To infinite possibilites, an interview w/ Muffie + Tahni interview and editing by Kate Bredeson

“To infinite possibilities”: An interview with Muffie Delgado Connelly and Tahni Holt

Interview and editing by Kate Bredeson

On August 15, 2022, Muffie Delgado Connelly, Tahni Holt, and I sat down to talk about their dance collaboration Pulse Mountain, for which I am the dramaturg. Originally scheduled to open on July 21, 2022, Pulse Mountain was postponed due to COVID-19. We took advantage of the unexpected pause in production to think about this new work and the process of making it. Before we started our formal conversation, we chatted about Delgado Connelly’s work as choreographer on the upcoming production of Tick, Tick, BOOM! at Portland Center Stage, and how narrative and music as dramaturgical devices invite audiences to think and feel. Our  discussion then segued into Pulse Mountain. What follows is an edited version of our conversation.

Tahni Holt: Theatrical devices are in dance, too, of course: how do you get an audience to feel? So much of my work in the past really cared about this kind of expectation, and cared about skewing it, and messing with it, and not wanting to give that to an audience. My work wanted to make the audience members strive a little harder instead of giving them the formula. Maybe this was in part because I was never good at the formula. Just knowing the formula was there—it  was something that I did go up against. In Pulse Mountain, and in working with you, Muffie, and with our previous work on Sensation/Disorientation, I’ve felt a chance to revel in not caring about any of that anymore—the devices. And I love that.

In this way, Pulse Mountain has been such a pleasure because it brings me back to childhood when the formal intentions weren’t super loud; those devices weren’t super known to me at this point, and instead my kid self actually got swept up in the unexpected. Working on Pulse Mountain through Covid. all those formal things—rehearsal processes, expectations, dramatic structure, even the question of if or when there will be a public performance—just go quiet. All of that hasn’t been what is concerning to me about this work in any way. Which brings me to the kid part of it—this is a dance about returning in part to the feeling of being a kid, all of that joy and wonder and freedom I found in the dance studios of my youth. And it’s about the celebration of dance as opposed to big questions of how do we push things one way or another for those in our audiences. Of course there are things we’re trying to disrupt and interrupt. But it’s not structure, devices, and feelings. Pulse Mountain is about the craft of making.

Kate Bredeson: Can you talk about the role of the spectators in this work?

TH:  I notice how you, Kate, use the word spectator a lot. That's not how I experience our audience. Spectator makes me think of people watching something. And there’s something about the way Muffie and I—because I think we intersect here—

Muffie Delgado Connelly: We do— from different perspectives—

TH: For me, it feels like a mycelium inclusion, where we are trying to break down and absorb organic matter to use to as fuel for each other, the work, and our communities.

MDC:  Yes, we’re working in relation to each other, and to those who join us in our work. We work with their energetic bodies; they contribute to Pulse Mountain  in the same way that the building in which we rehearse and perform contributes to the work. The land that we’re standing on contributes to the work. We’re working in relation to each other, and to the music, the costumes, and to the time that led up to us being together. It’s all in relationship to the work.

KB: I should clarify: when I use spectators when I talk about performance, I don’t mean to indicate a passive watcher, I mean it to describe an active participant. To me, spectating is participating in presence and energy.

MDC: When you, Tahni first talked about your work, and skewing things, and how people have to work a little bit more to be able to engage with the work, I was thinking about how radical that is—just the idea that the audience has to participate at all. To meet the artist anywhere in the work is to me is a very decolonial idea. I love the idea that the audience members are not there to just be performed for, that the artist is not supposed to be doing all of the labor to entertain, to give the audience members what they're supposed to like. Even though this isn’t a new idea and there are a lot of artists and writers who have talked about this, I still think it’s a far less common practice than people would like to think.

KB: That goes back to what we were just talking about with the formula for musicals, and theatre and dance, and there are certainly exceptions to those formulas, but they are used so often. What we are talking about is what is the role of the audience, or spectators, and are we interested in people passively ingesting the work, or being provoked or challenged by it through active engagement and participation?

MDC: I think I’m still in question around this. For me, it’s an evolving part of our research, but I do feel like as we approach the performance of Pulse Mountain, there’s an invitation to meet halfway. This work feels like an invitation. We talk a lot about welcoming. I want the audience to be welcomed and absorbed into the space.

TH: Yes, what you’re talking about is exactly the work, and it’s not about being concerned with the comfortable and familiar tropes. Instead, our central question is: how do we invite ourselves here to this space, this process, and this work right now. Then, how do we invite all of us—audience members, spectators, our collaborators, and our community—here, now?  How are we welcoming people in a particular way? I don't know if it’s going to be successful. I don't think pushing people out of the work, or making them work extra hard, is what we are doing.

MDC: Welcoming is a very important part of what we are doing.

TH: Going back to musicals, since you’re working on one right now, Muffie, in Pulse Mountain we’re using our voices, and our voices are being used in really beautiful ways, even though neither one of us are professional singers. So there’s a naïveté to it as well, something uncrafted. But we’re not using this as a device to push people out of the performance.

MDC: I can only speak from my perspective on this. There is something for me that feels like a privilege I see in white culture—and white feminism in particular—of being able to push back in a particular way. And that feels not truthful to me, or to a lot of people of color. That pushing back for a white person, and a white woman in particular, is a very true expression, but it doesn't feel anywhere in relation to the kind of things that I push up against. Pulse Mountain is in relation to this, and this difference. In order for there to be space for me in the performance, and for my truth to be in the performance, Tahni and I are navigating a way for this truth to exist. This is all part of the answer to the question about what Pulse Mountain is trying to do. We are trying to move beyond formulas to infinite possibilities, and to make space for the different kinds of true expression that exist for me and for her.

KB: One of the things I’ve noticed in the rehearsal room is the amount of source material you use: images, words, ideas, drawings, etc… and I see how meaningful these references are to you and how this material has given you two a clear shared vocabulary built on years of research. Can you talk about this vocabulary you have developed and how the source material has shaped your project?

TH: These sources you mention are our guides. All of our research  is in relation to the guides that have come in to this process. There are guides in the room, and sometimes it can be deeply spiritual. There is no need to show these to the community. The role of the guides is to help us figure out the logic of this work and to figure out what we’re doing together. We call them in. That's the deep research that has been transpiring, and that's how we've mapped out the work—in relation to how the guides being with us. They’re not supposed to be seen. Instead, they are part of the layers of what is happening. One example that we’re open to sharing is the Crone.

KB: What is the Crone to you?

TH: The Crone has traveled through a life, has traveled through many lives. They are deeply rooted in who they are.

MDC: And we’re learning. We’re not there yet.

KB: We started this conversation talking about what it’s like to be a kid and now we are talking about the Crone.

MDC: The Crone is timeless. It feels like we have been dancing with all ages and all times, including pre-human life and form, post-human life and form, and into pasts and futures. The work is definitely working in relation to all of that in time and space.

KB: What is the origin story of Pulse Mountain? When did the seeds of this, and you two, start?

TH: 2016 in Sensation/Disorientation (presented by White Bird at Reed College in January 2017) is when the seeds of Muffie and Tahni intersected.

MDC: We wouldn’t be doing this process if we hadn’t left off with Sensation/Disorientation when and where we did. We had a very long intense process with it, and I remember finishing it and feeling like there was unfinished work between us. I definitely left Sensation/Disorientation feeling like I had a lot of questions. In that project we were such a group, an amoeba, and my flavor was so specific that I had to a lot of anchoring towards the group. I was really curious about what the possibilities and potentials could be if I didn't have to do all of that labor towards and with the group. And then Tahni came to me about doing this new project. It was originally Tahni’s work before it became a collaborative process, and initially I was coming on to Tahni’s project. And we started building a rehearsal process.

TH: You said no at first.

MDC: I did! That had everything to do with my positionality. Colonialism is a super real thing that works full time against me having time and space to work on my own voice and vision. So it’s a thing that I’m constantly having to negotiate; it feels like quicksand. I’m constantly asking: how do I do this? Where do I go next? Where's the place where I get to work on this project and have this resource in this space? So in general, I’m always trying to say no to everything. When Tahni asked if I wanted to work on a project, I said I have to make space for my work right now.

TH: After Sensation/Disorientation I also felt like there just has to be a world in which Muffie and I got to work together again. I felt that very strongly, and I knew at the time that the only way to make that happen was to get some sort of funding and to invite you in. It wasn’t that I wanted to do this as my project. I saw you working on a very particular part of your own voice and work that really didn't include me.

KB: Muffie, when did it shift from a feeling of you participating in Tahni’s work to something else?

MDC: That was how it started, and then it shifted when we let go of crafting a formal piece, and this was when everything was cancelled early in 2020 due to Covid. So then it just became a rehearsal process. We thought, well, we’ve already got this rehearsal time and space carved out in our lives. The whole world is shut down. And both of us were at home being full time parents and full time teachers to our kids.

TH: Home, stuck, full time.

MDC: So we asked: “do we want to stop coming in here and rolling around together?”

MDC and TH: Absolutely not!

MDC: So this was when things shifted. And things cracked open for us.

TH: It was such a relief for me. This was so much more that what I was asking for or wanting.

MDC: It is a collaboration, with all that a collaboration entails. There are very real dynamics that we are always navigating that feel tricky. And it’s real slippery on my end. I don't know how it feels for you, Tahni, probably slippery, too, and on my end it feels real slippery sometimes. Sometimes I can talk myself out of feeling like I’m truly in the room,

KB: In Sensation/Disorientation there were always six or seven people, maybe eight in the room, and it’s really different when it's just two.

TH: You can’t disappear when there are two people.

MDC: There have been a lot of shifting dynamics around Tahni and I getting comfortable and making space for each other in a way where we can fully show up, and also having thorough enough communication processes and a deep enough friendship to be able to have real honesty, so that we can actually show up for one another in the way that we actually need. Sometimes Tahni says, “I've got to make space for you. So I'm going to back up,” and I say “I actually need you to support me right now. So if you want to support me, you actually step forward and take over in this moment.” It’s crucial that we can toss the baton back and forth in that way, and to be able to say what one of us needs in the moment, which is something with which we all struggle. So sometimes, according to where we are, Tahni can fully be in the lead, and it can look like it’s her project, but that's a decision we're making together. And sometimes it launches over to me. We hold different places.

TH: What I love so deeply about the creation of Pulse Mountain is how much I learn about myself, and our friendship and collaboration, Muffie. You, Muffie, bring in the light. It’s incredible to be able to truly collaborate like this. When you talked about how to say what you really need—that type of space is so vulnerable. There’s a huge vulnerability to that. I’m really good at not showing up for it. If I want to, I can pretend to have that vulnerability. I remember this conversation we had once where I said, I don't know if I can do something. And you said “You don't have to do it.” There was something about you releasing me from having to do it that allowed me to move forward.

MDC: There has been a lot of that over the past few years. Time was really on our side. Pulse Mountain needed this time. It needed a lot of time.

KB: Thinking about process and collaboration and time, can you both talk in a bigger picture way about what you are interested in now as artists? What are the things that are core to you as people and artists, especially in response to the past few years, and how is this reflected in Pulse Mountain?

MDC: My work is largely invisible in the world. It really exists between the people who are closest to me and myself. The work that makes it out onto a stage is pretty far removed from my own actual work. So, for me, what's most exciting about Pulse Mountain, and what's interesting to me about it, and what I’m most proud of, is not only what is going to be seen in the community, but what Tahni and I have built between us. That’s what will remain when this work is over. It’s what Pulse Mountain is doing, and how it will continue to impact dance, our lives as individuals, and the people with whom we work in our somatic practices, and how it’s going to be passed on through Flock, the dance center that Tahni founded in 2014, and where we are now two of four co-stewards. In this way, Pulse Mountain makes me think about the future. My hope is that the people who come to see Pulse Mountain get to feel and experience some of this.

TH: Yes. There’s something about this collaborative process with Muffie that is the future. There's something about the process as we've experienced in the last nearly three years, and how this is the only way forward. It’s a lifetime of learning and unlearning. There’s something about this that is the flower of this performance.

MDC: I love that.

TH: This performance is like how there are all these roots of the flower. Then this flower arrives. It only arrives because of all that planting and watering and sun and composting. Something about this performance feels into all of that. Like the mycelium inclusion. I guess that's what feels a bit futuristic to me about Pulse Mountain. The audience members feel the process of making the work. At least that’s what I hope.

MDC: Maybe subtly. Maybe very subtly.

TH: For me, in Pulse Mountain, and more broadly, it feels like the world is swelling. And that is in the work.

KB: We were set to open on July 21 and then we shut down due to Covid. As you’ve been reflecting on and living in the pause since late July, is anything new that you’ve discovered?

TH: I immediately went into my way of being and I said “this just sucks.” And Muffie said it will all work out, it will happen when it’s supposed to happen. And then it was fine.

TH: I had this sense of responsibility for the crews and the financial responsibility. All this stuff was like feeling very like a pressure cooker. And then Muffie said it will happen at the beginning of October, and I said it can’t work out then, and then it did.

MDC: In July, we felt ready. I was really proud of us. And, still, some more time wouldn’t hurt. And having more time together with Maxx and Luke, the musicians, and you, the dramaturg. And now we have an extra month.

KB: I’m really struck in this conversation of thinking about kids, the Crone, age, and time, and how having more time with all of this feels like part of the fabric of the work. What you’re describing about this multi-year journey, reveling in the process, it feels like part of the work.

MDC: It is a shape-shifting, responsive and adaptive work that at every step of the way between January 2020 and until now (and ongoing) became what it needed to be for every season. It wasn’t just Covid. There were many political events, racial revelations, a lot of uncovering of truths that came out in the world, Trump, #metoo, the fires, Kavanaugh, abortion rights, and we were a part of all of this. Pulse Mountain became good at adapting to what we needed it to be, and it has been a life preserver for us. This work didn’t have the privilege of just being a dance piece. There was too much real life shit going on. And so, whatever it needs to be, that’s what it’s going to be.

We’ve used the image of both islands and planets to think about Pulse Mountain. In rehearsal, we’d talk about moving from one planet to another. And then the work shape shifts, and in this conversation, it’s a flower. Astrologer Renee Sills talks about water, and we see a lot of water in this work. She was talking about how fascinating water is because it can be a river, and then an iceberg, and then a cloud, and now it’s in your blood. Pulse Mountain feels like this. It’s a shape shifter.

KB: So much of this process was mostly just the two of you, and then as we ramped up in July, musicians Maxx Katz and Luke Wyland, and me as dramaturg, and lighting designer Jeff Forbes, and costume designers Annie Novotny and Chloe Cox, all showed up to join you. Can you talk about what adding in these elements brings to what had largely been a two-person process?

TH: It brings this feeling of “Oh, this is actually going to happen! There is a form to this thing! Now we get to make a shape out of it at this moment!” and that's super exciting. We felt that all of these people were gifts. I have so much gratitude for everyone that has been a part of Pulse Mountain, and I was feeling so much gratitude for people who were buying tickets. We couldn’t have people involved along the way due to Covid—we didn’t even know if there would be a public performance—and then, when the process opened up and our collaborators joined us it was like being showered with all these gifts from other people, and the gifts were a loud “Yes,” with people saying that they wanted to be on this team.

MDC: It amplified how I feel like Pulse Mountain as a process and a performance is a practice of yes. It's a pleasure practice. That's what this work is, and so that's what happens when you put that vibration out; it comes back.. It’s a pulse mountain—that pleasure, that pulsation of energy is the center of this work. That’s what this is.

Pulse Mountain will play October 6-8, 2022 at Building Five. Pulse Mountain is Muffie Delgado Connelly and Tahni Holt, Music Composition by Luke Wyland and Maxx Katz, Costume Design by Annie Novotny and Chloe Cox, Lighting Design by Jeff Forbes, and Dramaturgy by Kate Bredeson. https://www.tickettailor.com/events/pulsemountain/754346

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Kate Bredeson (she/her) is a dramaturg, a director, and a theatre historian.  Her project as a scholar and artist is to research, write about, and practice the ways in which performance can be a tool for radical activism and protest. As a dramaturg, she worked with Tahni Holt on Rubble Bodies (2018) and Sensation/Disorientation (2017), and is the recipient of two national dramaturgy fellowships from the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas: the 2011 Residency Grant, and the 2016-17 Mark Bly Creative Fellowship. Her book Occupying the Stage: The Theater of May ’68 is published by Northwestern (2018). She is currently at work editing anarchist theatre director Judith Malina’s lifetime diaries. Kate is Professor of Theatre at Reed College. https://www.reed.edu/theatre/bredeson/index.html

Muffie Delgado Connelly (she/her) is a dance artist, movement researcher, teacher, and somatic practitioner. Her movement work is part of her activist practice, and in both arenas she is informed by her identity as a Chicago-born xicana mother. Her work as a performer and choreographer has been presented across the United States at Links Hall (Chicago), Packer Schopf Gallery (Chicago), The Art Institute of Chicago, Movement Research Festival (New York), The Gibney Dance Center (New York), and in Portland at White Bird, Performance Works Northwest, the Newmark Theater, and Portland Center Stage. She is a yearly guest teacher at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Delgado Connelly is one of four artistic leaders of dance center FLOCK. https://muffiedelgadoconnelly.com/

Tahni Holt (she/they) is a dance artist whose career is devoted and in service to dance through performance, teaching, community gathering, ongoing collaborations, and somatic studies.  Holt’s work invites ongoing states of mystery and unknowing to reside in the liminal space, where unraveling is not a marker of failure but one of great power and intrigue. Her choreographic work has been performed throughout the U.S at On The Boards (Seattle), Fusebox Festival (Austin), The Lucky Penny (Atlanta), DiverseWorks (Houston), Velocity Dance (Seattle), and PICA’s TBA Festival (Portland). She is founder of FLOCK Dance Center, for which she is now one of four FLOCK stewards. With Luke Wyland, she runs It’s a Fucking Miracle, a popup dance class. Holt is a certified Alexander Technique teacher and mother. https://tahniholt.com/