Signs and Languages

Tomorrow we all stop for a week - offering some much needed head space. This week with Alex Carly and Janusz has been a good week for the work. A fog has lifted and we are working towards some kind of common understanding. The ground work that has been done is beginning to reap rewards and the work is gathering its own momentum. This is when I start to make connections, where people's journeys and languages start to fall slowly into place, where threads are picked up and sense is made of 'scenes' or functional actions. We are practical in the approach to making this work. What does the room need now? I am carrying a vast amount of stuff around in my head - connections between materials from May, July, August devising periods. We have talked a lot this week and it has been useful, non-egocentric talking - about the work and what it needs, what it means, what it offers us, where it may be going. All three performers are is working within a restricted palette of language - pushing one idea as far as it can go, amking, dismantling, reworking, reshaping, repeating, pushing it around. We end up with multiple versions of similar material, material that can be looped and repeated, but what is exciting is that we are now distilling down - making decisions about what works and what needs to be rejected and removed from the picture. I enjoy this process. Mining, digging, reforming, recalling, settling on one version that might be something. And we are rupturing the material- marking it, speeding it up, stealing from others, writing it, scoring it, reading it, omitting bits....shifting between languages, just like the flyer says we should be.

Thursday 27 August

Alex Writes, 26 August

If language is the key to cracking this, than surely we can find each other in the dark…?

If this sort of darkness is anything like fog, it will settle, leaving us were we started: the place we want to know for the first time again (wink T.S. Eliot)

Carly, Charlotte, Henry, PK, Val, Scott, Sam, Ruth, Wendy, Janusz and I…..six weeks later

42 days and 41 nights

Some of us don’t want to move

Some are reluctant to piece two movements together in fear of actual choreography arising from the ashes of afterthought….

I don’t think it’s about the movement or about the words or sound or about acting or about the lack of a set (so to speak) or about art in general…

We’re dealing with an internal strike; We want to pause. In the limelight. And unravel ourselves as you’ve never seen us before (outside a pub): just being here and trying things out, failing and getting up….because if you never fail you will never experience getting up.

We are trying to move the spectacle from what we do to how we do it and eventually to who we are.

Is that interesting?

The Arts Council seem to really hope so…

Darkness is settling…

Here we go

Buck naked (so to speak)

Stuttering from the heart for the first time on stage….enjoy us.

Enjoy us as we attempt to pause…

What we do, you’ve seen before

This is a total one off

So to speak

More Sunday Questions, 23 August

How to place instruction at the centre of the work?

'I've got something I'd like to show you'

GO GO GO GO GO GO GO

START STOP

AGAIN AGAIN

How to 'mine' the material.

'Just put your foot there.

There in the dark

Step

Step

Step'

Reluctance and refusals

Audiences are very quiet.

How to put a frame around events to introduce our intentions?

How to make an invitation to do something?

How to state the instruction?

'We're going to try something a bit different tonight, Ladies and Gentlemen.

When the lights come on I will dance for you. When they go off I will stop'.

Should every performer just have one action that is repeated and repeated and repeated with time measured and duration noted. Repetition in a changing context throws new light on the material - and includes the audience in the game of recognition and change.

How to avoid a jumble sale of ideas - limit the options?

When to stop?

BEING UNSURE ABOUT HOW TO CONTINUE

REPEATED CIRCLES OF MATERIAL

RECYCLED EVENTS

AN ORDER THAT IS LOST OR CONFUSED

BEING UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

GOING OFF SCRIPT

BURNING OURSELVES OUT

LOOPING

PHASING

PROMPTING

WATCHING BEHAVIOURS

These are not my words

I LIKE TO BE WATCHED

I LIKE TO BE ADORED

I ILE TO BE EXPOSED

I LIKE TO BE ADMIRED

I LIKE IT WHEN PEOPLE THINK MY JOB IS BETTER THAN THEIRS

I AM VERY KEEN TO DO SOMETHING

I SHOULD DANCE

I SHOULD DANCE

GROWING UP IN PUBLIC

LOOK OUT AND ASK FOR HELP

Nearly There?

I CANT REMEMBER ANYTHING

WHERE IS THE SCRIPT

I USED TO BE ATTRACTIVE MUCH MORE CAPABLE

I WILL LOOK MEANINGFUL AND I WILL SHOW MY LEGS

I DONT WANT TO BE MISERABLE

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BEING REAL ON STAGE

SUCCESS HAS GONE OUT OF THE WINDOW

GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO

Look at Us, Just Look at Us

Look at Us

Just Look at Us

We must be joking

We must be having a laugh

How did I get my foot in the door?

Who let us loose on the stage?

Bad Orchestra, 13 August 2009

Weds 12 July

I have wanted to make work with song in it for quite some time. As this seems to be the piece where I am throwing caution to the wind, today we start to sing. I ask Alex to compose a simple melody that we can harmonise to and we steal some words from Wendy’s NERVOUS NUMBER text:

LOOK OUT AND ASK FOR HELP

I CAN SEE FROM THE WAY YOU WATCH

THIS IS GOING TO BE – SPECIAL

I TREMBLE AND I HESITATE

The result is so on the edge of being completely appalling, that I imagine there must be something in it worth pursuing. PK and Alex like it so that’s good enough for me. Henry’s not so sure!

I give everyone a list of what they need to ‘get through’ in the next hour or so, on top of which

Using what sketches of materials we have generated we perform a structured improvisation

I ask Henry to take people hostage within the impro

I ask Alex to score his way through it

I ask PK to concentrate on getting through a long list of texts in different forms, including a panic attack

I ask Janusz and Carly to busk their way through what little material they have and make up the rest.

They get through it and some interesting scenes emerge. Feeling a need to start working in more detail, I decide to use what happened in this improv as the basis for emerging ‘episodes’, dissecting what happened, mapping the actions and recreating it in detail over the next 2 days so repeatable ‘scenes’ can start to emerge.

Tuesday 11 August

We create the QUIZ SHOW FOR THE BODY that Wendy has sent us, setting up Carly and Janusz as dancers who don’t know what they are doing or why, or where they are or what is expected of them. PK and Alex accompany with cheerful plucked music as the quiz slides out of control and the dancers retract to the back wall, embarrassed, ashamed, undone. Too easy?

Carly makes a phrase from a CALLING DANCE text, and with a bit of editing, a phrase that can be repeated over and over with an intervention from Alex.

Janusz creates a phrase with a STEP TO IT text that Claire Macdonald wrote ages ago after initial discussions in Sussex about this work. He works with a microphone in one hand and complicated foot patterns, accompanied by cello later in the week.

PK works on a text that starts acoustically in the shadows and emerges into the light, to which Henry dances and Alex plays cello.

10 August 2009

Janusz arrives from Posnan and Carly from London and the atmosphere shifts again. I am not sure yet whether a constantly evolving cast helps or hinders my own creative process. A devising process staggered into three weekly chunks of time with each performer means I have to hold much real and imagined data in my head as we work – imagining Scott here and Val there whilst working with everyone else. Aurora’s devising process feels like a long time ago. She has given birth to a baby girl (a week or so overdue) and is doing well. She was expecting to come over on 6^th September, but I wonder if this is realistic now - I hope she isn’t worrying too much about work and enjoying her first few weeks with her daughter.

My approach to making this piece has shifted this week. I have been in a mental and emotional fog of prescribed drugs since I started making work with Aurora and I have now finished the course and seem to be seeing straight again.

I reflect on how each performer seems to be turning up with quite a strong personal agenda for making this particular piece of work. Some would really rather work alone. Some really don’t want to be touched or manhandled. Some want to feel connected to the group. Some want to be out on a limb. Some don’t want to do partner work. Some feel it’s time to lay down the instruments they are expert at playing. Some would rather be down the pub. Most like to play and improvise. Again questions of free will and coercion – what does the piece need? Am I not being clear enough? In allowing more space and freedom for people to work things out for themselves within a process, am I being less of a director? How much direction to give experienced practitioners? Am I just providing a frame for their own explorations? What will we be left with? Where is the sense of ensemble? Will that come in September when we all reconvene to finish making and structuring the work? Am I giving people enough rope to hang themselves with?

Carly and Janusz arrive and there are expectations from me for more movement. Henry will spend the week consolidating his materials before leaving for three weeks. He is studious and independent in his approach, very clear about what he likes and doesn’t like, what he is willing and not willing to do on stage. He works things out for himself in relation to what is going on around him and doesn’t seem to equate dancing with ‘feeling’ anything- he has more of a functional approach somehow. Janusz is hoping not to do any duets this year – and I rather annoyingly ask him to create a wall duet with Carly on the first day he arrives. I can feel his dismay at being asked to create such a thing (again) but we need some material that serve this function and it’s a useful way to get Carly (who I haven’t worked with before) into the thick of it.

We play under the lights imagining the light as water falling on different parts of the body.

We develop a motif for PK that she is shocked every time the light falls on her face.

We develop circular patterns that may be useful to create the ‘storm’ I’ve been planning.

We describe a dance we have always wanted to make.

We read out loud several comical dances (from Italy, North London, Constantinople) that Wendy has written for us to try. We try them out. They are pretty bad.

PK starts work on a LOOK AT ME text.

We talk about rituals and repetition, about leaving a mark and the translation of movement into sound.

Wall Wipe / Panic Attack

wall wipe dance

panic attack

I Nevers / Counting texts

3-7th August

Alex's score dance - double jointed shoulders and arthritic knees lead to a broken down composer's dance, scraping along the back wall, fighting to score notes on the wall as Henry steadily draws the stave.

A ladder comes in handy for staging your own death, using text as wallpaper, breaking up the space.

Long Days Ahead

I ask Alex to musically score sonic events on the back wall. I like the way it looks. I think this and Aurora's drawing may both add an interesting graphic aspect to the work. the board looks beautiful when it has been cleaned. Alex plays dead. Henry plays dead.

Henry, Alex and Patrycja, 3 August 2009

We are now in the process of making a show, because when I mention these words in the studio people seem to know vaguely what to do:

PUNK ROCK

STORM

GO GO GO

KILL KILL KILL

I NEVERS

TAI CHI DANCE

SONG INTRO

GOOSE CHASE

SUCKY DANCE

LOOK AT ME

NERVOUS NUMBER

RANT

GLANCE DANCE

CRACKPOT

PETRONIO

PHOTO TEXT

DRAWING DANCE

WALL WIPE

WATERMARKS

ENIGMA DANCE

PISSING

HOSTAGE

ABU GHRAIB

SHORT PAUSE

PANIC ATTACK

Henry, Val and Alex, 29 July 2009

Henry is a calming independent presence. He suggests that he does not connect with the darker texts Wendy has written (following conversations with me). He would rather focus on rhythm of the writing. Years of practice show in his approach to the works on the page. Delicate, intricate movement patterns emerge in his long, lean body. Shifts of weight and small swipes carving air. Limbs that allow movement to linger in traces in the space. He generates movement fast and instinctively which looks deceptively effortless and simple. I enjoy watching him create material. He and Val create a duet with a STOP START text that Wendy has written.

GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO they shriek at each other - dancing madly

AGAIN

STOP

It reminds me of my niece Sylvie who shouts AGAIN AGAIN if you hang her upside down and then stack her back up.

Game playing. We need to play more.

Henry, Val and Alex, 27 July 2009

Val returns.

Henry arrives.

Alex arrives.

Scott comes back for a few days

Valentina 20-23 July

Scott has gone.

Val is still recovering from Italian Flu and trying to buy a house in London.

Alex is delayed because his visa didn't show up on time in Costa Rica.

I am struck down with Yorkshire Flu.

Val and I struggle for four days with texts that I think she can do something with.

She makes an interesting solo sucking in and swallowing words she is trying to speak. Big questions around whose works we are speaking and how to deal with text that carry my conceptual ideas which may not fit into or suit another performers' mouth.

These words are not my words.

My flu gets worse and for the first time in a long time we take Friday off and Val gets back to London a day early, ready to move house.

I spend three days in bed (sponsored by Kleenex tissues).