DAY ONE - Discussion

By Charlotte Vincent

I introduced the group (Patrycja Kujawska, Darren Anderson, Jem Treays, Rachel Krische and Valentina Formenti) to some of the philosophical thoughts, questions of form and ideas around my/our practice that have been sitting with me for some time now. Many of these thoughts have grown from shifts in my approach to making VDT’s work. I feel that the company’s productions have started to move away from the creation of entirely fictional environments, have introduced ‘direct address’ into the work, have broken down the fourth wall in order to draw attention to some of the constructs that are in place in the act of performance.

CV - I feel as if I am at a bit of a crossroads in my practice. I would like to sit in this confusion with you and try to work in a different way to my usual practice. I would like to think of the next 6 weeks as a lab where we are not bound by the conventions of the theatre space or bound to the notion that dance must mean movement.

When a group gathers for a first rehearsal an infinite number of personal questions hang unspoken in the air. The first rehearsal is always to a degree the blind leading the blind. ON the first day the director may sometimes make a formal speech explaining the basic ideas behind the coming work, Or else he may show models or costume sketches or books of photographs, or he may make jokes, or else get the actors ready to read the play….The purpose of anything you do on the first day is to get you through to the second day. The second day is already different: a process is now at work and after 24 hours every single factor and relationship has subtly changed. A director learns that the growth of rehearsals is a developing process; he sees that there is a right time for everything, and his art is recognising these moments. He learns that he has no power to transmit certain ideas in the early days. However much home work he does, he cannot understand the play himself. The actors sensibilities turn searchlights onto his own. In fact the director who comes into the first rehearsal with his script prepared is a real deadly theatre man.
PETER BROOK, THE EMPTY SPACE.

I am questioning the fictions and constructs of theatre practice. I am questioning the limitations of dance as an appropriate language to say what I want to say. I enjoy physicality but most dance theatre work seems hackneyed and unbelievable unless you plunder the emotional soul. Broken Chords felt like a full stop. I felt as if I have nothing more emotionally to say.

What is left – the form and its limitations.

Broken Chords and Test Run – the last two pieces we have made, seem preoccupied with interruptions to the dance and parenthesis around the form of dance – the need to move has been questioned – the limitations (and power) of movement vocabulary made explicit. The choreography stripped back. I am clear that this is not about not liking dance- I am not rejecting the form, but rather questioning the assumptions within it. Broken Chords questions the earnestness of the fictionalisation of a personal emotional theme via the rebellion of the people on stage who have been asked to perform it.
Test Run embodies exhaustion, reveals the shape of the dance through a symbiotic relationship between dance and live music and exposes the pressure on the individual dancer to make something happen via his body. Both pieces use text – a sharp ‘STOP’ in Test Run or long and humorous interruptions in Broken Chords.

Test Run has no set. Just a square marked on the floor. When I made it, I didn’t know about Bruce Nauman’s video work Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square (1967-8).

If there is no constructed, fictional scenographic environment to read, what are we left with in the empty space? Thoughts, bodies, words.

There are two titles to this research project Stand Up and Motherland, which may or may not be connected. The fact that I can’t settle on either title reveals the kind of confusions I face as to what to do next.

The two projects I have described in funding applications and promoters packs (which always, ludicrously come before making the work) are MOTHERLAND and STAND UP. Both are trying to pin down some ‘concept’ about the work that might come out. I feel that the problem lies in the fact that I am currently more interested in the constructs that form the work rather than the content of the work and given the lack of fiction this may incur, am finding it difficult to pin down in written language for consumption. There is no easy marketing friendly way to express what the show is ‘about’ this time around. Or where we are. Or what the music might be like. Or who the personae on stage may turn out to be.

Motherland seems the most confused idea as it mixes up professional interest and personal emotion. After Broken Chords I am resisting the need to make art as a kind of catharsis, but Motherland is a title given to express the difficulties of being a female practitioner in a field where women often practitioners seem sidelined. It would look at themes around Women and children, Women and partnerships, Women and emotion, Women and leadership, Women and nurturing, Women and guilt as a driving force. Motherland explores the middle period of a dancer’s life, when performers make new choices about how their bodies function and what they want to achieve. Motherland explores how some performers may no longer wish to kick their legs so high or fall so hard, but how at this mid-stage in their careers, they have so much more to say. Motherland is a synonym for fatherland. It has the connotation of one's country of birth and growing up, with the country being respectfully viewed as a benign mother nurturing its citizens as her children. For ‘country’, read ‘practice’.

Stand Up is preoccupied with the ontology of dance. Questioning the form and the constructs behind the form. This seems to be where the practice is heading.

At Jonathan Burrows’ suggestion, I have been reading Andre Lepecki’s Exhausting Dance. It talks about the identity of dance as ‘being in flow’ and how, then, the stilling of movement is a threat to dance’s tomorrow. A Stuttering Dance or a Still Act as an interruption to dance’s flow.

Key ides in the initial chapter of the book that seem crucial to address if you are engaged in choreographic process are-

Dance ontology is isomorphic to movement.
Does ‘proper dance’ mean, in essence, movement?
What takes place if we are not being subservient to the kinaesthetic?
What can a body do?
Only after accepting such grounding of dance on movement can one accuse certain contemporary practice of of betraying dance. (Jonathan Burrows/Jerome Bel/Bruce Nauman/La Ribot/Xavier Le Roy)

Why this obsessive concern with the display of moving bodies, this demand that dance be in a constant state of agitation?

And why see in choreographic practice that refuse that display and agitation a threat to dance’s being?

Choreography means a yielding to commanding voices of masters (living and dead). It demands submitting to disciplining regimes (dietary, anatomical, gender, racial), all for the perfect fulfilment of a set of steps, postures and gestures that nevertheless need to appear spontaneous.

There seem to be two basic political positions – EMBRACING MOVEMENT or BLOCKING IT (Deleuze, 1995)

What is the premise of a kinetic subject always moving, apparently without effort always energized and never stumbling?

Re-thinking ACTION and MOBILITY through slowing down time and movement.
Lets consider performance of the still act rather than continuous movement.
Dramaturgies of stillness reconfigure the dancers’ participation in mobility.
What is the command?
What are the rules of the game?
How to present ABSENCE as well as PRESENCE - do we just find a kind of mourning and melancholia?


The unintended fall is more interesting than the leap. The interruption more engaging than the dance. The act of stillness is a political act in the context of the expectations of what dance will deliver.

Until making Test Run one choreographic process that I have employed is to plunder emotion to make work. Now though I am no longer sure that this is the most sustainable way to make work. It is just too tiring for everyone? Is it just a bit old fashioned? Also does the languages around that process spill too much into everyday life and make relationships in the studio too difficult and demanding? What is the cost of working like this? My instinct is always to move in to emotion rather than move away and offer space around it. Is this bullying? Is this need to work with emotion some kind of substitute for a meaningful family life?

I feel stuck in getting beyond the boundaries of myself. I feel stuck when I create or see pure fiction. I get stuck when I see/ create pure movement based dance. These questions have been nagging away at me for ages.

What else is there? Perhaps we need to look at the CONSTRUCTS of theatre through a series of choreographic studies / exercises. Focus in on the TASK. Not try to steer it all the time. How can I make work around text and dance without it becoming a crappy story? How can we continue to include the integration of live music without it being descriptive?

Presence – in order to be present you have already begun to represent yourself as subject.

How are bodies held within a linguistic material and physical space of representation?

Question- If you had one last dance in you -what shape would it take?
What is the last dance you would dance?
What is the dance you have always wanted to make?
The last song you would sing?
The last face you would pull
The parting gesture?
The last words you would write?
The last pass you would make?

Idea for a piece / process called 10x10
10 weeks
10 dancers
10 solos
10 backdrops

I know I am interested in making work that reveals the mechanics of theatre
What is Choreography as curation – where is my voice in that?

A tearjerker
An opera dance
A radio play
A still dance
A pregnant dance
An exhausted dance
A silent dance

Discussion around Last Dance as a kind of death took place – two people thought a more relevant question might be - What is the first dance you would make?

AFTERNOON SESSION
In what I perceived to be the absence of any other suggestions I suggested a task.
Draw your Last Dance on a piece of paper
Write down five words that are attached to the dance
Share a thought about the work we have been thinking about and write the thought down
Ask a question that you would like to find the answer to

Rachel
Drew a straight line / Carry on straight / Pause / Stop
Still like the journey but which way now?
Why provoke for provocation’s sake?

Darren
PICTURE TO FOLLOW
Frantic / 2D /crafted/no freedom/space
Top Hat and Tails
How would I go about leading a day
What would I want to find out?
What am I driven by
Where do the ideas come from?

Patrycja
PICTURE TO FOLLOW
Passage / lips / dress / fingers / ephemeral
Too many words can kill the essence. Silence.
What is my dream?

Jem
PICTURE TO FOLLOW
Goodbye / skin / exit / oooo / honey
How to work with warmth?
Will my back last?

TASK
• Swap your paper with someone else
• Do your favourite move in slow motion
• Trace the pattern on your partner’s paper through the space and think about the form it takes
• Find a way to present the words on the paper
• Share the thought somehow
• Ask the question somehow