Roadtrip Dances: Final Report

For anyone still curious about my Roadtrip Dances project from last August, the final report can be found at this link or by clicking the image to the right.

The report discusses my inspirations, frustrations, and general observations amidst more photos and documentation of a trip that spanned fifteen states, fifteen hundred miles, five days, and several public performances in capitols, city centers, parks, rest stops, and abandoned alleys. 

Any insight or question is welcome, as always. I hope it inspires a reader or two to inspect their surroundings and their place within.

Many thanks to Caty, for being an excellent travel companion, and also to those of you who were able to meet us along the trip for neighborhood tours, breaks, and general refreshment for our tired traveling bodies. 

Roadtrip Dances: Smaller States, Faster Travel (7)

Monday, August 15

I underestimated the magnetic pull of familiarity and home on this last day of the car, as the desire to reach our destination swelled. Driving from Philadelphia through New Jersey, New York and Connecticut to reach Massachusetts was a drive I have done many times and the visual cues and mile markers seemed to push onwards instead of stimulating interest and a stop. I do feel that I did a bit of a disservice to my home area comfort zone, but at this time my brain was also incredibly saturated, swimming with thought from the Southern leg of my trip. The view from the inside of the car was familiar and didn't vary much, the same green deciduous trees lining highways with occasional and quick pockets of city. While this was a point of stress in Florida, when the landscape was straight and open, I felt snugly held by the leafy trees even if the scenery wasn't novel. 

During the last leg of the trip I focused on simple public performance, leaving myself open to observe any reactions. I completed a car dance while crossing the George Washington bridge (NY), and a dance based on observation of people encountered at a highway rest stop in New Jersey. Connecticut was especially rough as we got closer and closer to home, and I improvised on my impatience in a strip mall parking lot. There were a lot of people walking about at the rest stop and several individuals made eye contact but all kept walking. I wonder if they feel like the performance wasn’t for them, and that they couldn’t stop to watch (minus one unfortunate male cat-caller), or if that they were just feeling the same sort of homewards travel magnetism.  While affixing my head to the car and spinning about in the Connecticut parking lot, two older women were taken aback but not enough to linger. Perhaps that's a common occurrence in Connecticut.

View NY/NJ performance video here.  View Connecticut performance video here.

Excerpt from NJ/NY. Included some fiddling around before officially starting so I could share the really appreciative whistler-slash-#1 fan of impromptu art. Clip features some apathy, rest stop mentality, having to keep going, a slow mo tantrum I saw inside. Several drivers/pedestrians behind the camera looked while passing by, unlike the Florida rest stop. Grass was surprisingly clean. #newjersery #newyork #reststop #roadtrip #roadtripdances #travel #dance #danceeverywhere #grass #oilchange

See this Instagram video by @kholman * 18 likes

Showing signs of desperation and car confinement in a tiny excerpt from a CT strip mall. Two older women in a car behind us pretended not to notice but were very confused. #timetogohome #roadtrip #roadtripdances #connecticut #highway #parkinglot #rotate #carduet #stuck #stripmall

See this Instagram video by @kholman * 14 likes

Roadtrip Dances: Philadelphia (6)

Sunday, August 14-Monday, August 15

We got into Philadelphia late on Sunday night and had to leave fairly early on Monday morning, unfortunate, as I really like the city, but it also proved to be an excellent break after a difficult weekend.

After catching up with an old friend late into Sunday night, we woke up Monday morning to walk the city at the beginning of rush hour - strategic for encountering a lot of people, no? 

Philadelphia feels a lot like Boston, to me, in terms of its buildings, rush and history. It’s a grey city instead of a tan city, and even though I’ve only visited a few times it feels familiar. Perhaps spurred on by the good feelings of a visit with a dear friend, or the comfort of the home-like feel, I had the highest hopes for the most viewed public performance of the trip. This is where I would focus on the idea of performance, of being viewed, or so I thought. Situating myself right in the middle of Penn Square, against City Hall, the LOVE sculpture, public transportation, and the major rush of adults getting to work on time I began to move inspired by tall buildings, public spaces, the calm I felt within the bustle of a city. My audience strategy failed. Humorously no one that walked by batted an eyelid, and the experience began to circle comedy. At one point a woman passed in such close proximity that we could have made physical contact, but her resolve to stay focused on some spot on the distance was incredible. This sort of thing continued as I kept moving and even when I started to push my focus outwards as I moved, attempting eye contact, groups of people just a foot or two away seemed to not even notice my presence. Two men working in some sort of tourist booth did cheer me on from afar, perhaps because that's where they had to be and it was a break from the mundane? Thanks to them, however, as I truly started to think I'd mastered invisibility and they swiftly brought me back down to earth. 

As I continue thinking about the Philadelphia experience I would love to know if the majority of individuals actually noticed and just didn’t acknowledge what I was up to, or if passersby truly didn’t see it. Is there enough rogue art in Philly that it was the norm, or did it make people uncomfortable? Would sound have changed the response? Does context change anything; if I had performed during the Fringe Festival would that be more acceptable or classifiable to those walking by? Am I overthinking everything and people just don't really care that I'm atypically moving my body in public spaces? 

I left amused and satisfied. Someday I’ll get to do the Rocky steps.

View video from Philadelphia here. 

Excerpt from Philly, in which caffeine-free-me has a hard time making things happen at 8:30am. Playing with the height and established feel of such a city and the idea of finding just a tiny bit of wide open space. Really wanted to dance in the spontaneously spraying fountains in back but that would make for a wet car trip. Not sure who viewed this... No one commuting to work seemed to notice. Several curious homeless people and one homeless dog were stationed behind me far to my left, and two guys in some sort of tourist info booth were pumped and quite into it - thanks to them. (Some funny captured sound in this if you can deal with it.) #roadtripdances #roadtrip #improv #dance #danceeverywhere #lowkey #spiral #roll #philadelphia #philly #city #rushhour #goodmorning

See this Instagram video by @kholman * 25 likes

Roadtrip Dances: Virginia and Maryland (5)

Sunday, August 14

We left Durham early on the morning of Sunday, August 14 as there were many stops to make en route to Philadelphia. Our first stop was Richmond, it was directly on our path, the capital of the state, and neither my companion or myself had been there, but yet again we encountered a ghost town. The vacancy of Richmond was probably exacerbated by temperatures in the high nineties, but also by the day being a Sunday, something I didn’t consider in advance even after the influx of religious billboards. We drove about, taking in the hot, dusty tan and taupe city, everything looking a bit run down and tired. Signage and fonts from decades past, lots of boarded up windows, very little noise and a hot breeze. I found a wide open intersection with large sidewalks for a performance and yet again performed to those who drove by and those who had to be out in the heat - a handful of homeless men.

To be completely candid, the rest of the Virginia experience was infuriating. I’m sure the state has some beautiful places and redeeming qualities, but my travel through didn’t encounter additional reasons to stop before it was necessary. After the failed stop in Richmond and finding ourselves almost out of gas we found an exit with a gas station and a myriad of fast food restaurants which were the apparent only option for sustenance on a Sunday. We decided a Subway was the best choice of the limited options, though I did conjure up a memory of a dance friend foraging on a performance trip, and as we entered the store we walked right into an intense fight over a dog trapped in a hot car, the dog’s family thinking nothing of their decision. The ignorance demonstrated in the back and forth argument was shocking. Mad for the poor dog (sadly there’s no law in Virginia protecting dogs locked in hot cars or I would've gone vigilante), mad about the ridiculous amount of propaganda splashed on anti-abortion billboards and hateful bumper stickers escorting us up the highway, it took me the entirety of a couple of hours of bumper to bumper traffic to cool down. Then we hit Baltimore.

Baltimore was the first location that made me realize how we were not just traveling through deserted Southeastern cities, but also across a sort of road map of the country’s major recent civil rights events. Thinking about the recent drop of charges in the Freddie Gray trial and trying to put that in the context of the city we were driving and walking through, my brain couldn’t really process much else of what I saw. At surface value I noticed a good amount of brick, taller buildings than previous cities, and lots of praise for the military. I still have some trivial curiosity regarding the popularity of crabs and wonder if anyone in the impoverished neighborhood that also houses Johns Hopkins Hospital could afford to go there. We spotted City Hall, a most ornate building, with green space and a series of fountains in front, two hidden parking spots, mostly abandoned on a Sunday afternoon besides a dozen or so homeless men sleeping on benches. I performed amidst the gardens and fountains, vacant city hall, many sleeping men. I’m not sure if anyone opened their eyes to take it in. I’m not sure if there would be any benefit to viewing what I did. It was just important to do, entering and leaving very quietly. We found a battered dead butterfly stuck in the windshield wiper of the car, adding to the somber feel of the afternoon.

It took getting to northern Maryland to sense the familiarity of the North just around the corner (down the highway), as the trees, highway structures and signage started feeling somewhat familiar. The Mason-Dixon line was palpable; I had several friends try to humorously suggest the shift would be obvious and I didn’t realize this would be somewhat true. When you travel around with an educator, she can tell you who even the obscure figures being commemorated through names of highways and historical sites are, leading to the realization that there are major differences in picking southern and northern important figures for such commemoration.

I can’t help but feel I should go back and find more positive experiences and beautiful sites, it feels like irresponsible reporting of the Southern East coast, but for now I think I need some time.

Richmond, Virginia video click here. Baltimore, Maryland video click here. 

Tiny excerpt from Richmond, VA. Literally no humans anywhere, except those that passed in cars, maybe because it was about 100 degrees. Heat + human confusion + lack of morale = a really lazy, smeary dance for an intersection. Could've been a hallucination but I think the fellow driving the flatbed was smiling... #roadtripdances #roadtrip #richmond #virginia #city #sidewalk #hot #dance #danceeverywhere #whereiseveryone

See this Instagram video by @kholman * 16 likes

Baltimore, MD felt a little somber more than anything at first. This is a tiny clip from a walking sketch. Couldn't resist the light and shadow and built in balance beam. #roadtripdances #roadtrip #notagymnast #walking #light #shadow #baltimore #maryland #dance #danceeverywhere 📸: @caitfay87

See this Instagram video by @kholman * 12 likes

Roadtrip Dances: From One Carolina to Another (4)

Saturday, August 13

We left Charleston after a final explore on Saturday, August 13 and started our drive to Durham, North Carolina. The drive was a reasonable five hours, at least in comparison to the day before, and accompanied by nearly 70 wacky and fairly insensitive billboards for an aging tourist attraction called ‘Pedro’s South of the Border’ as we progressed up the highway. Billboards advertising pralines and canned goods, okra, mainly, started tapering off as we entered the northern of the Carolinas. While Durham was brand new to me, a friend and fellow MFA candidate had been singing its praises since they day we met (shout out to Amy Unell who also provided an unbelievably comprehensive list of Durham attributes and took us on a killer tour of Duke the next morning), and I was excited to see what we could fit into a condensed stop. 

Happy to be out of the car by late afternoon we walked for hours by indulging our curiosity all over the city, trying to make some sense of the layout and mostly failing. Durham sprawls, it is wide open, there is a lot of diversity in building heights, minimal signage, and what isn’t brick is very light stone.  It’s an excellent city for getting lost and the experiences that come from wandering without purpose; at one point we walked into a cupcake shop's birthday party and were welcomed to stay (southern hospitality is definitely a thing). Yet again it was incredibly hot outside, temperatures were in the high nineties with no sign of breeze, and the only signs of city life were a long line snaking down the block outside an ice cream shop that didn’t pop up until after dark, a trickle of individuals headed into a Lyle Lovett concert at Durham Performing Arts Center and the distant roar of a large group of people at a minor league Durham Bulls baseball game. Perhaps that’s where everyone was.

I had several thoughts wander through my head as we traveled and took in our surroundings. In efforts to understand the prevalence of bulls everywhere we stumbled upon the history of old tobacco and wandered through the converted tobacco buildings. I am torn with how intrigued I was with the old brick buildings and compounds, despite their origin in the needs of a terrible industry, but their history was alive and I couldn't help but feel a sort of attraction to the old brick buildings. Towards the end of the evening we were approached by a homeless man in a three piece suit and hat asking for money. I was taken by surprise both by his level of dress and the amount of clothing in relation to the extreme heat, but remembered that the man we encountered in Charleston asking for money was also fairly formally dressed. I’m very curious about this trend, but didn’t feel that it was my place to ask about his attire out of the blue. The next morning, after some incredible avocado toast that deserves special mention, Amy and her pup Luna drove us around Duke. As we saw some of the more iconic sites of the University, the Duke chapel among other landmarks, I wondered about the aesthetic and function of the college town. It felt so much like Amherst in a Southern way, perhaps there's a secret formula for developing such towns. Additionally, Durham felt fairly liberal and I know a lot of fantastic open-minded individuals that live or lived in North Carolina. How do such small liberal pockets easily exist in a state that can otherwise pass such atrocities as HB2 (the bathroom bill)? I collected these thoughts, questions and observations, unable to dive in to any of them with brain that was rapidly becoming saturated, and hope to revisit them as I continue breaking down my travels.

Durham was where I had one of my most meaningful connections and performance experiences of the entire trip. Amidst our long walk all over the city we found a mural in an empty lot. Sitting across the lot, staring into the mural, was a man in ripped, dirty clothing, speaking to himself, who identified himself as homeless. I was interested in the swoopy simple lines on the mural as a sort of dance language, and asked if it would be ok if I filmed a quick dance at the site. As I performed movement that was awkward and clunky as I tried to move in heat and sandals on gravel, he sat rapt by my improvisation. Upon finishing he enthusiastically expressed how much he enjoyed the impromptu performance. I was excited by the fact that perhaps I enhanced someone’s day-to-day experience with my project. This felt like progress, despite not having specifically defined sub-goals to accomplish during the trip. 

For video click here.

Adding some invisible ink to this Durham, NC mural with its hand-sized line drawings. Isolation, getting stuck, dead ends, swirl. Our friend at the very end wouldn't give his name, but was down with being part of the video and viewing experience and expressed excitement, intrigue and a little confusion afterwards. #roadtripdances #roadtrip #durham #northcarolina #mural #improv #invisibleink #dance #danceeverywhere #streetart #literally

See this Instagram video by @kholman * 24 likes

Roadtrip Dances: Florida and on to Georgia (2)

After the airport dance and a far too brief overnight stay with a pair of my alternate parents (thanks, Audrey & Paul), my traveling companion Caty and I hit the road at 7am with the intention of covering Florida and Georgia before stopping in Charleston, SC. I say intention because we didn't even make it out of the driveway before needing to jumpstart the car and charge the battery a bit. We ignored the potential bad omen. Eventually we got our act together, hopped in the car full of Caty's classroom supplies and my miscellaneous collection of things that seemed important to take on an art road trip, and found the highway.

Our first day on the road was a disguised exercise in mindfulness. All of my pre-trip fears about the worst part of long-distance car travel being sitting and confinement were somewhat validated but also the experience wasn't quite as torturous as I'd anticipated. Nine hours of Florida and Georgia highway was a considerable amount of sitting and monotony. We didn’t stop for the first few hours which consisted of mile after mile of the thin grey line that is the Floridian highway system. I know many parts of my reflection on the trip will appear to be generalization, and I do have memories from some beautiful beaches in Florida and family theme park extravaganzas, trips that made me realize not all of America is arctic in winter months, but Florida highways are incredibly uninspiring. I spent the first hour of the drive trying to hold on to some of the novelty of the landscape; imagine roads that are simply straight, no curves or changes in elevation for as long as you can drive with a border of trees on either side obstructing the possibility of a view. It was amusing, as lack of curve and elevation might be to a New Englander, but amusement quickly turned into a sense of doom when the horizon just didn’t change. I had a notebook at the ready to record my findings but I simply ended up repetitively affirming my intrigue in palm trees, the superior cloud formations in the sky, the fact that trash is made into mountains, and a recurring billboard for divorcemenonly.com. Also the prevalence of truck drivers and the general impatience of our neighboring vehicles.

I completed my first dance at a rest stop because it was simultaneously something new, respite, but it was also set directly off the same rigid path we were fated to endlessly follow. Like ourselves, everyone at the utilitarian rest stop looked tired, bored and sticky. I took interest in a random grove of five palm trees, definitely not natural to the ground they were rooted in, growing upwards with the same straightness as the road, and made a movement sketch to match. No one really seemed to watch or care and at that stage that was ok with me. We ventured on, past many more of the aforementioned divorcemenonly.com billboards, enduring a continuation of the grade school lesson in perspective as the straight highway shrunk into the distance. There were tall buildings in Jacksonville, an exciting shift in environment that quickly flattened back out to our day’s norm. There wasn’t much change at the Georgia border, besides the proud declaration of PEACHES! and PECANS! every time we would hit the mile marker, the introduction of something called Huddle House, and an influx of churches. There wasn’t enough time to do justice to Georgia, besides some in-car miniature movement sketches likely observed by no one. Sorry, Georgia. The South Carolina border was an exciting milestone, but also one where our surroundings felt decidedly southern. A long day.

For video click here. 

An excerpt from a Florida rest stop dance... After you pass beachy So. FL things get really linear, flat, straight for about a billion miles. No elevation, no curves, not much to see off the highway. 🙀 The people at the rest stop directly to the left of the screen were mostly not amused by my moves, even though I'd expect they'd never seen some nut making a dance for the straight/boringness of the Floridian highway and the rigidity of palm trees. #basic #palmtrees #highway #reststop #roadtrip #sorrynotsorry #blueskies #flat #boring #florida #dancelife #danceeverywhere #roadtripdances

See this Instagram video by @kholman * 21 likes

Roadtrip Dances: Why and a False Start (1)

There were many reasons why I decided to take on a series of road trip dances up the East coast beyond the fact that I needed a practicum project for grad school and that a close friend needed to get her car up to Boston. There is so much of this country that I haven't observed with my own eyes and as a US-based artist making work that speaks to our culture I felt this was important. As a human being, too, art-aside if one can separate, I wanted to have a chance to examine the coast I live on; how do various aspects of the South compare to my lovely little pocket of the Northeast, would I feel a distinct shift in attitude, behaviors, reception, architecture - hell - fast food chains? Being quite curious about the consumption of art and the various shades of willingness to participate I wondered who would stop to view my tiny performances and how would they view and possibly engage.  Finally, I struggle with the idea of myself as a performing body. I love to dance and to explore my physicality, constantly am immersed in making work to set on others, enjoy the discreetly performative act of teaching, and yet I have only recently passed the point of 'hating' the act of performance. Could I complete a project based on the caveat that I had to publicly demonstrate something I haven't quite figured out?

Slightly anxious about the latter reason, having arrived in Southern Florida, I found it difficult to let go of the marginal amount of stress surrounding the performative goals I had set for myself. Funny, because there was no pressure to 'make something' - not that that's ever really a stressor - I'd decided to move in an improvisational and perhaps site-influenced manner. It was the act of being watched with no safety net of others around me; if there was any sort of audience it would be a deliberate audience, choosing to watch yours truly as likely the only person doing strange things in public at the time.

Considering the fact that people probably watch me do very weird things every day (I've got a number of odd habits and methods and tendencies), I gave in a bit, giving myself permission to do just one invisible dance while sitting in the airport waiting for a ride. An excerpt of it is below. I was passed by a family, an airport worker driving a woman through the terminal, a flight crew, and a horde of businesspeople and no one was wise to what I was doing. The fact that it was a secret was exciting. While this was completely not the purpose of my trip, a false start of sorts, it gave me just enough momentum and amusement to combat my silly worries and carry on with the project.

Also, while not opposed to nudity in performance, a copious application of spandex (aka bike shorts) was adhered to in each of these videos. Dance is just crotchy. Get over it. 

For video click here. 

Excerpt from an attempt at a completely anonymous/invisible/overlookable (even headless) performance at an airport in Florida, pre road-trip, exactly one week ago. Also, don't worry: bike shorts. Also-also, excuse my lumpy knees. This was me allowing myself not to be seen in front of random people before an entire trip of busting a move in public. #airport #danceeverywhere #invisible #anonymous #headless #roadtrip #hands #shhh #backgroundnoise #comfortzone #dancelife #roadtripdances

See this Instagram video by @kholman * 16 likes