still live process blog

Studio 2 – PICA. Afternoon. 11 July 2006.

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.

playing with the idea of micro editing. the following text lists the simple processes for exploring the notion of a 2 second feed. taking motion and editing it to stillness then reanimating through compiling frames together. looking at composition, choreo-cinematography, remapping time, loss of information, redundancy, reconfiguring and perception. just for starters of course.

from these edits there are two main streams in terms of inscribing the images. the first is through following the chronological progression of the movement. that is, taking a phrase (be it through movement of body, camera or both) and pulling out frames so that there is still a sense of shape or linearity in the resulting images. it’s almost like the reverse of time-lapse photography or stop-motion animation.

the second stream is more about dislocating the images from their chronology and composing the sequence through other means. each frame has a relationship to the preceding and succeeding frames. this becomes a more compositional assemblage where the editing takes precedence in the choreography of the piece.

other things: what is the resulting visual impact of extracting frames from a linear progression? does it allow the inbetween moments to be represented? are those missing elements holding signifigance in their absence?
using a cell size of 2 frames instead of 1 creates a very different experience. the fractions of movement that the eye picks up with 2 frames makes the sequence fit into a dance idiom. some interesting reading here.
things to try: turn your sound off when you watch them. open them all up in pop-ups and view at once. download to your desktop and open all in quicktime – set them to looping playback. observe the topography of the studio. step through them frame by frame. the clips are listed in order below the body of this post.
process 1

fixed frame, dancer walking and standing score.
import entire 3min clip into FCP
edit frames from viewer onto timeline
1. choosing static poses (1 frame)
2. choosing ‘in-between’ moments (2 frames)
3. compiling chronologically

process 2

fixed frame, dancer walking and standing score.
import entire 3min clip into FCP
edit frames from viewer onto timeline
1. choosing static poses (1 frame)
2. compiling frames with repetition of images

process 3

fixed frame, dancer walking and standing score.
import entire 3min clip into FCP
edit frames from viewer onto timeline
1. choosing ‘in-between’ moments (2 frames)
2. compiling chronologically, duplicating
3. reversing duplication.

process 4

moving frame, dancer improvising with a focus on relationship to camera and sense of moving through the frame
log and capture clips into FCP – extracting ‘useful’ sections
edit frames from viewer onto timeline – one clip at a time
1. choosing dynamic moments (2 frames)
2. compiling chronologically – 5 segments only to create a section
3. repeat section

process 5
duplicate sequence from process 4
1. reduce each cell to 1 frame only
2. duplicate to fill 2 secs

process 6
moving frame, dancer improvising with a focus on relationship to camera and sense of moving through the frame
log and capture clips into FCP – extracting ‘useful’ sections
edit frames from viewer onto timeline – one clip at a time
1. choosing dynamic moments (2 frames)
2. compiling chronologically

process 7

same as process 6 – different footage.

process 8

same as process 7 but there are 2 frames for each cell – this is a 4 second feed

 Podcast Video [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
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Under threat of excommunication (followed by a slow and painful death) by Mr. Corbet, I have been digging deeply into the latest issue of Contact Quarterly (Vol 31 Issue 2).

Materials by Richard Siegal in which he describes a choreographic methodology (for work, “If/Then”) designed to envoke or foreground notions of authorship during performative activity. Ideas and concerns surrounding “networks” are almost painful in their current omnipresence and yet Siegal talks to a kind of logic-based flow chart of performative decision making that also integrates texts from filial relationships (and clearly, notions of relating and relationships are central his thinking and doing). It is stimulating stuff.

Siegal writes, “The subject of virtuosity is largely transmuted from the physical to the mnemonic. The cause and effect relationships, which set the vocabulary into motion, are a feat of extraordinary memory for which dancers are especially qualified” (p. 60). I am reminded once again of the breadth of the term virtuosity – and how it tends to represent a seeing or visual hegemony. That is, that which is visible is able to be virtuosic (stronger, faster, higher).

But I want to go back to networks (such a broad word). Siegal expresses the desire for “systemic complexity” and in dissolving individual control so that the “more qualified organizational abilities of communities” might shift and expand and improve his “If/Then” methodology.This paragraph – the second to last on p.60 – prompted a consideration of “Crevice” on my part – how might the relinquishment of individual control, and (subsequent) enabling of “systemic complexity” via networked communities, impact on a lonely man?

Pushing this idea further, what is it to not be able to assume or choose loneliness?I was thinking about the world’s last lonely man or the final lonely man. Where the viruses and organisms of community and network prevent or denature (the option of) loneliness.

A big jump I know.

But I both love and loathe literal and metaphorical networks (as this wireless one we are working on ducks in and out of being serviceable).

And I am now starting to think that it seems odd to consider sharing these ideas on that big dubdubdub network in the sky – who is this writing for? David and Paea? Or just a very public means by which I might organise my thinking?

Spent some time with a small group of people yesterday (including Paea and David) working on sighted and unsighted materials. This was based on the work that Alexandra Macdonald and I did in the UK (at the Choreographic Lab in Northampton) in March this year. Interesting to work within a group situation (Alexandra and I spent the entire time in a large studio alone), and attempting to articulate information that had been developed in quite an organic way (and with no particular ‘endpoint’ in mind).

Issues related to movement “defaults” emerged. Not really surprising, but because Alexandra and I worked mostly outside of what might be called contact idioms we seemed to approach the moving/viewing/unviewing with a greater emphasis on soloing within a duetting structure – what State of Flux call Duoloing I think it is). But this also has to do (perhaps) with how the information is provided in the sharing – and b/c this is my first go at facilitating these ideas/actions/provocations I am bound to come upon moving misnomers.

The difference between the process of finding and the process of sharing is perhaps the awareness of what the experience ‘might’ be like. My capacity to adapt the information, and remain open to surprise in where people direct (or corner) the materials is critical. Is the endpoint that Alexandra and I experienced the one that ought to be experienced? No — and yet its richness is something I’d like to have shared, and to enter various moving communities. These questions then return to what it is that I might be seeking in this particular aspect of my practice. Simply more stimuli? Or an increased/altered sense of intra and intersubjective (space/time) corporeality?

On a completely different note – Alexandra and I used the terms “assist”, “resist” and “t-bone” to cover the kinds of options open to the sighted person in the duoloing. These need clarification and refinement (especially ‘t-bone’ – which we used (thanks to Teb) as a note to have the capacity to completely fuck things around) … seems like good fodder for a venn diagram.

Spent some time yesterday (day before?) working with two cameras that were taped together (or their tripods were) at right angles to each other – as a possible idea for development of four-angled materials for “Crevice”.

Link to some video here: http://www.choreographiclab.org/Main/?p=148

Always intriguing to execute an idea that has only been conceptualised. The practicalities become evident very quickly. For example – a question of focus. Passing through the door the camera which I was “sighting” (or viewing through) was nicely focused, but the second camera at right angles couldn’t handle the closeness of the door frame. How to resolve?

Also, the gaps between the two frames of the cameras lead to a particular kind of disorientation – quite stimulating. My thinking at the moment would be to use a combination of “real” materials shot in a (yet to be found) location, AND some constructed animations/3D modelling of the same location. That way I would have the capacity to give the architecture “sense” as well as to render the four angles a more abstracted (torn apart) feel – as is present in the above (two angle) version.

Quite a lot to learn.

Today begins the last day of the first week. I have spent this time considering the idea of research – what is it, how does it work, how can it feed the physical? I realise it is, of course, vitally important. This time in Perth is also a unique chance to not have to find time to read and be engaged in other modes of performativity outside of or in addition to the time spent in the studio in the physical practice of moving.

Teaching yesterday I was aware, again, of how very long it takes to find your ‘mojo’ as a mover. I was saying to Simon, sitting in the sun, that that morning as I watched younger dancers against (or rather beside) older, that there is something about one’s sensuality that comes into play. Is it that the more sensual you are the more luscious, grounded and virtuosic your movement?! Not sure about that one….but there is something to be said for giving your body up to experience that is diverse outside of the studio.