Could you tell me about
some of the ideas/ findings that have arisen during your research and
development?
One of the things that has come
up in my first few days of research to develop approaches for this project, is
that it…isn’t really about walking! The walking is a kind of necessary part of
it, but in fact, what I’m interested in about the idea that I have proposed is
that it’s a framework for interaction. So it’s not so much about the movement,
it’s about the interaction.
So what I proposed is that 50
people form this single file loop which moves through the Siobhan Davies Studio
building and that it is continuously moving. And then along the route, many
different tasks are mapped to a particular space. As each participant passes
through each of those spaces, they perform a particular movement task, but in
their own way. So it should be possible to see this mapped out score that moves
around the building, and it should also be possible to see each different
individual’s response to the instructions. So there’s an interaction between
the participants, in that they have the individual responses to the same set of
instructions and there’s also a close interaction between the performers and
the audience because they are sharing the space – sometimes very closely,
sometimes less closely, but the audience move around this loop structure freely
in and amongst and around and along the route. That’s the thing that really
interests me about it, it’s like an installation that is always there whenever
you come upon it, and you can navigate your own way around seeing it,
experiencing it. It’s always happening, it’s always changing, it’s always varying,
it’s always there.
Another thing I have been
thinking about is how to make the dynamic relationship between individual
activity and group activity a visible subject of this work. Both
choreographically and generally, I would say that the two extremes of that
spectrum - everyone doing their own completely different thing and everyone
acting in complete conformity- are relatively easy or habitual things to
achieve. Negotiating a way of balancing those states together somehow is the
tricky, but interesting and necessary thing to try to achieve.
There’s one more thing, a
compositional thing. - just the simple fact that all of these mapped out tasks
will not only be happening one after the other but also alongside each other.
It’s a sort of double composition because it needs to work in both senses - it’s not only about what comes next but
about what counterpoint you are seeing side by side so it’s quite tricky
actually! How can something quite simple work in both of those ways at the same
time, and without the co-existing elements drowning each other out?
This hopes to be a
participatory dance on a big scale. Does that affect the artwork, and how?
I think the first thing to say
about that is that the idea for the work, from the beginning, is grounded in being
a large scale participatory piece. So it’s inherent in the idea. A smaller
group of people would not be able to span the circuit of the building in the
way that I’m picturing. It also comes out of a lot of my interests. I’m
interested in working with trained and untrained dancers because of the kinds
of questions I’m asking about dance and movement. For me virtuosity is a
question rather than a given. It’s a really live question for me, because it’s
something I feel as though I spent a lot of years working on, and something I
still enjoy in certain ways, but I also question what physical virtuosity
really gives to an audience and whether there are also other kinds of
virtuosity that might support the making of choreographic propositions.
I’m also interested in mind body
relationship. What I’m often thinking about now is that you can think about
dance in a very different way from how I have in the past. I like to imagine
that dancing might be whatever I’m doing when I am learning something about the
relationship between my body and my mind. That can be a very wide range of
things. I’m interested in seeing people engaged in that. It doesn’t necessarily
require conventional dance training. That sort of fascinates me.
What are the impacts or
effects for those who are going to be involved in this project? Particularly
those who perhaps have less experience of being involved in dance or big
participatory projects?
I don’t really think I can
anticipate what people will take away after the project. What I can say is, I
hope they have a good time! I hope they have the opportunity to participate in
something creative and to challenge themselves in ways which are interesting to
them. I think that if you end up presenting this as a written piece rather than
an audio piece, people won’t get my enormous long pauses between words which
are typical of me. But they are
indicative of what I think people who participate in project will notice, that
things take time with me! That’s about the creative process. I like to think
about things lots. I’m interested in sharing process that requires quite a lot
of concentration and stamina. I think often in dance experiences people enjoy
them because they are very entertaining – you put on some music and you have
fun. That’s great, those are wonderful things to do but I’m just not always
able to come up with a focused and coherent result as an outcome of a process
which is only characterized by the desire to have fun. I think people might
find it challenging in terms of concentration and to go further and deeper into
things which might seem quite simple on the surface. I hope people can come out
of the project feeling as though they have been a part of something and that
this group of people, for a short time, will have a community that shares
something. And that that invites
other people to interact with it.
At this very beginning
stage what are some of the challenges you’re facing with this work, and what
are your hopes for it?
In the research I have been
trying to open my mind to completely changing the idea. I have been exploring
lots of different options because I don’t take it for granted that my first
idea is the best one. I realised that they were things I really like about the
idea and some pretty strong challenges.
I think that my original idea –
with all the tasks mapped out along the route - will demand a lot from the
participants, and I think it’s worth demanding that for the sake of the
audience. If the tasks are really mapped to specific portions of the route it
gives the audience something fixed to hold on to. There may be up to 50
different tasks in the score. So there’s something about the concentration and
physical engagement it will demand to
switch between activities very quickly. And to get into a particular activity
very fast, doing it fully so that it registers as a performance and then very
quickly switching to the next thing, and the next, thing and the next. The danger is, it won’t leave performers a
lot of time to sink into things so that they become fully embodied, So it would
require people to learn how to make that kind of embodiment happen perhaps more
quickly than is easily accessible.
What do I hope? I hope that it
will become an artwork. I hope that it will be a professional artwork in its
own right. I hope that it is clear enough and that it is about something
clearly enough that it is worth doing again in other places with other groups
of people. I hope that it’s not a one off event but that this is the beginning
of this idea and that it’s a full treatment of the idea.
Yeah, so I hope it’s good.
