Peace. Be Still

Peace. Be still.

I’m stuck on these words right at the moment. they are Cid’s words. It’s what he says when he talks to himself about how to cope, day to day.

my own lack of stillness:

It is funny how the ideas that float around don’t go away. they seem to always return home to roost. Some times I don’t even recognize them when they return. but then, I do. Most of the time.

I was thinking about our improvisation score, the one that goes: Make a line. Make a circle. Lie down together, close enough so you feel one another’s skin, and heat. I like this score, because I like its simplicity. And, I like the myriad decisions that it reveals, when there are fewer decisions to make. I also think it is a kind of meditation on kindness, on being together. It is a good way to keep autonomy, but to devote oneself to the company of others. What I don’t like about it is its insistent consonance. Perhaps the very thing I like as a practice, I also have difficult with as performance. (hey, what’s that about?)

Well, some time ago, when I was imagining dances, but not making them, I said that there would be two dances, and they would collide with each other. occupy the same space. It just occurred to me, as I try to understand which direction to take, that this score could be one of the dances. and the other, could be a solo that never ceases. perhaps it’s its regularity, not the surprises that it throws our way, its insistence on it’s simplicity that would allow it to be danced alongside another dance. That is the piece that could be made now. a little bit like Lailye’s solo while others form a circle. But in my imagination, it is not a short solo while something else happens, but something that happens throughout. not that this creates less consonance. just a bit more to keep track of. and what is that solo, any way? (a previous incarnation of this was my attempt to imagine combining the veterans performing the combat scene, alongside of the improvised score, or a set dance of lines and circles. but the combination of these two dances seemed to work best on video. live is another thing.)

That is one thought. Then I remember that in a grant application I had written, I had wanted to deal with forces of nature. like gravity, and wind. I had not thought about this before, but gravity (overcoming it, or giving in to it) has been a key movement metaphor in my work for some time: everything from “outside in” to “action conversations.” but I digress. I was thinking about the “imprints” in our dance. how they are about gravity, and I had forgotten that I had been thinking about gravity, for months (maybe years) before I went to the studio for this piece.

You know what I think is the key to making things? the ability to believe however briefly, that what you are doing is important. if you question it too much, you can’t commit to what you’re doing. I find myself going in and out: trusting my intuition, believing that the things we do matter. As we construct them in the room, they do in fact matter. then, in a moment, that sense of trust and belief in the importance of our actions can disappear, like a mist that clears. this happens when I see everything through a non-believer’s eyes. critical eyes. I carry these eyes with me all the time. it throws me off.

there are so many dances that this project raises questions about as we make it. which dance do we pursue? be careful, I advise myself, to not try to do them all. I like Amy’s idea of having video images of instrumentalists who are not there, as if sitting in chairs, making the sounds they made when the camera caught them doing so. absence and presence. but if we were to do that, it’s such a strong idea, that I think I’d have to make a dance with a few monitors on stage, with a missing dancer, or dancers, with televised other things too. I love that idea. but that is not the dance I’m making now. I’d like to finish this one, so we can make that one.

Then there is the choreography that we have been working on. what IS it? as I attempt to follow the score, as if it were a spine, am I diluting and confusing two things? what are the rules of this choreographic dance? it is not clear to me. I am working intuitively, noticing things I find interesting. but this is driven by something I don’t fully understand. If I don’t understand, is that a problem? I somehow feel that I ought to critique the “working from my intuition” process. slave thoughts. what about following rules and getting to new places because of a rule?

some dances are “easy” to make, in a way. I think these are the best kind. you are ready. you know what you are doing. when something is hard to make, I think it is because there is still more research to be done.

so, the dancers walk onto stage. they form a line. then, in their own time, they turn and walk downstage to form another line, on the edge of the stage, looking out at the audience. why do they return? isn’t it a bit of hemming and hawing?

I’d like to do an improvisation in which everyone is still and then they all try to move at the same time. this is a non-sequitur.

OK. so what if the dancers start by walking to the edge of stage, and look at the audience. forget the line upstage. then, they turn and “go into the stage” with the imprints. what IS going on with these? they eventually form a line. they collapse a little. another line is formed. nestling. another line is formed when marina drops to the floor. leaving things behind. nestling continues. carol lying on top of marina. others gradually walking away. Tida dancing in the back. WHAT IS THIS? the diagonal. pivoting on the spot. all walk away. marina returns. she dances her cipher dance. Lailye or michel lies down where Marina had been. she finishes her dance, holding onto the last little bits of it. when it is gone, she walks out, back into the space.

Perhaps:

1. all walk in from the wings and spread out in space: are still. (and then move together, ecstatically, but Marina, who is still). OR all pivot in place, but marina, who attempts to go down to the floor or who is still? OR who all do “delicious feet.” perhaps everyone walks out from the wings to space, but one person, who dances, barely visible in the wings.

2. it is here that someone walks a tree across the space.

3. it is here that someone brings dead leaves onto the stage and drops them.

LETS MAKE ANOTHER SHOW. another Pieter. when?