Jerwood Bank 2008 – Siobhan Davies Dance

6 Responses to “As promised another question…”

1. Josephine says:
   Sunday 2 November, 2008 at 9:37 am

   I am being challenged to work longer on generating movement than I normally would. I would rather move on to the next stage, or put something to one side ‘for later’, than face refining and developing movement at a particular moment. So I am recognising a habit avoidance and impatience in my usual process, which is now being challenged, and I am seeing that sticking and battling with something can be worthwhile.
   I am very grateful that the other people are there, because it feels we are sharing the experience (even though at the moment we are working a lot individually). It is also interesting to observe how other people respond differently to tasks. I will explain this more another time, but around me I am aware that there is slightly different process going on in all of us.

2. Lyndsey says:
   Sunday 2 November, 2008 at 11:57 am

   Already in week 2 I am finding myself realise how I normally like to work. Bank is exposing this at an alarming rate. It’s now very clear to me (and it reveals itself constantly) the ways in which I feel comfortable when approaching material. What I need to do is work in the ‘other’ ways, the new, scary but exciting ways and this is proving to be more of a challenge than I imagined.
   Knowing that the others are facing similar challenges is definitely reassuring and it’s encouraging to see how we all approach this differently. I really appreciate the openess of our discussions, it provides a real insight into what we are all aiming for and how diverse our approaches are in trying to achieve it.

3. freddie says:
   Monday 3 November, 2008 at 3:00 am

   The more tasks we undertake, the more lazy i feel with the use of my body. Could this be because i’m becoming more efficient in focusing the use of eneryg to deliver my intention without the extras, somtimes the not needed waffle?

4. sarah says:
   Tuesday 4 November, 2008 at 11:00 pm

   Discoveries in generating movement material;
   1. My hands are the entry point/ or starting point for a lot of my explorations. This is where I start to carve an idea from – Gill asked me what was the relationship of the rest of my body to the gesture or intention I have found – she encouraged me to explore the options – where is the spine now – where else could it be .. etc This was helpful. My thoughts/intentions/ideas often get stuck/ isolated in one part of the body. But this is slow work – to change how I usually do things – step by new step…
   2. For some unknown reason I like to put enormous effort into every ‘move’ – particularly at the start – just to make sure I ‘m feeling something – that I am communicating something. A slow dawning is occuring whereby I can now see that I am actually masking what is particular about the move with all this effort – that everything just has the same big deep breath and were off ! quality about it which dilutes its effectiveness – And more than that this huge effort – alot of the time – throws me completly off the move I wanted to do in the first place. I noticed it today in class with a simple turn – I instinctively want to give everything a bit more welly – it actually makes me not able to do the turn – or in my recent work with Lost Dog – the more I performed it – the more effort I percieved I needed to inject into the movement – the more I lost the unqiue quality of the movement. Again this is difficult to change in an instant – in a period of six weeks…maybe – a start anyway. I am making myself seek softer quieter qualities – that is keeping the effort at bay – but it is my default setting – reprogramming under way.
   3. On stimuli for generating movement; I looked at the drawings and the art books and found my literal tendancies were fed by these – but I persevered and found new ways of using them – gleaned qualities/states/sensations. I used some text – always works for me – somehow the translation from page to body is enough of an abstraction already for me to go beyond the literal when using words, I used a memory – which I really illustrated – perhaps its time to revisit this and seek a more visceral response. And then I tried just waiting for a movement to arise. It did and these are probably my clearest starting points.

5. Luisa says:
   Sunday 23 November, 2008 at 10:44 pm

   One thing I definitely found in this process that has made me appreciate much more movement and their own value and significance:I tend to discard a lot of material when I work on my own and this time I had to work on movement strip to their bear essence to which I would normally place little attention .I also tend to choose what it is often a habitual coordinations and give to the later work on space and rhythm the job of making the all thing interesting for me. Another thing that I found is the tendency of work with the body as a whole or through a single gestures without a great deal of range i between. It is also extremely useful to give time in the space to do reflect look at books and move rather than move continuously in order to produce a x result which I tend to define far to early in order to make the most of the time I have in space. It is very useful to work next to my colleagues not only for the exchange of ideas and observation but also for the simple giustapposition of energy that creates in space. It is also great to see the different outcome that we all achieve .

6. Joe says:
   Tuesday 13 January, 2009 at 1:34 pm

   I really appreciated being in the group and seeing other people’s processes. This helped me a lot. Perhaps most specifically was when I saw individuals working in directions that were new to them specifically, and might not have been a challenge or a new directions for someone else. Hence, there was a sense that each individual had their own set of challenges and needed to develop their practice in particular ways that was different from everyone else. As a choreographer who works with other dancers, it was interesting to be able to appreciate individual needs and to witness my colleague’s breakthroughs in certain areas and how the project leaders helped them achieve that.

   This was also really helpful in reflecting on what my challenges were. One colleague for example took a new direction that radically changed her Portrait. It was so apparent and exciting, I was inspired to question the ways in which I needed to shift and challenge myself.

   What transpired for me was a need to play with ‘volume’ in my Portrait and to recognise how much more deeply I could engage with my material at each point in my Portrait. Also a theme of emotion and physicality: somehow my material was quite emotive and I wanted to balance that with a performance quality that kept it physical – so it was less closed and prescriptive.