Entering Entangled: an interview with MA/MFA Creative Practice students

“Prehistory. Time before time (we danced). Shape-shift. Now, then, and later. Remember what has been broken. Forget what has been broken. Revisit ice, stone, water and metal. What came before thought? What came before language? (we danced). What came before necessity? What came before cultivation? What came before incessant digging? What came before control? (we danced). What came before freedom and ideas? What came before now? What comes later?”
mayfield brooks

For the past 15 years, Siobhan Davies Studios (SDS) has hosted two modules of the MA/MFA Creative Practice programme, led by Independent Dance (ID) in partnership with Trinity Laban. We are three students from the latest cohort of this unique programme. Over two five-week intensive modules – Embodied Practice and Investigative Practice – we were given time and space, with each other, the community at the studios, our neighbours, and the building itself, to keep asking questions of our own practices. To reflect on this experience, we’ve turned to each other again, with some questions about our time on the course and in the building.

Eliza: Cat, was there a moment of arrival/ or multiple arrivals for you at the studios? 

Cat: To arrive into my creative practice at SDS through ID’s programme, was to feel kinetically entangled in a vibrant meeting place between presence and response. The porousness between these attributes is accompanied by a dialogue with the surroundings; the ground, the air, sound, gravity, breath and others. Improvising with what is available required buoyancy, a constant negotiation of space, sensation and responsibility toward that which is not-self, but always in relation. The echo of this far reaches and also reminds me, that I am surrounded by a landscape that I am part of and with that awareness I carry agency in how I arrive, move and land. 

Cat: Rabi, did engaging in the space change the way you approach your creative practice? 

Rabi: I agree that the studios is a place of entanglement! Sharing the Roof Studio with the 12-15 people in the MA/MFA cohort was an experience in creative vulnerability. I’m typically fairly private about the testing phase of a creative project, but within this space, I learned to trust others to witness the experimentation, to give my energy generously to others’ creative testing, and to allow others’ investigations to bleed into mine. The building itself is also very sensual, like a hug! When there were sticky spots in my experience I found respite in nooks to tuck myself into. Having the building as an active non-human agent in our collective dynamic gave me breathing space to move around blockages

Within this space, I learned to trust others to witness the experimentation, to give my energy generously to others’ creative testing, and to allow others’ investigations to bleed into mine. The building itself is also very sensual, like a hug!

Rabi: Eliza, what was it like to have the cocoon of the studios as a home for your practice for these 10 weeks? 

Eliza: As a freelancer without a regular studio, it’s such an exciting shift to be able to root down and to allow my practice to have a more in depth conversation with a space. I think with feeling “at home” though, there’s also a welcome challenge for me to recognise the bubble that we form as makers in an intensive process and stay responsive to what’s happening outside the studio. One of my favourite things about being at SDS was attending ID’s Morning Class; continually expanding, letting others in and learning from a wider community of dancers. I always want to challenge when there’s a strong sense of “us” in a making space, and to keep practicing a kind of creative porousness. 

Eliza: Rabi, you spoke about how you have perhaps fostered new relational practices. How did the intensive nature of the module affect this kind of collaboration across difference? 

Rabi: Going through an intensive learning and making process entails meeting each other again and again, and I found myself needing to meet others anew and always be ready to be surprised. In ‘The Mushroom at the End of the World’, Anna Tsing talks about contamination as an essential mode of community building where a diversity of experiences and embodiments influence each other and change us. I think the sustained proximity enabled this contamination across difference. Whilst being porous, I found it essential for us to be aware of our internal balance and the impact of our cross-contaminations. At points, I met my current limit for being with difference whilst remaining whole, which was humbling and fascinating. At others, I felt profoundly changed by the sustained contact with deep-rooted creative enquiries. 

Over time, the atmospheric habitat of the Roof Studio, stirred up with vibrant communicative possibilities, gradually shifted. Children’s voices from the neighbouring school, once palpable, grew more distant to the sound of strikes. Their absence enabled a renewed appreciation for this opportunity to play and the generative aspects of being environment-responsive.

Rabi: Cat, you also spoke about the significance of relation, and you did the two modules a year apart as you were a part-time student. What did you notice when you engaged with our neighbours over an extended time? 

Cat: Adventuring with the intensives part-time heightened an importance in traversing, to be with what is emerging rather than existing apart from it. Over time, the atmospheric habitat of the Roof Studio, stirred up with vibrant communicative possibilities, gradually shifted. Children’s voices from the neighbouring school, once palpable, grew more distant to the sound of strikes. Their absence enabled a renewed appreciation for this opportunity to play and the generative aspects of being environment-responsive. Experiencing the geography of care between SDS and its surrounding network weathered my explorations, making them permeable to a re-addressing of what and how to create contextually aware work.

Cat: Eliza, how do you envision maintaining creative porousness now that this time at the studios has come to an end? 

I’m definitely pre-grieving this MA, even in the midst of my final project! But, my research over the two years has been investigating Queer Desiring Practices, suites of movement and writing tasks that might feed queer futurity. These practices necessarily take place within and without the studio, in groups and alone, and draw richness from our past, present and from what’s to come. I think the work requires an openness to the circumstances given, a trust that “we danced” before, and that we’ll continue practicing into and through precarity. I’m very much with José Esteban Muñoz, and his ideas around queer horizons, in which rich past experiences, “moments of queer relational bliss…are viewed as having the ability to rewrite a larger map of everyday life.”