Choreographic Lab

After the summer workshop was over I began learning how to use Final Cut Pro. Up until now all the loops I’d been creating had been done on iMovies. This new software allowed me to really experiment with something I’d had to use projectors to achieve up then - which was to have different or the same loops play simultaneously on different screens, so that I could see the interaction of the different visual and aural rhythms as I varied the timing and delays of their projections. With FCP’s ability to edit automatically and easily with split frames I could now start investigating this in a much more complex and compositional way. I became particularly interested in a small interaction between two of the performers (Gill and Adam) from the workshop and started taking one of the loops I’d made of them and created different juxtapositions between the loop itself in different frames and also small edits of the loop. Thus I was able to make a much longer films, with a more intricate vocal-physical-visual structures than the loops that I’d been posting on the website up to now. I began to feel I was at last beginning to create “physical-music” as I like to call it. Once I’ve worked out how to do it I will post some or the whole of the film that I edited.

In September I showed the film as it then existed to some of the Lab members (and journalist Donald Hutera who was visiting). They then fed back on it. What follows is that feedback as taken down in note form by I think two different people, though I cannot specifically remember who. I’ve decided to let it stand as it was given to me afterwards - I display it more to give some taste of an example of a feedback session between Lab members around a piece of work, because obviously without being able to view the film the feedback in itself will probably be meaningless to most readers. It may be clear from the first few notes that I told people that they didn’t have to follow any particular approach (e.g. Lehrman, Focusing..) to how they approached viewing and feeding back on the film.

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(BEFORE SHOWING FILM)

GUY
Re. feedback – be relaxed. You don’t need to chose a way of feeding back, although you can use whatever approaches have been useful so far, but don’t use an approach you haven’t already used. Feedback can involve questions.

ANNA
In response to this: “What do you want from us?”

GUY
Just to see it, I haven’t shown it yet. I just want people to look. I won’t talk during feedback unless you ask me a question. You don’t have to feedback anything if you don’t want to. You could feedback later if you want to. When I feel I have enough from you then I might ask some questions of my own.

Context:
“Should I should I not?”
2 perfs – Adams Benjamin and Gill Lyons - voice/movement workshop
Capturing bits of voice/movement process
Want to write music – physical music.
“Visual-physical-music”
Feedback on use of software ok.
I will play it twice
It’s about 2 mins long

(AFTER VIEWING THE FILM)

JANE
Sometimes you let a thing establish itself for long enough for us to get it, then at other times you don’t. Is this on purpose or not? Maybe listen to it by ear.

ANNA
Was your process improvisatory? Were you composing/editing intuitively or with some overall design?

GUY
Had no notion of what it would be - I did it a bit at a time. Once something there, I would think what is the next thing. Sometimes I made a mistake and looked at it and thought that the result was brilliant for some reason.

ANNA
Its very exciting
It could complicate more
It feels like it plateau.
Maybe it’s a taste thing
I didn’t want to be lulled
Excited my senses imaginatively

ROBERT
Read and then explained
Felt like trains in the audio programme
Long train of loop/loop/loop
Dreaming into the moment
A layer of – percussion – where are the strings?
But then it changed (as screens move up and down)
Reich & Glass – early days of looping
Musicality shifting 4/4 – phasing of the loop
Additive techniques
Reductive techniques
Phasing techniques
Moved beyond Reich because it included the visual
Wanted to follow all the way round the cycle
Doing this visually – engaging with frame rather than musicality
Is there any overall structure? Logic?
Keep phasing
Then traditional period
Not guitar
End? Is this because you’re not following a particular structure
(Reading from notes)
Trying things out.

DONALD
Like Anna – I looked away
I liked that
Touch of the infinities
I’ll dip into it
Fixating on man dropping down
Woman backhand tennis
Imagining bigger/smaller
Do I need to SEE it
I like the barking dog (I heard in it)
Hip Hop
I’m dreaming in
Simple + complex at the same time
Visceral
Impulse inside my body responding
Intertextual - Bride of Frankenstein
Bits in bottles
“You said stop it” to the movie at one point
Your intervention exciting – you have relationship to them

(Various people Interested in this interaction between myself and the film when I turned it off and told the performers to stop.)

Blind summit – did w/ puppets
I had a desire to seeing you doing something with them.
Maddening, mesmerising jumping on and off.

VIDA
Read from writing ditties (Vida has these notes)

DONALD
Happy mint

SIMON
I started thinking about disabilities
Nervous ticks
Collisions between disorder of that reaching & this resonant audio
Driving audio / incompleteness of physicality
Senses
Remembers – Rock concert
Thump in my chest
Driven by audio – visual long way in the background
Liked having movement a long way away.
Liked the sense it was in between two scenes that never happen
Steve McQueen Thomas Crown Affair
First movie to use split screens
When is the next scene going to happen?
If it should?
Bradie Bunch

ANNA
The rhythm is still in me.
I know those people are improvising
That material

ROB
Do you see any potentials in how to display it
I saw it in a gallery
+ a short film on TV
Nice little thing

ANNA
Asked whether I started from a concept or was the idea technology driven
I responded about noticing the camera in rehearsal how well it captured work

SARA
Note – the affects of note taking & lab weekend
Drawn to sound
Movement of people and wanting to
See that more closely
Movement of screen and movement
Distracting – want to go in further into the movement

JANE
Struck by something like a separation…..Feel
- me from video
- in me as I experience the sound& image
These things come from the same source but my body isn’t experiencing it like that.
2nd time through – what is it that separation?
Noticing of the image in the 2nd time round of watching
I know the sound
Discomfort. Feeling of separation
A gap. Notice the gaps. Gap between R image + L image. Mismatches
Timing of images
Gap
Mismatching
Desire in me – aesthetic – why is it bothering?
Stay still image, L+R L +R L+R rather than splitting the film into three.
Then I am more content
But more irritated
Desire in me – aesthetic – why is it bothering?
Stay still image, L+R L +R L+R rather than splitting the film into three.
Then I am more content
Purely Aesthetic judgement

(Anna responds to Jane)

“Irritation”
Lurking in there is much more form
Stay & get stuck somewhere
Aesthetic of what is in the space
Compose a film piece by focussing on the audio
Formal properties of the space.
Shape fundamental to the whole piece

SIMON
Black
White
Shot in rehearsal room?
does not matter
What is it in that moment?

JANE
I would love to see it just side to side

ROBERT
Said - LCD picture frames

GUY
Irritation
Not in time
Musically right / interesting
Listening – looking & watching

ROB
Cut point at the beginning very important
1/2 way thru Adam - staggered and recovered

JANE
Continuity of space, clothes, is it possible to overcome that?
Irritability – not to do with sound

(Jane waltzes around the space)

Ad hoc
Could go form one film to the next standing rather than sitting and watching one film on its own – the with each you could in a positive way appreciate that they do go on + on + on + on
How you show it?
So technology intensive

SARA
How did we feedback being given free rein?
Guy context
Anna asked questions
Rob – writes and explains
Donald – Compared himself to Anna & ???
Vida made notes and read
Sara – trouble
Jane – I was struck by - like perf dreaming – then did irritability
Vida Playful dreaming into dreaming into possibilities for piece.
Rob – Maybe was breaking rules
Guy Happy with feedback
Different ways give variety
Difference
Space for…..
Cussing type feedback could get squeezed

GUY
One thing I forgot to do was to leave space before showing the video for people to have time if they needed to prepare themselves to view the work from a particular perspective.

JANE (VIDA?)
Remarked also to leave space after showing for the same people to prepare themselves to feedback in a particular way.

Responding with Intertextual resonances / Performative writing:

Tasks:
A few things to try – except for the very last and first tasks these are in no particular order and you can do some or all (and several are different ways of getting at similar concerns):

First task: As soon as you have experienced the work, and as quickly as you, can write as many key words, images, ideas, fragments, connections as you can …

Describe your experience of the work… how were you sitting / standing?, was it comfortable? Where you alert, tired etc etc? were you warm? were you distracted / focused etc…. the idea is not to relate this to the performance but just to note these sensations, emotion and conditions (to own them perhaps)?

Write down movements you remember … describe in as much detail as you can
Write down sounds you remember…describe
Write down images you remember….
Write down spatial elements…
Write down…
Write…

Take a moment to let the performance to resonate as a whole and allow yourself to imagine the performance as ‘something else’ (a ship, a building, a painting, a news paper, a person, a landscape etc etc… , describe the detail of this ‘something else’.

Close your eyes, focus on your breathing, allow your attention to be drawn to a particular moment / image in the performance…. How does it feel? What is its texture / temparature / colour / atmosphere etc etc….? Open your eyes and allow yourself to start to write, let the writing follow, try not to worry about its form or sense… but emerge from your experience of the work.

Take some time .. as long as you need… to let the intertextual traces you sense emerging out of, or going into, the performance to surface, to become clear. These allusions may be personal memories and experiences, previously seen performances, films, sounds, sculptures, landscapes, critical or theoretical discourses etc… These traces may, (or may not), be located in particular moments – if they are - note this connection.

Make a response in a haiku (or your own version of!)

List the questions you have…
real or imagined as evoked by the performance…

Imagine a creative tasks that the work gives rise to
(not answers or solutions .. just activities)

List resources you feel resonate with this work
… critical, theoretical, fictional, filmic, danced, etc …

I often think of intertextual responses as being like unravelling a weaving… in the process of unravelling the underside of the weaving becomes visible and the previously hidden ‘concerns’ become evident. There may be numerous threads … pull at one thread… see what comes out, follow the tangents twists and curves, knots… stay with this one thread until you have exhausted it for yourself….

End task: look over your responses… we all tend to have tendencies in our ways of looking, things that appeal to us…. Can you see any recurring themes, ideas, modes….? What do the responses ‘say’ about you? What may you have missed or not considered?

A tightness across the chest, a heaviness.
A reminder of knowledge……………….of this process, of this work.
Seeing more - children, small steps, open spces, 3 screens, colour and an immense sadness in ME.
A woman dragging herself across the floor.
Why do I want to make sense?
A separation of eyes and body. Are they separated?
————-
A shower of colours, of green and white.
My body chased by nostalgia.
I think I resisted that, my body resisted it, my head and my throat.
I wanted to feel and I loathed to feel.
————
Lots to see.
Meanings in images and associations to images.
Nowhere near an image. I didn’t see, the first sensation was in my ears.
A child’s cry and the manipulation of the child’s cry. Nostalgia cut by the manipulation of the sounds. The strings being cut.

Harmony and dis-harmony.
Together and apart.
Fuzziness around the screen.
Familiarity with the triptych, trying not to remember.

Images in the middle. The studio work. Felt different. I noticed the difference and it feels significant.
Evocative image of the older woman on the beach.
Stillness unwatched but remembered,
Looking at right (hand side image) but noticing that the left is there more. The song at the end completes that meaning.
Watching and seeing difference.
Looking and not looking.
I’m noticing rather than watching.
————–
(An acknowledgement first) an anxiety about getting this process right.
An annoyance with having to watch within this framework.
This colours my experience of watching it, for fear of getting it wrong.

The enjoyment of watching the images, the cut.
How do I watch this?
The connection between the three images. Easy to watch and not easy to watch.
Annoyed by music and (not) hearing it.
It never felt easy to listen and watch.
Closing eyes to hear the words.

Surprised by being delighted by the simplicity of the four flowers in the frame.
The colour and simplicity.
My eyes held by an image outside of the body……………….and tinsel.
Silver tinsel dust thrown up into the air.
Being held. By a lightness.
Curious as to whether it is enough to be intrigued by nothingness.
I liked the feet in the water. But feet are always interesting to look at.
Is it enough that I like it?

Studio sections - is it important that I have seen this show before? (Or that I haven’t?)
Human beings doing things that are set.
A really different quality and relative to other images. Not set.
————
Hazy baby gaze.
White feet. white sheet.
Eyelashes, eyes up close and fluttering.
Cold and cool. Feet to head. Faceless womans head. Stroking and comforting.
First steps. Last steps. Lulling and plodding.
The sweet sound of babyhood.
————
I loved that.
The arm across the face.
And so did you.
The way the arm fell across the face.
————
Floating boat people.
Studio stuff on nocturnal sand.
————
A pressing in the chest and a twang in the shoulder blades.
Empathy and discomfort.
The pleasure of life on-going.
Empathy, longing, flow.
Chest pressing (low diaphragm).
A warm sensation, mothering, life processes.
Beginnings and endings - hard.
A discomfort with the work.
Twanging, sting.
The tension between the live work and video. The aesthetic of the studio and filmic images. An unease.
If I have not seen the live work, then how is it?
Liking the recontextualisation of the live work.
And wanting to stay wallowing.
————
A tightness in my neck.
A real discomfort.
Silence.
An inordinately long wait.
The relief as someone speaks.
(Thankyou).
I receive, gratefully and feel amazed by the generosity.
The generosity in dwelling within oneself and the work, the difficulty in doing that.
Taking time, taking time up.
The struggle to be within.
Close up and alongside.

Strangely, like me and like the work.
To take time to form the images and the sounds.
(For us) the fascination in pre, literally before, language and how an image comes into and out of focus.
The clarity from the blur………………someone said fuzziness.
Seeing and not seeing.
Listening and not hearing.
Coming to a point of articulation.
Had anyone seen the (repeated) images of the annunciation?
(Fra Angelico).
(Mary and Gabriel).
No-one said so.
I could have asked.
I didn’t.
Maybe it doesn’t matter?

How does this work, the thing itself, this little bit of a dance, of sounds, words and images so full of emotions for me,
absoloutely steeped in them…………
so very present and yet a real, all too real absence…………..of a dearly loved one…….
collide, collude and confuse how we respond from our felt sensations?
What is the difference (in) between nostalgia and sentimentality?

Thankyou for all of this (in alphabetical order only) to Donald, Guy, Jane, Kerryn, Rob, Simon, Vida.

And I just wanted to say I also so wanted to hear.
(although I hadn’t realised how much until I did)!
I loved it, I just really loved it.
And it moved me.
I was moved.
Thankyou for that too.
————

For Jo.

Open ‘slather’ in terms of how to respond – no guidelines.

These notes are more about my reflection on what happened in the feedback – and the ensuing discussion. They are appallingly brief.

We seemed to ‘lapse’ back to our usual modes/ways of articulating dance.

“It feels like it could do something more …” “I’d like it to …” the responses become egocentric – as if it was us making the work – and (in my mind) not commenting on, or noticing what IS there, but rather on what ISN’T.

In this sense it seemed a good example of why TO organise feedback/responding … and yet it’s important to note that Guy (who the responding was for!) was invigorated and stimulated by the thoughts/responses – so, in this respect, who cares?

And yet, I think we tended to agree that something was lost – particularly in terms of the time that the Lab’s articulation strategies afford the responder & maker … Sara asked how we might “protect” the taking of time … to prevent losing the modalities/strategies that demand more time. that these ‘other’ ones will disappear more quickly/easily - particularly in situations outside of the lab environment …

Simon

Activities –
1. Authentic movement, 10 min improv
2. Two minutes reflection
3. Switch for 10 min improv
4. Second 2 minute reflection.
5. 15 min improv. First 5 silent, second 5 being fed single words by observer (no constraints on type of word), third 5 silent.
6. 2 minute reflection
7. Switch 15 min improv (ie other mover)
8. Final 2 minute reflection.

Two minute reflection on Jane doing (the first 10 min improv):
Small hands, large breath
Folded in two. Torsoless woman.
Sobbing.
Empathy.
Knocking on door.
Interruption.
Space/time in my observing. Noticing, missing, reading, guessing, exaggerating.

Personal reflection on my first 10 minute AM improv:
Calm. Checking in. stable. Gentle abandon. Noticing the known, surprised by the un. Gliding, oiled, frictionless body(s). Light.

15 minute Jane improv – words spoken to her:
air. Ground. Back. Shouldering arms. Soft feet. Unknown. Integrity. Belly. Hips. Sustain. Sustainence. Air. Lungs. Fingernails. (then repeated all).

Two minutes reflecting on Jane’s 15 min improv:
Patterns. Seen. Get to here, then this. Surprised. Perturbed. Do, then think. Rhythms constructed in the thinking. Silence. Thinking body. Tune in tune out. Still. Sure. Calm.

Two minutes reflecting on my 15 min improv:
Knees. Sticky. The privacy. The secret. A moment.

I have questions about authentic movement (it’s utterly new to me). Are we (Jane and I) simply talking about dancing ‘authentically’ (whatever that might be)? In other words – taking AM and placing it within a ‘dancey’ context. Are there aesthetic choices being made (at least, are there supposed to be aesthetic choices being made)? Is there room ‘allowed’ for a disembodied eye on the improv?

Simon

Performance Dreaming Matrix - notes/thoughts by Simon

Based on Gordon ??’s ‘Dreaming Matrix’ - to get at what is in the collective unconscious. Gestalt. Adapted for performance viewing/discussing/articulating context.

In brief – encourages a dreamlike response to seeing/witnessing performance materials/movement. And then develops these responses ACROSS a group – developing a dreamed matrix of articulated patterns/ideas. It is about the shared/collective response.

Take 1.
In this ‘experiment’, we had three people improvise for 10 minutes. The observers then began dreaming…

The following are some of my notes/thoughts/reflections on what it was I heard within this ‘dreamscape’ (I was one of the performers and hence did not participate in the PDM not sure why actually – but the second ‘experiment’ trialled this.

SG voiced concern for our foregrounding of response to spoken word (versus written).

VM: “collective conversation”

I had a thought about ownership – this time b/c it was ‘just’ improvised my listening during the response was not ‘loaded’ .. I didn’t need or want or have to feel defensive … different if it had been ‘my’ work??

AF: “suddenly run … later”
AF: “muttering like a cat … although cats don’t mutter”
AF: “making me think of dance like a butterfly sting like a bee”
AF: “between an embrace and a self-embrace”
Donald: “There’s a party in the jungle” … “chimps and children”
Donald: “There’s at least one cage in the space.

The process of responding in this way felt useful in a generative way – for what ‘it’ might be … the responses were strongly narrativised.

AF: “There’s a secret”
VM: “The secret is the darkness behind the game”
AF: “But that secret isn’t always shared is it?” “Nobody knows the rules except the one who is muttering”
JB: “And I’m laughing, does that make me complicit?”

The responses were interpretive …

AF: “The one who muttered insisted didn’t he?”

Questions for me:
1. What is being articulated?
2. Building in the silence … the ‘no response’
3. Who is it for?
4. Why would we want to do it?
5. What does it get at?

Lucid dreaming. Half awake, half asleep.

Take 2.

The entire group involved in the ‘performance’. A round robin, maximum three people in the space at once. 10 minutes long.

The responding:
- remembering what happened (distinct from Take 1). Activities – what we did.
- b/c I was in it it was clearer what we were talking about. The introduction of the subjective – the “I” – first person.
- We are all now located in it.

AF: “The Czech shirt becomes like punctuation in my field of view – twice”.
AF: “performing in a Zimmer frame”
AF: “Wasn’t watchable”
AF: “19 years ago, when I was young”
RD: “not trumping it up … no assertion of authority” in the responding – perhaps this is not what is said but how?
VM: “not point scoring … it’s not an argument”

It is the end of the day and I am sitting on a hard-backed green chair in Isham light with Guy. I am feeling a little bit frustrated having spent 3 hours trawling through DV tapes for some footage that wasn’t there.

Chips
Daddy
Bird
Mathew Bourne’s male swan lake
Charlie
Nostalgic 70’s dads
Silence
Black
Green bird low light
Purple face
One leg
Fall feet
Black and flesh
Muffled breath
? is this the end
is there more
flapping arms
straight back
shaved head
beak
horizontal line blurred across screen

skin flesh body silky smooth curved - soft light on white skin – downy fur – its looks cool but is actually deceptively warm and radiates heat – its awakening to the world –

as the arms flap I am reminded of Mathew Bourne’s male Nutcracker and I notice that Robert could be one of the male swans – I think of watching my friend Tom perform as one of these swans and begin to see their physical likeness. I think of the ballet and representations of birds in a dancers body – I think that Rob has got the movement ‘right’. I am drawn to the starkness of the image, the black and white (and pale green) the limited movement and blurring of the edges of the body.

I want to try being this bird – I want to try on the beak – but then maybe I don’t as I couldn’t look the same – maybe I don’t even want it to move at all but to just be very still as the camera zooms in.

I watched everything twice. Forgive me if I get the titles of the piece wrong

Jump Jump Fall Fall
His bare feet and the shortness of his trousers and his bare midriff, put me in mind of a cabin boy on a galleo. He’s in a storm. Reminded me of Robert Lepage’s (spelling?) show Coriolanus, which was a live show done behind an open slit, letter box shaped that stretched across the stage, about the size of a cinamea screen (Cinemascope!) so that one had the impression of watching the action going on behind it as if in a film. Also made me think about the film I saw where the director had made some actors keeping jumping up in the air and then edited out all the parts where they come down to the ground again, so that in the final film the people stay perpetually in the air. This film is sort of the reverse of that because he keeps falling down, but for a moment when in his jumping he disappeared out of the screen I was remined of this other film. I hoped or wondered that perhaps he would jump and that his feet would not reappear. Aware of breathing. Feels like he’s undergoing some kind of torture.

30 Seconds of Silence
Intriguing that the words remained on the screen as if to assert that it was not a mistake to watch and listen, rather than just show the title and then the blank screen. But then I thought it doesn’t say “30 seconds of stillness, silence and NO WRITING”, so I thought “Rob’s clever, he noticed that…..” Put me in mind of the next show I want to make which is provisionally titled Something or Nothing or Guy Dartnell’s Nothing. I imagined myself doing part of it, sitting infront of the audience in stillness and silence for a while. Film made me think of John Cage (or is it Cale) and his famous track of silence and this annoyed me, because I’ve never even listened to it, or played it on an album as it were so I could listen to the actual thing, or no-thing. Made me think some concepts are more interesting as concepts than they are as pieces of art. Wondered about this in relationship to my own show.

Become a Bird.
Thought of the poster for the film/soundtrack cover Birdy. Seemed almost the same but Rob was pointing in the other direction (I think) and in the poster the man has no artificial beak. I love the dimness of the image, the faint green - it was mysterious. Notice I’d never seen Rob naked before. I was willing to believe he was a bird even when the camera zoomed in and I was really aware of the artificial beak. I thought there is no mouth to open…how could he sing, eat…? But I didn’t care….I thought it’s ok he’s not really a bird he’s just representing one.

Daddy Chips
This really stood out because the images were not studio based and were still images. They had been searched for, sourced, collected and chosen. I liked them - they were from somewhere other than “art”, they were “authentic”, “real”. I liked there ordinariness, not shot by a professional(?). I thought is that really Rob, really his dad? I reckoned I saw one too many dad images at the beginning - a mistake or a deliberate or unconscious disregard for the instructions? Something disgusting about photos of chips, something disgusting, grim, english, english seaside culture, yuuuhhck! Britain is so grim? Chips are not to looked at they are to be eaten. The dad seemed to get older through the film. Was it the same dad all the way through? Something of sixties British working class movies in this or seventies TV movies - I can imagine this sequence to music being a branch between one scene and another about the life of some chip shop owner……..

Violet Bulregard
Haven’t seen the film that the instruction comes from - for my sins. Saw eating, somebody chewing on something, a face like a cartoon, then the face became a balloon being blown up. I thought Rob is being a balloon or is what he’s eating growing inside his mouth? Has he eaten too much? The screen changed colour. He’s ill? Then I saw a giant, then the Incredible Hulk, a giant balancing on one foot as if in a skinner release class with Gaby Agis, then he was outstretched and then he fell over as in the first film about falling down. I thought he fell down the same way as in the first film, can’t he fall down some other way?

Guy

From: Joanne (Bob) Whalley, University of Northampton/Dogshelf Theatre Company
Daddy Chips
Chips Daddy
Daddy Chips
Chips Daddy
Daddy Chips