Ryutaro's photos

Photos by Ryutaro Ishikane

We've been hearing about other performances using fabric on heads (although none of us have seen them)-must be the zeitgeist.

Little Steps and Thinking Big

Monday was murky. Small advances – an introductory phrase remixed to include bits from all of us (Eva’s wish), a re-ordering of sections to accommodate Vicky’s “orphan solo”. After making small changes, the flow of things feels off. Often I’m the one expressing discomfort, a sense that we could dig deeper, and then Vick pops out with some total shift: a new order or staging when I was just looking for a little makeover. She’s generally right on. There’s a lesson there about the effectiveness of thinking bigger, with a more ‘anything goes’ spirit.

The day began with the New Jersey Transit train being delayed “for an indefinite time” as I traveled back to NY after the weekend. Four hours door to door. But now rewarded through the kindness of friends who’ve loaned their lovely digs to this peripatetic artist.

Surprise, Surprise

The first surprise is that the Red Thread machine has been oiled and gotten moving so that an idea, thrown into the middle of it, gets torn up and mixed around and comes out very differently than it began. This piece does not feel like my piece or Eva’s piece or Vicky’s, but instead the product of a hybrid sensibility. And that happens while deferring to each other, giving space for one person’s idea and then another’s to get fleshed out fully. Not consensus, but evolution through a series of radical propositions. Darwinian.

Another surprise – we made a form encompassing all our materials in our first NY week that seems OK. We’d been wanting to get to this place and it happened without struggle. And having Vick’s husband Alan come and reflect back gave more certainty that the track we’re on is the one we mean to be on. He was uncomfortable with the parts that make us uncomfortable, appreciated things we can’t see being inside it. His comments also sparked a structural idea that may prove to be the key to the whole thing once we bring in our 3 younger dancers (more on that later).

Red Thread is not like anything I’ve made. It’s more pedestrian, more choppy, more all over the place, and more spare. But the idea of patchwork – of placing one color next to another with no apology for contrast or wild juxtaposition - implies exactly the kind of freedom we are taking. And, also as with patchwork, it’s repetition that makes a pattern emerge.

NY

Everything is different now--including the weather. Our upcoming official showing in March is much more a reality, and thus much more frightening. The novelty and fun of finding movement scraps and making clusters turns into a need to refine and define. We are trying to decipher a thru-line--trying to build on what we have, trying to be rigorous, trying to find the inner logic, all while having much conversation and cherishing the intimacy that is always there.

NY

Four months after our April showing at Swarthmore, we’ve settled into a new pattern - 2 weeks of work, 7 weeks off, 2 weeks of work, 6 weeks off, 2 weeks of work – Arnhem, NY, Philadelphia - then another three months later, the performances. On Monday, our first day together here, in NY, we bemoan the fact that we never have a good long chunk of time, say 6 or 8 weeks, in order to be able to really let things evolve, since at the end of each 2 weeks of intense preoccupation with the piece, we always feel we could go on and regret reaching the end. Yet, each time we meet, our shared history, and the accumulating material, has sunk deeper, and we pick up the threads and get into the swing of things faster and faster. Past history has become present absorption. So by Tuesday, at this second 2 week meeting, we’re well into it, revisiting our phrases, putting our clusters back together, adjusting details, clarifying intentions. We’re now asking questions about the whole, we’re back to long talks about content, form, purpose, significance – we’re in the thick of it.

Forest AND Trees

[e-mail to Eva and Vicky]

Red Thread Rides Again!!

In our (trans-Atlantic) conversation today Eva and I were mulling over what we think should happen in the next two weeks in the studio.

We need to make a string of sections/ scores/ a set framework that we can repeat – one half hour or 45 minutes
We can run this as solos/ duets/ trios
Arrive at this form by 2/3 -3/4 of the way thru the 2 weeks

Zoom in zoom out, carefully crafted details and sketching more lightly to consider whole (forest and trees)

Focus on dancing/movement material
Develop more set material/scores for generating movement

Creating balance with image/theatrical moments
Movement not “stuck in”!

Solos and duets with outside eye watching

Each of us can bring to this intensive some ideas of how the whole might work (or cohere) – rhythms, sense of overall pattern, strategies for assembly, ideas about how things may progress or shift

Time line – a day of remembering, 5 days of creating and assembling forms, 2 days of running longer arcs and swaths and continuing to develop new, 2 days of running complete form in varying configurations, letting it morph and considering the coming sextet. Showing.

xo
Lisa

Cabbage Queen

A lady in Western PA, born Italian, who married into a Hungarian family, now feeds her whole town with her scrumptious cabbage rolls. Does this have anything to do with Red Thread?

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09274/1002034-34.stm