Project timeline

August 08: Residency period Chez Pras, Charente, France.

Application to Resolution! The Place, London- reserve list (unsuccessful)

November 08: Teaching (at Dance Warehouse) and practical research sessions, Canterbury.

Application to Bric, N.Y- unsuccesful
Application to The Brick, New York- in discussion for future season
Application to Judson Church, N.Y- unsuccessful
Application to Draft Work, Dancespace, N.Y- unsuccessful
Application to Open Performance, Movement Research, N.Y- successful

Invitation to show work at Open Performance, N.Y.

January 09: Research phase with studio space provided by Laban.

Consolidation of thoughts about the project.
Application submission to Point Ephemere, Paris- pending.

Invitation to show work at WHAT NOW, ID.


April 09: Discussion, planning and adminsitration time.
Presentation of research, "open office" at WHAT NOW 17th-19th April.

Tasks & explorations in the studio

Perhaps in order to understand the writings around and about our method it would be helpful to give some examples of the kinds of tasks we have been doing.

OBJECT-EMBODIMENT-RELATIONSHIP

In Canterbury we worked for the first time in the dance studio with various objects selected with little discrimination other that we could carry them.

Objects included:

some of the objects used in Canterbury

a glass jar with red lid
a blue hippo sponge toy
a yellow plastic egg spoon
a metallic pyramid ornament/ box
a red decorative ribbon
red and pink collapsible paper lampshades
a wooden peg
a heavy lead pipe


We were beginning to work with object-embodiment-relationship. We spent time looking at each object and noticing qualities that we felt that object proposed. We especially noted contradictory ideas proposed the object, and ideas which seemed to go against "natural affinities" such as large things having heaviness. There are problems with the word "natural" of course... For each object we discussed tensions in qualities such as the quality of being infinitely amenable without standing up to gravity but with lightness enough to hold some form unsupported (red ribbon.

As we were interrogating the objects we were drawing attention to the obvious physical/ structural properties which are perhaps overlooked through an understanding of what is necessary for the object to sustain it's designed function. For example, the peg possessed two materials and two halves. The peg also possessed energetic potential ( in the spring), a certain life-span subject to wear and tear, strength, bilaterality, one point of flexibility, flat surfaces, tension/ resistance.... All these observations could and did then provide information for our own movement explorations, proposing some strange ideas for us to inhabit.

Once we felt that we had begun to explore the objects verbally, identifying proposed properties and ideas, we systematically explored these physically, then taking time to discuss what was happening for each of us.

METHODS OF INTERROGATING OBJECT-EMBODIMENT-RELATIONSHIP

In January at Laban we worked for 10 days, repeating similar tasks with different objects and slightly different focusses, to make clearer the method of interrogating (taking information from the) object and understand the sorts of physical responses we might be able to generate from certain objects.

This research phase built directly upon the groundwork done in Canterbury. During the studio time at Laban we agonised over how we were attending to the objects, and got really serious about our methodology. We had previously felt the necessity for clarity in our use of language, often finding that we were working with different references, however during this phase the need for concurrence on terms was paramount as found ourselves getting more and more detailed. We noted how in the first instant of attending to the objects we were using the five senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell with a probable preference for sight and touch. We decided then to break down this process, trying to focus on each of the senses at a time. We were interested in investigating if different qualities of information arose from interrogating the object with different senses.

We worked with all combinations of the 5 senses and 2 objects: the piano and the metal object in the photo below. We filmed the danced responses/ processing and timed 7 minutes for each. We have watched the film footage back, interested to see if there is evident consistency either across the sense categories or with each object through all the sense categories. There are some clear correspondences, but not yet enough material gained to state a consistent trend. We will follow up with further research...

A few objects that we approached in our January research phase.

Some questions/ thoughts that arose:

• Our different preferences in interrogating the object- something about activity and passivity.
• The process by which we select objects- we had stronger, more interesting responses to some over others but are not yet clear if there is a reason for this. It would be good to follow this up especially for when we get to a live performance situation...
• Being the object versus a relationship to the object.
• If we can devise a method which is replicable
• If we can re-find danced states in absence of the object, in another time.

Simone

Simone Forti in Orvieto, Italy, March 2008.

J: In the workshop experiences we had with Simone Forti we experienced her Logomotion research separately, but similarly. In Orvieto, I explored speaking-writing-moving really for the first time with any focus and longevity of investigation. In my own practice, I recognise now that the interplay between text and movement has always been present, but in a mostly undisclosed manner. I mean that when I worked with Simone I could feel a "homeliness" in working between text and movement, but that the methodology was unfamiliar to me. I had never exposed my process in that respect, inpart I think because of my infancy as a maker. I found the workshop investigations then at once challenging and familiar....

E: Text, speech and movement have been part of my creative practice for quite a long time. I remember exploring speech and movement in my own choreographies as a student at Laban, as well as sourcing my work from reflective writing, and therefore letting some of it filter in the work. Working with Simone helped me bridge these different elements as well as understand how they can all be the manifestation of the same creative activity. It was extremely challenging to me as it placed the self at the center of the experience, therefore leading me to a very vulnerable yet extremely rich place.

J: As Elodie and I have discussed our work we have settled on the term "track-changing" to describe the potential for information to be converted into another medium. This may not be a clean translation, and here the idea of currency is useful to me. In Simone's work we both experienced and witnessed instances of live processing in the improvised form- when the idea spoken or danced changes either in content or due to swapping between the modes of expression (movement, language). Much much more could be said here about the beauty of clarity in these processes. In recent conversations we have have discussed and shared writings and talked a little of dances experienced with Simone, noting our mutual interest in the integrity of the decision making processes in speaking/ writing/ dancing which follows a stream of consciousness subject to diversion and content switching.

In the beginning: what is the something that that is?

(a short warm up) Laban graduates of 2006, Janine and Elodie have worked individually in various professional capacities over the past two years. Both have sought to continue their professional development outside of institutions, building upon the knowledge gained through study at Laban and a playing with the application of our creativity. We are now developing a long-term collaboration, defining our research ground and devising a way in which to work between the UK, France and beyond. Our trajectories have passed through some common ground- separately we participated in Simone Forti's Logomotion workshops- Elodie in France, Janine in Italy. I think we are in agreement that the experience of this work has formed a keystone of our mutual enquiry (more about this later). For one year Elodie was engaged as a dancer for several artists in New York, and there experienced a desire to source work not only from the body but to explore the remit of her field within the art world more generally. Elodie returned to Paris restless with vibrant creativity and set about choreographing a solo work (premiered in February 08), teaching and wondering about a creative practice which does not as its premise determine any one mode of expression. Meanwhile in the UK and Europe, Janine had been working in various collaborative situations with visual, fine and digital artists. Projects included a film/ live art installation afewsquaremiles for one audience member, commissions from Duckie and the Light Surgeons (site specific) and presentation of work for the stage. Janine has recently been dancing for Valerie Preston-Dunlop's heritage film project, Unearthed and in Southeast Dance commissioned film Opus:One in Folkestone. Our process began in Charente, France in August with a 10 day residency chez Pras exploring with film, photography, movement of bodies and objects. We were exploring ideas of lineage in personal histories of objects, familial relations and movement properties, stating " I know that there is a thing shared, but what is the something that that is?"/ "How do these things belong, what makes it so? From a seeming logic can there develop a new taxonomy whose proposed polarisations and relationships suggest inventive co-ordinates for creative play?" We are interested in new opposites, false tallies and how close we are to being really really very shiny. It's playful, curious work in which we will not compromise technical skill but will enforce compositional discernment through the rigour of the method we devise.