7 October

- 2019 -

Possible New Working Method

I had set a few intentions for the 401 process:
-I want to take on the role of the director (unlike the last two semesters where I was more passive)
-I want to be quicker with making decisions rather than waiting too long.
-I want to choreograph which means to really write movement so that it's specific and polished and shaped...rather than always rushed and messy.

I was here curious to get a sense of Alessandro's working methods from him havng been with the group Teatro Oficina for 5 years in Sao Paolo, Brazil. It's a theater group, and I get a sense that he learned a lot of rehearsal discipline there and how to create material. So I followed him today.

We both watched videos of me dancing from 6.10.2019, and from those we pulled out movements that we liked and focused on them separately. They lent themselves to a sequence, so we constructed one. At the end I performed a 10-minute sequence two times in a row.

--

Themes that are interesting that emerged for me this day:

Nijinsky fauno

Death to rebirth

Hexentanz

"so, I think, the theme of this steps is Spirits for you, but as I told you before, you need the grounding/earth to give them the possibility to become real and be born on Earth..." -Ingrid

Still to work from last time maybe, or at least not to forget:
Shake/vibration low to then explode out quickly

Alessandro recommends that we don’t look at past videos/old references…only the most recent where I did the full sequence…to keep moving forward with the decisions. Therefore, I only keep the last video from that rehearsal.

Macumba

9 October

Notes from Raquel and Icaro sending me references via Whatsapp “Macumba” group. These are my preparation notes for the following rehearsal from their references...

Orfeu calming with Birimbao (it's an idea where I get wild with dancing and then Icaro calms me down with the Birimbao...so that there's a tuning of the dancer with the musician until there's harmony and a flow)

To lose myself!

Time structures (I can make scores with time as ways to structure tasks between me and collaborators on stage...i.e. 5 minutes we all go as fast and loud as possible...to see what kind of situation that might create)

Fauno
Imagine if – wish

Tasks:
--get Wut music to Wut to –going between chaos and distortion and then clarity and harmony! I.e. birimbao to tune and call (the dance, spirits, etc). "Wut" means music that can inspire trance-like and intense dancing...ecstatic states.
--compose silence
--sonata of bodies struggling (thinking of John Cage here)
--Raquel, Icaro & Alessandro in the dark yelling and me dancing …us composing Cage’s traffic and silence

They sent me the following on the Macumba WhatsAPP group:

Raquel sent me an article I google translated:
Henrique Gomes -“Percepção e pesquisa na paisagem sonora: os fluxos do meio e o observador participante”
Perception and research in the sound landscape: the flows of the environment and the participating observer
--It's about sound environments


Icaro sent me a youtubes of Cage and Prepared Pianos because they had a wish to be more experimental with the sound they could offer...as opposed to Brazllian jazz which is all that I've heard them play.

I was excited by their desire to be more Cage-y, but I also was imagining the show to be eclectic and having different worlds that we go in and out of as a group...so sonically a landscape that holds the show together but also with the ability to have very different genres. For example, I would love a moment of Brazilian jazz happy music and then later some sonic score of grunting and maybe later just exploration with one instrument of Icaro's, etc.

Cage—Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano

David Greilsammer – John Cage – “prepared piano”

John Cage – Sonata V

John Cage and the Silence

Icaro sent an example of water music too...
Water Music – Tan Dun (by Simantra Grupo de Percussao)

Alessandro and I tried repeating the method from the previous rehearsal, but it was more difficult in tackling the study on "masculinity" for example because the material there did not lend itself to a natural sequence...it was more like different tasks or attempts.

We identified this grounded stance though that was very Earth energy and masculine somehow.

I felt resistance to rehearsing this position ...from judgemental thoughts and also physical exertion, but Alessandro insisted. I'm glad he did because I learned about a sense of power that I have...which I felt from this position of strong legs structuring me to the ground.

We got into a fight though because he tried to give a direction which distracted me from an internal process in the moment of tuning in. The role of director was not clear here, and i felt that it wasn't clear between us how to proceed with giving inputs or not. This became a bigger problem between us (and me with myself and with others as the process developed).

It's hard to be dancing, in the doing, but also needing to be a director with the oversight and the planning.