Three Takes on Day Three

(Vicky) -starting with reading/hearing each other’s thoughts

-today we marathon to Bach
playing with the music
its tempo, its rhythms, its regalia

Lisa wants to see 1 person marathon while others come in adding activities
“framing” according to Eva via Susan Sgorbati
or

-enhancing, supporting, highlighting, refining, defining, underlining

-to off set – and yes, to offer relief even

i end up the “marathoner” and a little derailed by the word “marathon”
imprisoned by my superimposed notion of ongoing, energetic, kinesthetic doing
that i can’t fulfill
when is the response to stimuli hokey, “pat”?
how to figure that out?
Eva has a desire to see a certain episode
we take turns trying
- is something there?
- the transitions seem off
i’m nervous about the sadness – is it the music? is it manipulative? hokey/pat?
- we like the same parts
- does that mean anything is something there?
tomorrow

(Lisa) Going into a fresh work situation gets you revved and moving for a couple of days. But by day three you often hit challenges. Here they were about too many ideas and tricky juxtapositions.

After all of us repeated the “marathon” idea of continuing to dance in an active and expanded (as opposed to a largely still or small way) for twenty minutes, I wanted to move one step forward with it. I have a vision of one person persisting, dancing over a long haul while others come and go, and other events unfold around them (some metaphor!). Getting to actually doing that involved everyone adding ideas and suggestions to the point where I became irritated, just wanting to DO it. Later I realized that my relationship to the idea itself was like that of a child who sees a toy they want to play with. When others had their hands on it, delaying the moment of beginning play, it was frustrating! I never thought of collaboration as being like children figuring out how to play together, agreeing on the game and how it’s played…

The second challenge came when Vicky’s score mixing two duet images seemed to just not find a right balance. One image coming out of the “marathon” involved a chair being held behind her as she progressed forward. Another involved an awkward item with teeth. They could both be read in a number of ways, but seemed to refer to assisting and caretaking, possibly of a parent or child. There was a mixed response when we added a Bach piano largo. It was beautiful but did it verge too far toward pathos? How should one action be connected to the other – through abrupt transition? Should there be a sandwich of actions? And seen at which angles? How exactly to time one person’s moves relative to the other? This was the first form we have done together that has the quality of needing to be impeccable to read at all properly.

(Eva) We begin with Lisa’s marathon score and continue to add themes we can focus on while moving. To yesterday’s ‘notice when you find a motif’, ‘stay with repetition’ and ‘don’t feel the need to relate to everyone all the time’, we add ‘do savor a meeting/relationship when it happens’ and ‘feel ok about not knowing’. I’m finding that with the addition of ‘parameters’, my enjoyment of the 20 minute span of time grows. In fact, 20 minutes now seems short. There’s so much to notice, so much to do.
Lisa wants to see one ‘marathoner’ in the space with events unfolding around her. Vicky and I flip a coin. Unlike the task of decision-making within a piece, where one intuitively knows what feels and /or looks ‘right’ or not, Vicky and I have seemingly insurmountable problems stepping forward to do or ask for or want something. Vicky becomes the ‘marathoner’. In this context I find myself shifting from my usual ‘dancer imperative’ (as Lisa calls that desire we have to move, to be out there doing), to composer/choreographer imperative (the desire to order, shape, structure, see the whole). I become pedestrian, fulfilling the need of the space and Vicky’s moving. Totally enjoyable.
In the afternoon we work with 2 images, trying them this way and that. I become impatient and want to let it go, but Lisa keeps pushing at it, we try different orders, new spacing, . . . . . Vicky points out emotional/physical states she feels are generated by the addition of music. We’re not sure. We fiddle. I like how we can hold each other in difficult moments that, alone, each of us might have a tendency to discard, yet perhaps, it will, eventually, yield something.