Jerwood Bank 2008 – Siobhan Davies Dance

Who’d have thought 8 little bars of a song could cause so much consternation.  8 moves were fitted randomly above notes in the above song. Squeezing a move in to a time slot half a beat long was testing – it tested ‘the move’ in particular the initiation point of the move – clarify that and you were laughing – well kind of ……………..add a real sense of its relationship to breath – ie. explosive, sighing, inbreath… and then you had something solid to hold on to as the song insists its way on……
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The idea that each person creating a portrait was introduced to the group. This was the starting point for the making of the second quartet of the work Two Quartets. There were a number of things discussed in relation to the task.

-Try not to have a preconceived idea or image of who the portrait would be of. This is so we can discover this person through a gradual building of fragments of material, drawn from a range of sources including everyday, emotional, textual and visual stimuli.

-Through the testing of our material in different ways we will start to develop layers of information to draw upon as the process evolves.

-To be aware that the solo is to be directly communicated to a viewer. That this becomes a constant reference point.

To follow on from what we talked about in the group discussion:
What discoveries are you making about your own process?
Is working alongside other people in the studio giving you new insights? 

The task seems daunting, but exciting.

Finding ‘everyday’ moves at times feels exposing. Also a worry about being too ‘mimetic’ – explore this or discard?

I am feeling intimidated by the freedom of the task.

I can feel inside crying out ‘tell me what to do!’

However I am resisting the urge to storm into the task – as I often do. I am trying to create some space for thoughts and ideas to emerge. Let’s hope they do..

Create some everyday actions………….I can’t think past gestures – I want to think past gestures and mimed actions -

Smile ( that’s the only one I have)

Create movement from sensation or memory or……….I can’t move past image – this is a major problem for me in creating dance material I get stuck in images – still pictures – that dont seem to need to move – but I do need to move – I want to create movement that moves not just images that breathe. My Song movement material too – it hardly moved it couldnt get off the spot – I think I want the intiation to be so strong that thats all I’m concentrating on not where the initiation can take me to……………………

I have heard and used the word portraits so many times and yet not thought about its meaning enough. I naturally associate it with a representation of a characteristic feature which refer to a person more or less recognizable in the photographic sense but necessary significant about the subject and his nature. The brief is to embody the story which our movements contains through a juxtaposition or layering of moves, textures and structure in order to convey the multiple world that our living body experience: a simultaneous sense of memory, present and future….. I am simplifying greatly what was said but… I need to do this right now.Its a great task and facinating idea…. as much as greatly scary.

I would like to spend my time in the studio doing as much as possible to try to find movements without worrying about  if they’re right… too much… I think it is the only way. I believe there is a sort of natural selection phenomena with movements for which the good one styes and the other disappear in the oblivious. I would like to take inspiration from people and their gesturesin order to get away from the feeling that I am miming an action. Well this is step one.

There is a sense of isolation in the process. I am excited by the prospect of using the methods we’ve been exploring, particularly looking forward to creating a structure. At the moment, however, I am feeling challenged in finding ways to generate movement. I am getting caught in questioning what’s going to work, what’s particular, what’s specific or what’s too self-expressive. I am playing with new ways to discover material and for that reason am feeling a little disconnected or removed from myself/ my practice.