by Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg

Tara Cheyenne Performance

On the surface, Tara Cheyenne Performance (TCP) gushes with dance, theater, and an abundance of comedy all expertly  delivered and executed by Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, and no doubt coming with a twist of provocative social commentary. But when one digs deeper into the undercurrent of the company, what seems like a solo operation, quickly reveals itself as deeply rooted in community and collaboration, sharing values of respect, care, exchange, and critical thinking. Tara’s practice is just like her performance work, it talks the talk and walks the walk. No box ticking here. Just genuine desire and passion to pull in and connect to those pushed outside of center, whilst hopefully bringing awareness to those who maybe don’t realize that center has kept them thinking in the single story.  

The repossession of Norman; thoughts on the recent filming of Goggles:

I recently regained possession of a ‘character’ that emerged about 15 years ago. It wasn’t easy. The idea to make a film out of the stage show, Goggles, had been an idea that I was sure would never happen. The idea was large and involved a creepy basement, loads of haze and my 37 year old hyper-flexible dancer body. My ability to manifest, however, proved fruitful much to my surprise and chagrin-I am no longer 37 or hyperflexible. Now, in this body, I am faced with finding Norman (the main character). What I have learned this time is that putting Norman back on like a costume, as I have done in the (fairly distant) past does not produce the ‘affect’, the feeling of him. I panic, which to be honest is just part of my process. But then I pause long enough to recognize that once I have re-learned the text and the choreography that is still within reach I must surrender to the ‘engagement with the fragments’ of the piece as it surfaces in my body, mind and finds objects, space, image, events to intersect with in the present. The film was shot in a basement that looked exactly like the basements of my childhood. Storage, clutter, 1980s excessive equipment, a stuffed monkey, terrible oil paintings, laundry, doors with elaborate padlocks, bare light bulbs. All of this, ordinary in many ways, tipped me over into the world of Norman. Norman today picked up the threads, the ‘affects’ of time and space and interestingly got funnier and way darker. 

Perhaps what I encountered is in the realm of chance of liveliness, allowing. Planning, defining, preparation,  are not useless but cannot anticipate the tangle of trajectories that emerge in the doing, the being. The status quo, the ‘way things should be done’ distract me from this moving target truth. The improvisation, the composition that flows or snaps into focus then runs or drains away. 

Once in costume, in “character” (this is something to unpack-what does ‘in character’ really mean?) in the basement, with my team of brilliant creatives and facilitators, I was off leash so to speak, and able to tune myself to the ‘affects’ of the space/people/actions/potentialities. I could dwell in the peripheries of myself, and pull my affected/feeling-surfacing-self into the frame (literally and figuratively). I could be in the state of becoming that fed a relationality and presence. We shall see what the camera captured. 

 *When I “dwell in the peripheries of myself”, I mean to be liminal to what I am as “presentable”. This is where the ‘characters’ live. They do not exist fully formed but sometimes, if invited into the ring they can appear quite recognizable. In the peripheries they are always in a state of as-yet-defined.