In 1999, I was working on a piece called HUMP. I was inspired to work on this piece because I was hearing a lot about reproductive technologies. Dolly had recently been cloned. IVF, designer babies, and test-tube babies were in the media. My question was, ‘What would happen to the most joyful, animal, exhausting movement in the human repertoire, the Hump, if we didn’t need it anymore to reproduce?” I set out to make all the choreography possible from the hump motion that I could. By doing this, I ended up in the swamp.
HUMP led me to a piece about primordial soup, the slimy life forms that emerged from the swamp and began to slither over one another and eventually hump each other. The piece became about the beginning of life on Earth.
In the early days, I thought being the director meant telling people what to do and having them do it. I thought I should have a vision, know exactly what everything should look like, and push that vision out into the world.
Then I met Todd.
Todd was very tall and slim. He was pale white. He was ungrounded in his movement…or at least not much of a contact improv dancer who might be more into the ground. He had begun to dance in college but was very committed to his new life as a dancer. I can’t even remember how he ended up in my company. But here he was. Enthusiastically trying to slither and slime across the floor. It was not working at all. I wasn’t sure what to do. I must have already accepted him into the piece but I hated how this was looking. There was another dancer in the cast who also was struggling with the texture of this primordial movement. Jennifer. She was a very sweet, very beautiful ballet dancer.
So I listened. Rather than compromising the piece or cutting these very committed and talented people from my cast, I decided to create a new character for them. I asked my costume designer to make them a two-person leotard. I ordered white unitards for them and bought white pancake makeup. I decided to make tall taller and white whiter and ungrounded less grounded. I created the Digital Creature - a male/female pokey, pointy, linear, sterile computer character to counterpoint the slithery, slimy, organic humping characters.
This decision made the piece. The Digital Creature, who was being eaten by a hungry computer, is eventually overtaken by the Swamp Creatures. It described the conflict of the first dot com boom - when the piece premiered. Seemingly overnight, we were all working behind computer screens all day and our animal selves were being forgotten. I wanted the swamp to win. I wanted the human animal to thrive. At the end of my imaginary world, the Digital Creatures are reinitiated into the Swamp world.
If I had pushed forward with my agenda, my original more limited vision, I would have missed the primary drama, the rich juxtaposition, and the greater meaning of this work. Listening wins.
I recently guided an Anniversary Refresh program for some wonderful, stressed parents. At the end of the journey together they said that they were surprised by how well I listened to them. As a director, they expected me to lead and not listen necessarily. A good director works with what and who is in the room. A good director doesn't try to make Todd into a Swamp Creature. A good guide listens intently to the needs, impulses, and personalities of her clients and creates that experience - not the one designed to work for most people, but the experience that these two people need for their relationship to bloom. Once I hear who they are and where they are, I can guide them in the direction of what they want. Deep listening is primary.