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| " As soon as a moment passes it is a memory, a time and place I cannot return to except through fantasy or projection." – Marina Libel in "She Turned On The Light" by Wendy Woodson. Photo by Eric Poggenpohl. |
Wendy Woodson wears many hats: choreographer, director, writer and video artist. An award-winning and creative tour de force in the contemporary dance world, her work explores the between word and gesture, what is said, what is unspoken, body and voice. Her new work, "She Turned On The Light," explores a favorite them of the artists: the intersection of fantasy, reality and memory, as experienced by two women separate by age and history. Past and present will merge and separate, possibility will reveal itself.
Q. Why does the intersection of fantasy, reality
and memory appeal to you?
A. I have always had a hard time distinguishing between reality,
fantasy, and memory. My day-to-day reality is infused with memories
of former days and dreams of future ones. I have tremendous nostalgia.
The idea of travel across different times and places is important
to me as a way to navigate through life...or 'reality.' I have
never felt entirely 'settled' in any one place or dimension so
the place where fantasy, reality and memory intersect is the place
I call home.
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| " As soon as a moment passes it is a memory, a time and place I cannot return to except through fantasy or projection." –from "She Turned On The Light" by Wendy Woodson. |
Q. Tell me about your time in Australia as a Fulbright
senior scholar.
A. Australia was and is a place of real wonder for me... a place
of new weather, new light, new languages and vistas, powerful
primordial landscapes and intersections of very different cultures.
To not know a place is a wonderful relief. You can see things
that you would never be able to see in places that are familiar.
The tensions between belonging and not belonging make the moments
that you are in all the more potent....everything is heightened,
vivid, and for me, exciting. "She Turned on the Light" is a composite
of different stories I imagined in transit in Australia.
Q. Your production company Present Company is renowned
for bringing together high-quality artists from different calibers
(ie. film-makers, composers etc). What do you learn from such
experiences?
A. I learned early on that my work is never 'my own.'
I would dream things up in my room alone and as soon as I got
in the room with others whatever I dreamed of solo was never the
same. This surprise quickly became addictive....I want and
need to work with others so that I cannot predict what will happen.
Sometimes I feel quite ambivalent about this need – it makes
me dependent, vulnerable, out of control. I am truly grateful
for these collaborations- they take me to places I cannot imagine
alone and sometimes they take me in spite of myself. I like this
edge, this interaction.
Q. How do you expect audiences to react to this
piece?
A. To be absolutely truthful I don't know. When we performed
it in a workshop production in Amherst responses were very positive
– people related to the overall story and found themselves
in it and also appreciated its mystery. This is what I hope for
and I also hope to be surprised. I never know the full extent
of a work until an audience reflects it back to me. Most of us
have experiences in our lives or in those of our families that
relate to displacement – to stories of times and people
lost and found across generations.
Q. What do you attribute your tireless creativity
to?
A. Am I truly tireless? Do I want to be 'without tireless'?
I have defined myself to such a large extent on my ability or
energy to make things as a way to be connected in the world; the
fear of not having this connection pushes me. I like a few weeks
or days without any kind of agenda – when I don't
have to make something, to notice everything as possible 'material.'
But after a while I get uncomfortable with the threat of becoming
inert, immobile, disinterested. This is the threat that motivates
me, or at least has motivated me up to now. My relationship to
all this however is in the process of changing but I think that
I'll always want to devote myself to something that lives at the
intersection between reality, fantasy and memory.
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