Jerwood Bank 2008 – Siobhan Davies Dance

We started with breath.

They were asked to write a thought about breath (it could be a singular word or a sentence) which could stem from any impetus…. anatomical, emotional, situational ect.They passed this thought on to another person and this new thought became the engine for an exploration (about 20min) all the while keeping a part of themselves alert to moments that spark their curiosity and which could lead to further exploration. They recorded these moments in their own notebooks.

They were then asked to add a new thought on breath to the one they received….it could be a continuation of the previous thought or taking it on a new tangent. This was then passed on to another person in the group and the process was repeated, hopefully continuing to challenge their way of thinking.

We repeated this process three times and then the page was passed back to the original person.

Everyone then went back to their notebooks and chose one of their new thoughts to explore further. They worked on their own, in pairs with one observing and in group improvisations. Slowly more clarity of the thought was experienced and demonstrated and as they continued everyone became more precise about the intention which drove the movement.

Project Leader
Deborah Saxon was born in Australia and worked for numerous dance and theatre companies before travelling to the UK in 1990. She joined Siobhan Davies Dance in 1991. During the last 12 years she has also performed with Mark Baldwin Dance Company, Jeremy James Company and Xoreftes in Athens. More recently she has created two duets with Henry Montes Uncouple and Humming Solos. Deborah is a freelance teacher teaching open classes and workshops throughout Europe and Australia.
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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.

Each person now has a collection of elements which capture different aspects of their portrait. We started to look at a way of structuring these elements . We followed on from the idea of using the songs as a way to challenge us in how these elements sit alongside each other, but this time we replaced the song score with text. They all found a different piece of text and no matter whether it was prose poetry or a section of a play each one had a play on repetition and rythmn. They were all set the task to create their own set of rules or code to adhere to and then feed their fragments into this new structure. This became the first layer to work from and once the memory worked its way around this jigsaw they would be able to sense what new layer of thought or added code could develop it further. Showing each other and working their material in group plays was an important part of this process.

To show a journey across the space moving through three distinct terrains. Within the task we will look at how an imagined terrain or circumstance makes an impact or imprint on our movement language. Each terrain should have its own unique rhythm and timing and we should be able to drop into each state without build up or preparation. This will contrast our process for the portraits task in which we found an internal emotional world that impacted on the space around and was particularly directed to a known viewer.