Janusz's Steps

Walked in with a suspicious step.

A "worrying step.

A "do not want to step in” step.

A “am not sure if I will fit in” step.

A “not sure what step to take” step.

A happy step.

A willing step.

A “willing for what” step.

There will be lots of steps…

I do not want to make the next step.

Maybe I do not want to step in at all.

Maybe I do not know how to step in.

Maybe I will step too far.

Maybe I already made a big step.

How will I know when is the last step?

More steps…

I make a step.

One step.

Second step.

Third step.

“I don’t know what it means” step.

“I don’t know will it mean anything” step.

“I simply don’t know” step.

Have you had enough of stepping the steps?

I continue to step the steps.

Stepping forwards.

Stepping backwards.

Stepping upwards.

Stepping downwards.

Stepping for a piss.

Stepping for a fag.

Stepping for a rant.

Stepping for a chat.

Stepping to the office.

Stepping up and down.

Fuck that stepping rhyme…

More steps are coming up…

Third week steps become clearer.

Is it still worth to step in further?

Do I step towards the right direction?

Is that step mean a step to me??

Step, step, step…

Ok, and one more step…

For once, make that one fucking meaningful step.

“Is it difficult to ask?” step.

“In no particular order” step.

A “Persistance” step.

A “Costa-Rican” step.

An “understudy” step.

A “calming presence” step.

A “crying baby” step.

A “City Road’ step.

A “Crookes” step.

A “Lower Walkley” step.

A “sex for pleasure” step.

A “Class 2 National Insurance” step.

A “draft schedule” step.

A “Darren Brown” step.

A “Protect and survive” step.

A “Rubiez” step.

Too many steps…

Few more steps… (patience)

Step, step, step…

Fuck the steps, fuck ‘em up!

Step up.

Step forward.

Keep stepping.

keep stepping..

keep stepping…

step alone

Step together

Yes, step together.

Lets Gather Together, Like We Used To

Alex is composing, scoring, attacking, questioning, managing and making sound.

Carly is dancing, signing, thinking, remaining mute.

PK is talking, shouting, breathing, reading, presenting out, pushing the action inwards.

Scott is playing, reading, talking, measuring time in pauses.

Janusz is copying, noting, notating, correcting, watching, refusing, stealing, reworking.

Aurora is floating, drawing, drawing breath and tending to her baby girl.

Henry is moving, often alone.

Patrycja's Thoughts, 9 September 2009

I'm pleasantly snowed under an overwhelming amount of text.

There are hundreds of paper sheets floating on the stage floor,

a massive pile of printed words on my stage desk,

dozens of wrinkled, half-ripped and stained pages waiting backstage...

I feel like a

WORD collector

WORD deliverer

WORD transmitter

WORD interpreter

WORD presenter

WORD consumer

WORD broadcaster

...some WORDS are more MINE than others...

The ACT of organizing all these words in the space, in my head, my mouth , in my memory, in a loop station, is an ongoing task. The DIFFICULTY of organizing them will be explicit throughout the performance too.

WORDS as a substance

WORDS as sonic value

WORDS as rhythmical value

WORDS as emotional value

Tangible WORDS

WORDS flying in a 'storm' scene

WORDS squashed under the pressure of the expectation of MEANING

WORDS chopped and divided to syllables, singular letters.

WORDS as a weapon against abstraction.

WORDS seasoned with a Polish accent.

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).

Scott's Reflections, Week 3, 13-17 July

Valentina arrived at our rehearsal process this week, so with PK, there are two other humans in the space with me. One thing that might have been slightly problematic for me so far, is that I dont have so much interest (desire) in soloing. This has been coming on the last few years for me. The clear desire to dance/perform/make sound/behave, in relationship to other people. At the very least, I seem to need objects or architecture. Otherwise, it can be difficult to find a reason or motivation for me to move. Why disturb the universe?

I crave paraphernalia.

This week has been concerned with making lists of would be materials, and trying them on in creative ways. There are some repetitions, and there are some turnings off into new prospects. As we are making hour long sessions often, it all gets mixed up in a gumbo of rehearsals and repetitions. One needs to stay alert as to what kind of signals are coming from fellow performers, in that they might be wanting to practice a specific material or scene, and need another person to perform their part, in that scene. Lots of materials generated, though as ever, how to organise them? There is also this very abstract notion (for me), of imagining how any given bit, will exist in relation to all the bits that will be made over the course of the summer, as Charlotte keeps up this process with a new performer arriving every three weeks to Begin their own process. Then in September, we all (cast) gather back in Sheffield to assemble the work. One can only imagine some things...

Its been interesting to observe Valentina as she has been inserted into an ongoing process, and has to develop coping strategies on the fly a bit. Or in other words, Charlotte and PK and I, have been accumulating and storing a bank or list of images and words and sounds and such, that we can refer to for use. I wonder if Valentina will go through any similar process when Henry arrives late in her three week period.

Lots of potential material has been discarded for the time being. Or perhaps material has been re-contextualised. In some cases, maybe its a less overt/obvious approach to material, and these bits have been allowed to simmer under the surface more, but still contribute to the gestalt. (Or something...)

Charlotte keeps mentioning, that I might be a disruptive figure the piece. Or that a persons (solo) might be in several short instalments over the course of the evening. As such, in the works we have been practicing this week, there might be several entrances and exits over the course of an hour or so.

We have been working with the set more this week, and the architecture of the space. Moving objects (chairs, mic stands, lights, bodies, texts etc) about the space.It can look afterwards, as if there has been a bit of a storm or disruption in the stage space. at times, I have felt disruptive myself, and have had images of breaking lights, or asking difficult questions (rhetorical?) and such. I have managed to break a few broom sticks whilst using them for pointers on the black board. This has me feeling like some deranged CEO or professor.

Ruth (dramaturg) came in to watch and feed back this week. I think she thought it was all a bit dark maybe. I believe I heard Charlotte say that this was not unusual for this period of a making process, and that perhaps, it might lighten up later. All I can do so far, is follow my nose.

Scott's Reflections, Week 2, 6-10 July

I feel like the second week of my rehearsal period was concerned with putting into form, many of the materials we had been researching the first week. As ever, there seemed to be a riddle about how to get back into the content of the research work, and put this into repeatable forms. I often feel that getting swept up in the vibe of action/behavior, is the more interesting aspect of the product, and that the shapes of the behaviors/actions, are sort of by products or consequences of something more primary (or interesting to me anyway). I understand that this can be slippery for the purposes of choreography or repetition. ( Repetition, the French word for rehearsal).In my experiance, some things change, and some stay the same. What does one address, if not shape and duration or other quantifiable properties? Tempo, tone, etc.. Is the foot pointed or flexed? Or relaxed... New dance in my experience, often has no set syllabus, and needs its materials identified as such, in order to find a beginning point or palette from which to work.

We have been trying on several versions of text, some of which are amalgams of as many as four writers contributions by now. I am sensing a need to start back at a beginning concerning text and language. Or another doorway or approach anyway. I am thinking more and more, that the texts might not need to relate to me personally, but would reflect larger or more general concerns, Or at the least, multiple concerns or thoughts of the multiple writers. Cut ups (by way of Burroughs) have come to mind.

One thing that seems consistent for me, are the acts of accompaniment for action, with sound. This seems to give me something tangible to focus on or practice. Making sound as other people act. It seems less abstract to me than movement propositions. Dancing as such, is feeling very abstract and removed from an actual environment. On that note, its been very helpful for me to have PK in the rehearsal space this week, as there is someone else to respond to, or perceive in the space with me. As an added bonus, PK has brought a ukulele with her. Stringed instruments are right up there with puppy's at the top of a list of good things for me to involve with. Now, if someone would only show up with a puppy or two, I would be all set...

Wendy came for a day, and shook up the approach to text by suggesting we only speak the vowel sounds of the words and such. It was good to have the language ruptured, I felt.

Talks with Wendy 18 July

Talk of new RANT AND MANIFESTO texts, that can act as aspirations for continuing rather than moaning or describing what we are no longer prepared to do. Talk of a 'LOSING MY DIGNITY’ text. Talk of a 'PROMPTING' text. Talk of a 'NEUROSIS' text. Talk of 'Do we become redundant as we get older' and is that a different question for women? Talk of aging and failing physicality. How could you stage killing someone off? After a long discussion, thoughts that may help Wendy to write some new stuff for IWGO -

• Do we find ourselves where we want to be? Are we constantly adjusting ourselves to make the right impression/ fit in / become acceptable/ be part of a group / find a common language
• Perhaps the show becomes an attempt to articulate a manifesto for how to continue....
• Trying stuff out. Things standing in for things
• People co-existing in their differences of style and approach within one show
• Trying to avoid being so inward looking, but circularity is useful in the presentaion of things
• Functionality of performance – seeing performers cope with things being the driver for action
• Things seen and then reseen in different contexts with different stuff taking place at the same time – affords us to use texts more than once or vary/fragment them in order to reuse and recycle them
• Playing with the idea that performers notice that they have dug themselves into a hole on stage and the language around that
• acknowledging that narrative and emotion are inevitable in the work
• Texts that supply instructions for looking are useful

Losing Track, 13 - 17 July

Valentina arrives, recovering from possible Italian strain of Swine Flu. She had weak legs, but she lightens up the room. Harry joins us, teaches Yoga, gets involved in a long improvisation. I think he enjoyed being with experienced performers for the day...Great to see him move again.

As a way to open things up a bit, we've done several long improvisations which seem to suggest a potential, shambolic way forward for 'housing' of the fragments of material we are creating. The blackboard acting as a set of instructions, duly wiped off as the performers fulfil the tasks they set themselves at the top of the improv. It makes the performance functional. The volume of tasks is a bit overwhelming for Scott, who prefers to work on one thing at a time, but at least the more improvisational nature of this way of working offers him freedom to make choices, that when we are trying to 'set' things doesnt feel right. Lots of discussion around practice and repetition and forgetting and the need to follow a kind of score- however broad as a way to get through stuff and generate new stuff.

I spend much time pondering on how I will have to keep adapting my way of working to suit each individual performer - this is dangerous ground for me - I have to be careful not to get too sidetracked with the enquiry into that, to the detriment of creating useable material for a show that has to actually exist at some point in the near future. Lots of discussion around free will and volition - what one naturally wants to do and what one doesn't really have an appetite for. Os directing dictatorship? So much of that negotiation comes down to the roles we play in a room and so much is down to taste. My worst fear is to make boring work where nothing much happens. How to embody the work we create together?

On Friday we run some stuff for Dramaturg Ruth and it feels pretty weak, nihilistic and difficult. No hope. Very dark and unformed. Not enough light - real or otherwise. Is this shit?