Entry 2: Sunflowers

I've been thinking about sunflowers.

People often say that sunflowers turn their faces toward the sun to receive what they need. Whether or not that's botanically true all the time almost doesn't matter. It's a beautiful way to think about growth. But it isn't only sunflowers. Every plant reaches toward light. Growth, in many ways, is simply learning where to turn.

That feels like what this past month has been about in the Making the Artivist® Apprentice (MTA) Program.

Field Note: Artists, like sunflowers, grow in the direction of their attention.

We've spent the last several weeks expanding the narratives of the solos the apprentices are creating. We are surrounded by stories every day, in television shows, movies, podcasts, social media, family conversations, and gossip. Yet making a dance with a narrative is something altogether different. Dance doesn't rely on dialogue to tell us what matters. Instead, it asks the body to carry meaning, memory, contradiction, and possibility.

The truth is, I don't know that I've ever sat down at the beginning of a creative process and asked myself, What is the narrative of this dance?

My choreography usually begins somewhere else. I collect movement, improvisational scores, conversations, images, pieces of music, observations from daily life. I notice things. Eventually those fragments begin speaking to one another until a larger structure slowly reveals itself.

Lately, while working on a technology fellowship and drafting my Fulbright proposal, I've realized that my practice is less about inventing than it is about paying attention. The dance teaches me what it wants to become if I stay with it long enough.

I think that's true for these young artists, too.

This month we asked them to look more closely.

What does survival look like in your body?

What cannot be said through words alone?

Where does your research live physically?

What surprised you during your interviews?

What responsibility do you carry as an artist working with this issue?

None of these questions had the right answers. They were invitations to notice.

The apprentices interviewed one another and members of their communities. They translated research into movement. They experimented with risk, pleasure, memory, resistance, and vulnerability. They revised choreography after receiving generous feedback from their peers. Little by little, the dances became less about presenting an idea and more about allowing an audience to experience it.

One evening, we covered the studio walls with different narrative arcs: Transformation. Journey. Resistance. Memory. Uncovering. Cyclical. Call to Action. Rather than asking, What is your dance about? we asked a different question: How does your dance move through the world? Watching each apprentice stand beside the arc that felt most connected to their work reminded me that choreography isn't only the organization of movement. It is also the shaping of experience.

Perhaps that is what I admire about the sunflower.

It doesn't force itself to bloom overnight. It doesn't rush toward becoming its fullest self. Day after day, it simply keeps turning toward what gives it life.

The apprentices are doing the same.

They haven't finished their dances yet.

Neither do any of us, really.

What they have is curiosity. They have questions worth asking. They have communities willing to share their stories. They have bodies becoming more willing to hold complexity. They are learning to trust revision instead of perfection. They are discovering that narrative isn't something they place onto a dance after it is finished. It grows alongside the movement, slowly revealing itself through attention.

Maybe becoming an artist is less about knowing exactly where you're going and more about learning what deserves your attention.

Like sunflowers, we grow toward the light we learn to notice.