Found in Translation

This week I have been traveling to Manchester to work with Sankalpam, a Classical Indian dance company directed by Mira Gokul and Stella Subbiah. Sankalpam have commissioned me to create a short piece alongside  choreographers Luca Silvestrini and Stella Subbiah herself in collaboration with theatre director Philip Zarilli. Dancers Lucia Tong, Kamala Devam, Charly Ashwell and Natalia Thorn perform the works. This was another opportunity for me to follow my obsession with counting. I found various patterns of counting in circles and gave them to the dancers to interpret. It was exciting to see the Bharata Natyam application to the numerical concet. Last Friday we premiered the programme entitled "Corporeality" at the greenroom, where Sankalpam have been resident for the last week, rehearsing and teaching open workshops. Looking at the three very different works by the three individaul choreographers, we decided on a journey that gradually strips away layers and leaves us with the physicality of the dancers.
We started with Luca's piece, which draws from the dancers' biographies, followed by Stella and Phillips work, which deals with the psycho-physical process of Abhinaya (internal acting) to end with my piece, which is a minimal and abstract dance piece. We received a very warm response from the audience at the greenroom, which was followed by a question and answer session. Someone asked, what was lost and what was gained in translation. Everyone agreed that they discovered a new ease in their process when opening it up to the performers who brought new responses and new materials with themselves. Moving outside of our familiar comfort zone and searching for new meeting points was a risk worth taking and that seemed to cross over to the audience.

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"Corporeality" tours in the UK in November to Lincoln Performing Arts Centre (6/11), Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster (9/11) , The Brindley, Runcorn (12/11), Laban Theatre, London (16+17/11), Barbican Theatre, Plymouth (19/11)

International Performance Art in Mainz

Last weekend we performed Newly and The Accompanists at PAD Mainz. Its directors Nic Schmidt and Peter Schulz have a real talent and dedication to establish the small -scale venue as an inviting place within the local community. For me as a maker it is always  invaluable, if the opportunity presents itself to receive feedback from the audience, to not always entirely rely on my subjective feeling of how it might have been received.  But how do you prompt a conversation that encourages spontaneous and honest responses? The experience at PAD Mainz showed that the atmosphere created in the venue can really help. They have build
up a group of regular audience and there is a sense that the audience owns the programme. The presenters introduced our work with a short speech in the foyer and afterwards were approachable and interested.

The venue is also maintaining its close links to Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in the neighboring city Frankfurt, who had commissioned some of the other artist's works, including Martha & Lucy's Fine Bone China, both based in Bristol, and London based Mamoru Iriguchi's Into the skirt. Unfortunately we missed their performances, which were shown earlier in the festival, but I hope to catch up on their work very soon. However they stayed on to see our performance and there was plenty of opportunity to talk (while eating the delicious diner that had been cooked backstage). I think nobody wanted to leave this very warm and welcoming place.

Physical Expressions

During the last term I taught a movement skills course to the first year students of the BA Performing Arts at the London Metropolitan University. It was a very inspiring experience for me to work with them and to be part of their process. I found much in common with many of them, who entered the course with very little knowledge of dance and a very vague picture of what their future profession might be, just following an intensely subjective feeling that this is a good thing to do. Their assignment was to chose a character from a book or film and to create a short movement study based on their personal responses to and observations of the character. During the classes the students frequently created short solos and presented them to the group. The creative work was accompanied by an introduction of elements of Laban Movement Analysis, a method that was outside their expectation and outside their experience. Most students started from a very fragile point and end up using only a small amount of the learnt knowledge. Yet there was a clear progression towards finding “a voice”. How did they process information and analyse their experiences? Is there a personal method for developing a vocabulary, for gaining objectivity about how movement can be read and for how to scrutinise ones choices? And does good work become less good when its creator fails to present a convincing case? Many questions came out of this very rewarding experience that relate to and enrich my own practice.

Choreosound

This autumn I was one of the lucky choreographers, who were invited to participate in Choreosound a pilot project in Göteburg conceived by Swedish choreographer Marika Hedemyr. During this lab choreographers and composers, dancers and musicians from all over the world met and explored new ideas for collaborations without any predetermined agendas. The invitation came at a perfect time for me. My dance company was touring a programme of short pieces entitled between sound and silence, which had been created with composers John-Marc Gowans and Matteo Fargion. Choreosound was an opportunity for me to question, where my passion for music collaborations had come from and where they could go next. It was also a chance to meet new artists and to work with musicians, something I wanted to do for a long time.

My desire to choreograph always originated from a personal place, without wanting to be narrative or autobiographical. Seeing the works of choreographers like Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Rosemary Butcher, Deborah Hay and Jonathan Burrows left a lasting impression on me. Their performances were not concerned with displays of skill but with the movement material itself. They made me see movement through the eyes of an individual artist. Working with chosen limits, they seemed to find expressive potential of movement within its internal details. As a young dance maker I had a hard time though to analyse the methodologies of other artists. I didn’t really believe in borrowing toolboxes. To create my first pieces, I just used all the movements I liked and left out everything I didn’t like. Relying on intuition, the materials were then mapped out in space and time. The choreographies were created with a group of dancers I brought together for each project. We performed in silence, with the intention to reveal a personal type of musicality interwoven with the physical language and to maintain a simplicity and directness.

I took a break from performing, because I wanted to sit with the audience and watch. I felt the need to improve the composition and one way was to introduce an exterior logic. I found inspiration in Estonian composer Veljo Tormis, whose music is developed from folk songs. I choreographed a duet entitled Newly based on Veljo Tormis’ choral composition Estonian Wedding Songs. In this process I interpreted the music as a set of patterns and drawings, which were then given to the dancers. They responded with movements and vocal sounds. The musical structure created a framework, in which the dancers could reinvent their relationship in surprising ways. I came to Choreosound with ideas and questions about how to work with structures and about how to engage the performers and the viewer within them.

My first session was with composer Yong Nan Park, accordion player Anti Leinonen and marimba player Elin Sander, and dancers Katja Schia and Karin Hedin. We borrowed an idea from composer Tom Johnson's piece Abundant Numbers, in which he divides the number 12 into 2, 3, 4, and 6, which are then combined to create a pattern.

-2-2 -2-2-2 - 2
--3- -3--3- - 3
---4 ---4-- - 4
---- -6---- - 6

Each performer’s task was to create 4 materials, which could be performed at the same time and in all possible combinations on certain counts. The structure determined a fragmented type of movement. Without having thought about sound or rhythm, there was a “musical logic”, which tied together everyone’s actions. What I liked about this experiment was the concentrated effort between the 4 performers to stay together. An interesting discovery was how the combinations of sounds seemed to work better. Each time they build up to something new and the repetition was enjoyable to witness, while the combinations of movements and their repetitions didn’t always produce the same effect. The experience raised questions about the difference between hearing sound and seeing movement and what this meant for music and dance collaborations based on rigorous compositional ideas. If we had the chance to work on this sketch again, I would experiment more with the translation from pattern to movement.

My following session was with composer Daniel Skoglund, double bas player Benjamin Quigley and Elin Sander and dancers Ari Kauppila and Andrius Katinas. We worked with structures and chance elements. Each performer acted as a dancer and musician by creating a sequence of tasks, which involved movement and playing instruments. It was important that the materials were clear rather than skillful. The sequences were then looped, and because they were of a different length, different combinations of actions between the performers were created each time. We then introduced more options for the performers to ad new materials, to copy each other, stillness and so on. Sometimes this sketch produced a totally unexpected theatricality, and sometimes it fell flat. We realized that we needed to be careful about how many elements could change at once, so that the structure was still there, but that it remained unpredictable for the performers as well as for the viewer, what would happen next. It was a very fragile balance, but that was also, what really excited me about this experiment.

My last session was with composer Amanda Cole, guitar player Barney Strachan and Elin Sander, and dancers Gilda Stillbäck, Lisa Fahlén and Alice Martucci. We interpreted a piece of music Amanda had written. This piece had a minimal rigor and the musicians’ interpretation brought real beauty to it. It was a peaceful experience to be in the studio with them, and I was looking for something the choreography could do to meet the music half way. Although this session took place in the most conventional set up with clear role divisions and a need for virtuosity from both dancers and musicians, I still felt I was on an experimental pathway. The dance part was based on very limited material. Each dancer had a set score of steps and pauses, and the combination of 3 dancers’ patterns created a strange “start and pause” effect. What interested me was how the dance could have its own rhythm.

Back in London, I realize that I have taken so many new inspirations and ideas with me from Choreosound. What will stay with me is the experience of everyone’s generosity and I really hope that we will find a way to develop the begun collaborations.

Listed to Amada Cole's music
Listed to Daniel Skoglund's music
Read more about Choreosound

Pick & Mix

Last Saturday we performed Catch at Pick & Mix at Woolworths in Leytonstone. This is a a duet I created with Katsura Isobe in 2005. We have been performing it many times since then but this was the first time it was shown outside a conventional theatre setting. I was worried about how this very abstract work would communicate in a less formal space and from a close up viewpoint. There was a moment of fear in the morning brought about by the technical challenges of the venue (for example electricity...) and a sense of unpredictability of how people would interact with the space, with each other and with us. But the warm and welcoming reception of the audience, which ranged from toddlers to pensioners, calmed me down and allowed me to enjoy the physicality of the piece. I never performed with so many people smiling at me. I loved all the other performances, which ranged from committed Hip Hop choreographed by Tashan Muir and performed by Unity Youth to a classical work beautifully choreographed by Kim Brandstrup for two dancers of Rambert Dance Company. There was a delightfully entertaining solo by Elisabetta d'Aloia, choreographed by Bettina Strickler, and many more treats, including duets by Dean James and Seeta Patel and an intriguing solo performance by Shala Tarrant of a new work choreographed by Fearghus O'Conchuir around the Woolworths' letters. Fearghus was also the curator of the event. He says: "I was happy too to have helped create a space where these choreographers could work side by side, generously, creatively and in that spirit, share their work with the audience." I feel that the success of the event had a lot to do with his gentle and attentive approach and I was happy that about 300 people attended the performances on that day!

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