Inspired by his participation as the first performing artist-in-residence at the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), David Neumann came to MANCC as a Mellon-funded Returning Choreographic Fellow in a series of three residencies to develop a multi-disciplinary dance/theater piece, Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed (working title). SETI Institute astronomer Dr. Jill Tarter explains, “the probability of success is difficult to estimate, but if we never search, the chance for success is zero.” Neumann's curiosity about the universe from a scientist’s point of view began here.

Neumann’s central questions for Distances Smaller... are found along the boundary between the explainable and the mysterious. His aim is to unmoor himself from his own comfort zones by placing privilege, masculinity, and race in the context of the cosmic scale, and by relating the challenges of art-making to scientific endeavors. The work allows a complex view of the human experience to unfold, full of all its hubris and wonder. Neumann is attempting to bring the unfathomable scales of time and space into the theater and onto bodies with his mix of dance, science, and theater-making methodologies, creating a work where the borders between language and movement become indistinguishable, and the empirical and poetic become sympathetic agents.

For this work, Neumann aims to explore and stage multiple, concurrent points of view. As his research into both the cosmological and quantum scales has shown him, the more one knows, the less one can be certain of. Neumann finds this paradoxical state difficult, inspiring, and truthful, as it is connected to his own process of emerging awareness within a systemically racist society. For Neumann, change begins by unpacking one’s assumptions and dancing within the mess.

Neumann’s first residency for this project, in August 2016, was a solo period of research, during which he began an ongoing conversation with FSU’s Dr. Jeremiah Murphy, Assistant Professor of Physics, on the intersections between dance and astrophysics.

In his second residency, Neumann brought an intergenerational cast of dancers including Sara Rudner, Professor of Dance at Sarah Lawrence College and former muse of Twyla Tharpe, and  Jodi Melnick, a renowned choreographer in her own right. The cast also included Victoria Roberts-Wierzbowski, who worked previously with Neumann at MANCC in 2011 on Restless Eye. The residency culminated with an Open Studio Rehearsal during which Neumann and sound designer Tei Blow experimented with the musical score for the work. Undergraduate School of Dance students in the Music and Choreography class, co-taught by guest artist Millicent Johnnie and Specialized Faculty member Dan Smith, attended the rehearsal and engaged with Neumann in an open dialogue about his process in real time. In attendance at the showing was Dr. Murphy, who was able to provide further insight on the work after having seen it live in rehearsal.

Neumann’s third and final residency at MANCC took place in late June/early July 2018, during which the cast reconvened and further developed the movement, script, and technical elements of the work. Marcella Murray, a theater artist who had recently graduated with her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College where she met David, joined the team as a performer and dramaturg for the work. This residency was transformative for the piece. While David was initially working with at least two separate approaches that, in earlier MANCC residencies, he was trying to combine, it was during the third MANCC residency when David decided to separate the material he had been developing into two distinct works: one a future piece with Sara, Jodi, and Victoria, and one a piece made in equal collaboration with Marcella Murray: Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed. During this residency, when not rehearsing with David, Tei, Hyung Seok, and Chris Green, Murray conducted extensive research in FSU’s Strozier Library on a variety of subjects including miscegenation, the influence of space travel on human biology, non-Black observations of the Civil Rights movement, creation myths from around the world, terraforming, the American Spiritualist movement, and narratives of enslaved people. The residency concluded with a final work-in-progress showing that featured the lighting, sound, and live video elements put together with the first draft of the show’s script.

Karinne Keithley Syers joined Neumann's residency for three days as part of MANCC's Embedded Writers Program.

These multi-year residencies, including the Embedded Writers Initiative, were supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

I Understand Everything Better is a multidisciplinary dance-based performance that explores the impulse to report on calamity, the consciousness of traumatic change, and one's proximity to dying. A union of theater and dance-making methodologies, I Understand incorporates innovative technology, weather reports, and personal narratives within a framework composed of elements drawn from classical Japanese dance and theater. Within the central metaphor in I Understand... of an oncoming storm, a comparison emerges between the individual and the species-wide in relation to experiencing the end of life. There are three main points of portrayal: a man on his deathbed, a meteorologist reporting from within a storm, and a great actor who might be performing a Kabuki play about a dying man in a great storm.

Prior to coming to MANCC Neumann worked with two advisors on the project including, Dr. Pamela Barton (an end-of-life care physician) and Rick Davis, a lead scientist with the National Weather Service in Ruskin, FL.  Neumann conducted interviews with weather reporters and observed their live weather reports. Observing them on the job allowed for a highly detailed account of how these “in the field” reports are produced, adding to the specificity of the performance. Neumann also interacted with the elder community and those who attend to their health care needs to gain a wider perspective on approaches to dying as well as the effects on our minds and bodies as we near our last breath.

Neumann began his MANCC residency by meeting with a nurse from Tallahassee’s Big Bend Hospice to discuss her experiences working with those at the end of life and how she cares for those who face terminal illnesses. Neumann and his collaborators also met with Dr. Kristina Buhrman, an Assistant Professor of Religion at FSU, to discuss ancient Japanese theater and philosophy. Alongside the exploration of the themes in the work, Neumann used his MANCC residency to focus attention on production elements including lighting, set construction and furthering the develop a soundscape. Neumann ended his residency with an informal showing of I Understand Everything Better followed by a discussion in which Neumann addressed his inspirations for the piece and its genre-defying nature. 

I Understand premiered at the American Dance Institute in Rockville, MD, March 27-28, 2015.

Former Choreographic Fellow David Neumann returned to MANCC to develop Restless Eye, a work that explores the realm between thought and behavior, between describing life and experiencing it. While in residence, Neumann and his collaborators sourced a variety of data sets and statistics based on everyday phenomena and shared their investigations through open rehearsals with the local community, FSU students and with students at Sarah Lawrence College via Skype. Neumann and writer, Sibyl Kempson met with Dr. Karin Brewster, a Sociology professor and Director of the FSU Center for Demography and Population Health to discuss the utilization of statistical models within the developmental process. Neumann also explored the possibility of incorporating digital media in the work with collaborator Tei Blow.

The work premiered at New York Live Arts on March 24, 2012.

This New York Live Arts Partnership was made possible, in part, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Neumann worked with students and his dancers on FEEDFORWARD through the exploration, expansion and a combination of the rules of sports. Neumann used the rules and tactics of different sports as “found algorithms” to determine the structure of this new ‘physical event’. Eve Beglarian worked with a local band of trombonists to develop an original score for the work.

FEEDFORWARD premiered at Dance Theatre Workshop in October 2007.