My personal aim on this 10days residency is to create a convincing performance for myself. I want to be convinced with what I do as a performer in this work.
As I wrote on the previous post, the starting activity is to collect some images and sound that is associated from my clattering red sleeve that Michele made. So I went for a walk to take some pictures around the university campus with Michele and Anne-Laure.
Here are some pictures that have inspired my character.
pieces
pieces hanging
yellow pieces on green
yellow pieces vs. green pieces
layers of time
patterns
a piece in layers
patterns in layers
layers of time
pieces as whole
pieces of time
red pieces in green pieces
thicker pieces, layers
red pieces
placement, patterns
layers of time
pieces of time and force
contrast of nature and industryI have also taken nice pictures of some indications of industry, which I believe Anne-Laure is representing although I won't put them here because there are too many pictures already. I will wait for someone's contribution for those. But I just want to mention that there is an idea of contrast between nature and industry emerged as well.
The walk was profound experience and has become vital inspiration for the character development.
During the walk, Michele asked me "Do you like nature?"
Yes I do.
And I like these things that I have collected as images above.
After we came back to the lab, Doros presented his magnificent image and system of Ukiyo that integrate real and virtual space. Yes, it is possible to integrate real and virtual space.
Paul asked if it was possible to manipulate only a character (or part) of the virtual world by the performers. Yes, it is possible.
Eng Tat showed us amazingly responsive sensors and suggested how I could interact with the virtual world by using leaves.
All these facts excites me. And I have decided to work on leaves.
What happens if I have a sleeve of leaves instead of the red clattering sleeve?
Michele and I managed to collect two bin liners of the yellow leaves of ginkgo.
We will work on this today.
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2 comments:
This is very helpful, to hear your thoughts and what drew your interest. Also to know your aims and ambitions of yourself from this residency. I also found yesterday's excursion that we made with Anne-Laure very inspiring. I loved the contrasts that we saw, the organic with the inorganic...the ways the balances shifted. Sometimes the nature was more powerful and we could only glimpse the mechanical or manmade. Sometimes the reverse happened, sometimes we could see the destructive nature of the nature on the manmade (chairs, made of wood..comes from the trees). I liked very much the pealing layers of the chairs.. They also came from your tree, (crafted by man) as did the golden-yellow leaves.
How does it feel to be inside nature? How can we merge with the nature and have that 'oneness' which is a philosophy that belongs to the East... How does it feel to be a singular floating leaf face down on the tranquil silent water its surface a mirror of reflections of the world? How does it feel to be a single leaf amongst many, one inside the collective? How does it feel to be many leaves /still/agitated by the wind? You are the wind and you are the leaf. How does the wind transport itself (through the atoms of the air, large powerful moves of the cyclone wind that strips and denudes the tree. Small gentle moves that slowly declothe the tree.
I enjoyed watching you begin our explorations with the leaves and partial leaf garment (sleeve) today. The colour 'yellow' has great impact and is a primary colour as is the red... the other primary is blue (the back of your red neoprene disc is blue). With you we have the contrast of hue, the black in that palette helps to further define the hue.
Here are some of my notes from watching your movements in phase 1 of the leaf work and your response to nature.
"Slowly moving through 'crackling' leaves... listening, touching, smelling the textures (intensified through her presence and the agitation of the leaves)... with bared hands and feet, senses outstretched.
Lying on her back, rotating slowly around and around and then just lying (face down) floating like the leaf on the still water...suspended and motionless in the shifting world...for a moment quiet.
She slithers forward (like a snake on her stomach)... Her body displaces the leaves...
Stands up... and sweeps down to collect...
Clumps of leaves (in hands) lifted in upstretched arms (high/above the head)... slowly releasing leaves, letting them fall one by one (singularly) then in twos and threes to the ground... The tree becomes denuded, the last leaf falls poetically to the ground... Subtle careful slow movements fill the space as she goes into the nature and becomes one."
We need to continue working on this and think where to go next and hopefully we can get a good interaction with sound (Oded) and sensors (Eng Tat) and the breath (performers).
Michele
Yes, I do agree that this walk was very fruitful. The craving of getting inspired by the environment has paid off. It seems that every where we were looking there was something offered to us to be inspired. I very much like too the contrast between the organic and non organic and from this we draw very different movements and approaches to our dance. Katsura and I started to talk about different approaches to our dance, how we develop and explore material, Katsura very much draws her choreography from somatic approach not related so much to her emotional side as she commented from one of her last blog and that makes sense to me that Katsura as a person is very much in touch with the nature. Interesting that at the moment she is wired with sensors and dancing/moving in leaves. There, within one entity she represents the antithetical of nature and mankind technology, a correlation, collaboration , relationship emerges between the living organic and sophisticated technology. Oppositely to Katsura I am inspired for my character by the mankind, the chunkiness,the electrical Japanese wires.... the factory women.
Dysfunctional character, I, at the moment, explore a range of movement which seems to be limited and obvious, perhaps to mimiic to the factory. I press and show effort into my movements and as Johannes commented I express sound as I am pressing, expelling the movements and perhaps this limit me in the range of exploration. I believe that I am also inspired and dance with my emotions and therefore transmit those into the movements as well as the projected sound, which at the moment again come out as perhaps obvious.
Maybe for the next few days, as at the moment everybody is occupied with tasks, I should go and find a space, looking at my inspirations and try to develop a new, extended and imperceptible vocabulary and perhaps also explore every now and then a sort of fragile delicateness and lightness to the character. Like when the nature "attack the mankind" and this one becomes more fragile and sensitive.
Those next few days will go quickly and I want as everybody get the most of it to go back to UK with a much more deeper and compelling character.
Last but not last I would like to say few words about the sound rehearsals we have started. This is very very interesting for the group and for myself. For the group as I feel that it starts and will bring us together. And for my self I have never explored sound in that way and start to self believe that with practice interesting sound will emerges.
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