5.02.2003
so...yes its true. i have semi-big, poofy hair.
i have this thing with my hair being flat. every time i try to grow it out..its just long and flat. i used to think this was true because i had thin hair. but to my surprise, a haircutter told me i actually have thick hair...which weighs my hair down...thus the flatness. anyways, i've always had a thing for bigger hair. it just makes me smile...i think its more natural too. anyways, so when my friend christina got big hair back in college, i loved it. she had gotten a salon to braid her whole head into small braids, and then permed the braids. she only kept it for a week or so - but i loved it.
so i jacked the idea...and decided that this is the time to do it. yups. so, one night, karina and i sat in our apt for 6 hours braiding, perming, and un-braiding my hair. all for $6. gotta give karina props for offering to do it, and then spending 6 hours doing all the work.
so anyways...honestly, its been liberating. some people like it, and some people don't. and i love that. it makes some people wonder, "why did she do that to her hair?" maybe this is me being a "rebel" in my own way. ha! maybe i want to stand out in a city like ny. or maybe ny is anonymous enough for me to walk around without feeling so self-conscious. yea that's more like it.
what's next i think to myself...shaved head? maybe a lil too extreme for me. but maybe a boy cut...
artist statement from bill shannon, "crutchmaster"....
Recently through dance choreography I have juxtaposed abstract forms of urban streetstyle kinetics into a textural landscape with an express focus on time and how it can be used to reinvent the familiar.. my role as director and choreographer is in the setting of pace and creation of mood. The dance I live and perform reflects the same landscape I attempt to define through choreographic expression. This dance exists as a physically concentrated form of a much broader spatiotemporal continuum. When I attempt to define myself as an artist I dont say to myself I am a choreographer or I am a dancer. I know choreographers but I am not one of them. I also know dancers but I am not like them either. The reality is that I lack the specialized focus of the choreographer or the training of the dancer. The way I see it, I currently function as an outsider artist of an interdisciplinary nature within the dance field. I use the term outsider because I was never trained in dance. The dance I perform is pretty much my own invention and, never having seen much choreography, the dance pieces I choreograph lack the sophistication of contemporary artist in the field. So if I am unsophisticated and entirely out of the loop why are the venues normally reserved for those who are so so sophisticated opening up for me? I think its because I have an original vision that holds no alliegances and bring dancers to the stage who are raw talent that never make the rehearsal. Through dancing I have created an entire classification of movement that is technically specific while culturally a hybrid and unique unto me. What I mean to say is that in a way I have invented a new form, profoundly different from anything you may have seen.. this invention is rooted in the hiphop/skateboard tradition of street improvisation yet has a formal timeless quality beyond the boundaries ofits roots... I dance in the street when I walk in the street.. the whole street watches me walk down the street... walk a block with me.. you will see.. I weave traffic like a bird flies among the herd.. I stop traffic when I fly.. this is no exaggeration.. I pause and complete strangers ask me why.. I go and they do the same.. walk a year with me if you have the patience to keep up with the creeping pressure of a cumulative wall of gut impulse nice intentions... what I have discovered is that in the same instance I could be an heroic daring stuntster for one and a pitiful struggling mope to another... and this discovery was at first a great sadness to me then at the critical moment it became my greatest joy.. and that is why I am an artist.. why I am a creative individual.. to make things work.. to have no expectations .. to simply live my creativity without precedence.. to just follow my soul and stay true to people in the most profound sense of staying true to myself.. an artist.. without any specialized medium but the idea... and the impulse.
...a few months ago at Shelter, a couple of friends were raving about this guy dancing on crutches. lots of style and movement...and then i hear about a performance by bill shannon, "crutchmaster." didn't end up going, but he's performing again...this time a more interdisciplinary piece with spoken word and multimedia. it's so neat, though, to use your handicap as creatively and inspirationally as he does. he actually just helped choreograph alot of the new Cirque du Soleil, Varekai, that is currently touring. go to his website and read more about him...more to come if i go see him next week :)
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