Choreographic Lab

ARRANGEMENTS

Began watching the footage I had shot of Helen Chadwick and myself in the summer. This was the first time I’d had to look at the footage involving Helen. There are two films one of Helen working alone and one of us working together. Helen is a composer/singer. We had first met when we worked and performed together in 1995 on a project for the Centre for Performance Research called The Sound House with composer Meredith Monk.

Film 1

I had asked Helen to simply use the space to explore however she liked in voice-movement according to her feelings and impulses, rather than improvise through pure “singing”. The emphasis being on her trying to get her voice and body to reflect the same thing. I said I would occasionally feed in to help her in this direction. Helen moved with great ease and I discovered later that her performing roots are actually in physical theatre. I realised that infact I had first seen her in the Doctor Foster’s Theatre Company in the early 80’s. Some of what she did is hilarious. Some very moving. She has a kind of impish quality, which is not immediately apparent when you talk with her. And her music is so “pure’ that it is surprising to see this essentially naughty wild quality about her.

I can see that there are a number of phases of what she did that I might edit into vocal-physical scores.

Film 2

We decided to do an improvisation together. Helen would start by singing. I would contrast this by doing something in voice-movement that went against what she was doing. Then, as it seems from the video, we would seek to reverse our individual perspectives (me “sing”, she “voice-moving”). From that we could “do what we want” but staying within the realm of “music” and as it seems looking for periods of unity and synchronicity.

This was more interesting to see the possibility of us performing together rather than editing the film into something. I want to make this happen at some point.

FOCUSING

Jane ran a focussing session. Details of the structure for how to focus were given to us in hard copy. I worked with Vida. We developed the apparently normal focusing procedure by taking it into sound and movement rather than words. One person focuses the other listens and “reflects back”.

My questions were:

First exercise: “The World?’” I giggled at this because its such an enormous question, why wouldn’t one have a problem with it. Also it is typical of me to choose such an enormous subject.

Second exercise, where the question had to be more related to an issue within the lab: “Why do I want to set my work?”

My experience: I felt a Xmas tree on the front of my body - its star just at the apex of the v at the bottom of my sternum. I laughed since it so close to Xmas how corny to have a Xmas tree. The star at the top of the tree was cover over by something brown. Words I used were BROWN COLOUR; SHIT, COW PAT, BROOWN DIRT…. Then I realised it was really the colour and texture of brown paint powder like we used to us in school. This was the most fitting image – a small mound of brown paint powder. I lifted my fist and brought it down on the mound to disperse it as I discovered. Then I rubbed it over my body until I was covered in brown paint powder. I was brown. Then I wondered “what does it need”……WATER…its too dry….paint powder needs to be mixed with water. So I stood under a shower…which although it solved the dry powder issue, meant that the powder just washed down the plughole. But it meant I was CLEAN, I was CLEAR. There was cleanness, there was clarity.

ISADORA

In the afternoon Kerryn and Barret showed us what Isadora was which was very interesting. I thought I would only be interested in the masking aspect of it but looking at it again perhaps there are other functions of it need to explore…. e.g.

- Running various voice-movement scores/people alongside one another.
- Creating a chorus

Day was mostly devoted to talking about the website and how it should be formatted.