Intro to 'the bridge'

A 'bridge of words' to describe movement principles is coming out of this research that will form the basis of choreographic exploration and workshopping. These terms are forming the backbone of my 'sociokinetic framework', which is being shaped as I go along. The concepts are coming from two sources of data that I am investigating - everyday movement in social settings, and theoretical material from literature. The 'bridge' will cross the divide between everyday movement and dance. Words that are being added to 'the bridge' are being adopted if they meet the following criteria:

• i/ they have emerged as a response to what I am observing

• ii/ they are new or different to the way I habitually talk about, hear, or read about movement and dance

I have no idea how long this bridge will be. At this point in time it contains 6 building blocks:

- avoidance & detours

- making space

- sanctified touch (violation &/or approval)

- equilibrium

- ratios of control (self vs environment)

- space-against

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reflection - 200907

thoughts emerging from Renaud Barbaras’s Desire and Distance and his discussion of Bergson’s critique of the metaphysics of nothingness (related ideas from Yves-Alain Bois and Rosalind Kraus in their book Formless and their examination of works of art that explore the theme of ‘formlessness’ also have a floating influence)

o as Barbaras states, paraphrasing Bergson, objects don’t come out of ‘nothing’ because ‘nothing’ as a reality is an impossibility, so objects come out of the objective ‘all’ – an existence that is full of ‘not empty’
o there is only ‘substance’, which has not appeared out of nothing, but is background, source, and outcome all at once
o this is a flattening to an irremovable one-ness that merges all effects into primary causes that loop or double back onto themselves at an essential level – i.e. matter is self generating
o this removes ‘nothing’ from the role of reality’s ‘other’
o it removes materiality from the idea of an ultimate genesis and makes it an un-made constant (there was no ‘big bang’, no ultimate beginning to everything – such concepts are an impossibility on the level of experiential or known reality)
o materiality is the un-made maker of all that is made and un-made
o materiality is a permanent, ontological ‘static’ ceaselessly fluctuating with activity of one sort or another (nothing is free of it, there is always movement somewhere within a thing or place)
o materiality actualises non-nothingness as indestructible in a continuum that is self-given
o “from dust to dust” means there is only dust (Duchamp grew dust piles, he called it ‘dust breeding’, and deliberately incorporated it as a ‘painting’ layer in his work – Bois, Y. & Krauss, R. Formless, a user's guide. New York: Zone Books, 1997. p.226, & note 2, p.284)
o framed in this way, movement in the everyday takes on a different shade – things are forever bubbling and brewing in the present – a present that never goes away – the changes are in a location’s self-changing processes – this takes action that is normally thought of and perceived as linear and directional in a spatio-temporal sense, its ‘passing-through’ quality, and fixes or cements it in place so that it can’t move in or out of the static ever-present moment – all it is doing is self-altering itself while remaining glued against the ongoing surrounding moment
o as perpetual fluctuations in and of the constancy of the moment-location, movement becomes part of locations that change partially in an illusory way, or more accurately perhaps, in a partial way, in that materiality never goes away and neither does the moment and neither does ‘location’ – this reveals a conceptual split – because moving bodies move into new locations, backgrounds and locations change around them and are continually replaced, but the phenomena of ‘background’ or ‘location’ never goes away, body’s not only ‘pass through’ these, they also ‘carry’ locations around them as a physical constant which they can never shed – so on one level movement can be seen as the kaleidoscopic changing of a fixed reality – and in this sense, people are always attached to location and are of it as embedded aspects - no matter where they are, people are always embedded in environments because they can’t be anywhere else at the same time
o conventional understandings of space and movement are based on the experience of being able to move from one location to another – this understanding acknowledges a separateness between figure and ground that allows the moving bit to relocate itself in space – this ‘separating’ ability is the basis of object-hood, which imbues a thing with existential independence – but this independence gets over-inflated and bestowed as a condition of material reality itself, i.e. material reality has an independence that separates it from the backdrop of space conceived as a blank emptiness, as ‘nothing’ – but when ‘nothingness’ is removed, material reality, or object-ness, immediately gets swallowed into a background of its own kind, therefore losing total independence as it merges back into a sea of materiality and becomes part of sticky existential textures and patterns that are responsible for forming and sustaining it
o in this way it seems to me that ‘separateness’ has the same illusory quality as ‘nothingness’ – separateness is a slither that surrounds a thing and allows mobility within environments – like some kind of invisible lubricant surrounding every distinct thing, contributing to movement in the world – of course a sliver of invisible lubricant between things doesn’t exist, but either way objects are bestowed with an existential power to break boundaries in space, which is an ability to exert freedom from space – but the independence of objects to break boundaries within locations is always within the context that they can’t break out of the backdrop and frame of materiality which in this sense becomes a sea which not only immerses every single THING but is completely self-immersing and pinpointed in the unchanging constancy of ‘now-time’ – which is another slither with an illusory slipperiness
o there is no frame surrounding BIG reality on the outside of which is empty space – there is no elsewhere outside of reality, only somewhere else boundlessly within it – there are no boundaries and divides separating things within reality, these are all infinitesimally intricate parts of its organisational immediacy and its reality as a dynamic, systemic ‘organism’ (dangerously close here to hylozoism!)
o movement is now no longer about the ‘space-between’ (which, as a non-existent slither, has thinned away to join the non-existence of nothing-ness) and is now about the ‘space-against’
o movement is now both changing, sequential, linear, evaporational, conditional, temporary, transitional, transitory, temporal, procedural, etc as well as permanent, present, non-destructive, fixed, unconditional, immoveable, substantive, etc
o the distinction between presence and process is removed by expanding a way of viewing that sees each of these as the other
o this seems to locate and spiral the mechanics of what I am observing more into a location rather than simply across its surface – it’s a burrowing device that peels back a surface never to find ‘nothing’ underneath, but instead finds structural-organic pulsations and integrated patterns of activity and interaction whose idiosyncrasies belie completeness – the productive exchange between the universal particle (the speck of dust) and the idiosyncratic particular
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reflection - 270907

theme of control

"People typically feel in control in their normal surroundings and less in control in strange places."

(Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the flesh. New York: Basic Books. 1999. p. 276)

there is a relationship between self control and environmental familiarity - also between controlling one's actions and controlling oneself

control = self-control / ease / comfort / security / well being / assuredness / etc

What do environments do to help people maximise self-control (and not), whilst also controlling them? (Banks, for instance, may be more controlling, while malls less so in respect to directing movement and allowing/disallowing activities)

Self-control vs environmental control - when and why do people willingly give control over to environments? - when they want something - and when they have no choice, i.e. when they are forced

Being in one's normal places of residing compared to new locations - in normal places of residing, the space is an extension of body and self - not so in new and unfamiliar places (until, that is, these become familiar) - the feeling is of being 'inside' own space, and an 'outsider' in unfamiliar space (paralleled to being inside and outside of one's own body - i.e. varying states of self control - e.g. the 'stoner' is 'out of it' or 'off their face')

key themes - inside and outside (insider and outsider) / ratios and relationships of control between self and environment (when and how do these align and when are they misaligned?) - these are all about movements adjusting to and being adjusted by spatial factors that generate states of being willingly or unwillingly a part of the environment, where self control and identity/independence is facilitated (enhanced, encouraged, modified, influenced, maximised) or thwarted

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how movement is helping my reflective processes

~ when I am typing I often give myself a structure where I do 5 minutes at the keyboard broken up by 5 minutes improvised movement in the small space of my room – I am religious with it, I watch the clock for both activities, and alternate between them – my rationale for doing this is because I want to access contributions that my moving body can make to my investigation – because the theme is ‘embodied meaning’, I want total body movement to make an equal contribution and have equal status to my concentrated thought processes and typing hands – I also want to make sure that everything I am writing can be tested, explored, understood, and applied to movement, particularly as I’m working on choreographic outcomes further down the track – so when I get up to improvise, sometimes what I am writing about directs the movement and gives it intention and meaningful-ness – by making it meaningful I am looking for more meaning – which is a demand I am making on my moving self, a demand that at times gets a bit demanding in forcing movement to provide or supply its hidden gems – surprisingly however, the pressures of expectation (the pressures of pressure – the oppressions of pressure – the demands of pressure – the pressures of demand), don’t interfere and movement often (seemingly nonchalantly and in its own unhurried self-contained way) delivers, even if inside itself it may find the methodical regularity of the demands unspontaneous, forced, and tiresome – this is about a relationship of control where the mind is placing prescriptive demands on the body for it to deliver some appropriately insightful response – sometimes it pre-attaches value to movement, by specifying its focus, and restricts or conditions movement’s discovery of its own response values to a question – it’s an area where the body’s wisdom is doubted somewhat – however if moving is its own kind of thought, then it doesn’t need the accompaniment, rationale, guidance (like a blind person being led), or direction (or doubts) from the mind, ALL THE TIME – the difference, in me, between moving from a thought-centred way and in a non-thought centred way mostly affects my spine and pelvis – vertical spinal equilibrium, which is a natural state, comes into play when I don’t think – if I want my spine to move more I have to activate thought and remember to use it – this is about equilibrium’s connection to thought-led movement vs un-thought-led movement (movement thinking itself) – this also applies to the way my pelvis anchors itself spatially and has to be ‘remembered’ and freed of its habitual functionality and stillness in respect to balance and as the base point or ground of spinal verticality – thought-produced off-centred movement and un-thinking equilibrial movement have completely different energy/effort states, the first is more extreme than the second I find –– of course ‘thinking’ movement in order to free it is often only an initial stage, the process is like taking a toboggan up a hill and then giving it a push, after that the effort is taken over by the sled’s own momentum and minimised to responding to the contours of the slope – the same with movement, after the initial push, it freely transgresses its own confines of its own accord – un-restricted by prescriptive conditions, non-directed movement responding to its own preferential mechanisms, is at times minimal and to my mind initially uninteresting and banal, but this lack of interest disappears when unexpected insights are invariably elicited and produced – an example is the young ‘flapping arms’ man from my Chichester street footage – I was doing non-directed movement after I had been writing earlier in the day about Lakoff and Johnson’s statement that controlling one’s actions equates with self-control in its widest sense, and about environmental familiarity and unfamiliarity producing ‘insider/outsider’ feelings, and my movement was very banal and simplistic – I was just in a low energy vertical state flapping my arms and kicking my feet when the image of the ‘flapping boy’ floated into my mind and my body instantly showed me how to understand his action in respect to the location and the discussion about control (which I’ve now added to my analytical sociokinetic data), and how prescribed activity in this particular public environment is flexible in what it allows, but is monitored carefully – so thank you moving-self – the organic eyes of onlookers become environmental eyes that insert themselves into the masonry (and quite literally too with the growing numbers of inconspicuous surveillance cameras) – embodying architecture by giving it sight

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reflection - 220907

more thoughts on care

"...in order to protect oneself from what one fears — this is the strategic achievement of anxiety, which arms the subject, in advance, against the onslaught of trauma, the blow that takes one by surprise."

(Rosalind Kraus, in Formless: a user's guide. New York: Zone Books, 1997. p. 196)

o what are accidents? they disrupt action – in big and small ways
o but what are they? and why are they hard to fit into the scheme of things?
o they obviously have causes – so one aspect is very apparent – but they’re not planned – so the cause sits both outside of and within a chosen, undertaken piece of action – they show up a moment of flaw in the deliberation and consciousness of the doing of an act by revealing that awareness levels had been thresholded too low – to a point where attentiveness had been minimalised to a blur and an element of blindness and inattention allowed to emerge and cause harm
o the automatic doing of habitual acts still require an amount of attention, so attention levels are an adjustable factor, they are lifted or lowered, but most of the time they are lowered to levels that push the edge of what we can get away with
o lowering attention levels conserves energy – this is an energy efficiency mechanism – allowing energy to be directed at new or specific areas of the moment
o habitual tasks, like chores that are repeated frequently, may be done semi-automatically because they have lost interest or new-ness value, so learnt behaviour takes over to which the least amount of monitoring attention is given – however too much daydreaming when driving the car can produce a level of attention deficit with catastrophic consequences – or stubbing a toe going into the bathroom through distractedly and hurriedly misjudging the distance between your foot and the door is the consequence of a lower attentiveness level with irritating results
o all of this is about accidents that are the direct outcome of misjudged attention threshold levels
o what is significant is the relationship between attention and habit in everyday movement and the existence of attention levels that are monitored and that are continually changing and adjusting
o attention is a radar that needs monitoring – go off for a quick coffee and you might miss the enemy boat, the UFO, or the distress signal
o further to this – attention IS monitoring – not just something that is monitored (otherwise all you have is ‘monitoring the monitor’ and ‘aware of awareness’)
o awareness of ‘attention as a monitor’ changes its tactility and reveals/amplifies the physicality of consciousness
o what does monitoring do?
o it scans – it measures – it alerts – it evaluates – it judges – it’s a gatekeeper – it assesses – it sums up – it orientates – it signals – it scouts – it informs – it’s wary – it’s suspicious – it questions – it’s cautious – it’s exact – it’s selective – it tests – it stabilises (hmmm… instinctive self-care attached to attentiveness sounds very paranoid! - self-care is deeply connected to the 'structure of anxiety' Krauss talks about in the quote above)

reflection - 210907

random thoughts

o care is about ‘not-to-destroy’ things – it is about preservation – preserving the security of a thing – care is the basis of all movement – and it has come from coordinating skills – and learning how to become coordinated
o with my in-built attitude of care, I have respect for objects in the world and in my immediate environments (although I might heirarchicise these using preference criteria and importance) – generally speaking, I want to keep the world intact and leave objects alone so that they can peacefully go about their duty servicing my and others’ needs – everything sits in a state of readiness and availability – waiting to be used according to melodies and patterns of movement that choose or determine where physicalities alight (Gins and Arakawa’s ‘landing sites’)
o nature provides examples of things we can learn to duplicate - built environments duplicate ourselves
o dance movement is about rearranging body parts in different configurations and relations to each other - they're about manipulating self materiality for the sake of it
o I’m so surrounded by where I can’t go, I get used to it and instead focus on and accept the ‘where I can go’s’, most of the time I completely ignore and forget all the ‘where I can’t go’s’
o big wild movement is an aggression (perhaps all movement has the seeds of aggression) – it is a war against barriers – in open space it intimidates barriers and dares them to come near – in enclosed or narrow space, it is unhappy that it is forced towards stillness – it hates being dominated – movement is a dominator
o the difference between small and big space is the difference between the dark oppression of defeat and the open sunny light of victory
o open space smiles on abandonment
o the mechanical repetition of walking is built around straight lines and right angles which are established in the body locomotive as natural and primary – this is a stiffness and ploddy-plod digitisation that creates flow, evenness, and continuity through the disrupting effect of punctuated repetition – dance breaks and falls through walking’s barriers to catch itself in flow as a departure from the confined mechanistics of walking – flow brings in circularity that right angles and straight lines in the natural walk, postural, and sitting states of the body deny
o when dance is in empty space (like a studio), it has itself to explore, i.e. raw movement, or the architectural planes, designs, and surfaces of other dancers – the ground is a constant that is used maximally to compensate for the lack of other fixed objects
o when environmental factors/structures are introduced and impede open space – these alter and affect movement and immediately invite/attract/enforce interaction
o why straight lines and right angles are more natural for the body and movement is because they dominate the structural mechanics of the body itself – this is the basis for their predominance in built environments – the dominant angularity of built environments not only furnish movement economically, they mirror the body and are customised to its mechanistic form and dynamic (like sculptural moulds) – squares, rectangles, straight lines, etc are not un-organic when it comes to the human body – they are reflections of its dominant construction principles and features
o the body may have curved surfaces that themselves are identified as organic, but the breaks at the joints render it angular
o in movement, the body traces circles more freely than it can make them – the body is predominantly angular in its breaks and construction – the major exception is the spine, which can curve, twist, and become rounded – we can also curve the feet (with good arches) and rotate the forearm – the tongue is very good at circular shapes – but the joint-angled being that we are has no difficulty tracing curves and circles in many different movement ways in the immediate space surrounding the body – this allows us to experience circularity in ways that extend beyond the body’s physical capacity – we vacuum these traced curves back into ourselves as though they were of us and not of the air around us – this is a kind of kinaesthetic reversal – proprioceptive appropriation – we are insect-limbed with snaky torsos – we are climbers more than slitherers

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dance - ÉDUARD LOCK

AMELIA – la la la human steps [ on dvd ]


~ torah torah torah
~ attack attack attack
~ the thrill of speed
~ erotique
~ the body is a turbine
~ moving camera – swimming perspectives
~ film me film me film me
~ I am filming you, the camera replies
~ tight taut female bodies
~ straining to erupt from their musculature
~ the female as killing leg
~ behind in front in front behind
~ partnering that has only 2 sides
~ shadow support
~ hold hold hold
~ flick release
~ woman is the front of man
~ she faces him or is his face
~ a body face
~ his erotique body face made of her
~ put a woman in a man and a man in a woman and you get a smiling man and a serious woman
~ in every other respect their suited selves are the same
~ skin swapping
~ sharp edged
~ support given support taken
~ object object object
~ staged lives
~ dramatique erotique
~ puncture puncture puncture
~ grasping grabbing razored spinning
~ desolate con(front)ations
~ touched distance kept at arms’ reach
~ insatiable demand
~ pointe-shoe’d women powering over bent-knee’d men
~ there is work to do in this state-of-the-art arena
~ the human parts don’t fit
~ they super-charge it fractally
~ converging walls and 2 supports
~ the arms of man and the legs of woman
~ all meeting at revolving hips
~ manipulated on a spin point
~ strobe dancing
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postcript

~ if the woman’s hips are the spinning earth, if earth is read as the womb and nourisher of life, then this dance still makes masculine hands control its spin, i.e. God hands – but the hands are obsessed with their task and the men’s eyes never divert their focus from their intense concentration on the hips at hand – are they trying to get at something they can never know? - the secret of life’s source inside a womb not in their own bodies? – this interpretation of woman’s hips as spinning earth is viable given the setting – a concave world made of sloping walls – a bowl – the hollow of the pelvic bowl with a female dancer at the centre being spun from the hips – and, as per historical feminist literature showing that wo-man has no identity of her own, this dance has eroticised woman (naked legs and see-through tops) or elsewhere she is further fetishised in a man’s suit – woman made in the image of man’s choosing with no-where else in that sterile world of polished wood to be anything else – the only way out is up – but only the floating (and trespassing) Spirit-eye of the camera, like some invasive mechanical viewing implement being manipulated by a curator/collector of species, comes and goes from there to examine what’s been trapped and caught for its curiosity and fascination – a swimming zoom-presence that penetrates and rotates its own viewing in the way the choreography rotates the dancers, and their bodies and hips, or goes up high as the eye from above (the eye in the sky), or peers very closely into the woman’s eye but sees nothing except compliance – a woman’s eye, like the hips, unlike itself – a woman’s eye, a collected thing, that cannot pry in the way the prying camera eye, self permits – the object of fascination can only be handled this way and that, turned round, inspected, its quality appraised – serialised and categorised by the connoisseur – human liqueur for the cabinet – a matured product – expensive – there is no soil in this world, it doesn’t belong – and the men-servant-dancers can only do the eye-in-the-sky’s bidding, be its hands – making sure to duck under the woman’s blade-like arms and overly adamant gestures – or try to access her through competitive imitation that forms no bonds - parodic cross-signalling posed and turbo-charged as a mystique with a plaintive air

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dance - JULYEN HAMILTON

improvisation [ on dvd ]


~ solo figure dialoguing the space gracefully and articulately
~ stillnesses punctuate erupting expansions of physicality-activity
~ much looking up and crossing an upstage diagonal area with his back to the live audience (and camera – which is positioned high up at the back of the seating)
~ slapping and grabbing gestures and motifs in the start as though he is internally recounting some kind of story or pursuing an inner train of thought
~ playful physical melodies circulating his freedom, that rest back into reaching extensions of arms, body, and legs and then into gazing up into space above his head
~ he has a distance focus that gets dissected and slashes his body in opposing directions
~ he begins talking and this produces laughter and amusement – his dialogue is entertaining – does the talking take over from the earlier movement interest?
~ he revels in the freedom that the space, his body, and the attention affords
~ when he stops talking the movement quietens the laughter – he is casually virtuousic (extended travelling handstands, diving cartwheels, hovering jetés, mercurial and intricate changes of direction, unexpected level shifts, feline technical assuredness), but uses a lot of idiosyncratic gestures and eccentricities that are sobering rather than laughter-provoking
~ the 2nd bout of talking reflects on personal correspondence with and to a third person, it throws up the 4th wall and excludes the audience – he then dissolves this tactic and engages with the audience once more, this time talking about the doing of 2 things at the same time – which is what he is doing by talking and dancing simultaneously
~ if he couldn’t melodise his body so intricately the point of his value would be lost
~ it is audience-directed as a reverie of uncontained performance slippages and insertions into self – he is swimming in the deeper freedoms and ramblings of the psyche – talking forever with his body
~ his physical talk is as natural as speech, peopled and shaped by an imagination partially externalised by his behavioural and spoken entertainments and mannerisms
~ he has filled an empty space with invisible things inside and of himself that he brings in and then reveals – he reveals an abundance of physical history and dexterity and a narrative that is running and unfolding internally and occasionally articulated in speech, emotion, and characterisation
~ he is a travelling shape-shifter with a sizeable bag of tricks surrounded by his highly controlled and feigned virtuousic madness
~ he circle stamps the space in a pacing heavy walk (earlier it was with loping stallion jetés), spirals to the front then retreats to the back with his back to the audience, turns downstage and walks energetically as though he is going to exit through them, stops very close and does some enigmatic parting gesture with his hands, he then surveys them close-up, and then speaks confessionally and explanatorily – he produces more laughter in respect to decisions made backstage about the order of the show and what he is going to call his piece – he retreats upstage diagonally to the edge of the space in the direction of the stage exit, turns, and sings diagonally into the space – he then walks into the direction of his song, gradually dancing with his singing and occupying the centre area of the stage - at the end of his song-dance he bows and exits
~ there are subtle lighting shifts throughout the piece that open the space, close it and make him more intimate, or spill up under him when he is downstage to make him eerie
~ what does the space allow?
~ a lit opening in a darkness in which to look down and focus attention on the trapped but willing (mutually desired) occupancy of a physical minstrel who in both hurried and unhurried improvisations, journeys and weaves his body and the space in the psychic landscape of a momented and shared self-absorption
~ the space allows him to circulate and to buffet himself across its dimension – the darkness cushions and velvets his containment like a padded cell
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dance - MERCE CUNNINGHAM

TORSE: LEFT SCREEN [ on dvd ]


~ sounds of dancers feet squeaking on tarquette or thumping in the landings from jumps
~ geometrical movements and spatial formations
~ split video screen
~ clumsy unison work
~ structure features groups ranging from 10 down through to 2, with isolated solo work
~ split screen is a viewing decision – binocular
~ regimented movement with held and posed waiting interludes – regimentation is a theme
~ preoccupied with tendus – the tendu is the central driving movement force
~ vertical ‘balleticality’ – a narrow movement vocabulary tightly bound up in mummy wrappings that keep the arms stuck out at the sides all the time – this is the coppelia doll as a wooden anatomical artists modelling toy (stripped of her frilly clothing) – marionettes on the open stage clunking around as per the stringed manipulations
~ the formality keeps the space spatialised (intimacy is sporadic, fleeting, and also formal) – spatialised space is where space between is consciously maintained
~ the spacing and regimentation is an obedience to structural demands
~ height competitions between the more and less flexible
~ as the space connects and divides the space-between so too do the small rectangular video screens sitting alongside one another (like two square eyes) within the larger screen (the skull)
~ the darkness that borders the lit dancing space is mirrored by the dark screen on which the two smaller screens sit
~ the dance is a classroom with lots of technical dance exercises being practiced – or the classroom has migrated to the stage
~ the right screen turned blue and was empty of image and dance momentarily – sky? – and then the previous dancing screen resumed
~ dancers enter and exit from the bordering darkness
~ these are fine articulate dancers who a have a casualness in the feet which makes them seem noticeably sloppy in the numerous ballet moves and extensions
~ more waiting in posed classical tendu positions with arms in 3rd
~ the dance of the almost-ballet that has been around so long now that it has its own completeness and can’t be said to be an almost-anything anymore except itself
~ grid patterning
~ the sounds of jumps inserted again – this is conscious because the sparse electronic score died down in order for the feet thumps to be amplified unaccompanied
~ patterns on patterns on patterns
~ the patternated body
~ forcing/labouring the big jump – the ground is woven in floor travelling sequences (mostly box step variations) and pushed off for jumping
~ punctuations of little partnering and lifting moments – the sporadic and structurally isolated nature of these make them like a motif that emphasises the off-the-ground and relentless airborne nature of the dance
~ everything is off the ground and up – retirés, relevés, demi-pointes, arabesques, sautés, beats, cabrioles, assemblés, battement, extended and lifted port-de-bras – this is a mad hot-footing on hot coals
~ there is so much anti-ground it becomes a battle and the dancers lose – eternal body flights of the flightless
~ flight is the desire and after a time and with relentless perseverance, the illusion gets believed – the argument for the possibility of unassisted human flight is won
~ facings are mostly camera (i.e. front) oriented – the camera never leaves its fixed location centre front, it only zooms in and out to dissect or enlarge particular groupings or individuals – but the body and choreography also utilise circular pathways and multiple facings that orient the front of the body in other directions
~ gaps and spaces are harnessed
~ repetition is a dominant factor – it is as if the dance is going over and over itself like a photocopier producing endlessly varied versions of a piece of material in an attempt to… what?
~ it’s like a tickertape or court transcript that goes on and on trying to… and now it just flickers out inconclusively, but not till it has reintroduced a movement that takes the dancers down to one knee for the second time – the first was at the beginning
~ the overall impression is of a community of uni-skinned dancer/androgynes busily and concentratedly carrying personal semi-largish basket-bundles of space in front of them as they travel around, across, through, in, and out of the performance area (which is hot on the feet) (– it’s also like an egg and spoon race) – perhaps the space-baskets have their clothes in them and they’re on the way to the river
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dance - SHOBANA JEYASINGH

animating architecture: FOLIAGE CHORUS [ on dvd ]


~ artificial elements – sea / birds / insects / nature
~ otherworldly – projections of branches
~ transposing nature onto/into geometric hard-edged architecture – in which it wouldn’t grow
~ projecting something onto surfaces and occupying its space in ways that compensate for its exteriorly cold functionality and aesthetically death-like surface visage
~ giving it artistic translucency and life to provide/replace what it’s not
~ the journey of the digitised subconscious featuring futuristic skull-caped androgynes
~ organicising and biologising inanimate environments that are now the ‘natural’ in which we live
~ romanticising steel – fish bodies swimming in translucent blue-lit balconies – all fakery with digital bubbles and weed – space and ocean – sub- and ‘over-’ conscious – caught midlevel between 2 heights – super-ego and unconscious – outer and inner spaces
~ dancers connected in linear relationship with fronts dominantly facing audience
~ travelling sequence as a group keep tight proximity, establishing connection and sameness
~ common twining snaky movement mimicking tendrils of vegetative growth
~ extending out along space exploratively, then opening and spreading across space, inhabiting its nooks and crannies, with the aid of projection, which matches the growth and expansion (proliferation) of the expanding dance tree
~ emphasis on slithering and climbing onto, into, and against the spaces boundaries and ledges
~ a breaking of the 4-unit at the point of arrival in the centre of the balcony, individuals work in unison facing the audience with equidistant space between them – establishing themselves now as independent offshoots from the earlier rhizome – fledgling trees that grow, assisted by the projection, into thick enveloping vegetation
~ the process of arrival and growth is then reversed at the end to signal exit and the decline or retracting process of death, decay, decline, or the seasonal withdrawal and disappearance of vegetative growth
~ humans imitating vegetation in an architectural space made purposely barren and screen-like in order to artificially control the life it allows in – the backdrop (building) may be well-meaning in its desire to make its organic mobile occupants more prominent and visible – but the danger to me is that its neutrality has a kind of quarantining effect – by removing anything from its design that might distract, it sanitises whatever occupies it and challenges/imposes the cult of the modernist white canvas as the dominant universalising medium for art – this is also the order and soft tyranny of the pristine – it is like the radiation chamber in which the dangerous messiness that art sometimes is, is placed to be made safe (one of the unfortunate aspects of bureaucratisation which in every other regards is a benefit maximiser)
~ the 2nd section used 2 big round columns, a wall, and open space - this section was energetic and had a different theme from the balcony section – the dancers embraced their bodies around the pillars at the start (vegetation growing up them – perhaps this is the linking idea to the balcony) and then used them as supports to launch from, lean against, flow around, erase and rebirth themselves – a place for coming and going and echoing, through much use of matching pair work and synchronised 4 work, the repetitive regularity of the columns
~ this section with the assertive columns and the bigger than necessary open space, which was cropped down to a smaller size by a red rectangular light that defined and established the performing area, produced more dynamic, fast-paced movement, accented, occasionally air-borne, energetic – in contrast to the narrow balcony in which the movement was cautious and slow-paced - greater physical abandon and risk in the open space, and greater care and deliberation in the more confined space
~ as with Akram Khan, the dancers moved in synchronised unison that was not as tight as the choreography looked like it might have wished it to be – they were more confident in solo work, but in the unison work it was apparent that 2 were secure with the timing and phrasing (and form) and the other 2 were following them and not producing the same clarity or exactness of movement design
~ dwarfed by the pillars, the dance was lopsided, and lived under the overhang that the pillars supported, like little animals coming in and out of their holes, but a bit timid of full exposure and freedom – as though, like animals on leads, the pillars were not going to let them get too far away
~ in the end it looked like an excuse to decorate a bit of building with some available dance art, which is fine if it is a love and thanks transaction towards an environment effectively and responsively (responsibly) devoted to reciprocate as a replenishing, servicing, housing, and vitalising resource for artistic activity, well-being, and growth
~ so – there are 2 sections in this work and 2 environmental metaphors:– the first: the building has lots of open space, cut out spaces, and glass – so the metaphor created by the dance is about fish and fish tanks – referring to the fact that people in the building are connected most of the time to 2-way vision – they can see out and the out can see in
- the second: the dancers hug the 2 big pillars and live in, out, and around them and the sheltered space they hold up – the nurturing and sheltering provided by the pillars, the cold mothering pillars, represent or symbolise the support that the building has been designed to provide the arts and young fledgling artists who, like infants growing, need protection and sustenance to help them mature and venture out into the wide spaces of the world (towards the sea of faces of the audience, the representatives in the symbolic drama of the horizons of the world) to become pillar-like elsewhere (in the partnering sections in the open space, the dancers repeated movements on each others’ bodies that they did at the start against the pillars)
~ the architect in his interview says the rounded shapes of the pillars create more flow and that as people are organic, they make a ‘foil’ for the geometry of the building, he said that if the building was more organic, then people would be camouflaged
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reflection - 150907

directions matter

o in empty boundless space, directions have no meaning because there’s nothing to create direction
o in the bounded real spaces of the world, all directions matter
o I can go down the same stretch of road to and from where I live and the importance of each of those directions is inversely proportional to whichever way I am going
o the importance of whether I am going towards or away always favours the direction I am heading
o in one moment, when I am facing and heading towards the destination of where I live, that direction has no rival in importance and significance, but in the next moment, if I have to turn around and go the other way (or any other way for that matter), the importance of the direction I had been going immediately dissolves and disappears
o I create the importance of any direction relative to my purpose
o not only do I establish direction in choosing what to do and where to go, I also elevate its importance
o I thicken it and it becomes paramount above all other directions
o I extract it from anonymity and the deep and cosy companionship of its friends and singularise it in stature above the rest
o but I am fickle, its elevation is always short-lived and totally tailored to my needs – once I reach my destination and I have no need of the direction and route that got me there, it is immediately dismissed and forgotten – or remembered fondly if something interesting worth noting happened (like snapshots from holidays and adventure memorabilia)
o from differentiation and distinction it is discarded and merged once more into multidirectional surround-space – the porridge of non-distinction
o this is one of the deep body grammars that Morris talks about to do with facing and orientation
o directional space is a narrow groove – body width wide and conceptual
o it is also a linking element in the structure of spatial mobility
o direction stretches space together linking points and locations
o linking spaces are measured and quantified by time, distance, and effort
o they are physicalised and personalised to individuals and use
o by facilitating movement through space, directions extend the physicality of the body
o distance is a form of diminishing inconvenience – its inconvenience diminishes the closer the destination becomes

more on ‘avoidance’
o I can move because I have nothing to avoid OR I move freely when I have nothing to avoid
o so I choose to move in the places where avoidance is minimalised
o this defines ‘open’ space
o open spaces are merely spaces that have been enclosed in particular ways – they are defined and consequent on configurational and design elements

theory - ARCHITECTURAL SPACE / Bill Hillier

Bill Hillier
A theory of the city as object: or, how spatial laws mediate the social constructions of urban space. Proceedings, 3rd International Space Syntax Symposium, Atlanta. 2001


K E Y Q U O T E S

culturAL variaNTS & microeconomic invariaNTS - SPATIAL LAWS confine/restrain &/or generate/extend MOVEMENT

…spatial configurations, through their effect on movement, first shape, and then are shaped by, land patterns and densities. 02.1

…although there are strong cultural variations in different regions of the world, there are also powerful invariants. 02.1

…socio-cultural factors generate the differences by imposing a certain local geometry on the local construction of settlement space, while micro-economic factors, coming more and more into play as the settlement expands, generate the invariants. 02.1

…there are certain invariants in the social forces - or more precisely in the relations between social forces - which drive the process of settlement aggregation. 02.2

…there are autonomous spatial laws governing the effects on spatial configuration of the placing of objects such as buildings in space… 02.2

…social forces working through the spatial laws create both the differences and the invariants in settlement forms. 02.2

The link between [differences and invariants] is […] movement, but whereas the ‘space-to-function’ mechanism was driven by the effect of spatial configuration on movement, the space-creating mechanism is driven by the influence of movement on space, and so can be considered ‘function-To-space’ mechanism. 02.2

…it seems likely that human beings already intuitively 'know' these laws (though they cannot make them explicit), and can exploit them as agents to create social effects through spatial behaviours at a very young age. 02.3

…by placing an object in the centre of a space we create more obstruction to lines of sight and potential movement than if we place it at the edge. 02.3

…the principle of 'centrality' set out in the 'theory of partitioning' ~ If we place a partition midway on a line, it creates more - and more evenly distributed - gain […] in the universal distance […] than if we place it peripherally… 02.3

An object placed centrally in a space will increase universal distance and interrupt intervisibility more than one placed at the edge. 02.3

…culture is a variable and puts its imprint mainly on the local texturing of space, generating its characteristic differences, whereas micro-economics is a constant and puts its imprint mainly on the emerging global structure of the settlement in a more or less invariant way. The reason one works locally and the other globally is due to the ways in which each uses the same spatial laws to generate or restrain potential movement in the system. 02.3

…local processes are largely residential [and are] the primary distributed loci of socio-cultural identities, it being through domestic space and its environs (including local religious and cultural buildings) that culture is most strongly reproduced through the spatiality of everyday life. 02.10

…it is the micro-economic activity of markets, exchange and trading that is most strongly associated with the ‘integration core’… 02.10

…the integration core of public space also reflects the spatiality of everyday life, but in this case it tends both to the global, because micro-economic activity in its nature will seek to extend rather than confine itself and also to the culturally nonspecific, in that it in these activities, and therefore these spaces, that people mix and cultural differences are backgrounded. 02.10

This is the critical difference between the two aspects of the settlement creating process: the socio-cultural component is idiosyncratic and local while the micro-economic component is universal and global. 02.10

…why should socio-cultural life generate one kind of spatial pattern and micro-economic life another? The answer […] lies in the fact that the relation between micro-economic activity and space, like the relation between culture and space, is largely mediated by movement, but micro-economic […] in a universal and global way, culture in a local and specific way. 02.10
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my observation key terms in this in respect to movement are ‘extending’ and ‘confining’ – that culture confines activity and specifies it in particular ways, whilst micro-economic activity extends interaction and movement through the use of generically designed spaces – the question for me is: whilst ‘variable’, i.e. culturally specific, movement can be easily identified, what do ‘invariable’ movements look like in micro-economic environments? And doesn’t ‘invariable’ in this context simply indicate a new kind of culture, the ‘globalisation’ culture, which is different from something like a biological invariant? Given that people act differently in these different environments (i.e. residential and micro-economic), does this gradually produce a dissolving of this divide? Does the global eventually invade the local and produce an equilibrium that dissolves and amalgamates the two? I guess this is an impossibility because in such a situation all differences would disappear.

theory - PHENOMENOLOGICAL SPACE / David Morris

David Morris
The Sense of Space. Albany: State University of New York. 2004

K E Y Q U O T E S

TOPOLOGIES OF expression & enveloping - PHENOMENAL GEOMETRIES OF THE BODY

The sense of space is the basis of all social experience and of perceptual experience in general. vii

...from the crossing of body and world to space via living perception. 5

…the geometry of the world, the structure of lived space, is not reflective of a mathematical geometry, but of a living, ‘phenomenal geometry’ of the body… 101

The lived body ‘sums up’ space as lived space. 101

What counts in this expressive ‘geometry’ of the body is the way that life takes up parts spread out alongside one another and envelops them in one another through movement as a unified whole that expresses an attitude towards the world. 102

…body-world movement generates envelopes of perception: an inner envelope in relation to the body as place, an outer envelope in relation to larger place… 126

…our sens of depth ultimately expresses a deep grammar of body-world movement… 126

…the sens of depth is… rooted in the crossing of the body and world, and is labile... discovered only in an expressive body, and in a nature in which movement gives rise to expression. 127

Our study suggests a pre-objective, bodily care, a care in movement. 127

If our being were not fundamentally care, then there would be no world and no objects. 127

…the topology of enveloping stretches our body in space and time [and] roots us in place… 127

The moving body 'translates' things in terms of its own movements… 127

…in the point where world and body cross, we do not quite have complete volumes meeting, but volumes moving together to generate envelopes… 127

If, as Merleau-Ponty might put it, I see the mountain, it is the mountain out there that makes itself be seen in me. 128

…in terms of body-world movement, […] by thinking that this reversibility is a marker of a care in movement, […] body and world give themselves to one another in order to move back and separate. 128

…the cultivation of place "localizes caring," and this suggests an intimate connection between care and place, one that would be rooted in the body. 128

…the topo-logic of a body that senses depth is not merely a topology of functional envelopment but of caring in movement, care in place. 128

...the moving engagement with the world implies earth, something that supports habitual body-world movement. 149

Facing is […] an index of responsibility and care in the deep grammar of our facing bodies. 154

…the topology of residing, and our sens of orientation via our bodies, open into an ethical dimension, and so too does our sense of space. 154

...our basic concerns - sexual, political, ethical, and so on - are often put in terms of orientation. 158

The deep grammar of the body surfaces in our words. 158

Metaphors of depth, solidity, volume, and expansiveness are used to describe someone’s being, whereas metaphors of orientation are used to describe their relation to their being in the world… 158

Our sens of orientation thus involves a moving care for place in the face of others […] habitat is the topic of ethology. 158

[The] ethical dimension of lived space [comes from] turning to developmental psychology and studying how our sens of space develops through moving and growing, by showing how care in movement is integral to development and facing others... 158

…the topology of concern [is] a link between posture, concern an emotion, over the course of development. 159

…the developmental crossing of the body and the social world [is] not simply kinetic, but involves emotional care in movement. 172

…our sense of space sways with changes in our emotional, social, moving, and postural relation to the world. 173

The ethical and spatial cannot be pried apart [they] encircle one another… 176

…ethical relation is textured as a doubled openness: it is an openness to the other through an openness to movement, place, the social, nature. 176

Our articulation of a sense of space is thus a movement away from death, a movement that at once faces death as a limit and turns that limit into something else… 177

…the sense of space […] belongs to a moving being who crosses limits and in doing so has a sense of space that always implicitly signals the limit of death, signals something that is there before us that can be neither encompassed nor sealed off. 178

If we feel death in our hand touching the bench, we also feel life in the hand of the other… 178

Merleau-Ponty detects a circuit of care in the phenomenon of double touch… 178

…insights... into the relation between spatial perception, movement, place, emotion, posture, and development […] suggest specific approaches to this relation that would add to existing investigations. 178

Our sense of space is the living sense that we take away from our movement in place… 179

...place is movement moved, movement spread out and traced in the texture of things. 180

In place the moving sens of living, building, growing, verges toward non-sens by being sedimented, traced, and spread out in unmoving things. 180

Lived space is the sens we make of our movement in place, lived space is the sens of place reanimated in our movement. 180

What we detect in lived space is a deeper complicity between space and the moving body. Lived space is what appears to us when we move in place, the sense we take away from place in moving through it. But this suggests that there is perhaps a different sense of space. When we move through place, we encounter a space sensed by our movement, that is, given sense by our articulating movement. When we do not merely move through place, but move in it, dwell in it, perhaps place senses our movement, that is, place gives our movement a sense, direction, in the way that a partially completed puzzle gives pieces a sense that helps us fit them into place. When we dwell in a place we connect with it in a different way, and that connection makes us re-sense our sense of space. I call space of this sort dwelling space, to contrast it with lived space. We could probably also speak of habitual spaces, spaces whose sense depends on habitual movement patterns that we carry with us, habitual patterns insensitive to places we are in. And we might also distinguish space, a growing sense of space that arises when we are learning to navigate new sorts of places, or to first learn how to move in place. 181

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my observation ultimately – place is embedded within the limits that bound it and beyond which it cannot go – a beyond that marks a crossing point between the knowable and the unknowable – a border that both contains and threatens – defines and defies – a perpetual stand-off, marked with tension and uncertainty – place and space are polarities marking the finite and the infinite that interlace the fundamentals of living and the tension point between life and death, bounded and unbounded, animate and inanimate, real and imaginary – the neutrality, indifference, and unfriendliness of ‘earth/nature’ that culture tries to keep at bay – polarity sits at the core of movement – what assists and what opposes it? – a freedom bounded

dance - ALVIN AILEY DANCE COMPANY

SADLERS WELLS

060907

FIREBIRD – Maurice Béjart

THE GOLDEN SECTION – Twyla Tharp

REVELATIONS – Alvin Ailey

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~ Maurice Béjart – circular floor patterns enclosing dancers, or linear tight group facing audience in centre of stage – circles and centre – I can’t see past the ballet! – can’t even apply my theories – lot of stiff forced lines – a very small and repetitive vocabulary of movement - what does this indicate? – emphasis on a static physical geometry of extended lines – symmetrical patterns – how do I view these? Static snapshots – movement as transition, not as subject matter – unless a held position is seen as a kind of movement – what is going on in this kind of dance? It is obviously stylised – very stylised – bodies detouring into experiential places that most bodies don’t do – but what is that sharing, sociokinetically? Symmetry is an emphasis on balance and order – security and stability – it is overt – a projected overt-ness trying to enclose bodies in communities of care – the care associated with being in a group or being enclosed and protected by a group – or trapped by it – or the group sticking together out of vulnerability and fear - the forced extended shapes become threatening, like weapons – pointed weapons, projectiles – accusatory, sharp, directional – self protecting as well as dangerous to others – like the needles on the porcupine – the solo dancer depicts/enacts the hero/martyr narrative, echoed as a double-dose of grace by the second spirit figure emerging upstage out of the dark of the heavens – his entrance towards the audience orients him as a benefactor that has come out of the infinitesimal recesses of the disappearing perspectival vanishing point, and so his passage and offering is directed into the world (as his pathway extends across the proscenium to embrace every seat in the auditorium) – saviour myths rankle me, they are obviously deep-rooted, but in this form lack a sense of personal – even though the dancers are clad mostly by skin, which gives them the vulnerability of exposed-ness – it still looks formulaic, the clichéd modern tribal in a world that has nothing similar to which to connect it to – tradition encrusting truth

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~ Twyla Tharp raises a different range of questions – the movement vocabulary was less restricted, with attempts to free up and animate hips and shoulders by incorporating popular dance-jazz-funk moves – in contrast to the rigid spatial emphasis on formal lines, circles, symmetry, and perspectivalism in Béjart, Tharp is deliberately destroying the boundaries and messing up the pathways as much as possible – a mayhem of activity masquerading as communal celebration and joy – so what of it sociokinetically? This is an avoidance of the circularity of the tribal ritual and a depiction of the business of the city street – celebration of life in the overcrowded congestion of the metropolis – narrow passageways, near misses, not enough time to engage with others other than emphatically and with impact – in attempting clarity amidst rush, what is created is a borderline whose edges are continually dissolving into messiness and blur – this is a freneticism faking its own joy because the pace destroys clarity, depth, satisfaction, and completion – life on the run – running is an exuberance, an energy, an abundance, a vitality – but it is also an escape, a departure, a getting away – a lack of commitment to the moment – no staying power – like the dance – flashes of attempted visual impact, like the gloss of advertising – contemporary advertising in the capitalist metropolis is about sex, impact, and shine – the costumes were skimpy shiny gold – reference, like Béjart, but this time with lots of lifting and partnering as the central activity, to mythologising human life as communal and vital – but the smiles are the smiles of professionals (the professional politician, the professional salesperson, the professional celebrity, the professional performer) and were echoed on my face as a grimace

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~ Alvin Ailey freed up the space in a more nuanced and crafted way than the other two, albeit conventionally – the movement fitted the dancers more securely, perhaps the material has been performed more often – what did I see in terms of my sociokinetic agenda? The same emphasis on creating a body world peopled by the architecture of movement – as with Béjart, the group featured as a community, but the tribal was given an overt Christian subjectivity, colonised – sensuality was present in this as a current and a flow, represented tangibly in the river section/symbolism, that streamlined sexuality with spiritual grace, a device that sublimates it – and craftily incorporates it into the camp of the opposition – use of diagonal, sultry swaying steps, lack of fear of pause and slowness, stillness’s that weren’t forced – deliberate use of time, but a time that suggests unhurried travelling, but still purposeful – it’s a pulling back that is about moving forward in a coordinated way and making do – climaxes strangely with men and women in church in synchronised uniformity of attire and attitude – individuality that pits the sexes against each other but centralises and elevates the women as the guardians and moralisers overseeing the swaggering men circling beneath them – a climax of regimentation in the grid-o-sphere – boxed by the urban trap – a community populated by the innumerable nuclei of two – being faithful to partner and lord – the transition from river to temple – natural to urbane

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dance - AKRAM KHAN

RUSH [ on video ]

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~ made up of a lot of sudden changes of speed – eruptions and bursts of movement

~ intricate movement structures – strongly punctuated with stillness

~ maintains a consistency of vocabulary – flourishing spiral hands and arms – mostly vertical in posture and standing

~ structurally triangular and diagonal

~ music keeps a tension, and sudden lighting changes and interjections keep the momentum pacey

~ sociokinetic – linear, no contact, but sameness of being (all dressed and move the same) – 2 men / 1 woman – but this bears no relevance to the theme – androgynous neutrality of movement and energy inclined towards the energetic and ejaculatory

~ strong clarity and linear definition of movement – when dancers slightly out of sync in unison moments, it doesn’t make it problematic

~ geometrical with organic twists and curves that resolve back to the linear or erect

~ designed within the space – it sits presentationally for viewing – it swims within the frame of its edges – other than when they enter at the start from out of frame (off stage)

~ moments of swaying suspension (the piece is about hang gliding)

~ flourishes and stillness’s

~ sinking, twisting, hand curving gestures, round upper body and head, animal postures elongated occasionally along ground with isolated actions of the joints a la Forsyth, long straight arms – spinning motif like a propeller – tilting forward motifs – emphasis on held lines and planes – horizontal, sloping, angled

~ at the start the dancers assemble and look at the performing space from audience’s edge, and then abruptly finish here at the end of the 1st section – reminding the audience of the start

~ piece finishes asymmetrically and inconclusively near downstage corner by the audience looking diagonally off stage over their heads – anti-dramatic contrast to dramatic closure of 1st section

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dance - YAEL FLEXER

300807

INFORMAL SHOWING OF NEW WORK BY CHOREOGRAPHER YAEL FLEXER, FEATURING 2 DANCERS, IN THE THEATRE AT CHICHESTER UNIVERSITY

~ strong physical geography

~ rich movement melodies on the bodies

~ tight piece

~ structurally well put together

~ cross focus between audience and space – its volume and presence

~ weaving pathways

~ networking that knits the full span and depth of its surface

~ self-avoiding that attacks the space in get-out-of-the-way expansions that spiral down to moments of walking round each other, or grabbing hips to pull the other person behind

~ the themes are space, its emptiness made into a subject and its independent volume and presence marked by the dancers standing at the edges looking in - also, when it is empty, its is lit brightly in its own separate colour wash

~ the space is a player/performer in the work

~ the space is stage, viewing place, to be viewed, and to present

~ hence the small cube of light at the start followed by the same small cube with the dancer in it, which then expands to fill (become) the whole space - as does the dancers’ movement

~ this theme is restated again as the conclusion to the work when the small cube reappears after the dancers have left

~ intelligent choreography with a simple task/agenda of spatial investigation/deconstruction in respect to its persona and function as a viewing/performance space for dance

~ the geographical location is added to by the moving geographies/architectures of the dancing bodies who provide further volumes, masses, arches, and pathways that are moveable, malleable, and transient

~ the dancers share the same technical vocabulary as each other with occasional idiosyncratic insertions (which always come as welcome tidbits and as embellishments/quirks/discoveries) (- the flapping elbows and outstretched arms over the head with flayed/splayed fingers are examples in this piece) – unlike the bulk of the movement material which is more familiar and generic, and widely available and used as the current/preferred aesthetic style in contemporary dance – it’s a recognisable pool of movement that is fed from the technical training dancers get (what comes first? Does the aesthetic originate in choreographic practice and then migrate to technique class so that dancers can keep abreast of choreographers' needs? Or is it more simultaneous? Or do new nuances and stylistic emphases originate in advanced technical investigations and training?)

~ the quality to the dynamic and mass of the movement is in keeping with the current vocab – edged, geometric, cutting, sudden, circular, abrupt – a relaxed attack that spirals asymmetrically and erratically – with durational elements that taper of their own accord as the internal energy and momentum expends itself naturally (internally expending energy releases) – meaning the dancers have to force-start the dance (re-start their own commencing) each time – this creates a pattern of bursting jump starts dotting and punctuating (serrating) a timeline

~ this is dance that establishes virtuosity as its natural condition and ground-base on which to relax as a casual occupant – the theme becomes a ‘this-is-for-me’ space – the ‘me’ being a dancer first and in this piece, also an androgyne, which goes with the formalist aesthetic (i.e. movement in space first) – these are the raw essentials, instruments, tools, ingredients of the practice – a stripping that reveals the backgrounding of other factors made inessential by this focus (gender is one) (specific non-theatre spaces or ‘other’ spaces, other than those similar to this one, is two)

~ modern art and the hugging of the white canvas closely to its chest, which it wants to show unspoilt by too much picture but just enough to create another kind of fullness in which the canvas features as much as the paint – inanimate and animate co-animating

~ this piece showed great complexity and competency of crafting and artistry but is low on originality, the exclusion of which makes the concept of originality less significant to the artist’s purposes here

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reflection - 100907

MOTION – E/MOTION (this is never absent) – QUALITY OF ANIMATION (go together)

SPACE – TOPOLOGIES (unimpeded – impeded)

- corners
- open places / enclosures (receptacles)
- ascending / descending
- gaps and openings in barriers (glass transparencies and empty)
- barriers and walls, obstacles
- indicators and signs (function enhancers / assists)
- passages and pathways
- compression points
- contact points
ground (feet, lower extremities)
hand operated
proximity triggers
furniture (posture altering)
- textures (smooth, frictional, soft, hard) & colours (dark, highlighted, muted, attractive, distinctive) (also signitive & triggers)
- movement regulators (control flow, speed & density)
- segregating elements (road & pedestrian walkway)
- sound – distance & proximity, direction & orientation, discourse/discursive, sound is a form of touch and an emotion accompaniment (e/motion) signalling (controlling, allowing & disallowing movement)


How much of these are in a choreography?
Kinetic snapshots can dissect an environment mechanically in respect to all of the above – but nothing is arbitrary, everything is driven by intentionality, purpose, and collective/personal narrative(s)
- how do I connect the arbitrary/independent fragments ‘snapshots’ to narrative?
- AND (considering narratives are generated unconsciously in dream and reverie – i.e. they’re a natural psychological/somatic function) connect narrative to inner landscapes as either its biological/psychic outcome/imperative or the reverse – i.e. inner narratives mirror life narratives
- ultimately, this research is all about me getting to know something my way that other people already know about in other ways


so one thing that is emerging from watching the footage of everyday movement is a language that describes the action and the attitudes/intentions that surround or underpin it – there are presently 5 clear factors that I am observing:
- avoidance
- detours
- making space
- violation & approval of touch (touch is sanctified)
- equilibrium

there is an equilibrium state in the body – and in street movement – in the street, the direct route is the equilibrium state – the detour/deviation is a departure from the equilibrium state – in the body, posture has an equilibrium state – movement that takes the body away from its postural equilibrium is a detour or deviation

o a lot of the business of moving is space-making – avoiding is making space – rather than denying and claiming space, it is about relinquishing space to others – deferring – what makes one person defer to another?
o creating space is self-removal
o proximity to structural supports is a blending with that support – an increase in mass, volume, and security to create greater personal security and stability – there is a blending and an adopting of the qualities and strengths of the support
o built environments are designed to calculate and provide as much (meaning as little) space as is needed for the purposes and function of the location


WHAT MAKES A GROUP RECOGNISABLE AS A GROUP?

o it’s to do with a connection that’s visually set up between the members or people in the group
o so this is a connection that merges their mutual spaces
o holding hands is a physical linking device
o but when there is no physical contact, proximity and a matching of physical momentum – matching feet and a maintained closeness – aided of course by talking to each other, or turning towards each other
o do groups have to detour less because they force single bodies to go round them?
o holding hands is quite frequent in partnerships – is this just an affection connection? Or is pragmatic in busy places because they don’t have to detour as much? People that are connected are impossible to walk between so, as a couple, they don’t have to give up as much space as they may as individuals – but couples and groups don’t have as much momentum in more crowded areas as individuals, so they sacrifice space for speed in some circumstances
o you are aware when you go between people who are in groups that you are breaking or passing through connected space – like they own it – the space between them becomes territorial
o connected space is a definite spatial state


socialised groups are about connected spaces – and connecting the space between people

in a mass activity, like a lot of people going through a small doorway, people blend their individual spaces to make or form a large collectively-connected space in which individuals adjust their momentum to that of the people around them

reflection - 290807

290807
o larger groups displace smaller groups
o groups of equal size displace each other equally
o movement and environment interact – can’t have one without the other
o there are countless obvious things about how they interact
o so what am I looking for that is not already obvious?
o phenomenologists are right in their enclosing-folded-enveloped appraisal of reality
o context and culture stand out
o the security of the fixedness of environments enables greater secured-ness in the fragility that movement is – movement is inherently fragile
o demarcating and apportioning space to facilitate particular types of movement – i.e. walking goes here, cars go there, etc
o there are obvious things about when movement encounters other movement – orientations, distances, configurational relationships, displacements…
o all these can be studied but are obvious and don’t reveal anything startling or new
o is there nothing else to see?
o I am looking at something in which there are no revelations…
o and why connect this to choreography?
o how does the dance of the street inform the dance of the stage? – they are already related – they are both about people so will utilise shared laws…
o like economics, there are limitations in space that are designed to maximise utility through restriction not excess – the purpose of the city street environment is for maximum human occupation – not emptiness
o everything is flattened and at right angles – edges are softened (made safer) with curves
o sociokinetic laws – what are they?


if the inanimate and the animate are dancing with each other – one silently and in the background, and the other actively and on the surface – what kind of partnering is this? – it is the stable hand that allows the twirling form – the back across which one can roll – the arms to catch the falling body

environment is the watchful supporting partner – dormant and timeless in its role – slumbering in the immobility of it – like a prison sentence from which it cannot escape – endlessly yawning in the subservience of its duty – laying and spreading itself out just ahead and all around so that what is on offer can readily be seen – like competing shopkeepers waving their wares at prospective buyers – “here I am, a bit of road, walk on me” – “no, look over here, I’m a doorway, come inside” – “ignore them, I’m the footpath, faithfully catching and anchoring your every step”

o kinetic laws operate between silent and blind partners – between the subservient and the pampered – the trapped and the mobile – between attack and a resistance that never falters – or, like a door, falters intentionally – accidents are unintentional falterings (faults)
o of course movement in the world is purpose driven – instrumental – goal directed…


the woman with the umbrella
is carrying her space

protected from the rain
she replaces where it is falling
with a down-pouring of rain-less space

a horizontal blot of moving shadow
her umbrella impotently re-fabricates the darkness overhead
and mocks it with its rain-less exertions



o all this stuff in the street may be purposeful and clear (transparent) in respect to what is happening
o but it is clumsy
o people avoid collisions with others and objects
o it is not smooth
o choices have to be made with care
o it is about constant adjustment
o things avoiding other things constantly
o objects are positioned to be avoided
o avoidance is the dominant physical objective on a moment by moment level – there is constant vigilance about what needs to be avoided – anticipation of calamity relegated to the highly active semiconscious goings on of instinct and peripheral vision
o people steer themselves along paths that open to non-collision
o this avoidance is an avoidance of touch – it keeps the boundary of skin sacred and available only by permission – this keeps ownership of self intact – anything else is violation (violence)
o public movement is about carefully and skilfully controlling violation
o is there a difference between the violation of the animate and the inanimate?
o necessity in the fulfilment of purpose selects/allows the violation of the inanimate
o we will touch buttons, open doors, give or take objects, and do a thousand other things that permit and neutralise the violation of touch
o the ground remains an unavoidable constant – but for the feet alone – other body parts are less comfortable on the ground
o so different parts become accustomed or adapt themselves to violations associated with them, thereby allowing and permitting them, even claiming them – chairs for backsides – numerous implements for hands – clothing, but allocated to specific parts of the body – is clothing a violation of touch? – a pseudo-skin blocking real skin from the violation of the public gaze – what the body allows to touch it becomes a sanctioned violation
o violation of the social code would be walking into other people and bumping, crashing into them, colliding, knocking over, pushing
o social space is full of the absence of violational activity – an ordered constraint is imposed, sanctioned, and understood in physical languages that become very skilled in adhering to and mastering the weaves and intricacies of complex spatial manoeuvrability and motion with and amongst/amidst others [EXAMINE THE FOOTAGE OF THE HEAVILY POPULATED AND CRAMPED CHICHESTER MARKETS IN RELATION TO THIS]
o obviously there is the practical consideration of harm-to-self and self-preservational priorities and instincts at work in all of this – reflecting the presence of CARE that begins with SELF and becomes communal through commonality (Morris) – the evidence/basis in movement of an ETHOS/ETHIC
o the ETHOLOGY OF CHOREOGRAPHY – is still an intriguing concept/term that is pulling me but as yet I don’t know why
o choreography and dance is rife with avoidances
o every curve is an avoidance of the space in its immediate proximity
o a curve is never a directional path – it is always semi- or indirect-ional (also in-directional – it is avoiding what is on the ‘in’-side of its curve – even if something isn’t there – all curves demarcate an inside and an outside, otherwise they wouldn’t be curved)
o but a choice or sacrifice is being made here – a preference to avoid one area of space is to simultaneously exercise preference for proximity with a less problematic location/vicinity
o every movement that is over, around, circular, curved is possible only from the basis of avoidance – you can feel this physically when you do curved or circular movement – it is probably the basis for most dance movement in the body, and the accounting/determining factor for its stylisation – because I can avoid, I can embellish – because I can avoid, I can abstract – because I can avoid, I can go beyond – because I can avoid, I can repeat – because I can avoid, I can flourish -
o in movement, dance takes the longer route (the detour) because it enjoys the journey as much as, if not more so, than the arrival (the goal) – it is a delayed arrival – and sometimes, a delay without arrival – making it just a delay - it is a hedonistic indulgence in the physical act of avoiding that allows greater proximity and access to things that have to be detoured to, to be experienced
o what is avoidance? – it is the next most direct route
o and this is what is seen in the street in the pathways mapped by social movement
o YAY! – now I’ve just done my first reversal – looking at dance through the lens of everyday movement
o every solid in architectural and other environments are there as avoidances, guiding and confining people through the laws of non-contact to the gaps and openings leading to things


this is like treasure hunts – structures gesturing politely through their don’t-touch-me-I’m-contaminated personas to the treasures they protect (24/7) devotedly and tirelessly (dutifully) (they have no choice) and allow visitation to through doors (traps) (lures) – “come buy the treasure, taste the treasure, take some of it away – but leave something behind – you can’t steal it – and we have a never-ending supply – which is why we make it available and easy for you to find – look at our BIG SIGNS – and our BIG WINDOWS - see!”


POETIC LITERATURE is part of the process of this research because it is all heading towards ARTISTIC OUTCOMES as the primary goal – this is not just academic research, which is where my head and focus has been till now – the now prior to this realisation that is – little poetic moments have popped out, but I’ve sidelined them and been uncomfortable with their frivolity – but this is wrong – I am going to make choreographic work that is going be equally engaged with as art (it is already an overstatement to call choreography art – I am stating the obvious - tautologising) - so the mix is equal portions of academic and artistic/personal (because the artistic is personal) – so now my note-keeping can be organised into 3 categories:

- THEORY / ACADEMIC formal / traditional

- REFLECTIVE personal / revelatory / ‘meandatory’ (that’s a nice new word! meandering & predatory)

- ARTISTIC interpretive / creative / unconstrained & uncensored / poly-vocal / imag(in)istic

F O O T P A T H scenario

avoiding is interchangeable with favouring

subject is walking along the footpath
subject favours a small distance on this side
subject favours this side (means avoiding the other curb)

______________________
subject favours a bigger space on this side
subject is avoiding this side

______________________

a volume of space
a volume is not a volume without parameters – in a moving world of envelopes within envelopes, spatial volumes can only be established by avoiding & favouring surrounding parameters


o in dance movement in the body in open space the parameters that are being avoided are invisible
o this is why dance can be made in empty studios and be stand-alone in its application and occupancy of any suitable open/empty space
o the invisible presence of volumetric parameters being avoided in stylised dance movement (– this of course is what Forsyth understands and manipulates/demonstrates so masterfully and so complexly in his IMPROVISATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES)
o this is not a new thing about dance – it has been there the whole time – just never articulated so clearly, overtly, consciously, and intricately in the way that Forsyth has specialised and researched
o this is a contextualisation strategy that famously underpins modernism – the removal of immediate visible socio-cultural parameters in order to make the art object seem out (or ahead) of time


too much is coming out now – I stare and stare at the obvious and see nothing and I despair – what I see is not interesting, and I suddenly doubt what I’m doing – and then I see it – it has been staring at me the whole time, but completely invisibly – it is all about avoidance – this is so obvious – yet it is also not obvious – it is an obviousness buried and forgotten (at least to me – obviously!) – but when seen again, it opens up strong realisations, perceptions, and explanations – it is a resurgence of energy – from a barren familiar uninspiring landscape, suddenly a perceived (and felt) overflow of meaning, insight, and possibility – things sprouting out in all directions completely out of control – it is 1.23 pm – I’ve been trying to sleep for the last one-and-a-half-hours – but have to keep getting up and turning on the lamp to write down the next thought that won’t let me sleep – I want to exhaust the flow because I want to go to sleep – I would actually prefer to go to sleep – but I know from experience that if I don’t write these thoughts down, the subtleties, distinctions, energy, nuance, specificity, whatever, will be lost tomorrow – memory failure will erase two-thirds of my semi-sleeping realisations – I guess this is REFLECTIVE PRACTICE in action – now I will sleep – PLEASE! [nothing comes after this line tonight]


WRONG
I keep lying down in my bed, facing the wall, with my back to the writing pad (avoidance), but I had to get back up to write this…



o so environments are jam-packed full of ‘avoid me’ and ‘don’t avoid me’ signs – similarly, so is dancing
o dance is continually structured around the avoidance of invisible volumetric spatialities – or rather, the complex physical circumnavigating of these, produces it as art
o a dancing figure at full flight and in full splendour is all about ‘get out of my way’
o this thinking of dance in terms of ‘avoidance’ and ‘getting out of the way’ reminds me of a classic anecdote that an actor friend told me – he was an extra in an Australian ballet company’s version of Petroushka many many years ago – he had a very small part as a costumed bear in the crowd scenes – he was standing one night in the wings watching the action on stage when a thickly accented voice behind him said “Get out of the way cunt!” – he turned and it was Rudolf Nureyev, who was the company’s megastar guest artist, in full splendour about to make his entrance, but the costumed bear was in the way – I feel apologetic quoting an extremely objectionable expletive, which, coming out of the mouth of someone whose god-like stature at the time represented the very soul and spirit of dance, not to mention the implications associated with his choice of body part to denigrate in respect to dance as a feminised art form (– all of this is a very fertile essay in itself that has a lot of stuff that could be unpacked) – the story re-enforces a structural requisite/determinant/preoccupation/enjoyment of dance that this discussion of avoidance highlights – the words “get out of the way” by this famous dancer just before his entrance also speaks to dance’s destructive kinetic momentum (not just hierarchical prejudices and misogyny), an art form built around complex physical understandings of how to manipulate and play with the laws of avoidance