...
Opening the pages of the first edition of FRONT, a new project/ publication based out of Portland, Oregon, one feels subsumed by the big floppy off-white pages and running text, lining up and sliding out of sight like a little chorus of dancers. My dear friend and colleague Noelle Stiles is one of five artists who initiated the project. Tahni Holt, Alyssa Reed-Stuewe, Danielle Ross and Robert Tyree complete the lot. Why do I ♥ FRONT?
...
.........
One / You have to hold onto this thing. It is wide when fully open, causing you to fully extend your arms a little bit more, perhaps like a seabird or a child pretending to be a bumble bee. The reading experience is a welcome physical experience.
Two \ It is an ongoing experiment---a pop-up publication---embracing the ever-shifting landscape of thought and influence around contemporary dance. It seems to make no promises of being in a newspaper format next time. {{Perhaps something else?}}
Three | It is a 'chorus of voices'---a collaborative statement, an unfolding public confession, a universal desire, an US in the YOU---with each and every inclusion. Reading through it, I never get the sense of a hierarchy of knowledge or opinion. I feel a widening of the discourse around contemporary dance as seen and experienced in another community outside of New York City {Halleluyah!}---that of Portland, Oregon, and all the contemporary dance people making their way through the world today in that place.
{{Dance is of the place in which it grows, like vegetables or fruits or trees.}}
...
...
Four / It features good questions---How do I read this dance? What is dance to you? What types of dances do you do? ---and freely exhibits people's responses, all in a handsome mash of honest reflection.
Five \ One of the ways it does this is through the Chain Conversation format: Three different artists having a conversation, and FRONT features some of it. Not all of it. Just enough to wet the palate and make you feel like you walked into that room with that conversation running for a moment. You ran with it, and then left to go walk for a while with another conversation.
Six | It has a fragment of thought in it that really resonates with me and helps me make sense of my life in dance:
.......
{{Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner asks Karen Nelson:}}
How has your Buddhist practice influenced and/or changed your dancing over the years?
{{And Karen Nelson answers:}}
Actually, dancing and Buddhist practice came at the same time in my life so it's difficult to distinguish influences. It's sort of like asking how does life influence your dancing, which sounds like you aren't living when you are dancing and not dancing when you are living. {{Word.}}
.......
There is a hook of an idea in this publication for everyone interested in getting hooked on thinking about and talking about contemporary dance.
......
..
My list ends here because what I write next doesn't warrant a list. I am one of those people who, when I flip through the pages of Contact Quarterly or other dance related journals, or visit websites about contemporary dance, want more. I want to see more artist-based writings about the life and work of being a contemporary dance artist. I want to see more editors interested in working with dance artists to have them tell their story and write about their life. And I want to see more experiments in getting those stories out there in some kind of published/ media-based format on a regional level. So what would a FRONT in Atlanta, Georgia look like? Columbus, Ohio? Burlington, Vermont? Miami, Florida? Austin, Texas? And so on.
FRONT gives me hope that there are others who want this, too, and are just doing it. Its gift is in its swell of meaning-making, happening beyond the place where I live, making itself a part of the weave of dance-making in this country. That fills my ♥.
So to those at FRONT, and everyone in Portland making a good go of it, I say:
............
