A field guide, a manifesto, a small embarrassment
Dork out and do it. No biggie. Begin again. Trip on the floor on the way in.
Section 01 — what we mean
The Dork Aesthetic is what happens when somebody stops waiting to be impressive and starts moving anyway. It is a public commitment to the uncool, the unpracticed, and the earnest. It is not irony in a wig. It is not a posture. It is the radical lowering of the stakes of making, so that entry becomes possible — for the dorks already in the room, for the dorks who haven't shown up yet, and for the dork inside you who has been held hostage by good taste.
no biggie (idiom, operative) A radical release of pressure that allows beginning to happen, again and again, without the burden of sophistication, ambition, or mastery. It is not apathy.
Section 02 — the tenets
Beginning is the practice. Mastery is the trap. We're not building toward the ending; the ending is more beginning. Each step is a fall over and again, stumbling through silliness rather than sophistication.
To be unironically dorky in front of others is a craft. It takes years to stop apologizing. The slow, confident, accurate splits at last call — performed from the bar top — are an art form. Pat Benatar is the curriculum.
If the door is too narrow, fewer dorks come through. We are in the business of widening doors. The work is not less rigorous because it is more welcoming. The work is more rigorous because it had to make room.
It is easy to be cool. It is excruciating to mean it. The Dork Aesthetic refuses irony as armor. We are sincere on purpose. We risk looking stupid. What we risk reveals what we value.
To bring people into a room is to create conditions for permission — permission to not know, to try, to fail without consequence, to begin again. The room is the score. The dorks are the dance.
Don't instruct. Don't watch from above. Get down onto the floor. Start the band at the same time as your child. Embrace embarrassment as a method of co-being. Be a beginner in front of the people you love.
You may quote Karen Barad. You must also wear the QUEER earrings. The bibliography includes Dork Diaries next to Meeting the Universe Halfway. The scholarship is real. The joy is also real. The two are not in tension; they are the technology.
No safety without risk, and what you risk reveals what you value. Trip on the way in. Pee on stage. Sing the Pat Benatar. Build the chicken coop for the husband. The Dork Aesthetic is a permission slip you forge for yourself, with your own bad handwriting.
Let people be
Just set them free
I just wanna be me
Why's that so hard to see?
Plant some more trees
Build homes for the bees
Stop making so many emergencies
Only
Only
Dance emergencies.
(move your body)
(move your body)
(sing it with me)
Section 03 — observed specimens
Below: a non-exhaustive, occasionally horny, mostly tender taxonomy of dork forms recently documented in the choreographic field. Each specimen is real. Each specimen is loved. Hover, if you dare.
Starts the band with the child. Holds no particular expertise. This is the point. Choreography happens at floor level, in pajamas, while someone is asking for a snack. Mastery has been politely declined.
Has been called: Bianca. Alexis. Diana. Sexy Lexi. Bert. Bonx. The Michelin Tire Baby. Cannot decide which is the lie. Code-switches through identities like rooms in an old house. Survives by surviving.
"My center is the softness of a rustling pile of leaves. I am full like an almost-asleep bear." Sleeps on the sliver of diagonal the child has left her. Walks to school on all fours. Holds the fishbowl of her own belly, even after the fish has left.
Does not know how the bit goes into the drill. The bit gets hot. She is hot. The project is hot. Will fuck your perfectly square picture frames up for you. Will build a chicken coop for your annoying husband. To live in. With the chickens.
Wanted: one brave soul with a strong liver, loose plans, and a flexible definition of dignity. Will arrive in thick-ass glasses and pajamas. Likely to perform Pat Benatar from the bar top at last call. Sparklers, for reasons that will not be explained.
Talons, teeth, tails, long lizard tongue. Lives under the bed, up in the head. Knows it is ugly. Knows it is free. Will eat you up before you can catch it. You're a monster just like me.
Will not watch from the wings. Wants to play, not be played at. Wants their sexy time near you, with you — or close enough to feel your heat. Not tethered tight, but intimate and near. "Let me be called your bandmate, not just fan."
Today she was a tiny lifeboat being bested by the sea. Then, from somewhere deep below, a rumble of magma — slow, inevitable, rising until it burst. She came apart in all the best places. Her legs are still sore.
Dance maker. Homemaker. Event maker. Host. Trouble maker. Husbandman. The roles are not separated. The studio is the kitchen is the floor is the school drop-off. It is all one practice. The child has been in the studio since before birth.
An aside, on the room
"Let me in the room. Let me be called your bandmate, not just fan."— filed under: pleas, methodologies, love letters
Section 04 — ancestors, accomplices, conspirators
The Dork Aesthetic did not arrive un-cited. Below are the figures whose shoulders we are gleefully, dorkily standing on — usually in mismatched socks. Some are scholars. Some are puppets. Some are both.
Section 05 — a working methodology
Performance is a human technology that predates science — one of the earliest forms through which people have processed, transmitted, and transformed experience. Storytelling. Gathering. Ritual. Play. These are the original meaning-making practices. We do not study them from above. We are doing them, on the floor, while the kid asks for a snack.
To gather is to create conditions for permission — permission to not know, to try, to fail, to begin again. We role-model play rather than instruct. We become a scholar from the physical, not the cerebral, entry point. We hold the tension between the ambition of academic culture and the dorkiness we can't help but cultivate. The tension is the site of the inquiry.
Hannah Arendt · Karen Barad · Judith Butler · Joan Didion · Michaeleen Doucleff · André Lepecki · Jacques Rancière · Legacy Russell · Rachel Renée Russell (Dork Diaries) · Rebecca Solnit · Evan Wolkenstein · Kara Walker · Oscar Murillo · the works of one's own child · the works of Miss Daniels, first grade.
"No biggie." Used continuously, in good faith. Used after the trip on stage. Used after the cartwheel. Used after the master's degree. Used before the next beginning, which is always coming.
Section 06 — closing benediction
You are not running late to the cool. You are running early to the gathering. The room is bigger than you think. ♥
— a dork dance, in progress // bring snacks // biancacabrera.com