Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Hi,

I am the Executive Director of a small modern and jazz dance company based in Denver, Colorado, Louder Than Words Dancetheatre. Ironically, while our name may lead you to think we have a preference for actions rather than words, we are, in fact, huge word geeks. We spend ridiculous amounts of time looking for the right titles for shows and pieces and we can get obsessed about finding just the right words.

I found A Way with Words a few weeks ago and I'm thoroughly hooked. I've been listening back as far as I can go and I've started keeping a notebook of words from the show that I think are neat or that might work for titles.

I'm writing because we need your help, dear forum. We are struggling to find a title for our upcoming show this June. To give you a sense of our history, here are titles of some of our recent shows:

Stupid Human Tricks and Other Eccentricities (1996)
Fun d'Mental Dances, vi; this is a gambol (1998)
Nocturnoography (2007)
Stand Up & Dance (2008)
Tensegrity (2009)
SHIFT (2010)

Each of our show titles has an inherent play on words and I could go into depth on each but I'll stick with one. Tensegrity was really the first in a series of performances based on math and science. The show we are trying to title is the next in the series and we are struggling mightily. Here are the directors' notes from the show:

Directors' Notes:
Tensegrity* emerged from a series of conversations between the Design Team (Matt, Lacey & Whit) and the Artistic Director (Chris). We had this wacky idea to take our usual process and flip it 180 degrees: instead of Chris starting with the choreography and then describing what she wanted to the designers, we wanted to explore what Chris and the Company would do when presented with music, lighting concepts, set pieces and costumes first.

More than that, though, we wanted to embrace our passion for combining math and science with art. We've long talked about how choreography in general—and Chris's work in specific—is all about the architecture and geometry of bodies and structures in space. If you ask Chris what her inspiration is for her work, more often than not she'll talk about a mathematic sequence that fascinates her or a piece of architecture that caught her interest. We are the kinds of geeks who will animatedly talk about what we heard on Science Friday or read in the most recent Wired or Popular Mechanics. We are, in fact, the kinds of geeks who will pack up and travel to San Francisco just to visit the Exploratorium: the Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception for a field trip. Imagine, if you will, six supposed adults running around a museum, tugging each other's sleeves and saying, “c'mere, c'mere, you gotta see this!” It was an amazing trip that gave us far more than we are able to use in just one show.**

After drafting Austin (our composer) and auditioning more dancers, we had all the pieces we needed to build this sleek machine. As the process moved along, we discovered that we were talking more and more about perspective and human perception. At the Exploratorium, we noted that where we were each standing was often more important than anything else when looking at an exhibit. In many ways, this wasn't new information; but we then began employing it in new and exciting ways. Finally we came to the edge of a cliff: if we really wanted to challenge ourselves and our audience, we would need to take a risk and perform in the round with you, our audience, on multiple layers. The challenge of creating work that looks and sounds right, that works equally well from five feet to forty feet away became a mighty task. How does one dance with the audience sitting that close? How do we light the movement without blinding the audience? How do we get you to feel surrounded by sound without deafening you, or build sets and costumes that work in that format? And, finally, the most important question of all: how do we answer these questions without losing the art in the process?

You'll have to let us know how we did.

Many Thanks!

Chris, Whit, and the Entire LTW Family

*”Tensegrity” is a term describing a structure in which integrity is derived from a synergy of compression and tension. It was made famous by inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller.
**A special “thank you” to the angel who wishes to remain anonymous for making that trip possible.

The production this June is, as I said before, inspired by the same trip and similar concepts. It's a three act show with each act living as a stand-alone suite. We're exploring color theory, sets-as-costumes/costumes-as-sets, and sound theory. We've been playing with words about theory, theorems, hypotheses, proofs, etc... but we don't want to sound too "Journal of Advanced Physics" nor do we want to sound like the title from a high-school yearbook, "transformations," "changes," and the like. We're definitely titling the suite about visual theory Zyxt (thank you very much!). Otherwise, we're just at the point where it's time to start putting out our press material and promotions. We've been calling the show T2 but somehow I suspect someone with the Terminator movies will look askance at that.

So... have you any thoughts on possible show titles for Tensegrity 2?

Thank you so much!

Whit