Tribute to all my research collaborators

Inspired by yesterday's Bafta's I wanted to thank my research collaborators for all their input, before we step into the next phase of the project.

Jo McInnes

Thanks for helping me remember how sacred my connection with my body is, and for reminding me how much i love that. It took someone without any knowledge of making choreography to come in and approach it almost as a primitive practice, and direct it purely from gut and gut instinct. It is with this positive approach, responsiveness and a lack of cynicism and fear that you created a free world for us to play and enjoy dancing in. 
You will help us find a relationship with text and dialogue that is as connected and honest as the dance and movement, and that will be an exciting and challenging journey/process for us.

You get the thing i'm trying to say with this work. You have passion in abundance, and most of all I trust you!
cheers for that.

Greig Cooke

There was something about those 3 precious days we had right at the beginning that won't go away for me and Jo. It's often that way in the cycle of things creative. But we touched on something that feels like the heart of this piece. something about the ambiguity of the relationship, the equality of our roles, the playfulness, complexity, knowing-ness, familiarity, independence of character, softness, strength of will, freedom and honesty that has stuck. 
It was fun, and i look forward to more fun times. More running and more dancing with you. Thanks Greig.

Ben Webb 

Thanks Ben for your positive and generous nature, the gorgeous swathes of writing you produced for and about us, and in response to what you were seeing and feeling in the studio and out. 

Thanks for running all the way to the marina and back despite your body and mind giving you grief the entire way (I really didn't enjoy the run back that day either). For dancing.  For 'deadly lady', 'unfinished business' and for making 'Do you love me?' the most complicated question ever.

            Ben Duke and Ben Webb running

Ben Duke

                       Ben Duke and Toni by Matthew Andrews

Thanks Ben, you know I think you're brilliant. You certainly surprised me by how angry you are underneath that cool, calm, nice-man exterior! When given a green card, you gave as good as you got, and it pushed us both into challenging territory. Thanks for going there with me, i enjoyed beating you up and being gentle too. It was nice to be a child with you, not so nice being a teenager or a young adult, but really nice to be 90 years old together. 

Brad Birch

                      Brad Birch by Matthew Andrews

When you speak we all want to listen.

Thank you for the 20 page script you produced having written it over your xmas holiday, of which we only covered 2 pages, but it was brilliant and necessary all the same. Thanks for pointing out that when someone expresses a dislike for your jumper, there's probably a lot more to it. Thanks for sharing my dislike of wizards. I would like to meet an 'emollient nun' one day. It's an absolute pleasure to work with you.

Charlie Morrissey

I hope you know how much i appreciate your input into the work. Thanks for arriving on week 3 and getting stuck right in. Not only have i felt supported and inspired by your presence and direction, i also loved you stepping into the piece to dance with me. Thanks for chucking me around and allowing me to be fearless and completely trusting.

You and Jo make a complete team, I knew you would. Thanks for your curiosity, gut instinct and intuition. Let's keep digging together, its very exciting. 

    

                       Charlie by Matthew andrews

Lee Ross

'Thank you for the music, the song i'm singing, thanks for all the joy they're bringing...bla la la'

Been a joy to have you in the process. When you started playing for us that first day at the Nightingale I remembered how much i was missing a musician in the room. You've been writing some great tunes and lyrics for the piece and I can't wait for you and Scott to get together and have a little music session. 'I'm doing fine' is a mighty fine country tune, and i feel stoked to sing it. Looking forward to making more music with you, and finding different style songs and places for them to sit in the work.

                       Lee Ross by Matthew Andrews

Chris Fogg (producer)

Thank you chris. Words cannot express how grateful I am for all your support in making this happen. I am completely bereft to be loosing you as my producer and yet so pleased we have made a future role for you as mentor of the work. You are amazing inside and outside the studio, and we all loved having you there. You have a ridiculous amount of faith in my ability and vision, and I have so needed that support. Thank you.

Zoe Manders (administrator)

You are amazing, i don't know what i'd do without you! I love that you bumble along with me in the office and then go away and make everything happen all efficiently when i'm gone. Superzoe. 

Short beginnings

In preparation for this project I decided to sit and write the beginnings of some short stories, to help express something of what I might want to explore and to feed the subconscious minds of the collaborators. 

So i am sharing a few extracts from these short beginnings. 

  

1. The sprinter

I am a sprinter. A short burst, no holding back, living in the moment, fifth gear turbo acceleration kind of girl.

Long distance, sticking with it, pushing on through and in for the long haul just isn’t in my make-up.

Will it ever be? I don’t know.

Am I bound to an eternity of being this way? Or can I keep a steady pace, slow down and trudge through time, space and experiences.

I wanted to find the answers.

I met a guy recently who made me want to stay still, let time pass. Time after time after time.

He made me want to climb back into bed on sunny afternoons and bask in cotton sheets. To read a book, lots of books. To learn the guitar and spend hours perfecting a single chord change. To write a song. To write this story.

This is a story about a baby who never crawled. Who ran fearlessly towards icy waters. Who never lost a race. Who never lost at anything, but ran open and unprepared into the world and never looked back.

                                                      

2. A Happy Christmas

As I lie naked on the cold kitchen tiles, next to a pool of my own vomit, I get to thinking what I’ve always known: we really should have installed that under floor heating we talked about. But then we never would have agreed on that, we never agreed on anything. He thought it an unnecessary waste of money and energy consumption, a luxury not to indulge in. The case was closed, no further discussion needed.

The revelation came at Christmas time. These things always surface this time of year, buried under a mass of twinkling lights, celebratory drinks and dark nights huddled up on the sofa. I was not in love with him.

I was well programmed in the art of celebrating Christmas. I knew that for the kids the anticipation began on December 1^st. I knew I had to book babysitters early to avoid disappointment. I knew that putting up the tree was a full family affair. And I knew that things would never be the same again, no matter how hard I tried.

                       Exploded shed by Cornelia Parker

3. Inside his Ribcage

I’m running hard and fast now.

The cold air burns. It hits the warm air inside my lungs and both hot and cold begin to compete for space.

That’s when I feel it. As it enters into me I feel the pain and tightening.

And I remember what you told me.

I’m inside you, and you’re inside me.

I’d been storing you up, little by little, filling the cavity with pieces of you.

It started with small almost un-noticable fragments, splinters,

and then moved on to larger bite-size portions as I became more brazen and brave.

Like an addiction I could not stop, and there was always room for more.

But I don’t want you there anymore, I can’t breathe.

I want the space back inside my ribcage.

                     Jannis Kounellis, untitled 1979

4. Empty spaces

This room is empty, accept for me.

This home is empty, accept for me.

The space between us is growing, like forest clearance, exposing the earth to the sun, letting light flood in where once there was a thick canopy of green.

I have a table and four chairs, but they are empty, accept for me.

The walls are white and bare, and the air around me moves slowly and gently. No cool desert winds, no hot steamy nights, thick and humid and ready to burst.

I am invisible, behind these white walls, and yet they are like mirrors bouncing back at me. No escape. No hiding place.

I am not running, I am still. And there will be no chase. No adrenalin rush or sprint to the finish line. 
I have already been caught. 

'Run Forest run'

The weight of my body falling to the ground with each stride, and the sound of air being pushed out of my lungs and sucked back in again. I am not going anywhere, not running towards or away from anything. And I am alone, just a heartbeat in a body, until one day it will stop, and I will leave the well trodden ground behind.

                                Photo of Ben Duke by Zoe Manders

Some photos by the lovely Zoe Manders

Zoe Manders is my 'Administrator' where I am an Associate Artist at South East Dance. She is so much more than an Administrator, and extremely bright, gorgeous and talented too... 

Here are some photos she took of me and Ben in rehearsal @ The Point creation space.

                                     

                                                      

All photos by Zoe Manders

What someone saw...

Response from Jenny Hammond (audience member at the sharing):

'What struck me most and stayed with me after the sharing was the essence of time passing and how we are affected by it. As children we are free from restraints, and our inhibitions don’t affect our behaviour. We move freely, and are curious about things and people. We are not afraid about what we say to people or how we act around them. As we get older we lose this nature, we become more guarded and we think about what we say or do before we say or do it and how/what affect it will have on others. Our movement and our behaviour becomes more measured, more controlled, less free and I guess in a way is not what we truly feel. The different stages of life that the movement/text excerpts explored, reflected this for me and was what stood out the most.'

Week 5, the sharing week

Where?
@ The point, Eastleigh, Creation Space

With:

Me/Antonia Grove        Performer
Jo McInnes              Director
Charlie Morrissey       Movement Director
Brad Birch              Writer
Lee Ross                Songwriter
Ben Duke                Performer

What we needed to do?...

We needed to see if the ‘treatments’ and process we were already testing out for making this piece of dance theatre could cope with a more extensive and committed piece of writing/dialogue; the beginning of a script with a narrative context, history, progression through time and emotional gravity. 

So we asked Brad to write a script which we could use to test this out, rip it apart, scrutinise it and probe it with questions.
                                    
                                                                    Brad birch

                            Lee Ross                                                                                          

We also needed to test out the introduction of live music in a room, get a feel for its possibilities, the different tones and the reason  its function interests us.

We wanted to ensure that each medium (dance, text, song/music) maintained its own strong identity and voice, and didn’t soften or mould itself towards a common harmony or become diluted just because we would sometimes require the mediums to work together in combination.

It was the conflict, clashing, rubbing together of the artforms that interested us, and highlighted the complexity within a story. The elements could also work together in harmony, and we did'nt want to be afraid of that, but both harmony and discord seemed to rely on all artforms communicating in a strong and confident language.

What we actually did...

Brad came back after Xmas with 20 pages of a script- a dialogue between two people with a long history.

This immediately presented us with a whole new challenge, very different from the individual sketches we’d been working on till now.

We began the process of dissecting it scene by scene from the beginning, however we didn’t really get past the second page! The weight of backstory, and the emotional intensity of the opening scene made it immediately apparent that it required a much longer and more in-depth process of working into it. We were presented with a whole new treatment process to investigate, and lots to consider about the nature and form of what was needed and desired in terms of the writing. 

We all wanted to push the depth of narrative and commitment to a ‘story’, whilst wanting to recognise where dance and song and the intention/placement/context/direction of which can take a lot of the weight off the text. 

I learnt some of Lee’s songs, some new ones he’d written for Running on Empty, and some existing tunes.

I had an immediate affinity with a little country number called ‘I’m doing fine’. We were all attracted to the song because of its commitment to a particular style, and the way it tells a sad story through a pretty tune.

We took our dance improvisations ‘through the ages’, working a relationship from young kids through to old age. Jo would direct us from one moment in time to the next, our aim being to keep the dance human whilst avoiding mime or literal representation.

We returned to our ‘Jumper text’ from week 2, which we have renamed ‘the emollient nuns of Avignon’ (because we like it!). We used it in this improvisation through the ages, inserting it repeatedly on Jo’s direction, testing it against different states and times. The repetition of it in new contexts was very satisfying, and had something of the cyclic, ‘

running on empty’ quality we started this process with.

At the open sharing on Friday, we presented this longer improvisation, directed live by jo and Charlie, and accompanied by Lee on various string instruments.

We also revisited the ‘hoodies’ duet, working from behind our hoods through an improvisation of curiosity, intimacy, tension and aggression, leading in to scene 1 from Brad’s new script.

It’s always very exposing to share such a delicate, intimate and complex working process, however the work needs to expose something delicate, allow people in to a place of intimacy and communicate complexity to its audience with bravery and courage, so in fact it felt a necessary thing to do at such a early stage. Our audience was wonderfully open and generous, and I felt extremely proud to invite people in to witness such brilliant collaborators at work. Thanks everyone!


All photos by Matthew Andrews

                         

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

The missing week 4

I didn’t write about week 4 @ Farnham Maltings because we were doing a lot of pre-Christmas batting around of ideas, a lot of dancing (me, Charlie and Ben) and trying it alongside different texts, and then discussing things whilst standing in the middle of the studio like some kind of new wave corporate ideology group!

 

It was the first week Jo and Charlie had been working together as director and movement director, and possibly the first time the piece felt tangible and realistically possible to go ahead and create together... So we relaxed in the knowledge it was possible and happening already, but that we had a lot of work to do in a process like this, it was gonna be hard so we might as well enjoy a nice Xmas and face the music in the new year!

 

Thanks to Gavin, fiona and all @ Farnham Maltings for looking after us. The woodland lodge was quite surreal and very 'woody', and the country pub perfectly cosy and christmassy!