{"id":599,"date":"2024-07-24T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-24T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robiky.com\/?p=599"},"modified":"2024-09-17T15:20:33","modified_gmt":"2024-09-17T15:20:33","slug":"choreographer-david-dorfman-on-magical-risk-and-radical-empathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/robiky.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/24\/choreographer-david-dorfman-on-magical-risk-and-radical-empathy\/","title":{"rendered":"Choreographer David Dorfman on Magical Risk and Radical Empathy"},"content":{"rendered":"
For 40 years, David Dorfman has made capacious work full of heart. His 2020 piece (A) Way<\/em> Out of My Body<\/em><\/a> features original text, songs by Lizzy de Lise, and the rousing music of a live \u201chouse band\u201d led by composer Sam Crawford. In a performance of the work last month in New York City\u2019s Bryant Park, Dorfman and his wife and colleague Lisa Race danced alongside the newest generation of company members. I had a unique view of Dorfman as he waited offstage for his entrance cue. A coil of electricity, he vibrated with small pulses as he held the railings on each side of the steps, ready to burst from the chute.<\/p>\n He\u2019s a little like that in an interview, as well. We spoke on Zoom recently in the leadup to his company\u2019s performances of (A) Way Out of My Body <\/em>at Jacob\u2019s Pillow (August 3\u20134)<\/a>.<\/p>\n Jacob\u2019s Pillow bills you as \u201cbeing on a mission \u2018to get the whole world dancing.\u2019 \u201d Why is that important to you?<\/strong> The description for a workshop based on (A) Way Out of My Body<\/em> states: \u201cIn our unpredictable world, filled with daily obstacles of all kinds, how do we navigate toward positive change, resilience, and empathic behavior? Our answer is to dance through life with each other: safely and with magical risk appropriate for the occasion.\u201d I like that phrase, \u201cmagical risk.\u201d<\/strong> I think about this a lot. Also that opposites attract. It\u2019s kind of like when something really, really, ticks us off. Many times that\u2019s because we\u2019re really interested in it, or we see it as a side of ourselves that maybe we don\u2019t want to recognize. I feel that if we would recognize all of ourselves, we\u2019d be so much more empathetic, and so much more ready to see those sides in others, instead of saying, \u201cI don\u2019t like that\u201d or \u201cI don\u2019t want to be near that.\u201d But really, what that means is that you don\u2019t want to be near yourself, and that leads to a lot of violence. It\u2019s our discomfort with ourselves. What if instead of going into relationships with one-upmanship, or the need to dominate\u2014what if we came as a listener and a witness and a facilitator?<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re dancing, you\u2019ve decided that you\u2019re going to interact peacefully, and, for the most part, you\u2019re going to enjoy it. When you\u2019re dancing with another person, or folk-dancing in a big group circle, or country line-dance, or disco dance\u2014that\u2019s how I started\u2014you\u2019re concentrating on being with other people, and realizing what your body is doing. You\u2019re not scheming power trips.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I talk about opposites being the same. Sometimes I say to choreography students, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you now do the exact opposite approach to this idea?\u201d One of the first things I showed my mentor, Daniel Nagrin<\/a>, he said, \u201cWhat a great idea! That doesn\u2019t work right now. Go back and make it work.\u201d He was excited about what I was working on, but it wasn\u2019t yet communicating. How could I release something that I thought was very important in order to get to something else that was more communicative?<\/p>\n