PURE RESEARCH REVISED – JUNE 2011 WITH NOTES How do we use choreography/physicality in our work, especially working with found material and verbatim texts or existing scripts? Maiko starting away from source (The Outsiders) and using a personal approach to get closer to it. Jamie will start with the source, moving away from it into the realm of the personal. June 13, 14 & 15, 2011 DAY ONE Thinking about: When have specific applications of movement in the past been successful/not successful in our work? How do we evolve this practice so that it feels like it is moving forward and evolving as our work evolves? How can it become distinct aesthetically in our work, or is it already? More hints about the “why” or “to what end?” 2 – 3:30pm Work session with Sarah Chase PREP Lie on your back, arms by your side. Gently, arms begin to grow along the floor, right arm, left arm etc. Arms move up and over the head, moment of switching above the head, and legs move in counter. Arms come back down. Repeat Lie on your back, arms travel above your head. With whole back still on floor, bring arms and legs to one side and make a “C” shape with your body, turn into a fetal position on the same side. Roll back, fold open your legs and arms, arms and legs extend along floor and repeat action on other side of body. Do several times. IMPRINTING Begin on the floor. Imagine your body is leaving an imprint where it meets the floor. Be conscious of every imprint as you move around the floor and space. Eventually bring your body up into the space, traveling through space. WORM HOLING After imprinting rises into the space more, begin to work a sense of worm holing, leaving an imprint behind in space as you move through the room. Like worm holes in beach rock. SUBSTANCE
Imagine the air in the room is like flour. The sensation of burying your hands in a bowl of flower. Placing your body parts into substance as you move through the room. X We drew an X from fingertip to toe on a partners body. After the X is drawn, you try and feel the two lines equally. Front and back. CROSS PATTERNING Make a pattern from a series of words. Ie: Spring/Summer/Winter/Fall and MOTHER/FATHER/SISTER. As you move through the 12, you are thinking of the words that correspond. Mother in the springtime. And then you can begin to place an association on top of these combinations. I remember Mom in the kitchen looking out the window, crying at the beauty of our lilac tree in the backyard, etc. Use this to load the intention physically. Break 3:40 GAME – “go” The ball is on it’s own trajectory, this trajectory is fixed. Look at me, not the ball. Go away from the voice. Work levels of complication with this game until it is organic and living, breathing on it’s own. Group rhythm, kinesthetic response/awareness, energy focus and an icebreaker. Began playing the game, starting cooking, replaced the ball with a smaller ball. Then stop saying “go.” Widened the circle so that it took up the whole room. This exercise was a fantastic precursor to exquisite corpse, because it was all about the practice of picking up for each other. The ensemble working together to keep something going and alive. And thinking as one. Being in each other’s bodies. 4:00 WALK/RUN in space. Further kinesthetic awakening, connection to the centre. Accumulate with exploration of YOUR NAME HERE, a physical expression exercise that allows for isolation and working of specific body parts while finding connection to a core or centre. Striving for total physical engagement. Begin to play with size & quality. Introduction of image life and more specific creative expression within the exercise. Conversations with each other. Additional layer of emotional engagement.
This didn’t seem necessary after Sarah’s work in the morning session so I skipped it. I would still like to work on this idea though and flesh it out a bit more. To get the bodies ready for the next part: 4:30 Exquisite Corpse Remembrance/Collective Recall PART 1 RECORD THIS This is a method I’ve used in the past and which I’d like to explore more: It is a group creation exercise, based on the collective recall of a story, pieced together through individual’s personal memories of the movie THE OUTSIDERS, (a seminal movie in my teenage life).Participants will have all watched the movie prior to day 1. The group will do an exquisite corpse remembrance of the film from start to finish. They must add on to each other’s words, one speaker at a time, until they have finished. They can only go back, if they say “Yes, but before that…” We will film to recall the physical vocabulary. We will make a completely repeatable group score. The group will be seated in a row of chairs while doing this and will be asked to get up when they speak and to physicalize their recollection. This will require some attention and focus. We will try for little pauses. Everyone must participate. This process was surprising because of the amount of detail brought in to the remembrance. It might work better to not know the story so well or have it so fresh in the mind. I went through the 1 hour and 8 minutes of material and picked out essential bits for everyone. We learned it until it was repeatable, which took some time but was very satisfying. Except for the FORMATION of the line felt really limited and like an energy dropper. Became curious about how we can break that up so that it is doing something interesting. During this time, Sarah and Jamie started playing music, which sometimes was grating and other times was exciting. They saw something in watching me work with the group, in particular in watching a group of people learn something and become gradually more competent in it until it takes flight. This was a really important and exciting discovery. DINNER Learn SONG: GLORIA by Van Morrison Did I tell you about my baby You know, she comes around Shes about Five feet four From her head to the ground Comes around here Just about midnight Makes me feel so good
Makes me feel alright And her name is G . L . O . R . I . A G.L.O.R.I.A G.L.O.R.I.A, G.L.O.R.I.A G.L.O.R.I.A, G.L.O.R.I.A Gonna shout it every night Gonna shout it every day She comes around here Just about midnight Make me feel so good Make me feel alright Comes Walking down the street Won’t you come to my house She knock on my door Come in my room Make me feel all right G.L.O.R.I.A G.L.O.R.I.A, G.L.O.R.I.A G.L.O.R.I.A, G.L.O.R.I.A This song has virtually no melody. But it was really useful as a layer. We never learned it, but we played it and folks sang along in the Gloria bits, which was fantastic. 6:00 Exquisite Corpse Remembrance/Collective Recall PART 2 Learn it! From here we will: Over dinner I will watch the video and edit it down if necessary. Watch the video and get the group to recreate the whole score. Get the score repeatable. Work it as a chorus and individually. Play a bit with size, quality & foreground/background as we work it. Break 7:45 – 9:45 Physical Transmission 3 CONTEXTS for same movement score. Work individually. This work looks at taking a specific physical vocabulary and using it as a consistent code within different source material (ie: texts, songs, etc). We will use the created score and layer on different sources, which colour the score or layer other meanings on top of it. There is an interesting relationship that gets generated with this kind of repetition between the physical life and the emotional/narrative life.
I would like to apply 4 different emotional/narrative layers: -A personal story: A time when you were in a big fight or a time when you were influenced by someone else to behave in a way you wouldn’t normally. -Text from another source: Romeo’s speech under Juliet’s balcony -Text from Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost Nothing Gold Can Stay Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. Learn the song GLORIA by Van Morrison. We then placed 5 different treatments on top of the score: 1. Minah told us her version of THE OUTSIDERS movie. This was really exciting, and worked for the most person. 2. Conor told us a personal story about his youth and a tragedy that happened to a friend of his. This went in and out and was most interesting around the moments when Conor would come forward to do his part of the action. 3. We played epic music and everyone put a quality of “love” on top of the sequence. This works. 4. We tried a scene from Romeo and Juliet. This was the least successful. Peaked my curiousity around what physicality could possibly work with a text like this. 5. We did “THE OUTSIDERS” acting while playing music, Van Morrison’s GLORIA. This worked and was really enjoyable and could be part of the show if we ever make a show out of The Outsiders material. Curiosities: How/When does the movement become “codified?” How does it gain power? How do we use that power? How can we reference the original found material? When does it work? When does it fail? After it fails, if we keep going, does it get interesting again? Is failure a part of the process? How long until the codes become apparent and work as a tension? How/Why does it resonate? Cushion/Discussion
DAY TWO Mash-up/Collisions I would like to capitalize on the creations of first days work program and use fragments of the Outsiders film and explore any potential in the displacement (mashing) of text from one source, R&J, speculations and personal story, and found physicality/choreography. Questions: §
How much of the original source material (if any) is necessary to make the combination interesting?
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Can the two combine to create something that stands alone?
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How does specificity or rigor of replicating the found movement generate focus or sympathetic response on the part of the viewer?
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How does it heighten the centredness or focus of the performer?
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How can looping of the movement/text be used?
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How can the original movement gestures be stretched (a la Toshiki Okada – cheltfitsch), slowed, sped up under or to reflect the text spoken?
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How can we create fictions (additional material) from the combined fragments?
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When does the mash-up riddle become distracting. The moment it is solved or given up on?
2 – 3:30pm Work session with Sarah Chase Did a first bit of Chi Qong work. Breathing in and out and touching fingertips. Imagining that the space has substance. IMPRINTING & WORM HOLING We did another jam of this and started to work a bit in relationship to each other. X We traced X lines on a partner on the floor. First we did parallel, and then we did the X. CROSS CRAWLING We always end on the X, exhaling.
NON LITERAL SIGNING We used Robert Frost’s poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay, to develop a sequence of non literal signing. We did 2 lines together and then each took one line. Then we worked on making it fluid and not choppy as we worked the gestures and the text together. Then we worked on associations within our words and then we tried to put them together again, staying true to the association and the poem. To me, it felt like the association effects the physical action while the poem stays true to itself. You are really understanding what the poem means as you speak it, and your body is telling another story that is linked to association. Associations are exciting because while I think I’ve been doing them instinctually, this has never been articulated and so it is a new way of looking at the work I’ve done with Sarah, like in Train. 3:30 – 3:40 BREAK 3:40 – 3:55 GAMES in the Space: Purpose shake things up get a little bit stupid before we get specific. §
Pick a person to avoid and person to stand beside.
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Find a person to pick up.
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Viewpoint - make a triangle with two others.
3:55 – 4:20 Dance Party: Moving from complete stillness to out and out groove.
Stagings 4.20 – 5.30 Study and stage the movement/blocking from The Outsiders. We recorded 3 scenes from The Outsiders to put into ipods. The group learned the choreography from the church scene. Once again, watching them learn it off the computer and become slowly more competent worked. Then the scores themselves were interesting as duo and single material, which you could place into relationship. This idea could be taken further. One thing Sarah and I talked about on the last day was the idea of placing monitors in different areas for learning and then swapping out the monitor for another object. Like, an urn. Or a dead body.
2 scenes -‐ -‐
Scene in church delivering letter - 43.00 – 43.45 The Tom Cruise Moves during the prefight. – 1.11.55 - 1.12.25 Choose six distinct moves to master and string together.
5.30 – Recordings onto I pods § §
The Romeo and Julliet’s. Any other texts we feel we need to get in there
6-7 dinner break We learned another scene, the hitchhiking one with Twobit and Pony. This was less interesting. 7- 9 MASHING Review the scenes and the blocking. Start mixing the ingredients. We tried putting the scenes on top of different physicalities and texts. This didn’t work all the time, in fact most of the time it felt like there was too little challenge within it and it didn’t do anything active. The movement and the text felt very disparate from each other. But when the challenge became greater, when we started to layer on top more difficulty for the group, it became instantly engaging and really really funny. We had them moving forward and back doing a peripheral focus off a leader and then not being able to be on the same level. So there were two or three levels of complication at play. Then it was doing something active with the text and offered some kind of commentary on itself. The text helped, because it started with Cherry saying “I came here to see a movie and I’m gonna see a movie!” Also worked when the voices started getting pared away, so ipod by ipod the voices disappeared.
Two Variations: One where the text and the movement remain in original form so that neither bend to suit the other and we look for synergies in the collisions. Two – we allow them to morph/or speak to each other as needed. Use i-pods if needed.
Text could include: §
Speculation on character development beyond this scene.
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The group Recall.
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Subtext.
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What they imagine the other to be thinking. Play with first and third person perspective.
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Listing the actions as they do them and other distancing techniques.
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New Fictions
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Speculation on character development beyond this scene.
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The group recall text completed the day before
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Subtext.
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What they imagine the other to be thinking. Play with first and third person perspective.
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Listing the actions as they do them and other distancing techniques.
Allow for actor driven improvised physicality based on previous work Ie. the dance sequence created earlier in the day, stretching slowing etc of movement Cushion/Discussion
DAY THREE This day is meant to be an accumulation of some kind, but we’d like to keep it pretty open to see what we might want to play with. 10:00 – 11:30 Work session with Sarah A shortened warm up which contained imprinting and worm holing and x-ing. Was very great to feel a bit heated through it. 11:30 – 11:40 Break 11:40 – 1:30 Maiko and Jamie combined work session A mishmash of previous days’ work? FORMATIONS We took 5 formations of the group from working on learning the exquisite corpse remembrance and then we strung it together. It was important to not stop in b/w the formations, but just to sustain a bit and move through to the next, so that it was less tableau and more active. Then we cannoned it. So that it felt even more organic. This was quite beautiful and I’d love to see what it would be like to integrate this into Dress me up. So that the line formation is not the fall back, but that these organic pictures can be alive and revealing. Interested in this as a system of chaos within something. Still pretty, but not “neat.” Not so “clean,” which I am far less interested in these days. Then they just started doing their lines from the 5 hander as they remembered them, which was really nice. Just before lunch we worked at breaking down the two church scenes. We had two people start in relationship to each other. Then we added some peripheral focuses. Then we added one person learning the death scene from The Outsiders of Dally off an iphone. Then we added sound from the movie. The sound of the death, the sound the rumble, the music. Then we switched the peripheral all to the death around one person. Minah read from the novel. This was by far the richest combination of materials and treatments and had all elements we were playing with working together for a brief moment. It revealed the source, and it contained many live negotiations and challenges within. After lunch we worked on books and pens and we took a look at ricochet moments. We did another experiment which included text of a scene on ipods, peripheral moving and talking. It was interesting to see the group get better at a scene over time and watch that ripple peripherally.
The last thing we did was have Minah do her body puzzle, which involved characters from The Outsiders on one side and light/darkness/sunset on the other. As she announced the combo, other people used this context to say a few words about the movie and to tell the whole movie chronologically. 1: 30 – 2:30 Lunch Break 2:30 – 5:30 continuation? If there’s time, we’ll look a bit at Sarah’s curiosities? It will be most useful to have a discussion with her about what she sees. Articulation of a process would be something good to strive for. We will see what happens. 5:30 – 6:00 Cushion/Discussion WHAT WE’VE ASKED THE GROUP TO PREPARE: 1. Watch the movie THE OUTSIDERS, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, prior to first day (based on the SE Hinton novel). 2. Know the following texts from Romeo and Juliet: ROMEO: But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief, That thou her maid art far more fair than she: Be not her maid, since she is envious; Her vestal livery is but sick and green And none but fools do wear it; cast it off. It is my lady, O, it is my love! O, that she knew she were! She speaks yet she says nothing: what of that? Her eye discourses; I will answer it. I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks: Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night. See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O, that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek!
(Know all 3 parts in the following scene) MERCUTIO Draws Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk? TYBALT What wouldst thou have with me? MERCUTIO Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives; that I mean to make bold withal, and as you shall use me hereafter, drybeat the rest of the eight. Will you pluck your sword out of his pitcher by the ears? make haste, lest mine be about your ears ere it be out. TYBALT I am for you. Drawing ROMEO Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up. MERCUTIO Come, sir, your passado. They fight ROMEO Draw, Benvolio; beat down their weapons. Gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage! Tybalt, Mercutio, the prince expressly hath Forbidden bandying in Verona streets: Hold, Tybalt! good Mercutio! TYBALT under ROMEO's arm stabs MERCUTIO, and flies with his followers MERCUTIO I am hurt. A plague o' both your houses! I am sped. Is he gone, and hath nothing? BENVOLIO What, art thou hurt? MERCUTIO Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, 'tis enough. Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon. Exit Page ROMEO Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much. MERCUTIO No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough,'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o'
both your houses! 'Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic! Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm. ROMEO I thought all for the best. MERCUTIO Help me into some house, Benvolio, Or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses! They have made worms' meat of me: I have it, And soundly too: your houses!