Streb: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero
224
Streb: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero
224eBook
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Overview
Called “the Evel Knievel of Dance,” Elizabeth Streb has been pushing boundaries and testing the potential of the human body since childhood. Can she fly? Can she run up walls? Can she break through glass? How fast can she go?
With clarity and humor—and with her internationally-renowned dance troupe STREB—she continues to investigate what movement truly is and has come to these conclusions: It’s off the ground! It creates impact! And it hurts trying to stop!
Here, Streb combines memoir and analysis to convey how she became an extreme action dancer and choreographer, developing a form of movement that’s more NASCAR than modern dance, more boxing than ballet, and more than most people can handle “in this dizzying, inspirational self-help” books (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781558616868 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Feminist Press at CUNY, The |
| Publication date: | 12/06/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 58 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
IN THE BEGINNING
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones!
— JOHN CAGE
My adventure in life began with action, and I know it will end with action.
At a young age I began to construct public moments for myself without asking for an audience. I thought I could garner the attention of passersby and loiterers, who might be tempted to watch if I paid attention to what was truly unusual. One morning up at Lake Ontario, where my adoptive family had a cottage in a local marina called Flanders, I saw a gaggle of men hovering over something and gesturing wildly. I was eight or so, by which time I was a trained fisherman. I pushed through the crowd and peered down. I saw a four-foot-long eel squirming all over the place in the horrible way snakes, their cousins, can. I saw that it had swallowed a hook. In fishermen's parlance this is a drag because it means you lost your hook and are often forced to rerig your entire pole.
Once I had forced myself into the center of the men, I bent down, took the eel in my left hand very close to its neck (if eels had necks, which they don't; they are actually all neck), got close to the back of its jaw hinge, and squeezed. It opened its mouth and I stuck my entire hand, fingers first, down its gullet, searching around for the hook's hard stem. I got my forefinger just inside the curve of the hook and pushed down hard. The hook got unhinged from the stomach of the eel and out it came. I threw the eel back down to the ground dramatically and handed the hook to one of the men. They screamed and cheered, and said, "That little boy got the hook out! Good fella!" I turned on my heel and walked away, glowing and glowing, hugely proud for hours after. I knew I would tell this story many times over in my future, but I also knew it was an experience that you had to be there for. I could never properly describe in words an event like that.
Another early physically intense memory was putting up a ceiling at our house on the lake. Leonard Streb, my adoptive father, built both our houses by himself, from stuff left over from various jobs (which has always reminded me of Johnny Cash's lyric, "I'd get it one piece at a time / And it wouldn't cost me a dime ..."). One time, Leonard ran out of nails and asked me to stand on a ladder and hold up a part of the ceiling while he ran to get more materials. My hands were over my head in a parallel fifth position with the heels of my hands flexed hard against the Sheetrock. Minutes passed, but still no sound of his return. I remember thinking, what an asshole. He's at some bar having a beer, thinking this is funny. If I had moved, the pieces he had put up would collapse. I was not going to let that happen.
Before long, my arms started shaking, my shoulders quivering. I started breathing heavily. I tried to name the sensations. I sensed the moments passing: it was authentic slow motion (another idea encased in the term adagio I grew to loathe in dance). I realized back then that there was no vocabulary for fire-in-the-sinews or rapid-quaking-of-muscle-groups. I was experimenting with the application of force, what little I could exert upwards toward the surface I was holding, given my weight and height and generally small size. For some reason, I kept pushing up with new intensity. I would start to feel myself fail, then — Eureka! — there'd be a little bit more of me, way down inside. A few hours later he came back and was shocked to find me still there, not because he was impressed, but because he had forgotten all about the ceiling and me.
One time I burnt a big barn down to the ground. I didn't mean to; I was playing with matches in the hay and it caught on fire. It was so magnificent I didn't try to stop it. No one was hurt but it was quite a spectacle. I got a huge amount of attention that day; cars parked everywhere and people stood around to watch. I was interviewed by the police, who threatened to take me to juvenile court. I admitted it was my fault. I knew I shouldn't lie, but I also knew I shouldn't talk about the small, amazing pockets of fire, how their power excited me: something so tiny could wreak such havoc.
In 1968, after years of performing unspecific action in the world, I looked at the list of possible majors at the State University of New York in Brockport, New York, and chose dance. This seemed to be the perfect combo of art and movement. Rose Strasser, the chair of the dance department, interviewed me and noticed I had no dance credentials.
"What can you do?"
"Well, I can pick up any disco dance that comes along. I get the rhythm instantly and can teach it to all my high school girlfriends! Does that count?"
"No," she said, "That has nothing whatsoever to do with dance."
Twenty years later I came to realize that that might be exactly what is wrong with modern dance.
Four years after that moment, I got onto my Honda 350 and tore out of Rochester, New York, Easy Rider-style, with exactly $120 cash, which I earned from training as a mechanic in a gas station and pumping gas. I headed west to San Francisco, arriving there a mere thirty days and six thousand miles later, via New Orleans, Houston, Colorado Springs, and Albuquerque, with a few other stops along the way. To date, this was the most grueling physical act I ever performed. I am still vibrating from that journey.
In time, I knew my life had to be built in New York.
I moved to New York City in 1974 and got my first job at the Wild Mushroom Café on Bleecker Street. There I met a guy named James. I was introduced to him by another new friend, Jimmy Gambino. Jimmy was once a Golden Gloves champion, but had gotten into a bad drug habit and lost his legs. He walked with two canes and made a rhythmic sound as he came down the street. Part of the sound was his two artificial legs, not just the canes. I was scared of him, scared of that impending sound and what it signified. One time I found a booklet of American Express checks. I asked Jimmy to cash them in for me. I knew he knew people who could do this. He said, "No, Elizabeth. You don't want to get mixed up in that." I completely thought I did, but I trusted him to know better, and didn't ask twice.
So James was the "block guy" on Bleecker Street. He had access to cheap apartments, from $110 to $225 a month. If you put down a key deposit of a couple hundred dollars, you could get a lease. This was prime property in New York City. It still is. This was an early clue to New York real estate: it mattered who you knew. Those with their hands on the strings of power were not always behind a desk. They often wandered around the streets where you would least expect to find powerful, influential people.
When I first began working at restaurants, I knew I wasn't ready to begin as a cook. Sure, I could read a recipeand make a meal. But could I read it in five seconds, make it in ten, and do it absolutely consistently night after night? Could I take the pressure? I needed training first.
So I started as a porter, which basically meant I got up very early to clean restaurants before they opened for business and before my daily 10 a.m. dance class. At one point, I was whizzing on my bicycle to clean three restaurants in downtown New York first thing in the morning. It was a terrible introduction to the trade. At one restaurant, every white shelf was literally covered in rat footprints every morning. Few things unnerved me, but this did. I was relieved when I felt ready to cook. Before long, I had a shift every night of the week. I was making thirty dollars a night. Still, cooking was about the efficiency, accuracy, and exactness of events. It was about being able to stand the heat, literally and figuratively. In small kitchens such as the ones I worked in, the menu is divided up into various cooking zones: stovetop, oven, broiler, and cold station. I worked all these zones at once. It was not unusual for me to cook 150 dinners by myself in one night.
For some reason I remember one night, after many years in the restaurant business, I was walking to work at Charlie and Kelly's on West Fourth Street. I had tears in my eyes, thinking, oh, oh my dream of being a choreographer may not work out. I may have to work in restaurants forever! I was thirty-five years old already, and I was just being realistic. But then I thought, okay, so what. I can live with that. If that is my fate, aren't I better off than most people in the world? I was feeling sorry for myself, which is why the moment stands out for me. Of course, I didn't have to work in restaurants forever, and I've been able to dedicate myself to choreography full-time for many years. And I might as well state the obvious: it's much easier to be successful than to struggle through a horrible job. But that doesn't mean you discover more in your life. The information I got working as a restaurant cook added to my knowledge of movement, and enhanced my lexicon, even if it wasn't being recorded, and even if no one important noticed me.
REAL ESTATE
In 1977, I was breaking up with my first girlfriend, Paige. Well, she was breaking up with me. I was still madly in love with her when she decided to walk out, to go with another woman. Apparently I didn't pay much attention to her. I had rehearsals and two classes a day, I cooked six nights a week, and I was completely unaware of the normal demands of a relationship. I have a memory of sitting in front of the TV eating coffee ice cream, hearing a sound, turning around and Paige was asking me something, wanting something. I thought, can't she see I'm busy? It never occurred to me that being with someone meant sometimes not doing exactly what you felt like. I trouble to mention this break-up for two reasons. One is about relationships, which I'll return to later. The other is about fire escapes. During our breakup, I decided to climb down mine to look into Paige's apartment (we lived on different floors in the same building). I saw exactly what I feared most, and despite all the climbing and jumping I would do in the future, this was the last time I exercised that option at home. And then I needed to move.
I met Tom Treadwell in ballet class around this time. He and I decided to look for a place together. A lot of artists were heading south to find cheaper work/living spaces. I thought that if I could build a studio to rehearse and live in and rent it out to other dancers, maybe I could cut down on my cooking time. Tom found a loft at 307 Canal Street at Broadway. We signed the lease together for three thousand square feet of raw space at $450 a month. Raw space means no electricity, water, plumbing, stove, sink, toilet, interior doors, walls. Raw space! We knew we had to create everything from scratch, but we didn't know about the rats, scores of them. Tom found out on the very first evening, when the sun went down across the horizon of the floor plan. Dozens and dozens of rats walked across the floor towards Tom, who ran to the restaurant where I was working that night to tell me. Rats again!
We learned that rats in New York City are in fact super-rats, impervious to any poison. You could maybe catch them in traps, but rarely would even a powerful spring-release contraption actually kill them. We tried glue traps, which were even worse. When they got caught, they were famous for the most intrepid escapes, like chewing off their appendages, which we would inevitably encounter elsewhere later on. They were fearless eating machines, and never stopped chewing. A friend told me the only way to get rid of rats for good was to shoot them. I imported a gun from a friend in Long Island, where they were legal, and began target practice on the ones stuck in the glue traps.
To build out the loft, Tom and I spent every penny we made. In the summer of 1977, Leonard Streb came down on the Amtrak from Rochester with his toolbox and know-how. He put up every single one of the five hundred two-by-fours and leveled the bathroom floor. He couldn't believe that my handsome roommate wasn't much help: "What the hell is wrong with him? Six feet four inches tall and he can't pound a nail in straight!" But I helped him, as I used to do as a girl. It was the most decent act he ever performed for me.
The place started to look more and more like a gorgeous dance studio, and so it became one. I bought Tom out after eighteen months. He didn't want to live in public anymore; he wanted a home. I deeply did not want a home. I wanted to run a public space, and for many years I lived there as well. I rented out the space by the hour, and never made more than it cost me to live and work there. In 1980, the landlord, Max Landau, took me to court to get the space back. It wasn't legal residential property, so he thought he would kick us out and make money with new tenants who would pay four times as much for the same property. The property value had risen exponentially. He owned Industrial Plastics, the store below my loft, and he sued me and the five other residents of the building who also refused to vacate. He knew we were living there illegally from the start, making a less expensive home than others in the neighborhood at that point. But we not only improved his physical property by investing tens of thousands of dollars in renovations, we improved the entire neighborhood. This was becoming a typical Manhattan feud. When we finally settled the case in court in 1995, our side prevailed. He gave us each another raw space in the building, with a forty-five-year lease and the right to purchase (at a very low price) in time. Tenants like us are now protected under the New York City Loft Law, which passed in 1982.
Throughout this long battle, I remained on civil terms with the landlord. And I learned an important lesson about time and space and relationships when it comes to real estate in New York City.
It was 1995 when I moved out of my three-thousand-square-foot loft and began looking for a different kind of space for my extreme action company, STREB. By now I had developed a practice that involved eight dancers and tons of action equipment. We were rehearsing in several different garages and lofts in Brooklyn, Queens, and on the West Side of Manhattan. Down the street from one of the garages on North Sixth Street in Williamsburg, I saw a phone number that led me to a man in real estate named Carl Vollmer. I called him for months and months, telling him what kind of garage would be STREB's dream space. He would retort, "Don't tell me your hopes and dreams! It'll cost you seven thousand dollars a month and that's that!" After several months of these exchanges on the telephone, he told me to meet him at Bedford and North Seventh Street. We walked to 51 North First Street, to a former loading facility for the Old Dutch Mustard Company. I looked into this vacant space, with thirty-foot-high ceilings and a fifty-by-one-hundred-foot footprint, and I saw the potential for magic everywhere and Carl helped make that happen.
I began the journey to acquire it with a ten-year lease. Then in November 2007, with unprecedented support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York City Council, the Mayor's Office, and the Brooklyn Borough President's Office, STREB purchased the space, which had become the STREB Lab for Action Mechanics (S.L.A.M.).
S.L.A.M. is an anti-white cube, anti-glass bubble, anti-ivory tower arena. It's the un-Lincoln Center. It's an experiment of place. It is the urban barn modeled after the suburban garage, which has been the birthplace of astounding new genres: rock 'n' roll, high-tech industries, chemistry experiments, grunge, etc. A place where "wrecking" the place doesn't matter. Unlike theaters or dance studios, a garage is a place to eat, drink, destroy, and build. We wanted to strip away the veneer of privilege, and appear as an entity more grounded in the hubbub of real time and daily life.
Over the past seven years we've developed a new operating system for audience sovereignty. Our new rules of conduct for twenty-first century audiences include: no start time; question necessary duration; no exclusion of noise; leave the house lights on; eat, drink, and be merry; do whatever you want, whenever you can; have all ages, races, classes together for a common purpose; mingle economic yields of buildings in adjacent neighborhoods; multitask; have no doors; offer things people need, like bathrooms and water; drop the idea of beginning, middle, and end; forget the idea that events have some pre- intended meaning; know that subjects are dead, it's all verbs; immerse with strangers; question civic duty; find your real audience on your own, virally; make an event a destination for more than one reason; ask what's an accidental "art-act"; be "open source," it's a Wikipedia world; believe Jane Jacobs in the Death and Life of Great American Cities; ask what is the next "small thing"; redesign lobby use; question the frozen real estate of fixed seating; question the hidden messages in the theater ticket; notice the difference between a metro ticket, movie ticket, and bus ticket; embrace interruption; examine public vs. private; examine the sidewalk, the low water line, and porches; redesign audience experiences; leave cell phones on; ask what can you sell? who wants what you have? what do you have?; re-examine the issue of scale; question what's right-sidedness; let outside in and inside out; lose ideas of ordained behavior; ask what is a new cultural paradigm; embrace distraction; let your mind wander; let kids, their behavior and desires, lead the way; install popcorn and cotton candy machines; intersect peoples' necessary everyday pathways; speak to a "smelly" person today; put a public sidewalk through your building; install audience action karaoke. Experience is a verb.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Streb"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Elizabeth Streb.
Excerpted by permission of Feminist Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Anna Deavere Smith,
Introduction by Peggy Phelan,
IN THE BEGINNING,
Real Estate,
Birth of STREB,
A Real Move,
Music,
BODY,
Danger,
PopAction,
Extreme Action Specialist,
SPACE,
Arena,
Un-Habitual Space,
Perspective,
Perception of Movement,
Action Machines,
TIME,
Hunks of Action,
How Soon is Now?,
Real Time,
Rhythm,
The Ten-Second Dance,
Invisible Forces,
MOTION,
Fight or Flight,
Syntax of Movement,
The Moveical,
THE REAL MOVE,
Notes,
Appendix A: Action Heroes by Laura Flanders,
Appendix B: Q&A Anna Deavere Smith and Elizabeth Streb,
Acknowledgments,
Index,