Transcript of Edited Interview with Barbara Dilley
Christine:
Welcome! Could you give me a brief sense of yourself as an artist and educator? How would you describe what you do?
Barbara:
Early on I trained in classical ballet, then had the great good fortune of joining the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1963. John Cage was the musical director. His ideas and views were very influential. Then I joined the experimental dance/theater art scene through the Judson Dance Theater in downtown New York. Yvonne Rainer became a mentor, which evolved into a powerful ensemble group called The Grand Union. I call Grand Union my art mother and John and Merce my art fathers.
In 1974 I was invited to Boulder to teach at the founding of Naropa University. Later that summer I was invited to create the dance/movement studies program by the founder, Chogyam Trunpa Rinpoche. And I just said yes, and was very inspired by Buddhism and the exploration of what meditation would mean in dance/movement studies training. In many ways, the classroom became far more creative and satisfying for me than performance.
Christine:
So it felt like it was still an artistic experience to be in the classroom.
Barbara:
Definitely. Creating a dance journey for a semester, working in classroom/ensemble, shaping a path for emerging artists – having a beginning, middle, end - was so satisfying. And in many ways there was more continuity than in the performing experience. We were together in the classroom several times a week, for a semester and sometimes for 2 years.
Christine:
Could you describe for me a bit about what you think contemplative dance is?
Barbara:
In I978 I designed a form called Contemplative Dance Practice. I was inspired by the structures of meditation I was learning and the study and research around the nature of mind. I wanted to create an opportunity for students to experience on their own the connection between body and mind. The original 3 hour Contemplative Dance Practice (CDP) was inspired by the daylong nynthun, an urban group retreat, consisting of 3 hours of sitting and walking meditation morning, afternoon and night. CDP was embedded in the dance/movement studies curricular constellation. Everyone who came took the classes together, so they shared a vocabulary and research base. Since that time, CDP has evolved into a stand-alone practice. It's now offered in many places in the world.
Christine:
There is this idea that moving, particularly a kind of attentive moving or conscious moving can have contemplative results or learning results. I think of you as an artist and teacher. Can you say how movement constellates in a way that brings about a contemplative perspective or practice?
Barbara:
Contemplative is embedded in a traditional Tibetan Buddhist framework. Hearing, contemplating and meditating are the three actions that, together, bring about wisdom. And I was inspired by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s teachings on ‘synchronizing body and mind’. First, you hear someone talk about this synchronizing of body and mind, and then you have to contemplate it, reflect about it. Contemplation in this context is just thinking about it or researching it within your own daily life, finding out if what you heard has validity for you in the context of your living and being. And then meditation is a process of letting go of fixed concepts and opening up.
I became interested in this as a figure-eight continuum. You could enter maybe through contemplation, and then get interested in hearing more about it, and then deciding to practice meditation. So the experience for me from this classical form is to think of it as fluid, and individual. CDP, as I initially shaped it, begins with Sitting Meditation. And next we move to Personal Awareness Practice, where we move off the meditation cushion, out into the space of the studio, and bring with us all that we arrived with today, and how we unfolded our awareness in the sitting time, and put all that into our movement research. It's not guided because it’s self-research. Then we go back to the cushion and sit for maybe five minutes. (These sections are marked with a small bell.) Then it's Open Space. Now we can get up when we’re ready, enter the space and meet the moment, the room, others. (And sit back down whenever we want) There is no instruction about how open space is supposed to be. We just enter the space and find our moving being. And we are in ensemble with others who are also doing this. Also we are ‘well-wishers and on-lookers’ witnessing others and ourself in movement exploration, in behavior, in compositional choices, in exuberance, in repose. When the bell rings, we return to our cushion, sit together briefly, and then there's always a closing circle.
Christine:
A few minutes ago you said something about working to let go of fixed concepts. Do you think there's a relationship between a fixed concept and a fixed way of moving?
Barbara:
Yes. My training in classical ballet was fixed. And my attitude toward it was structured. It was a form being passed on in a specific way, over decades, and there was a right way to do it. I think in that sense, concept is not a negative or pejorative. It’s often delightful to hold a point of view and our physical being within a discipline. Then you can mingle all that with improvisation. You can explore being free of concept and being in response to just ‘what is’, in dialogue with the environment, the people, place, this moment. I was interested in exploring this relationship between fixed and open. I teach improvisation through what I called Open/Structures. For instance, we agree to a Grid Map of Space and we walk and stand and sit and lie down on parallel and perpendicular lines visualized through the studio space. Within that we can choose. There's this dynamic of being held in discipline of the Grid Map, and also being spontaneous.
Christine:
That certainly is talked about in creativity theory, about that balance of improvisation and structure. When we're carefully attending to our sensations and inner experiences, like in the open practice - attending to both large and small movements - what might be going on there? How is the quality of your attention influencing that?
Barbara:
I was introduced to that type of attention in early movement studies practices like Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s work, BodyMind Centering. Many of these early movement studies and research explorations paid attention to bringing mind awareness to movement impulses. These forms deeply influenced me. When we are exploring our movement impulses, beginning with some kind of stillness practice helps us recognize when an impulse arising in our body is not generated from a thought ‘about’ something. All of a sudden, we begin moving to the left. Paying attention, with a light touch of awareness to that experience, is most helpful in opening to spontaneous expression and to this felt sense of ‘synchronizing mind and body’. But sometimes we can become fixated and get stuck being too attentive or too mindful. So we just breathe and let go and, perhaps, let nothing happen for a while, and wait. And of course there’s noticing the outer world, what’s happening around us, and how that stimulates our moving and playfulness.
Christine:
So that sounds like letting go of one particular way of paying attention and going into a different way of paying attention.
Barbara:
Exactly. This is an instruction in meditation practice – apply a quality of ‘bare attention’, of ‘not too tight and not too loose’. As we go about this movement research, we notice what it feels like in our body when it’s too tight and too loose.
Christine:
It reminds me of when physiologists or kinesiologists talk about tone in the body. They're talking about not too tense in a muscle, not too loose in a muscle, but the slack is taken up in the muscle fiber and the muscle is ready to move. And that's called tone, which also strikes me as the middle path.
Barbara:
Of course. Awake. Ready.
Christine:
And you're seeing that middle area that as maximal awakeness?
Barbara:
Yes. It's a creative basis, a moment of being here, alive, awake in this environment. And I can see and feel how to respond. I can move out, or drop back. I'm able to lean into the composition that’s emerging right in front of me. I'm able to imitate somebody. I'm able to be playful. Perhaps I'm able to take a nap.
Christine:
So the feeling of choice?
Barbara:
Yes.
Christine:
So one distinction that can be made is when we are immersed in an experience and when we're thinking about an experience. Could you comment on how your work holds that difference?
Barbara:
A friend of mine just sent me this wonderful video clip of Charlotte Selver (a pioneer in sensory awareness) talking about the difference between observing and experiencing. It’s so provocative. What is the kinesthetic experience of observing? What is the kinesthetic experience of experiencing? I think they're different. And I think it's helpful to be able to explore both. It's hard to locate direct experience in movement if the watcher is not relaxed. This is in the territory of synchronizing body and mind. And the felt sense of this.
Christine:
So is it possible that when we attend consciously to our ongoing experience, that we access information or resources that weren't accessible before? And what would that look like in your work?
Barbara:
It’s the possibility of being able to let go of constraints, criticisms, and particular storylines while one is both relaxed and aware and also supported and encouraged in community. We feel more confident and more relaxed with who we really are. We’re willing to let ourselves be, just as it is. If you're in CDP and you rise up off your cushion and enter Open Space and somebody there has a lot of high energy, you know how to just stand, just witness - not get swept away.
Christine:
So you just said ‘who you are at that moment’, which implies a kind of fluidity to identity.
Barbara:
I believe that's optimal.
Christine:
So this brings up the idea about how conscious moving practice can be a change agent. What kind of embodied changes might you be looking for in your work? You've talked about becoming more discerning and having choice. Would you say those are the changes that you might be interested in?
Barbara:
I like seeing students being willing to experiment and explore some kind of relaxation, even delight. And a kind of physical ease in their presence. I often notice this in someone’s eyes – how they are seeing, watching, and resting in the space. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen taught me that you can feel the ‘mind of the room’, how it exhales and opens. You notice how you feel in this room, with the light and the space and you know others are feeling this, too. There's a kind of shared atmosphere of ‘I can do this. I can be here. I can discover. I can be a part of this group’.
Christine:
In one scenario, this group is a group of dancers, and you could make some kind of performance piece out of this. How do you see that occurring where it comes from this openness to experience, and how that might then be used towards a particular result, like a dance piece?
Barbara:
That's what I aspired to in Naropa’s dance/movement studies curriculum. Students would develop the skill and inspiration to make original art on a stage or in site-specific work. In improvisation/composition classes, structures were introduced to shape a vision for a performance event. For instance, I would offer a structure for making solos, a Score. The solo will last for three minutes. There’s a beginning, middle, and an end. And you move from lying down to sitting to standing and the solo emerges. It's only three minutes long! In this Score students can investigate how to “be” in that Score, feeling what it was like to begin, to notice the middle, and how to navigate an ending- letting go - stopping. Each student inhabits the Score uniquely. Then in CDP practice they can explore how to inhabit the improvisational journey. They have a structure for what we often called ‘making work.’
Christine:
What are the requirements of the practice? What do you have to make sure is included in order for the practice to feel like it has integrity and that it produces the results that you're interested in?
Barbara:
It’s a provocative question. For me, it was always about the ensemble of the classroom, how that supports and inspires each member. I would say you have to show up, and if you don't show up, you're not a part of the journey. And there's a discipline. It’s necessary to be a part of both the exhilaration and the discomfort of exploration. You show up whether you feel like it or not. You show up whether you are happy or sad or angry or depressed. And if you don't show up, you're out. Then there is space, the environment we are in. It is a big influence. Are you attracted to offering your creative work on the stage or to make site-specific work? We practice letting the environment become a partner in our creative process. I also believe that ‘entering the silence’ is an essential component for creativity. This is the contemplative aspect, settling body and mind, sitting together quietly together before we begin.
Christine:
Well, thank you so much, Barbara. It's just been a pleasure and a joy to reconnect with you.
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