California DanceMaker Grants

2002 Grantee Profile: Loretta Livingston
Read the Bones

Loretta Livingston's personal research for her Read the Bones project began several years ago, inspired by an outdoor art plan in the Maguire Gardens, adjacent to downtown Los Angeles' Central Library. The art plan, created by Jud Fine, is called SPINE, and is composed of steps, pools, wells and spouts, with water connecting the pieces. The 2002 California DanceMaker Grant supported the creation of Read the Bones, a performance project that incorporated dance, live music and video art collaboration. The resulting one-hour piece was shown to the public on September 20 and 21 in the Central Library's Mark Taper Auditorium.

Ms. Livingston worked intensively in the studio with five dancers during the months of June, July, August and the beginning of September. Mr. Fine's book, which documented and commented on his research and process for the outdoor art plan, was used as source material by the dancers, composer and designers. Livingston worked with the dancers to develop a movement language that was extremely complex, and that adhered to a specific arc and evolution — a task she had set for herself, since "evolution" of physical form and language was a core concept in SPINE.

Loretta Livingston's Remarks

"The importance of development time was key to [the creation of] Read the Bones. The grant bought me time — time with the dancers, time with the designers, time with the composer and time with the source materials. As a choreographer, I always work in multiple drafts, but the particulars of this work demanded an extraordinary amount of movement craft. The dancers and I worked together to create an original movement language that could become a signature — a visual and kinetic "signing." This had to be in place before I could work structure and development.

"... My job as director requires me to support and nourish the collaborators, and in order to do that I must first have the time to make the movement language, and make it rich and evocative enough to inspire everyone involved.... This is my fourth collaboration with the composer and video artist. The grant afforded us quality creating time. We moved forward in our work together. I will say again that time, in the fullest and best sense of that concept, is what the California DanceMaker Grant gave to me."