Out of the studio

We had a rich and intensive day last Sunday at Northampton University, that gave me many new ideas of how to develop the work. I taught a workshop for Northants Dance and saw a performance of "Counting Piece", a short silent work for 8 dancers that I have created this summer with the student's company Playgrounds, which is directed by Matt Gough. What I really enjoyed about the seeing the students perform was their commitment to the materials and to the spirit of a group piece, which has a quite different feel to the more intimate trio we are making. Then we presented our work in progress followed by a talk. I decided to present a lot more material than before and some of it was still very raw. Vida Midgelow, who is a reader for dance and performance at the university, led the session. What are the most memorable moments after watching the two pieces? How would you describe the works if they were not a dance piece but something else? What is the performance quality of the work? Why did you decide to work with live music? The stillness and movement of the accordion was one thing that was picked up by the audience, how to capture it in a satisfying way?

Photos by Zoe Plummer

More Sharing

Yesterday evening we performed together for the first time. We showed an extract of the new work to the students at London Metropolitan University, who gave us a very warm response. I knew most of them, because I currently teach the first year students of the Performing Arts Course. It was a nice opportunity for me to share my work with them while I am also mentoring them to develop their solos. To start performing the work at this early stage feels like the right thing to do. Things are still very fresh and the performers are still finding their way through the materials, its an exciting moment for us. I am looking forwards to this Sunday when we will teach a CPD workshop and perform at Northampton University. Photo by Zoe Plummer.

Drawing things together

Dancer Lise Manavit has joined us for the second phase of rehearsals, so we are finally all together in the studio, Camilla, Keir, Lise and myself (plus three accordions). It is amazing for me to step away from being inside of the work and to see what we have been creating. The atmosphere between the performers is very warm and there is a lot of positive energy in the room, which is a gift. Particularly at this point, when a lot of the material has been created and difficult choices about how to develop the piece as a whole are pressing. And new challenges arise of how to travel through the many complex materials that require a lot of concentration and constant listening to each other. An important conceptual element of the new work is that the performers try out and learn something new, in this instance playing the accordion (to Camilla's expectation). The idea is that this helps to stay alert and open. In reality this is also very challenging, it requires some trust, stamina and curiosity in our own process.

Various sharing and workshop have been coming up and I have invited some people into the studio to see the process. Last week we gave a lecture demonstration for the MA composition students at Trinity College of Music, which was followed by a discussion. This was a great opportunity for us to perform some of our materials, to share our thoughts and to collect responses from an audience that is very familiar with working with formal structures. I was not sure what to expect and started to question my own aspiration of working so intensively with concepts that I am not an expert in. The students were very generous and curious in the way they engaged with us. Some of the questions that came up: What kind of commitment and precision do the minimalist structures, like those we borrowed from Tom Johnson, demand? When reinterpreting scores that were created by another artist is it important to stay true to the spirit of the original work? Can you respond to only one aspect of someone else's work?

Found in Translation

This week I have been traveling to Manchester to work with Sankalpam, a Classical Indian dance company directed by Mira Gokul and Stella Subbiah. Sankalpam have commissioned me to create a short piece alongside  choreographers Luca Silvestrini and Stella Subbiah herself in collaboration with theatre director Philip Zarilli. Dancers Lucia Tong, Kamala Devam, Charly Ashwell and Natalia Thorn perform the works. This was another opportunity for me to follow my obsession with counting. I found various patterns of counting in circles and gave them to the dancers to interpret. It was exciting to see the Bharata Natyam application to the numerical concet. Last Friday we premiered the programme entitled "Corporeality" at the greenroom, where Sankalpam have been resident for the last week, rehearsing and teaching open workshops. Looking at the three very different works by the three individaul choreographers, we decided on a journey that gradually strips away layers and leaves us with the physicality of the dancers.
We started with Luca's piece, which draws from the dancers' biographies, followed by Stella and Phillips work, which deals with the psycho-physical process of Abhinaya (internal acting) to end with my piece, which is a minimal and abstract dance piece. We received a very warm response from the audience at the greenroom, which was followed by a question and answer session. Someone asked, what was lost and what was gained in translation. Everyone agreed that they discovered a new ease in their process when opening it up to the performers who brought new responses and new materials with themselves. Moving outside of our familiar comfort zone and searching for new meeting points was a risk worth taking and that seemed to cross over to the audience.

Read a review

"Corporeality" tours in the UK in November to Lincoln Performing Arts Centre (6/11), Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster (9/11) , The Brindley, Runcorn (12/11), Laban Theatre, London (16+17/11), Barbican Theatre, Plymouth (19/11)

Control

"I must hasten to add that music, which is 'found', is not usually found easily. " Tom Johnson

I "found" these interesting articles and lectures online written by Tom Johnson, in which he talks about his process of composing structural music and his wider observations about composition: http://www.editions75.com/English/articleslecturesenglish.html

Music in Studio 9

In October we spend the first three weeks of our production process at Laban. We means Camilla, myself and dancer Keir Patrick, who has been joining us for the first time. The support from Laban and funding from the Arts Council allowed us to focus intensively on the process, which is something I have been craving for. We introduced a piece of glass as a new instrument to the two accordions to complement previously created materials and to create new materials. Keir and me have also been playing the small accordion to accompany Camilla. Switching from playing to moving is an interesting new development for me. We are trying to integrate the two within one choreographic pattern, considering the different expressive possibilities each option brings and also the challenges that arise from going from something familiar to something unfamiliar. I am reminded daily about what it means to work in such a structural way that I have committed myself to by introducing mathematical patterns into the process. They require a lot of practice and constant intuitive decision making about how to apply them and where to go with the materials generated. This process is slow and difficult but very satisfying and surprising when it is working.

Funding

I received a letter from the Arts Council England to offer me funding for this project. Thank you to everyone for their support and encouragement to make this happen! This comes just in perfect time as we will begin with the rehearsals at Laban in a couple of weeks.

Playgrounds

Some more research, this time I am in Northampton to work with "Playgrounds",  the universities' company of third year dance students. The output of this residency will be a 15 minutes long silent dance piece to tour dance platforms and schools in the East Midlands from autumn 2010 to summer 2011. The main question in this process is how the patterns created with the abundant numbers can be shared in a larger group. How many different ways are there to share a pattern, what is shared? Rhythm, timing, material, modifiers? What kind of relationships emerge between the performers, when working in this structural way? I introduced another type of pattern into the process, which is also borrowed from Tom Johnson: "Counting in Circles", found in his book "Self-Similar Melodies". When working with these patterns for sound, I am trying to find out how they can work with different movement materials, and I change the patterns, or overlap them in different ways, to find the meeting point between the logical workings of these structures and the qualities in my choreography. Company director Matt Gough is blogging about the process here
'untitled' from matthew gough on Vimeo.

Residency in Cork with dancer Louise Tanoto

In July we have been resident at Firkin Crane, a theater located in a former butter factory in Cork. Dancer Louise Tanoto joined me for a week. After our previous intensive collaboration with Camilla (and her accordion), we concentrated on what we can do now with just the body, focusing on the different scales of movement and physical rhythms and sounds, and how they can be shared between us. This sparse approach to movement is something I have been developing for many years in many different ways. I wondered how the new process with Camilla had influenced me. I feel I am beginning to find a distinctly different way of thinking about the phrasing of movements, so the performers can "swing" together, like Camilla would say. As part of the residency I taught a class for professional dancers and the public sharing on the last day was attended by about 50 people. This was very informal, I performed some movement material, showed some footage on video (Louise had to go back to London) and talked a bit about how we have been working. I was surprised how interested people were in hearing about our process, some were dance experts but many did not have much experience with contemporary dance. People also contributed a lot of interesting and encouraging thoughts, my favorite comment was from a woman who compared me to Charlie Chaplin. There was also a question whether the Shandon bells would become part of the piece? The sharing was also free to attend demonstrating again that its mostly money that stands between people and the arts. I do hope that we will be able to go back and present the finished work in Cork at some point soon. The stay in Cork was also a great opportunity to meet with the other resident artists, particularly with Aaron Draper and Kimberley Almquist from New York, with whom we shared a house.
Pictures below are by Andy Ferreira

When language fails

I spent a week in Berlin to develop a new project, and on that occasion got the chance to see American choreographer Meg Stuart's Do Animals Cry  at the Volksbühne. The traditional building has recently been refurbished into a more trendy venue and the audience now gets to sit on big floor cushions. What sounds like a nice idea is very unpractical to say the least. Despite sitting uncomfortably for over two hours, Meg Stuart still managed to draw me into her world.
Her piece is about situations that could take place in a dysfunctional family, with her narratives being communicated through the body rather than through verbal language. I became curious about how she works with her performers, who all seem to be developing their own individual stories with a natural presence on stage. Alexander Jenkins was one of my favorite performers. The balance between details and a bigger scene was intriguing and like nothing I have seen before. There was an intimate feeling within a large work, helped by an impressive set created by Doris Dziersk. It includes a tunnel made of small pieces of wood, which made me want to run through a forest.

Sharing in Berlin

After working for a few days intensively at Jangada Studio, a beautiful space for Capoeira and dance in Mitte, we invited a few friends and colleagues to an informal sharing. What was interesting is that, similar to the first sharing, our visitors all enjoyed the minimalist approach to the material. They liked to be in the same space with us and to see the performance close up. Camilla and I on the contrary are more and more thinking that it would be more interesting to see the work from further away, that this would leave more space for the viewer to create their own associations. We talked about possible sets and lighting, that would help us to create our own "world" that we could draw the viewer into, which is very different to sharing a space. The discussions help me to understand though that the scale of a work is something crucial, but that I would like to decide it along the way by paying attention to the material and the relationships that evolve as a result of the process we set up. I would like to treat this decision (which we haven't made yet) as a logical progression rather than an "ambition". It all seems like common sense, once put in words. But there is so much talk in the dance world about scale that it can be easy to see it as an aspiration rather than the result of a process.

More R & D

Camilla and me will spend a week in Berlin between 9 - 15 June to reflect on what we have been doing so far and to develop some of our materials. To undertake some of our research in Berlin is also exciting for me, because I lived in Berlin many years ago, and since then the city has gone through a massive transformation, while the performance scene there has been thriving, so I can't wait to go back for a visit. The previous research and sharing with three dancers in London had brought a new energy into our process. It has  shown me that widening the creative process to an interdisciplinary group increases communication between the performers and has real potential to produce work that communicates to an audience. The question now is how to keep it going, how to find the depth in this process. Which is difficult because we work and live in different places, and dance pieces have to be produced so fast these days. I hope to find a balance of working intensively with the individual performers and of bringing everyone together often enough to nurture the bond between the performers that has already began to evolve.

International Performance Art in Mainz

Last weekend we performed Newly and The Accompanists at PAD Mainz. Its directors Nic Schmidt and Peter Schulz have a real talent and dedication to establish the small -scale venue as an inviting place within the local community. For me as a maker it is always  invaluable, if the opportunity presents itself to receive feedback from the audience, to not always entirely rely on my subjective feeling of how it might have been received.  But how do you prompt a conversation that encourages spontaneous and honest responses? The experience at PAD Mainz showed that the atmosphere created in the venue can really help. They have build
up a group of regular audience and there is a sense that the audience owns the programme. The presenters introduced our work with a short speech in the foyer and afterwards were approachable and interested.

The venue is also maintaining its close links to Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in the neighboring city Frankfurt, who had commissioned some of the other artist's works, including Martha & Lucy's Fine Bone China, both based in Bristol, and London based Mamoru Iriguchi's Into the skirt. Unfortunately we missed their performances, which were shown earlier in the festival, but I hope to catch up on their work very soon. However they stayed on to see our performance and there was plenty of opportunity to talk (while eating the delicious diner that had been cooked backstage). I think nobody wanted to leave this very warm and welcoming place.

5 Days in May at the SBC

5 Days in May is a short festival for contemporary dance at the Southbank Centre. Its the first season curated by Nicky Molloy and Eva Martinez, who previously programmed nottdance in Nottingham. Introducing international choreographers to London for the first time, it promises to be an incredible opportunity to see what is currently happening in contemporary dance around the world. And the platform's first performance lived up to the expectation.

Portuguese choreographer Miguel Pereira opened his work Doo by
playing a nostalgic piece of music from a record player that he casually dragged to the front of the stage. Later we returned to the same spot for an explosive and emotionally charged percussion solo by his Mozambican collaborator Bernardo Fernando. In between these two symbolic moments of "back then" and "now", middle aged Pereira revisits his childhood memories.
He was born in Mozambique and left the country as a young boy, when it became independent from Portugal in 1975. His personal stories subtly hint at the different experiences of life in Mozambique for white and black people under the oppressive power of the Portuguese colonisation and the growing resistance from the black indigenous majority. The spot at the front of the stage gains a second meaning as a place where the two men address their personal struggles that arise from the political violence and their desire to find something in common.

The following performance was a solo entitled Loin by French choreographer Rachid Ouramdane.

Sanjoy Roy wrote the following interesting review in The Guardian

"The recent European avant-garde performances at the Southbank Centre are the kind of works that tend to veer between the excruciating and the revelatory; Loin, a solo by the French performer Rachid Ouramdane, leans towards the latter. More an installation than a dance piece, Loin is based on Ouramdane's memories of his Algerian parents, and on his travels in south-east Asia. A documentary seam runs through it: voiceovers of his mother recalling the torture of her husband by the French; the brutality he encountered and practised in the French army in Indochina; video footage of war veterans scarred by the knowledge that they had killed in order to survive.

Words define the field, but it is unspeakability that powers the piece; one woman, having recounted her story, says: "That is why we don't talk about it." Ouramdane first appears as a hooded youth, mutely facing the image of his mother; later, he patrols the stage perimeter like an impatient guard. In the few dance passages, he is stunning, transfiguring body-popping moves into convulsive spasms of electrocution, or undulating with a shirt wrapped around his head in a queasy intimation of faceless, sexualised bondage. When he does speak, it is in a barely intelligible rush, like scrambled poetry.
For all its bleakness, it has an ineffable beauty, especially when the human presence disappears. Loudspeakers are left rotating on stage; faces depart from the screens, leaving images of empty roads, waterfalls, fish, fields – a peaceful world in which people are absent."

First Development

Camilla came back to London and we spent another week in the studio at Laban joined by dancers Louise Tanoto, Ankur Bahl and Elisabetta d'Aloia. We held a small informal sharing on 18 March 2010 for our friends and guests, mostly other artists. Our main focus in this week was to set up a process of sharing materials and patterns between all performers. We experimented with other interpretations of Tom Johnson's mathematical method to integrate all the actions. Our materials at present consist of small music, text and movement fragments, they create a very tactile, close up feeling. Working with a bigger group had many implications in terms of the relationships and the space between the performers. We also began to work with two accordions, one is a serious concerto instrument, the other a much smaller folky type of instrument, slightly out of tune. Their sounds don't really fit, which I quite like. We are starting to think about the scales of the movements and of the sounds. What is the work now, what can it be and how can the viewer engage with it? Its all very quiet and slightly dodgy and I wonder whether there can be a big bang or whether we should stay with the casual tone of the work that seems to have established itself.

Meeting Camilla

Camilla Barratt-Due and I met in autumn 2009, when we were both invited to an interdisciplinary project in Gothenburg called Choreosound, which was directed by Swedish choreographer Marika Hedemyr. For a long time now I wanted to create a work that involves close collaboration between musicians and dancers, so attending this lab was an encouraging experience and made me think how I could realize this aspiration. Camilla is from Norway but she has been living in Berlin for a while. She studied the accordion at the Royal Academy for Classical Music in Copenhagen. Since then she has been working internationally as a freelance musician in the fields of classical contemporary music and multi-media performance. I invited her to come to London for a week to try out how we could work together, Laban and London Metropolitan University kindly gave us a studio. As a starting point we took an idea from Tom Johnson's composition for piano called "Abundant Numbers" and reinterpreted it for movement, voice and accordion.

Physical Expressions

During the last term I taught a movement skills course to the first year students of the BA Performing Arts at the London Metropolitan University. It was a very inspiring experience for me to work with them and to be part of their process. I found much in common with many of them, who entered the course with very little knowledge of dance and a very vague picture of what their future profession might be, just following an intensely subjective feeling that this is a good thing to do. Their assignment was to chose a character from a book or film and to create a short movement study based on their personal responses to and observations of the character. During the classes the students frequently created short solos and presented them to the group. The creative work was accompanied by an introduction of elements of Laban Movement Analysis, a method that was outside their expectation and outside their experience. Most students started from a very fragile point and end up using only a small amount of the learnt knowledge. Yet there was a clear progression towards finding “a voice”. How did they process information and analyse their experiences? Is there a personal method for developing a vocabulary, for gaining objectivity about how movement can be read and for how to scrutinise ones choices? And does good work become less good when its creator fails to present a convincing case? Many questions came out of this very rewarding experience that relate to and enrich my own practice.