, Judson, you were surrounded by a lot of people from other disciplines that was also your social circle. Um, and I was wondering like in that moving here, there's also something that shifts socially. Um, of course you live here, you're, you're going on tour, so you're still meeting the people that you've worked with. But something fundamentally shifts, um, in let's say how, um, how you align yourself with social circles, but also through that, how you align yourself with certain aesthetic, uh, paradigms. For example, back then, you're very much surrounded by the people from visual arts. And we talked two days ago about, for example, these issues and questions, uh, about representation, the surface, flatness, Flat... I mean that, that's exactly what I would see as a development that can only take place because you align yourself with this broader circle of people that deal with similar questions but through their own medium, etcetera. But here's something other happens, I guess. Like how, how was that for you to...?
</p>

<p class="sp">
You mean at the farm? 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:23:17)
Yeah, so you decide to, maybe it was not a conscious decision. That's what I'm curious of. But you leave something behind. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
I thought I was retiring. When I came here. And so I had retired for some months and. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:23:38)
Meaning you didn't make any kind of art, you were not practicing...
</p>

<p class="sp">
No, no, no, no. I was just thinking that I wouldn't be able to do that so freely that I, you know, wouldn't have the opportunities that I had had in the city. Um, I didn't envision traveling so much. I had not started touring in my life. I don't think. I had traveled in America. I had toured work in America in the late sixties on the West coast, but you know, and Grand Union had toured a bed and dah, dah, dah. But, uh, when I came up here, this place seemed so remote. It's much more remote then, than now. Yeah. There was not a majestic highway 91 to get here. You had to come up a little two lane road, um, from, you know, very far South, you know, and just took eight hours to drive here. And it was really remote and there were no homes around. Some farms. This farm was not surrounded by other little houses, you know, that involved growing up in the area. And there was no, no place to dance. There was no room. We didn't have a studio. What was helpful was that people were creative. So that meant, I mean the people here and then I was coming into a group that was both creating crafts and marketing them elsewhere, you know, so they had a whole system going, uh, but they were building houses and they were working on their own cars and um, people had various talents, but there was a very talented mechanic. There were very talented woodworkers. There was a sense that there was material here for a person to build a lot of stuff or whatever you wanted. And, um, I guess it was no more shocking to my system as a, what a operative human being then moving to New York from the desert was, you know, I, I had a life of such shocks and, and in touring I had had a life of, uh, exposure to, yeah. Not only with Cunningham we toured around the United States a lot, but we also had that incredible world tour where for six months old company just took out in circled the world.
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:26:53)
That's in 64. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
64. Yeah, it was. Um, so moving here was not, so, you know, I, I guess I was adapted by then too. Cultural changes. But it really seemed to simplification and improvement in every way from New York in a really bad place. The only good thing about my apartment in New York, my one room, you know, with the bathroom on the side was it, it was in Soho, what has become so Soho and. That was exactly at the point where the artists were starting to lofts there and create what is now or what remains. So, you know, but for a while it was in the early seventies, it was an artist town, you know, it was ours. Trisha lived there, Yvonne lived there, Simone lived there, you know, um, loads and loads of visual artists, loads and loads of sculptors, loads and loads of people who just need big spaces. You know, Cathy's building housed lots of radical artists. Um, um, so, um, culture. So that was...
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:28:39)
So somehow you also kept on going back there because your, like you said, many of your friends and colleagues were living there. So there was a way of staying in touch with what was going on in the arts. I mean, being here didn't mean that you radically cut yourself off. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Interestingly enough, there was another connection, which was that, um, because uh, Deborah and David and I were living here and I guess people came to visit, um, the artists in Soho decided to start a restaurant. There was no place to get a meal in the evening. You know, for instance, there was a few sandwhich shops for the daytime, but in evening there was maybe one bar in which you could get a meal, you know, maybe not even, you know, I don't know what it was actually doing at that time, but they started a place called Food, a cafe or a restaurant. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:29:49)
It was called Food.
</p>

<p class="sp">
Food. And uh, yeah, just its sign out in front was 'food' and it was run by artists. And, um, so, you know, artists, um, that meant that they had to really be devoting their time to managing the thing. And so they did it kind of communally, you know. And different people would manage different weeks, all of that. And the women from Mad Brook were famous amongst that circle for, um, their bread. And, um, so they would come down and stay for two or three months and be the bakers for food and bake all the bread and rolls and biscuits and whatever was required. Uh, getting up in the middle of the night, you know, and going and warming up the ovens, you know, doing the bread and it was great bread, you know, I mean there were many of them that went down. So there was that connection between here and there as well. And also we had to go down to New York every now and then to buy because there was a, there was no health food store that we knew of in, in Vermont. So we would go to New York city and go to the Lower East Side where there was, you know, both food bulk organic available and you buy for the next months and ship it back up here, eight hour drive back up.
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:31:29)
Great.
</p>

<p class="sp">
So it wasn't just me moving in and out. It was the whole farm was a little bit New York connected.
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:31:35)
Yup. Talking about food. I'm getting very hungry. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
I'm starving. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:31:44)
I'm sorry. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
I havent't had breakfast. Have you had breakfast?
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:31:45)
I had a piece of toast. Yeah. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Well that's a lot more than I had. 
</p>

<p class="te">
(02:31:53)
Thank you so much for this. 
</p>

<p class="sp">
Yeah. That was good. That was a good talk.


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