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.
As my performance comes closer I took the time today to have an Alexander Lesson focusing on the first few minutes. The performance is improvised so this is not about planning what I will do – but rather how I will do it.
As is usual in an AT lesson I showed the teacher my movement – and my teacher with some questions and hands on helped me consider the key elements of the activity and my use of my body in movement in the space.
We considered gaze and focus – we thought about speed and timing – we talked it over and I tried out different ways to say hello to my materials as I began. I had been concerned about how to start as in the show I will need to begin before I enter the space – and thinking about how I will walk and then how the ball will take my attention revealed my concern with getting down to the floor in a way that doesn’t distract from my saying hello to the ball. The hands on helped me re-calibrate the dynamic poise of my head in relation to my body as I looked – I can gaze with less movement – and show attention with less energy. The softness I experience as I release in extension helps me fill the space – to fully inhabit my body and the activity. I begin to be less concerned about getting down to the floor and the whole movement becomes free-er and more fluent.
We turn out attention to ending – again the sense of where my axis is as I look makes a big difference to the quality of the movement – paying attention to this makes it very clear to the viewer that I’m fully engaged with the ball – and also makes it very clear when I am not – this is another kind of release – as having said hello to the ball in a new way every time – I will also be saying good bye to it in a new way each time.
This linking of extension with a kind of release – letting go – another element of being free to move – emerged recently as I was writing about my work. I realised that there were more links than I had initially understood for myself – with the three performances I had done before – including the one with the sorting out of stuff. The sorting out stuff images will be the basis for future work that I can combine with the balls – for now I like to both and either or of the two balls – so won’t add a third dimension either to my performance or to the projected or printed images.
