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)

Control

"I must hasten to add that music, which is 'found', is not usually found easily. " Tom Johnson

I "found" these interesting articles and lectures online written by Tom Johnson, in which he talks about his process of composing structural music and his wider observations about composition: http://www.editions75.com/English/articleslecturesenglish.html

Music in Studio 9

In October we spend the first three weeks of our production process at Laban. We means Camilla, myself and dancer Keir Patrick, who has been joining us for the first time. The support from Laban and funding from the Arts Council allowed us to focus intensively on the process, which is something I have been craving for. We introduced a piece of glass as a new instrument to the two accordions to complement previously created materials and to create new materials. Keir and me have also been playing the small accordion to accompany Camilla. Switching from playing to moving is an interesting new development for me. We are trying to integrate the two within one choreographic pattern, considering the different expressive possibilities each option brings and also the challenges that arise from going from something familiar to something unfamiliar. I am reminded daily about what it means to work in such a structural way that I have committed myself to by introducing mathematical patterns into the process. They require a lot of practice and constant intuitive decision making about how to apply them and where to go with the materials generated. This process is slow and difficult but very satisfying and surprising when it is working.

Funding

I received a letter from the Arts Council England to offer me funding for this project. Thank you to everyone for their support and encouragement to make this happen! This comes just in perfect time as we will begin with the rehearsals at Laban in a couple of weeks.

Playgrounds

Some more research, this time I am in Northampton to work with "Playgrounds",  the universities' company of third year dance students. The output of this residency will be a 15 minutes long silent dance piece to tour dance platforms and schools in the East Midlands from autumn 2010 to summer 2011. The main question in this process is how the patterns created with the abundant numbers can be shared in a larger group. How many different ways are there to share a pattern, what is shared? Rhythm, timing, material, modifiers? What kind of relationships emerge between the performers, when working in this structural way? I introduced another type of pattern into the process, which is also borrowed from Tom Johnson: "Counting in Circles", found in his book "Self-Similar Melodies". When working with these patterns for sound, I am trying to find out how they can work with different movement materials, and I change the patterns, or overlap them in different ways, to find the meeting point between the logical workings of these structures and the qualities in my choreography. Company director Matt Gough is blogging about the process here
'untitled' from matthew gough on Vimeo.

Residency in Cork with dancer Louise Tanoto

In July we have been resident at Firkin Crane, a theater located in a former butter factory in Cork. Dancer Louise Tanoto joined me for a week. After our previous intensive collaboration with Camilla (and her accordion), we concentrated on what we can do now with just the body, focusing on the different scales of movement and physical rhythms and sounds, and how they can be shared between us. This sparse approach to movement is something I have been developing for many years in many different ways. I wondered how the new process with Camilla had influenced me. I feel I am beginning to find a distinctly different way of thinking about the phrasing of movements, so the performers can "swing" together, like Camilla would say. As part of the residency I taught a class for professional dancers and the public sharing on the last day was attended by about 50 people. This was very informal, I performed some movement material, showed some footage on video (Louise had to go back to London) and talked a bit about how we have been working. I was surprised how interested people were in hearing about our process, some were dance experts but many did not have much experience with contemporary dance. People also contributed a lot of interesting and encouraging thoughts, my favorite comment was from a woman who compared me to Charlie Chaplin. There was also a question whether the Shandon bells would become part of the piece? The sharing was also free to attend demonstrating again that its mostly money that stands between people and the arts. I do hope that we will be able to go back and present the finished work in Cork at some point soon. The stay in Cork was also a great opportunity to meet with the other resident artists, particularly with Aaron Draper and Kimberley Almquist from New York, with whom we shared a house.
Pictures below are by Andy Ferreira