In an effort to reach out into the college dance scene, one post a month will be written by a dance student from one of the many campuses based right here in New York City. Get the fresh perspective of the next generation of dance innovators.

We start the series with New School student, Saifan Shmerer.

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The Last to Know

I walk into my first rehearsal for my Advanced Repertory class, change into my dance clothes, warm up in the corner, and psych myself up for the last Rep class of my college life. When our esteemed guest choreographer peels his Julliard-trained body off the floor where he’s been splayed since I walked in, and slides back into the reality of that particular studio, he doesn’t set any material on us. He doesn’t even pretend like he’s going to.

“What if your whole body, 360 degrees, could perceive time and space, uniquely and originally?”

Huh?

Two weeks later, I’m on the train and trying to do my ‘Dance and Theories of Communities’ homework. I’m tired, fading in and out of the literature, when deja-vu hits.

“There are three ‘what if’ components to the ‘I’ who dances. What if
-’I’ is the reconfiguration of my body into fifty-three trillion cells at once?
-’I’ practice non-attachment to each moment?
-’I’ know nothing?”

I seem to have entered into a new dimension. For the first time ever I am being asked to shut off my intellectualizing conscious brain (hard to do when you drink this much coffee), and let my body “think” for itself; let my body practice an inquiry. And what does that actually mean? My understanding so far is that it involves patience and a willingness to be always trying, asking, “perceiving.” Let me tell you, it’s not easy. How comfortable it is to slip back into the same movement I always do, to perform for whoever is watching, to return to my “technique.” No. I have to concentrate on the space, the people around me, and the seconds, minutes, moments flying by—not with my brain—with my heel of my right foot and my left earlobe and the back of my head and my hip bones and every single toe and finger, every joint, muscle, wrinkle of flesh. Everything is awake, every element attentive. And the hardest part is that when rehearsal ends and my body can go back to its otherwise perpetual state of not thinking so hard, my brain turns back on—full throttle.

Discovering a new kind of practice like this reminds me why I chose to study dance. Not only is there always more to learn, there are always more ways to learn. Wally Cardona (the esteemed choreographer) and Deborah Hay (the author of my homework) both examine how we engage the physicality of our bodies. They are working to change the way we conceive of this fleshy thing that moves us through the world. What I love about their work is the shift away from the common idea that your mind absorbs knowledge and passes it down the chain of command to your body. Instead, their practice of perpetual questioning deconstructs the body as object or tool, and opens it up as a receptor for knowledge. When Hay enters the studio asking herself, “what if I know nothing?” she immediately shatters the hierarchy of mind over body. In practicing non-attachment to each moment she allows herself to always be moving on, learning (and leaving) something new. And in reconfiguring her body into its fifty-three trillion cells, she resists common conceptions of the body as singular. What Hay and Cardona (and many others who engage in variations of this practice) promote is a practice of body-knowledge, in which the symbolic and physical body is recognized as a cognitive entity.

As I begin to question the 18 years of ballet training that has taught my body to stop attempting to know itself, I wonder why we train that way in the first place. What drives the rigorous privileging of mind over body? And why, even in an art this physical, is the body still the last to know?

–Saifan Shmerer
February 22, 2008

Saifan Shmerer is a senior at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, where she studies dance, theories of performance, and anti-racist feminist philosophy. She will perform Wally Cardona’s aforementioned work with her fellow classmates in Eugene Lang’s Spring Dance Performance at Alvin Ailey, on May 2nd and 3rd. She is excitingly awaiting her graduation in May, and looks forward to a bright and challenging future in New York City and wherever else she may land.