the preIssue

issue #1

extras

c | J's editor introduction : pre - issue

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I began c | J in 2005 before my final year of graduate school. In the summer of 2006 I traveled and talked to several choreographers and people involved in dance, from critics, to dancers, to lighting designers, to sounds designers, and so many others. I talked to them about starting an online journal that was by, for, and about choreographers. Nothing of the sort based in the U.S. seemed to exist. Since my original idea in 2005, such online journals, archives, blogs, and websites have appeared in greater numbers. c | J stands as one among many.

 Our preIssue presents a collection of questions I’ve been addressing in my own choreographic process. I offer my questions and notes as a place to start and begin imagining what c | J can house and grow. What you’ll find in the preIssue are drawings, thoughts, and responses that have emerged from my asking of the questions during my most recent collaborative projects, Idle Governs and flat land. As with all the questions proposed in c | J, there is no answer. Answering is not the point. It's about the questions. It's about the half-thought, the full-thought, the image, the longing to articulate, the sense rather than the reasoned, the ‘I-wonder-what….’ It's about a creative as well as critical discourse.  

| How does the act of thinking engage in the act of moving and dancing?

| How is dance a visual form based in time? How is dance a physical, sensual, kinesthetic form based in time?

| What is American movement?  

As a choreographer, I propose these questions, both about the form of dance and our context for making, to create an area of inquiry for both a studio and research practice. I’m interested in how these questions and others can become points of departure for the dancing body/mind and lead to a site of information original to a dance-making process. For c | J, these questions, and our notes and exercises, illustrate how a choreographic process breeds information and new questions for a creative discourse and exchange about the craft of making dances.

On the following pages you’ll find a collection of thoughts and responses from my collaborators CoCo Loupe, Christopher Richendollar, and Jaclyn Thompson, and myself. Our musings were collected during conversations, movement exercises, walks, long drives across Indiana and Ohio, and lots and lots of dancing.

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