Choreographic Lab

First and foremost the Lab has allowed me to explore a new area of work without having to produce a performance at the end. I have often found in the past that organisations that have supported my research have required, often for justifiable reasons of their own, some kind of “comeback” usually in the shape of a showing or presentation of some kind. Though I have chosen during the Lab to publicly present the work at various points, this has been my choice as I went along and reflected a notion that certain things could only be found out by placing the research in a public context. The result of all my explorations is that I have had my initial hunches concerning the possibilities of integrating video editing with my live Voic(e)motion work confirmed. The way forward is exciting as has been the process of reaching this point. It’s a pity there aren’t two more years of the Lab for me to explore the work beyond the small steps I have taken – but at least I have taken small steps.

The time scale has also been important. I feel there’s significant difference researching something over a two year period rather than over a few weeks or a week as is usually the case. In the latter you usually have to have made a lot of the decisions beforehand about what and how you’re going to research because of the condensed nature of the time period. Reflection on the process is usually after the event, when it’s sometimes too late. The two years has allowed the possibility to try out small amounts of research followed by long periods of reflection before deciding what the next step should be. Though I haven’t drastically changed my focus from what I’d envisaged at the beginning, this time scale also felt like it offered the opportunity to completely change direction if I’d wanted to. Just having this as an option is so important, since it provides space for ones thinking even though the decision to change direction may not be taken.

I valued the frequent meetings with people that the Lab provided. I hadn’t envisaged how much time would be spent in conversation over the various issues of the Lab, not just personal, but inter-personal and universal. In some ways this meant that when in Northampton I spent more time in dialogue with others around the table than I had planned and thus spent an equally less amount of time in the studio or editing room “working”. But this opportunity to flex my intellectual muscles around such things as feedback and documentation was I realised something that I had been hungry to do for a while without knowing it. Its so important to have opportunities to talk, knowing that the conversation is something that can (and will) be returned to at a specific point in the future, rather than it being something that has to be argued out and finished now. There was a sense that over the two years with the Lab that not only was the work “work-in-progress”, but so too were the conversations.

It has given me a new outlook on the possibilities of feeding back on other people’s work – and thus my own work. I now have a clearer notion of the process I normally undertake when attempting to feedback on something and am more aware of what other choices there could be - not just theoretically, because the Lab has also provided me with the tools by which I could choose to engage in these other ways. I am indebted to the other people who have taken part in this process, to their generosity and sense of enquiry. Particular thanks goes to Jane and Vida for their endless energy in arranging and organising things. I am also indebted to Tim Halliday for his patience in helping me to learn how to use new equipment and software and to Simon Ellis for his invaluable work on the website.

Being in the practice.
To write from the practice.
Stopping to write.
Not waiting to complete before I write.

Putting myself into my physical, emotional and mental mind/body space.
Dwelling…………….
Trying hard not to dash.
Taking time.
Coupled with a development in my own practice to the yin rather than the yang.

A surprise to make another, a new work.
And video at that.
I thought I would be reflecting on past work and making bits of new live performance choreographies.

On trying to understand process a product has emerged.
And how important the heart of it is.
The heart is.
Yvon is right.
The heart of the work.
The heart of the lab.
The red river pulses on too scared to stop or slow for fear of being stagnant.
This has given me heart.

But what a difficult thing to do.
To offer up something. To place it under a microscope and to keep changing the lenses, even ever so slightly.
Or switch to a new frame?
To let it go and then to be given it back, only to try to understand more.
Muddy waters.
Some clarity.
More mud.
(Like the squid changing shape).
Critical reflection or action research?

And the tremendous gift, courage, as words start to spew out not in carelessness but in an attempt to delve deeper.
To understand, in a deeper way and to ‘acknowledge’ who you are and all you are made up of and where some of that may sit in all of this stuff. Such a tremendous (sense of) responsibility.

Enough. Too much solely in the head now. Return.
And I’m cold again.
How on earth do we represent the richness?
Remember a slice of not a superficial scratch at the whole.

The presence.
Palpable.
The palpable presence of the felt sense in THIS room.
Here and now.
The privelege.
The priveleged.
Struggling.
Struggling to find the words.
(For Yvon from Guy).
The difficulty in beginning, in locating where it is, where it is coming from.
Oh my.
And listening. Learning to listen more.
How has that one slipped me by and permeated my whole being?
To take time.
Enough.

Hearing their voices saying their words.
And sitting still.
Not dancing.
Noticing all the nuances as we search for the sensation.
But not dancing. A six year old got us dancing together. (Thankyou Naomi).
We cluster around. We cluster around technology and I grow stiffer.

However it feels to me that if we hadn’t ever moved together, watched each other moving, guided each other through those practices that ground us, our level of understanding and generosity would not be as rich. Now I understand more. Now I can connect the words with how you move, with what is important, I understand more.

Outcomes / Reflections on the Lab

Trusting my processes of making and not trying to understand the work in a critical, analytical way but being wholley in the process of making and trusting that process.

Reflecting back on my initial questions and looking at the changes in my thinking about the process of making.

Wanting to use the Dream Matrix in the initial stages of making something, trying that out with collaborators.

The web/dvd as a ’slice’ of Pendulum, Rotations, writings, images and reflections of my time in the Lab - as a website that can be copied onto disc for ease of use etc. I am imagining that this is a section on my own website that is linked to the main choreographic lab website.

Missing the crossover time during summer meant that the work perhaps didn’t develop as much as it could have. Had I had people poping in and giving feedback and ideas etc.

Practical support - use of space and equipment was great - wish that I had done more practical work.

I asked for time to reflect upon practice, to further explore my practice in order to articulate, be more articulate! I hadn’t really considered how being part of this collective would really impact upon this. How I really came to understand my practice more was through careful, often difficult, feedback loops from all the other lab members over an extended period of time. Visiting and revisiting. Searching and re-searching. Understanding much more through the generosity of others.

And through action-research, less planning, acting & reflecting but rather reflecting, re-making, making. Both cyclical but we start in a different place and each moment contains all of those elements all at once.

Getting nearer to the practice through the practice itself. Writing just after I have moved, or stopping to write and then continuing to move. And now I find myself dwelling in the minutae and then to the magnificant and the magnificant minutae. In the figurative in amongst and alongside the natural, the enviromental. Happened upon - Ella’s feet dancing in the water then ‘lifted and copied’ in performance. Focussing on those beautifully dancerly unchoreographed moments made up from the naturalistic, the found.

Oh more than that. Embodied. As my son Callum runs down a corridor and slides to a halt on his knees. The night after I watch Peter Kay’s observation of this exact single moment, sequence of events, howling with laughter with my Dad.

The focussing in on a moment, or a series of moments. What draws us, is it me and you, to that? What do I know, what have I learnt that draws me to that? What focusses my attention?
Trying to understand the ‘draw’ of the moment, the movement, the image, the sound. The pre-image or pre-sound. The post-image and post-sound. This in relationship to other frames of reference - the painterly, the filmic, where else?

And how does all of this become relevant to a wider community? To a contribution of knowledge?
To be continued………………………

Three seasons, three ages, three places. It is definately an old device invented to represent the multi-dimensionality of reality - each part is independent and self-contained but also part of a whole too - what happens then with a triptych in the age of “multi media”? It becomes a highly complex compositional device, image and sound are used to both indicate a subject matter and dissolve it. One would think that this piece is about children, which is true in some ways, but the rhythm of the editing and slow initial quality of the child’s movement has another effect on the viewer’s brain. We occasionally see the world through the child’s eyes, but also how the child might see the world in a few years time, there is a peculiar sense of now and tomorrow, now and after - after what? I don’t know but I suspect that the child becomes a metaphor for the world not in a naive way but perhaps in a positive sense that life is hard and painful but there is hope and potential.
So the triptych creates a space in-between, between now and then, here and there, old and new, painful and pleasant and it doesn’t settle into any of these.

Reflections written by Sophia Lycouris.