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MI
AD
NY
IZE
IRROR
ICTATOR
r o t a t c i D a s i r or r i M e z i S y n A
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Structures
Structural Breakdowns
General Notes and Choreographic Scores
Libretto Text and Musical Scores
Recursive Methodology
Production Notes
DICTATORS:
COMPOSER: Brian McCorkle
LIBRETTIST/DIRECTOR/DESIGNER: Esther Neff
CHOREOGRAPHER: Lindsey Drury
REHEARSIVE TEAM:
Paige Fredlund, Matthew Gantt, Kaia Gilje, Ren Kladzyk, Thea Little, Sarah McSherry, Butch
Merigoni, Ellen OMeara
RECURSIVE TEAM:
Jessica Bathurst, Lorene Bouboushian, Matthew Stephen Smith
Other Originating Team Members:
Adrian Owen, Valerie Kuehne, Michael Newton
STRUCTURES
1.) THIS WORK HAS BEEN PERFORMED IN PUBLIC OVER THE COURSE OF A LONG PERIOD OF
TIME, APPROXIMATELY 1,000 HOURS. EACH PERFORMANCE HAS, IN RETROSPECT AND VIA
ITS STAGING, SOUGHT TO MAKE OF ITSELF AN OBJECT, OPERA-TIONAL IN RELATIONSHIP
WITH OTHER OBJECTS (I.E. SPACES, AMOUNTS OF MONEY, BODIES, IDEAS, POLITICAL SYSTEMS, INDUSTRIES. ETC) AS IDENTIFIED VIA THEIR REFLECTIONS.
2.) AUTHORIZED OPERA MATERIALS, INCLUDING MUSICAL COMPOSITION/NOTATION,
SCORES, 41 PIECES OF TEXT, AND WRITTEN AND VERBALLY DICTATED CHOREOGRAPHIC
SCORES HAVE BEEN REHEARSED CONSISTENTLY BY A REHEARSIVE TEAM OF PERFORMERS
TOWARDS ACCURACY OF REFLECTION. REHEARSIVE TEAM MEMBERS PURSUE TRAINING,
MEMORIZATION AND EMBODIMENT OF AUTHORIZED OPERA MATERIALS.
3.) A RECURSIVE TEAM OF DIFFERENT INDIVIDUALS HAS SIMULTANEOUSLY DEVELOPED
METHODOLOGIES FOR MIRRORING, RECURSING, REFLECTING, REFRACTING, AND OTHERWISE REINFORCING THE ACTUALITY OF THE OPERA. RECURSIVE TEAM MEMBERS PURSUE
AUTO-TRAINING PROCEDURES BASED IN METHODS FROM ETHNOGRAPHY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND OTHER SPHERES OF PERFORMATIVE SOCIAL ANALYSIS. THEY WORK IN DIRECT
OPPOSITION TO THE OBJECTIVES OF OPERA, THEREBY REIFYING THEM.
4.) THE DESIGN AND ENFORCEMENT OF STRUCTURES IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE DICTATORS. THE EXTENT TO WHICH STRUCTURES ARE EMBODIED IN PERFORMANCE IS RELATIVE.
5.) EVERY SOMETHING IS OBJECTIFIED BY ITS REFLECTION OF ANY OTHER SOMETHING.
A TOTALITY OF OF RELATIONALITY, RECURSION OF ALL INTO ANY, THE STRICTEST SYSTEM
THERE IS.
STRUCTURAL
BREAKDOWNS
WEEK 0: ACCEPTABLE OBJECTIVES FOR ART
1, 12, 14, 17, 34, 2, 10, 21, 22, 23, 40 , 41 (ALWAYS AND OTHER)
WEEK 6: AGENCY
ALWAYS
2 (documentation on video)
10 (in space)
21, 22, 23 (Kaias diagram aria)
40 (instructional tape)
41 (scores for dictators)
GENERAL NOTES
AND CHOREOGRAPHIC SCORES
GENERAL NOTES FOR MOVEMENT MATERIAL: Construction of Training
From the moment the culminating weeksof performance processes begin at Momenta, the Rehearsive performers of movement dictations should no longer use spoken language. The languages available to them have
been devised over years of rehearsal, and are given as well in this book.
The Rehearsive team has developed body-language systems through which they can spell out needs, ideas,
concerns.Over the course of the exhibition, these performers should work to master their non-verbal/ movement-based communication systems in order to comprehend and understand. A number of pedagogical dictations have been developed to encourage this process. More can be invented as the process evolves:
One performer spells out command while singing the letters, and the other person uses the firsts alphabet to complete the command.
Letters inside Letters (refer to Confuse #3)
Simply performing ones the alphabet, with or without singing the letters.
Spelling out an effect or style command upon ones own alphabet while performing it.
Running ones body at a speed possible for movement with the letters while singing at a speed possible
for voice (refer to Confuse #24).
Further, a number of game-based structures have emerged over the last two years as a means by which performers can quickly and easily alter the situation at hand:
A raised hand is a way of silencing. In different dance dictations, it may have slightly different effects. It
can also be used to simply reverse the sonic rules of the dictation underwaywho is singing, for example, can
become silent, and who is silent, when a hand is raised, should sing.
The word uncle can be used to signify the need for completion or an end-point to the current task.
Any single performer may use the Difficult Spelling Bee as self-sacrifice in order to give others a
break. To create this action, a single performer does anything difficult with her body while making consistent
vocal noise, until some sort of unconscious word is elicited. The solo is then complete; the performer stands to
face the audience, and speaks the Word again aloud.
Some dictations, which have been designated set dances, are to be rehearsed by the performers
in the afternoons before the shows and developed into standardized choreographic vignettes. All set dances
should be forms of music visualization, therefore dealing as directly and non-interpretively as possible with
the lyrical and compositional elements of the songs with which they are paired.
Some dictations, which have been designated transition, are to appropriate the movement dictations
from the prior and subsequent pieces, becoming, for lack of a better term, concept-as-cross-fade. Refer to
Significant Forces of Feeling #36 for further description. McSherry is not allowed to comment.
Three forms of Volume/ Space/ Numbers have been developed to deal with sonic information
through movement, vaguely re-described, these are: (1) Single performer plays the volume of the group, (2)
Proximity of group in a movement pattern determines volume, (3) The Pile. These should be re-invented, developed, diversified, mastered, managed, etc.
One unplaced dictation should be performed. It is called The Nose-Piano. It can be placed with any text
or song and at least two keyboards. At least two musicians hold the heads of the dancer/singer performers in
their hands. They speak a word, they touch the nose of the singer/dancer to a key on the keyboard. Then, the
dancer/singer sings that word in the tone prescribed by their nose.
All instructions layer upon all other instructions. Complexity compounds. Nothing is left behind.
Dictations/ Systems:
(8) Feeling from the Body: Inward Outward can be either or both of these:
(a) Feeling as tactilityself-editing shape: Three or more performers create a shape with eyes closed, memorize it with their hands and body, strategically working with others to maintain the shape as fully as possible
while shifting inside it to touch and memorize it. In this, the shape negotiates its performers (solo) abilities for
palpation and memorization (they cant feel or memorize collectively) versus the (group) abilities of their body
forms (they can together make a repeatable, collective shape). Abandon the shape, moving as far away from
one another as possible, and then back toward each other to recreate it by changing what were the original
placements of each performer inside it (same shape, different roles). Edit each other into place.
(b) Manifesting radical Levels of Feeling: To attempt to see the entire space at once, spin within it. The
seeking of a radical/total level of seeing will cause disorientation. The feeling is a consequence of the bodys
response to this act. It could be the feeling of sickness or simply of anger toward your choreographer, or otherwise.
(9) A Domino Affected Nostalgia: Perform a section from Lindseys first dance (2002), Not More Than 15
Minutes. Perform it in not more than 15 minutes. To create this dance, a 21-year-old Lindsey created gesture/
poses to describe the major landmark emotional experiences in her life, including love, failure, hope, wonder,
and surrender. She threaded these together into a sequence that traveled in a switchback along the surface
of the stage, which she imagined more like the typing of letters on a typewriter than the emotive or theatrical
expression of a performer. In this early dance, Lindsey was expressing dancing as a form of writing (her image
was a typewriter). All that needed to be present therefore were the symbols to indicate meaning, the performer
need not feel the emotions or energetically embody them while manifesting their symbols. She further played
with the idea of emotion as a little system of cause-and-effect between people, as a this happens then that
happens, that can be expressed as such, and as simply.
(11) The embedded body problems of the high school choir, singing with feeling: This has also come to be
called The Glitch Game. A walking pattern is created by the performers who then attempt to re-perform it.
Any differences from the original walking pattern are corrected within the subsequent performance of it. The
corrections are also memorized and ingrained into succeeding versions. From mistakes, dialogue, movement,
and interaction arise within the walking pattern which narratively address the notion of perfectible repeatability.
As a consequence, in their actions that seek of repeatability, the performers manifest the very foil to it. When
the Glitch Game has stabilized, the song is layered over top of it, with no greater instruction than to Perform
as a high school choir improvising what they hope is a beautiful song.
(26) Flocked Feelings: Performing the (a) Fault Flock and/or (b) Rage Flock. The idea of a movement flock,
is to create intense forms of improvisational unison. It is, to say the least, a well-worn tactic in the dance choreographers toolbox. The idea of unison is an extremely interesting oneit requires that the audiences disregard
obvious differences between performers in order to perceive the effect. These two flocks work from this notion
by playing with the extremely slow pacing required by exacting improvisational unison.
(a). Requires that the performer bring attention to her own body when she perceives that she has fallen out of
unison with the others by moving back into the same body configuration as the others with a movement quality
that directly opposes that of the choirusually this will be convulsive, twitching, and/or explosive movement.
The most noticeable movements of the Fault Flock are therefore those moments which are self-correction of
mistakes. Performers may enter and leave this flock.
(b) Involves the facial expressions of performers. Since faces are on the fronts of their bodies, and the leader of
the flock is in the front, performers must drop their flocking, take a look at the face of the person in the front,
return to their position, and take on that expression where they left off. There is an unavoidable latency in this
version of the flock. Once the following performers have registered the face, they have no way of knowing that
the leading performer still performs it. Rage flock must not continue during sung moments of the performance.
The vocal parts are sung from a held-state in face and body. Performers may enter and leave this flock.
(27) The feeling of understanding as an abstraction across bodies: One performer presents in body language
I Do Understand in a single place in the room, not moving through space, and giving the material enough
times so that she can feel the other performers have had a chance to memorize what was done. The performers
line up, facing toward the audience, and present (in place) their renditions in unison. No physical practice allowed.
(28) A set dance.
(36) Feeling from the situation: Outward Inward: A great transition. This is otherwise called, intuition or
instinct, and even sometimes, projection. Already something has been happening in the last system. Continue it through around half of this performance. There will be a subsequent dictation. It is chosen within this one,
performed as a transition within the performance of the vocal dictation, continued beyond this song into the next
one. The material is therefore appropriated as transitional material from both what is prior and subsequent. The
externals of this dictation, or the two dictations that border it, determine, as a result, its insides.
Dictations/ Systems:
(15) Transition
(16B) Transition
(18) Faith in the power of imagination: This is the dictation wherein the performer turns herself into everything present, creates of herself a second body able to traverse her spatial self, and then visualizes into the
space the annihilation of the former by the latter. It is called An Autoscopic Gargoyle (Gremlin). The dictation
is done via a visualized doppelgnger (which is a being conceptually related to autoscopy in psychology through
the further concept of heautoscopy, or seeing ones own body at a distance).
It should be done by a single performer. Or, single performers should be scattered as much as they can be
scattered. Lost, maybe, but in determinate spaces, places that have concreteness to them, or a quality of the
finite unless a performer really wishes to take on the task of destroying the sky in her mind.
First, the performer believes that she is integral to the place where she is. She extends herself to include as
much of the space in her sense of self as she can. The audience, the walls, the other performerseverything is
included in her sense of self. And then, from her body, a creature emerges. This doppelgnger has been created to destroy the space. It begins somewhere in the space, with the surface, tearing away at the space, surfaces
give way, insides and structural supports are exposed. But the space is a body, the body of the performer. The
duty of the performer is to manifest this concept, to visualize it, and then to observe it as it transpires.
Note: (a) Autoscopy is a term for experiences of seeing a place from a perspective outside ones own body.
(b) In medieval architecture, gargoyles conduct rain away from the roof and sides of cathedrals to protect them
from water damage. They are often elaborately carved as hybrid beasts, devils, dragons, or other such figures.
Some say they are a depiction of evil that protects from evil. Some say they refer to a dragon slayed by St.
Romain whose head was hung on the wall of a church. Some say they were used to strike fear into the hearts of
common people. Regardless, gargoyles are the means by which the grotesque was figured into the functionality
of the holy design of cathedrals.
(c) In the 1920s, British pilots from the Royal Air Force appropriated the term gremlin from English folklore to
describe a malicious creature that damages aircraft. The doppelgngers of the performers, like gargoyles (interstitial to the space) are also like gremlins. They are saboteurs of the machinery of place.
(25) Faith in previous successes: Perform the first dance created for the opera with the addition of head rolling
and a small choreographic alteration to account for the special end of this song.
(31) Transition
(33) Faith in Faith: This is called Total Enthusiasm. It operates on the notion that all one needs for a great
performance is ample gusto in the performance. The song is split by verse. Before entering the space to perform a section of the song, performers around the perimeter of the room will think of 1 terrible idea for a performance. The best indicator that the subjectivity of terrible is applicable to the performer thinking up the idea
is if the performer herself doesnt actually want to do the idea.
When the performer enters the space to perform the idea, the job of the other performers is to support the
idea as much as possible. This support comes in the form of cheering and egging them on. Vocal support from
the sidelines, once posited by individual performers, will either quickly become the entire groups method or
vanish (as unsupported short-term individual choices). Performers may enter the space and support the performer by doing the action as well.
The only thing with substance in this dictation should be the complete and utter enthusiasm present in the doing of its two roles.
(37) Faith in instruments: This dictation is for the band, whose faith in instruments is so great that they spend
the entire opera doing little other than playing them. This performer is an instrument. Consider her an instrument that takes quite a bit of strength and passion to play, think of all the various physically taxing instruments,
combine them together into one, here she is. Play her.
ALWAYS
1 confuse / 12 any size mirror is a dictator / 14 this that pip yup / 17 cognizing self / 34 typologies
In the case of Always, these five songs are used as a form of segmenting the opera. They create cognitive
breaks. At the end of the song, the opera must go into a period of silence and stillness. (1) and (17) have movement dictations. The rest appropriate the movement dictation of the song prior, carrying it to an endpoint.
Always, therefore, is an end scene.
These are non-theoretical, vague in planning, and are therefore invitations to possibilities thus far not imagined.
They are, as well, sadly political. But they are to be used as forms of divinity. As pleas to god.
(2) Can be done live as a gift to a funder or as a plea to a high-ranking art persona.
THE SHIPS OF
JAMES
COOK/KIRK
11
In which history
the sandy house, the beachy hump, the rotting couch
whoer professors argue/highwho nudes/stake
the house on the lake is still here
outside it is 55degrees
bulbs are seen crowning
exercises are undertaken to combat
situational obesity, loose bowels, you know, college for it
each demands it
16A
21
Artists (and all individuals) are products of their socially, culturally, economically, and politically constructed contexts, thus an artists praxis operates as a sub-conscious/collectively conscious/universally instinctual (heteronomous) procedure of socio-systemic conception and extrusion. She is a conduit in a logical system, her product is
a by-product of that system-reality itself, her product functions as any other technic/technique, if every technology is a metaphor then every art is technology
22
Artists (and all individuals) are agents or actors who interpret the sybols/signs/rules/modes of their socially,
culturally, economically, and politically constructed contexts through an active process, thus an artists praxis
operates around a verb, as an intentional objective: to describe, to record, to communicate, to reflect, and to
express her subjective reality. The artistic product is a maryoshka, a mirror, a model, or an assimilation of reality
into object. As an object, good art is that which accurately and successfully objectifies reality for human consumption.
23
Artists (and all individuals) produce their own constructed contexts through their emotionally/psychically-driven
conclusions, thus an artists praxis is one of organic generation/origination, difficult to distinguish from the
cooking of foods, the conceiving offspring, the growing of gardens, a many-headed hydra of desires and decisions. The reality of existence is that it is created, thus art is inherently a part of constructed reality, made of
the same matter as all the known universe and equally subordinate to the emergent economic, politic, cultural,
philosophic, (and so on) systems/logos/nomos/etc as any other human action/interaction/decision/instinct/impulse.
25
the same sort of engine
or a better one
one knob one function
strobing
Make Sure
source feed
intellectual property
is a rapidly shrinking area for investment
if you move, please take your object
with you
feed Source
a slowly rotating rhombus
fetching a loved one
33
I too would rule the rules
I too would vigorously
moustache my mouth with the juices
of THE lady clerk
check the label
that old fitting room excuse,
should I be general
should I come home from the war
a military maiden
with a sweet corn on a stick and a
snow cone on a stump
I would be a girlie
searcher, you know what that means?
dialogue gets me high, son
its the rhetoric which is
ripping my kidney out through my new shirt.
40
When I say any size mirror is a dictator, how many of you picture a dictator looking in
a mirror?
If you can imagine that now, a dictator looking in a mirror, focus on that image, but not
too hard.
dont focus too hard on the face, just the general shape or character of it
focus on the image as a whole, the size of the mirror
Notice the color of the dictators clothingand hat?
If the dictator begins to become vaguely historical, or even to resemble a specific historic dictator
thats ok, allow your mind to make these decisions but dont focus too hard on the face
let the rest of the picture come into focus
The dictator is looking in a mirror and doesnt see you.
now allow the face to slowly come into focus
the dictator is looking in the mirror
Youre behind the dictator, it doesnt see you
RECURSIVE
METHODOLOGY
The Recursive team members are carrying clipboards. Attached, are individual Books of the second
opera kind only, notes and prescriptions for themselves and other team-members, a non-public diary
of cues, considerations, and other anterior attempts to relate totally to a future performance situation. Meeting infrequently, Recursive team members have been working alone to develop self-formalizing methodologies for relating/reflecting/recursing/reenacting/resisting. We first defined a methodology simply as that which dictates how, and/or why, and/or when but not what. Formalizing this
conception in-performance, we found pedagogical methods, analytic methods, performance methods, and many others existent as frames (of reference) around a student, a culture, a dance,
a song, and so on, primarily operating as modes of definition/objectification. A mirror is that which
objectifies, a methodology is that by which objectification is performed. Is a methodology also a kind
of training? How might it operate, how might it train bodies, individual and/or social? The feeling of
needing to repeatedly ask, but what will I be supposed to be doing and where does the supposed-to
come from? The Recursive team will apply their individual, totalized methodologies from Sept 5-Oct
19, 2014, working 3-7pm during gallery hours to apply their methodologies to an immediately
self-constructing performance and further working to apply their methodologies in performance to
action 7-9pm.
1 METHODOLOGICAL RECURSION PER WEEK CAUSED BY REHEARSED ALPHABETS
1=1 mutually relational, direct constructive participation in encoded cause and effect. Rehearsive
performers have a memorized alphabet of movements. These correspond directly to the English language alphabet. Recursive performers, knowing the English language alphabet, may each have their
own methodological alphabets for performance: each letter may correspond to a scored recursion
(26 of something).
1 methodology per week per performer (MATTHEW, LORENE, JESSICA)
Multiple tasks per week, developed as a Recursive team, individually, and assigned by the Recursive-dictator, based on the rehearsive score sets. One dominant task is allowable per week as a mode
of performance when individual recursive performers choose an attempt to be performing without
making decisions: mimicry, social learning, and other forms of functional behavior.
1 methodology per week for all performers together.
METHODOLOGICAL RECURSIONS ATTEMPTING TOTAL SUBVERSION
Detirmined in advance as an act, known only to the performer and theoretically modeled to cause subversion, or overturn, in some way. Dysfunctional behavior, posed in exacting opposition to perceived
realities.
1 methodology per week per performer (MATTHEW, LORENE, JESSICA)
The Recursive team will work against embodiment by treating each body as a semiotic vehicle, i.e. as
a role or as known entities. Recursives believe that they too (this is a universal application, here,
totalitarian) are semiotic vehicles. And so they perform as exchange students, politicians, stage hands,
playwrights, comedians, ethnographers, critics, and otherwise, filling out methodological dictations for
action. There shall be no more science fiction. Another way of saying this: Suspension of disbelief will
be forcibly enforced by the Recursive team. The Recursive team Totally (Gesamptkunstwerk) adopts
that terrible yet common conceptual metaphor that all the world is a stage and the men and women
merely players. We will perhaps be able to see what some of the implications of this constructive conception will be.
To the Recursive team, the set text and music represents/symbolizes meanings. We ask what does this
mean? over and over again, thereby constructing (making) meaning/sense. We may use costumes,
props, texts, lighting, jokes, and other elements of performance as art-form to actualize the goings-on
as meaningful opera.
The Recursive team is professional.
The Recursives are individuals, they do not represent all bodies or all people, and yet they pursue the
scientific method towards universal, empiric knowledge(s).
The Recursives become frustrated by restrictions but continue to play their signifying roles, seeing everyone as performers not real people, and perhaps this distinction does free a citizen from responsibility.
The Recursives understand the necessity of leadership and authority (see above).
The Recursives make note.
-Esther Neff
PRODUCTION
NOTES
ANY SIZE MIRROR IS A DICTATOR processes have operated through performances on Governors Island, as
part of chashamas Harlem Art Factory Fest, during AUNTS curated by SALTA, as part of Movement Researchs
Spring Festival at ISSUE Project Room, at Dixon Place as part of Experiments and Disorders, Gibney Dance,
Flux Factory, and elsewhere. Previous to the formaton of the Rehearsive and Recursive teams, initial processes
were performed by Esther Neff and Brian McCorkle during iCan at IV Soldiers Gallery, in Copenhagen during
Hitparaden, and at Grace Exhibition Space, The Delancey, and elsewhere. Concepts and songs were also
devised on a tour through the Midwest with Valerie Kuehne and as part of a durational diner at Fitness Center
for Arts and Tactics and in Berlin during MPA-B at Grntaler9 (both with Valerie Kuehne, the latter also with Ivy
Castellanos). Lindsey Drury has also developed choreography through a GROUNDWORK residency at CORA
Dance.
THANK YOU
SPECIAL THANK YOUS TO: Kikuko Tanaka and Eric Heist, Momenta Art, Shannon Hummel, Gina Gibney
and everyone at Gibney Dance, Stefany and Erin at Hatchfund, Tatyana Tenenbaum, Januz Jaworski and Sophia
Cleary, Mica Scalin, Christen Clifford,Teena Lange and Ali Dolanbay, Ivy Castellanos, Hector Canonge, Anya
Liftig, Guru Rugu, Jill McDermid and Eric Hokanson, Henrik Vestegaard Friis, Courtney Harge and Artspire,
Miles Pflanz, Adrian Owen, Valerie Kuehne, Michael Newton, You Nakai, Edward Sharp and David Ian Griess,
and everyone else inour communities, you know who you are.
This project is an operation of the Panoply Performance
Laboratory (PPL) in collaboration with Lindsey Drury
(Drearysomebody)
panoplylab.org
drearysomebody.com
Rehearsals and Recursive meetings took place at Panoply Performance Laboratory and The Woods Co-Operative. This book was made by PPL and drearysomebody
in advance of an exhibition at Momenta Art in Fall,
2014. Drawings and design by Esther Neff.
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YRNOTES
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