making up for a month or more of neglect

Dear Blog, I didn't mean to leave you so long. Here is some writing for you from the last week or so. We are going to Copenhagen for the weekend. And then I promise I will become so regular in my habits. Love Jane

3/11

Yesterday when I was in the park* with Ada, I noticed a little girl who was part of the childcare group that had just rolled up in a kinderwagon**. She had been plonked down on the side of the play equipment area, and as she couldn’t walk, that is where she remained, looking on at the other children, occasionally one noticing her and giving her some attention, but mostly looking as though she was abandoned to her own world. Apart from wondering whether her parents knew she had moments like this and whether this being left out was going to have long-term affects on her personality, I thought about myself in relation to Antje’s process. Now we are getting to the serious end of the process, there is a lot more German being spoken, particularly between Antje and Ann, the stylish dramaturge (who I look forward to seeing each day just to see what she’s wearing), and while I like to think I can kind of follow along, there are many moments where it is evident I simply do not understand. And that’s not only the language but also what the piece is trying to be. I feel a little bit like the girl on the edge of the playground. 

*This is my excuse to accompany this post with these photos of us at the Hamburg Stadtpark, taken by Toby's mum.

** Kinderwagon's are contraptions for carting children around in. They are like wheelbarrows with seats. I've counted up to ten children sometimes riding on them. Those tagesmutters/vaters are strong!

28/10

Thoughts that keep persisting: While working with Antje, I keep thinking about the bluebird solo I performed at my ballet concert when I was about 12. I don’t know why it is in my head so much. I still remember the choreography. And I remember the feeling of what it was to do it. The me inside the choreography. I think I’m thinking about what the skills of a dancer are. Of how to take on someone else’s movement or someone else’s direction, and give your attention to it so you can inhabit it but also be able to suggest new possibilities. I don’t know when it was I decided I wasn’t a very good dancer. I’m pretty sure it might have happened studying at QUT. But it might have been earlier. It is not my greatest skill to fulfil someone else’s wishes. I get too caught up on the desire to please, to do it well, that it prevents me from actually being able to do this. I remember discussing this with Elizabeth, who I think is a great dancer, and being surprised by her confidence in fulfilling something of someone else’s. Not that I’m worried about this. I don’t want to be a great dancer in some one else’s work. I’m so much happier in collaboration with someone or making my own work, but mostly in collaboration. 

But then thinking about choreography, I know I am so formed by working with Rosalind Crisp’s method of movement research. Sometimes I wonder if it actually serves the work I want to make because it is an attention so clearly about dancing. Of course with The Fondue Set and on my own, the emphasis has changed, but I wonder if it’s stopped me from being able to follow other methods. This is a long preamble just to state that when I see a vocabulary of choreography that is known to me, like say generic contemporary dance (which is probably no longer contemporary), I don’t know how to read it apart from how well it is done in relation to the ideal i.e. How good is the dancer. And there I have just stopped myself from writing how well it is executed because I don’t know why dancers are killing moves all over the place. 

Is choreography new movement vocabulary or is it the way it’s put together? I ask that in a complete Carrie Bradshaw way to be followed by an illustrative narrative about dancers and dancing rather than love and sex. I feel myself knowing less and less about dance. Firstly I don’t know if I like it. Secondly I don’t know if it’s what I do anymore. But then I know that I do and I do. I’ve just been in three new contexts where the movement seems to be the thing that happens last.

Last night I dreamt that Lizzie and a long forgotten fellow student from QUT Lucia were making a work together, and I had suggested that they worked with a third who was Danni Coglan, the tenant of our flat in Sydney and the music curator at the Sydney Festival. Lizzie and Lucia were both upset because Danni kept bringing in moves like barrel rolls and leaps to the ground, and they felt philosophically this destroyed the work, but I kept saying they had to keep her because if they sacked her, they’d never be presented at the Festival. Also Xavier Le Roy was in the dream but he was bald with a comb over and fat and had thick glasses, and my mum was in the workshop saying can someone just tell me what he actually does. 

27/10

I’m not sure how it got to be the 27^th of October. A Thursday even, which is quite far into the fourth week here in Hamburg. And Berlin feels not just far away in space and time, but as though it exists as a whole other period of life. It could be that the weather turned just as we arrived in Hamburg, isolating Berlin in another season, but it also clear that Berlin is not Germany. Berlin is something different altogether. And here I am now in Germany. Or Hamburg. Or a café in Hamburg, taking a midday pause from Antje’s project and drinking yet another hot frothy coffee. A friend said to Toby recently that one of the defining features of an Australian in Berlin is that they relentlessly complain about the coffee, and to go with type, what is it about Germans and latte machiattos? Or more precisely Germans and froth and scalding heat? Donna Miranda sent me a link to Zizek talking about European ideologies and toilets. I would equally be interested in hearing what he had to say about coffee drinking habits. I sort of get the heat because the Germans are without doubt a hardy (and ungentle) people and its cold here, but taking to the already frothed milk with a heavy -handed whip of a spoon confounds me. Or to be more precise upsets me. But they are playing Nick Drake and The Cure here so I’ll stop being so Australian and get to the catch up I thought to start with.

We are in Hamburg, living in a suburb that’s quite nice but definitely not cool, after having spent two weeks sort of camping in an empty flat round the corner from the Reeperbahn, which was seedy but definitely cool. I have been in the studio with Antje and Silke for about three weeks and have been thinking a lot about dancing and my relation to it; how funny it is to have ended up in process as three women but in such a different constellation to how that is normally for me; how I have a lot to learn from Antje’s objectivity to the material she creates and her confidence if I can call it that without seeming too insecure; how much I admire her as a performer; and last but not least just how nice Antje and Silke are. Antje is so welcoming and makes me feel like I know her a lot better than I do. 

I think that trying to put an image with my writing has been stopping me from writing a bit, so excuse me if it gets a bit wordy here in future.

I’m reading The Natural History of Destruction by WG Sebald at the moment. The description of the bombing of Hamburg during the second world war has made me see Hamburg very differently.

tear jerker

I've found myself somewhat prone to tears of late. The most embarrassing being waterworks on the verge of uncontrollable during the debrief session at Matchpoint when Donna was talking. In case anyone from Matchpoint is reading this, I just thought I'd show how easy it is for me to cry. Today, I happened upon the Berlin Marathon. It was late in the afternoon so it was towards the end of the race. I was riding my bike through the sunny streets and there in front of me was a man resplendent in lime green lycra, a man who was by no means an athlete, a man who was clearly overweight, in green lycra no less. But he was running and the five people who happened to be on the street were cheering, and all of a sudden I was crying. I don't want to be patronising. I couldn't run a marathon. But then I don't think I'd want to either. I was crying because there was something about the spirit of this man, and the gap between fantasy and reality. I won't go on. I don't want to cry all over again.

music music music

Its been a most beautiful autumn weekend in Berlin. Today we are doing shifts at the Hamburger Bahnhof (one of us there, one of us with Ada... Ada is going to miss her dose of Joseph Beuys this week), and yesterday we did not very much except cycle round town, buy some things at Muji, have an accidentally long afternoon nap, and I don't want to keep banging on about Fräulein Frost but we ended up there again in the late afternoon. It seems on a sunny day in Berlin that ice cream was only invented yesterday and people still can't get over the genius of it. The visit to Fräulein Frost ties in nicely with what I was thinking about to write anyway, because not only was the rhabarber back, but they were playing the State I Am In by Belle & Sebastian, which is (to be euro english about it) a super nice way to order icecream.

I was thinking about how music seems different when you travel. Perhaps you are more alert in general so incidental music in shops seems less incidental and more like a soundtrack. I remember hearing Elliott Smith in a cafe on my first day in New York in 2005 and don't think there could have been a better way to hear it (though that scene in the Royal Tennenbaums is also pretty good). Here, despite the fact I've been in a dance studio for much of the time, I am listening to much less music than I would normally. The stereo in the studio with Wendy didn't work, and at Matchpoint talking dominated, and really no one dances to music anymore anyway. There have been two moments that stuck out, and both seemed like gifts to me when I was feeling anxious/moody/frustrated/unhappy/bored with my artistic abilities.

The first was at Tanzfabrik where I took a break to go to the bathroom and heard Bill Callahan's Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle blaring out from another studio. We listened to this album so much in Sydney before we left that I took a little moment to sit outside the studio to think about home and what it is I'm doing here. The other was during Matchpoint after a quite intensive yoga session, leading into another session of talking, when Matan for some reason plugged his ipod in and played Moon Pix by Cat Power. I have listened to Cat Power pretty much everyday since Ada was born as The Greatest is one of our go-to go to sleep albums, and despite this, I have never tired of hearing it, and I'm still not entirely sure what the songs are about. But Moon Pix is my favourite album and is the record I listened to over and over when I first started hiring Omeo dance studio and attempted to make dance work that would change the world.  I was trying to be intense back then. Now I'm wondering why I always want to make a joke. If I could make a piece a quarter as good as Metal Heart I'd be happy. And I was happy and revived to hear it again on this day.

I often think about using music/songs in dance as cheating, because music is so persuasive. The Fondue Set/I have certainly done it but always with some sort of reference to it inside the work. I tried so hard in my latest solo to find a reason to include Phil Collin's 'You Know I Love You' (with me singing it and all) because I wanted to use the pathos, but it never worked. I ended up with Rick Astley. I think using Rick Astley is probably working against a piece being good. Next year, I'm working with Gail (a sound artist) on a project specifically about music and dance. This I hope will challenge some of my assumptions.

one week later

 

Friday a week ago was the final day of the Matchpoint exchange, and it is only today that I have finally had the space (or is it the time?) to organise all the many thoughts in my head. I have written a list of headings in my journal which I intend to elucidate on here over the coming days. But for now these bad video stills from the day we cooked 'lonesome food' together at Dick's apartment. And a mish mash of bits of writing:

Memory is overlaid with the actual. Locking the toilet door and remembering how I could never quite work out whether the catch had caught and being surprised on many occasions. And last night the purposeful walking around with no purpose. I realise now how lonely I was then and how this city is filled with the memory of my loneliness. Walking the streets, any street, just where my feet would lead - more often than not round and round the theatre so I wouldn't have to hang out in the foyer by myself - listening to my mini disc. Hard to believe that 5 years ago I didn't have an ipod. And once, walking and listening, seeing two boys eyeing me off, walking towards me and then parting so they could go either side, and me being so aware that something was going to happen, tightening my grip on my mini disc, and then to be surprised that they just hit me on the arse and then ran. So lame. So nothing. And then into the theatre to see a show that I don't remember now. My memory is mostly only the excruciating wait in crowded foyers. Not the show at all.

I've still got the image of the red heads running through the minefield and am annoyed that I can't shake it. Big waves too. Ships over waves. And thinking about high rise buildings. How we stayed in that apartment on the fiftieth floor and everytime I fell asleep I felt like I was rolling off the edge and would catch myself. Trying to rewrite history. Trying to save people who can't be saved and wanting the ground beneath my feet. I ask what disaster. Britney Spears make up smudge.

Last night remembering my dreams - being told not to gesture with my hands. To use my legs because its less expressive and Matan telling me I look like a duck anyway.

 

matchpoint

Yesterday I began the Asia Pacific exchange at HAU in Berlin called Matchpoint. At lunch there was a conversation that went like this:

"Do you have Muji in Australia?"

"No."

"NO?! Uniqlo?"

"No."

"NO?! H &M ?"

"No."

"NO?! Zara?

"Yes, but only just..."

These are my kinds of people.

That evening, we watched a show by a group from Japan called Contact Gonzo, which was like nasty contact improvisation, all messy and violent. The antithesis of what contact is meant to be. Sort of fighting really. 

Emma and Elizabeth (and Martin and Dean) will be excited to learn if they look closely at the photo that Contact Gonzo is Yuya our translator from our trip to Osaka. Who would have ever thought I would have run into Yuya in Berlin? The world of dance is small.

I'm so behind on this blogging. I'm going to try to catch up somehow.

a day in the life

6.20 Wake up with Ada. Toby gets up with her. Back to sleep.
7.00 Get up. Toby goes for a jog. Breakfast. Shower while Ada entertains herself throwing plastic cups at my feet. Get us both dressed. Dance a bit on the designated dance carpet. Horsey rides. Do up and undo the stroller straps.
9.30 Ride to the studio on my new bike. Coffee on the way.
10.05 Warm up. Do some writing. Talk, talk, talk, talk with Wendy. Watch some stuff on youtube. Talk some more. Have Lunch. Re-learn a rhythm talking thing. Do some improvisations. Get the giggles.
16.20 Ride home.
16.45 Ada naked on balcony, splashing water in buckets. Have a quick discussion with Toby about how best to spend the sunny evening.
17.05 Ride round the corner to buy Haloumi/Felafel rolls and beer.
17.25 Ride to Volkspark. Look at the statue of Friedrich Jahn. Ride round the park to choose a picnic spot.
18.02 Eat dinner. Drink beer. Kick ball. Chase Ada. More horsey rides. Watch the germans stripped down to their underwear.
19.08 Ride to Fraulein Frost, the icecream shop round the corner from our flat. Give Ada her first taste of ice cream. Watch her run off with my entire cone. Tantrum as I negotiate it out of her hand. Toby manages to eat his in peace.
19.42 Home. Toby bathes Ada. Wash up.
19.56 Put Ada to bed. Fall asleep next to her.
21.00 Wake up. Toby makes me a cup of tea. Continue work on Australia Council application.
23.00 Begin online application filling in. Get disheartened.
23.30 Send draft to Rosalind
23.46 Bed
1.00 Ada wakes. Gets into bed with us.
4.26 Ada wakes and sleeps. Wakes and sleeps. Wakes and sleeps until...
6.26 When she is awake and the new day starts.

gymnastic father

It was with much excitement that I learnt from Toby (who is mapping/jogging what seems to be every street in Berlin) that just up the road from where we live is the 'turnplatz' where the 'turnvater' invented 'turnverein'. The excitement was mine. And is probably mine alone. Friedrich Jahn is the creator of mass gymnastics, which happens to be the subject (or one of them) of my solo work Opening and Closing Ceremony and I can't quite believe I'm living almost round the corner from such historical events. Berlin, huh? Its impossible to escape history here.

post minimal

©Anja Beutler

Last night I saw 2: Dialogue with Lucinda by Nicole Beutler/NB and oh my did I love it. It was a kind of cover version of two of Lucinda Childs' works/scores from the seventies with all the intense structure but with humanism and theatre too, and a tiny bit of dry humour. I think Nicole Beutler might be totally up my alley. It got me thinking about minimalism in dance, and though I know no one could ever accuse The Fondue Set of being minimal, it made me remember the tightness of the concept of The Hoofer. A kind of messy minimalism. Post minimal theatrical or something like that. And it got me excited about the possibilities of my scoring project with Gail. And made me think much harder about structures for my current solo work. And meant that Wendy and I spent pretty much all day today devising and trying to fulfill tricky word scores. So it was good in all kinds of ways.

I'm sure it had nothing to do with me also finally finding good coffee near the studio this morning, but that was good as well.

are you working too much?

I'll admit that though this is only my fifth post, I am already a bit perplexed about what belongs here. Or more that I feel like I have to get a blog practice going.

This past week has been full. An open space, open studio with Wendy which at times has seemed too open (what is it that I want from this?); dance shows; meeting people; not seeing Ada (and feeling guilty as well as feeling I'm missing out); and much much conversation and thinking. I want to write the thoughts down but keep missing them. Thats why I have to start the blog practice.

But for now, no thoughts -  just some pictures of the spectacular saturday we had. Breakfast at the cafe across the street. Browsing for bicycles. A bicycle ride and dinner picnic in Treptow Park. (Thats what we did. The photos are of the sun about to set).

The title of this post and the last are me paraphrasing some of Wendy's concerns. Clearly I am not accusing myself here.

Also Wendy laughed at the idea of me writing a blog and said she had tried to write one during the development of her latest show and failed. You can read her efforts here

if there's a past, there must be a future

Last night I missed seeing Dance by Lucinda Childs. I had a ticket specially arranged for me because it was sold out, and I was excited about seeing it, having seen a video of the original at the Whitney in New York,   and this, and Sol Le Witt's design drawings, being the inspiration for the walk on floor pattern/back drop for Folk Dancing! that the wonderful Agatha Gothe Snape made with me. A truly great thing if I do say so myself. But alas, I misread the show time and left it too late and missed out.

Then this morning as I made the coffee and complicatedly conveyed it from the stove, a wasp stung me. I began to think things weren't going my way and perhaps the trip was botched from the beginning. (And googling 'wasp sting berlin' didn't help when the first article that came up was about the increase of wasp sting deaths.)

So convinced that I would probably die and with ice strapped to my hand, I struggled out to Tanz Fabrik to begin the first day of the first project of this big undertaking. And what a good day it turned out to be. First of all was the minor joy of enacting a scene from my year 8 german textbook: A visit to the Apotheke.  Second of all was remembering all over again why it was I wanted to work with Wendy Houstoun. She is so full of ideas, full of conversation and is so very funny. It is such a privilege to have this time with her, and in such an open ended way. Third of all was coming home to find Toby had bought Ada the most excellent second hand wooden trike we had seen in a shop on the weekend. And finally of all was Toby getting me a scoop of rhubarb ice cream from Fraulein Frost for dessert. Rhubarb icecream!

(The wasp sting still hurts though.)

we are here

We have arrived in Berlin. In Paul and Nadia's beautiful and light filled flat, which as far as I can tell is situated on Berlin's Sesame Street. Or is every Berlin street like this? There is a playground every 30 metres and yesterday it was a rare sighting to see an adult without a child (and the child without a bandana or scarf round its neck). I'm not sure it was like this five years ago but maybe I wasn't looking. 

We had a morning straight out of a farce comedy. The hot water wasn't working and required many phone calls and languages and an electrician with a moustache and a fantastic pair of green overalls. I was excited to speak some german as this man was the first german I have met whose english is worse than my german.

After so much thinking and preparation, we are here. I can't quite believe it.

The view from our balcony at half past eight last night.

the fondue set: retrospectacle

This is a new old work. Three weeks ago we (me, Elizabeth Ryan and Emma Saunders) celebrated ten years of work as The Fondue Set  This show went through many permutations in the ideas stage from the massive (a residency, festival, and accompanying exhibition) to the small (a little party with a task based talking improvisation) to the quite big again when we were generously offered the big theatre at Carriageworks. What Retrospectacle became was a lo-fi one hour improvisation on a large stage with fantastic lighting and pants. The pants made us feel spectacular. Heidrun Lohr's photos make us look spectacular. And we had a very good time together trying to remember all our work over the years. We also think maybe we made better improvisations in our rehearsals together in the lead up. Perhaps thats why the usual way is to have a creative development, pick the best bits and then do the show. This time we just did the show. 

While I'm away, Emma and Elizabeth are going to make a solo each and perform them as a double bill called 'Life Without Jane'. I'm going to write a speech to go with it titled 'Everything That Happens Without You.' The performance is set for the 28th of January next year. Just in time for my birthday.

folk dancing:egg dance

Before we leave I thought I would take the chance to collect some of my old work. This is from my shorts works curation, Folk Dancing! at Campbelltown Arts Centre in 2009. Folk Dancing! was such a great project. I got to curate all my favourite choreographers (who you can see here, here, here and here) and made this egg dance with the wonderful Ianthe Goodwin-Brickhill and Venettia Miller, who risked broken ankles during the rote rehearsals for this work. Enjoy!

a rationale: first post

I feel the need to explain (to myself at least) the reason I want to start a blog. I know that for many people having an 'online presence' is as natural as, well, having an iphone, but I feel somewhat uncomfortable with having a kind of self somewhere else (and quite comfortable with my cheap nokia). The times I've been published in RealTime, put a video up on Youtube and my short dalliance with Facebook have given me a strange feeling of unease that I am not physically present alongside this other. This might come from being a performer. Not having to worry about what people are thinking of what I'm doing because I'm too busy doing it. And yet, I'm starting this blog.

The initial thought to start it came about because I was very lucky to be awarded the 2010 Robert Helpmann scholarship from Arts NSW. One of the criteria for this award is that the recipient will share the outcomes of their work in some way with the rest of New South Wales. In my application, I didn't say I would write a blog, but since receiving the scholarship, I have been thinking about ways to share as a sort of joke (I was going to call this 'For the New South Welsh'), but also meaning it too. I think that one of the shortcomings of dance (in Sydney at least) is the lack of a sharing of process. So this is my sharing. You can probably read it too if you're not from New South Wales.

Also, as I get older, I've become more interested in writing. Writing about dance. Writing next to dance. Or just writing. So I thought this might be a place to collect some of this. And as well as that (and possibly most importantly), since my friend Kellie started dear olive, I've become a bit obsessed with reading blogs, and have developed an embarrassing habit of making up blog posts in my head. Then I began a project with Gail Priest where we are blogging to each other, and I am no longer afraid of the format (but I'm obviously no graphic designer). And last of all, I thought it might be a good way to let friends and family see what Toby, Ada and I are up to, because, of course, I'm too egotistical for Facebook.

If this is anything like keeping a journal, its sure to fail. I have a book which has 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 written on it, and inside is a very well kept (and overly verbose) account of the first ten days of January for each year. Because I kept making New Years Resolutions, and my resolve lasts about ten days. Look forward to some lengthy posts, followed by nothing.

A note on the name: After watching Blue Murder again recently, Toby detailed with devastating clarity the reasons to be dedicated to process rather than outcomes. He was talking about the police force and corruption. I was thinking about dance practice, but it made complete sense to me about why I am interested in what I do. Of course I can't remember his eloquence, but it was something about there being no ends that justify certain means. Or that you have to dedicate yourself to a process and not worry about results. Ways and Means.
And also of course a little nod to Pavement. Transport Is Arranged. And it is.