Beginning with Intercultural Practice

In 1993, Eelka Lampe wrote an article for TDR about the founding of SITI Company as a cultural institution for international exchange in Saratoga Springs, New York. In it, she reports the anecdote Anne Bogart repeats when she is speaking about the founding of SITI: After meeting with Tadashi Suzuki in Toga-mura, Japan, in 1992, Suzuki and Bogart along with a group of artists sought to collaborate in creating a US-based company that trained in Suzuki’s methodology and Bogart’s Viewpoints with Bogart as the artistic director. When Bogart suggested Saratoga Springs, New York, as a home, Suzuki agreed, serendipitously pointing out that in Japanese “sara” means “fresh” or “brand new” or “never used”—so Saratoga is “New Toga.”Footnote ¹ In Bogart’s inaugural statement about the institute she describes a home of international exchange that would be “artistic, economic, and spiritual.”Footnote ² The shared training of the Viewpoints and Suzuki would be at the center of SITI’s process for creating productions and would bring together artists from all over the world to train and cultivate their own work. From 1992 to 2021 Saratoga International Theater Institute (SITI) offered training in the Suzuki method and in Viewpoints in tandem for a four-week summer workshop at Skidmore College.Footnote ³ Artists from around the world familiar with the Suzuki or Viewpoints methods of actor training attended, although many had never seen SITI perform.

At Skidmore, international students gathered to train and collaborate on new compositional materials. This is part of what made SITI unique: establishing a radically physical pedagogical system that facilitated performance, intercultural exchange, and creative collaboration. The company also led workshops throughout the year at the Zeisler Studio in New York City and traveled internationally to teach at various institutions and acting schools. Bogart participated in the Summer Institute but rarely at workshops elsewhere. Although Bogart has published about her own methodology, little has been written about how it manifests in SITI’s pedagogy and, in particular, how SITI’s widely acclaimed summer workshop was structured.

I first heard about the Skidmore Workshop as an undergraduate and applied every year for three years to both the summer workshop and workshops given in New York City before I was accepted. The application required a $40 fee, headshot, resume, and answers to a list of questions: “1. Have you previously applied? 2. Why are you applying to the SITI program as opposed to any other theatre program? 3. Describe your experience and training up until now. 4. Describe your future. 5. What and who have been important inspirations for your work?” (Amico Reference Amico2013). After an explanation of the physical rigor, the final question asks if you may have any physical limitations that prevent full participation. This question remained consistent in any SITI workshop application, although exceptions and accommodations were often made.

I was finally accepted into a winter workshop at the Zeisler Studio in Manhattan in 2012 and the Skidmore Workshop that same year. Tuition for the 2012 four-week summer workshop cost $2,055 with an additional $1,512 for room and board at Skidmore College—a hurdle for many artists. Some grants were available through SITI and some artists came with funding from their own countries or institutions.

In January 2012, during the five-week Winter Training Workshop from 9 January to 27 February in New York I met Tina Yotopoulou, Fiona Green, and Brad Delzer. Tina was an actor from Athens, Greece; Fiona was a performer and devisor from Bathurst, Australia; Brad was a director and part of the Theater B resident company in Fargo, North Dakota; I had just completed my MA degree in dramaturgy at the University of Houston. Winter training in New York that year also included theatre artists and dancers from Ireland, Mexico, Brazil, and Canada. To stay connected afterward, we created the Facebook group “Winter Training 2012.”Footnote ⁴ All of these participants were active artists and dancers. The participants spanned greatly in age and experience, from some just completing their undergraduate study to those who had been in the industry for more than 20 years.

That summer, Green, Yotopoulou, and I went on to participate in SITI’s Skidmore Workshop in Saratoga Springs with 60 other artists. While there, we posted to the winter group’s Facebook page what we did each day for the winter participants who could not attend. The next year Brad returned to Skidmore and continued to post his own reflections and notes from summer 2013 on Facebook. Note-taking is not allowed in the workshop room so many leave notebooks out in the hall strewn on the benches. The intention was to create a focus on embodied experience, a focus coming both from the Japanese 1960s angura (Japanese avantgarde Little Theatre) focus on nikutai (the body), as well as the corporeal focus from 1960s experimental dance and theatre in the US (Living Theatre, The Performance Group, Judson Dance Theater Group) (Eckersall Reference Eckersall, Fischer-Lichte, Jost and Schenka2024). After each session participants often huddled over their notebooks, trying to capture what they remembered from a session and cut to high points we may have retained, with little framing. We typed our notes at the end of the day, usually exhausted. Green was the most diligent, able to push through her fatigue to remember and record the day for the sake of our former training class members. Delzer’s notes the first week were thorough, but he was not able to keep the notes up as the weeks progressed. What follows here is a selection of what we four shared with each other across the two years—our interpretations, misinterpretations, quotes, misquotes, and memories.Footnote ⁵ I have also included some moments from our written notebooks to create a fuller image of the program.

When we were first thinking of how to format the notes, I leaned into what we knew best: creating a script. In this way, we dramatize the experience and, as with a script, the notes are missing the full embodiment. The notes travel primarily through the first week, alternating between 2012 and 2013 to show how each of us responded to similar training sessions. My comments between these notebook entries are italicized as “stage directions” and tagged with my initials (MFG). Through textual montage, we recreate the methodologies that we learned at the workshop, disrupting the chronologies of time.

As both a scholar and a practitioner looking at SITI Company’s past, I find myself fluctuating between narrative history and embodied memory. SITI’s pedagogy lends itself to a nonhierarchical, embodied knowledge and a broad-based international discourse.

The Notes

From conversations on Facebook, June 2023. Flower-Gladney is in New York, Yotopoulou is in Greece, Green is in Australia, and Delzer is in Rhode Island.

MELISSA FLOWER-GLADNEY: If this is going to be the first published notes from SITI’s training, what should it feel like? What should be included? Should we have more people? Everyone from the workshop? Should it be snippets or full pictures of days?

FIONA GREEN: I’m still trying to get my head around what it is to reflect on reflecting. Now I’m reflecting on reflecting on reflecting. The reflexive mirror game. I’d prefer just to be in the space and not know what to do. Just standing at peace, knowing that even what you do wrong is right.

TINA YOTOPOULOU: Hey all. I am having visitors from abroad this week. After July 15th I’m available.

GREEN: We’re in three time zones about one-third of the world away from each other!

BRAD DELZER: Blame Melissa. My heart hopes we can all be in the same space, even if digitally and even if only for a short while. But that might prove impossible.

[Skidmore College in the summer is beautiful. A campus on rolling green hills within walking distance of a small town with rows of bed-and-breakfasts for those visiting the mineral springs of Saratoga. As workshop attendees, we stay in the college dormitories, sharing rooms with one to three other people. Meals are shared in the college’s cafeteria where we swipe a temporary meal card.

At the 2012 and 2013 SITI Summer Theatre Workshops, there are 60 participants divided into two groups of 30, Groups A and B. In the morning, these groups rotate: Group A does Suzuki training for an hour and a half, Group B does Viewpoints; there is a 15-minute break; then switch. The sessions are led mostly by company members Leon Ingulsrud, Will Bond, Akiko Aizawa, Ellen Lauren, Barney O’Hanlon, Stephen Webber, Kelly Maurer, Tom Nelis, and Gian-Murray Gianino. In the afternoon, we study composition with Ingulsrud, Webber, and Bogart; dramaturgy with J.Ed Araiza; and voice with Lauren and Aizawa. Some days are “double days” where we go to second Suzuki and Viewpoints sessions. We are then all assigned smaller composition groups. These groups perform compositions at the end of the week on “Composition Day.” In 2012, SITI Company was collaborating with the Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, so some of the afternoon classes were movement classes led by the Jones/Zane company. Throughout the workshop period, SITI was also rehearsing with the Jones/Zane dancers to create A Rite (2013), which they performed near the end of the workshop at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Although the workshop participants did not rehearse or work directly with SITI on the show, all of the composition assignments centered around The Rite of Spring. In 2013, when only Brad Delzer attended, the company was rehearsing Steel Hammer (2014), and similarly, the source material for their compositions stemmed from themes from this work. —MFG]

Week 1

From Yotopoulou’s notebook, undated, 2012

Reveal the space, the “piece of wood”

• what are we revealing?

• how are we revealing?

There are many different ways: it varies artistically.

From Flower-Gladney’s notebook, Monday, 28 May 2012

DAY 1 SCHEDULE

What to bring: Lunch, clothes to move in, props, images and any inspirational materials

From Delzer’s notebook, posted on Facebook, Day 1, Monday, 3 June 2013

Delzer:

There are 59 participants; 28 of which are International—lots of Aussies (like at least 5), quite a few Canadians, some Brits, couple Finns, some from Mexico City, one from Rio in my group, and others.

From the combined notes of Gladney, Yotopoulou, and Green, posted as Meltiona on Facebook, Day 1, Tuesday, 28 May 2012

Suzuki Training Group A, led by Webber, Ingulsrud, and O’Hanlon

Yotopoulou:

We started with focus.

Focusing on an image or a spot, or something at a distance—whatever helps.

I have to have resistance from my image and from the floor.

Exercises:

1. Feet at first ballet position (for me it was always faster to think of ballet terminology, where applied). We are going down and up in plié (hello ballet again).

• Down in 10, up in 8.

• Down in 8, up in 6.

• Down in 5, up in 3.

• Down in 2, up in 2.

• Down immediately at the clap! (but the whole process is included)

Green:

Bondo talked about making sure we do “our own work” as a priority. Whatever is said to us—we need to make sure that we “do our own work.”

We went up and down on all the different counts (ow!) in basicFootnote ⁷ 1 position. Then in open basic 1. Called “diagnosing”—how’s your strength? How’s your flexibility?

Show your feet to the world.

Stomp.

Yotopoulou:

Stomping: “landing” with change of weight. Otherwise you are just smashing your feet to the ground which is not good/wanted. Imagine a second floor underneath (2 cm) and that the vibration of the stomp spreads to the whole of this underneath floor.

Basic no. 2: At the beginning we do the first move of basic no. 2 alone. We divide it in two:

a) lift foot [with a straight leg]; and b) bend knee. The bending of the knee should be done at the height that the foot has reached. We should not let it drop. If I lift it high,

I have to bend it high. The knee REMAINS at the same position!

From Yotopoulou’s notebook, May 2012

Yotopoulou:

[Walking:]

• 1. ashi-bumi [stomping]

• 2. uchi-mata [pigeon-toes]

• 3. wani-ashi [outside of the feet]

• 4. soto-mata [inside of the feet]

• 5. tsumasaki-aruki [high toe/tiptoes]

• 6. yokoaruki #1 (ichi) [side sliding]

• 7. yokoaruki #2 (ashi no fumikae) [sidestepping]

• 8. kosa-hanten [side step + turn] [also called Chekhov]

• 9. yoko-bumi [side stomping]

• 10. suri-ashi [shuffle/sliding walk]

• 11. shikko [roach/duck walk]

Other:

• Agura = okladon (in Greek) = sitting cross-legged

• *(It might also mean rolling exercise in Suzuki Method of Actor Training) Sonkyo I

• Sonkyo IIFootnote ⁸

• Statues: they use the English word

• Marches: 1, 2, 3, 4 new school

• and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 old school

• 1. Ashi=legs/bumi=stomp

• 2. uchi=inside/mata=groin (from geisha)

• 3. wani=circle (or alligator!)/ashi=legs

• 4. soto=outside

• 5. Tsuma-nail/saki-tip

[The above lists the names of what are called “The Walks” or as a set they are referred to as Basic 5. Aizawa taught the original Japanese names for each of the walks as well as some of the positions. There are often references to “old school” and “new school.” Suzuki training forms changed subtly over time, including the names and numbers, as well as how certain gestures were delineated within the forms. —MFG]

Delzer:

Afternoon Movement led by O’Hanlon with Bond and Webber

Green:

We looked at homologous movement, contralateral movement & homolateral movement.Footnote ⁹

Flower-Gladney:

I have the picture drawn out. I will try to post it later.

Barney is interested in the idea of radiation from the naval so we also worked with the idea of folding in and radiating out (arms and legs out on diagonals from the naval).

He talked of the movement of a fetus and how it is curled up in the womb and what kinds of movements we do at different stages of development. Also the idea of the movement of our “contents” (innards that have their own movement—intestines and organs) and can we sense the sloshing of those.

Green:

Not just the sloshing but what if we could move based on our organs: our lungs or our intestines and what would that feel like? Big focus on the sensation of movement.

[Brad Delzer took a similar class with Bond and O’Hanlon on the first day in 2013; you can see how he tries to describe the same exercises. He has a very well filled out description of composition afterwards. The instruction was the same in our year even though the topics (Rite of Spring vs John Henry) were different. —MFG]

Delzer’s notes posted on Facebook, Day 1, Monday, 3 June 2013

Morning Suzuki, led by Bond

Delzer:

He’s incredible. He started with talking about how this is each person’s work. Suzuki isn’t a style, it’s training. This isn’t about turning you into something you’re not. What’s your work? He also talked about how when you lose your way, think of the work as a conversation with the performers who have come before.

We then did the up-downsFootnote ¹⁰ for Basic 1 and then he had us spread our legs out wide, toes pointed at 45 degrees and go up-down with our back straight.Footnote ¹¹ I was terrible at this.

Morning Viewpoints, led by Bogart

We sat and went around the circle, said our name, 2–3 sentences about our culture, where we are now, and what our future is. What was really interesting is how quickly the question about culture turned into biography, and how little people were able to articulate any of the answers to those questions clearly. Anne interrupted once to point to the need for clarity, of thought and word. How do we communicate in a way that can bring people along with us?

One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot is how as storytellers we’re often terrible at telling our own story. I think it gets back to the idea that Bondo [Will Bond] and Anne both touched on and we heard a lot in our own training of “exactitude.” How clear can we be?

Afternoon Composition led by Bogart and Ingulsrud

This was an incredible class. We were asked to research the legend of John Henry, as SITI is working on a piece about him. Class started with us writing three sentences about John Henry. We were told to do this from a phenomenological viewpoint. Anne explained that there are 3 ways you can look at a piece of theatre:

Structure is about how the piece is put together. Semiotics is about how it makes meaning, and phenomenology is about how we react to it—emotionally and intellectually. So we wrote three lines of how we reacted to the piece [the story of John Henry].

Then Leon talked about ideograms. In a literal sense, ideograms are pictorial representations of ideas, like the exit sign with the man running out the door, or boys’ and girls’ bathroom signs. He made the connection that the theatre is written in an ideogrammatic fashion, it’s just that we use space and time to communicate complex ideas.

From there we were split into groups of four and given the instruction that we were each to create two no more than 15-second silent movements: one about joy, one about pain. We had 5 minutes to storyboard and each had 5 minutes to direct. Then we had to take them and put them together into a piece, like a montage. Then we had to take out the blackouts and add in all of the text that each of us had written; we had about 15 minutes to do this, then perform.

For the performances, we were told to be calm, and work with exactness. To trust and meet the other performers, and to be altered by them. Bondo stepped forward and said:

Then we got a huge assignment for a site-specific work of no more than 10 minutes due at the start of next class.

From the combined notes of Flower-Gladney, Yotopoulou, and Green,

posted as Meltiona on Facebook, Day 2, Wednesday, 29 May 2012

Morning Suzuki led by Webber and with Aizawa

Green:

Basic 1 (introduction). Go AS FAST as you can. Allow yourself to arrive—BAM! Don’t adjust. The floor is REALLY HARD, by the way. Ow, and makes legs seriously tired when stomping. Make sure the intensity of the stomp move in the basic is the same as the bringing feet together and down, up. Don’t relax into stillnesses.

Try to arrive BEFORE everyone else. Be the FIRST to get there and allow the stops to be very tight. We talked about what goes wrong physically when we stomp. He [Webber] was encouraging people to think about stomping in a physical way. “My body rocks this way” or “I start to kick back my feet” rather than “My mind starts to freak out and I panic”—keep intentions physical—and BREATHE.

Delzer, notes posted on Facebook, Week 1, Day 2, Tuesday, 4 June 2013

Morning Viewpoints led by Ingulsrud

Delzer:

Leon talked a lot about how acting is in the moments when you don’t know what the fuck to do. In those moments, you open up and we can see the authentic you. That it is in the moments when something might happen, must happen, but the performers don’t know what that something is.

Morning Suzuki led by Aizawa

I love Akiko. I said it. I love her.

Akiko focused a lot on how Suzuki isn’t really about where you’re going (like slow ten, stomping-shakuhachi);Footnote ¹² it’s about constantly confirming that “I’m here!” Make the audience see you, even when you cock-up. Every stomp is saying “I’m here!”—every stop, every moment.

Akiko: “Can you seduce the audience when you fall, tell them to come to you?”

Then those of us who had had previous training did stomping-shakuhachi. There are 29 in the class and only about 10 had done it previously. Holy fuck that music is long. LONG! It was the best I think I’d ever done it, and it was terrible.

Afternoon Movement led by O’Hanlon

I love Barney, too.

He spoke about how the movement class is to bring you back to the wholeness of the mind-body. It’s a chance to go inward, and in a little way a chance to heal your body. Then we got on the floor and writhed around for the rest of class. We explored each limb. I have no ability to describe what we did. I’m sorry.

From Flower-Gladney’s notebook, 29 May 2012

Flower-Gladney:

I learned I can move with my limbs. I look and feel like a dancer. I learned Suzuki calms my nervous energy. I experienced what it means when someone touches me, is selfless.

From the combined notes of Flower-Gladney, Yotopoulou, and Green,

posted on Facebook, Week 1, Day 3, Wednesday, 30 May 2012

Green:

(Really? Do I have to? We’re all tired and sore. Much groaning and moaning as we go up and down stairs. Yes, it’s that day. Things are a bit of a blur—I’m tired.)

Morning Suzuki led by Ingulsrud with Araiza and Webber

Leon talked a lot and it was good. Hm, memory problems. He talked about readiness to perform and he shot us up [to standing] in a second and drilled us through Basic 1 and 2 with spear and high-toe to illustrate that we need to be ready at all times to do anything. He then talked about the notion of always being aware of the audience when we are in the “rehearsal” room—that it is all performance, and we should be preparing ourselves for performance energy at 9:30 in the morning. Make a sharp contrast with regular life and present the fantastical self to the world. In Viewpoints we’re trying to be equal to everyone and in Suzuki, we’re trying to be more important. (From Tina: he actually said “the center of the universe”!) Be the first to arrive on the floor, and wait for everyone else—makes you feel important and also gives you more time to mentally prepare. He said that people were obviously not putting all their weight into the front slide forward foot in basic 2. “It’s impossible. You’re trying to move the foot with the weight in it. It looks too easy—you can’t be doing it right.”

Flower-Gladney:

Leon talked about how Suzuki is a training of failure. It is something we can never succeed at. Rather, it is a way to learn how to fail. So we know what it feels like and when we approach failure onstage, we are not afraid of it anymore. We know what to do with it.

Afternoon Composition led by Bogart with Webber, Ingulsrud, and Nelis

Flower-Gladney:

Anne and Leon gave us notes on our montages. As if they were rehearsals or finished products.

Notes: montages must be musical. Repetition creates story. Notice when the physical and the text line up and when they do not or should not. Save the moments of when people look at each other, they should be rare and electric. Detail should be both inevitable and surprising. Only when something is said in a relationship does it have any meaning. Juxtaposition always. Distance can be used to create connection. Theatre is about seeing the invisible and hearing the inaudible.

Green:

Then we got a list of a million things to put into our first composition assignment due next week—basically based on stuff from the Rite of Spring. We went and sussed out some sites for the performance, thence dinner, thence symposium. Excellent history of: Japanese theatre; Japan; Postmodern performance in NY; Anne & Suzuki & SITI company. Then we saw some cool slides from SITI company shows.

When we all trudged back from the theatre hall, we are sore and tired. Bed now.

Flower-Gladney:

Rite of Spring

The Rite of Spring is about change. Changes that are startling and sneaky. It is a song that takes a set of rules and slams them against new ideas as if it were an experiment.

What will happen?

Pain, loss of jackets

Theme: journey

• A happy meeting—homecoming

• Up a trail

• 3 sisters

• Inside joke

• Joining hands—facing world

• Abandoned

• Separation

• Running and grab

• Start with sweaters off. M walk to side meet face the world

A fantastic rebellion against what is right and wrong for the growth of humanity.

Performance:

[This list is the list of ingredients assigned to us to include in the performance of our first montage. We were given a few minutes to create a short piece that included these gestures or ideas, incorporating what we had been told about ideograms and creating through a phenomenological approach.

We were then assigned groups to work with for the rest of the week on a composition. We rehearsed throughout the week after being given a new list of ingredients to include. —MFG]

Ingredients:

• Choose space inherently theatrical audience, acoustic

• Make an order so [it is a] journey

• Max length 10 minutes

• 4 parts

• Departure that is an arrival

• Sacrifice

• History

• Riot

• End should imply a return—snake swallows own tail

• Rite of spring—last keys are unresolved chord that is resolved by the beginning. Be subversive too.

• Thread a journey—shared journey one man, or woman, walking

• Revelation of space

• Revelation of object

• Revelation of character

• Someone is carried aloft

• Use one of four elements in excess—water fire air earth

• 15 consecutive seconds of simultaneous unison action

• 15 seconds of top speed talking

• 15 seconds of stillness

• Ecstatic moment of community

• Broken expectations

• Surprise entrance

• Speak after exhausting yourself completely

• Describing the extreme experience—process of describing

• Don’t directly apply Suzuki

• A section where all onstage are listening to rite of spring

• A section where embody Stravinsky if can embody without music—do it.

• Use music in three different ways from unexpected source, contrast, underscore etc.

• Someone is chosen at some point

• Use tools in ways that are not meant to be used

• Use score as visual art, fake score

• Perform an authentic ritual

• Stage the augers section of the rite of spring = deal with structure to get music into bones text—a lengthy piece music theory related to rite of spring

• Phenomenology of experience

• Speaking direct language inside an experience rather than about it

• Music before what he was reacting against Stravinsky

• Choreograph everything get it into body

• Don’t be stupid

• Don’t talk about it outside the group

From the combined notes of Flower-Gladney, Yotopoulou, and Green, posted on Facebook, Week 1, Day 4, Thursday, 31 May 2012

Viewpoints led by O’Hanlon with Webber and Aizawa

Green:

It was SPACE DAY!!!

He talked about the horizontal plane, tipping over the hierarchy and John Cage. We went outside and listened to the symphony of the soundscape. Then we listened and looked. Then we listened, looked, and felt. Picture us in dappled sunshine on a perfect day on a rolling, grassy hill with many very straight trees (there’s a very loud air conditioner nearby). We then went into the grassy bit and thought about space. We split in two and were told to understand the experience of both performing and being at the same time. Don’t “do,” “be,” but also be a way of being open to the audience. Well, we romped on the grass for a while longer. It was real nice.

Morning Suzuki led by Nelis with Webber

Um, he threw us onto the floor. Stomp & Shakuhachi; basic one (lots); basic two (lots) basic one: down with text; up with text. Ow.

Still getting us up quickly and focused in the space. We did quite a bit about making sure we are breathing. Are we breathing fast, through our nose and silently? Can we move faster, can we breathe faster? Transfer weight completely to the stomping foot in all basics, so you are READY to go and won’t need to shift ANY weight off that foot to lift it up.

He gave individual feedback to every single person who stomped. Shoot legs out for position [Basic] 2 and 3. Engage with the trauma and SPEAK!!

From the combined notes of Flower-Gladney, Yotopoulou, and Green, posted on Facebook, Week 1, Day 5, Friday, 1 June 2012

Green:

At […] the end of week one. We’re all thinking about a glass of wine/whiskey—but can hardly be bothered walking into town to get it. Yes, that’s how tired we are. Okay, I’m going to do some summaries which will hopefully jog my memory tomorrow as I have a composition meeting in 30 minutes.

Suzuki led by Nelis with O’Hanlon and Bond

Lots of talk about breathing. If you aren’t conscious of your breathing, you aren’t conscious of ANYTHING onstage. This class was the toughest one yet (for me). It touched on many difficult areas.

We stomped and instead of rising to Shak [Shakuhachi music], we lay on our back and allowed our breath to just do what it wanted. Feel the pleasure of a body demanding a good deep breath and all your system giving it that. Put backs of hands at side ribs and feel them move. Then put wide hands on abdomen and tummy and feel it expand up and down. Now dig into place below sternum and see if you can feel the difference between your diaphragm and your abdominal muscles. He said the diaphragm should feel like an uninflated tire while your abs are more rock hard (??? perhaps other peoples’ ???). Anyhoo, this was kinda nice.

Killer class.

Morning Viewpoints with Bond

A lovely, gentle end to a rather speedy week.

He said it was review. He asked us to do the grid and think about space. It was peaceful and apparently we went for 30 minutes, but barely believable. We are still getting to know each other and our viewpointing quirks. He was giving people space to just observe which people liked—they are still wrestling with “doing” and bad brain talk. We went from just space in this 30 minutes to “turning up the dial” on time some way through. As a class, I think we’re pretty good at finding interesting starts, but still kinda messy when making good spatial stuff on the run.

We started doing some 7-person Viewpoints session without instructions. I think they just ended up being “open” but not encouraging wild craziness. There is quite a bit of talk about different philosophies about the individual and the group and how to balance it. How some performers (like J.Ed) are always doing something different from everyone else and some are always in support (Bondo confessed to this). Obviously, you notice your habits and always try to surprise yourself.

Bondo then made the space much smaller (square). Bondo curiously encouraged people to be selfish and enter with an agenda. I was a little confused by this instruction—and I think Bondo meant something else, but it was interesting to watch.

From the combined notes of Flower-Gladney, Yotopoulou, and Green, posted on Facebook, Week 3, Monday, 11 June 2012

Green:

Okay, we’ve made it halfway. Morning Viewpoints and Suzuki have changed up. So now Mel and I are buds but Tina and I are still morninglyestranged. I’ve become fascinated with the bulging quads I’m developing and other people are being taken to chiros and wearing ice jewelry on their feet. Also the flu and a sore throat is starting to take off, because people have started kissing each other… I’m just saying, Tina, it seems to be an awful coincidence…

From the combined notes of Flower-Gladney, Yotopoulou, and Green, posted on Facebook, Week 3, Day 1, Monday, 11 June 2012

Morning Suzuki led by Bond with Araiza and Maurer

Green:

Crazy marches. We’ve introduced the “huh” that the advanced group were doing.Footnote ¹⁴ This is a really friggin’ interesting concept. Bondo had themed the day “expanding time” in Suzuki. This took various interpretations, but I really don’t think either my body or brain will any time soon be visiting comfort with this concept. But I got the beginning of it—so there’s some hope.

So Bondo’s obsession is about pushing moments to expand time. He does this seriously strange and annoying thing in stomping (which, by the way, we haven’t done for days and days). He stomps completely off the beat—not out of time (well sometimes) but often nearly onto the offbeat. He’s pretty puckish, but he’s trying to find the way time expands when you try to be so on top of the beat you’re basically before it.

But what happens to your sense of time when you are there? What is time reality like there? And how does it allow you to feel the silence of the rest of the stomp? Anyhoo, hopefully, you’re seeing where he’s going with this time thing?

From the combined notes of Flower-Gladney, Yotopoulou, and Green, posted on Facebook, Week 4, a reflection, Thursday, 21 June 2012

Green:

Okay, no time in crazy week 4 for step by step.

Hm, I will just try to remember things we did and some wisdomy things.

Speaking led by Lauren, reflections

Green:

Ellen said that she had to get up to “Suzuki” level of speaking in 3 weeks (I can’t actually remember how long she said) and she developed exercises to allow her to do this. Basically, the exercises are intended to get voice connected with center, enough air in (in weird compressions of the center—for help and for hinder/test) and also a cutting tonality which will be heard even when soft. I get a competitive feeling from this kind of work. Like even the person next to you is shouting, and you are whispering—you should still be easier to hear or to listen to. I guess, in the basics it’s about making sure you hit your consonants, but Ellen’s more interested in center connection and tonality.

I was completely hopeless and didn’t improve with prodding. Ah well, practice practice practice.

So again, it’s: 1. root your center; 2. Get your air; 3. retain your focus/image; 4. Speak.

Obviously, the more advanced you go the more you’re able to keep your voice connected and then make sure that you keep center engaged the whole time. Drive your voice through regardless of lightness or strength of delivery and come at each line from a completely different perspective with each new breath. Bondo and Ellen teach this differently. Bondo is very much of the school of thought—every changing statue, every push from 2 to 3 position in basic 2 should be experienced at that moment, so of course you’re not in the previous moment of speaking. Ellen is more of the mind that the better you get, the more your brainbody can string a long text together (like the Midsummer that we were working on), even if you change everything—a throughline is retained.

Some teachers say a little movement when speaking is fine and can fire you up with your relationship to center or (I think Ellen said) make it happen but also let it be invisible. It all can be translated to sitting or standing statues.

Viewpoints reflections

Green:

I feel like the teaching was very different for summer than it was for us [in winter 2012] and, I guess, it’s about who teaches you. Each of the company members explores Viewpoints from their own personality and as we know—the whole point of Viewpoints is about spontaneity. So, when you’ve been exploring your personal take on spontaneity for 20 years—it’s unsurprising that people will be diverging off in different directions. Barney, a movement man, is very interested in the contemp. dance world and is quite intellectual about his experience of the horizontal. The idea of “research.” What are you “researching”? This keeps performers grounded in their own experience and less likely to be “trying” to be interesting (whilst trying to be interesting). If you don’t know what I mean—I mean don’t be an obvious “trier” at interesting—because generally that comes off as “tryhard” on the floor. Know how to be interesting by being interested in your research—shape, space, time. It’s the double consciousness of “being” in the space that we juggle. To know what I’m interested in; what the group is interested in and what the audience might be experiencing (okay, triple—but I’m sure this list just goes on and on).

Bondo said, he’s a joiner—always wanting to support the group. So he tries to work against his natural instincts. Anne also said that; being an artist is about resisting your natural instinct. Which is soooo true in Viewpoints—so we train, so our instincts can be better. Bondo said that J.Ed is the one who is always going off doing his own thing. He has been definitely the voice of “make sure you’re aware of the group” which, I guess, is unsurprising if you’re someone who likes to wander off—you have to be even more engaged.

Leon, probably the most intellectual of the bunch after Anne, seems to go in a similar direction, but with less “movement/shape” and more conceptual approach to teaching it.

When we did classes with Anne, she was coming from a much more group focus. How do we know that we are performing in the same piece as everyone else onstage? Our flocking exercises were instrumental in this lesson for me. I guess, I knew it, but now I feel like I know how to teach it better. You don’t copy—ever. You are up there (without Viewpointszombieface) being, and experiencing and doing and trying like hell to do the exact same thing at the same time as everyone else—for your own reasons. If you don’t know what’s going on/can’t see? Just make it up, but commit and really, keep your “chi down” and don’t flick your eyes around or watch what everyone else is doing (for some practical tips). It’s like making an improvising chorus—everyone knows that it’s death to try to make everyone the same and totally boring. People are not the same, and everyone just looks a little bit xeroxcopy and not the beautiful cohesive individuals that makes a chorus pop. Like Anne said, “the more you are dressed and move the same, the more we naturally see your individuality.” Ah, she’s full of wise words. I’ll try to dig another quote out of my brain. “The decision to move together is just a subset of ‘now.’” That’s not quite right—I’ll see if I can get it more accurate from one of my sources.

I think being taught by Stephen and GM [Gian-Murray Gianino] in Winter, we learned more about the confidence of “being” on the floor and that made us less twitchy performers in total by the end and our performances more postmodern. But the emphasis on awareness of group and audience perception in summer training made the performances more interesting—and I sense that’s the next stage we would have got to if we had kept training. We were encouraged [to] allow for people to do solo work within open viewpoint session. Like J.Ed would say—“okay, try to allow for 2 or 3 solo moments within this one.” Because sometimes we all just jump on ideas and join in without thinking—oh, someone’s jumping, that’s cool. I’ll jump too. Whereas it might be more interesting if that isn’t directly absorbed into the vocab of the Viewpoint. Let it be a solo which is quietly (or noisily) framed by the rest of the company. Speaking only came into both Suzuki (solo) and Viewpoints late in the training, so we were still at a bit of a “stand and deliver” mode. I desperately wanted people to stop coming downstage and delivering directly to the audience, but then… control issues, Fiona, control issues. Let them go.

[This final note is from the Winter Training Workshop, where we all first met, beginning again as an ending.—MFG]

Notes from Green’s notebook from Winter Training in New York, Zeisler Studios, 29 January 2012

Green:

Student: Is there a stop in this walk or not? And if so, is it with feet together or feet apart?

Teacher: Yes.

We don’t really ask questions anymore.

I get it, we are supposed to learn independence from the teachers, by not asking questions. Finding our own path. They’ve even stopped giving instructions! Stephen just told us to sit down at one end of the room and then stopped talking, for about 4 minutes, until the class just started an improvisation exercise on its own.

Flower-Gladney, a final note, 30 December 2023

I am still sitting with this direction, with all the moments a SITI company actor told us to be more than just students, to make the work our own. It is at this moment we were left, and are here today. As I reflect on these notes, in my mind I am sitting in the same room with this group, pausing, as we realize what it is we must do: begin the work, or that the work has already begun.

This first Winter Workshop was the only time Fiona, Brad, Tina, and I were all together in a space physically, although some among us have overlapped at SCOT or SITI workshops. From this workshop, we have remained connected. And now, through this journal text, we are together again. This kind of return to the training was common, and students often met multiple times at trainings at the Zeisler Studio or the summer workshop. The intention was for the training to be lifelong. SITI became, in many ways, what it was intended to be: a center of international exchange.