Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Technology for the Traveling Dancer
Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Technology for the Traveling Dancer
By Stephanie T. Yezek
The motif of the gypsy dancer, that traveling icon idealized in literature and alive today, returns to me again and again, flitting in and out of my brain as she does through life. I cannot seem to repress the reality of that figure. Nor would I want to: she is real, and I am proof. Only now my caravan is a car, my fiddle an mp3 player, and my pen and paper a digital video camera.
In this twenty-first century of live-feed video conferences, web-cams, Hi-definition, wi-fi, Blu-Ray, FiOS and the innumerable other clever and not-so-clever abbreviations, how does the traveling dance artist decipher which are the tools best suited for her need of mobility, clarity and efficiency? How does she sift through the bads to get to the goods? For instance, how does she decide if a cell phone that is also a computer and also an mp3 player and a digital camera and a planner with a touch screen in HD, that has voice command and alerts you every eight seconds when it needs to be charged, or has a message waiting in text and voicemail format (much like a child or puppy in desperate need of attention) is appropriate and necessary to her trade? Though the super phone might be useful and effectual to some, this writer/dancer/traveling artist believes it to be simply too much, too overwhelming and truly unnecessary. I cede its importance and practicality to those who perhaps understand it better, and I do not admit to any technological guru-ism whatsoever. What I can offer is my experience with some great tools that have personally enhanced my trade of teaching and creating, while I myself flit in and out of manifold and multiform environs.
Your Office – The Car
Unfortunately, the most important technological tool of the traveling dance artist is a working car. I remember the days of newfound freedom with my hand-me-down set of wheels. That ’88 Nissan Sentra somehow still emanated that new car smell, if only in my wistful nostrils. Now, however, after nearly three years of darting here, there and everywhere through Washington D.C.’s beltway-of-hell, the dreaded Interstate 495, where traffic can come to a standstill any hour of the day, any day of the week (seriously: on a Sunday at 2:00 PM; on a Wednesday at 2:00 AM. It doesn’t matter. Traffic will be yours – oh yes – traffic will be yours), I have learned to deal with it. Instead of fighting it – because really, what can screaming at that person who cut you off, after honking at you for going slowly because the person in front of you is from Michigan, and does not understand the intricacies inherent in using a turn signal, really do but increase your blood pressure? – I have learned to let it happen, go with the flow and really get some work done in those hours of bumper-to-bumper bliss.
Because the truth is, sitting in traffic can be an extremely productive time. And though awareness of the cars around is the primary concern, the two-mile-an-hour-if-you’re-lucky speed is rather conducive to the safe release of thoughts. I am in my car so much, it is best to think of it as my office. Desks don’t move, right? Plus, in my car I have a corner office with four windows and a cushy chair with two cup holders. Added bonus: the Vitamin D I receive from the sun as it grazes my left arm, left thigh and face – trucker’s tan included free.
I admit, I did not always think this way. In fact, it is only recently that I began to understand the importance of “me-time” in the ‘carffice’. I did not realize what valuable time I was wasting raving at D.C. drivers as they passed me on the shoulder and flipped rocks into my windshield. Now, after three years of enduring the phenomenon that perpetuates the area, my nerves are somewhat better equipped to handle the delays. I now have time to think. I have time to listen – to music, to my thoughts, to my British, physicist boyfriend as he explains his success in superconducting Tungsten. And when thinking and listening converge, I hang up the phone (and the ear piece, of course) and get to work. I create a Pilates class for tomorrow. I put together a dance routine and choose the music that fits the energy level. I create an intermediate modern class that I am subbing next week ,with a new series to challenge the hungry dancers. I recreate a piece I choreographed in Oxford to suit the dancers I will be working with at Bucknell University next weekend. I find that because my me-time is rather limited outside those four moving windows, I use my hours inside as my planning periods. I rediscover that important thought process, that solitary reverie inherent in brainstorming with minimal distractions. Lately I have found that it is a great time to create. Despite the chaos outside, my brain is surprisingly clear inside.
Your Filing Cabinet – The iPod
What a functional, fashionable, necessary tool for the traveling dance artist! Really, this upgrade in technology seems designed for us. Adaptable and convenient, the iPod – I prefer the Nano as it takes up very little room and still holds nearly a thousand songs – has transformed my teaching practice. While I am driving in my car, I put my iPod on shuffle, and it usually never fails that I hear a song that inspires a new piece, that fits the beat of the sequence I am creating, or that I simply like to listen to as I teach. Not only does it help create a class – the “On-the-go” feature I find particularly useful as I can add the songs I want to revisit without committing to them or the order as I would with a CD – I find that when putting it to use in class, the iPod stands out for efficiency and flow (coincidentally two of the ten BASI Pilates principles I particularly relate to as I teach mat classes). I have a set of speakers as well, but that is not as necessary. Probably more necessary is a CD player-adaptable cable. Though most gyms and studios understand the growing use of and necessity for providing such cables, it is always nice to have a set of your own. I recently dug up the cable I received for Christmas two years ago, and it was very exciting when I heard the dulcet sounds of Muse and Keane emerge from the speakers, as my students breathed in and out through the Hundreds.
Your Journal – The Digital Camcorder
Not only does the digital camcorder fit right in the palm of your hand, it is also handy (ha!). Recently, I was recreating a piece to be set on students at my alma mater, and the only copy of the piece itself was cut short and barely visible (incidentally there are some flaws to the mini-cam: this particular one did not gauge the focus of the lights well, and facial expressions were somewhat diluted). Luckily, I had a willing dancer friend to help me with the movement and my mini-DVD camcorder to record everything as it happened. Not only is the quality of the filming clear and precise, but the mini-DVD’s are absolutely adorable! (Please excuse the girly exclamation.) And they play right in your computer’s CD/DVD drive. It is best if you have a movie-editing program, because the cost of getting videos edited, though quite worth it, is rather expensive. But again, that is an added luxury (though I will allow those with the super phone to think otherwise).
Because dance traditionally lives and dies in the moment, its ephemeral nature combined with that of the gypsy dancer’s constant need for motion, the digital camera seems particularly relevant in the field - not only as a record of current dance practices within your and the greater dance world, but as a living journal of those thoughts embedded deep within your brain and body. If the car is the most necessary tool of the traveling dance artist, the office in which thoughts are produced, and the iPod the means to which those thoughts are organized, then the camera is the archive, the means of preservation: it allows the expunging of the brain to create room for more thoughts, more moments of fleeting brilliance (and consequently momentary sanity). Much like the gypsy dancer, if you blink, you might miss it.