In my first posting I wondered about how much of the personal should appear in the blog – what my personal life had to do with my professional choices and artistic creations. As I said then, the point perhaps of this blog is to provide some insight into my process of being an artistic director and choreographer and the complex array of things that go into making artistic and organizational decisions. This issue of the relationship of personal history to artistic meaning, output, and value has been around for a while in literary criticism – is knowledge of an artist’s personal history and psychology necessary to discern meaning from the work, and for an appraisal and valuation of it? But in dance these questions are seldom if ever asked. Mostly, it is that those personal truths and realities of the artists’ lives is thought to add a deeper understanding or insight into what is being seen on stage but not necessarily to contribute to the work’s artistic successfulness, worth or value.

Since so much of American contemporary dance is abstract, autobiographical elements are almost impossible to discern. One might say that American contemporary dance artists do everything they can so that who they really are as people and glimpses of their personal life goes unrevealed in their work, (Bill T Jones, David Rousseve, and Reggie Wilson might be exceptions and interestingly all African-American males). With abstract dance artists it is only through ongoing viewing of their work that we come to understand and appreciate (or not) their aesthetic concerns and interests. But seldom do we know what non-aesthetic circumstances drive them and the choices they make – how the non-aesthetic affects the aesthetic. Perhaps even the complex structures employed by many of these artists are like elaborate decoys designed to distract and to keeps us away from knowing who they really are.

I am raising the question because I recently saw a performance by a young (experience wise not chronology) and talented choreographer that caught me off guard. There were two moments in particular that were startling and caused me to gasp (and those of you that know me, know that it takes a lot to make me gasp). In the first, a woman was being violently “humped” by a man in the center of the stage just before the lights went to black ending one of the sections of the piece. The second involved the same woman being tossed upside down in a waste dumpster with her legs sticking straight up, just before another black out, this time signaling the end of the piece and the program.

The dance in general I would describe as a surrealist romp with many of the elements one would expect from a work of that nature - surprises, unexpected juxtapositions and non-sequiturs. And if you were inclined to interpret the moments I described from a feminist perspective there would be much to be dismayed, alarmed, and perhaps angered by. So, from both those viewpoints, gasping seems an appropriate response. However, what triggered me was neither. It was my knowledge of non-artistic biographical information about the choreographer and his relationship with the performers in question that provoked my reaction - the woman in the two instances is the ex-wife of the choreographer and the second man, who tosses her in the dumpster, is the choreographer’s current domestic partner.

With this additional information, other questions cascaded. What is he saying about his relationship with his ex? How does he really feel about her? What does he think of his current life with his current partner in relationship to his old married life? Does he realize that these kinds of questions might arise for viewers? How does the ex feel about what was happening to her on stage? …. I could go on but I won’t because what this points out is that none of these questions have anything to do with whether what happened on stage succeeded as a piece of good dance or not.

In someway, this is familiar territory for me. Back in 1993, I created Sentimental Cannibalism, a work that used as it reference point Jean Baudrillard’s On Seduction. The work caused quite a stir (not always positive). Like Baudrillard I was called anti-feminist (among other things). I recall vividly an incident at the American Dance Festival when David Dorfman and I almost came to blows when he said the piece was pornographic and demeaned women and that I was a misogynist. Interestingly, black women responded quite differently to the work and thought the images of women depicted in the work were not those of man eating “bitches” but rather of strong and assertive women who gave as good as they got. While my intention in the work was to create movement and visual configurations that were metaphors or signifiers of Baudrillard’s ideas, as well as to make an engaging piece of dance-theater, many considered the work to be autobiographical and interpreted it as a manifestation of my personal (and damaged) psychology. And because of that perspective many condemned the work and I was demonized. After that, it seemed all my work was scrutinized through the misogynist lens.

Now I find myself considering intent and meaning in regard to another male artist’s work. Not necessarily what his conscious intent was but what he might have unintentionally communicated. Is he (and was I back in 1993) being irresponsible by not considering how the imagery in the dance might be interpreted? Or are we as artists so caught up in our efforts to solve the technical and unique challenges and demands of creating new work that we naively create inside a bubble? And only after that bubble is burst by some viewer who is bringing all kinds of “other” information - perspectives, preconceptions, and histories (personal, generational, cultural) – are we made aware that we might have said more that what we meant to say… However, I am still left with the question – Was the work any good?

When I moved to Seattle in 2002 to become artistic director of Spectrum Dance Theater, I felt sad (I had closed the dance company that I had spent 24 years building in New York); misunderstood (my board of directors here didn’t seem to understand a thing I was saying); alienated (I had moved clear across the country into a community whose culture seemed foreign); and lonely (basically I knew no one here). I felt so conflicted about being here that I didn’t even rent an apartment but rather lived out of my suitcase in a hotel for the first 9 months. What got me through this and my first two years at Spectrum was Kent Stowell reminding me (sounding like Tim Gunn from Project Runway), to “make it work” and Stargate SG-1, Showtime and later the SciFi Channel’s long running series. This is not hyperbole (well maybe it is) but it’s true — that television show saved my life!

Of course I knew the 1994 Roland Emmerich directed movie Stargate, staring James Spader and Kurt Russell, on which the television series was based but I had never watched the TV show. I liked the movie because the science titillated me. I loved the idea that a ring-shaped alien device could create a wormhole enabling personal transportation to complementary devices located cosmic distances away; and the quirky concepts partially based on the theories of controversial Swiss author Erich Anton Paul von Däniken’s claims about extraterrestrial influences on early human culture. The TV show with its fiendish but beautiful, vain, and arrogant parasitic villains, the Goa’uld, that marched, camped and vamped, strutted their stuff across the sets and chewed the scenery like glamorous stars in an old Cecil B. De Mille movie, were just so much fun to watch.

During that time FUN is just what I needed– and there was plenty of opportunity for it! Monday beginning at 6 PM four episodes from a previous season; Tuesday through Thursday, one episode beginning at 7 usually from the same season as the Monday episodes; then Friday one old at 7:00 follow by the current season’s episode at 8:00. The characters Daniel Jackson, Samantha Carter, Teal’c, and Jack O’Neill were my imaginary friends and companions. Their travels through the Stargate to distant place, encountering new cultures (usually enslaved and pre-industrial), harrowing situations, danger, and fighting the evil Goa’uld, thrilled and distracted me from the realities of Spectrum. The show provided a daily respite from the challenges of my hard work at a not for profit dance organization. It gave me joy and solace from my sense of isolation in my new home of Seattle and relieved my sense of dread and impending disaster at work.

When I think about the show objectively, Stargate SG-1 was not a great show, it was a good show and I loved it. There were many pleasures to be had – the “Urgo” episode with Dom DeLuise (so, so funny), the Aschen and first Chaka episode, Richard Dean Anderson’s consistently wry and sometimes sardonic humor, the episode when Dr Frasier is killed, the early Carter/O’Neill love/attraction/loss story, the robot SG-1 team episodes, and the growing sense of ensemble as the seasons progressed come to mind. Oh, how I relished those moments when they nailed it! But more importantly I felt that the cast, producers, writers and directors seemed to be completely engaged, passionate about what they were doing and that engagement was often palpable. They found pleasure in what they did and that was inspiring. Those first two years of my religiously watching the show boosted my spirit and showed me what I wanted to bring to Spectrum - ensemble (team work), engagement (passion), and pleasure (love of the doing).

During that period I also started to become aware of an aspect of television that previously I was not conscious of – the role of the series developer/writer/producer. And for Stargate SG-1 that was Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner. Unlike movie making which is a director’s medium, in television it is the ubiquitous writer/producer that rule the roost. That person(s) has the power, and, controls quality, consistency, and vision. Even if they don’t write or direct every episode, their aesthetic sensibility and storytelling notions are reflected in everything you see on that screen. Just as Caesar’s image and seals were on documents and coinage authenticating their value, television producers stamp their seals on shows. For the the networks, they are the real faces of value for the shows - not the directors or actors.If Brad Wright/Jonathan Glassner and Stargate SG-1 is outside of your experience, how about Law and Order (or any of the Law and Order franchises, SVU or Criminal Intent) or CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its franchises (Miami and New York) and “you betcha” that Dick Wolf and the Anthony E. Zuiker/Jerry Bruckheimer team respective seals of approval are all over those shows.

So what does this have to do with Spectrum? When I came to Seattle I had to use a new model for how to do things. What worked in New York did not work here. It didn’t work because my job was in many ways different. In New York I was a choreographer and by default an artistic director; while at Spectrum I was an artistic director and by default a choreographer. So, I began to model how I went about things like the developer/writer/producers of the television industry. At first, back in 2002, I was not conscious of what I was doing, but all that Stargate SG-1 watching had insinuated itself into my subconscious. It became clear to me that my job was to create a vision, oversee production, control quality, maintain consistency of product and deliver the highest quality dance that I could (set the standards by initially choreographing all the works myself, then begin to find others who could) and to do it all in the SG-1 spirit of ensemble, engagement, and pleasure.

Today, I still watch a lot of tv and am delighted by current shows like House, Fringe, Dexter, Califonication, Castle, Nip/Tuck, Glee, and TrueBlood. And I miss cancelled shows like Carnivàle, X-Files, Rome, and Firefly. My new role models seem to all be working in tv! The Scott brothers- Ridley (well known for his feature films Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, and Gladiator) and Tony (Top Gun, Deja Vu)- new tv show The Good Wife, with Julianna Margulies, is superb. Also, at the top of my list are Ronald D. Moore (the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica), Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Firefly), Bruno Heller (Rome, The Mentalist), and Tim Minear (Angel, Firefly).

However, there are two “Televionistas” that leave me breathless and inspired with their audacity, intelligence, creativity and genius – J. J. Abrams and Ryan Murphy.  While Abrams’ recent feature Star Trek was a fresh and surprising visioning of a prequel, it is his string of television hits, Felicity, Alias, Lost, and Fringe, which thrill. Just the sheer volume of his creative output and the energy needed to sustain his production company Bad Robot Productions boggles my mind. Murphy who is the creator of the two most diametrically opposed shows on television, Nip/Tuck (the dysfunctional relationship of two South Florida plastic surgeons) and Glee (musical show about the dysfunctional relationships among members of a high school glee club, and between the school’s faculty and staff) exhibits less bravado but more heart. However, both men are brilliant.

But Nip/Tuck brings back that old Stargate SG-1 feeling– but richer and better. The writing is excellent, especially the dialogue, and in-spite of the sometimes soap opera-ish elements, it resonates emotionally mature and honestly in a way that Stargate SG-1 never could. I laugh, I squirm and I am touched by how fragile, vulnerable, flawed and human the characters are. They remind me of me. I feel for them and for myself when I watch. Their foibles are also mine and that insight awakens my compassion for other.

As I move into the next chapter of my tenure at Spectrum, again I find that I am taking my inspiration from television. When I arrive home from my day at the studio, like a passionate young lover, I rush to my big flat screen TV and the downloaded shows I watch nightly through iTunes and Apple-TV (Roku is my next purchase) and embrace it. I tell myself that it is a way for me to escape from the challenges of my work but in reality it draws me closer. For me, it is an entertaining, deceptive, and unconscious way to meet, consider, solve and rise to the job’s demands.

While tv and dance don’t appear to have much in common, that difference might just be superficial, on the surface. Beyond tv’s big money, advertising driven revenues, huge resources at its disposal, and scores of creative types working on every aspect and dance/Spectrum’s lack of all of the above, both good television and good dance require vision, creativity, energy, imagination, skill, mastery, and insight. With television, I am reminded daily that while money and staff would make my life easier, they are not fundamental to making good dance or building a great organization. They just help deliver them to the public.

Around this time during the past several years, I find myself thinking that my work is out of fashion, out moded. Usually, I don’t know what causes it – a slowing down of activity, seasonal depression (this is Seattle after all). What triggered it this time, however, was an invitation from Zoë Scofield and Juniper Shuey to attend their APAP showing at The American Realness Festival. The details are unimportant in many ways but what struck me about the invitation and set me off was how aware I was of a shift in aesthetic tastes as evidenced by the artists that are the “real Americans”, those included in the Festival, Miguel Gutierrez, Ann Liv Young, Luciana Achugar, Layard Thompson, Jack Ferver and Jeremy Wade. Some of it is generational of course and of course I am not only another generation but also fall into another set of aesthetic values category as well… Wow, I think to myself — this is what old feels like!

The problem is that there is a tendency to think of these aesthetic shifts as absolutes; that generational shifts in perspectives are truths and not just a truth but permanent and absolute truths. Yes, these shifts are indeed real but just like dance they are ephemeral, transitory, and temporary. And like fashion or trends, well, even life itself, they will again shift, change and be different…

Last week in the New York Times Roslyn Sulcas and to some degree an unaccredited author in the Financial Times while writing on the Judith Jamison 20^th anniversary celebration as artistic director of the Ailey Company, repeatedly vomiting out and regurgitated the same half digested stale old rhetoric about the mediocrity of the works commissioned and revived by the company under Ms Jamison tenure. What they both failed to recognize is that those works in many ways represent the dance fashion of the time that they were created, pieces from the “ready to wear collections” of the choreographers, if you will. And like padded shoulders and thick eyebrows they were meant to be no more than what they were, popular and the look of the time. They help to sell the company; they brought audiences in to the theaters and put butts in the seats. And like the perennial Nutcrackers that populate our stages at this time of year, they delighted some and perhaps help to whet the appetites of a few for something more substantial. If these choreographies did not meet the “classic” test, well most things don’t, but they served their purpose - they made the Ailey Company the most well-known and successful modern dance company in the world!

Ms Sulcas concludes,” But the depressing conclusion to be drawn here is that, in the main, the choreography challenges neither the dancers nor the audiences. It’s even more depressing that everyone seems to like it that way.” I say - Who said that fashion or entertainment was about challenges? What Ms Sulcas and other like-minded critics might value might be of no value to Ms Jamison and the supporters of the Ailey Company and the opinions of such critics might be like people deliberately and continuously farting and fouling the air during a birthday celebration of a beloved relative.

Now back to my original thought. If my work or aesthetic values are outdated, do my past work and my current work have value? Do I need to dress-up what I do differently in order for its worth or content to be gotten or appreciated? Another set of questions might be: Is much of the American dance works currently in fashion today devoid of “content”? But rather the aesthetic packaging is the content? Its stylishness, its construction, its cleverness, how it’s accessorized (video, text, celebrity artists collaborator), its intellectual conceits, and its total visual appeal might be “the point”?

Perhaps what is most valuable for me in all of this thinking and wondering is - none of this has anything to do with why I do the work I do or whether I will continue to do it. I get value from what I do and the dances I create and there appears to be others that get value as well. During my 33 years of making dances I have found myself many times, to paraphrase Heidi Klum the host of Project Runway, being out one minute and in the next minute. But it has never been auf Wiedersehen.

I just finished what my friends call a “donaldbyrdtrip”.

I departed Newark to Seattle, airport codes EWR and SEA (I’ve taken to memorizing the codes) at 8:20 am on Sunday 13 December. At 6:00 am on Monday December 14, less than 24 hours later, like a vampire retreating from the advancing sunrise hoping to avoid being fried to a crisp by the sun’s impending rays, I find myself walking, no, lurching through the same Newark airport … My mind reels and my body screams for sleep. A week earlier I had flown Gothenburg, Sweden (GOT) to Amsterdam (AMS), two days later Amsterdam (AMS) to Seattle (SEA) via Los Angeles (LAX), then the next day off to New York (JFK) and now this. I desperately need to lay down and close my eyes for a bit before I have to be at a 10:00 am rehearsal in mid-town Manhattan….

Ok, so the question is why? Why do I do things like take a 6 hour transcontinental trip to sit in a theater to watch an hour-long dance program, then turn around and make the reverse trip back all on the same day? Or fly to Sweden to perform a 15 min solo when the financial don’t really work? Why do I say YES to things when NO might be the more sensible response?

I used to think I made wacky choices because I was ambitious, driven, and being strategic (I am), or I had a deeply rooted need to people please (maybe), or “The est Standard Training” indoctrination of keeping my word (possible). … Those may all be true but I don’t think those are the only reasons. I accept that I am not always a sensible person and that I am driven by a need to succeed, but I am also a person who wants and has a need to serve and be fulfilled by what I do.

When I was in my late 20’s my friends would howl with laughter because I used to say I wanted to be a “modern dance giant”. “You mean like Martha Graham?” Convulsive, rafter-shaking guffaws followed. Inexorably, I was ridiculed into silence and I stopped saying it. But I still believed it…

Now I know that what I desired then was not to be a “modern dance giant” in an egocentric sense or in a public acknowledgment way (both which may also be true) but rather in the sense that I loved dance so much I wanted to not only be a part of it but wanted to make a contribution to it as well. How could I serve IT, The Dance? How could I give back to the one thing that had so transformed me? With The Dance I had found an identity (dancer, choreographer), a voice (a way of expressing how I saw the world), and my Calling. And I wanted to share my enthusiasm. My fervor would be evangelical in its intensity and passion. I would be a fiery John the Baptist for The Dance. I would serve that which had awakened and transform me. And the results would be monumental!

Some have said to me that Spectrum is such a small platform to do the things that I aspire to doing – but I don’t believe that. What might be true is that I have not always articulated the scale of the vision I have for Spectrum. Perhaps what has kept me quiet is I am still listening to my friends from 30 plus years ago shrieking with amusement at my big dream; that I have allowed myself to be silenced out of fear, seeming grandiose, egomaniacal, or just being told that it is impossible. But those donaldbyrdtrips are an indication of something and that something is a commitment to the transformation of Spectrum and Seattle’s contemporary dance scene into something that is glorious, magnificent, and unparalleled. Now I’ve said it.

I’m not quite sure where to begin… Perhaps, I should create ground rules for myself about what I will or will not write about; make a decision on how formal or informal this blog will be… What I do know is I don’t want it to be like those Facebook postings that are mundane information that pollute with banality and makes me want to hide permanently that person’s comments. I hope I can find an inviting balance between information about Spectrum and my relationship with it and my personal thoughts/considerations on dance, aesthetics, and art - to create a tone that is not to loose and chatty but also not stiff and desiccated.

Also, there are the questions of how much or little of my personal life, details and experiences, should I include and what is the relationship of my personal with my position as artistic director at Spectrum?

For example, I am writing this in my room at the Amstel Hotel in Amsterdam (it is my favorite hotel in the world) … I am en route from Gothenburg, Sweden where I performed at 24kvadrat (an intimate, charming, and green colored performance space) with Maud Karlsson (former dancer in Donald Byrd/The Group), Siv Ander (a 70 year old beauty and former dancer with Cullberg Ballet) and Tommy Håkansson… Tonight I will have dinner with Scott deLahunta (an Amsterdam based researcher, writer, consultant and organizer on a wide range of international projects bringing performing arts into conjunction with other disciplines and practices, whose also a friend that has moved and touched me in so many ways with his intelligence and sensitivity). Does any of this contributes to or shapes my decisions as artistic director or helps you the reader to understand the choices I make in that position? Maybe what is more pertinent and directly related is I met with Paul Selwyn Norton, a Netherlands based choreographer, who I would like to bring to Seattle to work with Spectrum? I don’t know …

As I ponder these questions, information, and facts, they all seem to have some bearing on what might be happening and what you might be seeing and experiencing at Spectrum in the near future. How they fit together, I don’t quite know as of yet – but I am sure they must fit.