cc  >> Andrew Taylor: So here's what  I know about Elizabeth Streb.  You can read her bio.  She's done cool stuff.  She's gotten big awards.  Her company is awesome.  But I guess, what I take away  from my many engagements with  her and her company, is she's an  individual that transforms the  space around her.  And she's done that in a bunch  of different ways.  So, beginning with dance, you  know, transforming the physical  space of a stage.  She just told me she started  dancing at 17, and then decided  to major in dance as an  undergraduate.  So you can see, she moves  quickly to figure out what she  wants to do. 

 Then she evolved a company.  In 1985, she started her  company, which if you haven't  seen it, you really need to see  it.  And I think you'll see some of  it here.  it is a glorious amalgam of  different things that really  push your brain, and transform  the space that they work in.  Then, her newest chapter is the  chapter that we're talking about  today, is this Streb Lab for  Action Mechanics, SLAM, in  Brooklyn.  And it's, as you'll see, it's  sort of her attempt to  re-conceive the space in which  creative people do their work.  We have a lot of assumptions  about what that looks like.  Some of them are perfectly fine.  But there's a whole range of  different ways we might engage  audiences and artists, creative  people, community members, in  space.  And that's what we're going to  talk about today. 

 So, I'll let Elizabeth do the  rest.  But I'm extraordinarily pleased  and proud to present to you,  Elizabeth Streb.  (applause)  >> Elizabeth Streb: Thank you  so much, Andrew Taylor,  it's just a pleasure.  We've been having exploding  brain cells back and forth for  the last, I don't know, five or  seven years.  And we keep running into each  other all over the darn United  States.  I don't think it's gone  international yet, do you?  But it's been a very inspiring  exchange of information.  § §  So, this topic, particularly is  very, very inspiring to me.  When I first started as an  action maverick, which is in a  sense, why I ended up believing  that my world was going to be  completely encompassed by  action, it was as if when you're  a small kid.  And usually, this is when ideas  germinate, I think, most and  best.  You're thinking to yourself, or  anyway, I was thinking to  myself, well, what do you do  with your whole darn life?  I was brought up. 

 I was adopted at two.  I was brought up in an upstate  town named Rochester, New York.  And what I saw all around me,  and I think many of us are  influenced by what we see all  around us, and especially, I've  decided lately, by the quality  and nature of the conversations  that we each have at our dinner  table.  I feel that that is one of the  most impactual representations  of how we then take off and go  into the world to figure out,  well, what can I do?  And my main idea was, I did not  want to have to figure out what  hairdo I was going to have by  17.  Every single person in my  neighborhood, the women, figured  that out at that age, and for  the rest of their lives.  (light laughter)  I don't know why I logged on to  hairdo, but I felt it was  significant to the small  constraints that many, very  often women are forced into.  I decided, as I looked into my  world and watched things happen,  that my main obsession was  movement, was what was actually  invisible.  And I thought to myself, well,  you just do it.  You have to do it.  And my attachment to movement  was very erratic and kind of  grubby and grunty. 

 Like, for instance, I think my  first choreography happened when  I was nine.  I was at the dinner table.  My father was a Mason.  There was a cigar box, he smoked  cigars, of nuts and bolts on a  pile of magazines over by the  counter shelf.  And only I noticed that that box  of bolts was slowly slipping off  the shelf.  And I unobtrusively got up.  My parents were talking about  the masonry my dad had done that  day, or something else.  I wandered over,  surreptitiously, swung around as  it slipped off the shelf, and I  caught it perfectly horizontally  about an inch from the ground.  Not one cold washer fell out.  My parents, very startled,  looked at the event, made no  comments and went back to what  they were doing. 

 But I walked around the  neighborhood like I had won the  Olympic gold medal or something.  This is me.  This is what I'm going to skip  to right now.  I did a lot of crazy things.  I had motorcycles.  I tried to see, you know, how  fast could these small  motorcycles go.  I think I had a Honda 50 when I  was 15, because then you had  freedom.  You know, you'd ask your dad,  hey, can I take the car?  And what would he usually say?  No.  I go, I don't need a car, I have  a motorcycle.  I'd get on the motorcycle. 

 This is a 350.  And this is the moment,  I was 22.  I just got out of college.  And it's the moment before  I went across the country.  I drove this Easy Rider 1972,  it had just come out.  I took this bike and I decided  that I'm going to ride it to  San Francisco.  And I immediately headed  to New Orleans.  Not the most practical thing to  do.  But because they had done that  in the movie, I thought, you've  got to do that, if you want to  ride a bike across the country.  And I went 6,000 miles  in 30 days. 

 I had not much money.  I had maybe $200.  I'd pull off the road when the  sun set, and I made sure no cars  were going either way.  Then way off the road, I was  scared of snakes and gophers and  prairie dogs, but that was okay.  Then when the sun would come up,  I'd get on the bike and keep on  going.  And what was so incredible about  that, is right now, I look at  the seat of a motorcycle  and I think, what the heck  was I doing?  And I realize that our heroes  are different.  And this is meant to say, I wish  we had time for me to go to each  one of you and say, who are your  heroes?  Are they the heroes that society  more or less approves of?  Or are they the kinds of heroes,  for me, such as Evil Knievel,  that represented something that  I thought had all of the fabric  of a profound set of  circumstances and  accomplishments.  Someone once asked him, at about  the moment he was done with his  exploits, would you change  anything in your life?  And he said, well, I might have  gone a little faster on a couple  jumps, but otherwise, no,  I wouldn't.  He said, I never really had any  trouble with the take-off.  It's the landing that's a  problem. 

 I believe that when I first  trapped a fly in a mason jar and  I noticed that it could change  directions on a hair, without  bouncing off the walls, I stared  and stared at it.  And I thought that is the most  beautiful flight I've ever seen.  It's not like a seagull that  makes a decision which direction  they're going to go, and then  just keeps going that way.  It's like something everyone  dislikes.  It's something everyone thinks  is ugly.  It's a fly.  They're dirty.  But watching it, I became  unbelievably inspired.  And I started to think, well,  why don't humans fly?  I started to have a dream of  human flight.  And I suspected it would be  grubby and grunty and a little  ugly, and slightly unattractive,  such as that fly. 

 I thought that that fly and  I had some pretty serious  commonality.  These are images of my dancers  in the air.  This was from a Wolf Trap  collaboration, when they  commissioned us to celebrate  the anniversary of the Wright  brothers' flight.  When you see the dancers in the  air, you can see their muscles  just being completely flexed.  And although they're floating  through the air, and  they're going off a trampoline  in this situation, what they're  really thinking about, because  they have to, is the failure of  flight.  What's going to happen when the  ground rush comes up to whap  their bodies against it?  I learned pretty early on  that I had to contend, and  didn't want to camouflage,  the effect of gravity.  So who were some of my other  heroes?  I want to just introduce you to  a few.  You may know them already.  >> Larry dreamt of flying in his  own homemade machine.  >> Streb: Anyone know him?  >> In 1982, at age 33, he  attached 42 weather balloons to  a plastic lawn chair, tethered  the contraption to his  Chevrolet, then sat himself in  the chair, untied the ropes and  rose. 

 Not 30 feet, not 40,  not 100 as he imagined.  Above his girlfriend, his  mother, and the family's  suburban ranch house, Larry rose  16,000 feet over Los Angeles  with not even a seatbelt on his  chair.  A few miles out to sea,  a startled commuter pilot saw  Larry pass his cockpit.  An alerted rescue helicopter  at last towed Larry home.  But Larry was already saved.  To fly was all he wanted.  After Larry landed, his  arresting officer asked him  why he'd done it.  He was curious, said Larry.  Besides, a man can't just sit  around.  >> Streb: Did any of you see the  movie this summer that Disney  made called Fly?  Was it called "Up"?  I mean, this is what's so  incredible. 

 This guy had this dream and  carried it around in his brain.  Why I'm bringing all this up  is because this--  I found him in  the Darwin Awards.  This was a few years ago when  not everyone knew about the  Darwin Awards.  Do you know what they are?  Those of you who do not, they're  people who try a stupid human  trick and die, usually they get  a Darwin Award.  This guy got a Darwin Award and  did not die.  But this is the type of thing.  Let's say, maybe there's even  something you dream in your  brain and you've never told  anyone, even your best closest  friend.  You just kept it a secret, like  he did.  He thought, I'm going to get  a Chevrolet.  I'm going to get a belt. 

 I'm going to tie this lawn  chair, get 42 weather balloons.  And it got him through Vietnam,  the story, as it may be true.  And finally, finally one day he  did it.  Now, he ended up being a pretty  depressed guy.  I think he died.  And after the fact, Disney came  and made the movie "Up."  But I find that a little sad,  because he really could've been,  you know, launching himself  around Hollywood with a whole  lot of pizzazz.  But what's so amazing is that  this small idea became a dream  of the entire population.  And I think that if we each, no  matter what our disciplines are,  mine happens to be action and  movement.  No matter what they are, what  Streb has attempted to do from  the very beginning, is to  in essence noun-ize the verb.  What would my methodology be to  figure out how to construct an  effective action moment. 

 Now, Evil Knievel got on a  motorcycle.  Larry Walters attached a bunch  of weather balloons to his lawn  chair.  I mean, Evil Knievel had  millions of people watch him.  I don't know who was watching  Larry, except for the pilot that  got very upset when he floated  by his window.  But what I was interested in,  because I was in the performing  arts, I graduated with a degree  in modern dance in 1972, from  SUNY, State University of New  York at Brockport.  And I knew I had to go out into  the world and figure out, before  I got too old, and so I could  demonstrate it, what is my  movement idea.  So it was always about what  movement could I do, and bring  inside a space like this, and  have all of you, if you would  ever be willing to be my  witnesses to the action, be  affected by it in some way.  My dream was that, and continues  to be, you don't just get told a  story, but you have a physical  experience, because we make it  so extreme.  So I thought, I looked at  dance, because that was my  field, and I wondered, why do--  I wondered why they camouflage  the effect of gravity.  Why does the circus do that?  Why does, a lot of times,  gymnastics do that?  And I just put these little  thoughts down, knowing at the  moment that they were fairly  stupid questions. 

 Everyone in the field, for  hundreds of years, camouflages  gravity.  Who do I think I am?  And then, many times, in my  ballet class, my teacher would  say, you're dancing too  muscularly.  Put your shoulders down, because  when I would lift my arms,  I'd go like this.  It felt so good, you know.  It just felt good.  I did what felt good.  And, put your shoulders down,  and stop making that grimacing  face, for instance.  I'm thinking we're doing  ronde de jambes.  That really does hurt.  I was such an idiot savant. 

 I didn't know.  But I just said, okay, I have to  learn how to do these other  things.  But I was a little suspicious.  And I thought to myself,  what if I'm right?  What if my questions aren't just  offensive, which they could've  well been at the time.  I could've just been kind of an  ornery kid.  But what if they were my,  you know, trail of breadcrumbs  into a new tomorrow.  So I just hung onto them.  You can see them here.  Question the hegemony  of the floor.  Everybody does their dancing  on a horizontal floor. 

 And you really find that its  absolutism starts to really murk  up the waters of what an  invented action phenomenon  could be.  And timing, I think,  is emergent.  It's not something you can make  an intellectual decision about  beforehand.  That's why we also think that  music is the true enemy of  dance.  And I think that the forces and  the power that you can generate,  affecting the timing of the  human body in space, depending  on where it is, etc.  § §  You know I'm from the '70s,  right?  But really say,  how could demand the impossible?  What is something you could do  that would be impossible, even  if you would just going to do an  exercise, something physically  possible, that you've never,  ever seen anyone do before.  Could somebody raise their hand  and give me, what would that be?  Stand on their finger?  Not like that?  You knew I was going to do that.  I got that idea.  Upside down?  Me, just like this?  Boy, that's a good one.  Has anyone ever seen anyone  stand on their finger?  No?  It's a good one. 

 Now, why I think this is so  phenomenal is you can't hardly  believe your eyes when you're  watching this.  I just wish I was there when it  was being filmed.  You know, even very, very heavy  things have a dream of flight.  This is our trampoline.  It's an Aussie.  I mean, the training.  You can't really say  to an elephant...  You can't really say  to an elephant,  please be right side up,  be vertical.  Make a perfect line.  Really, he took so many risks  in this, and everything. 

 Oh, what could be  more beautiful?  § §  This is Yves Klein's  Leap into the Void.  There's a whole bunch  of discussions about whether  this is real,  or a put together photo.  Then there's another story  that says, well,  he did it when he was drunk,  and crashed  and broke his shoulder,  but no one was there  to take a picture,  so this is real, kind of,  in retrospect.  But if you're going to do that  kind of thing and leap out of a  building, when I first looked at  this image, I thought, well, I  wonder how far can a human being  fall.  That would be the question.  And still be okay.  How can you invent a condition,  which is what we do at Streb,  to ask what's the what.  So, this is a piece of equipment  that is invented by Noe Espana,  one of our longtime  collaborators.  And what we're trying to do is  figure out in every move we make  that includes gravity, how can  we cheat space and time, so that  all of you could look at  something and have it appear to  be a sort of silly putty moment.  Like, is there a way for us to  construct something, and we do  use action gizmos. 

 And we do that because well, the  music industry cheats.  They have harpsichords, pianos,  flutes, drums, guitars.  They're not just standing there  singing.  So, I feel, when that thought  came to me, I feel even more  exonerated.  You can't make exciting action  without a gizmo that helps you  get to a new place in space.  Or, you use something physical  that interrupts your space.  Now, you'll see that what  happens when Cassandra starts to  go around right there, at about  1:00 or 2:00, that all of a  sudden, you get an anti-gravity  moment.  It doesn't last long.  It lasts for a couple seconds.  But what we've been  experimenting with, given that  say, let's say this room we're  in is my dance studio. 

 Many of you work in a studio  like this, except for there's  mirrors and barres.  Let's say that we repurpose the  dance studio.  Cassandra's floor is the inside  of that wheel.  And if I were to let you watch  the whole piece, or you come to  SLAM in New York City, which I  wholeheartedly invite you to,  you'd be able to see that they  run on the outside.  But it's not something she can  do without this machine.  And the other idea of this  machine is, we're trying to  figure out how we can grab you  by your intestines and make you  think, somehow, the transfer of  this information is palpable.  We work with danger.  I want to lay out some of these  attributes that we have to  contend with, and fear.  And that's part of what we do.  If I could say, oh, I want to  fall from 30 feet, and I want to  land perfectly horizontal,  okay, I'll land one-foot mat. 

 But I want to just fall.  So I'm not doing anything  once I take off.  I'm letting something happen to  me, by not grabbing, you know,  frantically for help, or  screaming to my friends.  And what we're interested in,  and what about that moment of  fear that happens pretty  constantly, in different ways  for different people.  Does that cause you to stop  doing things?  Or, in fact, are we saying we  need to go into an unhabitual  place in space.  So where I am right now is right  side up, the base of support is  the bottoms of my feet.  I'm calling this an unhabitual  place in space.  There's no tricks to the  construction of this floor.  I walk along and it doesn't go  up and down.  There's nothing interesting that  happens. 

 I know exactly where the level  ground of the latitude line is.  So, if I'm just completely where  I always am, then how can I  possibly make a physical  decision about what to do?  I think I'm just going to let  the cliches in my mind pour out.  So, we're trying to figure out,  how can you do a move, and show  the effect of action on  substance.  So this move is called "break  through," and I got the idea.  I was very interested, because  action, once again,  is invisible.  Can you guys see that?  Is it too dark?  You can see it?  Is there a way to take the  lights just ever so slightly?  If there's not, it's fine.  With this, as well, I thought,  how do you capture the force of  physicality.  This is SLAM, our Streb Lab  for Action Mechanics.  It's in New York City.  It's in Brooklyn, New York,  Williamsburg. 

 And this is a whole room full of  kids that have no idea who we  are.  They end up being our barometer.  We're trying to say, well, let's  bring in an audience of  strangers.  One of the conceits of SLAM is  to attract, virally, strangers,  people who we don't know.  We don't really advertise for  much.  But the idea of setting up a  pane of glass to dive through,  which is actually, the last  couple seconds is extremely  technically difficult to do.  Because you have to power your  run, then you have to heel  drive, then you have to, like  divers, you have to have to  punch the glass so there's a  hole in there before you fly  through.  And you have to have enough  force so you don't start  lowering before you're through  the frame, or you'll get cut.  So if I can up the ante with  force, and I can demonstrate  that these are physical systems  that we're putting together  here, we're stitching them  together.  As you see, this is an 8-foot  I-beam. 

 I found it in my neighborhood.  I guess you could say  I sort of stole it.  You may think, what's more  beautiful than an I-beam, a  piece of construction material?  But all it's doing, really,  we want to know,  simple physical things.  But the other search that we're  performing is what is the  anthropological perfect  combination of moments, both  physical, spatial and temporal  that the humans on earth would  recognize as something that's  codified into some kind of  content burying act.  This beam is swinging around  in a 20-foot square.  And it's all choreographed, but  the dancer's job is simply  not to be where it is.  And the fear issue comes into  this.  This move, which is a little out  of the screen, but there's a  screw right in the dead center  of that beam, and they're just  swinging it, perfectly  horizontally, because it can't  go back and forth like this.  That becomes a technique that we  actually work on for, sometimes  hours, just so right now, when  four people are trying to do  just their move and just miss  the beam, that it's going  absolutely horizontally.  And so the search, the quest  isn't just about crazy human  moments in a studio. 

 It's about trying to gather what  I notice in the world, and  figure out how I can stitch it  together in an action movement,  temporal spatial scenario, so it  encompasses its very own rhythm.  This is us walking on a wall on  the moon.  This is a Douglas Adams' quote,  "The definition of flying is  to throw yourself at the ground  and miss."  So let's say you decided just to  take this quote.  I know you read enormous  amounts.  And what if you just took that  quote and said, okay, let me try  a few physical exercises to  figure out if I could do that,  rather than first deciding that  you know you can't.  So, one of our methodologies is  to invent questions that are so  unquestionably true, that it  does not occur to you to even  ask them.  Sort of the foolish person  sitting at the feet of the  master, trying to be as innocent  as they can be, and attempting  not to know, or try to inquire  what the answer might be, before  they've done an enormous amount  of investigation.  Can you see this?  No?  So here's another list of  breaking the rules of  physicality.  And we go through each one of  those.  And we attempt to make a  vocabulary out of it. 

 So, is it possible to move so  fast we stand still?  Because what I've noticed, I'll  say about modern dance, is that  it's just medium speed.  I never sit in the audience and  go, that was fast, unless  someone's flinging their arms  around.  That's not really moving though,  that's just gestural  elaborations.  So if some body, all in a whole  unit, is going to try to  demonstrate speed on stage,  what would you have to do  to have that happen?  How could you have order  disintegrate?  Why isn't it true that if you do  a combination forward, that  you've made up, and then you go  ahead and do the combination  backwards, in retrograde, to use  a musical term, why doesn't it  go backwards in time?  Sit and think about that.  Shouldn't it?  It's going backwards.  How could you figure out  something where you'd be out of  control?  And this would just be a laundry  list of questions, as artists,  or as even thinkers in the  business world, or as  performers, that you would say,  how can I be, make something,  express something that no one  else yet has expressed?  And why?  Because modern dance was founded  on the idea that they were going  to break away from ballet and  attempt to enrich the  vocabulary, the language of  modern dance.  So, you have to break the rules  a little bit.  Now, this piece  is called "Moon."  Again, I set up a condition.  I took a 20'x20' floor, and I  made it frictionless.  That seems like an easy effort,  but it actually took us so long  to figure out how you could have  an expanse like that, that would  be frictionless. 

 Then the dancers have to have  completely slippery clothes on.  And their base of support,  because throughout all of this,  we change our base of support.  We want to really get off our  feet.  We want to try and cheat into  new regions of spatial  territory.  And then, we have just our  simple, cheap, surveillance  camera above, and we project it  vertically.  And what we're trying to do,  in a sense, is a matrix,  one spatial trompe d'oeil.  Are the things you're seeing  vertical?  Is that possible?  It's almost possible.  It's just not quite possible.  And could we ever, then, take  this idea, to vertical space,  you know, that's bound by  gravity, but from a slightly  different angle?  Could we possibly figure out  how to do it?  Now, you could look at this and  say, no, we can't do that,  because if you're holding  somebody with their arm, and all  their body is over there, well,  they're going to fall.  But what if, again, you just  sort of emptied your brain of  what you already know or think  you know, and say, okay, by what  method could I figure out how to  do that?  So what part of reality provokes  your wonder?  You're wandering around the  world. 

 We all have jobs.  We all have deadlines.  We have bills to pay, all of  that.  But do you notice, when you're  wandering around, and I have to  discipline myself to do this,  what grabs your attention?  And when it grabs your  attention, you just feel  completely moved and inspired.  Then you might jot it down.  And you might say, well,  I wonder why that grabbed my  attention.  I wonder why I cared or noticed  that.  And maybe if I just didn't walk  in New York City like this,  'cause I'm so afraid the  sidewalk is going to be all  crumply.  Maybe I could--  I actually slipped on a  banana peel the other day.  I joke about that. 

 I'm fond of saying anyone who's  ever slipped on a banana peel  will understand this work.  And then, I slipped on a banana  peel.  It was unbelievably exciting  for a couple seconds.  But I do just want you to know,  I did not fall down.  I mean, these are more things.  How do you present something so  unpredictable that's physical in  lifetime space, that would be  tantamount to a page turner,  if you were reading a novel?  Can I keep your attention for  moment after moment after  moment, where you're just--  you know, that kind of thing.  And maybe, if we're asking some  tactical question about how  movement is constructed, and  we're not using the methods of  music, maybe there's whole new  causal information about how  movement goes together, and why  non-predictive action is scarier  than more pedestrian action.  Again, the out of control idea,  the danger idea, that you're in  control of, that you can do  because you're skilled, because  you've trained in ballet school  for 20 years.  What makes it not just an issue  when you're that trained, and  you're doing that technique, and  there's no danger around you,  and yet, it's physical?  What makes you not about  presenting your privilege to the  audience at that moment?  What if what they're getting is  not the pretty privilege?  What if it digs deeply  into a class idea?  This is my off the top of my  head theory.  And lo and behold, I don't care  anymore if my dancers have bent  knees or unpointed feet in the  air. 

 You know, quel horror, right?  When you land, you have to pull  it together or you get hurt.  But I think those things send  different signals.  This is a piece we were  commissioned, again,  by Wolf Trap.  And this was the stage version  of it, not just jumping off the  dunes at Kitty Hawk.  And I was trying to pay homage  to the Wright brothers, who  achieved that 120 seconds of  flight on that December 3rd day  in 1903.  Maybe it was December 17.  And so, what I was trying to do  is have continuous flight.  This is, you know, you saw the  elephant.  He was on the very same  trampoline.  And the videos were taken by  Newland Media at Kitty Hawk, and  then we juxtaposed them to the  dancers, attempting with the  timing, to be constantly in the  air. 

 What I found in my research  about the history of flight, and  initially, I was extremely  disappointed, was that mostly  the military paid for the R&D,  the research and development for  the ability of the airplane to  go so rapidly from 1903 into  World War I, when they're  actually using them for things.  § §  (applause on video)  That was, of course,  the Air Force anthem.  When that came on, all of the  Tuskegee Airmen in the audience  stood up with their hands on  their hearts.  And all of my New York friends  wouldn't talk to me for a few  weeks.  I said, but it's such a  beautiful song.  Yes, but it's a pugilist song.  This is my homage to hardware  and mechanical devices.  Right up to this year, we've  never used any motors.  Now, I'm adding motors, and  everybody's very excited about  that.  Except for they break more often  than simpler machines. 

 I don't know why that is.  But when I first started using  equipment, I did it because I  felt like, well, if I don't have  something like a bungee, or a  trampoline, or a wall, or a pane  of glass, or a cement block, or  I-beams, I'm just going to look  like everyone else wiggling  around on the floor.  If there's all this space, even  in a room like this, shouldn't  you get up there and use it?  And the context of the human  body, given how small it is  proportionately to the space  you're in, if you're really  going to figure out how to have  any effect on the space, and  therefore have the physicality  somehow get itself to the  audience, then you've got to  figure out something that allows  you to rise up a little bit.  This is my choreography.  That's actually how I figure out  what happens when.  And some of the other aspects we  use, borrow from other fields,  to understand proportionality,  to understand angle of viewing,  to understand vanishing point in  the visual arts, and asking what  is the vanishing point in  physical systems.  Could it be the horizon line?  You have to ask the notion of  how you put a body in a space,  very much like the circus.  And I don't know if dance in  general, historically, some of  you are studying here and you  might know the history of why  dance decided to dance on the  same stages that music and drama  were on.  But in the circus, they decided  well, oh, we want to present our  activity, and we want to do it  in a circle, which to me, makes  complete sense.  You get more people in the front  row. 

 And it's even more proximal,  and therefore it's not such a  class division in terms of, you  just have a few people lucky  enough to be in the front row.  But even more fundamental than  that, they said that for a horse  to gallop, the diameter has to  be 22 feet for it to be able to  go fast enough so that people  can stand up on it.  When I heard that, all of a  sudden, was filled with --,  that's a really good reason.  I mean, that's such a beautiful  idea.  What would our reasons be to  have, you know, any size the  theater is we go into, we just  use it.  So what we do at Streb,  based on that, was to use  a 20-foot square.  I have eight dancers,  a 20-foot square.  We're also asking grammatical  questions about the human form.  What is the syntax of the body?  If you're putting together a  sentence, then how exactly do  the joints, do the muscles, do  the back of the head, work  together to make an image that  has significance?  Except for just, oh,  it's a body.  Can a body stand on stage with  its back to the audience and  have an effect based on it as  itself, and have that be cogent  enough an idea to signify its  place on stage?  And then the other thing Streb  does is try and harness  invisible forces. 

 And I'll look out into the world  and I think, well, what about  that eight seconds on the back  of a bull?  Did I lose my sound here?  That's okay.  That's Bodacious.  He was a very famous bull.  And no one, only six percent of  the 100 percent of the people  who rode him, were the only ones  who were able to stay on for  that eight seconds of hell.  And I watch this rodeo guy, and  I think, now, that's a real  move.  If everything I'm doing is about  questing, locating what a real  move is, then that was one.  And so, I look out again and I  go, that signifies a real move;  no, that does not; that's a real  move; no, that is not.  And when you have weather  systems like this, they're  examining, in these basement  labs, the effect of a tornado,  for instance.  That's definitely going too far.  I could not put a body in a  condition designed with this  sort of force, and be able to  survive. 

 So, what is the classic basis of  your information in everything  that everybody's body  acknowledges doing?  I believe that sometimes people  want to carry on their body of  knowledge.  But I also believe that  sometimes they want to advance  it.  It's just more fun to advance  it.  So this just happens to be a  bunch of questions I ask about  movement, and ordering, and  grammar, and destination of  principles, and you know, what  would your version of that be?  What practices are happening  that aren't working, but nobody  is going to ever change them.  You know that expression,  science progresses funeral by  funeral?  Do you know what that means?  That means people usually don't  change.  So these are some of our  physical goals we've assembled  for now for the next ten years,  perhaps, to try and ask quantum  questions about what the body is  capable of, and what situations  we could put together that we'd  be able to essentially come up  with new vocabularies and new  languages.  These are cement blocks.  They're swinging by.  And again, the downstage one is  nine inches from the floor, and  the upstage one is about  20 inches from the floor.  And this is a very early version  of this piece called gauntlet. 

 § §  § I was 21 §  § When I wrote this song §  § I'm 22 now §  § But I won't be for long... §  Does anyone think that looks  like fun?  Do you want to try it?  Yes? No?  You do?  When we chose cement blocks,  I decided this is pure timing.  This is actually telling the  truth about a physical thing  that has its own inherent  timing.  It was the first time I came up  with a condition that was  physical, that was timing first  and space second.  Usually, it's space first and  timing second.  But now I want you to know that  this became very boring to me.  And we now have three blocks  swinging back and forth.  § Try to see it my way... §  And the dancers are back  in New York trying  to figure that out.  I decided to leave town,  you know, it's better that way.  These are drawings of the action  tracks that they do when they  run around the space.  And I started to think that it's  important that the audience  knows where we've been. 

 I don't know how effective that  is.  So, if we look back, maybe 50  years, and re-read this list,  and this is a list I'd really  love to have, but not like this,  but different.  And all of you, I'd bet you'd  love to have a list.  When people really believed we  were never going to walk on the  moon.  They really believed that  television, you can't have a  colored picture, or a black and  white picture coming through a  wire in your house.  Thomas Watson said, what,  the world will only ever be able  to accomplish, or have,  five personal computers.  He was definitely wrong.  I wonder what we're looking at  in our world, what thoughts go  through our brain, where we're  saying, oh, that's not possible;  stop spending your time;  you're wasting your time;  you're wasting your resources.  So we decided, okay, all of that  choreography, all of those  questions, all of the journey  about what's the what, in terms  of what am I making and what am  I presenting to the audience,  I started thinking about eight  years ago, well, I think the  system of presentation is all  messed up.  So what if I'd been working in  the high art world for the last  25 years, and there isn't anyone  except for the people who I know  and who already come to see our  shows, the anointed, who cares  about the relevancy and anything  I'm doing?  What is it that we have that we  can offer to people?  That was the simple first  question. 

 Is there anything that I've made  in 25 years that the general  public would want?  I didn't think that what I made  would have any currency unless  I could figure that out.  So, what would my models be?  I decided that it had to be a  space thing.  Where am I going to work?  In an ivory tower where I'm  renting by the hour, and no one  can come in?  So, I looked around the world  once again and I saw, oh,  there's factories.  This is actually my sister.  We were both adopted and we grew  up, we're totally different,  crazy different.  But here she is in Michigan,  working in a factory.  They make shelves for Walmarts.  And she's very proud of working  that Ideal machine, because none  of the guys would do it.  And that's what offers her job  security.  She makes $8 an hour. 

 She's smoking, as you can see.  But I thought, the factory is  the most gorgeous place in the  world.  It makes things people need.  So, I thought, well, how  exactly, if Roberta Gratz has a  definition of a public place,  "The physical manifestation of  a democracy's need for different  people not of like mind or like  look to come together for  unplanned reasons."  I thought, that's what I want.  I want to do a Jane Jacobian  recipe to figure out, you know,  where do we begin again.  So this is my garage.  When I first walked in, it was  "broom clean," they said.  I thought, oh, this is what  New York calls broom clean.  I don't think so.  So, is it a 7-Eleven?  Is it a church?  What rule systems am I going to  put in this once I figure out  how to raise the money?  You know, create partnerships,  because this is a lot more money  than possibly making a dance. 

 These are our bathrooms.  I was very proud of these.  This is Snohetta.  Snohetta is designing the next  version of our capital campaign,  and what would an international  action factory look like,  ultimately.  I examined the tickets.  We need entry systems to go into  the theaters.  And I just put a bunch on a  piece of paper.  And I thought, who would know  how to use some of these, or  what's their demographic  orientation, and who would not.  Yeah, you'd know how to get the  Metro card, you'd know how to go  to a movie.  But would you know how to go  to Tatra de la Villa in Paris?  Would you know how to go to the  Joyce Theater in New York,  or any of these places?  Union Square Movies,  sure, I know that. 

 Sensation, the museum.  And I started to see that things  are very wrong in our world,  in my opinion.  We were pretending that anyone  can come, you just come to the  door, you pay for a ticket,  you can come in.  But the behavior codes, once you  entered made, I think, the  majority of people feel pretty  uncomfortable.  How am I supposed to behave?  Some people like to make a lot  of noise when they're watching  something.  Some people don't want to get  dressed up.  It's just, my parents would  never have walked into most of  the theaters, and been  comfortable, that I perform in.  So, we just started trying some  viral experiments.  This was at a SLAM show.  And we call this  Audience Kareoke. 

 Because it occurred to me, oh,  you guys are sitting here right  now, you have to listen to me  for another minute.  But I bet you'd rather come up  here and dance, or talk.  And so, we just said, oh, anyone  who wants to, you know, for two  minutes in the show, anyone who  wants to come up here.  We'll yell out some pop action  moves, and you can do it.  Look at how many people came up.  Then I realized, oh, I think  they'd rather do this than watch  us.  What if that ends up being true?  All right, then.  We do a raffle, that's Zaire.  We raffle things off, because,  boy, do people love that.  It's like a circus. 

 Can I get something not for  free, but it's like a dollar for  the raffle ticket.  And it just changes the  atmosphere.  We work with about 400 kids.  So in our studio, I put Circus,  Streb, and Kids Action, because  I want to watch kids move every  day.  I want to steal their ideas.  I want to watch how natural and  unaffected they are.  When they perform, I love it,  because they shove each other  around.  You're not supposed to be here,  you're supposed to be over  there.  And I'm thinking with that, I  wonder why adults don't do that.  Because I feel that, I just  don't say it. 

 And then, we have something we  inaugurated.  We're going to do it again.  And I invite each of you to make  a 10-second dance.  I think I'm going to change it  to a 5-second dance.  And Kim Cullen is my producing  director.  She came up with this idea.  This is called Cata-ball.  And this is another experiment  with getting free things.  We were just exploding a bunch  of toys.  And if you catch the toys,  you get to keep them. 

 But if you don't--  Look at all those little arms.  If you don't catch the toys, you  have to bring them back to us.  Basically, we spent hundreds of  dollars on toys.  And then, anyone who gave ten  dollars got to have their name  listed as a producer.  And I realized wow, a free toy  is what they want.  That's why they're coming here.  And then, any one of you, let's  say we taught you a Pop Action  combination.  This is Zaire Baptiste.  He's our VJ-DJ.  And he's going to do  a Pop Action combination. 

 He's not a trained dancer,  but see what you think.  He agreed to--  (audience exclaims in video)  >> Audience: Nine, ten...  Whoo!  >> What do you think?  We could just replace the  dancers with everyday people?  No.  We have a flying trapeze.  I thought that would be a great  thing to have in this space.  And then, we try and ask,  in general, both how we gather  people together, and how we make  our work, spatially, temporally,  physically and civic-ly  confusing questions.  And these, at long last,  are our rules of conduct.  These are different things that  we've noticed and gathered by  having a space like SLAM, and  having it be open source and  viral, and not advertising.  And having it be about  attraction, not promotion.  And I go into regular theaters  and I think, whoa, this isn't  happening. 

 They're not mixing it up with  strangers.  They're not really allowing  interruption.  They're not really figuring out  how you could have a more  equitable ticket system.  What would be the next small  thing you could do, without  spending millions of dollars.  What would it be that you'd be  able to, maybe, inaugurate?  Like, there was a ski resort  that put a box of tissues  at the bottom.  They were in a very competitive  area.  And when people were driving  around trying to figure out,  well, what resort are we going  to, they're, oh, let's go to the  one with the Kleenex at the  bottom.  And I try and think of  penetrating the audience.  We do pieces right into where  audiences are sitting, so that  they'd be able to, you know,  have a physical interruption  from our end of the platform.  Some more rules. 

 Where do we go?  We go into Grand Central  Terminal.  We set up there for a month.  There were 500,000 people  walking by.  Now, that was a really good way  to gather an audience together.  This is, Cirque du Soleil  invited Streb to perform with  them in '04, to celebrate their  20th anniversary.  I though, oh, we're going to be  the odd man out.  They're going to see a Cirque  act and then they're going to  see Streb and be bummed out.  Well, I learned and asked a lot  of questions about what is the  grammar.  What's the difference in grammar  of our action to the Cirque's  action?  Then I realized, just our  sentences are slightly longer.  Maybe they're prepositions, or  just verbs, and ours are not. 

 Maybe ours are even veering into  a paragraph.  But I was pretty fascinated by  trying to figure out how to ask  questions.  As Noam Chomsky says, you just  can't put a verb phrase and a  noun phrase together, and have a  sentence that has any content to  it.  So, what is our content?  What did he say?  Colorless, green ideas sleep  furiously?  That was a famous sentence that  he came up with that has a noun  phrase and a verb phrase.  But my question to the dance  world is, you just can't put  anything together.  What are the rubrics of your  composition?  It can't be music.  Sorry, you're moving.  The aural system for composition  is just not the same as a  physical system.  There's a problem with causality  there.  So, can we in the dance world,  and it wouldn't be me, because  I'm not a scholar, but can we  figure out what is the grammar  of action, and what content does  it possibly hold?  § §  Oh, and we went on the David  Letterman show because we  thought that would be kind of  cool. 

 >> David Letterman...  >> And you know, I think many  people sort of thought that we  were stepping out in dangerous  territory.  >> Tonight's guest's  performance turns dance  into an extreme sport.  And tonight, presenting a piece  entitled "Ricochet," please  welcome Streb.  >> So, we did that.  Even more shocking, I'm not  going to show it to you, because  you can just imagine.  He made fun of us, but I like  him.  Hi, Barack,  this is Elizabeth Streb  I'm an extreme action  choreographer in New York City,  and wanted to weigh-in on the  easiest, cheapest way to change  our world.  We choreographers, whose stock  and trade are invisible things,  ie., movement, have an  extremely affordable plan  to establish the bedrock of  your platform for governance.  I know you need to fix the  economy and war, create new  jobs, and improve education and  health. 

 If you establish movement as  a holy elixir for our daily  lives, I predict all above  would come to pass.  Movement is the panacea we've  all been searching for.  Not a movement,  but humans doing movement.  Action as subject.  Here's a plan laid out simply:  ie., every morning, before  coffee, all 300 million people  in the USA would jump up and  down three times, then do  a full 360 turn in the air,  and snap into a huge "X"  with their body vertically.  If you inaugurate this movement  policy, I predict wars will  end, sadnesses will cease,  and the need for Ritilin  will disappear.  Congratulations.  And call if you need more  information.  Thanks for your leadership.  Elizabeth Streb. 

 NPR asked a bunch of artists  and people to figure out  a one-minute message to Obama.  We just did  "America's Got Talent."  I won't tell you what happened.  § §  I'm very, very excited to have  had this opportunity to just  give you, throw out to you,  some of the ways we've worked.  First, to establish the work  that we do at Streb.  To figure out what is vocabulary  that might be a different way to  move on earth with the stuff we  have, figuring out how to invent  hardware, figuring out who are  partners are.  I didn't talk at all about how  you get the money to do all  this, but I'd be very happy to  tell you all about that.  Some of it wasn't pretty.  But I didn't go so far  as to rob a bank.  Nothing like that.  But also, to figure out at this  point, where are we going to do  this?  How can I have control of my  enterprise?  How can we really own our space?  And figure out how to present  the work that we want to  present, and attract an audience  that's as diversified and  distinct as the world we live  in. 

 But that's my dream.  And again, I look forward to  having this exchange,  and invite all of you to SLAM  in New York City.  You're always welcome.  Thank you.  (applause)