DAY TWO

By Charlotte Vincent
Ellie McDonald joins the group

MORNING SESSION
Jem – There’s a contradiction between choreographer and the curational process – Yesterday we talked a lot about handing over ownership and then CV lead the afternoon. I didn’t really want to do it.
CV – Yes I agree. There’s a big contradiction. I find it difficult to break the habit of leading- I always need to fill the void. I feel the need to fill the silence and sometimes this isn’t helpful at all. I thought what I led and what we did yesterday afternoon was mediocre
PK- I didn’t really want to do it either
Jem – But we all did it! I really wanted to do some body work after all that talking
CV –That’s interesting because around 4pm I think I said that’s what I would like to do – that’s what my instinct told me to do - but the ‘should’ kicked in that we should try some stuff. We should have gone with what we wanted to do. This is a good example of me pretending to surrender perhaps?
Jem - Yes but it was the first day I suppose as you said it got us through to the second!
PK – I got a lot out of staying, for longer than was comfortable, in my process. I knew what I was doing wasn’t usual for me and I tried not to judge myself in the moment of doing it – I tried to stay with it
Jem - I had a question for you, given that you are questioning a lot – what excites you about your work?
CV - Hmmm that’s a good question….(rambles a bit)
Jem - When I look at your work it seems to be about persona and emotional charge and entertainment.
CV – What are our general thoughts from yesterday?
DA- Questions around direction and leading. How far would I go to please someone else?
This whole master / servant thing.
VF- Questions around appropriate language to discuss an idea. Dance as a still act. Roles in the studio, and playing the part of surrendering.
Jem - We talked about the pretence of surrendering, but I think this is a misleading term.
RK – Yes it has negative connotations of lying.
CV – It’s more helpful to think of it – as Jem said yesterday – as ‘status alteration’
PK – I was thinking about it and I decided to turn the phrase around – to think of surrendering to the idea of not pretending
VF – I was reading Diderot’s Paradox of the Actor and he says that if you are a ‘sensitive’ (‘sensible’ in Italian) actor then you are a bad actor. To be a good actor you have to be an observer who replicates what you see around you and that takes skill.
RK – I was thinking about dance as shifting energy
CV – We saw that yesterday in your solo – It reminded me how much I enjoy unpredictable movement…
PK - I was thinking about why you enjoyed Rachel’s dance and was wondering whether you liked it so much because of the quietness that went before – was it only interesting because of what went before?
CV- Yes it was a good example of counterpoint between stillness and movement – I am not sure you can have one without the other.
RK – I was thinking that in my dancing I am aiming to be practical and plain – that what I am presenting is me. I am trying not to embellish or hide behind anything – I am trying to be open – metaphorically naked – stripped back. When I see dance I want to see the human in the space.
VF – She doesn’t care. There was a don’t care attitude about how you started the dance and that gave her dance a lightness of approach – ‘just go’. I don’t mean ‘don’t care’ as in ‘fuck off’
CV- No, although I sensed there was a moment of that - I wondered if it was ‘really don’t care (cos this is s stupid task)’ or don’t care (to put the usual constructs around the ‘performance’ of it).
RK - I didn’t want to ‘make an entrance’ – I wanted to stay in the Lab feel of things
DA - I just stood in the middle! I’m not sure why I did that…
CV – I am not sure we know how to be in a Lab situation – it takes practice and we don’t get to practice it much.
PK - Everything is in relation to the other things in the space.
CV- Yes – a kind of domino effect – you make choices according to what has gone before.
PK – Perhaps we need to think of the Lab space as the context?
Jem – What came out for me was not an interest in Motherhood (Motherland) or Step Up (Stand Up) as concepts but the process of the day, but the definition of roles within the day
We did talking and then CV told us what to do. I wanted to do body work but I didn’t follow through. Why not? CV jumped in to fill the space. I understand this as it happened in my last process…It hard to say nothing and sit with the silence sometimes. What do you want to preserve from your practice? What are your core values?
CV - Charge – emotional charge. Humour.
Jem - Your work is very entertaining – entertainment?
CV- Yes. What are the core values in your work do you think?
Jem – The preparation of a state in order to enter a space and perform
PK – Mine are eagerness to share something, a thinking process which is never switched off on stage and energy which I can generate and broadcast
CV - That’s an interesting term, broadcast. Transmit.

Jem – What do people want to do?
VF – Stick with one idea – what’s the right language to use.
DA – I’d like to go away one day and do something else.
Jem - We all had a reaction to the question around making a Last Dance. I thought of it in relation to death. A summary of a life. I’m interested in faces and modifying expression to represent an emotional journey through life to this point now. Maybe it’s a video work.
RK – Id like to think about dance as self portrait. Why do we find portraits fascinating? I think we could go to the National Portrait Gallery. What would a self portrait be as a dance?
CV – Interesting – the 10 x 10 idea feels like a series of intimate portraits- how would you choose to represent / draw yourself (if choreography is mark-making) in your last dance.
Two other things stood out for me on your papers from yesterday-
How to work with warmth? Why provoke for provocation’s sake? I really enjoyed Val’s Singular Sensation dance on the floor – it was somehow a private act .

POSSIBLE ACTION POINTS FROM TODAY
• JEM VIDEO PORTRAIT
• RACHEL DANCE AS SELF PORTRAIT
• PK LANGUAGE TASK
• DA DISTILL IDEAS
• CV – ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS – What is the beginning of the new sentence that you would like to write? What language would you use?

CV Led a warm up which ended in an improvised dance to a skipping rhythm and a group lying on the floor. Each person emerged and imagined taking the first step of their last dance and to finish I asked them to share a thought.
Jem – Reveals
RK – Blow Up
DA- Pleasure
EM – Airbourne
PK – I step back and I look at my hands
VF – Lunch!


AFTERNOON SESSION – LED BY PK
Thinking about appropriate languages – as I am always shifting between music acting and dance- respond to the word I will give you in 3 different languages and think of an emotion as a separate language too. One hour. The word was PRAY (handed out on folded paper – we didn’t know what each other had). PK envisaged 18 responses to the word.

Jem thought about embodying rhythm of rosaries in his work but settled for
1- lining us up and whispering the lords prayer very fast into individual’s ear
2- allowed us to witness him in a silent thoughtful act in the stairwell
3- Photos including Jem staring at the sun

Val
1- an epilator based one woman band – lighter, epilator, prayer bowl hit with a gong and a mobile phone beat
2- Undressing into a bin liner, and then stepping into a circularly arranged screen and praying in Italian
3- Writing a prayer on apiece of paper, rolling it up and placing it into a balloon, blowing the balloon up and releasing it out of the window.
Ellie
1- Look at this body pose as if it were a photograph from below
2 – Watch this repeated movement phrase from above
3- Lie around me in a circle with heads near to an upturned chair and listen to the rhythm created and hum with me

CV
I go to churches to cry video shot on mobile phone
1- leaves in the wind
2 – soundtrack of old man making strange noises in the park
3 – text I go to churches to cry. I like the volume of space, the silence and all the wood.

RK
1- A rendition of Help by the Beatles
2- Sweeping the floor clean in a methodical manner from top to bottom
3- cant remember

DA
1- A series of church pictures to Madonna’s song Like A Prayer
2- A group prayer holding hands in the stairwell
3- A prayer written and read out

A discussion followed that involved how intrusive the videoing of the work was, how the transformation of everyday objects into something extraordinary is exciting, Val’s pragmatism and simplicity of function works so well, how RK looked vulnerable singing The Beatles HELP, how her sweeping can be read as metaphor, as a real act, as a preparation for something else, as a functional act. We talked about trance states and meditation and what makes an image poetic.

ACTION POINTS
Jem – looking into the sun
CV – would like to see Val combine all three of her acts into one
Group - A dance of proximity to / with Ellie’s rhythm – amplified?