Thoughts on the spot, 10.2.11

Question guiding the tasks of the session today: how do we move from experience to the more complex issue of creating intelligible artistic (dance) form

Focusing on ORIGIN NOT END in choreographic explorations presupposes a focus on evolution (of series, of species, of systems).... Evolution wants to evolve, it does not aim to end, an end is contradictory to its essence...an anomaly... it insists...origin embrace life forces, end death wishes.... trying to get rid of the nihilistic philosophical inheritance ingrained in art-making (Ana) origin is a place I am going to. (Vitoria). angel=the whiteness of a touch. (Io). clarification of origin is a clarification of the process, as to know what/where is, is already implicated in its evolution, that which makes it this an not another, Arendt over and over and over again... what it is knows -beyond words- what it wants to be, what it wants is connected to its desire in pure existence...want and desire indissoluble, is that not what art is after all all about.... (ana) ? you!I! can shift your finish to an origin..that is a start!? going to my origin makes a noise I want to avoid. (Olga) this place exists i know it so well I live with its breath rain and sun (Vitoria).

Let the hair drop

the Wings of A Body-----How many?

Language /Logos = E-Motion (Io)

Somewhere here is the link between personal experience and the issue -challenge perhaps- of what is normally termed artistic form.(Ana).  Τελικά τί είναι ωραίο; Αναρωτιέμαι... Ποιά είναι η αισθητική της κίησης; Σίγουρα θέλουμε να βγάζει νόημα αυτό που κάνουμε, αλλά ποιά είναι τα όρια μεταξύ ωραίου, ευκρινούς και πραγματικά αυθεντικού; ("In the end, what is Beauty? I wonder... What is the aesthetic of movement? Of course we want what we do to make some sense, but what are the limiths between Beauty, clarity and authenticity?" Evgenia).

Now we move onto first, what is sets up finite(ly) and infinitely ..if this is 'one' (proto), what is 'two'? (Ana)

I Need to Stay with That

Until I Find What Is That (Io)

In what ways is a choreographic process one of (self) knowledge of (self) discovery, only when I know 'my dance' (allow that immersion) will "it become clear" (Evgenia's question, almost an anxiety) if not it is un-intelligible to another, although part of who I am is embrouille in this an-other (damn, Arendt again...).

Ana writes (Ambelokipi, 5.15.pm): We confronted the artistic, aesthetic, structural, technical, performative- challenges within the CHOICE of determining "a first" from the pool of variables contained within the series of exercises today (fragments of 'a dance' began to emerge) ..and from there began to unravel notions of consequence of/from this choice.... only then can any talk of 'right' or 'wrong' choreographic form can take place.

For 'homework' I have asked them to keep the 'fragments' alive from today to next Tuesday, to carry it like a constant present day dream...continuously interrupting daily life, as I have read Mahler used to do with fragments of his symphonies in the making....through that learn its every contour, dynamics, texture, shape, time, space in , space without, it may even acquire a taste, a smell, it may begin to trigger other thoughts, other day dreams...I am not asking them to 'remember' but to keep it constantly present as a latent sense environment ..I want them to be, dare I say to 'live' 'in dance (not just movement as we do live in movement continuously) as constant as possible between now and the next session...it is a character building exercise more than anything else...thinking back to Michael's description of whom he considers a good dancer...this is what it means to know your practice...the studio is only the tip of the iceberg....we give a twist to Michael's statement, "there is no in or out in the process of a work".

News!!!!

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Given the success of this first lab, we are already on the planning stages for the new Summer session to take place May-July 2011 with contributions from a new influx of international artists.

If you wold like information please contact Ana Sanchez-Colberg, Lab Mentor, at: ana@theatreencorps.co.uk

Paradigm shifts

..Michael would call them. Today we begin to set the individual/shared projects 'in motion'. We begin by 'going back to go forward' an expression that has now become common language amongst us. We begin by considering the nature of creative processes; how does a process begin? perhaps a better thought is what are the infinite/finite ways in which a process begins? how does it evolve? how is it modified? how is it 'judged' so that revisions can take place? how does it account for evolving knowledge in and through practice so that artistic development becomes 'accountable' by each individual?

• 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.