ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

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JEAN FOGEL

Inquisitive Heart

There is always someone wading into uncharted territory. John Cage’s musical composition 4′ 33″, which was performed in total silence. Ruth Zaporah’s Action Theatre, an improvisational performance style born out of the present moment, asking the performer and audience to be here now. Steve Paxton founded Contact Improvisation, a revolutionary dance form that follows a shared point of contact. Mary Whitehouse worked with Jung and developed the practice of Authentic Movement. Deborah Hay developed the concept of cellular movement and was a contemporary of John Cage. The list goes on.

For all the individuals who felt compelled to explore the unknown, I am grateful. I came into dance as a young girl studying Russian ballet. As much as we moved from city to city, I was able to continue my dance training. Oddly enough, because we moved so much, I never had the opportunity to complete the performance aspect of ballet. I would be fit for costume, receive new toe shoes, and then we would move. This may have something to do with my personal evolution toward the avant garde.

I may not be able to remember life as it actually occurred, but my sense of inner resilience became my experience of continuity. As my artistic career developed, meditation and the contemplative arts became my refuge. I began practicing Authentic Movement, a therapeutic form that involves moving with eyes closed while being witnessed in the process. My discovery of this practice fundamentally changed me. I began to develop an inner connection to movement that went far beyond making shapes in space with my body, which at the time was the essence of modern dance.

When I crossed paths with the trail blazing mentors mentioned above, I had found my people. I studied Action Theatre with Ruth in San Francisco. I studied Contact Improvisation with Steve Paxton. I performed with Deborah Hay. I came into the world of performance as a personal act of discovery. My career in dance spanned traditional, technical and exploratory new forms. Carl Jung says the psychological diseases of our age exist because people do not tell their stories. I survived because I found a way to express the inexpressible of my past.

Poetry has its own meter and rhythm just as dance does, in my experience the two are inseparable. It is through the expression of dance and poetry that I am able to contribute to the world.

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him ― C.G. Jung

One of the phenomenons that occurs as an artist is a continual re-creating of the self, a constant calibration between the personal and the universal. When I am in the shadows and lose my way I think of Jung, whose understanding of the creative self is very clear. I remember the reward that comes with following the creative impulse to completion, the impulse has no name and cannot be measured, it just is, which is the most wonderful reward of all.