Performance Photos

So on Sunday 15th July we performed Walking Piece - 3 times!

It was full of life, of real people, of humour... I would like to direct you to some of the photographs as they emerge over the next few days. First lot from our brilliant Rehearsal Director and great friend of mine - Robyn Cabaret!

http://500px.com/photographybyrobyn/sets/walking_piece

Walking Piece picture by Shane Waltener

Shane Waltener is a fantastic artist who I had the pleasure of working with earlier this year. Follow this link to his website to find out more... http://www.shanewaltener.com/

Interview with performer : Shane Waltener

1.       What is it about Walking Piece that draws your interest?

The title of the work first of all intrigued me.  Walking is such an ordinary thing, everyone walks, and mostly without thinking about it. But when you do start to think about it, the activity becomes somewhat extraordinary, so I was hoping for some kind of revelation by getting involved in the project. I also recently created an installation at Siobhan Davies Studios that response to the building.  A group of three dancers walked up and down the staircase using the metal framework as a device to weave on. I also used the outdoor staircase during this project, so the parallels with Matthias site responsive piece also intrigued me. Im interested in the performance of craft, as well as participatory work, and was curious to see what his approach would be like. I usually lead group activities, so I was interested for once to be on the other side of the fence. I remember doing ballroom dancing ages ago and being led on one occasion instead of leading.  It was such a thrill, and a liberation.  I was hoping for the same to happen here.

2.       Have you take part in similar projects like this before? If so, why?

Not really.  I did take off all my clothes for one of Spencer Tunicks human installation a few years back but this hardly compares.  I was also filmed for Lucy Cash and Becky Edmunds film Pedestrian also scheduled for Footfall, but here again there is little comparison with relation the level of input involved with the project.  It's been ages since I've danced, but I've been thinking about it for a couple of decades, so I'm glad I'm finally getting round to it

3.       What are your expectations for this project at this stage? 

After 10+ rehearsals and two days to go before the performance, the piece does feel very familiar.  However, each time we run through it at rehearsal, it feels like a new piece.  This comes I think from having to perform tasks rather than remember sequences of actions and movements as we walk through the building. The meaning of the piece for me is in the moment, acting in the present rather than re enacting the past. This is a radical approach for a maker and I love it. I very much look forward to the 'reinvention' of the work on Sunday in front of a wider audience.  Performing Walking Piece throughout the day will be like performing it for the first time again, and again, and again

Its been fascinating to how Matthias has shaped the piece over the course of the rehearsals by responding to how the tasks were performed and giving us pointers on what our intentions might be when performing these.  Ive taken much more than just my feet for a walk over this period, its given me much food for thought, and stronger legs, and vocal cords in the process too!

Interviews with Walking Piece Performers: Jo Bailey

What is it about Walking Piece that draws your interest?

The opportunity to be part of a collaborative movement piece for untrained dancers, conceived and led by an experienced dance artist. To explore my own practice within the context of a piece that will perform. To push the boundaries of what I think I can do and the validity of that.

Have you take part in similar projects like this before? If so, why?

I was involved in Rosemary Lee's Square Dances in 2011. I was drawn by the reasons above and by the ambitious scale of the project. Also having knowledge of some of Rosemary's body of work and being excited to work with her.

What are your expectations for this project at this stage?

That we will cohere as a group (which I think is already happening) and bring into being a piece of work that is interesting and satisfying to both to performers and audience. That we will all enjoy the process of exploring and playing with the lines of the piece and discover things about ourselves and our relationship to our environment that we didn't know previously.

Interviews with Walking Piece Performers: Philip Cowell

What is it about Walking Piece that draws your interest?

I was drawn to Walking Piece for a different reason from why it now draws my interest. Initially I thought it would involve a whole load of people walking non-stop around a building. “Walking” walking, you know, walking proper like. I thought that would be a very interesting thing to do in its own right! But as soon as you meet our choreographer, Matthias, you know things will never be Quite What They Seem From This Day Forth, and so what we’re actually engaged in is an experiment with encounter. We’re walking, yes, in as much as we’re lifting our two feet to move in a forward direction, but in truth we’re playing, or playing with walking. And it's serious play at that. We’re facilitating enquiry through our feet! The great thing about Walking Piece is: it’s got nothing to do with walking.

Have you taken part in similar projects like this before? If so, why?

I’ve done a few bits and bobs like this – what might be called community arts projects, I guess: some oral history work, a bibliomancy project, some clown training. But this feels like a bit of a first for me. I wanted to take part in this project because it spoke to so many interests of mine at the moment. I made a commitment to myself this year to examine what it was like to be and have a body. We can go along in automatic pilot far too easily. So far I’ve done some circus skills training (trapeze, tightwire walking, juggling), I take an early morning dance class at CityLit (street dance at 8am!), I've taken up swimming again, started to walk the Capital Ring (all 88 miles) around London, and I’m part way through a mindfulness course, which is helping me through body scans and kind curiousity. Walking Piece brings so much of this together – playfulness, mindfulness, feetfulness, heartfulness! - and so the final July date – half way through the year – feels like a great opportunity for me to take stock of my body project. For me personally, then, it will be a milestone, and milestones have always been useful for walkers.

What are your expectations for this project at this stage?

I’m trying to be mindful about expectations at this stage. I turn up to the rehearsals and try and expect very little. So much happens as a result! I think the final piece will be great to watch, to bear witness to, and to engage with. I hope lots of people from across London will come along and join us.

Thanks Philip! Check out his website here! www.philipcowell.co.uk

Last words with Rosemary Lee on how dance helps us to understand better who we are...

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.

Rosemary Lee - Part 3: Have there been any moments of revelation for you in your career?

The piece I always come back to, is when I was asked to make a work in Barking and Dagenham which, I had assumptions about. I thought it was a working class area which probably had a history of racism, I knew there was a trial coming up there for someone who’d had racist treatment. I knew it was also somewhere where the women of Dagenham factory had made a stand, early in the feminist movement. So there was a history of working people, but really struggling I think.

I came and found what else they were struggling with. I was very worried about me as a middle class, white woman coming in and making a work for that community and then buggering off. It didn’t feel right.

I thought, if I’m going to make a public work of art, what can I make which is going to give something to the people, which isn’t just plonked on them, that isn’t just seen as an eye-sore and waste of public money. I also didn’t want to make a live work, I felt it was too risky, too fleeting somehow. So I looked for a space that could house something for an installation that was free.

 So I made a piece with Nic Sandiland. Something that was built for the central library in Dagenham. It wasn’t as widely used as the shopping street but I draw the line at commerce. I won’t make work where people are going shopping! So that was the closest I could get to a public space. I was really pleased with what we made. I felt I was going onto unchartered territory, so I wanted to work with children because I know I can relate to children of a certain age 8-10year olds, wherever they’re from. I worked for a year in a very forgotten little school. They’d never had artists in. They had a huge asylum seeker population. That was really interesting to work with young children who were trying to get a grip on where they lived, where home was. I found it really sad and upsetting, but also really amazing because the kids were just incredibly resilient to find their way. But dance for them, I felt, did bridge the language gap found a primary school. There were kids in the class who were really struggling, but weren’t doing so after the project. It re-affirmed my beliefs that imagination, and drawing on children’s imagination into their own bodies, to actually transform themselves in their bodies is very empowering. Which is probably why sport is so good for kids in those kinds of areas. I saw these boys transformed when I told them they were ‘weathergods’  - they could bring the rain in or stop the sun shining just with very slow gestures of the arms. A few of the boys, who really didn’t speak much English, really did look like gods, and they knew it. There was something about empowering them in a different way to fighting and aggression. Interestingly aswell, their favourite bit was the relaxation. I would put this music on and a lot of them would fall asleep! So that was a revelation for me. When they taste this more gentle approach they like it.

 It doesn’t work so well now, kids are even more difficult to teach – that’s another thing I’ve really noticed. Their energy is really different. I taught in a school in Hammersmith and thinking I’m going to have to stop because all I can do is shout and I know that’s not what I want to do. They were literally climbing the walls. I’m quite experienced but there was something I was up against which felt impossible, it was really depressing.

Square Dances too were a revelation for me because there were certain things I hadn’t known would happen. I was confident that the pieces would work. What I didn’t expect was that the audience would become communities in themselves, in particular the women’s piece made them feel like you. A flock of people. I saw them walking the streets together, talking, one of my friends made a friend on a bench and they travelled around the rest of the pieces together – like youth hosteling! Maybe something about a journey which they wanted to share. I had not thought of what it might be like to be one of the community of watchers. That was a lovely thing to discover, that they were glad to have the time to walk the streets together and find these pieces. I’m trying to find a way in which the audience feel really safe and therefore open up a bit more. I’m trying to make sure they don’t feel excluded from the dance. Make sure they know it’s for them – that’s very important to me actually.

Rosemary Lee, Part 2 of 3. Q. Who do you make work for?

A.

My response could be my audience or could be my participants. Like I said for the Square Dances, I wanted to make it for the women, give them a sort of gift. Though I feel like that piece is a gift for the women as much as it is a gift for those who see it. I would say the same for Common Dance – I am trying to give something to the participants which I think is a little bit different to when you work professionally, although I try to do that for any dancer I work with, professional or not. But you could argue there are some subtle differences there. It is about the kind of experience you want to give them, I really believe that. Having been a dancer myself and dancing for someone like Sue MacClennan, it is such a gift to be in someone else’s piece, to interpret that work, to discover it and to find a way to let that work come through you. I loved that opportunity, so I try to give all the dancers I work with and chance to find themselves in the work but to also find the work in them.

Equally, for the audience… I think it would be naive of me to say it’s for ‘everyone’. It is for anyone who finds it. Which is why when I work outside or for films on BBC I have no idea who turned the telly on then and caught it! I like that side of it. Having said that, there are audience I wouldn’t go out and make work for because I don’t feel I would get through in the same way. I don’t think my work is perfect for a teenage audience in a very deprived area. I don’t know whether I can speak to them, I think I’m too far removed. Having said that I’d love it if they were in the audience!

Who’s it for? It’s a very good question. It sort of depends on each commission, so Square Dances felt very much like it was for Londoners, for people who’d made the journey. I wanted to give them something in the heart of London. Something like The Suchness of Eddy and Henny I knew was going to go to more dance festivals, so I knew I was going to be playing to dance audiences in a sense. So that was made with that thought. I’ve got to make a work of art, as to whether people are trained or not. I don’t know whether I’ve quite answered that! Good question.

Interview with choreographer Rosemary Lee - part 1 of 3

You’ve worked with a lot of people of different ages and abilities, and in large scale sight specific settings. I am interested in what it is in particular about that sort of work, that sort of making which interests  you?

So, what attracts me? Well let’s break it down – there’s the different ages, there’s the size of the cast, there’s the site specificity and there’s the untrained and trained dancers - and there are different reasons for each of them.

If I start on the site-specific , there are many reasons why I use that – one, is because I get a different audience, and that’s regardless of whether I am working indoors or outdoors. If the site is not a theatre, you’re going to get a different audience. And that interests me because I’ve always felt, ever since the time I was a student, and I think I still feel this – that although I love going to the theatre there is a certain person who is going to be at the Theatre and that’s to do with their income and their background. Now, I still think I’m basically making work for a middle class audience, even when I’m outdoors, but with something like Square Dances you’re also going to get the odd passer by, particularly in rehearsals. You’re still exposing people who would have never expected to come and see something like this; you’re giving them something. 

Although I want to reach an audience that is going to get something from my work, I’m quite curious about trying to do that with different kinds of audiences. So outdoors you get the passerby, and indoors, for instance when I did something in the Fort Dunlop tyre factory, off the M6 in Birmingham, I got a lot of the old workers coming back to see what had happened to the old building. They hadn’t really come to see the dance, they’d come to come back into the place in which they’d worked all their lives. But to just have someone like that in the audience and for them to ssee their workplace transformed, I felt quite privileged that they would come. They’re not going to go to the Hippodrome to see a dance performance, but they are going to come back to the factory they knew.

So I’m getting a different audience, and I think artistically, I really like the limitation it gives me.

There is still a limitation in a black box theatre but with site specific pieces  is that– often you’ve got daylight if its outdoors, so the magic is different. You’ve got to create a different kind of magic which is reliant on the performance quality of the participant, which I’m really interested in at the moment. You are challenged by the context, the noise, the other worlds coming in that I actually really enjoy. How can I transform this particular site at this particular time? How can I enhance it or make it something different for a few minutes of the day and then it’s gone again. I really like that challenge. Having said that, I’m very picky! If someone said so something in this quadrangle I don’t do that at all, its only sites that maje me feel I can create some other atmosphere or augment the atmosphere that I feel is there, is dormant that I want to somehow enhance.

So the site is really critical for me and the challenges are delightful. I like the compositional challenge of how to make this space work with people in it. Do I need to fill it with 100 women or will something with just one person work?

Number of people – so the large scaleness of it, I think this is an interesting one. A while back Lyn Gardner the Theatre critic wrote a review of something she saw in Brighton where she said something like ‘these big participatory dances are just a way of choreographers getting dancers for nothing’ like it’s a kind of exploitation. I think it’s a valid point and it’s a question we need to keep asking ourselves: why are we doing this? But for me the numbers… if the piece feel like it requires 100 that’s due to the sight. For the women’s Square Dances the reason I wanted to make a piece for 100 women was a) because I felt the sight was right for it but b) because I had a personal reaction to my last piece, Common Dance where I had to turn many women of your age away and I didn’t like that. There was a real awkwardness that I felt I had to take every man and turn away 100 so many women. So there was a huge desire in me to make a work, find a site where I can literally take everybody that applies. Having said that, I didn’t take everyone because of stamina or physicality that I thought didn’t quite work so I’m my own worst enemy there, but I more or less did. So there’s different reasons there for why I did that.

The large number is not that I’m necessarily interested in making work for that many people and that that’s somehow better than working with one person, it’s just different. There’s a slight problem in thinking that choreographers want more, so it’s bigger and better. I don’t think that’s the case, it actually requires a certain skill to make something work for that many people. I think when I work with big groups like that I am saying something about humanity which I can’t say with four people. The mass of people says something about the numbers of people who have passed through that space, or says something about community or society, or says something about women. So for me its about what the effect of the work on people is. Sometimes I want to work with big groups because I think I can say something different and other times I want to go down to one because I can say something with that one person.

Whenever I’m working in what I call an epic way (over 30 people say) I’m also equally trying to find an intimacy in an epic form. How can I create something intimate and delicate with such a big block of people, which you mostly think of as spectacle. I’m really fascinated by that. The other reason is that I want to give people opportunities and there are very few opportunities for people who dance and have a connection in their heart and soul with dance like I do. It’s really dormant for some people too and its an absolute privilege for me to water the garden again and let them come up for a bit and let them see the air and taste the dance.  If I’m going to make a point about humanity, I can’t make it with twenty year old women. That’s a very small area of our lives. I feel I need to show people what it is to exist as a child and as an older woman.

Walked Path

This line of walked path reminded me of Richard Long's work. This is my brother, Adam. We have walked here so many times.

First rehearsal and 'Climb Every Mountain.'

It was wonderful to meet the other walkers on Tuesday evening for our first rehearsal at the Siobhan Davies Studios. We sang, moved and tried out different game like tasks that will form a loop of people travelling in and out of the building. My favourite game was 'Top of Your Lungs' which consisted of walking out on the the fire escape from the roof studio and shouting/singing  a line from your favourite feel good song. Matthias's example was 'Climb Every Mountain' from The Sound of Music...

See 0.59 for full effect and imagine wide arms flung out!

Richard Long: Art made by Walking

I have just discovered this famous land artist - whose work is the result of walks all around the world, often in remote and wild areas. He makes traces in the landscapes he passes through, upturning stones, rolling snowballs...




'In the nature of things:
Art about mobility, lightness and freedom.
Simple creative acts of walking and marking
about place, locality, time, distance and measurement.
Works using raw materials and my human scale
in the reality of landscapes.'




This particular piece 'A Line made by Walking' (1967) was made when Long was still studying at Art school, aged 22. He walked back and forth along this straight line. His performance becoming his sculpture.

http://www.richardlong.org/Sculptures/sculptures11.html

Alex Murphy on people, performance and piecing it together

Alex Murphy, Creative Projects Co-ordinator

To what extent are the Creative Project’s projects you create for the participants; and by contrast perhaps, to what extent are they for the SDD ‘audience’ or those on the outside?

Our objective is to work with artists to create projects that really involve people in the artistic process. So we spend a lot of time thinking about the people who we will work with, and how to make the project a rich, engaging and accessible experience for them, that will lead to an artistic outcome. So the participants are really key. We exist to give people an experience, through the arts and through the projects that we deliver. That’s really what makes our work different to the company’s projects, or the artists who come in to exhibit in the building. Our focus is on the people who get involved, as well as the artists who are leading the creative process.

So Creative Projects are for the participants, however we also want to create work which is interesting to a wider audience. Something that is not just for the family and friends of those involved. And I think it is, because of the artists we work with. We are creating work that is rich and deep and interesting to a wider audience.

In terms of SDD’s ‘other audience’ or ‘those on the outside’, we’re currently looking into ways in which we can present this work to give it that platform, and expose it to a wider audience. I think we can struggle, because people see the work as non-professional – it’s not trained dancers doing the performance, it’s young people, or the public. Whereas we, and the artists we are working with, see it as a piece of art. How do we present this work so that it can be enjoyed by more people in audience terms? That’s a really interesting challenge.

I am interested in your ideas surrounding performance. Are your projects often outcome-led? Is performance necessary? What is the effect of this on your work and for those involved?
I think this is a really interesting question. Our projects are very much process-led. We use the making processes of the artists we work with as a starting point. It’s very important to us that people have a good experience when they come and take part in projects, so that’s definitely the focus of the work we’re doing. However, having an outcome can be a really important part of that process.

Performance is a really powerful thing to do as participant in a project. Also, if we’re saying we are creating art through these projects, art is something that by its nature should be shared. It’s really the essence of it – you’re creating something, sharing it and drawing other people into it.

Is performance necessary? It really depends on what the project is. A project could be an exploratory process which aims to enrich the people involved, in which case the outcomes may happen later individually, or in a follow-on project, and I think that’s valid. But if we create something, then not sharing it is a missed opportunity for the participants and for the wider audience who would then get to experience that.

So, we’re not outcome-led, we’re process led. Sometimes a presentation of the work is a really valid part of that process, but it’s not the only way to end a project. We’re quite happy to judge that on each project.

Finally, I want to know… Why do you work in the Arts?
Because I like art! It’s my enjoyment and the thing I’m interested in. I think it is as simple as that actually! I get a lot from being involved in art, so if I can come to work and get involved with it there too, I’m going to be happier. I want work that enriches and challenges me in ways that I enjoy. I think because I’ve had good experiences with the arts, and specifically working with the arts in this way, I want to share that, and open it out to people.

Anything else to add?

There’s a question I’ve been musing on for a while. I tell people about my work and they say ‘Oh contemporary dance… I’ve really tried to enjoy that.’  They go along, they watch it…But somehow there’s a disconnect when they’re watching dance, in a way that they don’t have when they read, or see art or watch theatre even. It’s quite fascinating - I can kind of relate to it, I think a lot of people have felt that disconnect. I’m really interested in what that is about. Because, of all the art forms, it’s the one which you should have more of a connection with. Not everyone can paint or sculpt, but everyone has a body that moves. So why people have that disconnection from dance is something I’m really interested in. 

A lot of what I think about when we are approaching people who may not have done dance before is that there is that barrier. People have a barrier to dance and choreography and being creative with their bodies that is very real. It can be a fear thing, or a physical self-consciousness. But also, there is something about dance performance which isn’t connecting with people. I don’t have an answer for what that is. It seems a bit illogical, because it’s a human body moving. We should all be able to relate to that. One of the things we aim to achieve through our projects is to address that barrier.

Pedestrian

Here is a shot taken from last weekend by Lucy Cash as her and Becky Edmunds filmed south londoners walking for the film...

Walking South

Over the last few weeks, Matthias Sperling and I have been visiting places and people in south London as part of our recruitment process for Walking Piece. So far we have been to:
Pocklington Resource Centre in Wandsworth to work with a blind and visually impaired group and Croydon College to work with the Arts staff there.

More to come..

These boots were made for walking...

With my favourite here-i-come boots on, I am off today to join many other south londoners to be filmed walking my walk. Screendance artists Lucy Cash and Becky Edmunds have been commissioned by Siobhan Davies Dance to create a short film, of different clips and edits of people walking from new born babies, to those past 80 years old and all of the inbetween.. Then, filming places in South London they will make a 3 minute film which will be shown as part of Footfall and Big Dance 2012..
http://www.siobhandavies.com/dance/creative-projects/creative-explorations/pedestrian.html

Interview with Matthias Sperling and why it's not really about walking...

Could you tell me about some of the ideas/ findings that have arisen during your research and development?

One of the things that has come up in my first few days of research to develop approaches for this project, is that it…isn’t really about walking! The walking is a kind of necessary part of it, but in fact, what I’m interested in about the idea that I have proposed is that it’s a framework for interaction. So it’s not so much about the movement, it’s about the interaction.

So what I proposed is that 50 people form this single file loop which moves through the Siobhan Davies Studio building and that it is continuously moving. And then along the route, many different tasks are mapped to a particular space. As each participant passes through each of those spaces, they perform a particular movement task, but in their own way. So it should be possible to see this mapped out score that moves around the building, and it should also be possible to see each different individual’s response to the instructions. So there’s an interaction between the participants, in that they have the individual responses to the same set of instructions and there’s also a close interaction between the performers and the audience because they are sharing the space – sometimes very closely, sometimes less closely, but the audience move around this loop structure freely in and amongst and around and along the route. That’s the thing that really interests me about it, it’s like an installation that is always there whenever you come upon it, and you can navigate your own way around seeing it, experiencing it. It’s always happening, it’s always changing, it’s always varying, it’s always there.

Another thing I have been thinking about is how to make the dynamic relationship between individual activity and group activity a visible subject of this work. Both choreographically and generally, I would say that the two extremes of that spectrum - everyone doing their own completely different thing and everyone acting in complete conformity- are relatively easy or habitual things to achieve. Negotiating a way of balancing those states together somehow is the tricky, but interesting and necessary thing to try to achieve.

There’s one more thing, a compositional thing. - just the simple fact that all of these mapped out tasks will not only be happening one after the other but also alongside each other. It’s a sort of double composition because it needs to work in both senses  - it’s not only about what comes next but about what counterpoint you are seeing side by side so it’s quite tricky actually! How can something quite simple work in both of those ways at the same time, and without the co-existing elements drowning each other out?

This hopes to be a participatory dance on a big scale. Does that affect the artwork, and how?

I think the first thing to say about that is that the idea for the work, from the beginning, is grounded in being a large scale participatory piece. So it’s inherent in the idea. A smaller group of people would not be able to span the circuit of the building in the way that I’m picturing. It also comes out of a lot of my interests. I’m interested in working with trained and untrained dancers because of the kinds of questions I’m asking about dance and movement. For me virtuosity is a question rather than a given. It’s a really live question for me, because it’s something I feel as though I spent a lot of years working on, and something I still enjoy in certain ways, but I also question what physical virtuosity really gives to an audience and whether there are also other kinds of virtuosity that might support the making of choreographic propositions.

I’m also interested in mind body relationship. What I’m often thinking about now is that you can think about dance in a very different way from how I have in the past. I like to imagine that dancing might be whatever I’m doing when I am learning something about the relationship between my body and my mind. That can be a very wide range of things. I’m interested in seeing people engaged in that. It doesn’t necessarily require conventional dance training. That sort of fascinates me.

What are the impacts or effects for those who are going to be involved in this project? Particularly those who perhaps have less experience of being involved in dance or big participatory projects?

I don’t really think I can anticipate what people will take away after the project. What I can say is, I hope they have a good time! I hope they have the opportunity to participate in something creative and to challenge themselves in ways which are interesting to them. I think that if you end up presenting this as a written piece rather than an audio piece, people won’t get my enormous long pauses between words which are typical of me.  But they are indicative of what I think people who participate in project will notice, that things take time with me! That’s about the creative process. I like to think about things lots. I’m interested in sharing process that requires quite a lot of concentration and stamina. I think often in dance experiences people enjoy them because they are very entertaining – you put on some music and you have fun. That’s great, those are wonderful things to do but I’m just not always able to come up with a focused and coherent result as an outcome of a process which is only characterized by the desire to have fun. I think people might find it challenging in terms of concentration and to go further and deeper into things which might seem quite simple on the surface. I hope people can come out of the project feeling as though they have been a part of something and that this group of people, for a short time, will have a community that shares something. And that that invites other people to interact with it.

At this very beginning stage what are some of the challenges you’re facing with this work, and what are your hopes for it?

In the research I have been trying to open my mind to completely changing the idea. I have been exploring lots of different options because I don’t take it for granted that my first idea is the best one. I realised that they were things I really like about the idea and some pretty strong challenges.

I think that my original idea – with all the tasks mapped out along the route - will demand a lot from the participants, and I think it’s worth demanding that for the sake of the audience. If the tasks are really mapped to specific portions of the route it gives the audience something fixed to hold on to. There may be up to 50 different tasks in the score. So there’s something about the concentration and physical engagement  it will demand to switch between activities very quickly. And to get into a particular activity very fast, doing it fully so that it registers as a performance and then very quickly switching to the next thing, and the next, thing and the next.  The danger is, it won’t leave performers a lot of time to sink into things so that they become fully embodied, So it would require people to learn how to make that kind of embodiment happen perhaps more quickly than is easily accessible.

What do I hope? I hope that it will become an artwork. I hope that it will be a professional artwork in its own right. I hope that it is clear enough and that it is about something clearly enough that it is worth doing again in other places with other groups of people. I hope that it’s not a one off event but that this is the beginning of this idea and that it’s a full treatment of the idea.

Yeah, so I hope it’s good.

The precariousness of walking on two legs

I have started reading Geoff Nicholson's 'The Lost Art of Walking'

In the first few pages he talks of the madness in our verticality. Many of the other mammals that walk this earth stand on two legs once in a while, but 'humans are the only ones ridiculous enough to do it all the time...all those bad backs and knees and feet and hips - we'd have none of that if we remained on all fours'

It got me thinking about how and when and why we began to walk on our two hind legs... and whether we could ever just try out going back to basics...?! 

Meeting Matthias

Met with choreographer Matthias Sperling yesterday to think about Walking Piece. He begins his research and development next week...

Here is a video he recommended:

Bruce Nauman, an American visual artist. Part of the Process Art Movement which emerged in the US and Europe in the Mid 1960's.