Animal Dance: Field Notes for Communicating Outside of Language

Figure 1. Confined by our walls, whether wire or glass. Dirty or a dance floor. Two surfaces overlaid, framing the activity of their occupants. (Here was a place made to play, swing and / sway / the most appealing stranger.) We tell ourselves stories to gauge our range of movement. Our degrees of autonomy vary.(1) She paces the perimeter, eyeing a lemur in another / enclosure, who too can never escape / its narrative. How we relate to other / our own / bodies. Consider access vs. security: what measure. What we must look out for or: a way to behave in schematized spaces.(2) A place to expose / process / a kind of ongoingness.(3) If what we desire lies beyond reach, why bother? We work with what we have. A selection of themes explored, one for each passage. How to manage containment. Remember, these parallels limited. Remember, she might pounce. (I approached without hesitation, shyness shook off: an invitation. We were the only two in that crowd.)(4) A lion captive yet who is protecting whom. What she understands of her circumstances(5) / what we salvage, in our cages.(6) Sometimes the difference between inside / outside is nearly indiscernible.

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(1)One distinction between animals and other forms of life is the power to move from place to place, observes zoologist James Gray in the opening of his 1953 book, How Animals Move. In zoos, of course, this ability is severely constrained. While in Rome in the late 1960s, Simone Forti studied animals on the streets as well as in the zoo, and her movement studies frequently focused on understanding “gestures of captivity” (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 28).

(2)Forti’s work in the ’70s, rooted in the application of “schematized form” and geometric space, aligned with the concerns of process art (which exposed how art was made and the materials with which it was constructed) (Morse 2016, 150, 165). Indeed, various pieces featured performers standing or walking while repeatedly tracing diagonal paths and circles. But within this framework, her attention to the lowered or limited vantage points of lizards or other caged animals also served to “cultivate a radically skewed perspective” and a “new model of perception” of which other artists, especially sculptor Richard Serra, took notice (Morse 2016, 165).

(3)Much of Forti’s work was based on the investigations of crawling and circling she’d conducted at the Rome zoo. She often collaborated with sound artists such as Charlemagne Palestine, in whose music the textures “‘of repetitions and evolving variations are so close that the term melody does not seem to apply. . . . His predominant time sense is a kind of ongoingness.’” What’s most significant is the focus on “immersion” in the process by which art is made (Morse 2016, 150).

(4)Forti: “ . . . there’s a state of dancing, like there’s a state of sleeping, or a state of shivering. Some people have a shyness about entering that state, but everybody does it sometime. Often, at parties, people drop their shyness and enter a dance state. And when I’m in a dance state, the movement that comes out through me enchants me. It can be very simple movement, but it always comes with a sense of wonder, and as one of life’s more delicious moments” (Forti 1998, 108).

(5)Presenting the body as a site of both confinement and potential, “Forti takes animal sensations into her own body, embodying animality rather than replicating a situation of captivity.” In her dances, “animals are not idealized and romanticized . . . but are recognized as beings forced into circumstances beyond their control, constantly mediated by human intervention” (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 46).

(6)Forti: “I watched them salvage, in their cages, whatever they could of their consciousness” (Forti 1998, 91).

Figure 2. We are all anonymous in certain contexts. Which is preferable / safer / leaves more room for / interpretation. Freedom is not the opposite of vigilance. What we are more or less likely to do with a stranger is anybody’s guess. Have I mentioned this essay is about meeting someone at a dance club? Consider the dynamic of observation, watcher or watched. On the prowl, as they say. The animal in this photograph is not a polar bear; I’ll explain later. Where the hidden zone of the personal is contained within a public space: how to define this scenario.(1,2) Where two realms intersect, boundaries / blurred. (Hush Hush.) I consider adding a new layer of footnotes, facts such as: this was the name of the club. But some details are peripheral, simply unnecessary. (He was in my immediate field of vision, my attention trained only on him.) Questions of perspective: how our vantage point dictates what we see / how our gaze inevitably follows an object of desire.(3) How my body was conditioned to move alongside his, motion as a means of enchantment: a mode of communicating outside language.(4) I tell you how to read me. (As I read him, his kind, warm smile.) Today I google him; I still know his face.

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(1)The duality of the personal and the public is a concern explored by many artists during the ’60s and ’70s, including Forti. In Cloths (1967), performers crouch, hidden, behind frames and flip pieces of fabric from front to back, accompanied by live and recorded songs. Based on a dream related to Forti’s marriage, Cloths offers public presentation while exposing the “hidden zone of the personal.” As critic Rosalind E. Krauss suggests, the work’s blank canvas(es) might serve to signify the “public space of meaning . . . as opposed to ‘the privacy of psychological space’” of expressionist art, which many artists at the time resisted and sought to supplant with newer movements like Minimalism (Morse 2016, 60).

(2)In Trisha Brown’s Roof Piece (1971), dancers were stationed across a series of SoHo rooftops. A dancer performed a gesture that was repeated by the next dancer and then passed along, north to south and back again, south to north, operating like a game of telephone. Visibility of the piece hinged on “knowledge and access,” the first viewing held for friends and colleagues, the second visible only by those on a nearby roof (Morse 2016, 165). The piece actively raised questions regarding the modes of private versus public, welcoming such interrogation and serving as an example of how perspective can shift the impact of a situation, whether real or performative.

(3)When Forti moved like an animal, she could see only what was directly in front of her, “the immediate present.” This link between temporality and movement is clearly tied to her subjects’ lower center of gravity and inability to see beyond the horizon, into the distance (Morse 2016, 159). Metaphorically, this limited point of view might also relate to animals’ reality of living fully in the present, a mode that humans might aspire to more—one that likely would lead to a greater willingness to take risks.

(4)Describing her work Sleepwalkers/Zoo Mantras (1969) (alternately known by both names), Forti writes of “a return to movement as a means of enchantment, as in somersaulting down a hill, as a polar bear.” Regarding the shift in title, critic Julia Bryan-Wilson notes: “ . . . as a sacred utterance a mantra points to a realm of communication somewhat outside of normative language, one that, with repetition, leads to greater insight. But who reiterates the ‘zoo mantra’ to achieve inner calm—the dancer, or the animal?” (2015, 39).

Figure 3. A kind of circling: walk the edge, stop and turn, repeat. These are patterns to settle into and continually replicate.(1) We try comforting ourselves when there’s nothing else / to do. Also: a way of feeling each other / out. (If he maintained a modest perimeter, I didn’t question his reserve.) So much revolves around circles. (I did not let him out of my view.) The degree of focus, persistence required to perform an act over and over without regard to potential “success.”(2) To find comfort in constraints: a way to maintain: we salvage what we can of our consciousness, in our cages. How in dance we default to circles. Patterns settled into, continually / replicated. (I always believed / the best of him.) A vague scene replaying in my head: our positions not fixed. (Yet I recall his back faced the front entrance or exit, depending on perspective. The relationship among our parts shifting fluidly one gesture to the next.)(3) Now it occurs to me: I’ve captured the animals in photographs, which Forti would never have done. (Outside after, he kissed my cheeks, a custom not mine. Like a promise. And he called me / angel.) We are all subject to the laws of gravity. I just hope there isn’t an earthquake.

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(1)Forti’s animal studies were inspired by the vigor, adaptability, stress, and “occasional joy” of animals who develop patterns they “settle into and continually replicate” within the confines of their enclosures (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 41).

(2)Describing Serra’s short film Hand Catching Lead (1969), Krauss acknowledges “its quality of relentless persistence—of doing something over and over again without regarding “‘success’” as a particular goal or priority (Krauss 1977, 244). Serra made the film the same year he saw Forti’s Fallers (see Figure 5), which had no doubt made an impression on him and likely influenced the film (Morse 2016, 154).

(3)While observing animals at the zoo, Forti studied how their bodies were in constant motion. She drew pictures of them eating, walking, rolling, rocking, swaying, and she used these renderings for investigations of “anatomy, ritual movement, gravitational forces, and limberness.” These animal drawings demonstrate her attempts to record the extreme pliability of their bodies, to illustrate how the “relationships among their parts” can shift fluidly and rapidly from one gesture to the next (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 35).

Figure 4. Where do we go when we’ve no place to be? If captive: unseen. The strange matter of dislocation, isolation.(1) As a polar bear swings his head, in a dance / state of measure, in communion with forces of which he is part.(2) This is not a polar bear. I have photographed a black bear in its place. The way negative space makes a shape, of absence; we fill in what we want to see. The privilege inherent in this desire. Is this an animal or a sea / of broken-down boxes, a black mass at its center? In our loneliness devise ways to comfort ourselves, through movement. I am unseen, often. (But in that place I made him see me.) We work with what we have. Is this bear taking care of itself, a body at rest(3) or immobilized / in despair? I do not stay long enough to make a determination; just a few hours at the zoo. If we are agents of our own realities, create opportunities for interaction. Unfortunately, the polar bear habitat is closed for construction. Underscoring the complexities of a liminal space: whether stage, cage or dance floor. (Later he emailed, apologetic; he wasn’t technically available.) I’d try to confirm the wording but that account was hacked, shut down years ago. 

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(1)Forti was drawn to animals out of “a shared sense of dislocation, loneliness, and isolation” yet attuned “to their moments of connection and collective recreation . . . aware that their movements were shaped not only by their state of captivity but also by their inner reserves of strength” (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 45).

(2)The topic of measurement was central to much of Forti’s thinking and extended into her animal studies. She questioned the arbitrary nature of standardized measurement, how “standard ideals” are determined through “cultural agreement.” Connecting these ideas to the processes behind her pieces, and how they were embodied in animals (including humans), she notes: “It seems to me that when a polar bear swings his head, he is in a dance state. He is in a state of establishing measure, and of communion with the forces of which he is part” (see Figure 9) (Forti 1998, 119).

(3)In multiple texts, Forti describes how she came to identify strongly with the animals she observed and intuited that, as her own movements serve as a marker of her identity to which she can always return, so too can animals retain their specific animal nature. For example, through its inevitably limited movements, a polar bear in captivity was “taking care of itself in a way I could understand. . . . That bear, whose genetic makeup keeps it ranging at great distances over frozen lands, was in a small enclosure in the Rome zoo. Why did my heart identify with its heart? It just did. . . .” (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 46).

Figure 5. These nets lace the sky: boundaries built to protect us or keep us / confined. Grounded versus allure of flight; or is it falling? I consider cutting this section, but a body subject to gravity seems relevant; I’ve left it in for now.(1) So we enter a space / unknown. Strangers wanting to be touched, an interplay made dangerous, thrilling.(2) So we dance. An act irrational: a measure of / the draw of / falling or. (When, a year later, I flew cross-country to see him.) Can you make out the eagles perched on a branch? These birds, of course, can fly but do not have agency here. (He played Nick Drake on guitar, we watched Fellini.) If I’m honest, I feel silly describing this scenario, this romance; I deliberately avoid too much specificity. In this essay, I’ve posterized my images: a system to sidestep revealing what is overly personal. It’s hard to be earnest, not trite, in telling a love story. The goal is not to obfuscate, yet. The strategy of addressing such material as a technical problem appeals to me.(3)

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(1)From the late ’60s through the ’70s, dancers’ focus on process involved bodies subject to natural forces: “falling . . . caught up in centrifugal and centripetal forces of Forti’s circling; or aligned with the ground” (Morse 2016, 154). Also: how the idea of falling often carries metaphorical meanings, as in falling for a ruse, or falling in love.

(2)In Forti’s Fallers (1968), performers drop from the roof of a seventeenth-floor penthouse to a terrace twelve feet below, providing an “astonishing view of apparent free-fall.” The piece presented the body “as the act of falling, and as the fallen,” with an intentionally ambiguous degree of agency, making the work appear dangerous and thrilling. Rendering the body as an object, it also “coupled the implicit awareness of the act of throwing oneself off a roof with a seemingly heedless absorption in the act of falling or dropping”—an irrational act that was “disturbing, disorienting” (Morse 2016, 154).

(3)For postmodern dancers, the notion of integrating material deemed private, of exposing emotion in the work, was complex. They did not eschew its use altogether, but rather, devised ways to allude to the personal in a systematic way. Anna Halprin stated that incorporating the personal “might be best approached as a ‘technical problem’” and suggested looking for objective ways to manage such content to make its inclusion possible (Morse 2016, 21).

Figure 6. What makes a space of wild abandon?(1) Do visible walls limit or free us? As I’ve said, constraints can be generative. I look for hatchlings in a tub of turtles, but they’re difficult to see, hidden beneath leaves and some kind of foam. Smaller than a nickel: the perfect size to eat. Human as protector / predator / prey. Watched through glass: small ones, don’t get used to people; not a good survival strategy. I make a list of words associated with “club,” another for “zoo.” Look for overlaps. Engineered for unpredictable encounters or. A dance floor as an open field, potentially, ostensibly, for wild abandon.(2) Rereading the source text, I discover this isn’t the salient point; I keep it anyway. How to lower inhibitions, as with alcohol, what a dim light / obscures. Music to overwhelm our senses, making it difficult to hear. (Yet I was clear in what I wanted, in that space.)(3) What’s acceptable, or encouraged, when boundaries are pushed? Movement as a means / to an end; a mechanism for finding a mate. In dating, I’ve never much appreciated process, though I wish this weren’t true. (When I learned he was in the area only temporarily, for school.) But we are all here temporarily. (What outcome did I need to be satisfied?)

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(1)Forti’s movements based on her animal studies included rolling slowly from one side of a space to another, like seaweed in a surf, and balancing on her hands and toes in a plank position, alternately hopping and then returning to a state of stillness. “More than wild abandon, these small, even modest movements call to mind play as well as entrapment (as in seaweed ‘caught’ by the waves) . . .” (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 40).

(2)Forti was interested in the zoo’s function as a structural constraint but also as an open field akin to a performance space or stage. She wanted to explore “how dancing bodies—both human and animal—might convey solitude and agitation, but also steadying purpose” (see Figures 4, 7). Yet because of the empathy she felt toward the animals, observing them in captivity wore on her; thus many of her works focused on the animals’ reserves of strength and their attempts at “self-soothing” (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 45).

(3)In describing what she terms a “dance state” (see Figure 1), Forti refers to an absorption in her movement and an intense awareness of her perceptions, channeled through a “‘special order of thoughts that come out of the body in motion and which seem to be one with the motion itself.’” Ironically, she arrives at this sense of heightened awareness through disorientation, brought about, in part, by swinging her head in a dizzying fashion, in the manner of an animal (Morse 2016, 169).

Figure 7. As a zoo is a home is a cage; we are all performers, though the stage and the plot may vary.(1) Zoom out, see the boundary; zoom in, the fence / disappears. How distance from a subject inevitably alters our perspective. (How he made me think about sustainability, inadvertent / othering.) How understanding drives desire / to be better. To be clear, these conversations came about later, post-zoo / I mean, post-dancing. Truth is like a tongue: hard to deny reality once you’ve tasted it. The nose, of course, also. And don’t forget the trunk; how an elephant beats the ground, proving it’s safe to walk. Front foot forward, then places the rear one in the same footprint. I’ve come to watch the elephants dance.(2) We each have a name, remember. Our muscles oriented in different directions, allowing for greater maneuverability. Imagine: the strength and agility required to balance such a large body.(3)

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(1)In addition to observing animals in the zoo, Forti spent a winter in Turin, where she became involved in Michelangelo Pistoletto’s collaborative theater troupe Lo Zoo, which performed satirical plays on the streets of fishing villages and elsewhere. The name reflected Pistoletto’s belief that “so-called civilization had relegated every animal to its cage. The less dangerous, more docile and submissive had been placed in large common fenced-in areas: factories, housing projects, sport stadiums.” Although the piece Forti choreographed for the troupe was never performed, the project is indicative of her close association and identification with animals, reflecting the sense that any creature who lacks agency is essentially captive in a zoo (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 47–48).

(2)One of Forti’s experiences at the Rome zoo that found its way into Sleepwalkers/Zoo Mantras was her observation of the movements of an elephant: “I saw an elephant who had perfected a walk with which he passed the time of day. It was a walking backwards and forwards, some four to seven steps each way with, at either end, a slight kick which served to absorb the momentum and to reverse the direction of travel of that great and finely-balanced bulk.” The first sequence in her piece derives from this movement (Forti 1998, 146).

(3)While Forti felt sadness and empathy toward the caged animals she observed, she also viewed them as “models of resourcefulness, of ingenuity, of managing stress, and of endurance” (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 47–48).

Figure 8. Look carefully for the signs. Stay calm. Slow and quietly back / away don’t / run. Allow plenty of room and always identify an escape route. How to behave when encountering a stranger. Look carefully for signs. Make eye contact. Understand a specific gesture, quality of touch. (Before I left, when he said he didn’t want a relationship.) The desire to connect yet. Hurting is easy or. How to behave when encountering a bear. In this writing, I’d intended to examine different themes in each section; now reassure myself as they appear to both dissolve and materialize as I go / deeper. (What could I expect?) I use the term “relationship” loosely. In these circumstances consider all angles of vulnerability. What if instead of fear(1) we felt empathy, approached with a presumption of trust rather than malice. In a café an artist recommends exploring grief through the use of dead rats.(2) (And did this interaction rate as a failure or success?) But that isn’t the point. I struggle with evaluative measures. How we relate to other bodies, or: intrude on others’ spaces. No matter / the animal.(3)

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(1)Forti’s work showed the potential to bond with others through bodily movement, even across species, as she demonstrated through what she called “passive identification” with the animals at the zoo (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 35). According to one participant in Huddle (1961), “‘You are breathing someone else’s breath and you can hear all their sounds . . . you can tell if someone climbing is . . . scared.’” The performers could sense each others’ “states of mind through physical cues” (Morse 2016, 147). The vulnerabilities laid bare in this exercise are palpable.

(2)Focusing significant attention on the anxious behaviors of the animals she studied, Forti’s understanding of them was “tinged with grief,” as she felt great tenderness and empathy toward them (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 44).

(3)Forti recognized the uneasiness wrought by the zoo “system,” which offered examples of “nonverbal exchange, of catalyzing bodily sensations, and of compassion among denigrated subjects.” Her dances, in line with the post-humanist thinking of the time, address the constraints fostered by “systems of gender and speciesism, as well as the possibility of surprising alliances across the human/nonhuman divide” (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 49–50).

Figure 9. How our bodies know to move yet / we ape lions, bears.(1) A man’s hand taps the glass inches from her head. Taunting, luring. The sun’s reflection makes it difficult to discern the subject and its actions. So much depends on / context, the configuration of boundaries. I search for reason. The lion’s walk along a wall: a means of self-soothing or: plotting against unsuspecting prey. The latter does not align nicely with an empathetic stance. A way of maintaining / control or simply what we want to see. Desire, by definition, is irrational. (Our story didn’t have a lot of plot points.) I almost forget to mention him here. (We stayed in touch a while, I’d see him when he visited.) I still haven’t adequately addressed the notion of dating as process. Alas. How this essay loops back to the beginning, the closest I come to mimicking patterns of postmodern dancers. How I tried, failed to use a series of overlapping circles, triangles.(2) As a lion retraces a path along glass, enacting the ongoing nature of things. How tomorrow, the activities of today could be forgotten, as if they never occurred. Or rather, simply continued as a series of repetitions, evolving variations, with no apparent beginning / end.

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(1)Among Forti’s zoo subjects were large cats, in whom she observed adaptability and strength. In her writing, she discusses their compulsive pacing along the border of their enclosures, which seemed to provide some degree of relief and offered her a new sense of what she was doing when she danced. Movement is, for the animals as well as for her, a method of control and redirected awareness: “At times I’ve escaped an oppressive sense of fragmentation by plunging my consciousness into cyclical momentum” (Bryan-Wilson 2015, 45–46).

(2)The emphasis on patterning in process art and 1970s dance manifested in many ways—from drawn vocal scores to repeated sequences of simple gestures to a focus on spatial structures, which included mapping out how movements would be performed across a space. These techniques enabled artists to explore the same materials and concepts in new ways. For example, Lucinda Childs’s Particular Reel (1973) features a series of circular revolutions, a repeated phrase that makes an “unbroken loop” (Morse 2016, 159–60). For her part, Forti often worked with numerical patterns and connected them with movement subject to gravitational forces: “‘. . . I use the numerals as a floor pattern but I try to move through the curves and straight lines as dynamically as possible. In that way my sense of the figures is really kinesthetic; I work with the centrifugal and other forces with a sense of measure.’” For a section of Home Base (1979), she created a floor plan with seven circles and two intersecting triangles, Arabic numerals contained within them; accompanied by drawings with clustered circles representing the Star of David overlaid with the numerals, this would guide her pattern of movements on the dance floor (Morse 2016, 163).

Notes

In Figure 4, the line “Unfortunately, the polar bear enclosure is closed for construction” is from the home page of the Oregon Zoo website.

In Figure 6, the lines “I look for the hatchlings but they are so hard to see, hidden beneath leaves and foam. Smaller than a nickel. The perfect size to eat” are adapted from a page from the Oregon Zoo website.

In Figure 7, the lines relating to an elephant’s trunk as a steadying instrument and descriptions of the muscles of the tongue and nose are adapted from the Elephant Nature Park website and RealClear Science blog.

The instructions at the beginning of Figure 8 are from signs at the Oregon Zoo.

Sources

Bryan-Wilson, Julia. “Simone Forti Goes to the Zoo.” October Magazine, Ltd., The MIT Press Journals, no. 152 (Spring 2015): 26–52. 

Forti, Simone. Handbook in Motion, Third Edition: An Account of an Ongoing Personal Discourse and Its Manifestations in Dance. Self-published, 1998.

Morse, Meredith. Soft Is Fast: Simone Forti in the 1960s and After. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016.

Krauss, Rosalind E. Passages in Modern Sculpture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977.

Valerie Witte is the author of a game of correspondence (Black Radish, 2015) and The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (Operating System, 2019), co-written with Sarah Rosenthal. Chapbooks include The history of mining (g.e. collective/Poetry Flash, 2013) and It’s been a long time since I’ve dreamt of someone (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). She has attended residencies through The Hambidge Center, Ragdale Foundation, and La Porte Peinte in Noyers, France. She is a founding member of the Bay Area Correspondence School, and she currently resides in Portland, OR.