NEXT Reflections is a series of creative pieces from participants of NEXT Choreography, offering a personal insight into the course.
NEXT Festival 2025 is coming soon on 22 and 23 March. Save the date!
Möbius Strip
What form will this take?
I’ll let the words move-
carve the grooves that trace
the shape this reflection makes.
From the inside, out.
We’re warming up and Sasha leads us through an
up
down
up
down movement-
a bounce.
Well, not a bounce.
That would describe only what it looks like on the outside.
He doesn’t want to see a bounce, he wants us to connect to an
internal feeling of verticality.
To let the external form emerge from
a form of
internal impulse.
Inside
out.
Inside
out.
Throughout, NEXT has invited us to step out
of pre-existing forms,
styles, norms and shapes
that might constrain the expression of
what’s dancing within us.
Inside
out.
Allow the body to fill the space it takes
and form the shapes
it wants to make,
urges to make,
happens to make!
Not those our intellect dictates.
The first time we moved, alone, for one another,
I felt the freedom of
being
witnessed by an other,
of closing my eyes to the sight of seeing myself be seen
and just moving,
from inside,
out.
Permission to start from 0.
To sit with and circle
the empty sum of space that holds what could come
NEXT,
what first
Spills
out
of the brimming 0.
Permission to start from 0
to sit with and circle nothing
but the possibility of something-
could be anything;
even nothing can add up to something
and something
is not nothing
when you demand
nothing
but s p a c e
for the infinite forming
shapes
that spill
Out
from
inside
the brimming 0
from
inside
Out.
This is the shape this reflection takes.
About Céline
Céline Barclay is an actor and Director in Residence / Drama teacher at City of London School for Girls.
In a parallel universe, Céline Barclay is a choreographer. In this universe, she’s choreographing her way to______
Cover image from Jemima Yong.