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.