Reality and Its Likenesses

Donna Uchizono’s New Work Emerges From (and Disappears Into) Thin Air

Buddhism and theoretic physics were “points of departure” for Donna Uchizono’s new evening-length work, Thin Air, which debuts at Dance Theater Workshop on October 9^th. Both disciplines posit the notion that everyday reality—notably, matter and time—is a construct authored by our own minds

“I took a course on the Buddhist tenet of emptiness­—this idea that the world we see doesn’t exist in the way we see it,” says the choreographer. “I had known the concept as a generic idea, but I never really knew it.”

Despite her Asian heritage, Uchizono didn’t grow up Buddhist.

“My dad was a Methodist minister,” she says. “I came from a Christian background, so I wanted to study this idea. At the same time, I was interested in how quantum physics was proving these theories that Buddhists have been espousing for centuries— though of course my teacher laughs that Buddha doesn’t need physics to validate his thinking. So I got interested in this idea of projected reality and virtual reality—while for me, always what was so attractive and powerful about dance was that it’s not virtual, and that now, more than ever, it’s the live contact of performance that’s so necessary.”

Uchizono—who is a Bessie Award winner and a recent Guggenheim Fellow—was also working toward a Masters degree in new media and performance while conceiving Thin Air, and had been thinking about the ways in which video projection has been used in dance—ways that, to her, sometimes seem to dwarf the performers rather than enhance them.

“It was easy to use video to explore this idea of projected reality,” she says, explaining that in Thin Air she tried to figure out ways in which video and live performers could merge into images and events that “just appear in space.”

Uchizono’s elegant, thought-provoking inquiries also involve clear plastic, live painting, and other inventive bits of theater magic that must be seen to be experienced. She’s also plays with “expanded time, but not in a Butoh way.” Then the work, after exploring illusion, arrives at a very corporeal moment.

“After the passages with video,” says the choreographer enthusiastically, drumming with her hands on the table, “something very physical happens. There’s a contrast between digital projection and the power of dancing.”

By the end, the dancers are just doing a simple pattern in a line.

“It’s really simple, flat choreography,” says Uchizono. “These amazing dancers are just moving their feet—and that’s enough.”

“I do take a certain amount of time when creating pieces. I need enough air where the dance is allowed to talk back.”

What did Uchizono bring into the studio when she began working on Thin Air? Did she experiment with sketches of the stage pictures she was seeking?

“I don’t do sketches so much as notes. I always have a concept. The idea of video and projected reality was interesting to me. Also, I wanted to make small, little, minimal movement. So I actually worked with Hristoula Harakas, one Uchizono’s dancers, alone for about four months, before the other people came into the process. She’s been the main muse for this piece. I really depend on the dancers helping generate material. I’ll give them something and they’ll make it their own—so there’s a little bit of me and a little bit of them in there. This piece would be totally different with different dancers.”

Uchizono says she makes passages, then cuts them up and rearranges them, refining the composition as she goes along. And this time, her schedule was such that she had to work fast.

“Partnering takes a huge amount of time, but I didn’t have the time to develop that in a way that was interesting to me. Yet I do take a certain amount of time when creating pieces; I need enough air so that I’m not completely imposing everything I know onto the dance. I need enough air where the dance is allowed to talk back. You set up this dialog with the piece and then other, more subtle elements can come into the process. You bypass that ego thing that tells you, “I know what this thing is about.’

“Sometimes it’s frustrating for the dancers,” continues Uchizono, “because they might want to be told exactly what to do. But I’ll say ‘Let’s just play with these ideas until we see where they go.’”

Where they go, in Thin Air, is a piece that comes as close to philosophy as anything Uchizono has ever done—deftly suggesting the parallels between Buddhist meditation and current physics research into the contingency of the real.

“You think this, I think that,” muses Uchizono. “What is really out there when each of us thinks something completely different? What is out there that I think I know is out there?”