FieldNOTES: Untitled, a final dance for two

Untitled
Choreography and Performance: Jessica Vokoun and Rachel Bruce Johnson
Music: John Osburn
​Photos: Nathan Harmon
 
A duet exploring the motivations behind desire and failure, connection and disconnection. Unbeknownst to me, this work became the final dance work of my performance career. The piece was a rich experience, largely due to my dance partner and her commitment to a high degree of artistic process and her commitment to me as a close friend. I have strong and warm memories of moving with her and excitement each time we arrived in the studio to work. Though I was never able to garner enough feedback to feel satisfied in my own personal performance process, it remains one of the best experiences I had in my career with one of the most generous moving artists I came to know. The journey was wealthier than the product and the product, the dance, was pretty nice! A success in my book. 

However, at the time, I did not feel as if I had personally come to a complete resolution within my performance of the piece. I was uncertain if the choreography lacked some unresolved element or if this dissolution was a part of the performance process. I think one of the reasons the duet did not feel finished to me was because I did not reach the stage where I was reconciling my performance choices with the choreography. Sometimes that changes a few details of the choreography but usually it is more about underscoring the intent with performance choices. These choices solidify the concept within the piece. For me, if I have the chance to really delve into the performance process it feels more complete. It may have just  needed one more block in the build, one more piece in the puzzle. It is somewhat regretful to me that I was unable to get there and now it has been 6 years since that performance. I am not saying that it was not a good performance experience in many other ways. In fact, the cumulative ways in which the performance did feel satisfactory overrides this feeling of lack. But, nonetheless, it is something I still think about and wonder if there were a way to resurrect the work and continue exploring its themes. It may be ironic that the purported themes in the work actually came to fruition in real life. It was connection and disconnection, desire and failure through art, yet, in the wild. ~ RBJ

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