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The Runner (2007)
performing a practice : TH : 05.08.08 : OSU : SULLIVANT HALL : STUDIO 2




Directive:
“what if every cell in my body, at once, has the ability to invite being seen (in the lab)
getting what it needs while surrendering the pattern of facing a single direction?
NO BIG DEAL!”

concept, score & foundational direction: Deborah Hay
adaptation & premiere presentation: CoCo Loupe

In September 2007, in Findhorn, Scotland, 22 performers commissioned and subsequently adapted The Runner, a new solo work created by Deborah Hay for her Solo Performance Commissioning Project (SPCP). Hay develops a new piece for each SPCP as a vehicle for sharing her “practice as performance” philosophy with artists who wish to question their current notions of embodiment, expression, content, form and modes of performance.

Over a period of three months, the performers engage in private, daily practices of the piece’s score which is constantly informed by the associated performance directive. Thus, each practice session (and future public presentation) is approached as an opportunity to allow for spontaneous physical reaction to and reflection upon the language and structure of the score. The performers “perform the practice” everyday in order to develop their own personal understanding and unique interpretation of the piece.

 A loose metaphor: If the score is a map that the performer/driver follows (form) and acts upon (content) then the performance directive is a back-seat driver, albeit a wise and friendly one, who perpetually questions the amount and quality of attention that you are investing in your travels.

About Deborah Hay

Deborah Hay was born in Brooklyn. Her mother was her first dance teacher, and directed her training until she was a teenager. She moved to Manhattan in the 1960’s, where she continued her training with Merce Cunningham and Mia Slavenska. In 1964, Hay danced with the Cunningham Dance Company during a 6-month tour through Europe and Asia.

 In the 1960’s, Deborah Hay was a member of a group of experimental artists know as the Judson Dance Theater, which became one of the most radical and explosive 20th century art movements. By 1967, Hay had already achieved a prominent status as a young choreographer, and her unique style began to emerge as a distinct voice within the aesthetics of Judson. Sharing with her colleagues the ideas that dance engage with other art forms, and that the artificial distinction between trained and untrained performers be challenged, she focused on large-scale dance projects involving untrained dancers, fragmented and choreographed music accompaniment, and the execution of ordinary movement patterns performed under stressful conditions.

 In the late 1990’s Deborah Hay focused almost exclusively on rarified and enigmatic solo dances based on her new experimental choreographic method, such as The Man Who Grew Common in Wisdom, Voilà, The Other Side of O, Fire, Boom Boom Boom, Music, Beauty, The North Door, The Ridge, Room, performing them around the world and passing them on to noted performers in the US, Europe, and Australia. She also choreographed a duet for herself and Mikhail Baryshnikov, Single Duet, which toured with the Past/Forward project in 2000.

 Her third book, My Body, the Buddhist (Wesleyan University Press, 2000) is an introspective series of reflections on the major lessons of life that she has learned from her body while dancing.