Tamar Rogoff Performance Projects

O Yatros Horevi!

2011-03-30T10:41:00.000-07:00

Our very own Dr. Don Kollisch, ahem, excuse me, Dean Kollisch, has been outed as a, ahem, Ballerino. We love you just the way you are Doc and we wouldn't have it any other way. Congrats! Thanks for all the work you do!

-Your Fauny Friend...

Check out page 5 of this edition of the Sophie Davis Biograph

http://www.sophiebiograph.com/uploads/4/8/6/5/4865724/biograph_november_2010.pdf

Mr. Faun Goes To Washington...Again...

2011-03-20T06:02:00.000-07:00

FAUN is going on the road again! Back to Northern Virginia this time and the Hylton Performing Arts Center in Manassas, VA. Ah, Manassas...The site of many a soccer game when I was a kid, Civil War battlefields & George Mason University- where I won three blue ribbons in the Physically Handicapped Games and met two-time Super Bowl champ Dexter "Secretary of Defense" Manley. Baaah memories...

Here's a link with all the details

http://www.hyltoncenter.org/calendar/146/

Our Process

2011-03-13T20:17:00.000-07:00

So many people have questions about what the process was like working with Tamar and learning to dance. This pretty much sums it up.

-Gregg

FAUN in the Northern Kingdom

2011-01-12T11:27:00.000-08:00

In late October/early November of 2010 we had a week long residency and two performances at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. It was a wonderful experience. A review/feature article appeared in the college paper, The Campus. Many thanks to the article's author Claire Sibley, for writing such a concise, informative piece.

http://www.middleburycampus.com/2010/11/10/diagnosis-of-a-faun/

Tamar Gets A Shout Out

2010-11-08T14:09:00.000-08:00

Tamar Rogoff Performance Projects veteran, Claire Danes won a best actress Emmy this year for her work in the original HBO film, Temple Grandin. Her movement coach was none other then our very own Tamar Rogoff. Here's the clip from the ceremony.
-Gregg

If you have trouble viewing the video here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE9M6z6Fx_k

A Faun Farewell

2010-09-02T15:58:00.000-07:00

Apologies. It's been a while since anything has been posted on this blog. Summer happened. It is my hope that posts will continue here regularly for the next few months. To start, here's a nice write up we got in the Washington Times following our successful Kennedy Center Performance on June 10, 2010 as part of the VSA International Arts Festival. We were the only performance to be singled out for a review/write up of this kind. Kudos to Tamar and the entire cast and crew of Diagnosis Of A Faun. Many thanks to all at VSA Arts who made the festival possible.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/11/AR2010061106288.html?referrer=emailarticle

No Goats No Glory

2010-05-08T09:02:00.000-07:00

GOAT

Goat gone feral comes in where the fence is open

comes in and makes hay and nips the tree seedlings

and climbs the granite and bleats, through its line-

through-the-bubble-of-a-spirit-level eyes it tracks

our progress and bleats again. Its Boer heritage

is scripted in its brown head, floppy basset-hound ears,

and wind-tunnelled horns, curved back for swiftness.

Boer goats merged prosaically into the feral population

to increase carcass quality. To make wild meat. Purity

cult of culling made vastly more profitable. It’s a narrative.

Goat has one hoof missing-just a stump where it kicks

and scratches its chin, back left leg hobbling, counter-

balanced on rocks. Clots of hair hang like extra legs

off its flanks. It is beast to those who’d make devil

out of it, conjure it as Pan in the frolicking growth

of the rural, an easer of their psyches when drink

and blood flow in their mouths. To us, it is Goat

who deserves to live and its “wanton destruction”

the ranger cites as reason for shooting on sight

looks laughable as new houses go up, as dozers

push through the bush, as goats in their pens

bred for fibre and milk and meat nibble forage

down to the roots. Goat can live and we don’t know

its whereabouts. It can live outside nationalist tropes.

Its hobble is powerful as it mounts the outcrop

and peers down the hill. Pathetic not to know

that it thinks as hard as we do, that it can loathe

and empathize. Goat tells me so. I am being literal.

It speaks to me and I am learning to hear it speak.

It knows where to find water when there’s no water

to be found-it has learned to read the land

in its own lifetime and will breed and pass its learning

on and on if it can. Goat comes down and watches

us over its shoulder, shits on the wall of the rainwater

tank-our lifeline-and hobbles off

to where it prays, where it makes art.

-John Kinsella

This poem appeared in the 5/3 issue of The New Yorker Magazine

What The {BLEEP} Do We Know

2010-04-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

Tamar and I would like to apologize if we haven't kept our postings on the blog as current as usual lately. We've been very busy. We'll get back on track by the end of this week or the beginning of the next. In the meantime, here's something I wrote back in late February- before Harvard and before our most recent trip to Chicago. Our process is an ever evolving one. We hope these blog entries reflect that and we hope you continue to enjoy them.

It’s Friday. The weeks seem to be flying by but this Winter seems to be lasting forever. Whatever snow-kissed beauty from the recent precipitation was blanketing the otherwise charmingly dinghy Lower East Side has been replaced in less than twenty-four hours with icey snowdrifts and dirty slush puddles. Natural beauty never seems to last long in this place. After all, even the milk goes bad early here. Luckily I only have to walk across the street to get to the studio. Tamar is predictably running late. I’ve come to enjoy this time. Previously, I never used to be able to work for any length of time by myself. I lacked specific focus. Now however, I hop up on the counter as soon as I get changed and begin stretching my psoas muscles- first the right leg, then the left. With a little effort, I can let all thoughts from the morning, night before, week ahead, drift away and turn my focus inward in a way I would have thought impossible a year ago. My previously “cerebral” conversation, which took place in my head often with several different voices participating, has been replaced with a much clearer, quieter one between brain and body. There’s something almost Socratic in my approach. I ask my quadracep if it thinks it might be possible to not hold on to so much tension and my leg drops an eighth of an inch. I suggest to my right foot that it may want to see what it feels like to turn out (go on, I dare you), and it does. I’ve finished with my piriformace stretches and I’m in the studio and working on stretching my hamstrings by the time Tamar has arrived. “Oh that looks beautiful,” she says. She’s not talking about my perfectly formed bottom. I can feel her eyes practically burning a hole into my lumbar spine. I continue to stretch my hamstrings and then roll up to standing. Tamar has been obsessed with the stomach muscles and the core area recently. In class and in our one-on-one studio sessions we have been working on engaging them (the abdominals), by employing the image of a vase in the mid section. The idea is to get the edges of the vase moving in an eighth of an inch. It’s a difficult concept to grasp and even harder to maintain, but it makes all the difference once it does occur. It’s an incredible organizing principle. If my stomach muscles experience engagement my upper and lower body both move automatically into an almost instantaneous alignment. The shift is difficult to explain, and it’s very easy for me to get distracted by the amount of sensation that occurs in my body as a result of this powerful an alignment shift- particularly with the core. To engage the core requires a lot of intense focus, an almost ‘divine relaxation,’ which is difficult to acquire when my upper and lower body are shifting so much. I’ve been extremely interested in following the alignment changes in my lower body in the past few weeks, particularly below the knees. As we work I can sense that I’m losing the ability to get my abdominals engaged and give the attention to my legs, which are shaking and spiraling to the point of throwing me off balance. Tamar suggests I lay down on a mat so I can better focus on the specific core area, but I’m getting a very strong, specific intention from my lower body. I tell her I don’t want to lie down because my legs will be taken out of the equation. I have the sense she’s a little perturbed with this resistance to a direction, but before we can discuss it any further a woman comes down the stairs…

“Hello, can we help you?”

Mason, the owner has promised someone a private yoga session at 0930 with Ursula, one of the yoga instructors. Being the interlopers we are, we relinquish the studio and move into the hallway. We’ve worked here on several occasions in the past week with the focus on my feet. We are unflappable in the face of this adversity! Obstacles are opportunities for the likes of stalwart corporeal adventurers the likes of us! Outside the studio I’ve rolled down and folded over my legs. My lower back protests strenuously. It feels like someone is reaching into my back with both hands Kali Ma-style and is squeezing every last drop of bile out of my kidneys. It’s torture. Tamar is sly like a fox. While I was busy gathering some mats and blocks in case we needed them outside the studio her wheels have been turning and she has devised a compromise to integrate my upper and lower body. Before I know it I’m leaning on the cubbies with my left arm threaded through my right with my left leg bent and my right, standing leg straight. Within moments I’m shaking deep within my legs. I mean deep. Every striation deep. The first time I really experienced this was the day the Good Morning America camera crews were filming us. I was in a similar position (rolled over my legs), experiencing similar pain in my lower back and Tamar suggested I stay in this stress position, confident that it would move into something else. Before I could make some crack about cripple torture- Guantanamo on Ludlow, it did. Move. This deep shaking is very different from the aggressive, slam-bam-wham shaking that we’ve grown accustomed to. It’s internal, much more supple, stronger. My right leg is gently jack hammering into the ground. I’m suddenly aware of my lower meniscuses on my right knee. I’m not even sure if I have lower meniscus but something is happening behind my knee in a completely new and unexpected way. At one point my tailbone drops like a hammer and Tamar and I almost burst into tears simultaneously. It’s like we’re connected or some shit. I continue in this position for what seems like an almost Brechtian length of time. Suddenly I’m convinced that my right leg is turning in. Turning in, in that typical, clichéd C.P. way. I can see it in my mind’s eye as clear as day. I can feel it. My right knee is kissing my left. My right foot is rolled in. I ask Tamar to check on it. She assures me that I’m standing in perfect parallel. That’s weird. I heard her say it. I saw it with my own eyes but I can’t believe it. I’ve never had a perceptual flash like that before. Interesting. As I continue in this pose and continue to shake deeper and deeper I have another flash. I see myself standing completely naked in a twisted, spastic fetal pose. Curious and more curious. How far down the rabbit hole am I going to go? My arms begin to hurt so I ask if I can switch sides. Tamar acquiesces. A change is a rest. My body responds similarly on the left side. My thinking head is starting to come online with the enormity of what’s happened today. Before I can get bogged down in the pseudo-psycho-emotional ramifications however, I notice that the yoga session is coming to a close. I need to start walking before these people come into our space. As I stand up I feel completely different in my body. I can feel every rib, my muscles seem to be hanging on my bones and I feel at least eight feet tall. There’s no room to go forward so I decide to take a step backwards. I do and get hit with a wave of emotion that I’ve grown strangely accustomed to. That step was so effortless, so beautifully integrated, so fully and completely human that it brings me to tears. On these rare occasions I am overwhelmed with love for this body. My body. Such a smart body. Such a good body. If you’ll forgive a little Shakespeare, “…in form and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a god!”

The women leave, I walk into the studio and I have a natural opposition and feeling in my feet that has never been there before. I know I’ve mentioned that particular sensation before but this particular way of walking has really never been there before. It feels like tongues of flame are licking my heels encouraging them to raise and lower in near perfect synchronization. I (we all), have an encoded, inherent desire for positive alignment. That’s what makes this work simultaneously and paradoxically surprising and not surprising. I’m walking around like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Well, because it is. When Tamar and I began our work we both noticed and came to the conclusion that there was something juvenile or adolescent about my walk; an almost happy-go-lucky bounciness to it that didn’t quite match up with the adult I had become. During adolescence ever person goes through a period of dramatic hormonal shifts and physical change. Everyone (for the most part) eventually grows out of this awkward phase but disabled bodies remain disabled. I remember being consciously aware at twenty years old that “this,” my disability, was something that I was never going to outgrow. That was the same year I asked my mother for the first time about the story surrounding the circumstances of my birth. That was also the year I started writing my first play, Game Legs. By the age of twenty-four I had begun to get creative with my own life story after discovering an obscure vocabulary word. Teratogen, is a noun and is defined as, an agent, such as a virus, a drug, or radiation, that can cause malformations in an embryo or fetus. The etymology is as follows- Tera from the Greek meaning, “monster” and the root is from the Latin word Genes, meaning, “Born.” Essentially, I had created an imaginary construct, a mythology, (that of the “born monster”) around my own biography in which I cast myself simultaneously as the hero and the victim. All this was an effort to explain and justify a body that didn’t cooperate with my mind. Needless to say, it didn’t really help. More on this perhaps at some other time…

It’s been an intense morning. As Tamar and I change and prepare to go about our day we talk about the work and get into an interesting discussion about trauma. I have referred to my birth as “traumatic” for a number of years now and have developed my own pop-psych theory that for most of my life I have been living with some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s not anywhere on par with battlefield trauma or trauma associated with physical or sexual abuse, but the fact is that at a very early stage in my development, while still en eutero, my body experienced a trauma. It just so happens that Tamar has been reading a book on trauma recently, and one key piece of information she has taken away from it is that after traumatic events the psoas and piriformace muscles shorten. This is a result of every human beings instinctual response to danger to go into the fetal position to protect their face and vital organs. I was already in the fetal position when my trauma occurred, which may have driven me further into that position. My body compensated and compensated beautifully, but, and I believe this in my bones, for thirty years my body has been operating as if it is still in a state of trauma. It never got the message that I was a functional, vibrant, thriving survivor. What really bakes my noodle is that Tamar was on to this months and months ago without being aware of this link. It’s a hypothesis in development- but how much of the physical effects of cerebral palsy or spastic displegia, are merely compensatory manifestations of early onset trauma? How effective can this work or work like it be to counteracting those, for lack of a better term, post- traumatic effects? It’s a big question. One that I don’t think Tamar and I have even the slightest idea how to answer. I’m not interested in the answer at this point. We’re merely on the road and answers don’t seem important. What is important is that each time we work the questions get clearer. That’s good enough for now.

Mr. Fuan Goes To Washington

2010-04-07T08:23:00.000-07:00

Tickets are now on sale for the June 10, 2010 performance of Diagnosis Of A Faun at the Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts. FAUN will be presented as part of the first annual VSA Arts Festival. For more information and to buy tickets, check out the link below.

http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=showEvent&event=ZKDAF#schedule

Goats eat oats and does eat oats, but is this goat ready for the ivy league?

2010-03-04T15:02:00.000-08:00

Tamar and Gregg are happy to announce that they both have been invited by the Wyss Institute at Harvard University March 9th & 10th to take part in a symposium entitled, Moving Beyond Limitations: A Choreographer's Approach to Cerebral Palsy. For more info on the Wyss Institute and the symposium, check out the link below.

http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewevent/45/wyss-interactive-moving-beyond-limitations

Old School

2010-02-16T03:22:00.000-08:00

I'm preparing to move and in going through old papers and the like, I found this and thought it was interesting. Thought I would share. Jewel Walker was a professor of theatre, has written, directed and performed in numerous plays and trained generations of professional actors, including, Ted Danson and Holly Hunter.

-Gregg

Notes by Jewel Walker on Movement For Actors:

An Actor should be strong and flexible; should have agility balance and endurance. These are the foundation upon which expressiveness can be built

Strength is the most important and neglected brick in the actor's foundation

An actor must be physically brave on stage, even daring

The most expressive part of the actor is his trunk

Anytime you make not getting hurt the focus of the lesson, you will get a lot of injuries

Training has never caused anyone to become an actor

Everything onstage is what it seems to be

Whatever you have done to reach the level where you are will keep you at that level if you continue to do it

People make a difference exercises do not

No problem is ever solved, but they disappear when you create bigger problems

The theatre is not about acting

Actors need to be able to express the dual nature of human beings: feet in the mud, head in the stars

The only value in learning lies in its power to move us forward

Whatever we think causes anything is not the cause

Teaching must address the student to the work, never the work to the student

There is no power to any important question that has any power; the power is in the question

The great actor is not a slightly better good actor

2010-02-07T14:52:00.000-08:00

Personally, I find this video fascinating. Fascinating in a way a car crash is fascinating. Leave it to a pop icon the likes of Lady Gaga to tackle the hard questions. Namely- What's sexier- Disability or Death?

-Gregg

Beat Shiver Tick & Shake

2010-02-01T04:27:00.000-08:00

I've been doing a lot of research on The Beat poets of the 50's for a project I'm working on and found two things that I thought related- one from Tamar Rogoff the other by Jack Kerouack. Both of these fell out of a notebook I was looking in. The other day Tamar was talking about how she choreographs: how 80% of the piece comes to her almost immediately, and the remaining 20% reveals itself slowly to her over the process. Both of these pieces reveal something about the artistic process and I just wanted to share.

-Gregg

Belief & Technique For Modern Prose

Jack Kerouack

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy

2. Submissive to everything, open, listening

3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house

4. Be in love with yr life.

5. Something that you feel will find its form

6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

7. Blow as deep as you want to blow

8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind

9. The unspeakable visions of the individual

10. No time for poetry but exactly what is

11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest

12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you

13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

14. Like Proust be an old tea head of time

15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monologue

16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye

17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea

19. Accept loss forever

20. Believe in the holy contour of life

21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind

22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better

23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning

24. No fear or shame in the quality of yr experience, language and knowledge

25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it

26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form

27. In Praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness

28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure coming in from under crazier the better

29. You're a Genius all the time

30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored and Angeled in Heaven

Directions for the pas de deux between Ballerina and Dr. A

By Tamar Rogoff

1. Sitz bones over heels
2. Use your breath
3. Elbows lifted
4. Relax your face
5. Shoulder blades wide
6. Offer you hand
7. Wait for her
8. Whole body forward
9. Catch
10. Keep her on point
11. Give her space
12. Give her support
13. Allow her forward
14. Help her up gentley
15. Look her in the eye
16. Breathe
17. Breathe
18. Think up to go Down
19. Let her come to you
20. Keep arms in their sockets
21. Strong arm/ become the bar
22. Sternum to Sternum
23. Not to close
24. Release to her waist
25. Above the tutu
26. One and a quarter
27. Breathe
28. Breathe
29. Think up to go down
30. Keep your eyes on her
31. Good job, you’ve got it now
32. You’re ready
33. go

Rogoff On Mozgala- The Experiment (One Year Later)

2010-01-21T02:26:00.000-08:00

Jan 2010

What is my methodology ? Why? What led me to it?

1. I began the work in order to prepare gregg to dance the role of the Faun in a new work I was choreographing. I first saw him as an actor and his body energy called out to me as it was interesting---strong and active and responsive to the text. I liked how his passion ignited and was in direct contradiction to his physical condition. He seemed to act his way out of his c.p. leaving me unaware while watching him do romeo and Juliet that he had it and I knew he could dance his way beyond it as well.

2. I used a lifetime of body learning—everything from decades of dance techniques (ballet-graham-bharata natyam) to bodywork. My bodywork teachers were alan wayne and monica Hathaway both of whom taught me ultimately never to listen to them but find my own way. I’ve never studied feldenkrais or trager or Alexander or yoga—for the last 26 years I have given a laboratory class at ps 122 and now at lamama—many students have been with me for all these years—they are mostly actors and they agree to being there while I investigate whatever interests me—this is an experiential anatomy approach where I can spend a year behind the sternum, for example—then include any landmarks in the body that interest me—bones-joints muscles-spaces between things—the class speaks my idiosyncratic language —alignment issues—mine and theirs often spark investigation—in my class at nyu ETW I add how this investigation can be the origin of a choreographic vocabulary And how it can enliven acting—this is not at all academic, as I haven’t studied the body in an organized course but have picked up information everywhere. I tend to start where I am or from what I see and let the class follow where the body takes us—a class can’t ever be replicated.

3. The first order of business with gregg was to steady him enough so he could transcend his main concern which was balance and introduce him to new ways other than his set in stone movement vocabulary which seemed designed to compensate for the inward rotation of his legs and hips He was locked in to a very specific body vise and felt at the mercy of the signals from his brain which were telling him to tense up—we sat on chairs and stamped the feet—I offered imagery---the horse shoe heel—we opened the knees---tucked him into the fetal position which rounded the lumbar spine and changed the curves he needed for balance once standing—introduced opposition walking rather than the seesaw side to side lurch which was the way he got around and after a few weeks I taught him the shaking technique—

4. Shaking—we started lying down on the back-- legs bent feet on the floor—arms outstretched to the sides—palms up--opening and closing the legs (knees) waiting until involuntary shaking and trembling took over—it took several sessions and ended up starting in thumps of the chest against the floor the head doing an uncomfortable looking lifting and nodding—all very violent and not where I was expecting it to come from—each time he lay down the body took off in this same way until it ran its course---any time I put my hand on greggs chest I could elucidate a thumping—later came other lightning bolts of zigzag energy---month by month we worked out pattern after pattern—my finger under his lips could cause enormous gagging—his arms pounded the mats—his hands clapped together til they hurt and I had to put something between them—at some point what you might call shaking began—a bit quieter but still intense—thru the thighs and sacrum --then a vibrato took hold of his belly—his stomach muscles had never served him as the way his upper body met his lower was disconnected from the body’s original design -- then came more pounding now thru the lumbar—all this we followed as the body led us through—I selected a position from which to start sometimes lying on the back and sometimes on the belly or sitting in a chair—I selected a movement to begin getting us to the involuntary part and then we dedicated an hour or two to follow its course--we were in a gym so we had mats and blocks and everything you might use for yoga—I built him structures to get his pelvis up off of the floor so his legs could be tossed over his chest and his hamstrings could stretch and he could access his stomach muscles---now that his body had experienced the shaking it constantly went to that mode in any stretch

5. Standing and hanging over fingers near toes— we used this to stretch out and access the lumbar and open it up—here we got seizing up and a great deal of fear—I by passed the fear many a time by using my body against his—almost like lending him my nervous system—my sense of flow—throughout I used my body to teach his---he could relax onto me in different ways—the little reiki I know I used to quiet him as well --my hands sent messages and new patterns---now one sweep of my hand can illicit a 20 minute reaction and instill a new or even a permanent understanding---more and more he asks me to move aside as his body is telling him something directly and he must be left alone to follow his internal clues

6. Walking---from the beginning he walked at every session and I gave him a small message often connected to an image to take on the street with him—we had to watch his exiting on to the street as he tended to revert to a prior more protective –historically more familiar mode---mostly I just watched his walk and saw where energy didn’t flow—where the body was uneven or where the foot didnt touch the floor---as his abilities grew he could feel when his sacrum was rigid or not—

7. Attitudes --Gregg is addicted to the way feelings and information come through his body---he’s in awe when he feels space in the hip sockets or connections from one place or another—or when he can just slow down--this is a reversal of his former attitude which was a slave to his condition –always taking orders from the Bully (Oliver Sachs’ term for the lesion on the brain in C.P.)--always using tons of fast frenetic energy to muscle him through everything from walking to sex---his mind which functioned in a more nuanced way was at odds with the pace and lack of modulation in his body. What he thought in his mind---was not do-able in his body--therefore immense frustration as his hyper vigilance governed the resonance of his body making known its limitations

8. Identity---Gregg evolved his personhood –body and mind to fit into his C.P. body---thru that body he felt every emotion and in that body was stored all memories pleasurable and painful—his body rhythms –walking and running were the sound score to his life---the drag of his foot—his particular toe walk ---as his alignment changed ---his patterns changed and he became a stranger to himself and in fact to me---it was the original walk that housed the person I was interested in—the new neutral was exciting because it proved that change was possible but a bit blah and devoid of any personality---I often noticed when gregg was drunk or stoned that his happiness reverted into the old home base of his original alignment---he reports that when he is being an actor the same happens---

9. Going forward the questions are:
How will his new body house him?
What parts of the changes he’s elicited in his body will remain with him irrespective of his actively being conscious of them?
What amount of consciousness will be necessary to keep a healthier alignment?
For how long and how much will he have to continue the bodywork process?
We are planning a phase two of this project which will include bringing another person with C.P. on board so Gregg can both watch me teach and teach this person himself---will teaching the work keep him involved and help preserve his new patterns?
How far will we be able to go towards a permanent positive alignment? How will Greggs personality ---emotional balance-- identity and world view evolve to meet his new needs in his changing body?

Mozgala On Rogoff- The Experiment (One Year Later)

2010-01-21T02:19:00.000-08:00

“My Most Amazing Day”
New Alloy/New Alignment/New Alchemy

My most amazing day starts on a Thursday evening. I went to see a play reading hosted by Theatre Breaking Through Barriers as part of their Winter reading series of new works. I’ve noticed a trend in Off-Broadway plays by younger authors recently- the writing is good, the characters are clear, but absolutely nothing of dramatic value happens. This does not make for good theatre. In addition, it was over two and a half hours long. What was actually cool about it was that the idea of nueroplasticity was all over it. One of the characters talked extensively about the topic sighting such natural adaptations/anomalies as giraffe necks growing so they can reach higher leaves or how the speckled moth- white before the industrial revolution- turned black (or speckled), because it stood out against a coal dusted sky and was therefore easier prey. The question the character was asking was essentially, “Can a creature will itself to adapt and change?” The character was also a wheelchair user played by an actual wheelchair user. I found this fascinating since the idea of nueroplasticity has become practically the buzzword medical professionals have been using in reference to the work Tamar and I have been doing over the past year. I left the reading nearly three hours later. My head filled with the ideas of neuroplasticity and the human will. I arrived home to see this email message from Tamar in my INBOX

…I am stepping back and reflecting--im thinking about loving another body besides my own and I thought some very interesting things –like why is another body so comforting—its temperature—its shape---its familiarity--beyond or inclusive of--sexually charged feelings or partnering ones or parenting ones--what others are there—there is a mysterious link that im examining about what is confirmed in me by you---and I can separate from it but when I see you concentrating I connect and when I see you not concentrating I dis-connect---its more of a body messaging system between us than a psychological but it can feel emotional---whatever it is from my point of view its an intense instantaneous morse code—and the brain reacts second…

I go to sleep. I wake up early. Too early. I haven’t been sleeping well since the show closed. I haven’t not been sleeping well I’m just going to bed early and waking up early. During the last few months of rehearsal and during the run this was due to exhaustion and a need to conserve energy. It just seems strange that I’m still doing it. Not that there’s anything wrong with getting rest. There’s usually a drop in mood and energy following the close of a production, almost a post partum effect. So much focused energy and effort goes into the creation of a piece of work, that in the past when productions are over I crash hard. Surprisingly, this has not happened with this show. Perhaps it’s because Tamar and I continue to work in preparation for the Kennedy Center performance in June 2010. Beyond that however, the entire experience was fulfilling on so many levels that the closing performance and celebration felt like just that- the closing of a wonderful chapter in a year of my life. What’s going on now seems like a new chapter. Phase II. Gregg & Tamar2.0.
***
By 7:30am I’m sitting in a corner table at 88 Orchard, a coffee shop in my neighborhood. I’ve been going there for years but just recently started showing up regularly (practically every morning), to write. I’m trying to finish a play I’ve been working on for a few years now. I’m in the middle of revising the fifth draft. The entire staff is wonderful. They all came to see the show and loved it. I talk to them all, sometimes asking questions or for advice with the writing. They make a mean cup of java to. I stay there for about an hour then make my way to the gym.

God bless Ludlow Fitness for letting us use their space. Teddy (who took Josh’s place), is a hulk of man with the disposition of a…well…teddy bear. He lets me into the studio every morning we work. He actually grew up and still keeps an apartment in Tamar’s building. Small world. I stash my coat and bag into a cubby, throw on my gym pants and start stretching. Pzoaz/Peroformace/Hamstrings has become my daily regimen. I’m in the middle of stretching my peroformace muscles when I hear the door upstairs slam and Tamar’s footfalls on the stairs. It’s 9:05am.
-Hi Gregg
-Hi Tamar.
She’s bundled in a thick coat and hat, which she takes off, stashes and then goes into the WOMAN’s room. When she comes out looking like a completely different person, I describe to her how I think the cold weather is having a negative effect on my walk. Cold causes muscles to contract. It’s been bone-chilling in NYC recently with wind that penetrates and whips through clothing. I’ve been feeling my legs tighten as a result of the cold and have a tendency to walk faster from point A to point B. My focus and concentration is more on getting to a warm place then an aligned walk. Since the holiday break I’ve felt some reversion (what I term, “the snap back”), specifically in my lower back- what we refer to as “the cummerbund area.” In class the previous morning, we were improvising moving through the space and I mentioned this tightness in the lower back. Tamar suggested I remind my body that I have a spine, that that spine is long- it reaches from the Atlas in the top of my skull and connects to the top of my pelvis. This simple adjustment has helped immensely to “de-clunk” that area.

I’m sitting on a stool. Tamar is in front of me and has her hands on my feet. She’s placing them into proper alignment and pressing my pinkie toes, forever raised like the true aristocrats they are, into the ground. They were caught unawares by the revolution and need to learn what it means to do an honest day’s work. Tamar instructs me on how to get my feet into proper alignment. She uses her hands at first to show me the path my foot should travel up and down. She lists all the joints in the foot: heel/talace/ankle/ball/etc… and encourages me to think of the foot in its many pieces as opposed to a heavy, single slab. I ask her to let me try the motion on my own and input the suggestion of the feet as a mutli-faceted unit. There’s an increase in sensation almost immediately. My body is in conflict with itself. It wants to discover these new routes, new ways of moving, which is actually the way it was originally designed to move, but it takes time and effort to release it from it’s old modes of behavior. I’m working on my right foot alone. As I focus to raise and lower my foot, I can feel my left leg grabbing in the hip flexor, the knee wanting to turn in, the heel coming off the ground. I stop. I ask Tamar for a yoga block. With my left foot on the block and supported the “bully reflex” is interrupted and I can put all my attention and focus into my right foot. The simple action of raising and lowering my foot takes an incredible amount of focus and is physically strenuous. After a few minutes I am shaking. Not just in my legs, but my entire pelvis starts undulating. All this movement, termed “shaking” is purely involuntary. As my body discovers the correct pathways and what I assume are new neural connections as a result of positive alignment, my body learns that it can utilize these new pathways and release the old mechanism that had previously allowed for standing, hind-limb ambulation, running, jumping and general mobility with the effective, but less efficient, C.P. alignment. What the shaking does is soften my otherwise tense or spastic musculature to receive basic instructions such as; point your sternum down, tuck your tailbone under, close the front ribs/open the back ribs, etc. What’s more, as my right leg and entire right side begins to learn proper alignment my resting leg begins to respond similarly. Not nearly with the same intensity, but it’s as if one side is teaching the other- like a game of “Follow the Leader.” As my body reroutes I often times also experience a physiological-emotional response. In this case, I experienced waves of nausea and became very emotional to the point of tears. Tamar and I never stop or get bogged down with the psychological or emotional ramifications of this. This would kill our progress. We soldier on through. Both of us realize that what’s happening when this occurs is that my body is opening up areas that have been previously unavailable or inaccessible for over thirty years. It is what it is, and this to shall pass.

I’d like to digress for a moment here and talk a little bit about my body’s relationship with fear. Tamar has said that my hyper-vigilance is due to my body being in a constant state of emergency. I have come to understand this as a constant fear of falling. During some of our most recent studio sessions as I experience release in my lower body, specifically in the leg below the knee, I’ve noticed that my arms- shoulders, forearms, wrists and hands get extremely tense. I believe this is a compensation that my body does automatically as a protective measure. As I move my pelvis, hips, legs and feet into proper alignment- into an alignment that my body has never felt- my body tenses. This is because I believe IT believes I’m going to fall down. This is a new and fascinating concept to me. I first became aware of my body’s fear response during the rehearsal period. The first day I was working on the set piece we affectionately refer to as, “The Rock,” I couldn’t even sit on it without waves of physical terror coursing through me. I was flanked by Tamar on my left and Sharon, our stage manager, on my right. As I moved around on it and eventually tried to stand up, I held on to them for balance and support. Initially I couldn’t stand up on it without their help. My body would tense so much that it would literally drop me to my knees for a more supported base. If they let go of me the waves of terror would return and I would simply ask- or scream or cry out- for one of them to touch me. This simple action both comforted and grounded me. During our opening week of performance I was experiencing so much pain as a result of tension in my hip flexors that I was convinced it was only a matter of time before I was going to injure myself. Tamar stressed the importance of a focused warm-up. As I increased my warm up and internal focus the pain first moved from my left side to my right and then disappeared completely. By the end of the first week of shows it was gone. It didn’t return for the remainder of the run. As we work in the studio, I’ve realized that I can actually counter this fear response by slowing down and convincing my body that it’s okay- that it’s not in a state of emergency. The grip we call, “The bully reflex” is the grip of fear. If I stay focused and connected to my body as I move into proper alignment, using my mind, I can show my body that there’s an alternative to falling that’s better, safer, more productive. I’m still working on developing this theory but could this be me willing my body to change?

We work on my right side for a good forty-five minutes to an hour. I’m shaking. I’m gagging. I’m nauseous. I feel great. It’s time for me to stand up and walk around to see how my body has integrated these latest changes with movement. Tamar slowly removes my left foot from the block, being careful to place it down on the ground in the proper alignment. I ask to try and replicate what I have just done on my right foot with my left for a few times before I stand up. Tamar acquiesces. My left foot is considerably more rigid and less responsive then my right foot in general. It’s harder to lift and place down properly but I mange to do it about half a dozen times before Tamar assists me with standing up. I walk into the studio and with the first few steps it’s as if my brain has caught fire. My feet are on the floor like never before. I have a roll to my walk that involves the entire foot that I’ve never utilized until this very moment. It’s incredible. I walk for a bit. I allow my body to integrate all the new information we have just fed it. I try to let my new walk walk me. I listen to my body. Before we know it our work has come to an end for the day.

Neither of us had this planned when we arrived at the studio this morning. We never have an agenda. It just happened. This progress with the feet however, would not have been possible if we had not been working so intensively over the last eight to ten months. Tamar and I continue to talk as we change clothes and prepare to reenter the world at large. I have to head to the West Village to rehearse for a reading I am doing later that evening. Before we exit the studio Tamar gives me a few basic directions to carry with me through out the day. I listen. I try and put them into practice as we climb the studio steps and exit out onto the street. Tamar returns the keys to Teddy at the gym. I cross the street and enter my building. As I enter my apartment and hit the stairs I remind my body of the work we have just done and take each step slowly and deliberately, careful to make sure I am landing half-toe/heel/with the outside of my heel pressing down. As I walk up the steps I think for the first time ever, “I love walking up stairs,” as I fight back the urge to throw up in my mouth.
***
“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! Aaaaaaaaah!” I’m screaming into a microphone. I’m rehearsing for a staged reading at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre for Killing/Play by my friend David Anzuelo, a sex, drugs & rock and roll infused retelling of Oedipus The King. I play the Oedipus character, Rex. This is an amazing part for me. Not only is it well written and right in my comfort zone as an actor but aside from being the original mother fucker, Oedipus is also a disabled archetype. Everyone always associates him with blindness, but "Oedipus" actually means "clubbed foot" in Greek. He walked with a pronounced limp as a result of his feet being pinned when his parents abandoned him to the mercy of the elements shortly after his birth. They say it was his disability that gave him the knowledge to answer the sphinx's riddle, save Thebes and become king. I also have the pleasure of sharing the stage with Daphne Rubin-Vega, Salvatore Inzerillo and several other Labyrinth Theatre Company members. http://www.labtheater.org/ We rehearse for a few hours then take a dinner break before having to be back for our 6:30pm call. I step outside quickly for some air and then come back to warm-up on stage. It’s Pzoaz/Peroformace/Hamstrings time. I’m in the middle of stretching my peroformace muscles when Daphne walks on stage sees me warming up and we have the following exchange-

“Oh you’re so good.”
“What? You don’t warm up anymore.”
“Eh. No.”
“I didn’t use to either but I was just in a dance piece…I’m not a dancer I’m an actor. The director/choreographer saw me in a show and wanted to work with me.”
“And wanted to work with you. Yeah, that’s how it works.”
“I would get to the theatre two hours early just to do these extensive warm-ups. Just because I had to.”
“Is that because you’re at a disadvantage with the way you walk?”
“No. We all showed up that early- even the two professional dancers. We just had to.”
“Oh.”

The reading was a hit. The audience loved it. People were really impressed with my work and kept coming up to me afterwards to congratulate me. It felt good. It had been a long time since I had acted on stage but the attention and adulation was bittersweet. I was incredibly tense throughout the show. My heels were up. While I was performing it was as if all the work Tamar and I have been doing had never happened. I’ve spoken about this with Tamar and she thinks that emotionally there are big shifts between the new body and the old, and since I’m an actor I need to call up emotions during performance or at auditions for example, which relate and are stored in the old musculature’s alignment. Disorientation and identity issues come up constantly. I have to figure out how to somehow integrate the two and talk about how difficult it is on all levels to make changes plus how much consciousness is involved in making those changes. I had a beer at a bar afterwards and then left for home.

Back on the Lower East Side I walk down Stanton Street. As I’m weaving through the crowds of Friday night partiers and revelers I can feel my heels coming off the ground. My focus is off. I’m tired from a long day’s work, I’m negotiating crowds on busy city sidewalks and I’m loaded down with two bags. As I pass one of my favorite Mexican restaurants in the neighborhood a girl sitting by the window sees me walk by. She makes a face of sheer panic and disgust. I still can’t get the image of it out of my head. It was a face only David Lynch could love. All that work! An amazing day all destroyed with a look! I thought I was over this. I’m not. My whole body tenses. My mind begins to fire. I start swearing, screaming at the woman in my head. A part of me knows I’m really cursing myself. It’s not always this bad. Sometimes it’s worse. I stop. I throw my bag down on the sidewalk. I close my eyes. I breathe. I look into myself- an inch behind my bellybutton and an inch below that. I can let that woman’s gaze destroy me. Destroy all I have worked for. I can leave my body and let fear, anger, guilt and disgust wash over me like a warm bath. Or I can slow down. Stop. Listen to my body. I could take smooth measured, conscious steps all the way home. That’s exactly what I do.

FAUN on ABC's Good Morning America

2010-01-19T09:59:00.001-08:00

ABC's Good Morning America ran a feature segment on Diagnosis Of A Faun on their program this morning. Here's a link that has a video of the segment.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/HealthyLiving/odds-dancing-cerebral-palsy/story?id=9596192

More Faun-o-Blogs

2010-01-12T14:48:00.000-08:00

This post is a link to the blog Art + Culture You Might Love on 12/20/2009. I'm including it and find it interesting because the author, Alissa Horowitz, references the alignment work with Gregg. Here's a link.

http://www.artandculture.com/feature/2083

There is no mention of the shaking in this blog entry though and I asked Gregg to write something about it as it (the shaking), is what allowed for the alignment directions that Alissa references in her post. This is what he sent me.

...All this movement, termed “shaking” is purely involuntary. As my body discovers the correct pathways and what I assume are new neural connections as a result of positive alignment, my body learns that it can utilize these new pathways and release the old mechanism that had previously allowed for standing, hind-limb ambulation, running, jumping and general mobility with the effective, but less efficient, C.P. alignment. What the shaking does is soften my otherwise tense or spastic musculature to receive basic instructions such as; point your sternum down, tuck your tailbone under, close the front ribs/open the back ribs, etc...

FAUN and Disability

2010-01-04T18:04:00.000-08:00

The Cerebral Palsy International Research Foundation (CPI) published an article entitled, "IS DANCE THERAPY AN EFFECTIVE THERAPY FOR CEREBRAL PALSY" on their website November 9, 2009 in response to the NY TIMES preview article for Diagnosis Of A Faun. The link is included below.

http://cpirf.org/stories/1693

Dance Magazine Blogs On FAUN

2009-12-26T17:31:00.001-08:00

Wendy Perron, Editor of Dance Magazine featured Diagnosis Of A Faun on her blog on December 9, 2009. We have included a link here. Thank you Wendy and Dance Magazine for all your help and support throughout the process!

http://www.dancemagazine.com/blogs/admin-admin/3116

Ballerinas Aren't Supposed To Speak -or- Have You Seen My Calliope?

2009-12-25T03:01:00.000-08:00

painting by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

We had a great closing on Sunday, December 20th. At the party each member of the cast brought a poem that was near-and-dear to them and read it at the cast party. Wonderful words from wonderful people to commemorate a most wonderful experience.

From Emily Pope-Blackman:

Faun
by Sylvia Plath

Haunched like a faun, he hooed
From grove of moon-glint and fen-frost
Until all owls in the twigged forest
Flapped black to look and brood
On the call this man made.

No sound but a drunken coot
Lurching home along river bank.
Stars hung water-sunk, so a rank

Of double star-eyes lit
Boughs where those owls sat.

An arena of yellow eyes
Watched the changing shape he cut,
Saw hoof harden from foot, saw sprout
Goat-horns.
Marked how god rose

And galloped woodward in that guise.

From Lucie Baker:

A Blessing
by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

From Dr. Donald Kolisch:

WASP
By Tony Hoagland

Why should I have to deal with so-called human beings
when I can be up on the roof
hammering shingles harder than necessary,

driving the sharp nails down
into the forehead of the house
like words I failed earlier to say?

And when a few wasps eddy up
from their hidden place beneath the eaves
To zoom in angry agitation near my face

I just raise a canister of lethal spray
and shoot them down without a thought.
Don’t speak to me, please,
about clarity and proportionate response.

The world is a can of contents under pressure;
a human being should have a warning label on the side
that says: Disorganized Narrative Inside;
Beware of frequent sideways bursting

Of one feeling through another
-to stare into the tangled midst of which
would make you as sick and dizzy as those wasps,

then leave you stranded on the roof
on a beautiful day in autumn
with a mouth full of nails,

trying to transplant pain
by hammering down
into a house full of echoes.

From Gregg Mozgala:

The Last Wolverine
By James Dickey

They will soon be down
To one, but he still will be
For a little while still will be stopping

The flakes in the air with a look,
Surrounding himself with the silence
Of whitening snarls.
Let him eat
The last red meal of the condemned

To extinction,
tearing the guts

From an elk.
Yet that is not enough
For me.
I would have him eat

The heart, and, from it, have an idea
Stream into his gnawing head
That he no longer has a thing
To lose, and so can walk

Out into the open, in the full
Pale of the sub-Arctic sun
Where a single spruce tree is dying

Higher and higher.
Let him climb it
With all his meanness and strength.
Lord, we have come to the end
Of this kind of vision of heaven,

As the sky breaks open
Its fans around him and shimmers
And into its northern gates he rises

Snarling complete in the joy of a weasel
With an elk's horned heart in his stomach
Looking straight into the eternal
Blue, where he hauls his kind. I would have it all

My way: at the top of that tree I place

The New World's last eagle
Hunched in mangy feathers giving

Up on the theory of flight.
Dear God of the wildness of poetry, let them mate
To the death in the rotten branches,
Let the tree sway and burst into flame

And mingle them, crackling with feathers,

In crownfire. Let something come
Of it something gigantic legendary

Rise beyond reason over hills
Of ice SCREAMING that it cannot die,
That it has come back, this time
On wings, and will spare no earthly thing:

That it will hover, made purely of northern

Lights, at dusk and fall
On men building roads: will perch

On the moose's horn like a falcon
Riding into battle into holy war against
Screaming railroad crews: will pull
Whole traplines like fibers from the snow

In the long-jawed night of fur trappers.

But, small, filthy, unwinged,
You will soon be crouching

Alone, with maybe some dim racial notion
Of being the last, but none of how much
Your unnoticed going will mean:
How much the timid poem needs

The mindless explosion of your rage,

The glutton's internal fire the elk's
Heart in the belly, sprouting wings,

The pact of the "blind swallowing
Thing," with himself, to eat
The world, and not to be driven off it
Until it is gone, even if it takes

Forever. I take you as you are

And make of you what I will,
Skunk-bear, carcajou, bloodthirsty

Non-survivor.

Lord, let me die but not die
Out.

The Faun Is Timeless

2009-12-18T06:42:00.001-08:00

Friends of FAUN respond to the recent review in the NY TIMES

painting by Bernadette Wulf

Re: Roslyn Sulchas, "A 5000-Year-Old Being Without Physical Limits"
December 16, 2009

Dear Editor,

I attended the performance of Tamar Rogoff's "Diagnosis of a Faun" that Roslyn Sulcas reviewed. After reading the review, I began to doubt we saw the same show. She seems to have watched Gregg Mozgala "stretching indolently" as the Faun at the opening and then turned off her interpretive eyes. I am no dancer, but what I saw was the Faun languorously awakening to the sexual chargedness that shaped the rest of the performance.

It unfolded into the contrasting dialectic between the two pas de deux, the first a pas de desir with the second doctor and the second a pas-d'-amour with the nymph. Ms. Sulchas seems to have missed entirely the subtler plays ("...the rest of the story doesn't matter too much") between wholeness/halfness, back stage (forest)/front stage (operating room) as well as the contrasting motions from the sides.

What she really missed was Ms. Rogoff's magic elixir of fantasy world (fauns and nymphs) intersecting with the real world (an injured achilles, an operation), and wittiness (the second doctor turning upstage and revealing a very undoctorly bit of leg) joined with moments that were truly touching (the doctor's pas de deux with the ballerina he has healed to dance again).

Ms. Sulcas would have been more honest if she had told her editor "I don't get it. I just don't like this piece. Get someone else to review." I could have even understood her saying "I don't like this work" but she was afraid to state that. Strangely for a New York Times dance reviewer, Ms. Sulchas seems deficient in the history of dance.

Ms. Rogoff pushes the envelop to the edge, challenging our perceptions in the gray-flannel world. She also challenges our perceptions of what dance is about and which emotions it evokes.

Frank K. Flinn- St. Louis, MO

   -From Alice Bloch-
Dear Tamar, Gregg, Emily, Lucie, and Don,
What Times review? Didn't she see the show? Did she decide in advance what she was going to see and write about that? Is she the same person who reviewed Clare's solo? that reviewer couldn't get around the fact that CLARE DANES was performing. I felt some of the same about this--she decided what it was going to be about. It is also sort of like when Arlene Croce refused to review Bill T Jones "Still Here," because she said the interviews he used with the very ill prevented it from being considered as a work of art.
And Lucie and Emily, I have seen lots of really good dancers and that now includes both of you!
The other thing that is so off base is that she couldn't see what an ensemble show this is--that each of you are so powerfully yourselves, and yet something more.
Please go by the laughs, sighs, and applause of your delighted audiences--which include some really sophisticated viewers--and let this one go.
Frank is writing a letter to the Times. he will send you a copy.
He also sent on an article about a St Louis MD who has a huge research grant to help CP people walk by strengthening their ankles--but his mehtod is pure Western medicine--all machines and reps. Still, things are moving , so to speak, and maybe Tamar and this doc can get in touch and maybe that will help you get to StL.  Have a wonderful closing weekend.
Love and many bravos,
Alice

   
-From Anita Michael NYC, NY-
Was that woman even in the theatre, watching the performance, or was she on drugs? How is it that everyone of us who witnessed that performance was able to see and feel the beauty, depth, art and humor of the work, and she didn't get it? This is why I personally never read reviews, until after I've seen the work. I don't follow this reviewer's work although I do see lots of dance. She is totally out to lunch. And I say that not based on any connection to you, Tamar, but because one knows when one experiences trancendant art, which Diagnosis of a Faun is. Let's face it most innovative art was not understood or appreciated at the time it was first presented. All I can say is Phooey on Sulkus for not being able to truly see what she was looking at. Never let grandiose jerks like her stand in your way.  You have the gift, and you graced, and touched us all with it on Saturday evening.  With admiration, deep respect, and friendship.

Anita
Sent from my iPhone

-Anonymous-
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Faun Air: WBAI's "The Largest Minority" Interview

2009-12-10T10:57:00.000-08:00

Tamar Rogoff and Gregg Mozgala had a fantastic time with Lawrence Carter-Long and the rest of the staff at WBAI's "The Largest Minority." It was a wonderful opportunity to talk about the piece and the process with members of the disabled community for members of the disabled community- and anyone else who would listen. Please check it out.

http://archive.wbai.org/files/mp3/091210_110001thurs11amtonoon.MP3

CBS Sunday Morning Story- "Step By Step"

2009-12-09T12:37:00.001-08:00

FAUN On CBS Sunday Morning

2009-12-07T06:22:00.000-08:00

CBS Sunday Morning featured Diagnosis Of A Faun on their December 6, 2009 episode. Unfortunately, we can't embed the video but have provided a link to the CBS website.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5913842n&tag=cbsnewsTwoColUpperPromoArea

"The Faun-O-Blogs"

2009-12-06T03:16:00.000-08:00

It seems our Faun has gone viral. Diagnosis Of A Faun has appeared on several other blogs on the world wide web. Here are just a few.

FAB FEED

http://fourthartsblock.blogspot.com/2009/11/tamar-rogoff-has-blog-thats-pretty-faun.html

An East Village Arts blog...

UNITED STATES OF AM

http://untiedstatesofam.blogspot.com/2009/11/some-kind-of-monster.html

A writer friend of Gregg's...

WHEELCHAIR DANCER

http://cripwheels.blogspot.com/2009/11/diagnosis-of-faun.html

an interesting perspective on the NY TIMES article from members of the disabled community. We hope they come see the show...

DANCING PERFECTLY FREE

http://dancingperfectlyfree.com/2009/12/05/science-and-art-mingle-in-diagnosis-of-a-faun/

A review of sorts...

MARGARET, ARE YOU GRIEVING

http://margaret--areyougrieving.blogspot.com/2009/12/body-is-sacred-garment.html
An actor/dancer's personal blog...

HOT WHEELS & GLUE GUNS
http://hotwheelsandglueguns.blogspot.com/2009/12/dancing-wheels.html

Faun Takes Manhattan

2009-12-03T06:29:00.001-08:00

This photo (minus mosquito bites) appeared in the December 7th, 2009 issue of NEW YORK MAGAZINE. The blurb has been reproduced here verbatim.

photo by Harvey Wang

ALT-CHOREOGRAPHY

Tamar Rogoff has repeatedly embraced the idea of creating works for nondancers. She had a special challenge though, in actor Gregg Mozgala (pictured), whose movements are limited by cerebral palsy. Especially for him, Rogoff made Diagnosis Of A Faun, which explores how science and nature cpnverge. See why Oliver Sacks called Mozgala "the cerebral-palsy Nijinsky" Starting December 3 (at La Mama E.T.C.)

Didn't Nijinksy have a nervous breakdown and die peniless and alone? Perfect.

New York Times Features THE FAUN!

2009-11-26T05:55:00.000-08:00

The New York Times ran a feature article on the front page of the ARTS section on November 25, 2009 about Diagnosis Of A Faun. The link is below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/arts/dance/25palsy.html

Dance! Dance! Revolution!

2009-11-20T02:04:00.000-08:00

Pictured- Vaslav Nijinsky

   
Recently our Faun, Gregg Mozgala sat down with dance historian, Alice Bloch for a brief interview.
  Gregg:  I’ve been doing some research and I wanted to post something about how groundbreaking and original Afternoon Of A Faun was.  I read somewhere recently that it fell into obscurity and was thought lost for nearly seventy years because no one really liked it, how it was perceived as lewd, etc.  Then apparently, it had a big resurgence in the 1980's, (not just in dance but in pop culture to (check out the blog post, “Freddie & The Faun”- a video from the band, QUEEN), after it was reconstructed from Nijinsky's own journals.
  Alice:  Actually, Faun stayed in the repertory of the Ballets Russes after Diaghilev's death, and may have been done through the 1940's or possibly 50's. There were two Ballets Russes--DeBasil's Ballets Russes, and the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. One of them toured Europe and the US, the other did a lot in South America and Australia. According to a huge dance history book called "Ballet 101," Igor Youskevitch danced it in the 1940's. They attribute its revival to Rudolf Nureyev in the 1970's. I think if it left the repertory it was not because of lewdness, but because ballet companies of the Ballets Russes mode which performed repertory evenings kind of went into eclipse during the 50's and early 60's. That type of company--American Ballet Theater, the Joffrey (which in part focuses on preserving 20th century masterpieces) did not really come back into their own until the big dance revival in the 1970's.
  As far as I know, the dance was never lost, because so many people still living in the 1970's had done it. I don't know who Nureyev learned it from and I don't own a bio of him (I should!). Rite of Spring was lost, and then reconstructed, and the same people who did that also did Jeux (both dances were Nijinsky's choreography), though that dance was a trio and very few dancers were around who did it. There is no way the dances could have been reconstructed from his journals because he did not write detailed descriptions. The works stayed in dancers' muscle memories, and in the case of “Rite”, in notations on the score. It is possible that there were notations on the Debussy score for Faune.
  One other source--Anne Hutchison Guest did a reconstruction from a Labanotation score (ask Tamar to explain), but I don't know when the dance was notated.  Supposedly it had a direct link to Nijinsky, but I don't know what that link was. I saw that and the Joffrey version and the notated version seemed much more innocent--less consciously sensual, if that makes sense. Maybe you could contact the Dance Notation Bureau if you wanted to find out.
  Gregg:  This is great. I will never trust Wikipedia again. Can you speak on how revolutionary or groundbreaking Afternoon Of A Faun was? What was it about it exactly that challenged ideas of what dance could be up to that point? That's not quite how I want to ask it but I haven't had my coffee yet. Sorry. The inherent eroticism, the frieze style- what was it exactly?
  Alice:  It was revolutionary for all the reasons you mentioned. Plus, Nijinsky, famous for his elevation, jumped only once. The extreme of the style and his revealing costume were also part of it. It did cause a scandal, but Diaghilev loved that. Have you ever watched the whole thing? It is really beautiful.
  Gregg:  Yes I have.  I love it.  What else are you currently working on?
  Alice: I spent the weekend at an event called PeaceJam where Nobel Laureates come work with high school students to encourage them to get involved in community action. I was one of a group of volunteers who gave workshops--mine was on body image and healing and included some of the work a dance therapist called David Alan Harris does with boy soldiers in Africa. http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6187 A good thing to do.
  Gregg:  Most definitely.  Well Alice, thank you so much for your time.  This was very fun and informative.
  Alice:  Happy to be represented.  Keep up the good work.  We look forward to seeing you in December!
   
  Alice Bloch is an independent dancer/choreographer and dance historian who wrote her doctoral dissertation on how the dance of Isadora Duncan and Vaslav Nijinsky affected the cultural construction of the body. As a dance educator she specializes in Arts Integration.  She is on the advisory council of a new performing arts magnet school in St. Louis, MO.

Gregg Mozgala can be seen this December in Tamar Rogoff's, Diagnosis Of A Faun along with ensemble cast, Lucie Baker, Emily Pope Blackman, & Dr. Don Kollisch

Misha! Misha! Misha!

2009-11-14T03:29:00.000-08:00

Tamar Rogoff Performance Projects is pleased to announce that it has been selected as a company in residence by the Baryshnikov Arts Center for the month of November 2009!

Pictured- Mikhail Baryshnikov

http://www.bacnyc.org/index.php/events/residencies/

Thank you B.A.C.!

This will go a long way in helping make Diagnosis Of A Faun the best show it can be.

Altered Beast

2009-11-11T04:25:00.000-08:00

L' apres - midi d' un Faune was revolutionary for it's time-- more on this in a later post-- At its 1912 Paris premier it caused quite the scandal. In the newspaper Le Figaro editor Gaston Calmette wrote:

"We have had a faun, incontinent, with vile movements of erotic bestiality and gestures of heavy shamelessness." To him Nijinsky's dance was "the too-expressive pantomime of the body of an ill-made beast, hideous, from the front, and even more hideous in profile."

"...the body of an ill-made beast, hideous, from the front, and even more hideous in profile."

Looks pretty good to me.

-Gregg

Freddie & The Faun

2009-11-07T22:02:00.000-08:00

This is Queen's video for their 1984 hit song, "I Want To Break Free." What's the connection to the Faun? Press PLAY, and In about two minutes all will be made clear.

Mozgala On Rogoff- The Experiment

2009-11-04T16:37:00.001-08:00

photo by Lucie Baker

The following two posts are from writings that Gregg and Tamar wrote independently of each other to document what they refer to as, "The Experiment," the unique year-long process of turning Gregg into a dancer.

A quick note: This is a long entry and some of the content may not be suitable for every reader. Though there is no graphic language, no nasty words and no graphic scenes, it does acknowledge the existence of sex.

This Is A Week In The Life Of Gregg & Tamar

MONDAY: Around 8:27am I leave my apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan, and cross the street to my gym. The manager has been gracious enough to let Tamar and I use their downstairs studio space on Monday and Friday mornings free of charge. As I get up stairs I greet Josh, the morning shift worker, who grabs the keys to the downstairs studio and leads me out the door and around the corner. We chit-chat about our weekends, make small talk, etc. Once inside, Josh disables the alarm, hands me the keys and then goes back upstairs to the gym. It’s 8:32am. Tamar is late. I untie my shoes, slip off my socks and stash them in a cubby. I don’t want to be here. It’s early. I haven’t had my coffee. I stand in the middle of the mirrored studio surrounded by reflections of myself from every possible angle and scan through my body, starting with my toes and working my way up to the crown of my head. Are my toes gripping the floor? Why are my hip flexors so tight today? Am I jutting out my ribs and puffing out my chest? Breathe. Remember to breathe. I walk around the studio hoping to wake myself up by degrees. My steps are slow and lumbering. I’m dragging my left foot a little. I can feel my knees wanting to turn in. I stop. Adjust. I take a few deep breaths. I imagine my feet at my hip sockets. I envision having a left-rightness to my pelvis. I take a step. Then another. The difference in sensation from these slight few adjustments is beyond description. Six months ago I didn’t think any of this was possible. I hear the door slam upstairs and footsteps on the stairs. Tamar is here. It’s 8:47am. I keep walking. Tamar puts her belongings in a cubby next to mine and goes to the bathroom. When she enters the studio I know the real work will begin. I just don’t know what surprises she has in store for me today. Neither does she. In my experience these sessions can go one of two ways: Either the work is small, supple and intricate as we focus on a particular point in the body or a specific muscle/joint relationship, or we make some “monumental” break through which results in me discovering a way of moving that has been unavailable to me for the past thirty years. Whatever we do, it’s always intense and never boring. Somewhere between eleven o’clock and eleven thirty, we tidy the place up and head back upstairs. Tamar leads the way looking back at me and giving me directions about how to walk up stairs with measured, open steps. I lock the door and walk out onto the street. I can feel Tamar’s eyes on me even though I’m turned away from her. This is one of her least favorite parts of the day. We’ve just spent over two hours correcting and adjusting my alignment. All that work almost disappears as I reach the doorway and step out onto Delancey Street. She practically screams, “Threshold! Threshold!” I feel her hands on me immediately; one on my sternum the other just above my waist pressing on my lower back. We’ve discovered I have a habitual pattern out in public that reinforces my old way of walking. I arch my back and puff out my chest bracing myself from the onslaught of stimuli that is New York City. Tamar’s hands are there to remind my body that it doesn’t need to be in a constant defensive stance masquerading as openness and approachability. Walking slowly in near perfect alignment is a suitable alternative to my usual lurch. Not to mention it feels a whole lot better.

***

We talk almost incessantly on the walk back to Tamar’s apartment. I ask questions about the body. Tamar answers. We ask each other about our weekends. I've recently started dating again after my divorce, and Tamar inquires about any sexual exploits I might have engaged in. If I have, she wants details- as they relate to our work. Could I feel my pelvis? Was my sacrum engaged? I speak with surprising candor and she continues to inquire and offer advice and suggestions about things I should be asking my partner to maximize my alignment and body’s full potential during sexual intercourse. We walk through Thompkins Square Park. People stare at us. Who is that strange man in a t-shirt and camouflage pants ambling along under the trees? Was he injured in war? Who is that woman beside him? Is she his mother? Are they lovers? Who knows what they think. I’m too busy focusing on my body to notice. The only person Tamar and I might be interested in running into is the man who saw us walking through the park a few months ago. A tall African American man with a white schnauzer who said, “Oh, he’s getting better! He used to walk like this…” and then did his best to imitate my old gait. These are moments we wish we had a video camera. We haven’t seen him since. When we get back to her apartment we realize we’re famished and in desperate need of food. Having a choreographer who also happens to be a Jewish grandmother certainly has its benefits. There’s no chance of me starving during this rehearsal process I can guarantee that. As we eat, we continue to talk about the body. I bombard Tamar with questions about the process, dance, life, the universe and everything. We try to record ourselves as much as possible with an audio recorder, and more recently a camcorder. Hopefully someone out there will find this interesting. After a few hours I get ready to leave. Tamar gives my body one last once-over with her eyes before I walk out the door and usually has one last tip or piece of homework for me regarding the unevenness in my shoulders or the slight collapse on my left side. I tell her I’ll work on it and give her a hug. I walk down the hallway to the elevator slowly and with as much focus as I can muster. Somehow I just know Tamar has her ear to the door listening to every footfall I make until the elevator arrives, the doors close and I descend to the lobby of her building. Out on the street I’m talking to myself constantly. I'm trying to remember all the lessons from that day and integrate them with the hundreds of things I’ve learned about my body over the past few months. I start making deals with myself. If I can make it from Avenue C to Avenue B without my feet dragging once I can spend five minutes looking at the pooches in the dog park or stretch out on the grass. If I can make it from 7^th Street to 3^rd Street thinking, “my feet in my hips,” the entire time I’ll treat myself to a coffee. If I can stop my lower back from tightening up for the rest of the way home...I’ll talk to the brunette with the tattoos on her legs that lives in the building next door. It’s July and I still don’t know her name.

TUESDAY: There’s a mosquito in my room. It just buzzed my head and my eyes open wide as my hands frantically swat the air. I missed it. I can’t hear it anymore. I don’t know where it went. All I know is that I want it dead. I sit up in bed. I must have been sleeping on my left side for some time because I can feel welts from my ankle to my thumb along the right side of my body. “My wife,” the affectionate nickname for the dark blue body pillow that Tamar has given me to put between my legs to keep my feet and knees from turning in as I sleep, has come loose at some point during the night and is now smooshed up against the wall looking hurt and rejected. “I’m sorry, baby,” I say and pull her close to me. I check my phone. Great. I’m wide awake and itchy and it’s not even 6:00am. I really need more sleep. One of the major problems with receiving so much information and listening to my body more over these past few months is that my body doesn’t know when to shut up. It has been keeping me up well past 2:00am most nights recently. I have rehearsal today. I can’t be tired. I slip my wife between my legs and try to go back to bed. For the next two hours I toss and turn swatting at imaginary mosquitoes out for my blood. Just after 8:00am I decide to get into the shower. Even in the few steps between my bedroom and the bathroom I’m thinking about how I’m walking. I shower. No shaving for the next couple of months. The costume designer needs to see how well I can grow a beard. As I brush my teeth I notice that my legs are a mess. One is splayed all wompsided in front of the other, my knees are falling in, I’m favoring my right side- it’s not pretty down there. I step away from the sink and parallel my feet before continuing to brush my teeth. As I do, I imagine two spiders crawling out of my anus and spinning golden threads in spiral formations down my legs from my buttocks to my pinkie toes.

***

I walk out my door around 9:30am and make my way to class, which Tamar has been teaching on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the last twenty-six years. A few members of the class have been coming that long, which is a testament to how good Tamar is at what she does and the effect she can have on people. We usually meet at LaMamma, ETC’s rehearsal space on Great Jones Street, but they’ve closed for the Summer. We’re currently in the basement at Theatre For A New Audience on 9^th street and 1^st Avenue. We refer to this as, “the dungeon.” The class is an hour and a half and serves as a great warm up for the rehearsal that will follow. This is not a traditional dance class. I would describe it as, “experiential anatomy.” Tamar never comes in with any set plan on what to work on that day, but it usually correlates with what we’ve been working on in the studio- the lower back, the shoulders, the hip flexors, etc. After class, we gather our things and head onto the street. The deli across the street is having a special on Balance Bars- two for the price of one. Score! We stock up and Tamar shoves half a dozen in her purse. For whatever reason, we started getting these as snacks in between class and rehearsal when we first started working and the tradition has stuck. Ha! Balance Bars? I just got it. We walk west to 2^nd Avenue and hail a cab. For the month of July we’re rehearsing at the Joyce Soho, a beautiful facility on Mercer Street, which coincidentally was founded by the wife of the artistic director for Theatre Breaking Through Barriers, the Off-Broadway company that did the production of Romeo & Juliet which Tamar saw me in. Small world. Once in the studio Tamar and I begin working on the latest solo she is choreographing for me- the one that will take place in Act III. If I’m allowed to say that this is difficult because I’ve never danced before, then I can only imagine that working with me is challenging every choreographic bone in Tamar’s body. I’m sure no other choreographer/dancer has ever worked like we do. Movement just doesn’t move through my body like other people's. This is of course why Tamar was interested in working with me, but it also presents one of our biggest challenges. Tamar will give me an idea of what she wants to see and sometimes I can hit the movement right off without any difficulty. Other times our rehearsals are an exercise in figuring out how to get my body to make the choreography work for me and vice versa. This takes a lot of patience and requires us to work very slowly. If I’m not careful my frustration with my own body and my inability to find a solution in the moment can throw me into my head and disconnect me from the work. Tamar’s answer to this frustration, which I’ve expressed to her on several occasions is always, “You can get frustrated with choreography that doesn’t exist yet, but I don’t know what good it will do.” I hate it when she’s right. It’s important for me to ask questions and take as much time as I need with a particular section and sometimes this means telling Tamar to leave for five minutes so I can be alone with my own body and find a solution on my own. It turns out the body always holds a solution. That’s what’s so amazing about this. It’s the most purely collaborative relationship I’ve ever had with another artist and myself. It’s extremely rare to have the space and time to be able to work like this. Even with all its difficulties and challenges, I’m constantly reminding myself that, “I love every minute of this.” Ten minutes before the end of rehearsal after having danced for nearly three straight hours, I’m drenched in sweat and exhausted but completely adrenalized. I want to go through the choreography one more time, but Tamar insists that I rest, lie down on the floor and bring my body to a state of calm before reentering the world. I lay down and my body starts shaking almost immediately. This is my body’s response to all the work and its own unique way of releasing the huge amounts of tension it’s amassed over the rehearsal. Tears usually come next. They’re not connected to any specific emotion, just another form of release. It would be easy to think this was my body freaking out and saying something like, “What the hell are you doing to me!” But it doesn’t feel like that at all. It actually feels quite wonderful. It feels like my body’s saying, “Thank you.”

We walk out onto the street. Tamar has an errand to run, so we hug and part ways. “See you tomorrow,” is our familiar refrain. Right before I hit the Bowery there's a thunderclap, the sky opens up and rain starts falling sideways in torrents. Everyone around me is taking cover under awnings and in storefronts but I’m still dancing- all the time thinking, “feet in the hips, feet in the hips.” A little rain never hurt anyone. I need a shower anyway.

WEDNESDAY: I wake up realizing I’ve been dancing in my sleep. Shoulder blade/elbow/forearm/wrist/first knuckles/second knuckles/fingernails. Wednesdays are WILD CARD days. Tamar and I will usually reserve this day for bodywork, but it’s also the day we reserve for, ‘field trips.’ I’ve been to the Hospital For Special Surgery three times, consulted with a doctor of physical therapy, been photographed by a world-class photographer and met with a Para-Olympic body building champion gold medalist with cerebral palsy. Today, however, I’m standing in the middle of Central Park at 7:30am in the morning with thousands of other people hoping to get tickets to that evening’s performance of William Shakespeare’s, Twelfth Night presented by the Pubic Theatre. Tamar shows up around 8:30am. She’s brought blankets and snacks. We’ve got four and a half hours until they start releasing tickets so we might as well do some work. For the next few hours, Tamar has me looking at everyone walking by, asking me to identify problems with their alignment and how I would correct it. She then has me get up and start imitating these different body types. After a few hours of this work and some video recording we get our tickets and part ways, agreeing to meet up later before the show.

***

Later. I'm in the back of Tamar's car watching the Upper East Side pass me by through the passenger window. Tamar is sitting up front and her husband Dick- the original Faun in Tamar's life- is driving. We get to the theatre, my friend Emily joins us, we have a beer under a tree and then go take our seats. The show is amazing! The acting is incredible, the music by Hem is outstanding. It's one of the finest productions of Twelfth Night I've ever seen. Life is good. Life is good...

THURSDAY: Thursdays start out just like Tuesdays; class from 10:00am to 11:30am and then rehearsal at the Joyce Soho. We have an hour to brush up on all our work to date because all the designers and some other folks are coming today. I do my two solos and then Tamar works with Emily on her solo in Act II. I go to another part of the theatre to continue going over my pieces but I’m watching Emily out of the corner of my eye. It’s unavoidable. She’s an amazing dancer. I know it’s not fair to compare myself to someone who has been dancing for longer than I’ve been alive but I can’t help myself. It’s a beautiful thing to see someone move that well. Seemingly without any effort at all. Tamar is getting ready for people to arrive and talking to our film crew so Emily and I go through our duet. Until this project I had never ‘partnered’ anyone before. In the beginning I was terrified once I realized just how difficult it was. I was falling down, unsteady, and unsure of myself. My frustration with the process and myself were at an all time high. I'm happy to say it’s gotten a lot better and a lot easier. Emily and I can now move through the entire act, which Tamar informs us is a whopping seventeen minutes long, with only minor mistakes typical to this point in our process. It’s been a few weeks since Emily and I have danced the duet, and when we perform it there are more mistakes then I am happy with. We get through it through, and the feedback from everyone there is really positive and encouraging. I leave feeling good about the rehearsal but not as good as I want to. I’m frustrated. Every time we work I can’t help but think that I’m starting from scratch. This is of course totally false. I’m being too hard on myself. I call a friend and ask him if he wants to meet for lunch. He suggests a place on Mott Street which is close by. I say I’ll meet him there. While I’m waiting I’m trying to calm myself down, trying to stop myself from leaving my body and from getting stuck in my head. While I’m waiting for my friend to arrive I decide to call my youngest sister Meredith, who lives in Virginia. Because she’s a first grade teacher, I know she’s not working during the Summer. “Hey honey, what’s up?” She asks in her thick southern drawl. She’s the only one in my family to have picked it up from living in North Carolina and I love it. I tell her about the rehearsal- how I just needed to admit to someone and myself just how hard what I’m trying to do is. She listens, which is all I really need, and then she says the greatest thing, “Don’t worry darlin’,” she says, “You know you’re the best dancer in the family.” If you knew my family this isn’t saying much but it makes me smile and I instantly feel better. My friend arrives. We eat noodles. Good food seems to be the answer to everything.

FRIDAY: See MONDAY. In the afternoons on Fridays I give private acting coaching to a fifteen year old girl with cerebral palsy. I usually work with my friend Pamela, but she has a conflict this week and can't make it. I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out how to fill a ninety minute session with this young woman and then decide to conduct a little experiment. I want to see if the work Tamar and I have been doing will translate to her. I work very slowly and focused as I try to explain the approach and concept behind what we're going to do today to this skeptical, precocious girl. I have her lay down and after ten minutes of working she starts to shake. We work through the whole ninety minutes. At the end she says, "It felt like the opposite of when my I get CP spasms. It felt like a release." Hot-Diggity-Dog!

SATURDAY: I’m stretching out my psoaz muscles on a metal stoop next door to the Joyce Soho which hasn’t opened yet. Weekend mornings are my favorite time in New York City. Everyone’s still asleep and the city is actually peaceful. I’m staring up at the sky. There’s a giant line of cloud drifting above my head that looks like a spine. I seem to be seeing spines everywhere these days. It reminds me to keep my lower back connected to the stoop as I continue to stretch my leg. Emily walks up and we chat and stretch out on the street until we can go inside. Twenty minutes later I’m dancing in my underwear in the biggest dance studio I’ve ever seen. There’s an issue with the original design of my costume and Tamar and the designer need to see what I look like dancing with next to nothing on. This would totally work except for the fact that I’m wearing kneepads. They sort of ruin the entire effect. Funny, sexy and maybe, just a little bit creepy. That's me.

SUNDAY: My day off. Or is it?

Rogoff On Mozgala- The Experiment

2009-11-04T14:49:00.001-08:00

photo by Lucie Baker

The following entry is a letter that Tamar wrote to a friend detailing what they refer to as, "The Experiment," the unique year-long process of transforming Gregg into a dancer.

I first saw Gregg Mozgala, an actor with cerebral palsy, playing the part of Romeo in a very well reviewed off Broadway production. I was completely taken with his talent and something unusually strong in his energy and called him to ask if I could choreograph something for him. He thought I was crazy never having danced but said he would meet me and come to the studio to try. His upper body is beautiful by any standard --tattoos –a gun—a cross and a crowing rooster on his hard won at the gym biceps. His lower body was typically cerebral palsy-like with turned in knees and feet and the gait we associate with C.P. He had tight unyielding muscles. I didn’t plan to change anything. This is how I wanted to work with him. I have a long history of choreographing for non dancers as I did with Claire Danes. The problem was that Gregg kept falling down and was locked into a small vocabulary of see-saw movements that helped him keep his balance. He also had a whole comic routine for recovering from a fall.Together we came to the conclusion that some special training was needed especially around balance issues. So we eventually came to find this character of the Faun—We were committed to making a large scale work and to doing body work at first once a week and then everyday. I got my Guggenheim grant and dedicated it to a year in which I would explore the ways Gregg could become a dancer. He quit his temp jobs and I quit some jobs and we worked incessantly. Many psychological issues around disabilities came up. As his heels came down to the ground for the first time in 30 years and his walk changed, his identity was threatened because his old rhythms were gone. We started to notice how crossing a threshold, like a doorway, and going out into the street he became more armored and would revert to dragging his feet. Gregg is a great writer. We wrote emails back and forth during this very confused part of this year about assimilating so much change –physical and mental. He had been told he would be in a wheel chair by age 40 and besides the body work I was and am choreographing him into a leading role, partnering two amazingly well trained dancers and performing extensive solos. We perform “Diagnosis of a Faun” at Lamama Theater in December and at the Kennedy center in June. (funded by VSAarts)

At one point Oliver Sacks came to the studio and called him jokingly the cerebral palsy Nijinsky. ----

What I call the body work is not traditional and is based on my lifetime as a dancer and my interest in alignment issues and calling on my instincts and feedback from Gregg. Much of what we do makes him shake uncontrollably which functions as a release. Shaking is a healing method used by Bushman in Africa,

Japan

, and is related some think to the Pentecostals release during their church services. But mostly it’s a Herculean task for Gregg’s consciousness to re-route and re-pattern all day long everyday.

We have not found any easy cure but are both dedicated to this experiment as we have seen hard won results. Gregg’s fascination with his body and ever expanding confidence are a long way from his former attitudes. And his dancing is beautiful.

The Ancestors Must Be Smiling

2009-11-04T10:37:00.001-08:00

This photograph was in one of Tamar's scrapbooks and appeared in the Long Island Press, Monday July 19th, 1971. The caption from the article has been reproduced here verbatim.

A KICK AT ARTHRITS: Mrs. Barbara Rivero of Elmhurst, a former Rockette, gives a symbolic kick at arthritis after the Rockette Alumnae donated the proceeds of their annual dinner-dance to the Arthritis Fund. Looking on is Dr. Bernard Rogoff of Forest Hills, who has long been involved in arthritis treatment and research at the Hospital For Special Surgery. Mrs. Rivero, who danced under the name Bijou Baxter, is a licensed practical nurse at the hospital and has spent many hours teaching dancing in the cerebral palsy clinic.

"Dance," "Rogoff" and "Cerebral Palsy" all in one caption. Uncanny!

Sexy Beast

2009-10-30T19:45:00.000-07:00

(Thanks to Wikipedia and Lucie Baker for the following info)

In Roman mythology, fauns are place-spirits of untamed woodland. Romans connected their fauns with Greek satyrs, wild and orgiastic drunken followers of Bacchus. However, fauns and satyrs were originally quite different creatures. Both have horns and both resemble goats below the waist, humans above; but originally fauns had goat-like hooves, satyrs human feet. The Romans also had a god named Faunus and goddess Fauna, who, like the fauns, were goat-people.

Pan in Greek religion and mythology, is the companion of the nymphs, god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music. Two other Pans were Argeus and Nomios. Like Pan, both were the sons of Hermes, Argeus' mother being the nymph Sose, a prophetess: he inherited his mother's gift of prophecy, and was also a skilled hunter. Nomios' mother was Penelope (not the same as the wife of Odysseus). He was an excellent shepherd, seducer of nymphs, and musician upon the shepherd's pipes. Most of the mythological stories about Pan are actually about Nomios, not the god Pan. Although, Agreus and Nomios could have been two different aspects of the prime Pan, reflecting his dual nature as both a wise prophet and a lustful beast.

Designing Diagnosis Of A Faun

2009-10-28T10:15:00.001-07:00

The world of Diagnosis of A Faun consists of the faun, dancers, doctors, humans and nymphs. These are early costume and character sketches by designer, Robert Eggers.

the faun (Gregg Mozgala)
the nymph (Lucie Baker)

Dr. B (Emily Pope-Blackman)

Dr. A (Dr. Donald Kollisch)

the ballerina (Lucie Baker)

Forgotten Memories Of An Angry "Kid"

2009-10-28T09:09:00.001-07:00

This was forwarded on to me by my father from Rex Bent, a friend of the family and former shipmate of my old man (who was in the Navy for twenty-two years)

"Gregg will always have a special place in my heart. Still remember the day he was playing football and some kid called him a 'glimp'. Next thing I remember was him on top of that kid, kicking his ass, and the kid begging for mercy, with Gregg saying 'who's the glimp now?' ".

This pretty much set the tone for the next six years...
-Gregg

L'apres-midi d'un Faune from the film NIJINSKY

2009-10-23T03:55:00.000-07:00

Inspiration

2009-10-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

The Afternoon Of The Faun- Stephane Mallarme

These nymphs I would perpetuate.
So clear
Their light carnation, that it floats in the air
Heavy with tufted slumbers.
Was it a dream I loved?
My doubt, a heap of ancient night, is finishing
In many a subtle branch, which, left the true
Wood itself, proves, alas! that all alone I gave
Myself for triumph the ideal sin of roses.
Let me reflect
. . .if the girls of which you tell
Figure a wish of your fabulous senses!

Faun, the illusion escapes from the blue eyes
And cold, like a spring in tears, of the chaster one:
But, the other, all sighs, do you say she contrasts
Like a breeze of hot day in your fleece!
But no! through the still, weary faintness
Choking with heat the fresh morn if it strives,
No water murmurs but what my flute pours
On the chord sprinkled thicket; and the sole wind
Prompt to exhale from my two pipes, before
It scatters the sound in a waterless shower,
Is, on the horizon's unwrinkled space,
The visible serene artificial breath
Of inspiration, which regains the sky.
Oh you, Sicilian shores of a calm marsh
That more than the suns my vanity havocs,
Silent beneath the flowers of sparks, RELATE
"That here I was cutting the hollow reeds tamed
By talent, when on the dull gold of the distant
Verdures dedicating their vines to the springs,
There waves an animal whiteness at rest:
And that to the prelude where the pipes first stir
This flight of swans, no! Naiads, flies
Or plunges . . ."
Inert, all burns in the fierce hour
Nor marks by what art all at once bolted
Too much hymen desired by who seeks the Ia:
Then shall I awake to the primitive fervour,
Straight and alone, 'neath antique floods of light,
Lilies and one of you all through my ingenuousness.
As well as this sweet nothing their lips purr,
The kiss, which a hush assures of the perfid ones,
My breast, though proofless, still attests a bite
Mysterious, due to some august tooth;
But enough! for confidant such mystery chose
The great double reed which one plays 'neath the blue:
Which, the cheek's trouble turning to itself
Dreams, in a solo long, we might amuse
Surrounding beauties by confusions false
Between themselves and our credulous song;
And to make, just as high as love modulates,
Die out of the everyday dream of a back
Or a pure flank followed by my curtained eyes,
An empty, sonorous, monotonous line.
Try then, instrument of flights, oh malign
Syrinx, to reflower by the lakes where you wait for me!
I, proud of my rumour, for long I will talk
Of goddesses; and by picturings idolatrous,
From their shades unloose yet more of their girdles:
So when of grapes the clearness I've sucked,
To banish regret by my ruse disavowed,
Laughing, I lift the empty bunch to the sky,
Blowing into its luminous skins and athirst
To be drunk, till the evening I keep looking through.
Oh nymphs, we diverse MEMORIES refill.
"My eye, piercing the reeds, shot at each immortal
Neck, which drowned its burning in the wave
With a cry of rage to the forest sky;
And the splendid bath of their hair disappears
In the shimmer and shuddering, oh diamonds!
I run, when, there at my feet, enlaced. Lie (hurt by the languor they taste to be two)
Girls sleeping amid their own casual arms; them I seize, and not disentangling them, fly
To this thicket, hated by the frivilous shade,
Of roses drying up their scent in the sun
Where our delight may be like the day sun-consumed."
I adore it, the anger of virgins, the wild
Delight of the sacred nude burden which slips
To escape from my hot lips drinking, as lightning
Flashes! the secret terror of the flesh:
From the feet of the cruel one to the heart of the timid
Who together lose an innocence, humid
With wild tears or less sorrowful vapours.
"My crime is that I, gay at conquering the treacherous
Fears, the dishevelled tangle divided
Of kisses, the gods kept so well commingled;
For before I could stifle my fiery laughter
In the happy recesses of one (while I kept
With a finger alone, that her feathery whiteness
Should be dyed by her sister's kindling desire,
The younger one, naive and without a blush)
When from my arms, undone by vague failing,
This pities the sob wherewith I was still drunk."
Ah well, towards happiness others will lead me
With their tresses knotted to the horns of my brow:
You know, my passion, that purple and just ripe,
The pomegranates burst and murmur with bees;
And our blood, aflame for her who will take it,
Flows for all the eternal swarm of desire.
At the hour when this wood's dyed with gold and with ashes
A festival glows in the leafage extinguished:
Etna! 'tis amid you, visited by Venus
On your lava fields placing her candid feet,
When a sad stillness thunders wherein the flame dies.
I hold the queen!
O penalty sure . . .
No, but the soul
Void of word and my body weighed down
Succumb in the end to midday's proud silence:
No more, I must sleep, forgetting the outrage,
On the thirsty sand lying, and as I delight
Open my mouth to wine's potent star!
Adieu, both! I shall see the shade you became.

Diagnosis Of A Faun

2009-10-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

-photo by Lori Grinker

Greetings! It is with great enthusiasm that I announce the arrival of my new piece, Diagnosis of a Faun. This piece is my version of a story ballet with ornate sets and costumes and classical music. It is inspired in part by Afternoon of a Faun, the ballet that caused such a stir at its Paris premier in 1912. Our cast includes a faun and a nymph, two doctors, a forest and an operating room. Working on the lead role of the Faun with Gregg Mozgala has been fascinating. Gregg, an extraordinary actor is transforming into an extraordinary dancer. Our daily body work addresses the enormous intelligence his body has accrued through a lifetime negotiating cerebral palsy. Spinning the choreographic challenges of balance and partnering into the creation of the unique leading role he will play, is a process we both love.

Our leading ladies, Emily Pope-Blackman and Lucie Baker are enjoying some challenges as well, as they strut from toe shoes to high heels, to bare feet, from text and acting. Their choreography tests all the body intelligence they have accrued through their lifetime of professional dance training. I am also pleased to announce the involvement of Dr. Don Kollisch, a Family Physician who will partner dancer Lucie Baker in a classical pas de deux. We are both thrilled to explore his expertise and... My fabulous production team includes Rob Eggers (Designer), Leon Rothenberg (Sound Designer), Tony Giovannetti (Lighting Designer) and Liz Filbrun (Project Manager). How lucky I am, to have been commissioned by VSA Arts and to be invited by them to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in June, 2010. Additionally, I was generously given a New York season by LaMamma, ETC, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship from which I can make a documentary of my process working with Gregg (more on this in the 2010 newsletter). We hope to see you at the performance and the Gala Reception on December 5th.

-Tamar