In Motion

Triskelion Arts Split Bill Series
Take a trip to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and enjoy the premiere of two works-in-progress choreographed by emerging and mid-career artists. In this episode, Cameron McKinney of Kizuna Dance merges street-dance with Japanese culture in a piece inspired by Japanese salarymen, and Jessica Reidy of Treeline Dance Works presents a work examining the relationship between movement and worship.
TRANSCRIPT
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Radway: My name's Becky Radway.
I'm the artistic director and managing director
of Triskelion Arts here in Brooklyn.
Our mission is to foster and develop
the presentation of the performing arts,
so we do that through both our presenting programs
for choreographers and other types of artists.
Split Bill was started both to give artists a chance
to make longer works,
so they are either artists that have done full-length pieces
but are now creating something new
and in the middle of that process,
or they're artists that have really only done shorter works
and are looking to branch out into something longer.
People have a hard time finding an opportunity
to show work at that stage,
that sort of in-between 20- to 40-minute length.
And having to show that in front of an audience,
I think it makes them really consider their choices
and think about where to take it
once they leave the Split Bill program.
Off, you guys.
Yeah, do it.
All right. Oh, hey. [ Laughs ]
My name is Cameron McKinney, and I'm a choreographer
and the artistic director and founder of Kizuna Dance.
When I was thinking about founding a company,
I definitely wanted to have something that was my own.
I also am interested in exploring
some different ideas to the company
that I wasn't really seeing on the scene at the time,
those being the Japanese culture,
but translated through more
of a street-dance-influenced contemporary aesthetic.
The word "kizuna" is a Japanese word
for the bonds between people.
And I named the company that because I believe
that community makes for a strong performance.
So what really makes the company stand out
are those bonds that you can see between them --
those bonds of faith and trust --
onstage that translate into something
that's tangible for an audience member.
For me, myself, I have been studying the Japanese language
and culture for 12 years now,
and it's what I did before I began dancing.
So now I just try to combine those two passions together.
The piece that we're performing tonight is called "Koibito,"
which is the Japanese word for "lovers."
The main meaning that I'm working off of
is this idea of there are three businessmen,
and they are kind of the core focus of the piece.
And each of these businessmen goes through
a sometimes-dramatic, sometimes-inspiring episode
as they traverse through their day.
And it comes from both this stereotypical life
of a Japanese salary man, who works all day
and perhaps doesn't have as much time for his family,
and it also comes from a very personal place,
in terms of me having to run a company
and do everything else that I have to do in my life.
Sometimes I can get overly focused on just the company,
and I work and I work and I work,
but I still also want to be around my friends.
I still also want to have intimate relationships with people.
And that kind of gets pushed to the side
in light of my company sometimes.
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My movement has a really strong street-dance aesthetic,
is what I've come to call it,
that influences the contemporary movement.
Although, at its core, it's mostly contemporary.
And then in a subcategory of that contemporary,
I'm more interested in floor work
and existing on a lower level
than I am in being upright all the time.
So there's a lot of different mixes of things
and concepts and aesthetics that I'm still trying to find
a clear line through.
But the only way to find it is to keep doing it.
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There are scenes in very mundane places --
subways, office places, things like that.
And then in each one of those scenes,
it starts off in a normal --
whatever "normal" is -- in a normal situation
and then breaks into a scene of chaos.
And eventually, these characters either succumb to that chaos,
or they triumph over it.
Which characters do the triumphing or the succumbing,
that's up to you as an audience member to decide.
That's really what the piece is about.
It's about that balancing of a desire to be intimate
and also a desire to be successful
and whether or not you have to give up one to have the other
or find a balance between the two.
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This piece has been very different
for me, choreographically,
because I don't normally choreograph using emotion.
I normally choreograph using spatial components
and creating interesting shapes and space
and creating movement
that's really exhausting, is normally how I work.
This process, I really checked into
where I was in my own personal life,
and in choreographing that for the company,
I never specified the emotion
until the very, very end of the process.
I didn't say, when I was choreographing in the studio,
that, "This comes from this real place for me."
Instead, I kept them very distant, actually,
in terms of their understanding of what the work was,
which was perhaps overly successful in creating --
in creating a certain kind of mood for them onstage,
where they, themselves, as they perform,
feel checked out and feel a little bit removed
from what's happening.
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[ "Japanese Farewell Song" plays ]
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♪ The time has come for us to say sayonara ♪
♪ My heart will always be yours for eternity ♪
♪ I knew some time we'd have to say sayonara ♪
♪ Please promise that you'll be returning someday to me ♪
♪ I'll remember our romance until the day that I die ♪
♪ I'll see your face in the moon and stars in the sky ♪
♪ So hold me close
♪ Before you say sayonara
♪ And promise that you'll always keep me ♪
♪ Near to your heart
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♪ I'll remember our romance until the day that I die ♪
♪ I'll see your face in the moon and stars in the sky ♪
♪ So hold me close
♪ Before you say sayonara
♪ And promise that you'll always keep me ♪
♪ Near to your heart
♪ Always keep me near to your heart ♪
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I think what I would like the audience to take away
is a question.
And that question is,
"What am I sacrificing for my own goals?
Do I need to sacrifice that?"
Because whenever you keep your mind focused on something,
things fall by the wayside.
And some of those things are actually really important
for the human experience,
for actually living life and enjoying life.
So I think I'd like an audience member to think about that --
to wonder to themselves, "Am I giving up something
that is actually enriching to my life experience?
And can I balance that drive to succeed
in this city where everybody's trying to succeed
with parts of my life that are actually enriching and supportive?"
[ Man singing in Japanese ]
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Man: Slide.
Reidy: I'm Jessica Reidy.
My piece tonight is "Lift."
And I'm a collaborator and choreographer
with Treeline Dance Works.
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Tonight we're showing a first draft of our piece.
It was inspired by various cultural rituals,
ceremonies, traditions,
and the ways that they draw communities together
and how people attach meaning to something physical.
[Insects chirping ]
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We started with that initial concept of ritual and ceremony
and took inspiration from different cultures
and started noticing some of the similarities
in practices that carried through from culture to culture.
Since I am in the piece and it's hard to step back
and actually see what's happening when you're in your own work,
we found ourselves
just throwing all of the ideas out there sometimes
and then just really paring it down
to its most essential element again
and then re-developing it from that point again.
so it was a lot of, like, ups and downs in the process
of throwing stuff out there, removing stuff,
and then building it up again.
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[Insects chirping ]
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I think modern dance, like any form of abstract art,
might seem intimidating to begin with.
I think what I notice from a lot of people
that are new to modern dance --
they come into it feeling like they need to understand it
or that there's something that they should be seeing
that maybe they're missing.
And when we're creating work,
that's usually not at all what we're hoping for.
We're really open to whatever the audience's interpretation is
and interested and excited to hear
what they might see in the work that we didn't plan for.
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When I've gone through periods of time
where I'm not using my body, I just don't feel as happy.
It feels great to, like, move really large.
And I don't think we get that same kind of opportunity
in our day-to-day life
to just really move in an exaggerated way.
And movement is a part of our everyday life.
It's part of, you know, daily body language, conversation,
but we don't really get to, like, see it on such a large scale.
We're pulling out a part of our language
that is more subconscious -- body movement --
and really blowing it up.
So it's a whole nother way to get an idea across.
Through the research of this piece,
we noticed a lot of the practices and ceremonies
and rituals that we were looking at
were often done with the purpose of uplifting.
So that's something that I would like people to leave feeling --
like, a transformation of coming to a brighter place.
If watching dance maybe inspires somebody
to just wiggle a little bit in their kitchen
or go to a yoga class
or something to just move their body,
I think that's definitely an accomplishment.
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[ Music ends ]
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