The Place of Dance. Andrea Olsen

      Caryn McHose and Andrea Olsen Amphitheater at Epidaurus, Greece

       Photograph © Sophia Diamantopoulou

       Speak the truth as you experience it; someone else can speak his or her truth.

      —Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen

      Dance is a place I go to know myself and the world experientially and intellectually. The creative process offers a forum in which to pose questions and investigate possibilities. I chose dance for graduate school, over my two other loves, history and biology, because dance encompasses this broad terrain. The creative process was the link.

      In my writing and choreography, I often jump, assuming connections between things that might not be apparent. Edge zones bump up against each other, creating areas of heightened possibility, like the terrain between forest and field. The bane of some readers looking for continuity, these sometimes surprising juxtapositions encourage nonlinear and recursive thinking. Distinct disciplines and art forms overlap, and material cycles back on itself, offering both vitality and unity.

      Modern dance making, at least since Martha Graham, has been a serious endeavor. The inner and outer lives of the dancer are under investigation. This is my lineage, seeking movement experiences where personal inquiry and ecstasy meet. Somatic practice (trusting the intrinsic intelligence of the body) and the desire for art making (the impulse to shake up habits while giving form to emerging impulses) are in conversation. Responsibility and resilience are inherent. We are embedded in larger systems, remembering our place in the larger order of things.

      Writing is consistently present in my life. I remember, at age six, standing by my childhood desk and promising myself I would write—and not let schooling confuse me. I was a “good student” but not bookish. Often the title rather than the content was my jumping-off point for making dances, paintings, or stories. On the other hand, I’m reminded daily as I write that a trail of books has shaped my life: Homer’s The Odyssey, Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and Mabel Todd’s The Thinking Body at critical moments have shifted how I perceive the process of art making. With the embodied memory of those changes, this book offers a collection of possibilities for creative connections.

      The author’s voice in this text is mine, a view of contemporary dance through the lens of one life. As indicated by her byline on the cover and title page, colleague Caryn McHose offered much vision and time to this book. Indeed, many parts would simply not have existed without our three decades of intense collaboration. Ideas from co-teaching and shared explorations suffuse the work. My desire is thus to claim Caryn as an essential colleague and to acknowledge her work, even though I must