Jerwood Bank 2008 – Siobhan Davies Dance

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The search for terrain has been a very complex and yet quite clear experience.The clear part was that it was very obvious that things didn’t work for a while and that was a matter of fact:my body didn’t really have a intention to mark the space but was moving through it with some empty mannerism.The missing element was a physical ’state’ which generated and condensed a movement texture,   related to the area around the body.What a state is I find a bit hard to define but it is something close to a manifestation of a physical need  or reason to move and it require  fullness and integrity in its execution. Something that travel outside but that effect the muscles right through and the relationship to oneself.We all found that the terrain were a very fragile experience to perform and that made actually easier in the sense that we had to tune into that fragility each time which forced us into sensing that reason.

The complex element of the research was that it took a lot  of trials and experiment to work this out and I wonder if there is a habitual and common experience in dancer about perceiving space as neutral element of training.It was a constant hit and miss for me and I kept loosing important characteristic of what I was doing each time…and it was extremely helpfull to work even more so as a group on this.I think that was very much of a group effort.

After the last sharing somebody asked a question about if the terrain where a duet or not and afterwards I discussed the point with Freddie who was my partner in the terrain.We both agreed on the fact that there was a strong link through a very simple juxtaposition which didn’t dictate our choices and yet gave a strong drive to what we did with a clear sense of individuality: what we did wouldn’t have existed in that way without the other.I don’t think I have experienced this type of relationship before in dancing.

After having shown the portrait several times , developed and inserted code into it and all the other testing we have put it through I feel that It need to be expanded and refined in terms of the relationship between the single elements.I am not happy about not having managed to do that within the time I had and I keep reminding myself about the fact that the all experience was a explorative but: I don’t mean it about not having achieved a final product.I think that I have  not  pushed the movement material and timing of it  through its limit in order to discover more about how to compose or juxtappose the different shades together.I would have like to explore the idea of expansion and silences more.