Dance Faculty Member Dana Reitz Gives Convocation Address

Bennington College Convocation, September 5, 2006: Dana Reitz

"Left hand, right hand." Renowned choreographer, dancer, and Bennington faculty member Dana Reitz moves each hand alternately, letting the movements become new movements. "Left hand, right hand. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I know where I am. Start again." Movement. "Start again." Movement. "Start again." Over and over she returns to the simple alternation of her original gestures, each time letting them develop into something new and beautiful.

In her convocation speech to welcome the incoming class of 2010 and the entire Bennington community, Reitz demonstrated this starting-point of making a dance before launching into a speech in several movements, which included tales of her time as a student in Japan at age 16; the connections between word and body, which she first noticed through studying Japanese calligraphy; anecdotes from her friendship with dance critic and writer Edwin Denby; metaphors for the traveling mind; and sage advice for new students in the entranceway of their Bennington educations. Here we offer some excerpts.

I was thinking about all the different speeches I've heard about this "threshold moment."

I have a really hard time with the concept of threshold--the Western architectural image of threshold. Here's the line you step over, and everything's different. Well, it doesn't really work like that. It's really not a line. You come from somewhere, and you're going to somewhere, and what's really quite wonderful is that you're bringing what you've got before into what you're going to be doing. And so I'd rather call this time--this event--an in-between place, an entrance way, an interval. A place of possibilities and of potential.

I like this image so much better, because time and space are allowed to change things--to become things. It brings me to Japanese architecture, which deals with the progression in time and space of entering and exiting. In a Japanese home, as you enter from the garden, the garden goes in toward the home, and the home goes toward the garden, so whichever way you're going, you're entering something and leaving something. And there is an incredible ritual at this particular in-between place, which is more than a foyer, really. It's an introductory place....

So now I want to bring in the Japanese concept of ma. Here's the visual: gate, sun going through it. It permeates a lot of Japanese language and art and ritual--it gives you both an objective place and the subjective sense or spirit at the same time. This word, ma, is connected to so many other words. "The word for 'human being' (nin-gen) literally means person-place, or person in relationship. So 'person' is not really alone. It's person in relationship. Second is 'world' or 'society' (se-ken)--literally, world in relationship to place. Third, 'companion' (naka-ma)--literally, relationship-place. Mankind is seen as only one component in a bigger whole of man, environment, and nature. The implication is that the greater whole, rather than human beings by themselves, is a measure of all things." (from Shinto to Ando: Studies in Architectural Anthropology in Japan by Gunter Nitschke)

"Ma is a structural unit for living space....Ma is a place where life is lived....Ma is the way of sensing the moment of movement....Ma coordinates movement from one place to another....Ma can accept any amount of confusion." (Arata Isozaki, MAN trans FORMS from MA: Space-Time in Japan catalogue from the Cooper Hewitt Museum and Festival D'Automne)

So why am I telling you all this? Because in this in-between place of learning--not just today, but throughout the next four years--it seems that the growing awareness of self must necessarily include a growing awareness of Other, and of the surrounding circumstance, past, present, and possible future. This in-between place is an encompassing place. You are not here by yourself, as much as it might feel like it at times, and you are not in charge of the results. But you are and will be in charge of being present....

Start somewhere. Make choices. Put down markers. Throw a line out in the future to see what you can catch.

To learn to speak, we actually have to learn how to listen, and train ourselves to speak over and over again. To learn to write, we actually have to read and write over and over again. To learn to draw, we actually have to see things and draw over and over again.

Make things, remake them, try things and actually let them go. Write things, rewrite them, edit, rearrange, rethink. New information keeps pouring into the mix--but you know what? If you're prepared to be present, all these things will happen.

Play with new thoughts, move them, move them through new territory, move them toward the unknown. Practice, practice, practice thought process, not the result.

By the end of four years, I don't know what information you will have acquired, or what remarkable moments you will have had. And I can't predict what your interests will be, but what I hope is that you will have learned to see more attentively, hear with more discernment, speak and write more articulately, confer more openly and effectively, consider your actions more thoroughly, investigate more keenly and travel with delight. May this transitional place, this in-between place, this entranceway, be a transformational place. May you move through it with curiosity and commitment, grounded energy and great joy.

Welcome, and in Japanese, irasshai.

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