VIDEO WORK:

LIVE PERFORMANCE:

You’re welcome to jump around in this video as much as you want. Below is a bit of a map: some suggestions about where to pop around to and how to drop in to the action. Pick a few to follow, or all, or none. You don’t have to go in order.

1:38 - How can you tell when you’re starting to panic? Are there things you notice in your body when panic is coming on?

2:46 - How many different versions of yourself can be present in the room at once? From a letter Tsuyuno wrote, dated September 20: “Tonight I thought about how my laugh sounded as a child, and wanted to remember what it sounded like, wondering what kind of change I might be able to hear in the laughter of my current self.”

3:01 - Do you remember when you would spend hours talking to your friends on AIM or some other chat software about the littlest things like what you were eating or...what did you even spend so much time chatting about? Just narrating to each other your thoughts and the passing moments.

3:25 - Pause and go put on your most comfortable item of clothing.

4:54 - Warming up. How do you warm up for being with your friends? Are there rituals or practices you keep for arriving into being with them?

6:52 - Dani and Tsyuno imagine a future where they live with/nearby one another and raise children together--not necessarily their own children (although maybe), but the young people who are growing alongside them who need loving and teaching. In this future they are the weird artist aunts/uncles/parents who bring children along to dance events and cook meals together and age with gratitude and build a household where crying is encouraged.

7:49 - How many times have you considered having sex with your friends? Tsuyuno could never have sex with Dani because that would probably ruin it (beyond the obvious ways in which sex could ruin a friendship). Tsuyuno and Dani have already had the best sex Tsuyuno has ever had, and they’ve had it with each other. Their dancing love-making has already birthed moments that audiences have come to witness.

8:59 - What practices or activities feel sensual to you in a way? Do you ever find yourself using these to complement / support / replace sex?

9:50 - Moving slow in the middle and frenzy at the edges.

12:22 - What if first you watch this part for a few minutes (or just until 13:33) with the sound off, perhaps noticing what noises you hear in whatever space you’re currently in, and then you watch it over again with the sound on? What if you turned the sound off at any point throughout this video?

13:35 - Dream state. Layers shifting along one another. If this part of the dance is a sieve or colander, what are the biggest pieces that get strained out for you?

14:05 - What is one of the most rich sensory experiences you’ve had in a dream?

14:47 - From one of Dani’s letters, dated August 17 (too late in summer): “I think I’ve learned to pay attention. I think ‘attention’ isn’t as ‘zen’ or ‘artsy’ or ‘healthful’ as ‘presence’ is. It’s not about meditating on being in the moment. It’s about grabbing as much as you can of it before it slips through those tiny life cracks. It’s not as graceful as ‘being present.’”

15:47 - What do your insides feel like right now? The soft tissue inside of your body. How does the inside feel in comparison to the outside? The difference between land and water.

16:46 - Come sit down with us. Let your body come to a rest.

17:10 - From one of Tsuyuno’s letters, dated October 11: “It feels like it’s been a hugely long time since we were together. I wonder what different people we will be. It feels nice for me to think about it like I’m going to meet a new friend. Someone new who I already know will love me.”

18:16 - Can you picture us on a beach, looking out to the ocean? What kinds of colors do you imagine? Can you see the breeze blowing?
Maybe you can’t imagine any of that, and that’s okay. Where do you imagine that we are?

19:15 - A postcard Dani wrote, dated July 26 (too late in July): “Today I practiced looking at charts and taking bearings with the kids. If you have your course written out like that, you can navigate a boat, even in dense fog. The ocean can change fast, and life is doing that right now too.”

20:32 - Settling down. Tucking in.

FROM SITTING SEE SKY

Clips from a series of performances intended for an audience of one or two people at a time throughout 2020. In the Covid-19 era, our ways of engaging with each other have radically shifted. The stakes are higher in the exchange of words and eye contact. Maybe we can become more sensitive to the co-regulation of our nervous systems. In this research, improvisation opens the door to a deeper collaboration between traditional roles of “performer” and “audience.” Each distinct performance adds to a growing archive of scribbled notes, drawings, and video recordings of an emergent understanding: something special and important is able to take root when any kind of comfortable framework is released in favor of unvarnished, moment-by-moment presence.

CONSTELLATION LANDINGS

A work-in-progress showing of a gathering of fractals. The research in question: how does information accumulate when language becomes less clear? What do our senses offer us when language becomes less clear? What is this soup we are swimming in? How to be a self, lovingly obligated to others within the gravity of a spiraling sphere? Designed and performed by Tsuyuno alongside collaborators Sasha Wolfe, Asher Firestone, Mizu Desierto, Deniz Toka, and Micheal Hooker during the 2020 E|Merge Interdisciplinary Collaborative Artist Residency at Earthdance.

MAYBE SOON

A meditation on landscapes, timescapes, and memory.

Duet with Dani Robbins, 2017