Saturday 4 January 2014

residency and showing reflections – what next?

With the time, energy and space from an important developmental stage in this project and in my practice as a solo performer I feel free and available to blurt.

On returning to Canberra from Bundanon I presented a 25 minute showing at Gorman House Arts Centre – QL2 Dance. I was eager, though quite scared and vulnerable, to present this work that I had in the immediate time been working so intensely on, but also to talk and discuss ideas of the importance of this process in terms of making it a long term career project one that I come back to at different stages in my life.

The showing went relatively well, feedback was positive and the small audience excitedly engaged in discussion about ideas I might like to explore or questions to consider. I found this sooo useful and though feeling exposed, exhausted and self conscious it supercharged me with an enthusiasm and trust in this project and my developing approaches to process and presentation.

Questions mostly surrounded the idea of including emotional place in this work. I am not sure it fits so well, in the way that I attempted here anyway especially as the other content is largely dealing with physical, natural or built, environment and movement responses to it. But I feel that I want to include these 'sites', ie. emotional places in the work, but perhaps it is about considering the physical environments in a new way to extract or to bring these emotions to the surface.
 
To continue this project for the duration of my life/practice I something that immediately felt possible and felt right when it was suggested to me at Bundanon. It is incredibly potent for the sociological, environmental, personal and process aspect of the work. In doing so I might interrogate and document the changeability of site/space as well as evolutions in my interests, movement, relationships to and experience of a new or re-visited site as time ticks by.

After talking to Leon, Josie and their friend Kate on our final night at Bundanon I have become more aware and connected to the origins of movement/dance in term of ritual, which in Australia is Indigenous ceremony and songlines. These are, to my knowledge performed only at certain sites and time/seasons and on particular surfaces and routes/journeys, and link to my own dance in site, time, culture in contemporary society. I am super excited to research this further and I see the potential for creating a site specific dance that indicates a contemporary ritual, ie. What is the ritual dance of /Australians today? What are the  ritual ceremonies connected to site/space time? What is the movement of these sites, times and ceremonies?
So after this revelation I hope to research and continue my site dance experiments with this historical/cultural awareness and an awareness of identifying my own rituals/movements connected to site.

I hope to continue the development of a full length solo work, a physical thesis on site dance, combining live performance and film. I will actively seek out opportunities to continue its creative development and present this work in a season in 2014/15.