Ana Dance

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Last night was the first of two April Choreocollectives and my first return to OFS since my operation.

What a lovely evening!  A big beam across my face just being in the space, lying on the floor, glimpsing the others as they warmed up and chatted.  It is so good to share space with other dancers.

Then 4 quite different choreographic experiments -though we found a few points of connection.  The first using a colourful and form filled postcard image,  music and non-moving imagination before transforming into dance.   The second, a very brief stop frame exercise.  The third starting with a poem and costume props leading to a showing of work in progress.  The fourth how to create calm/order/moderation in a space.

As ever one person’s ideas trigger responses and further thoughts  so you come away feeling like things have woken up inside and your body has moved to very different tunes.

Looking forward to the next choreocollective  the 24th April.

Well, it is a strange thing to be stuck at home recovering from operation and missing all the work being shown at this year’s dance festival.  Not able to show work is one thing but not to see any others work either. .. All I can do is to wish all the dancers and choreographers luck and a good time during the festival and hope for some comprehensive reviews  and write ups so I can catch a flavour of all the creations shown.

While Meeting Points and the work of DEC is explicitly aimed at cross art collaboration,  choreocollective is aimed at choreographic development.  Even so,  I still found myself in the session last week investigating through dance the qualities of a visual art.  In this case Chinese ink painting.

Segolene was inspired by the notion in ink painting that there are 5 qualities or textures of black.

These are “Dry, Wet, Dark, Light, Charred” .  What did these mean? what did they look like?  How could we dance them?  And so we tried and noticed and discovered surprises, differences and similarities between our various interpretations.

Quality of movement, pathways through space,  relation to floor. All came in to play as we explored how  each of these terms could be danced.  Fascinating beginning and insight in to one choreographer’s process.

In Meeting Points  dancers, word smith and musicians explored the notion of balance and in doing so its counter.   Words emerged in response to movement and movement to words and music, and music sought to balance itself across the space and between the dancers.

In DEC practice,  after a great free warm up and improvisation we tried to express ‘evolution’ and non-evolution’  in the sense of development or stasis.  Artists, dancers and musicians all found that when we thought we were evolving we were often repeating and therefore not evolving.  Or when we tried to  not evolve we began to emerge in to some other form, motion or sound.  Without stopping altogether, the periods of stasis were simply pauses along the way of an evolving path.

Looking forward to the next Choreocollective session on 6th Feb and Meeting Points on the 18th Feb at OFS.

Glad I made it to tonight’s Playground at OFS – the last of the year!  This evening saw us create cards for a game, hear from Catherine Watson about land art and representation through new digital scanning technology, a presentation by Nicola Armitage of past and current film projects working with young and old with a request for an interested musician/composer, and a film of  a TED talk on the art of asking which the Playmasters had wanted to share. All interesting.

As always, and as intended by the organisers, as much as the presentations themselves Playground is the chance to meet other artists/new people, have conversations and discover possible collaborators or fellow journeymen.

I took the opportunity of the Playground one minute ‘Instant Noodle’ to announce that ‘Meeting Points’  a two hour cross arts session will be starting in January next year running every third Tuesday of the month.  It was great to find interest from a photographer, a dancer/poet and a musician – all in one evening! Hoping Meeting Points can turn out to be a great complement to the collaborative connections of Playground.

I am currently working on a small section of ‘Tuning’ which I have shown twice now at different scratches.  Practising today to develop it ready for Woking dance festival I found I was going backwards.  Why is that?  Something about the intensity of feeling and intention in the original creation of that section seems to have passed.  This should not matter as I want to work on the precision and clarity of the moves and their connection to the sounds made.  But at this stage neither are working.  Only 3 days to go…

Tonight I went to see a performance of Kathakali dance by The Kala Chethena Kathakali Company at the Mill Arts Centre.  Fantastic live music and great story telling with amazing costumes.  I was at first disconcerted that a Northern lass stepped out on stage to give a bit of background explanation and introduce the audience to this South Indian dance form.  She was the make up artist for the company and had strayed in to India many years ago on her travels and been hooked ever since.

We were treated to a demonstration /explanation of the use of gesture and facial expression and the difference in characterisation between male and female characters -all played by males.  This was clearly and humourously presented and I found myself give out a huge laughs as the exaggerated male versions were shown.

This was followed by a short film which showed the elements contributing to the performance – costume, dance, make up, music and then a synopsis of the story we were about to watch.  Another disconcerting element as it was an Indian version of Snow White!

I was not expecting any of this introduction, and part of me, having practised a different South Indian dance form and seen many Indian classical dance performances felt I didn’t need it.  However, I think it was a really useful and helpful bridging tool.  Using a well known tale and telling it in a different dance language, giving a few specific and easy to understand gestures which the audience could recognise when they occured in the story.  Also drawing attention to the very specific skills employed in the use of eye and face movements.

The make up and costume are quite extraordinary – green and black faces,  white protuberances from the face, elaborate decoration.  Huge headressess with manes of long ‘hair’ and wide,  short rounded hooped skirts.  On some fingers were metal extensions and from the costume dangled various cords and tassles and cloth that could be tossed and stroked or examined as the mood demanded.

At all moments the musicians bare chested (not young) men stood framing the action and completely attentive.  Wonderful subtlety and precision of timing with the actions and gestures on stage, dramatic changes of volume and rhythm, perfectly repetitive beating, tapping creating suspense or the sense of time passing.  Some beautiful singing, gentle and melodious enveloping actors and audience in emotions felt in the heart.  The complete integration with and support of the movement and emotions of the actors was wonderful.  What a treat live performance is!

Next opportunity for showing development of small section of ‘Tuning’ will be at Woking Dance festival in LEAP at the Rhoda McGaw Theatre.  Looking forward to working on more precision with the knobs and buttons and tying the quality of movement to the sounds made more closely.

Great that Susie Crow has organised this block of classes with Lizzy Le Quesne.  My body was treated to some thorough releasing.  I was also interested how many points of connection and crossover there are with what I cover in some of the Butoh classes – being suspended, use of imagery, melting to touch, softness in feet, space inside body and outside,  ‘being moved’.  All these influences and cross polinations of approaches.  I can’t remember whether I received these through Butoh training or the many years of various contemporary, release and contact improvisation classes.  We learn, absorb and filter through what is useful into the work we do.

I had so thoroughly engaged in the class that I completely forgot where I had parked my car and after struggling to walk to where I thought it was, realised I’d long passed it.  Had to laugh despite the pain.

Last night Cafe Reason hosted our 12th Diamond Night showing new works and pieces in progress.  We are grateful to Russell Anderson and Brookes University for making the drama studio available for these valuable events and to the volunteers who help us with light, sound and documenting in this intimate theatrical space.

Showing work were Cafe Reason with an early version of the prologue for their latest main project ‘The Heart’s Desire’ in collaboration with Moving Tone.  Dariusz Dziala with a short film,  Anne Ryan with two solos, Dark of the Moon- a duet, myself with a second outing of the ‘finding voice’ section of ‘Tuning’,  Mame Yansame a moving  solo  with projection and Flavia Coube a tragi-comic dying swan.

Organising and performing require rather different heads and usually I avoid combining both in the same evening if I can help it.  This time quite a few of us were acting in more than one capacity due to a last minute ‘staff’ shortage at the helm but all passed smoothly.  However,  I noticed my lack of mental preparation for performing which for me translates in to a less energised performance presence. (That’s my excuse anyway!)

Well, first attempt with the new, spoken sound/ word idea.  Plenty of work on it still needed but a start has been made and I think some of the intention managed to come through.

Great to see all the other acts.  What a lovely variety we have in Oxford.  Despite my misgivings about scratch nights, it is good to get the chance to try out ideas and see what everyone else is up to.  Also to hear all the (very articulate in this case)  opinions and thoughts that the audience come up with.