tonya said,

October 30, 2007 @ 6:10 pm

This is great! I saw his site-specific work, “Window,” downtown this summer and loved it. I also recognized him from David Michalek’s “Slow Dancing films” exhibit!

JustinPeck said,

October 30, 2007 @ 10:44 pm

now this is movement

Siri Dhyan Singh said,

November 2, 2007 @ 6:07 am

Think it was george clinton who said ‘the rhythm of vision is a dancer’ . . . that was just beautiful to me in this piece. Phenomenal one shot like that, gives me hope to live a life in flow.

bill shannon said,

November 20, 2007 @ 5:26 pm

Dear Sloan,
thank you for reposting my recent collaboration with RJD2 and director Joey Garfield. The take we are looking at is take 16. MY 16th and final attempt at rounding Brooklyn City Hall without a hitch. Your post also included an excerpt from my artist statement on virtualprovocateur.com. i wrote that statement in 1998 and its high time i update it. I dont feel the same way now especially about the level of sophistication of the choreography. i have grown over the years and seen a lot more dance than when that was written.

Your question about my statement was; How does not having dance training make you an outsider?

The primary reason I consider myself an outsider is because I perform an invented dance technique. The Shannon Technique. To be an outsider is to know that those on the inside are “understood”. When you look at my dancing you have no idea what is a perfect “sweeper” and what is an imperfect “sweeper” is (see 59 -1:05)… to that end you have no relative sense of measure when looking at my dancing. You might like or dislike a “sweeper” subjectively, but knowing the quality of its execution in relative terms is not part of that decision making process. Furthermore, my dancing includes references to other urban kinetic forms including bike freestyle and skateboarding. These references are couched in a disability-based manipulation of crutches that is stylized into a dance expressiveness influenced by a diversity of streetdance forms including breaking, boogaloo and housing. These references from urban forms and streetdance also fall for the most part out of codified dance techniques and in the case of streetdance are somewhat obscure to the dance world generally. Thus for those who might see my dance and try and talk and write about it my dance becomes clumped into generalizations of “percussive” or “slick” or “lyrical” and more.. none .. and i mean none of the critiques of my dance on stage begin to approach an informed critique of the actual dancing. Critics and fans are mostly stuck with discussing the staging, the costume, the music and lighting, the narrative structure etc.. basically concerns around the framing of the dance or who I am as an artist seperate form the dance. In contrast, when you read a review of a ballet companies staging of The Nutcracker, the reviewer will often mention an individual dancer and discuss the succcess or failings of that dancers technique in combination with the role that they are playing. (tiny tim anybody) Notions of what is rigorous and what is rote can be written about in an informed way because the technique is known, part of the canon, part of dance history. This entire area of writing about and comprehending a dancers expression technically cannot exist with an invented form. Thus I would argue that I stand outside of dance, as an institution with a history, looking in. I dont look for pity at my position. I dont think I have it worse than any other artist struggling to be understood. I only know that until there is an informed audience as to the nature of my technique (an unlikely scenario) I will remain an outsider who is only understood in general terms of the frame around the dance and how it relates to other frames around other dances. Streetdancers who i have worked with over the past ten years actually have learned my dance and seen it enough to know when I pull off a new combination or when i perform a move perfectly or when a move is particularly messy. They respond accordingly in the moment to my dance. The satisfaction of experiencing an informed level of appreciation among these few who are intimate with my dance process leaves me with a hint of what it must be like for a technical virtuoso with a technique understood by the world.

Finally i want to say agian thanks for posting up my dance on winger. ive bookmarked winger in my dance links. thanks for all the positive comments as well. this response is a little late so i dont know if anyone will see it but its worth it to me to share with you and respond to your question.
all the best. keep dancing!

yours truly,
bill shannon