In developing my final piece ‘Like A Woman’ I am using improvised performance and layered digital images taken from performance to explore what it can mean to fully extend ourselves.
Ideas about women and full extension resonate for me over a lifetime, as a young sportswoman, as a leader in the NHS and now as a mature woman studying in a new context. The theme emerged as I claimed a larger space in which to work for a few days. The larger scale moving and marking was exciting. I was fully inhabiting my changing body -worlds.
This theme sets the stage for my last term – where the challenge is to integrate my new learning, ideas and experiences and bring works to full realisation.
My performance today was shorter than I had expected – I was engrossed and settled as I worked with the ball – I was able to play with intensity and speed – and worked outside where I had been before as the ball made several unexpected bounces.
It was the first time I had observers in a different capacity – to asses – it was interesting to discover I soon forgot anyone was there – this is great – ready for showing to the public.
My biggest surprise was that the ball came to rest when I wasn’t really expecting it to – and somehow it became clear that the performance had finished – the ball had finished with me – before I was ready – but it was time to go even if the ending was premature.
Thanks to Rob for making my letters and for this snap taken to celebrate their successful installation.
These last few weeks have been taken up with preparing a space – I have learned that the more you make a black-out the more you need to blackout – I wanted the space to be simple – a black out and a spot light – all sorts of challenges have arisen with lighting from within and without.
The space is now ready – and I have spent time in it getting to know some of its qualities, now I’m ready to explore further with my materials once my performances begin.
The questions I have been addressing have included:
Where and how does the performance start
At which point do a I choose which materials to engage with
Will I put any limits to what I might do
Artists statement available at csadshow.uk. and movementinmind.co
July 24th I spent a day moving and marking with groundwork pro Cardiff – facilitated by Marega Pulsar. Her energy and generosity was infectious – everyone collaborated to make the day exciting challenging and rewarding. Participants were mainly either most comfortable with dancing or drawing – and the workshop took everyone to unexpected places. I explored making marks in response to movement – a familiar activity – and moving in response to the marks of others – this was new. I had feedback about the way I used my body in movement which gave me more confidence about my ability to speak to a group through my movement – all our bodies speak – but in the performance I am planning I want to speak with intention and clarity.
What a treat to spend time with ourselves, our bodies and each other, taking time to look carefully, and move and mark in different ways. An opportunity to network and share ideas.
The images below were made out of paper and charcoal in response to sound.
The process began with experiments with moving and not marking – first in a day light lit studio space – then in a domestic space – then in a lit AV studio. I was experimenting with extension in standing – then soft extension in moving and relating to an object. The object relating reminded me of Winnicot’s work – and I combined this thinking with my Alexander hands – I worked both with my alexander teacher and with the video and photography technicians to play with movement in performance and different ways of capturing movement – initially as documentation then as work in itself. As I worked more ideas about soft extension and extension as release and letting go emerged as I said hello and goodbye to the objects each time . The choice of balls arose from childhood recollections and re-connections in my academic reading and my looking. The lacrosse ball was ordered on line from a specialist company and was exactly like the ones I played with as girl – soft and hard at the same time. The orange wool was left over from making my new baby granddaughters first blanket. All kind of hellos and goodbyes implicit here – I began to think more about extension as both new hellos and some goodbyes – and related it to my own transitions having retired from a 30 year career last year and become a grandparent.
Thinking about the experience we bring with our ‘time travelled heads’ and being ‘comfortable in our own skin’ as we get older is the central thesis of the work that this group is doing together.
We worked with Mike at an open session over a weekend in July at Chapter Arts centre in Cardiff – with 6 sessions altogether working individually, as a group and in pairs. Mike introduced new languages which we used to improvise movement – we varied speed intensity commitment timing – we got to know each other – we developed our movement voices – and we got to share in watching each other work.
Mike used a range of starting points to help us bring diverse energies to the work – sometimes words – sometimes pictures – sometimes we built up from small fragments – sometimes we broke things into smaller pieces – sometimes we built on a previous development – sometimes we started afresh.
As we built on what we learned together over the weekend a sense of something profound developing among us grew. This is very exciting as we will be working together again soon and starting to rehearse regularly with a public performance in mind.
Thank you Mike.
