I suppose the way that I think about who we are at the
moment, our psyche, our being – is that we are many things. Many different parts, perhaps conflicting. Maybe what
we are trying to do throughout our lives, if we have the luxury to do so is to
find bridges between all those things. I think what dance can do is say this is
part of you , you can experience this, feel this. There are lots of different
things that dance can give you – one of them is how you can be with eachother.
How tolerant you can be...How you can give up your ego, or not.
For example, if you’re in one of my pieces, you have
to give up your ego. That’s why it can be therapeutic experience because I
think the best way to live is fairly humbly. It’s hard I think because what
bombards us is presenting yourself and being extrovert, more is better, have
confidence, write persuasively, not creatively, persuasively! And nobody seems
to question that…
The dance that you and I are involved in...what is it?
Is it somatic? We used to call it new dance but we don’t really know how to
talk about it. I don’t quite know how to even put it!
Of course it’s a utopian ideal - we all have egos and
can’t tolerate things we should but I’m very interested in giving people a
taste f this this very equal inclusive approach where everybody is respected
fully and the same and everybody is looked after. Just to see if that could
then change the way we are, the way we
live with eachother. I really believe in order to dance well, you have
to be tolerant.
All those things affect how we live as a community. And
then the more individual thing about knowing yourself, I think, for me it’s
about a poetic state. It’s a difficult one because I think we are struggling
with the borders of what this world of dance is. I really felt that when I was
trying to talk about Gill, and thinking about sharing what she did. It’s really
quite a small bit of the dance world we are talking about.I don’ know how to
explain it. It’s creative, it tries to allow people to express themselves through
improvisation… there’s lots of different things in there. I think if were
talking about that world, you can learn about yourself through surprising
yourself, discovering other places in yourself, its something more subtle than
that.
One of the reasons I stay in the dance world is
because, I love words, but, as soon as it comes out in words, it writes it in
stone. But dance doesn’t quite do that, that’s why I stutter over even trying
to answer you. Gill always talked like that in her reflections, keeping things
unsettled, questioning. It’s hard though because then people can’t quite grasp
it. What I’m trying to do it be clear about what I do but I’m hoping that that
doesn’t destroy what I’m really doing
which is almost unsayable. That can be seen as a cop out, academically. The
closest thing for me, is poetry. It’s a word form. Something about keeping
words so open that it unlocks something much bigger than itself. To feel your
feet on the ground, is not just to feel your legs dropping, feel yourself being
in an alignment but its also about feeling yourself as a single individual
standing on the earth for the first time again. To feel connection with the
ground. To feel it rather than to know it. All those things are massive and
fundamental to our well being, Scary too, because it can leave you in a lonelier
place somehow.
I think they
are a resource. When things go wrong, maybe knowing what it feels like to stand
on the earth, just for a moment, might get you through. With people I work
with, and this goes beyond dance, is that I am hoping I am developing their
observation skills. To be more observant in all their senses of the world
around them. If you have that, and can keep that open, then there is more
potential to finding solutions and the good in something. A mindful state. So
knowing yourself, is not only knowing yourself, but knowing everything around
you. Dance for me, is part of that practice. How does a technique class link
into that? I don’t know. Is it about finding the logic in that, finding the
logic in the dance? A lot of it I’m not sure about, but they are good questions
to ask, but not to get hung up on them – there’s no definite answer. For years
I thought there were these definite truths I thought you’d find.
Feeling
peaceful is important though, in a world which is often not peaceful. We are
lucky to have those moments.
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