Unstructured time helps me manage jetlag...

The excitement of actually being in-country when starting out a Fulbright project, or any international project for that matter, can lead to mis-adventure in the first few days. This is especially true when dealing with a time difference of more than 4 hours for me. Having spent almost fifty years travelling professionally for work, I learned to accept my responsibility for mishaps and distracted concentration over my first few days. Addressing jet lag for me is about realizing that what my brain thinks I should be doing is not aligning with what my body might be telling me should be happening. 

Now that I have more control over my scheduling for international projects, I make an effort to keep meetings and teaching/coaching obligations as light as possible for the first few days I am in-country. As a dancer, the companies I worked for dictated how much time performers might have to acclimate to a new time-zone and environment. But as an independent agent, I have only myself to blame when it comes to my schedule of work obligations. Still, knowing that I have a meeting for just one or two hours my first day, does help me let my body know there is a structure to what my days will become.

Insects are pollinating spring flowers all around Auckland right now.

With a 17 hour time difference between New Zealand and the east coast of the US, I want to be forgiving of myself these first few days, and having unstructured time to myself has been a huge blessing. It takes more time for me to acclimate the older I get, and listening to my body helps to focus my cognition. My body has no sense of what time of the day it is, irrespective of the sun being out, and the days being warm while the nights are considerably cooler. So I go for walks in the neighborhood, attempting to get my geographic bearings, allowing myself to get lost, when I forget to look behind me so I know where I came from when I attempt to return to my residence. Yesterday, I totally missed a walking pathway that would have saved me a quarter mile backtrack along the road where I am staying.

The walking pathway I missed completely yesterday, after looking for it repeatedly.

I did schedule to meet with my host institution, Black Grace Dance Company and many of the dancers and staff with whom I will be working throughout my time in New Zealand. Thankfully, I was graciously met by one of the production managers at the airport where I arrived at 6:00 AM NZ time, following an 18-hour non-stop flight from NYC. Then I had the whole day to settle in to my accomodations and manage business in small increments as concentration allowed. I was picked up at 4:30 PM to head over to Black Grace's offices and rehearsal space, to meet with everyone. 

And I have to say, it is such an amazing feeling to be welcomed in person to begin this phase of a project that has been in the works for many years! The timing for bringing everything together, was serendipitous in being able to take advantage of my active Fulbright Specialist status, which is set to expire in January 2026. 

While Auckland feels very much like a city in which to have a car, I love what I get to discover as I walk around the neighbourhood where I am staying. 

Yet, I can tell that it will be a few days before I will be feeling entirely comfortable both physically and mentally. So taking advantage of unstructured time each day is my way of acknowledging what feels out-of-synch. The structured time of meetings, interviews, social gatherings, and very soon, teaching and coaching, will be draining at first, but I know to give myself time alone each day for at least a week, with the sole agenda of self-care. 

Every country has its own special qualities, and in some countries, regions can feel radically different from each other. It is often hard to put into words what these difference might be, maybe it's the humidity, the change of seasons, the architecture and materials used in the buildings and roads, the interactions with people on the street, so many things. For me one distinguishing factor is always the vegetation. Here in New Zealand there are many endemic species of plants and animals, but I think it is the mix of both the familiar and the exotic that makes walking around feel subtly different than anywhere else in the world.

Today, on my walk, there was a period of bright clear sunshine and I wondered through a small park with a huge oak tree shading a grassy corner. I took this picture looking up through the leaves and had a vivid memory of visiting Hobbiton in 2013, where I wandered around the location set that had been built for filming the Hobbit trilogy and The Lord of the Rings movies.

A living oak tree in Auckland that struck a memory.

As it turns out, the oak tree that sits atop Bag End, Bilbo's home, in Hobbiton, is completely artificial, and each leaf on the tree had to be manufactured and attached. The story I was told was that a live oak had been planted in place for The Lord of the Rings scenes in Hobbiton, but it died by the time the Hobbit trilogy was scheduled to be filmed, and so the artificial tree was built. It was also scaled down from the original tree because the Hobbit movies take place sixty years earlier than the first trilogy.

The oak tree atop Bag End in Hobbiton.

Well, that's my first couple of days musings here in New Zealand. There's much more to come...

This blog (FNZdance25.blogspot.com) is not an official site of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author (Richard Chen See) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.

Global travel can feel surreal.

By the time I write my next post, I will be in New Zealand on the opposite side of the world from my home in NYC. Given the current state of global telecommunications, I have already booked both social and work appointments starting this weekend, as though getting there just means walking around the corner. I have no idea if my flight will be delayed, or worse, but life dictates that I operate on the premise that I will get there. So onward... with the realization that I won't be grabbing coffee in the morning at my usual neighborhood haunts for the next month or so, nor will I be paddling in my own kayak... 

The autumnal colors are out in the USA, while I am heading into Spring in New Zealand.

As a performing artist, it was natural to imagine the worst right before stepping out on to a stage for an audience of just a few or of thousands. "Curtain up" is a deadline unlike most others in life, and being prepared as a performer is typically the best method of managing what is to come once the curtain is up (this may just be a spot light or any beginning of a performance).

To be honest, preparing for a project where I will be far away from my day-to-day familiar can feel very similar to stage fright where I can imagine all kinds of things going wrong. I have to remember to breathe and not panic about all the unknowable things in store for me. After all, I know I am not the only person who has done a Fulbright project in a foreign country (sic: what Fulbright was designed to do). Somehow, as I age, I spend a lot more time talking to myself, and reminding myself that my apprehensions are often driving factors in my research, preparations and resultant faith in having done my best to prepare for both the known and the unknown.

Fulbright Specialists have been vetted by their peers, and approved for grants based on their expertise and accomplishments in their fields. I take this endorsement quite seriously, and realize how little objectivity I have with regards to my own abilities. In dance, such abilities can feel intrinsically attached to my physical and mental abilities, and I have to approach my body and mind for what they are in the moment. I have not only survived in a notoriously insecure field, but sustained a professional involvement throughout my lifetime. Yet the constant question I keep answering is, "Why is Art and performance" something important to society?"

Linguistically, how a society communicates within and without is far from static, and new words and phrases get introduced, while others fall out of use. Still, spoken language is important to communicate ideas amongst us as humans, and how we do so is subject to everything from context to intonation. Music is another construct for communication and can encompass so much more than words, whether heard by itself or in conjunction with lyrics. Diving a little deeper into this line-of-thought is where movement in conjunction with music can also transcend spoken and written languages to communicate both explicitly and subliminally.

"I Shot the Sheriff" original song by Bob Marley, most successful cover by Eric Clapton

I have occasionally listened to reggae songs written by Jamaican artists being sung with non-Jamaican accents, with mixed results for my ear. I was born and grew up in Jamaica, and have often been noted for how my accent defines my pronunciations in spoken English. So when lyrics are written to sit on music, the choice of words are often designed to fit with the musical rhythms, rendering them in harmony and understandable. Changing the emphasis in how words are pronounced mostly defines an accent versus a dialect of a language where grammatical structures and words might differ. 

Conversing with individuals who have strong accents that differ from our own, often brings attention to the beauty of language, while differentiating how it is used to communicate. As a listener in such a conversation, it is essential to remain open to hearing words differently and allowing their meaning to be understood. I think of dance in a similar fashion, where dances that are performed by different and differently trained bodies may transcend words for a global audience.

But returning to the insecurities I wrote of at the top of this post, my work is to place the choreographer, Paul Taylor, and his dances into the context of his life and time; while also being open to the life that the New Zealand dancers infuse into the steps as individuals with their own histories and culture. My role is no longer being the performer on stage in front of audiences, but in guiding and supporting the performers of this generation to make Art out of their self expression within the structure of the choreography created by Taylor. My role here too feels filled with responsibility for the privilege that my career has provided to me, and the fear of failure is a constant that keeps me attentive to all that I do. I will feel the success or failure of performances borne out of my efforts to be on my shoulders.

Curtain call for 2025 production of Chess on Broadway, in previews.

As an audience member at a performance of a musical, a play, a dance that touches something within me, no matter how momentary or how long, I find myself in awe of the performers. And while I know that individual artistry may highlight performers I find enthralling, it is everyone and everything around them and all the factors that led to that show, that gave me a transcendent experience. I can be as avid a fan of shows, performers, and companies as the next person, and I can be equally incredulous that I could play a part in such an experience for another audience somewhere.

I imagine that it is my own self-doubt that has kept me ever curious about new projects and ongoing research into how Performance Art has always been a part of human culture.

This blog (FNZdance25.blogspot.com) is not an official site of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author (Richard Chen See) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.

An exercise in hindsight... informs culture of the future.

I recently read a dance review that opened with the statement, "All reviews of live performance are an exercise in hindsight." In context it was apt, for the performance in question was about dancing personal reflections of choreographers and dancers on their lives to that point in time. However, for me the statement spoke more broadly to the fact that I am in the thick of the chaos that leads into a live performance. 

2003 - starting to warm-up on the outdoor stage of the Spoleto Festival in Italy.

The very nature of reading words on a page is knowing that the intent has been considered and edited. The exposition is no longer an immediate, spontaneous response to something or someone in the moment of being read. Yet good writing can feel as though whatever the words are about is unfolding as we read. Watching a live performance is obviously unfolding in time as we perceive it, but its intent has been equally considered and edited; then it must be practiced and coached so that the event appears to be a spontaneous exposition unfolding in the moment of every performance.

Every bit of carved, painted or printed piece of writing preserves its moment in time through its replication, translation, and reading well beyond the lifetime of its author. It could be a physical document un-earthed by archaeologists, referenced in a library, or even replicated digitally with aid of electrical impulses coded in 1's and 0's. However, humans evolved a culture of communication long before they had words. And the most precious of age old non-verbal communication in the world lives mostly in an infinite number of moments that we might call Performance Art, and be lucky enough to experience such Art in our lifetime, knowing that future generations will never encounter the same. We can hope that future humans will have their own transcendent experiences with similar Performance Art within their cultures, but we know that their live performances cannot be the same as ours. That is the nature of live performance's ephemerability. 

2003 detail of Spoleto with ghost of performance.

So why bother to consider that which is past, especially ephemera? I don't think there is much doubt that if you are reading this, you have an interest in how words communicate events and history. And I add that those very words have evolved based on, and because of their own etymology. Within our own cultures words communicate in different ways, but they carry with them a very human history and evolution.

In the mid-1980's, when I took a course on modern (1850-1950) European history, my professor gave me the option to do my research based on the Art of the times, and to analyze how the Art reflected, subverted, and predicted the ethos of those times. Ultimately, Art helps us memorialize meaningful events, gives us voice when our individual existence seems insignificant, and helps us imagine a future of possibilities. Performance Art in particular, may well be the most defining voice of the zeitgeist of any era. The performers are people to whom their audience can relate, they speak, sing and dance in the vernacular of the culture. Yet what they perform may have originated in a near or distant past. 

Black Grace - current promo shot for upcoming performances, 2025.
Photo: Toaki Okano 

The gift of creatives who imagine and bring a live performance to fruition, is a combination of both being of their own time, and of creating Art that speaks to future generations as well. When an original performance work continues to engage and stand up to critical scrutiny through generations of different performing casts, I think of that as a work of genius. Not because I imagine the creative to have thought through every possible interpretation, but because their instincts and perspectives were not limited by their own human mortality. 

Black Grace in Esplanade - detail from current promo, 2025.
Photo: Toaki Okano

The responsibility of re-mounting dances of legacy choreographers, is to honor as best we can the essence of their intent, while acknowledging a contemporary perspective of how the dance is being seen. Fifty years of continuous performances, somewhere in the world, of Paul Taylor's Esplanade is evidence enough that the work itself has maintained meaning for its audiences. It's ongoing life, is in the humanity of this generation's performers to find themselves within the framework of the dance. It is my pleasure and honor to have the mantle of shepherding Black Grace Dance Company in New Zealand to perform Esplanade. In the spirit, and with the support of, Fulbright, this is just as much about international exchange as it is about furthering cross-cultural understanding through Art.

This blog (FNZdance25.blogspot.com) is not an official site of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author (Richard Chen See) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.

The double-entendre of "Current Events"!

Lately, events from all aspects of life seem to be breaking over our consciousness, and as I get older, the topics often feel familiar, if unwelcome, like an eddy of deja vu. I have always loved moving water and playing in the currents of a river or the open ocean. So it isn't a big leap when I imagine the news cycles to be like ocean currents circulating through time, natural disasters, political upheaval, infrastructure failures, technological advances, celebrity dramas, and all of it. The delivery might be different, but the only certainty seems to be that nothing stays the same. And yet we all live in the moment hoping that our singular existence might affect a future outcome, a sort of legacy.

I'm the blindfolded jumper! 1983 with Mario Alonzo at Oakland Ballet Company. Photo: Marty Sohl

If I accept that I can't predict the future, I might imagine myself to be leaping into each new adventure blindfolded and each step forward is an act of faith. The benefit of age and experience is knowing that I have lived through many unimaginable moments and events in my own life, and that my stories are just one perspective of multitudes. So how do I stay the course of taking on new ventures like re-staging an iconic work of performance art on a new generation, internationally?

I focus on the details. This can be tedious and time consuming work, and in looking at reconstructing a thirty minute dance, if I were starting from scratch, it might take upwards of three hundred hours of research, documentation, and implementation. And this is only looking at my specific role as principal stager and artistic representative of Paul Taylor's intellectual property, for just one dance.

Detail from a Labanotation score of about 5 seconds of choreography...

I do have my methods to address these projects knowing the amount of work to be done, and that there is no short-cut, because we are talking about how we learn as humans. Much of my preparation is about making sure that I can conceptualize each and every step, role, costume, lighting cue, sound cue, and everything for how I believe it was intended. This is a tricky statement, that is not intended as hubris, but rather as accepting the responsibility that producing dance as an Art is a form of an expressed intent. And if that intent is not clear expressed from me as the artistic representative, then the result may well suffer under public scrutiny. I would also like my diligence, and belief in detail and intent to somehow mark my legacy in times when I am no longer around. 

My rough notes for the same 5 seconds of choreography...

Setting an American choreographer's dance on a company of dancers in a completely different country is also about finding common ground with both the dancers' and the culture's embrace of the creative content. Dance is a language of communication, even though it may not speak in literal terms, yet it can be a touchstone for human emotions made visible, even evoking descriptions like "grotesquely beautiful" or "sublimely terrifying". 

My digitized version of my notes for the same 5 seconds of choreography...

I mentioned above the fact that for humans to repeatedly perform the same choreography with integrity, musicality, and conviction, rushing the process of how individual dancers learn is counter productive. To account for different learning styles (a whole other topic about which I love exploring), my preparation does need to be ready to answer the performers' questions, which generally start from making sense of how to conceptualize and execute the intended movement or patterns. Yet this is only the beginning of the process, and it often takes about an hour of concentrated work in a studio to just learn a single minute of choreography, whether working with an individual or with a group.

Technological advances in video make it infinitely easier to view and analyze choreography, both as it is being created, and in reconstructing a dance. However, like oral traditions that have been recorded and transcribed to a written document, the root of a word/idiom/phrase may still be missing, because its beauty may lie in its pronunciation/accent/lexicology. Most video replications highlight the exceptional and unique talents of the performers being filmed, and if those performers are truly exceptional, the viewer might be trying to replicate the performer rather than the intent of the choreography. 

2025 Programme booklet for performance in Vienna with dances by
George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham and Martin Schläpfer.
Audiences in USA may never see a dance by Schläpfer on account of what it takes to reconstruct a dance, but his work has been known in Europe for decades!
Dancers: Rashaen Arts, Javier González Cabrera. Photo: Ashley Taylor

I want every performance and performer involved to be building a new artistic experience. Videos of multiple interpretations, my written notes, interviews with dancers/choreographers/audiences all serve as references in my knowledge base to offer artistic choices with a unified intent.  Paul Taylor created his dances from his perspective with a specific cast of performers. His genius was in creating a visual language that can speak through generations of dancers with as much nuance and personality as the original cast. My responsibility is in helping to decipher ways to take advantage of Taylor's genius, so the craft, the finesse, the breadth of expression of future dancers and choreographers will support their inspirations to reach an audience.

Literacy in written language and music help us continue to learn and build on what came before!

Taylor was a unique choreographic voice who danced with and grew out of an earlier generation of maverick talents. As we struggle to experience some of those pioneers' works being performed today, I think of it like losing the chance to see a William Shakespeare play or listen to a Johann Sebastian Bach concerto. Just because we know it existed does not allow performance arts to drive the Art of expression and reflection of ourselves as individuals or representations of our current cultures.

This blog (FNZdance25.blogspot.com) is not an official site of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author (Richard Chen See) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.