Feelings: What was your first reaction, your first feeling? Delay any kind of analysis.

My feelings were different throughout the project.
Initially, I was reluctant and a bit scared. I knew the project did not have enough resources and that I would need to spend absolutely all of my company - BodyMeld savings to make this project possible. I was questioning the importance of it constantly and felt completely overwhelmed and over my head with the production of it.
Once me and Peter started talking about it, I felt hopeful. I also could hear Peter’s excitement about some aspects that were not necessarily exciting to me. I was worried that we wouldn’t have time to explore and reach a consensus.

Once the rehearsals started, I felt joy but also deep worry that I had to package this process into a performance. That it must look like a performance at the end of our rehearsal time and we had only 3 days with 10 people to do that. Each day with only a three-hour rehearsal. I was constantly negotiating with how each section looked, what it said, and can we put it next to something we already had.

I felt so grateful and full during our rehearsals. The conversations with each and every one of the participants as performers, humans, and collaborators were essential and beautiful. I kept reminding myself this is why I do it all. So that this conversation can be possible.

The day of the show I felt alone. I felt sad. Peter unfortunately didn’t make it on time and that really affected my mood. I felt exhausted and yet so grateful that we were able to do what we did. I felt annoyed that after spending so much time and money in marketing only 10 people showed as an audience – something so common in Bulgaria.

I felt full and so fed by the relationships with the people that were part of the project. I love it. I think I create these projects so that people can connect to each other, they can have meaningful conversations and exchanges.

Evaluation: What was “Good” or “Not Good” in the experience? Why? Assess the situation on values that are important to you.

What was good was the conversations between each and every one of us on the theme of democracy and what that means. It was incredible to talk about each one of our different contexts – most of us have lived or live elsewhere. There was one person from Mauritius – an island in Africa. He talked about Mauritius’s independence and his idea of democracy and how that reflects on the national identity. How their anthem is actually in English and sounds British in sound, yet their language and their music have nothing to do with English and European-style music.

It was incredible to find out that all people were so affected, so interested in democracy and its way of working, yet absolutely every one of the Bulgarians had not voted in the last election. Something that has always been a trend in Bulgaria but has become a bigger and bigger problem.
It was so good to have open explorations together with the body and the voice. We found out how nonverbally to organize and create a world together. We played, we danced, we sang and there was very little leading in our play and presence together. That was the best.

What was great was how patient and understanding Peter was and what great communication we had.

What was not so good was my exhaustion at it all and how I had to make everything happen. Working in a deficit is not good and it is not possible anymore.

It was not good to have such an incredibly short amount of time. It was not good that we had to make a performance of it all.
It was not good that I felt we ran out of time to try out some of my ideas.
(Unfortunately, as we got into the space, there was little time and a lot of my desires and ideas never had a chance to be tried out)

Analysis: What could you learn from this situation? Come here with ideas from outside of the situation, which you can possibly help further. What really happened? Did others have the same experience, or did the same event happen differently?

One specific example during this whole process was some of Peter’s ideas and how I felt about them specifically my communication about it with him.

For Peter, it was really important to try out his sounding and stepping square game, to do vocal voting while creating political questions that performers will say out loud and audience would vote. For him it was also important to try out performers presenting an object and having the audience voice in some way about them.

I liked those ideas, though as time became really short, I felt that we couldn’t complete any of the exploration needed in order for these ideas to really bring out all they could. However, I let Peter lead the room into doing these explorations. I did learn a lot from letting this happen, however, for 2 of the 3 days, there was not enough time to explore some of the things I wanted to.
I kept focusing on trying to shape Peter’s ideas and adding some of my warmup structures to our piece.
In the end, we realized that 2 out of three of Peter’s ideas were not possible to be put in the score because they simply were not developed, our dancers didn’t really know what they were doing and how to do it, so we cut them.
I was very relieved that after expressing my worry and feeling that these sections didn’t work, Peter agreed with me. But I wish I had said something earlier. I wish I had found a way to address this issue in a way that Peter didn’t feel like I was shutting him down for my ideas. I feel that I made a compromise with myself, knowing exactly what will happen. Yet I don’t feel good about this compromise.

Conclusions:
General - what can you deduce from this experience and your own analysis of it?

I am exhausted from self-producing. I want to find ways in which I am collaborating with others, but I am not the producer of this collaboration.
I am always underfunded, which detracts from my attention and desire to do this again and again. Maybe I need to learn to do less.
I reach people who are in between cultures, in between locations, in between life events. I reach them everywhere in the world and it seems that they resonate with what I have to give and they deeply appreciate my teachings.
My leadership style needs more time. I need more time. I need my relationships to not be transactional and limited.
After a project like this for weeks, I am exhausted, depressed, and completely burned out.

Specific - what can you derive about your specific situation and method?

In this specific situation, I felt very rushed. The collaboration was good and built on trust, so that when Peter felt that I rushed or didn’t focus on some of the things that were important to him, he would tell me. However, I don’t think I would do that for myself. Maybe if there was a bit more time, I would have realized how much compromise I do with myself all the time. As it was, I felt very pressed and anxious. My style is such that I let others express their needs, interests, and ideas and only after that would I make a summation, see what is there, and decide how to move forward. It is both a style, but also a method of devising and collaboration.
However, we had only 9 hours. to make a piece with 10 people which is ultimately a collaborative project, this style of leadership didn’t work so well. Or at least it worked, but I felt more of a facilitator and less of a choreographer. Moving forward I would like to feel equal parts facilitator and choreographer.
What I can derive from this situation is not that there is anything wrong with the approach. I think my approach makes sure that everyone gets a voice and allows that voice and ideas to become part of the performance. Yes, I can deliver in less time, but it is not worth it to me to have this kind of relationship with the material, the people, and the theme of the project. It makes it not worth being an artist if all I’m doing is focusing on making a product in the shortest amount of time.

Personal Action Plan: What will you do differently in the next work session, when such a situation occurs again? Which steps will you take in the future based on what you have learned from this?

First and foremost, I would like to work slower. I would very much think differently about setting up a collaboration project that has to make a performance in such a short amount of time.
In relation to communication style, I now have a better understanding of when I feel that a process is not working out, or rehearsing certain ideas are taking too long. My wish is to communicate this sooner. BUT not to the detriment of never trying these ideas out. Maybe questions like; How do you like to explore this; how long do you think it will take; what do you imagine the outcome to be; etc. could help my collaborator figure out if their idea is worth the time and space.
I see that my superpower is in summation, in editing other’s ideas and putting them next and along with mine. But rarely do I let my initial idea to be in the center of the building of structures. That realization is interesting and yet I feel content in working in this way with collaborators.

I think what I would take from this is the recognition of myself for the facilitating and supporting work I do. The recognition that even though the main ideas might not be “mine” I have guided everyone to get to the emergence of it and I know how to recognize ownership of that.
I didn’t know how to recognize this before.

The concept for Sound Body

I’ve known Peter Sciscioli (USA) for several years now. I’ve invited him to teach in Sofia and he has invited me to his International Interdisciplinary Artist Consortium for the last two years.
Peter and I share a passion for community, creating environments where people feel safe and heard and can share and experience artistic exchange. Aside from being a professional dancer and performer, Peter has been performing and working for many years with Meredith Monk and is a skilled facilitator.

Before knowing about this homework project, I invited Peter to create something together.
I wanted to learn from Peter and soak up his brilliant way of working with groups of people.
I wrote a grant to make a piece together dealing with the scope of Democracy.
Presented with such a huge theme, we were in conversation for many months about what we could possibly offer the world with the very limited resources we had available to us.

Democracy has been a very sore topic for us both. Amid the American and Bulgarian elections, we were looking to find answers to why we and so many others feel so disheartened by democracy and how can we heal each other. The topic became more and more important as Bulgaria had its 7th re-election of government in the last 3 years. (Holyoke)

Meanwhile amid our online rehearsals and meetings, in the US a battle for the re-election of a convicted felon was waging. A criminal for U.S. President. Peter, a gay middle-aged married man felt unsafe, even living in one of the most liberal cities in the world - New York City.

We questioned if democracy is working. Are people voting and how do they feel about their vote? What happens when people are given voices to vote, but they don’t like those voices? We were trying to find how to process the very reality we live in, and to keep hope that democracy is a good and just system.
Our idea generation started early in 2024. Then we intended to create a utopian-like event in collaboration with other artists in Bulgaria and abroad, where we would have audience interaction and expose the shortcomings of the democratic process.

Initial Plans and curve balls:

In the beginning, I did a lot of reading and research on the different types of democratic processes - specifically participatory democracy which we are all familiar with. (“Types of democracy”) (“Participatory democracy”). It was interesting to learn that there were many different types of democracy and we wanted to focus on what we both were familiar with – participatory democracy.
By October of 2024, it became clear that we had no further funding and the project that was supposed to span a few months had to be condensed into 8 rehearsal days. Though short in time, this was a huge project to produce and set up. The website for the project and the international open call can be seen here: https://www.bodymeld.org/sound-body-workshop-and-performance-project/

Personal log documentation on the process of Sound Body

(Click here to see another page of all my notes)

Description: What happened during the work process?
No conclusions to draw, make no judgment, simply describe the actual situation.

Meetings with Peter one on one:

We had many meetings, and we talked about what it means to have democracy. We talked about how we think of democracy. For Peter, it was very much associated with an idea of nationalism. So, we explored national anthems, how they are built musically, and their usual meanings. We found that a lot are about the land and the people, but some are about supremacy in weapons and war. I had lived in the US for 18 years and sang the anthem but never realized that the U.S. anthem was about bombs. We looked at the sentencing of the Declaration of Independence. I am someone who likes talking about ideas, but I much prefer to get in the space and try things out. I knew I wanted to use flags, I wanted to sing and make the audience sing. I knew I wanted the whole group to move together and at times to have solos, duets, and trios with focused lights and finish with live-feed special effects.
Our meetings were harmonious, and we would constantly come back to ideas we didn’t want to let go of.

Rehearsals with Peter, Youlia and Niki:

We had three rehearsals with Youlia and Niki, we talked about democracy. I led the group into a tuning soundscape, while Peter offered a vocal and tai chi warm-up every day of the rehearsals.
We did open score explorations that emerged and formulated themselves. They were long and expansive and came out of nowhere. Then we talked about them, identified their building blocks, and recorded them to try them with the big group. We learned Peter’s sounding square dance score from a previous piece.

Rehearsals with the big group of 10:

We talked a lot about each one of our ideas of what democracy is in our different contexts. We tried representational physicality in relation to different objects, we tried different promotional language. In exploring what a democratic structure is, we realized how much of it is selling ideas, putting down other ideas, and generally using tactics of capitalism.
We played with the flags working towards making them different objects with different power dynamics on stage. – reverse flag, flag as a mop, flag as a balancing beam, flag as a place to hide, flag as a jumping stick.

Reflection and analysis presentation documentation

Reflecting on Sound Body in the public park:

Every day we rehearse in the building facing the national assembly in Sofia.

Every day there is something happening on the street. For two days the space was occupied by policemen, blocking all cars from entering and stopping. At least two of the days we could see and hear protests.
This is ground zero for protests. Flags are seen there all the time. This space is a political stage no matter how much you want it or not.
Walking through that area, you feel the charge, you feel the division between the heavily guarded people deciding the future of the country inside the national assembly and the beggars on the street, the mothers, the fathers, the students the musicians busking.
In the whole process of rehearsing, I am in fear. What is it that I am putting outside in the public space? The space where many people have protested has been beaten by police, where journalists have bloodied the streets trying to cover the latest protest.
I know I want to bring the section with the flags into the little park next to the National Assembly.

I fear what it would mean to others. I fear how the plastic silver and gold flags will be read - as something good or as something bad. Would the police come to ask questions?
I don’t actually want to do this.

Peter and the other performers are not aware of my fear. Maybe they are aware of my slight reluctance. They take it as a playful experiment. One of the performers is from Mauritius - a darker-skinned person in Bulgaria, in the winter - holding a flag. I am worried for him.

I keep thinking there is nothing to worry about. That this is a free country and it is absolutely ok to do what we are doing. And then I reflect that I would not have their fears if I was in the US. How ironic, because in the US it is actually dangerous. In the US you can get killed, you can get stabbed. Like that beautiful dancer who was doing voguing in the gas station and was shot to death because someone didn’t like it. (NPR, n.d.)

But in the US it is not so unusual, maybe in the US I feel the freedom to be a bit more myself.

We’ve rehearsed it and we know the score we will offer to the park and the people crossing it.
So we do it.

Analysis of the presentation in the park:

As we bring in the large flags and set up our space, few people are mingling around. It is a dark day and quite cold. Percy starts running with the flag. It is so beautiful. It looks so peaceful. People notice it immediately. I keep looking for the police, but no one is around.
We clap and we change the flag hand to hand. We run, we clap again, and change the flag. Passers-by are entertained for the 1s they see us. One person claps with us. I like that, that’s something I didn’t anticipate.
The performance is short and we have to move on. Analyzing my fear, I realize how much it blocks me. The performance was great, but we could have done it more than once or for longer. The entire time I was worried that we had no permit and were not supposed to gather there like that.
In doing this I realize I don’t like to insert myself and disrupt the fabric of society in public space. It is not my strength and not the feeling I like. BUT I see the video and I see how powerful and beautiful it is. Feeling the extreme discomfort from doing the piece in the public park next to the National Assembly is still present for me. Yet I think the video is more powerful than the live performance. I see how it means more and is much more easily shared.
I was surprised to discover a new meaning of the gold flag in relation to the gold of the cathedral in the background. This new visual connection makes me consider how these flags change their meaning based on what is around them. By no means did I want to connect the flags to anything that has to do with religion yet seeing it on the video I realize how this flag with the background of the cathedral makes this connection.

Research documentation on leadership aspects in the choreographic context.

I am very confident in leading and starting programs. I teach I facilitate, and I help artists one-on-one and in groups.
I’ve run artists' spaces collaboratively and participated in multiple “horizontal structure” organizations. So collaborating is not a new experience for me.

Working with Peter in equal measures was very nice. It has been a while since I felt that I’m collaborating with a person who is focused on power dynamics and wants to commit to the equality of the collaboration.

I noticed that my style of leadership was often to hear his ideas and identify what and how much got repeated to understand what was important to him. Together we made space for a lot of conversation in our rehearsals even though we had such limited time. We wanted to make sure that all participants felt heard and understood and that they could be themselves in the process.

I would often hear Peter’s ideas and say: “Yes, let's try this. How about if we tried this way”… or added something else to it? In a way I felt we played with one of the rules of improvisation which is “Yes, and…” I would often hear what Peter had to say and his ideas and then would ask what was exciting to him. I shared my own ideas, but as I mentioned before it often felt that there was no time to explore them.
In reading further about leadership and specifically looking at this very well-done infographic, I am realizing that in my leadership I use quite a lot of these skills. Communicating was a huge aspect of our relationship with Peter and also the rest of the performers. I was very much in a constant process of strategic thinking – of how to offer exercises and explorations and how long they would take in rehearsals. I listened to Peter well and made sure that his ideas were not shut down, but we could have time to explore them. At the same time, I did ask what are the top 3 ideas that he wanted to do and through conversation, we were able to navigate the exercises we both were ok with trying out. Problem-solving was a very big part of our relationship as we had to create a score in only 8 days. The first score we made felt very complex and hard to follow. Too many things were happening and some of them didn’t flow well. We had a 3-hour meeting after we attempted to perform that score with the group and we both realized a lot of the material had to be gone. This was the moment where I persuaded and questioned him on some of his initial ideas about selling objects and audience voting. Through a long conversation, he was able to let go of these ideas and together we made a new score that felt easier, simpler, and more straightforward.

In looking at the different leadership styles, I can definitely say that I am more of a democratic leader, always making sure that people around me feel heard and seen. It is no surprise because I do take people’s stories, ideas, and bodies into consideration when making work. I make personal stage work, and not abstract so it always becomes what it is only because of the people who are making it with me.

In this particular project, both I and Peter were serving also as coaches and mentors. We offered mentorship on how to use our voice and also specifically what our presence is in this environment. Going further into the leadership definition by D. Goleman, I can recognize that both I and Peter were affirming. We were affirming to each other as well as the artists we worked with. Even though our goal was to make a performance, both of us together and individually value relationships and collaborative practice. So it was extremely important for us to stay calm, to stay in the conversation of and about democracy, to make our performers feel valued, interested, and engaged.

Reading about democratic leadership I was also unsurprised that it was described as a type of leadership that takes time. Yes, that was exactly my experience. I felt that I gave the exact right amount of attention and space to other’s ideas and desires. But I would have wanted to give that same attention and space to my own ideas as well. I did not know how to do that at the moment without hurting people and stopping a process that even though I felt would not work the mere stop of it would have damaged the flow of all of our interactions and ultimately the process of making work together.

The Show(s)

Sound Body in Public Space - https://vimeo.com/1045005848/43cce2417d?share=copy 

Sound Body as a performance inside a theatrical space- https://vimeo.com/1047110992/3eb7cf1dcf?share=copy 

On Leadership

See the show