Mass Movement (black and white)

Mass Movement

from the Dancehouse season of the Keir Choreographic Award July 2014. Photos by Gregory Lorenzutti for Dancehouse

dancing and writing and dancing and writing (5 minutes)

1.

So what is it? A set of feelings? A task towards feeling. Are there parameters? Is there a style? Is anything allowed? Some of these questions I think i know the answer to and others well I should just let it form. Today it feels stupid to be engaged in the pursuit of dancing. I realised yesterday that I perceive dancing as an other and what I do is not dancing but an exertion or an unravelling of my body's relation to it. Is this how it feels for other people? Today my cheeks are hot. Too much coffee or the heating or the too much time inside in a kind of obsessing. This is not how to write. Do you notice that you sped up?

2.

I keep thinking about how I need to approach it with rigour. But maybe I don't. It felt good to write down 'a singular process' but maybe a mess of everything is alright too. Attention everywhere. If I'm paying attention to my thoughts - using dancing as a kind of collection point - then what attention is my body paying to what its doing? Is it literally just generating? Moving the blood around a bit faster so fresh stuff runs through my mind. I won't pretend to understand anatomy or biology. The reflection that my difficulty in comprehending maps and their relation to real space - real buildings and streets and thoroughfares, is perhaps similar to my lack of ability with anatomy. The body outside divided up and named versus what it feels like to be inside my own.

3.

An acknowledgement then that five minutes seems to move more quickly, faster than when I started. I think today my dancing is a conduit for thinking. Its slower to write it down and it can move through so many things at once. My hand, my pen, of course, can't keep up but I don't how to spell the sob that is bursting to get out but also shut up you wanker. Why am I thinking about truth? Would it be true to say that it felt most like how I really feel in that moment standing by the drawers, making the motions to pack, when the blood in my head sounded so loud and there was no longer any boundary between my skin and the air, between the noises coming from within me and the sounds coming from without? In fact I disappeared for a moment or everything became one - and its true that I can't believe that I went ahead and did what I did. Silently getting up, getting dressed, wheeling the suitcase out into the dark and softly closing the door behind me.

4.

And it was the desire to push it to the edge. To strip it down. To shout it out. To push, push until something else came through. Its not my place to say who is and who isn't an artist, and its funny that she says yesterday that ethically she thinks its for everyone, but also no its not. I'm tired. Thats clear, and its becoming a bodily habit. There's a kind of push, a muscular tension, that makes me feel I'm actually doing something. Now I'm just writing words on a page. I can't remember when it was that I thought 'do I ever just feel fine?' There is always some niggle, some itch, some ache, some hunger. And now it is legs that need to be stretched, a neck that wants to rest, a face that is full of heat and eyes that want to close.  

works still to be made: les sylphides

les sylphides

This work takes the form and structure of the original ballet Les Sylphides by Michel Fokine, but reinvents/improvises the choreography. It may or may not use the music by Chopin. It probably won't. Maybe some nice guitar reinventions. I'm not quite sure about the gender balance staying the same either. It might be a bit weird to have one man dancing amongst so many women. Or it could be fantastic. 

(I performed in our ballet school concert version of Les Sylphides, which pains me to call 'our ballet school concert version' because at the time and in my memory it was and continues to be completely the real thing. I loved it. The hair, the long tutu, the standing still, the kneeling, the walking round in a circle, the arm wafting and the standing still. I just watched a Baryshnikov version on youtube and felt I knew it backwards. It is an incredible ballet - taking an element of romantic ballet and dispensing with the plot. The first of its kind. Move over Nijinsky. Its time for the Fokine revival)

where my heart is

works still to be made: what we are going to talk about is the main question

what we are going to talk about it the main question

This is a piece that Wendy Houstoun and I played around with last year when we had two wonderful weeks in Berlin. It never quite got anywhere, but since being in Europe again (though a very different part) I've been thinking about it and finally watched the video footage we took. I am quite terrible at the task I am set, but I think i could get better. What we are going to talk about is the main question is a lecture of sorts. It could be performed by me or Wendy or together. It will be meanderingly brilliant.

(the video is us talking about what to do, not actually the piece)

works still to be made: alien (film series)

alien (film series)

A solo for Elizabeth Ryan. A verbatim performance of all Sigourney Weaver's action and emotion in Alien (1979). Without props or narrative. Music by Gail Priest.

The next in my film series after Working Girl.

(I don't know why but it takes a long time to get a dance work made or it does for me. For example, I first began working on Opening and Closing Ceremony in January 2009 and it was performed in its finished variety September this year which is a scary three and a half years later. Of course, its not like that is all I did in that time, but still it seems a little slow. However, I feel like I am constantly having amazing ideas for new works of varying degrees of difficulty that may or may not ever get made, and instead of waiting the full 21 years or so to see whether they do get made,  I thought I might make a collection of these fictional (or more optimistically yet to be made works) here on my blog. I wanted to have a book, like artists have books, but instead of it being work I have made, the works in it are ones I could have/might have/should have made. A portfolio of the future. This is the first one.)

nottingham

Lizzie and I are in Nottingham. Time is passing quickly or it feels that we are stuck in an eternally repeating day. Moving in the studio feels difficult, even with our newly purchased tracksuit pants, but we are finding a way slowly. I have realised how absolutely linked my emotions are to my dancing practice, and because I am trying to ignore or hold back or deny my aching heart (the deep chasm of not being with Ada) and pretend I can just carry on like normal, I am not finding my dance ability very satisfying. Today was the second day of our 'dance to an album warm up practice' through which some things were found and I remembered again how much I love Martin Creed. His ballet and his talks. Brilliant.

new start

I'm going to try again.
I have just started a Critical Path residency with Lizzie Thomson. In December, we go to Nottingham, but now we are at UNSW, starting gently - dancing a bit, writing a bit and talking a lot. Today I have been watching dance on the internet and I found this. I like this.

last days of europa

So without making a comment about how this blog as a means to document my travels has been pretty much a failure, and resisting the temptation to make more promises, and ignoring the fact that it is a new year when I get good for a couple of weeks at such promises, I will just say with no small hint of sadness that we are now into the last days (the last week expired yesterday) of our European adventure. How did this happen? Well if I had bloody well written this thing, I might be able to look back and see, but instead I'll have to live with the fact that I'm living in the moment, moment by moment, and can only go by how I feel. We are back in Berlin and I feel immensely contented (or if you are content, are you just content? I suppose you can't be partially content). I feel all my doubts and worries about whether what I was doing was the right thing to be doing melt away, and I feel very happy about all the projects, all the cities, all the experiences and all the fun I/we have had. And of course I don't want to leave. Which is funny because when I first arrived I remember thinking 'I'm not sure if I even want to be here' and then thinking 'well, enjoy it now because by the end you won't want to leave' (thats the sort of internal dialogue way that I think). And sure enough, Toby and I are making all sorts of resolves to somehow return. Maybe we will. But for the moment, we are enjoying every minute. 

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.)