October 2010
1 post
1 tag
“The antithesis of the theatre of indifference is not spontaneous simplicity, but...”
– John Berger, ‘The Theatre of Indifference’ in The Sense of Sight (1975: 72-73)
cited in http://compromiseisourbusiness.blogspot.com/2010/10/im-trawling-through-my-old-notebooks.html
September 2009
4 posts
believing
A couple of weeks ago I got to talk with some MA students (and new graduates) at The Place. Afterwards, one of the students (I didn’t get her name) started talking about the showing/performance Colin and I did on the 12th.
She talked about how she didn’t ‘believe’ that I felt awkward at the end, or that I ‘failed’.
I think she was right (although there were...
updating
4 September 2009 I haven’t been able to keep up with this writing online. In part this has to do with having a few other commitments, but I think it has mostly been to do with the density of the working process. The worst part is that because it has been some time I don’t quite know where to start. Yesterday we had a closed sharing (not sure if calling a showing a sharing is a Place...
August 2009
14 posts
types
Colin becomes stereotype Simon becomes archetype
Chris
Chris Bannerman (http://www.mdx.ac.uk/rescen) dropped in on the 20th August (yesterday) acting in a mentoring role. It was invaluable (at this stage) to have someone to push our ideas/thinking/actions onto. It reminded me of the great potential for isolation in the studio … ironic given Colin and my interest/focus on what and how audiences see.
These are some notes from our chat after Colin...
19 August
More notes. These are all a bit over the place, but I want to get them ‘out there’ for Colin, and the other two people following this blog (my mother? my sister-in-law?)
request, demand, obligation, threat. Increasing levels of inflexibility with respect to demands on an audience.
We talked some more about the ‘ecstatic’, and of the notion of ecstatic place existing...
wandering
Trawling through some old notes about responsibility, and the demands/requests we might ask of an audience …
If you find yourself wandering from this responsibility, then it might be useful to …
remind yourself of your commitment be kind to yourself, and bring your attention back to me listen wholeheartedly … to me, with me, for me.
Responsibility to see and listen as best as...
discomfort
It makes me uncomfortable admitting to the things that make me comfortable.
Colin and I devised a list of things that made us comfortable. These questions are designed as a kind of questionnaire to elicit similar answers to my list. That is, ‘if the answers are these, what are the questions?’
Who does history belong to? Do you deserve to win? Have you ever felt invisible? Can you...
pulse
I can feel your pulse. You’re too old for this shit. Guess what? I don’t want to work with you. Just thought I’d remind you.
preparation
To prepare the audience for the frame of mind to provoke or question … as part of a process of developing/provoking curiosity.
you looking
It’s about you … it’s about you looking at me.
(Colin said this)
remembering some work we did
Keeping the other in the periphery, whilst keeping in relationship (centrality) Circling and back to back, the “space is breathing quite a lot”, included a bit of cp’s arm (interfere/care) in this went into the bowing/breathing - when we were quite spatially distinct, cp joined ske upstage L ske facing downstage, cp upstage, him with his right hand ‘sensing’ and...
sitting, winking
Sitting, winking, telling Colin what to say: I am glad to see you all here / Thank you very much for coming this afternoon. Are you all comfortable? There’s something I’d like to ask of you. I don’t feel certain.
starting up again
18 August 2009
Back in the studio yesterday after a couple of weeks chasing other lives. First day back (17th) involved catching up a bit on our thinking and activity. Today we (once again) ended up deep in discussion about responsibility and questions of disappearance as a performer. That is, is it possible to make one’s self as a performer ‘disappear’ through asking an...
“Artists fortunately remind us that there’s in fact no single, correct way to...”
– From http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/arts/design/03abroad.html?_r=2&th&emc=th
WatchGolan Levin talking about his work. The material from 10min in is perhaps most relevant: “What if art were aware we were looking at it, and what could it do if it could look back at us?”
division?
Colin (paraphrased): This is me. This is all I am. This is all you have. This is all I can give. This is all there is to get.
We spent the day (Friday, 31 July) with some simple technology: Two cameras set up with live feeds to two monitors (ie one camera per monitor). This was to get this out of my system really, and for Colin to get a clearer sense of what I’d been thinking about. There...
July 2009
26 posts
Writing Colin
I wrote this as Colin improvised. It was the last bit of ‘dancing’ in today’s rehearsal.
He’s standing there, turning his head, side to side, Very slowly. He is winking at me! He is outrageous. But he is not wanting anything. It’s not nudge nudge wink wink mind you. More like it’s a secret, but one that we all know about. The bubble of contemporary dance? He is...
“A myth was never intended as an accurate account of a historical event; it was...”
– Karen Armstrong
Rose Hacker on negative capability →
“I don’t know if it is relevant to your work, and your thoughts, but the...”
– Bagryana Popov, responding to post on Professional Mourners.
“… and sooner or later your thinking may shift to open to the softened...”
– Bagryana Popov (responding to some of these materials online)
gathering
I suspect many of these posts seem to be a little random (particularly those that are not reflecting on our work in the studio), but we’ve been talking a bit about gathering - casting the net quite widely whilst our interests and ideas become more clear.
“One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the...”
– The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Short rehearsal
Friday 24 July 09: After watching a couple of showings, we spent 1 hr in the studio - touch based improvs. Caught between the ‘practice’ and pulling ‘old’ material into the improvs. Need to be clear about this.
Some thoughts from Gabrielle Eastwood-Ellis
“In his amazing book, “The Zen of Seeing”, Franck quotes Meister Eckhart, the 13th century mystic:
“The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.”
It is not surprising that this simple and loving expression of God has common ground in both Hinduism and Buddhism. Franck tells us that this ‘eye’ of Eckhart is the ‘Buddha Eye’ in the East and ‘the Endless Eye’ in...
Professional mourners
From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funeral#Mutes_and_professional_mourners
“The professional mourner, generally a woman, would shriek and wail (often while clawing her face and tearing at her clothing), to encourage others to weep. These people are mentioned in ancient Greek plays, and were employed throughout Europe, but the practice largely died out in the nineteenth century....
Lethal Weapon
From http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Lethal-Weapon.html
40 EXT. UNMARKED POLICE CAR - DAY 40 Riggs and Murtaugh cruise through downtown Los Angeles. Riggs drives, while Murtaugh scowls. There is an awkward pause. MURTAUGH Turn right. (beat) So. They tell me you’re a good cop. RIGGS I try. MURTAUGH Heard about your little stunt yesterday. Pretty heroic stuff. (as...
types of audience
Today was demanding for me. We warmed up and then had a series of quite complex (and revealing) conversations. We are unquestionably in the thick of this work already - the taste is strong.
There is something going on for us about the nature of knowing, and the expectations of audiences in performance/dance. The question of responsibility has stayed with us, but there are many other threads:...
knowing and the ecstatic
Colin: “The commitment [to whatever] is the way of knowing.”
Ecstasy - beside one’s self. What if my other self were next to me? Greek funeral - pay mourners to stand next to you to mourn on your behalf. Like we become divorced from the experience. Or soap operas - all the laughing/crying is done for us.
Two extremes here - one is ‘actual’ bliss/ecstasy, the other...
Wednesday 22 July 2009 - some notes
Started with an hour-long open improvisation, constrained to a 2 x 3m rectangle.
Sound of sea shell (man-made) into Colin’s ear, whilst covering it. (something he came back to)
Opening shoulder joint before pulling me down to floor (these kinds of repetitions were quite common) … the preparation of the body being explicit.
clapping - we clapped each other, for rhythm, for irony...
white
I am learning a lot about being white.
Bliss →
I want to write about bliss at some point. I keep returning to it as a salve for cynicism, as a means of understanding why it is that I keep making performance. It is not, however, hedonism.
Kolb's learning styles
Colin introduced Kolb’s learning styles into our work as a way of considering different approaches to the work:
Concrete Experience - (CE)
Reflective Observation - (RO)
Abstract Conceptualization - (AC)
Active Experimentation - (AE)
It seems like we are tending to work either in CE or in AC. They feel quite distinct, but perhaps part of our work is to find points of convergence? (Sound...
race
You see … Colin is black, and I am white.
It appears that this work will always be about race.
the audience as seeker
Note: These are propositions. They are stated in a language of certainty, but they are far from being certain …
The audience as seeker.
What do they want? What is it that they want to know, or that they are seeking to know?
If we make the object of the encounter that it is their responsibility to know … their disbelief gets in the way. So they have to suspend their disbelief in...
notes from rehearsal, 20 July 2009
These are not really designed to make sense as such. They are more of a sketch of some things that we did (moved, talked about) …
“meeting and making an entrance”
ecstasy - the ecstatic (I talked quite a bit about my experience of Nico Vascellari’s performance at Marina Abramovic presents …)
demystification - through this sharing process, but also in relation to...
“It is unfortunately hard to recall our quasi-permanent concern with the future,...”
– Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel (p.23)
“Which explains the curious phenomenon whereby valuable elements may be easier to...”
– Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel (p.15)
responsibility
To whom are we responsible? Who am I here? Who am I supposed to be? Why is it so difficult for me to be here?
Luke Jennings talking the bubble talk →
This is from The Observer, Sunday 19 July 2009.
I brought it into rehearsal yesterday because Jennings asks those (well-worn) questions about dance and its audience. His rhetoric doesn’t necessarily allow for different types of choreographers making work for different types of (sometimes very small) audiences, but the “invisible barriers” he describes are, I suspect, also...
ekstasis
He starts by describing an ecstatic state.
Now ecstasy in Greek meant to stand to the side of something, and then it became essentially an analogy for a mental state where you feel that you are not doing your ordinary everyday routines. So ecstasy is essentially a stepping into an alternative reality.
… his body disappears, his identity disappears from his consciousness because he doesn’t have...
May 2009
2 posts
before we begin
Before we begin, we’d like to clarify who we are and who we’re meant to be.
“To encounter another person at work is also to encounter oneself. In relating to...”
– Evfa Lilja Dance: For Better, For Worse (p.21)
March 2009
2 posts
“A question to become a feeling, a feeling to become a form, a form to have an...”
– Colin, 23 March 2009
meetings
We met at The Place yesterday, and then immediately after at The Place again. First we talked about this project, and then we realised that in talking about it the project was becoming, or had started. We didn’t know if we should be paying more attention to what it was that we were saying. Things seem to take on importance beyond what they would ordinarily. In preparing for the second...
December 2008
1 post
i don't know what to say
Dear Colin
It’s true. I don’t know what to say.
I was fascinated by the short wave ‘numbers station’. Where is it from? Can we stream them live?
I don’t know what we are saying either.
To each other.
I am worried about our differences, the uncertainty of it all, the time pressure …
When making projects, to whom am I responsible? By what means can I be (or...