Ecological Bodying

Performance Creation/Research, Dance/Somatics, Practice/Theory

Creation—Performance

How do we sustain the openness of creation/rehearsal period in the performance?  How do we create propositions that invites the audience into the performance? Billy kept wanting the piece to open and open and open- pushing it to something we had no idea would happen, letting it totally go. In his demands I am reminded of the idea of working against domination as choreography, where domination refers to the inability to let the people one deals with any chance to redefine the situation in their own terms (Stengers). Stengers writes that in taking risk, the instigators of the propositions have to take the risk to be bing kicked out of his or her standpoint. Ruth wanted structure so that each audience member, regardless of whether they attended art events or not could enter in and find a way to connect to the piece. She wanted to have clear stations for the children so that they were supported. Ruth wanted a babysitter for her youngest son because if he was there he would want to be holding onto her for the night. We struggled with devising ways to have a container that allowed something new to emerge, while also containing the multiple needs of the multi generational group.
We questioned, how do we collectively explore the propositions, through the questions, stories and interactions of the people coming to the show?

During the creative process and the performance we kept asking the question “where is the river now?” In asking the question we push the process to always locating and never settling into being located. There is no final location only the process or activity of locating, or a coming into different kinds of relation.

Within our rehearsal/performance the different scores enabled a co-creating of an affective space. It was a space of forces rather than fixed co-ordinates. In Erin Manning’s book Relationscapes she writes of relational spaces as experiential, haptic, rather than Euclidean or Cartesian. The individuals moving within it became an integral part of the relational structures between forces that generated the space, the space itself becoming a manifestation of the forces that we exude as living beings, forces that go beyond the confines of the skin. The space was not something around them, nor were they additions that inhabited the space, rather “both body and space…were experienced as alive with potential movement.” (Manning:2009,p.15.)

drawing score, draw the relation unfolding

drawing score, draw the relation unfolding

during the performance:
we are interested in playing with multiple attentions
we set scores or propositions but then each person could shift or play or make up other ones
In working within the idea of choreography we are interested in playing with space and time.
Some of the audience afterwards said they felt like they were drifting. Not always sure what to do or where to watch. It felt like a kind of meandering. The river that runs through our neighbourhood is slow and sluggish in some areas, and quick and bubbly in others. These different speeds create different feelings of time and we played with letting these different speeds choreograph the dance.
The children fell into exploring the space easily. They made up games, played with ideas, created sculptures with the stick, took leaves from outside and painted them into the painting and began climbing the rope.

One grandmother brought her son who was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and autism. She told us she thought she would only stay for a little bit but her grandson was happily moving about between the different stations, playing with things and the shifting space between things, building structures and running through and around people and sometimes inviting her to dance with him.