Portugal Day 23 Charlotte

MONTEMOR O NOVO

Convent of Salutation 16th to 19th century, considered to be the monument of greatest artistic value in the town and its environs. If you visit the convent, curently the object of restoration work, take a look at the Portaria (entrance hall), clad in tiles dating from 1651, and at the Claustros (cloisters). Pass through the arch into the garden where you will find the church of St. James (Igreja de Santiago), the Torre da Má Hora or de Menagem (literally translated, Tower of the bad hour, or the Keep) and the Porta do Sol (gateway of the sun)…..

Monday morning spent rearranging a new space.
Throwing ut the fag butts of the last group pf artists who Rui hosted here
Remnants of their work in the space
Cleaned away much like the chalk marks in London that the technicians had worried about when the cleaners washed our work away at The Place.
I havent had a moment to think in the five days I have been in SHheffield

Office meetings
Sorting out a broken down car
Recycling cooking talking
Board Meetings
Marketing Lunches
Catching up with friends and colleagues
No time to setle before 5 am back here - three years on since I last came, married with a husband and a stepson with me.
This is where I first met Alex and here we are again in the heat and the dust of Montemor. A different sense of time, place and purpose now.


Reflections of what happened in London. I am interested in applying some if the many things we talked about.

I would like to start leading again – find some new structures in what we are doing. Try to keep lab structure but be more specific in our investigations through generating and creating material – give ourselves something to look at and experiment with.

Return to some kind of roles that Alex, myself and the three performers (Valentina, Janusz and Darren) have established skills around – composing, directing, performing.

Free up the personal – investigate what you as three performers bring to the space. Let exterior be manifestation of interior space. Work solo for first few days.

Present /perform/collect ideas andwitness/scrutinise them closely.

Not talking as much. More doing.

What has stayed with you from the past four (DA/VF) / three (AC)/ one (JO) weeks ? Where are you now?

Val
• Composition
• Self-portrait
• Interpretation and Translation
• Single image - Graphic Notation
• One woman band
• Participating with the music. My desire to make sound.

Idea of graphic notation. Think of using my self portrait and make a graphic than interpret it in movement. Not to use any instrument, make the sound with objects or moving.

After further discussion
Apply GRAPHIC NOTATION to a photo of her own face – make a graphic score (www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/picturesofmusic) and then play / dance it .

Darren
• Exposing the chooses we make whilst in the act of the dance/performance
• Making my own solo
• Making a solo on Alex
• Finding the starting point, finding the finishing point
• Staying in the pauses
• Finding the silence
• Being in the performance/ no re-enacting, (Count 25)
• The memory of who was here, and who is here now
• What is my identity?
• Finding inspiration in others
• Structure/simplicity
• The audience reacts (physically?) to what the dancers body is going though, Logging what’s just happened, like the fragments that are left in your memory after you’ve seen a performance.
• Capturing the moment

After further discussion
In describing a one man show he uses the language of a lapdancer / prostitute –
I could get to know you
I coul dance for you
I could serve your needs
Ill do anything you want
Talks about having a box of tricks to choose from – audience choice from a menu of acts /jokes /dances to show. We talk about building up expectations and understated language – dancer as prostitute, acts of failure

Janusz
• Stillness
• Silence
• How to create something without talking
• How to move when you’re not moving

I've read the bog and the 2 hour silence task caught my attention.
A soundtrack to work with the task to create the music first then create the movement.

After further discussion
What is still moving in a pause or a stillness. Masures of time.What sounds are still present in a silence? How to measure stillness? How to verbally capture it? How to visually present it – does it need the counterpoint of movement?

Alex
• I would like to facilitate all those.
• I'm happy to try and help musicalize the performers

After further discussion
Three ideas
A Dysfunctional Requiem
A piece of developmental dysmusia (musical dyslexia) music
A last composition that marks key moments in his musical career to date- if you had one last piece of music in you to come out, what would it be? What would it sound like?

CV
Reminder of what Liz said - everything she does is a performance.
Go back to the solo idea I described on the first day of this r&d
Working in simple measures

The themes that have come out of the past 4 weeks for me – may seem too large and vague but we can work specifically with practically applying / investigating some of them in a solo form.

Memory
• interior spaces, remembering, capturing, resonance
• repetition and how to achieve divergence through repetition?

Tense
• past / present / future
• act of logging, marking, looping, relativity
• technical ways of measuring and capturing time

Pauses
How to mark pauses/ delay / cadences
• Grading
• singular images
• Liz’s 10 frames
• shades of experience
• space between words

Translation
Sliding in between forms
Finding the content in the form
Finding Analogues
• Music into text
• Text into music
• Music into movement,
• Movement into music
• Movement to text
• Text to movement

Text
• Continuous writing
• Wendy / Adrian’s exercise in music/dance form?
• Logging
• Documenting
How to write? How to move away from generating a text-based procedure ?

Last Dance / A Requiem
Go back to the thing about the last dance. If you had one more piee o music – one more dance in you = hat form would it take?


Aim of the 2 weeks to generate material- as Liz would say- Everything counts in what we present to each other.

Lets try stuff and if something is happening pursue it and if not scrap it
Really keep digging into your own practice

SOLO INDICATION

Start at the beginning. Informed by Liz’s approach

What singular memory or emotional location do you want to work with?

Where would you place yourself – boundary the space, feel the edges of the space. How in this environment (Espaco do Tempo) would you choose a frame for yourself? Work with the limitations of that space or frame (trust your instinct)

What would this mini production look like in your head?

What would you include in it (be really specific)

What would you leave out?

What would be a good start for this solo (you will know when something starts to work)

Where does the impetus for movement come from? (there may be very little movement - everything must count)

Act on your opinion, be inventive and remove the anxiety around what you are doing

How will you compose your senses to make something?

INTENTION
Phase two – once we have something formed to play with - what is the question now?

1 How could we loop this
2 How could we achieve divergence with it through repetition
3 What is its text analogue
4 What is its music analogue?
5 Reframe it in a different location/ what is its relation to the space?
6 If it is performed with the others in duo / trio form what happens to the material?
7 If you reduce it ot a single image what would that be?
8 If you interrupt the pausing structure within it or add silent beats – what happens to it?
9 If you make explicit the choice making within what you present to the witnesses how does that affect the work?
10 What happens if we log the presentation?