DAY FOUR

By Charlotte Vincent
10am THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

Rachel’s suggestion to think about Dance as Self Portrait? To take the group out of the studio context.

I am drawn to three pieces in particular:

25 pencil sketches arranged in a grid and the resulting video animation of Sir Stephen Redgrave by Dryden Goodwin. The composition, structure and construction of the video work is made explicit by the presence of the sketches. The animation of the still sketches, captured on video, flickers with energy and movement and creates a portrait that moves.

A portrait of Three Royal Court Directors, Katie Mitchell, Stephen Daldry and Ian Rickson by Justin Mortimer which he says ‘forces the figures to exist in a theatrical space with a hidden narrative’. There is black space all around the three figures, who sit very much in the bottom left had corner of the canvas. The equivalent of this position in stage terms in Down Stage Right – allegedly the most powerful position an actor can occupy on the stage.

Sir David Hare by Paula Rego – ‘a painting with the whole of theatre in it’. I am interested in the placement of objects in relation to the sitter – a sheep’s head, as mask, a crook, a crow. I am interested in the slumped position of the sitter. ‘The things I couldn’t get into David’s face I put into the sheep’s face’ the painter says. Is this how I use scenography in relation to the dancers?

The most revolting painting is the only dancer in the building – A pink and yellow Athena Poster-looking portrait of Darcey Bussell.

Other things I am drawn to –
Ken Dodd, the comedian, looking weary by David Cobley
Jonathan Miller, and his vast intellect, looking tired and wistful.
Happy Thought by Jason Walker – a self portrait of the painter looking glum with a yellow paper crown on his head.

I listened to John Hurt talking about his portrait:

‘I can feel that it’s a head not just a face. I can feel what’s going on inside of it and at the back of it. It’s an understanding, a perception isn’t it? It isn’t about expression – it’s about perception. A photograph insists that is the moment where a painting is an organic thing. What he captures of me…I recognise it Ill leave for other people to say what that is. I don’t know what that is.’

I listen to Germaine Greer talking about her portrait by Paula Rego:

‘It had to be a record of an encounter. I like the lack of flattery – it looks like me in a way that a photograph wouldn’t. It seems like movement. It’s Paula Rego’s energy and in the painting not mine. The face flickers all the time. The duty to be attractive is negated. This portrait gets into where my intelligence might be- it’s got my deformities in it. We had to look for a different iconic language probably. A portrait doesn’t have to be kind. Kindness can be condescending. Two egos met in the making of this – her energy and my intelligence and that’s flattering.’


We regrouped and had a coffee nearby to discuss initial thoughts on the Portraits we had been drawn to.

WH – I think the general principle of what we are trying to do is about EVOLVING TASKS and EVOLVING A LANGUAGE TO TALK ABOUT WHAT WE DO. We are looking at the rigour of our interrogation of the language we are using in process and production. What provokes questions? HOW DO THE QUESTIONS WE ASK INDICATE A NEW TASK? HOW DO WE FORM A TASK ACCORDINGLY? It is somehow about addressing the SO WHAT? in our practice. It’s about asking the right questions.

CV – Its about the APPLICATION of the questions and ideas into action/task

We went around the table and talked about what we had been drawn to in the gallery and how what we were drawn to might translate into a TASK of some kind.

Ellie
Drawn to: The stretching of perception and how it jarred to look at a portrait that was stretched
So what?Perhaps the idea of distortion as a movement study – time slowing down perhaps – elongated time

Val
Drawn to: Faces I didn’t know- not celebrities. I enjoyed seeing their features disappearing- eyelessness.
So what? Not sure

Darren
Drawn to: Formality of the tailoring in the 17th Century portraits – it’s so well to do! I like the formality and the dressing up.
So what? Something about exploring the opposite of formality?

Jem
Drawn to: I spent all my time at the computers investigating self portraits. What moment do you choose to depict? 90% of self portraits are looking over one shoulder as though catching UNGUARDED moments. How can you catch yourself out? Emphasises the act of choice-making.
When do you say ‘that’s me – enough’.
So what? I’d like to look at using video copies of facial expressions – self portrait as truth or as a lie?

WH - Self revelation – where does it lead in performance? I’m interested in watching performances where the performer is not less better than me. The ‘You’ will always be in the performance, so why highlight The You?
How do individuals reveal each other?
How do we reveal the process we are engaged with?
How do we create FORMAL GAMES around the question of The Gaze, for example?
How do we lean into a form to discover more about it?
It seems to me that a lot of practice moves away from language and form where it would be more useful to lean into it to discover more.

CV - Perhaps a reliance on emotional journey rather than form clouds the issue of form?
In VDT’s recent work the form has visibly fallen apart in front of your eyes to draw attention to the structures that are at play in the work.
WH – Yes but in Broken Chords the TC voice interrupting the show was clearly a directorial conceit. It made visible the director’s voice within the work.
RK – yes perhaps what we are looking for is something lighter and cleaner and clearer?
WH – Yes something less murky…perhaps you have to RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO ACCUMULATE STUFF AND INSTEAD TRY RESTARTING. To avoid emphasising the DRAMA of the work, you need to apply new principles.

We ate lunch on the go and all headed back to the Moving East studio in Stoke Newington.

Rachel and Wendy talking about Forced Entertainment’s Bloody Mess –
WH – There are many cue points and a distinction between high energy and low energy. Grading in and out of actions and practical tasks often going on. There are three beginnings and three endings to the show. A process of starting and re-starting. Of beginning, and then beginning again.

Wendy then set a TASK of watching someone (in this case Jem) move and ‘writing continuously’ as you watch – a process of watching and writing.

My writing was as follows-

Fixed face swinging arms smiling toes rocking arms circling, no wrists circling, heels rolling and arching and twiddling about like a man with his foot stuck in a man trap. The noise of a horse galloping, no stuttering or trotting or tap-dancing himself out of the picture. His knees won’t stand still and his chest puffed up. Lolloping about with his flies undone, he’s a helicopter man with very long arms and he’s starting to slow down and rock and catch and grind his kneecaps into the floor with pointed toes and a head scraping on the floor. And he looks like an eagle or something broken or bent–fingered like he’s fallen out of the window like those men falling from the world trade centre and he’s getting very pre-occupied and self conscious now and he’s beginning to think which is why he’s stopped dancing. Now he’s a Roman Emperor and a one-man band and he’’ll have bruises on his thighs tomorrow.

WH asked us to read our writing to the group. Interesting how they differed. The writing of Ellie and I contained association, RK’s seemed to frame body parts as ‘the’ head and ‘an’ arm, DA wrote of dynamics and speed, Val seemed to refer more to spacial aspects of what she witnessed and PK talked to the subject with a direct address – ‘your arms are swinging etc’.

WH commented that it was interesting that I moved away from the movement quite quickly into image then association then narration / accumulation

WH commented that the way you write offer clues to your natural tendencies – what do you notice first? How do you use language? CV – Is the dancer’s conventional role to ‘stay as a translator’, as Val put it? How not to super-impose your own stuff into what you see. How is the way I have been working to date really about somehow imposing my stuff onto the dancers? I have always thought that I was engaged in a process of teasing their stuff out, structuring and distilling, but my sense that I have been nurturing their voices within a group situation may be deeply misguided. Perhaps what I have really been doing is shaping them to serve the constructs of my own concepts. PK allowed questions to flow out and thoughts to flow in and seemed to work in two different time zones at the same time- is there a relation to musical practice here?

When we write are we translating movement, interpreting movement or questioning the movement. Are we pouring our own agenda’s into what we see? What comes first the body or the brain?

WH TASK 2– A development of the continuous writing task: sitting in pairs as a SITTER and a WRITER, look at the small shifts in the face and allow your-self to flow in and out of questions as well as observations.

My writing, looking at Jem:

Smile cracking through and uncertain face and lines etched on a brown forehead and eyes flickering back and forth and smile cracking and lips slightly pursed and breath held onto and minor tongue movements and hand resting above an ear and soft eyes soft eyes that harden only sometimes and look down and seem to search and small pupils and laughter lines and checking in and a scar below the left eye and 2 moles on either side of the nose and a wedding ring in the picture and 5 or is that 9 o’clock shadow and a bent thumb and legs adjust and the lips part slightly. A small itch. A wistful look. A slurp of tea and a slow turning away as time passes. And swallowing. Eyes lifting and dropping and readjustments and looking for help and discomfort and shifts to the left and he’s settled now and is drooping to the left and sinking into a place somewhere in the distance and falling further into it to sustain this moment of neutrality. Leaking discomfort and drinking tea.

DA - I can’t keep my eye on her at all times when I’m writing.

Development of TASK – Let’s watch you read the writing whilst sitting in the same place from where you observed the person and wrote the writing. No response from the sitter.

DA – I am tending to watch the commentator not the person being commented on.

CV - The observation becomes the script somehow and is used as a way of transcribing the action that you are witnessing in the space to the viewer. When WH read her written version of DA she somehow checked that what she was commenting on still held true – offering a kind of outside eye to the ‘script’ being read but from inside the ‘scene’. Like the RAGE improve the other day. I like the way you seem to be ‘writing’ what is in front of your face, what we are seeing too, but reframing it through language.
WH – How do you write? What is your tendency? What are the different ways of writing what you see?
RK/ Val? – How does the writing clothe and embellish the movement rather than just describe or witness it?

SUGGESTED READING – Remainder by Tom MaCarthy