Unicorn by Leslie Seiters

Jess – Eric – Leslie – Anya

(The Second) Unicorn

I got the chance to participate in a class taught by all four of the dancers before I saw them perform Unicorn. The class was very different from any other I’ve ever taken and made me aware of a lot of thing sin their performance that I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. During the class, we did an exercise where we were laying on our back with our legs bent so our feet were on the floor. We lifted our foot off the ground a bit and let it fall back to the ground just using its weight to fall. We did this multiple times, paying attention tot he sound, the sensations, and the reaction from the rest of our bodies that came from that movements. We then repeated the same movement but with a little bit of resistance to soften the landing or our foot, and again adding a little bit of force to making out foot land harder, all while still paying attention to the things we had focused on the first few times. The point of the exercise was to get us to notice all the things that happen and sprout from little movements and little changes to those little movements, to bring our attention to those things and make us truly take notice of what our bodies were doing. This effected the way I watched the performance later that day because I was paying much closer attention tot he little things in the dancer’s bodies that were effecting the rest of their movements in a big way. I was also paying greater attention tot eh sounds that their bodies were making that I ever have in another performance, which was very eye opening for me, especially since they use the sounds of not only their bodies live but also the recorded sounds of movements so heavily in their work.

Something that I took great note of in their work is just the way their bodies were working. While watching them dance, I had this amazing sensation that I was actually watching their bodies moving and working rather than simply connecting movements into a dance. I think part of the reason I was so in tune to the workings of their muscles and bodies was because I wasn’t distracted by other things and I was able to really watch them. By “other things”, I mean that their costumes were revealing in a way that made their bodies able to be seen and none of them had hair that drew attentions (everyone had very short hair other than Jess, who had it secured and out of the way in a high ponytail). We were sitting in greenbacks on the floor, which was a perspective that added to my ability to see their movements. Also, since we were so low and close to the dancers, it was almost impossible to miss the amazing muscle definition that the dancers had when they increased their proximity to the audience on multiple occasions (specifically, when Eric was singing very close to the audience, it was nearly impossible to miss how defined his calf muscles were as he moved through relevé).

Q&A with the dancers

Why is it called unicorn?

Leslie jokingly said unicorn and it stuck, but stuck for a good reason. In dance, you can’t make magic happen but the magic happens on its own but only if you let the magic find you. It’s kind of like a unicorn because you can’t go out and make a unicorn appear but they have magic nonetheless. They’re both kind of animal, kind of magic, and both kind of just get found.

How does Leslie see herself as a director?

They are all friends and colleges and working with them feels very peer-ish, so it’s hard fro her to put herself in the position of director. She had to find how to be a director in this group. She uses “light touch”, not sticking herself in the work too much while still being an outside eye while inside the piece. She has to move in and out of the group in a directorial way while not making that switch a focal point in the process. As an artist, she has to think of interesting things that nobody else has thought of without forcing it. It’s kind of a found piece: found sounds and found movement (in the sense the “found” means sourced from other things). She said creating is an arc because she personally changes so much that the piece inevitably changes. She also said that working with her friends is similar to working with students but different in that working with students requires a heavier hand.

Costumes

Jess is in pink so it seems like she’s special but she’s not. It’s a way to break expectation in an unexpected way. Contradiction was a huge part of the process as a general theme.

Music and sound

Where was the inspiration from?

They experimented some with duration (did a part of the dance in a loop for three hours) and tried to get a sense of the essence of it.

Some of the sounds were sampled from the first Unicorn

Leslie wanted it to incorporate more sounds of bodies and weight; for example, the sound in the beginning when Eric and Leslie are on the floor is the recorded sounds from a solo rehearsal. Leslie played with different ways of relating to sound, kept snippets of pop music from other pieces, etc., and incorporating dialogue of every day.

Individual experiences within the piece

Eric: through most of the work, in the many different times that they’ve practiced performance, through all of those things, there’s a practice about being a person. A note from Leslie, “be people dancing.” has become a part of what he tries to do in performance. “This is me. This is my whole self. It feels very inevitable that it will always be me individually. I also am never working to be an individual.”

Anya: it feels both old and new at the same time. The first Unicorn had 8 people. There are certain things that feel known, kind of known, and impossible to know. Be who you are as a person in your dancing body. Being attentive to and negotiate what you know, how you know, who you know, etc. Try being your own body but trying on other people’s bodies. There are furry edges. “I am not back on my haunches in the work, I am on point”. Leslie offers a lot of specificity and a lot of space and that’s really good for a director to provide. There has to be some container for the freedoms.

Eric: the more you work together, the less it feels like one or the other (specificity in when you are leaving yourself as a person and when you are focusing on the details with the other people). You can be who you are and also be specific with the other people.

Jess: the quickest way to be present is to try and not be present: oscillation between being and out of the group and your individual self. Clear and blurry: what is good? When you’re in it, clear is really clearly one thing and blurry has started to become a particular thing. How are you clear and blurry with different parts of your body at the same time? It’s an oscillation place of individual and group or individual and other (elaborated using sound effects).

Set vs. Improv

It all feels like choreography because there’s the over arching and then there’s also really predetermined steps. There’s a thing called “catch” (picked up from Trisha brown, Bill T. Jones, and Bebe Miller). You watch, catch watch you can, make a phrase from what you caught, and teach it. Don’t edit. Take everything you see and put it together live. You’re always catching something new. “The thing makes the thing makes the thing.” They dis this to generate material for this and other pieces but this process is in the actual piece itself. At a point toward the beginning, one of the dancers will be catching from the other dancers right then and there and then they will re-perform that caught movement as a solo later in the dance. When asked how they remember it, they said it’s really difficult but it get easier with practice, even though that seems silly since it’s improvised.

About working

Being on the west coast is hard to get noticed. Getting across the country is great because there are new eyes new people but getting there in the first place is difficult. Getting videos, gathering documents, and learning about the work to get to the point of being able to sell the piece is very important because no one is going to want to wager money on something that the dancers can’t even sell. They said they don’t get paid for rehearsal but that it’s better to being the work you want to be in and get your income elsewhere than to be paid for work you don’t wan to be in. They practice every Thursday morning for three hours not connected to a particular project or institution. Although they say that time isn’t connected to an institution, they said they really only have a home in universities. They mainly get support from institutions but that “support” is mostly free space. It’s been a long time since they’ve been out in the world separate from institutions and it’s been long enough that they hunger to branch out again. You have to talk to people you know in other places and use those connections to branch out. If you care about the work, you’ll put in the effort to get it out in the world. People are a primary resource. Make the work you want to make with the people you want to make the work with and magic will start to happen.

How long have you been working?

First version started a little over three years ago? (8 then 6 people) then the second version started this past winter. All of the set material except for one tiny phrase is new to this version of Unicorn. When asked how they decided what the want to keep from the other Unicorn, they said that they didn’t edit but rather that Leslie arranged things.

How did you find each other?

Jess had a habit of finding the people that were doing contact improv and Somatics wherever she was and dancing with them. She did that and met Leslie. Eric was there as well and then Anya later moved to the same place and met the rest of them.

Tips for finding people to dance with in the real world:

Anya: If you see somebody dancing and think, “I wanna dance with you”, contact them. There’s something about asking for what you’re interested in. A lot more things are possible than you think are.

Jess: find the people that are dancing.

Anya: go to festivals and find people. It’s a really tiny network internationally and connections can be very strong. It’s really possible to see a lot of work, take a lot of classes, and meet a lot of people.

Do they still get nervous before you perform?

Jess: yes

Anya: really randomly in the middle, but not before