still live process blog

Watching David wielding the camera (nervous for its integrity). Elongated point of view.

Low-tech. Quasi-steadicam.
Alternating, twisting perspectives.

Micro-experiments.

Various strands of this residency/R&D opening up – shrinking established forms. Looking within the known, expanding these spaces, underlining them.

I walked in on David and Paea dancing (I was late, caught in academic mode) … private space. Not mine. Intruder?

Hidden links, relationships. A smile, dropped, picked up. Extended arm, then the other arm. Accidental provocations, taken on, drifted, relaxed.

Playful.

Gently aware – of a whole – but in looking for the ways in. Multiple. Subtle.

Catching images of each other – a drop, a twist, a shunt, fallings, rescuing imagined and real moments.

Sweat.

Tonight (Thursday) we went to improv performance evening at King St Arts Centre. Molly Tipping presented some ideas/materials. At the end we had a brief chat about things that we had noticed/experienced as an ‘audience’. We all talked about issues related to narrative and character. It was interesting simply because all developed a strong sense of Molly presenting a “character” in the work. I wondered what it is about what we see in the body that lends itself (or evokes) a character.

We talked about posture, gesture, degree of pedestrian activity. And also the development of narrative. But which comes first? Does the presence of an implied (or real?) narrative expose or reveal a character – or vice-versa? Or are they developed in tandem?

David mentioned Nancy Stark-Smith‘s notion of “precharacter” in improvisation work. The idea (correct me here David/Nany?) being that as an improviser, when you begin to notice a charactered series or range of actions that you “pull back” to a precharacter place – in which the sense of embodiment is toned or levelled back to the ‘place before character’. Does this imply a particular type of neutrality in the bodyspace?

Changing topic here, I also  had a question about the idea (expressed by Molly) of actions/movements “choosing to reveal themselves”. I wondered how one’s volition impacts on this kind of uncontrolled fate?

Had a second session with Strut improvisation community this morning. Working on sighted/unsighted work once again – but this time with an eye
to increasing the “independence” of the duetting individuals.

We completed two iterations:

1. Baseline – locating/relocating the sighted person. Initially with sighted dancer “passive”, and then introducing tone for the second part of the improvisation. (some tone, some action, some “teasing” of the relationship).
2. Keeping “sight” of the other. A longer  improvisation focusing on the following:

i) increasing activity/dynamic level.

ii) teasing and pushing separation.

iii) independence/interdependence – particularly by considering degree of physical proximity.
iv) For the sighted person there was a reminder to keep electing to “assist”, “resist” and “rupture” (or contaminate) the situation.

Some questions:

What can you find out about this person’s state & body?

Does their location always have to make sense?

Are they safe?

What comes in and out of the field of view ?

How are you locomoting – beside, around and next to this person?

How do you “find” them?

At the end of the session, David asked, “Are you looking to stimulate risk?”. It resonated strongly with me, and now I think that it is both perceived and real risk that I am drawn to in this work – in searching/provoking for moments of the unknown or of extreme surprise.

tonight i went to the contact jam in the church space.  what a beautiful little space it is.  bloody cold though. today was a little bit of a mishmash for me, and i was incredibly pleased to end it with dancing and a return to a form that has kept me interested and inspired for the last decade.

there’s almost too much for me to get through now.  i’ve got so many things i want to keep exploring and developing and i worry that when i get back to Melbourne I won’t get the time i’d like.

the flickbooks that Simon and I have been working on has been delayed for so long by all the other things we’ve been doing.  and now i’ve started getting stuck into it again i’m remembering the sparks that got me excited.  it’s surprising how some of the thoughts about the flickbooks are present in many of the posts in this blog.  all the talk about Siegal’s complex community networks is very much a part of the flickbooks in terms of opening up the project to participation from anyone.  also, the tiny experiments with the flips that I been doing and paea has taken to hand also has a link through the shifting of the relationship with the body and time.  and of course now i’m thinking about space and the discussions brought about by the interview with Godard and the representation of space and topos in these tiny digital.analogue.digital scrapbooks.

god, it’s really a bit of a worry when you start referencing your own thoughts and explorations. partcularly only a week and a half in.  although, very early on i was thinking about recursive processes, so maybe it’s all ok after all. (that’s another thing i want to try and get back to/on to before the end of the residency).

so, back to the dancing. i managed to have a dance with everyone at the jam except for a guy that left early.  each dance was so different.  remarkably different in fact.  and this reminds me of the openess of this form.  that despite all the definitions and guidelines and instructions and hierarchy and vernacular and socialisation, at it’s base level the form is about an inquiry into movement and body.  and this in and of itself is accessible to anyone who might be interested.

so much more to do. time to rest.

OK. Spent a few hours today inside Final Cut Pro. The result being a flip that was supposed to be a brief 2 seconds, but due to my preoccupation with all the great things possible, I slipped a little in relation to the task at hand!
What began as a simple task of rearranging images of myself became choreographing a ‘dance’. Looking for impulse, some kind of odd flow and obscure forms, then playing with my real momentum versus an enforced shift of direction and speed. Fascinating. Of course I have seen dance on film, and this task is of little interest to anyone bar me, but it spoke loudly to me of engaging in other modalities of performance and performance making. I am learning. That is all I haev to say about it.

No real life fesh and blood dancing today. A shame.

 Paea's flip [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Watched PL dancing. Fed verbal response/observations designed to provoke, disturb, and perturb – as an accumulation of information.
1. Let the body cascade.

2. There is no action that is a reaction.

3. Including face.

4. Keep your eyes above the floor.

5. Or is that your gaze?

6. Backwards.

7. Don’t settle.

8. Thinking across your back, your hamstrings, your calves.

9. Don’t judge, just observe.

10. Don’t settle.

11. Find the place of no impulse.

12. Let the body reverberate to this state – micro-reverberations.

13. Where do they occur?

14. Can the initiation occur beyond your body?

15. Can this occur at three times the pace.

Watched DC dancing. Fed verbal response/observations designed to provoke, disturb, and perturb – as an accumulation of information.
1. Continuous action – no pause.

2. See in three dimensions – and be seen in three dimensions.

3. Skull is covered with eyes.

4. Weight going beyond your legs.

5. Legs do not prop you up.

6. Keep seeing and being seen; allow yourself to be seen.

7. Support is fragmented – arms, legs, spine.

8. Pushing beyond.

9. yes.

10. The dorsal body, the back body.

11. No rest.

12. Frantic.

13. The dorsal.

14. Multiple rhythms.

15. Don’t catch.

16. Release the head.

(23 minutes)

Following this, and as a type of recovery, David danced for two minutes using these words/ideas:

calm, organised, dynamically sustained, beautiful.

Can the body settle whilst being sustained?

Paea and I sat and read “Phenomenological Space” this morning/afternoon. An interview with Hubert Godard and Caryn McHose for Contact Quarterly (it would appear I have only read one thing since being here in Perth) – Summer/Fall 2006.

The idea was to read the material at the same time and then discuss/consider any resonances that resulted from our (mutual) introduction to Godard’s thinking.

What became clear, very quickly, to me was that I was going to have trouble pinning his thinking to any one aspect of my practice. I was stimulated creatively (in terms of considering corporeal and audience/performer spaces), personally (in terms of his ideas concerning expectations), as an improviser, and more broadly on issues related to a conceptual understanding of space.

It is tricky to know where to begin. What was significant?

My notes read as follows:

space – imaginary

topos – real (geometric or measured)

space is linked to our personal story.

notion of kinesphere – subjective space – a “gradient of perspective”.

one subjectivity meets many subjectivities, where subjectivity includes personal history & expectation, but also sociological context.

“My perception of space is organised through the habits of our sociology and by the geography.”

p.35: “The reason, for example, that dance contact is so important is because it’s a way to renegotiate: first, the distance to other people; then, the vectoralization of space; then, the many levels of perceiving.”

He describes his notion of the “non-cortical gaze” – a way of looking that is not about naming. “This non-cortical gaze allows you to have very easy body reading because you have the capacity to incorporate people in your subjective space; you are in the space, the space is in you.”

I began to think about the unsighted work we did last week – to try be more clear about what is being negotiated. I have a feeling that independent dancing is central to the work – and yet this independence is ‘touched’ by a concern for the other. The degree of proximity or severence between the unsighted and sighted participants allows a quite precise exploration of the (spatial) edges of the duet. For the sighted person there is (of course) a responsibility to keep the unsighted dancer safe, but at the same time to insert and tease a geography of assisting, resisting and (here’s another attempt at finding a suitable word) DISTORT (others might be: circumvent, mislead, hoax??) what is occuring. For the unsighted mover there is a tension between continuing the corporeal noticing of the sighted, whilst at the same time ‘testing’ the outline of the duetting space.
Godard’s clarification (or delineation) of space (imagined) and topos (real) might also help to clarify what is being practised in this unsighted work. Could it be the overlap between these real and imagined phenomena that is the line on which we are acting/moving?

Towards the end of our session, I asked Paea about what she experienced/considered as she read the material.

She talked of the “space within” her body – and of not hanging on to the way it (her body/moving) should be — “I don’t lose my thread but I stay open”. For her this thread was “of finding my rigour” [It is interesting to consider the notion of rigour as a noun] – “ways to be in movement that I don’t know about”

David arrived eating his lunch and we discussed the idea of “centre” in dance – and he mentioned that Martin Keogh described the body as being polycentric … of being capable of negotiating multiple (parallel?) centres whilst moving.

This idea sits with what was a dense period of thinking and reading. I feel like there are many many strands of Hubert Godard’s thinking (in this one article alone) that I’d like to reflect on, explore and integrate into my current practice.

Tomorrow.

A valuable time spent alone this morning. It has been some time since I have found myself alone in a studio with a camera and the possibility that this opportunity presents. It was refreshing and exciting. I began to dance. I thought I would film myself. I was interested to see just what I might do after more than a year of dancing other people’s moves (in the sense that though it is my body doing the ‘moves’, I did not make them).

I have been thinking about this idea of our multiple histories – of the body (danced and not), emotional history, geographic history, inter personal history and then – our overarching SENSE of history – the word, its place in our minds and how we relate to the fact of its existence. How does this come into play for me when I am moving? How close to a surface does it sit?
The answer (in terms of what I saw) is immediate – I can see flickers of ‘other’ recognisable and clearly earmarked aesthetics protrude quietly or loudly through my bones, from under my skin. So many moments of everyone else. I tried to almost force my way out of information that I do not consider to be exlcusively mine. It is that difficult thing of trying to get past yourself – a tricky task as you are both in your own way and the only one able to help yourself out of habits/patterns/known pathways.But more than this I wanted to have a keen awareness of how my ‘other’ histories might be feeding into my moving.

I wanted to get to (just a small) beginning of feeling like I was dancing and moving out my own information – informed as it is by my past (life, love, births, deaths – the sum of it all [sweeping concept I know]) but uniquely tagged as belonging to my particular history. Is it actually possible? There was small but hearty progress.

An aside: What would happen if, like Kate Winslet’s character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I had no sense of not remembering. Would the dance be richer and possibly be able to be described as actually UNIQUE. Or would it lack colour and richness…?

Watching I was reminded of how much information I am trying to sort (in each moment) and yet also how much I do not know or rather – that I see I need pratice at the art of being aware of entertaining (as much) possibility in movement as is possible. I am surpised by how objectively I am able to watch myself move now (a process that has taken some time). I watched and thought about weeding. This is a process that will take some time. I read some interviews with William Forsythe.

“…after my wife died, I had this sensation of her arms around my neck. It was so real that I could really feel it, I was aware that this was a wish but it was a sensation that actually could be experienced and so I thought what if we tried to intensify the body’s memory of itself, wrapped around itself so to speak…” Forsythe talking on ABC.

http://www.abc.net.au/arts/performance/stories/s439792.htm

To conclude – I woke this morning wondering about the purpose of this daily practise in research that is focusing on a cerebral and physical prodding. How is it applicable in the bigger picture? Why does it matter? It is a concern of mine in a socio/cultural environment where the ground keeps shifting under my feet. And then, Forsythe said…” And thenI might say that my work is somehow about the manifold nature of humanity. I would say that people are extraordinarily rich and so I think the work would hopefully tap into that”...And I thought, simply, yes, it is important. And this time in the studio is the stuff that allows time to reflect and investigate and ultimately feed back into the processing history of bodies in movement.