- We begin by considering the nature of 'the task', going back to Evgenia's questions in the opening session (see first post in the blog).
- We re address the idea of 'what we are looking for...", the search driven by an artistic/personal imperative (for which language may be needed, to define what I must and desire to do).
- What are the issues surrounding this creative imperative? How this first layer of imperatives connect to others?
I ask them to go back to 'origin', the 'eimai edo' of the first sessions, that 'ego' is probably now 'disturbed' by the interventions of the past three weeks, what issues, ideas, embodied-thought-int-the-making are emerging now? Start from that place, find its layers, contours, features...from that let it take you to 'the next' which can be related or separable (related only by contingency and contiguity if there is such a word in English). We have 30 minutes. The balance in the relationship between individual focuses and the shared experience of the group is indeed part of the equation.
30 minutes pass by very quickly
I ask them to capture in writing the essence/kernel of the task; what did it set up. This is written in the notebooks as well as a separate piece of paper. It is both my individual process but something that can stand on its own as a strange collection of a concept in the making. I ask them to exchange pieces of paper. Layer 2, what new task is suggested for you from the writing? that is I am not after deciphering 'her task'; but rather what is this set of words -perhaps not unlike Michael's score'- suggesting to me. Does it stand separate to my original task? Does it find a relation?
20 more minutes....
find your other, dialogue, witness each others tasks and responses to the tasks...what do I gain by seeing my 'task' through the lens of another?
we work towards layer 3: what is the new gained from seeing my task in another, from their feedback, from my doing the 'other's' task?
We emphasise and establish the dialogical nature of the process (in one session!), not in generating an immediate set of production tasks...
30 more minutes...
more reflections... we considered the 'working metaphors' that begin to arise from the work. I ask them to consider these nuggets of concepts as being related to the evolving method of their practice, not the thematic of a work... that will come later, indeed they are related, but not the same thing. I ask them to consider the broader application of these words that have arisen from the studio research, how diverse applications of the same term constitute different, discreet and also interrelated layers of the process. As homework, to consider how these very personal working metaphors are related to larger concepts of what we define as choreographic discipline...the relationship of a micro investigation to larger, communal dare we say, issues of choreographic discourse.
