- 2019 -

Reconfiguring

Ahmed

The first week and a half of November felt chaotic, and I was trying to find an orientation for myself in the making process. I had asked extremely last-minute if Ahmed could come for the three days he mentioned he might be available.

These days were the most difficult in the entire process perhaps. I had the theater to rehearse in for the last times, so the pressure to be productive was immense. The above video shows my preparation a few hours before he arrived in the evening. The next morning though we did not get so much "tangible" work done in terms of making structural decisions with the piece or solving puzzles with individual choreographic ideas. The time was bogged down by argument and stress until I had to take a nap and reset. Essentially, I had to admit defeat--that the entire morning was wasted and that I was unable to dance in the space properly.

It was only after that that I was able to relax and open up to the space. I realized that a major difficulty was that the performance space/the stage felt extremely cramped. This created a claustrophobic feeling for me which had contributed to my stress. Once realizing this, then the both of us could talk about this "problem" more objectively. We decided that it's very much like a birdcage, but it also has the potential to be cozy and safe like a cocoon or cave or nest.

Suddenly the piece had a "setting"...it was set in a cage, nest, womb, intimate space. Suddenly all the expansive dancing felt very contained, and this made me realize that I had to think much more about being grounded in my intention and body because the space made the subtleties magnified...it is a space of up-close-and-personal, and there is little filter between what I feel and think and then what an audience perceives or see in/about me. This was startling at first, but it was largely a matter of me adjusting to the space actually.

As I described in my final essay, Ahmed had observed that I was neglecting two spheres or levels of the piece...that I was looking from the only the structural perspective and getting stuck there...structural as in trying to make materials fit together like a child trying to fit a wooden cube into a circular spot.

So as not to stress me out more (because I wanted to use the theater space while we had it to try out known materials), he proposed we do an evening session of going back to a somatic and movement research mode where I go back to the "cells" of the body and imagination...not needing to work known chunks of choreography. From these exercises I was able to take a break from the director mind trying to solve problems. I was able to be in an exploratory and funner mode.

The above video came from Ahmed finding text in writings I had done leading up to the 401...such as the text in the publication. The prompt that I was supposed to dance was "Spirit Trying to Find a Body". This felt key somehow even though I could not identify a specific MOVEMENT that fit the proposal. Rather, it was a state of being in which I'm supposed to just be in that existential and experiential state and allow and trust for my presence to unfold on its own. This became the last part of the show eventually (though it can still be solved and refined more as to my intention there or what I can and can't do in that moment).

This Embodiment score reminded me in a surprising way of the need, importance, and value of being unproductive...in fact it was a gift for the process and the show.