Meeting your audience

As part of the Touch Wood sharing at The Place last month we had the opportunity to discuss our work with some of the audience members, following the Critical Response Process designed by Liz Lerman. This involves four steps to foster a dialogue between artist and their audience: 1) the audience share moments they have found exciting or memorable in some way, 2) the presenting artist asks the audience questions while the audience members should not deviate from the question in their responses, 3) audience members put questions to the artist but must phrase them in a 'neutral' or unopinionated way, 4) audience memebers offer their opinions with the permission of the artist. (Liz Lerman, 2011: 275)

This feedback process was somewhat imposed on both artists and audience members. However, the intention was good, to get artists and audiences to talk in the spirit of caring for each other, emphasised in the relaxed introduction to the evening by The Place's artistic director Eddie Nixon. And having participated in this from both sides, as an audience member and as a presenting artist, there were some positive outcomes.

After we performed an extract of Tracing Gestures within the evening's mixed bill the audience was split into small groups and paired with one of the artists. I was suprised how much time people had to sit with us and unpick and elaborate on the experiences they had just made with what we presented and to come up with some exciting suggestions of where the work could go from here. A lot of the discussion evolved around the relationships that had been observed between the performers with each other and with the visual materials, the visibility of physical experiences, the invading of intimacy, the play with surfaces and the tensions between moments of clarity of what the performers were doing and (at times) dissatisfying moments of confusion.

Dirty Electronics @ DigitalLab

I just spent two days with inspiring sound artist John Richards (Dirty Electronics) and an amazing group of dance artists at The Place. The intention was to explore some entry points into the creative use of electronic and digital media from the perspectives of our individual choreographic interests and processes. The workshop began by making a simple electronic instrument.  There was something very satisfying about physically making these sound objects and about gaining an understanding of their mechanical workings. Although very basic and raw, the instruments needed to be handled with great attention to detail and could easily break. In small groups we then devised some performance materials. Starting the process from the workbench seemed to have influenced us in wanting to keep all of this information visible and transparent when making creative choices. I was reminded of my passion for the many ideas that have emerged in the works of minimalist composers over the last decades and the DIY philosophy that often comes with these.

Pictured dance artists Anders Duckworth and Evangelia Kolyra
 

Touch Wood Sharing

Come to our sharing at The Place / Touch Wood on Friday 18th September, 7.30pm. Stephen Moynihan, Aaron Markwell and Richard Court will perform a short extract of our new work in progress entitled 'Tracing Gestures'. In this work a range of visual media are used by the performers to trace each other's movements. We will show an excerpt using video recording and projection, which will be follwed by a charcoal drawing performance. I am very interested to see how these two very different media can be connected to bring the audience closer to the negotiations that take place between the dancers, and to the images that are being created alongside. Let us know what you think!

To book tickets (£5) click here

Rehearsing at South East Dance Studios:

Drawing without looking

In our process we are most of the time not looking at the visual art work while it is created. We use other methods that include touch and proprioception. Here are some interesting work by visual artist Claude Heath entitled Epstein's Hands Sequence (1999, Ink and blutack on mylar film, 150 x 60 cms), and some thoughts by writer Tom Lubbock about drawing blind.

  “Drawing from touch carries a quite different body of knowledge from drawing by eye. There is no light or shade, for one thing - a big difference, because even in the most linear eye-drawing light and shade make themselves felt. And even though the object may be presented from a particular aspect, there is no angle of vision in the visual sense. An object seen always has a profile, a visible edge, the line of its shape as it stands out silhouetted against the world behind it. An object felt has any number of contours running over its surface, but none of them has the special status of this profile.

Or again, in any view of an object there is large amount of that object's surface that cannot be seen. There's its far side, its back. There's whatever of its near side is concealed behind some other part of it. Drawing by eye always deals with these restricted visibilities. But drawing from touch has no such limits. It has no prejudice in favour of near side over far side, or in front of over behind. It deals indiscriminately with the whole tangible surface. On paper, all contours superimpose in confusion.”

(Tom Lubbock discussing Claude Heath’s work entitled Epstein’s Hands Sequence/ The Independent, Don’t Look Now , 08/10/2002)

At South East Dance Studios

This week we are rehearsing at South East Dance Studios in Hextable, working with one of the charcoal images on the wall. The drawing on the wall is created through a movement task: to find a point together where falling becomes inevitable. My aim is to bring the audience closer to the subtle negotiations that constantly occur between the three performers during this task, and to the visual art work that is created alongside. I still have so many questions about the identity and the relationships between these two things that are happening simultaneously. 

We experimented with different colours and materials to arrive at drawings that have some more distinct marks and that still remind us of the movement that just happened. While the drawings are an accidental product we are still searching for something more concise. Even within the limitations of the task there are so many options of how to hold the charcoal and where in the body to initiate movement from, of what and how to trace. A more rigorous and simpler approach seems to lead towards something  more expressive. The drawings begin to appear more systematic. They look like dense, concentrated accumulations of lines. They are extracting some information about the perceived movement of the body without creating any usable notation. However, there is something very exciting about the possibility that each audience member could observe the creation of the drawing, and then could revisit the drawing itself at a later point, remembering their own experience of the performance.

I keep coming back to Toni Orrico's work. I like how he beliefs in and continuosly explores the potential of his  body to find a new form of precision.



Penwald: 5: wrists on walk from Tony Orrico on Vimeo.

Tracing Gestures at The Place

 I started working on the next development phase for 'Tracing Gestures'. I am joined by a new team of performers, Richard Court, Aaron Markwell and Stephen Moynihan. We have been exploring a range of tasks in which we use drawing and video recording as a medium to capture fragments of each other's movements and physicalities. The first two weeks of rehearsal have been a test of our observation and listening ability, searching for detail and precision. I feel quite touched by the performers' quiet and continuous generosity in these questioning interactions. I keep leaving the studio strangely happy at the end of the day, and slightly panicked, wanting to find a good way to share this intimate and subtle process with an audience. And knowing that it might escape me.

At TrinityLaban

I just had the pleasure to spend 5 weeks with 17 graduating dance students at TrinityLaban! We created a short work entitled Tatjana. Bettina John designed our costume and Louise Miriam Hynes the lighting.

The work was performed at Laban Theatre on 2nd and 3rd July alonside the other commissioned works created by Matthias Sperling, Marie Rotie, Charles Linehan and Lea Anderson.

Read a review by Fenella Kennedy here

Photos by Stephen Berkley White @ TrinityLaban 2015

Family Portrait

In April and May 2015 Juan José Guerra-Valiente and me have been working with families living in Westminster. We have created a series of portraits combining drawing and movement. The project was generously supported by Westminster Adult Education Service and the Arts Council England. Have a look here at our workshop documentation.