INTERVIEW WITH RACHAEL LINCOLN AND LESLIE SEITERS

We’re excited to welcome back Rachael Lincoln, this time with collaborative partner Leslie Seiters, for their most recent collaboration, Long Playing.

We sat down for an inside look into the evolution of their artistic partnership, the personal journeys that shape their work, and the creative process behind this unique performance. 

US: In my research for this interview, I stumbled upon quite a few reviews and previews about Long Playing, and was fascinated by lists upon lists of all of the concepts that the work touches on:

“an intimate and unfolding landscape of aging, transformation, accidental beauty, and the imperfect shelters we construct to navigate the wilderness of our lives”

“intricate and multifaceted exploration of perception and critiquing the social norms that categorize us as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, productive or lazy, these social structures we subscribe to daily.”

“Viewers of Long Playing have found evidence of a mercurial relationship, a critique of capitalism, an unfolding ritual, and transformation.”

Not to mention that the piece is also inspired by the list of the greatest 150 albums made by women since 1964, compiled by fifty women from across National Public Radio and the public radio system. ….. 

Did you go into creating the piece with all of these themes in mind, or did they develop within the creative process?  

Rachael Lincoln:
There's this sort of empty plate moment. How are we going to start something new? And that NPR list came out right as we were entering a new phase. I was like, okay, this is interesting. What if we start with this?

We spent probably a year and a half or more on that list, really deep listening to the music, considering questions like: What is this kind of "best of" list? Who makes it? Who doesn't? Why does that matter? All of those questions came up. Thinking about these women and their long or short careers, doing what they do. At a certain point, it feels like the piece absorbed that list. We continued moving forward in our process, bringing in who we are in our lives separately and together.

That list was the writing that got the grant that started the piece and was a big part of the practice for a long time. To me, it really feels like that was absorbed into the piece many years ago, and I don't know that anyone other than the two of us would even know to name its impact.

Leslie Seiters:
Yeah. There are remnants of maybe a couple of eight counts that are repeated from one song from that list.  Even though we went through many songs, artists, album covers, and artist stories. There still exists some remnants, but very little.

The beginning of the process is the hardest place for us. Once we have the material, then it's a great back and forth. I think that's just true of the artistic process for most people, but the starting is pretty daunting for us. We've learned to just start somewhere because we know in 20 minutes, it's going to turn into something else. This has made us a bit looser with a beginning place, knowing that it won't last.

Rachael Lincoln:
And I would also say that that makes me think about our different strengths, Les, I feel you're much better with beginnings than I am. I'm always thankful for Leslie at the beginning because I just feel totally slack-jawed.

US: You’ve had a long history of working together, first as dancers in someone else’s work in San Francisco and decades later as creators, performers, and collaborators.  How does this affect your work?

Leslie Seiters: 

It’s been a long time. The span of our time making together is like the span of our friendship, and it’s decades-long.  The phases of our life have been folded into the work we create together.  It’s been maybe 10 years since we lived in the same place, so a lot of our collaborative time has been spent living in different cities. The intensive times together when we work include reflecting on our lives and catching up on what's going on for each of us, which ends up being folded into the material and the content of the work.

US: In 2022, Lisa Kwak mentioned that the beginning of your piece starts with: "There's nothing you have to get here. We know sometimes, if you can't find a clear story, you might feel lost or uncomfortable. We want to assure you that you're not alone in this and that you have everything you need to see." 

Do you start with that every night?

Rachael Lincoln:
Well, this started because my nieces were going to see the piece. We were thinking about how you bring a young person in or someone who's not accustomed to this world. How do you encourage them not to get stuck in thinking, "I don't understand this, and therefore, I can't have a relationship to it"? And we expanded this for everyone who sees Long Playing. This is an invitation to anyone to let go of the part of yourself that feels like you need to understand or make meaning in certain ways of what you're seeing to have an experience of it.

Leslie Seiters:
Yeah. We hope to do it in the work itself, but I love including that in the program. It's an invitation to let go of the one meaning. The work is so specific to our lives, and we hope that, in our specificity, it can be many things for many people. But it still feels like there must be some words to let the audience know they don't have to work to get what we're trying to deliver. Their engagement is also part of the work.

Rachael Lincoln:
We talk about this a lot, like what is the level of accessibility of this kind of dance? We don't feel like everyone needs to like this or get something from it, but I don't ever want to hold anyone out by being so niche that someone feels they have no access to it. That question is in our work a lot.

US: Almost like pushing people away, saying, "I don't care if you like it."

Rachael Lincoln:
Yeah, and I really love work that does that too, where there's an aggression towards, like, "I'm weird, I'm doing what I'm doing, and come in or not." But I feel like I'm often really thinking about who's coming and want them to have an experience of what we're doing.

Leslie Seiters:
I think the text, where we are in space, what we're doing with sound, we keep coming back to, "We're in this together." Even when it gets really personal, there are parts that are vulnerable and maybe uncomfortable, but we're doing this because we're meeting you here. It's really important in this work—the meeting of the audience. Even when it goes into something that's a little drifty, we will come back and hold your hand.