Skript 120413: After watching and performing a performance of Opus 49, Miguel Pereira (Portugal)

I sit at my desk. The clock ticks. I recall a darkened theatre. I am surrounded by people. A figure appears with a microphone.

It’s me, in the dark trying to perceive the void. the emptiness...yes

Ah yes, he walks, moves slowly, gingerly perhaps. what, where...sound...no sound...

yes sound, there’s no silence!

even if i’m looking for nothing!

I imagine looking for nothing, the feel, smell, sense of it...nothing eludes, me, here now as I sit at my desk, the image of your looking with microphone in hand pulls me into something

yes, the microphone is my pen, a extension of my body, exactly as writing here with my fingers in this  moment. So writing dancing here without microphone but with fingers and keyboards, are we still perceiving the void, leaning into the emptiness?

thoughts, thoughts and thoughts...they’re not concrete but it’s with them that we build realities, is with them that we move our bodies, in space and in time.Yes...yes...yes...she thinks...as she sits up straighter in her chair feeling into the screen as his presence through is dancing fingers becomes more clear

my fingers are searching for the right moment, the subtle movement as the microphone is searching for something in to the void space, the theatre space where i should dance but where i feel empty. Should we dance? She dances, I watch her stand and she dances, knees bending, arms pumping above her head to the loud music. Was there loud music? Did she dance? I feel

maybe! in her head there’s loud music even if she’s stand, quiet, but there’s something always moving, the heart pumping??? giving the impression of something alive at least. The shapes and sound of no sound, the shape of no dancing but dancing. The darkness and void, yet the playfulness of that. The flap, flapping of your belt, the crashing of your body or the chairs, those lovely, cheap, Ikea chairs.

the body is in contact with something, with it’s own space against other spaces and this produces the sound, like the wind exists when it goes against a space, a wall, a window, our own bodies, sometimes it’s cheap spaces, sometimes heavy and hard spaces.

And sometimes the space gives rise to a movement, a moving floor, a floor moving, undulating, a darkness that does not feel like the wind. Who or what is here?

movement, sound, body, space, existing always since we’re alive and it can be a virtual space as the space where we are right now. here and now.

i’m trying to build something with my fingers against the keyboard, thinking in a language that’s not my own language but trying to find the right movement for a strange space. Yes, and a stranger...can we build something together...your language and mine...both fingers...both keyboards...both and more...

we build something together and it’s in the intersection between your knowledge and mine about english and between your knowledge and mine of Opus 49. I watch.

i watch and i do, simultaneously, as i think and i act at the same time, i’m an observer and i’m a actor as in Opus 49, searching for this “in between”. I see you leave, hear you leave the stage, hear you leaving, walking, or imagining you walking. Imagine all that you are doing when I cannot see you now or on stage. Do you smoke? Do you listen? Do you want to leave the stage, want to

dance, or should be dancing, or letting me dance you in my imagination.

yes, imagination, it’s the word, dancing, smoking, writing, leaving, existing by the imagination. sometimes we just need that, perceiving the invisible existence! existing invisibly???? as i wanted to do in my solo. Say more? 

disappearing...just the trace of my presence, just my heart pumping, could you listen my heart pumping?I hear footsteps, inhalation, exhalation, heavy breathing with more steps, silence, more silence...if i fall into that silence now as memory I hear your heart, feel your heart but then...then there was more  outer material elements of you rather than inner essence or materia. The dance of the heart...

confronting my inner world with the outside world, that’s it, with heart dancing dancing dancing...till the moment that it will stop. And darkness falls, we fall into the void...into the nothing...or maybe that is when falling cannot fall...when the void is void, nothing is nothing...where falling, walking, smoking, breathing, waiting, listening....stop. turn the microphone off. stop capturing, given up, abandoned, going away...but still existing.

Skript/Lakeside/Tom Dale

Skript 170413: Whilst sitting at Lakeside Arts Centre/ Tom Dale (UK)

writing dancing

i am here, pausing, fading fading the light casts on to me. was it so much darker only one month ago…


as i type i breathe, hissssssssss. the day light on hte table i a struggling. i feel the inner twitch in the stomach the tightness in the chest… a frip, grip, tip. the words are hard to find today. being here. again. the same but different.

settle into my inner dance…. can i find her. i know she is there beneath the twitching, gripping sensation.

pause. i remind myself to be with the moment. avoid judgment of the words that appear on the page. the single hand casting over the key board. the disruption across the shoulders as i type my one handed type t y ppp ing.

the dance of light… dancing as light. the light cascading in through the roof above me. can i feel it on my head, shoulder,… as the legs drop into shadow. and in that shadowy place, just a shade darker i sense the legs droppig from my knees the angle of the knee joint the lower leg sloping away , the feet rested but not planted. skimming skimming across the base of the chair.

the hand lifts … you look very busy there…

do i…

what does  being busy look feel like? can i sense that busyness in me. 

and as i reflect on this i realise that my gripping has passed. the busyness rests in the eyes in the smoother action across the key board and i know i am body writing dancing…

the dance the rests that is resting. the being rested. this i know. this i can be with.

a deep breathing in. the chest rises the angle of the head cast down… my writing dancing bringing forth a particular way of being. a particular state. one hand, the fingers pressing. the patterns emerging and repeating.

and in this repeating what emerges…

glance, the lift in the eyes the shift rotation and lift of the head.  the seat bones planted… yes that is the word… i feel planted

‘its too hot in there…’ as he smoothly smooches across the gallery space.

the cool air cast onto my left side. my right is warm the typing the one handed typing warming my shoulder, my arm..

whilst the other side s cool,

 sliding side to side.
laughter
hello
nice to see you
the hands paused over the key board
the bubble around me .. ah yes the busyness of me of my fingers of the eyes



....

the space of the table finishes the corner for me….

here we are in a space that could be anywhere but its here. and you are here sitting sitting with me.  not moving but my mind is not fixed and there are places that it wants to go to … the bodymind floating into other spaces, times.  i recall being here at the place before. but i note the red in the eye my minds eye takes me to those other space, times. and beyond.  if you went into a room and considered not coming out for a year or more, what would you find on your return to the reality of your life.  The world waits for no one and the time is now and we are of the time but still my mind wants to withdraw to have space for my thoughts to dance and my body to watch. 

and i have an image… in the room with the world apart… i am my body, my body -- outlined, sensing, , dreaming, is the world the home i carry with me… no I think not.  The World as I know it is not your home but a place of refuge for others to come to when you are asleep and not thinking.  we think too much and are governed by what we want and not what we need. 
and in that needing that touching with others can you feel sense the body the breath? sometimes and sometimes not.  I am in a cage in a body that is still, immobilized by grief and struck dumb by the worlds thirst for power and materialism  it makes me very sad and I feel not everyone is living, breathing or dancing to the real music the world has to give us. 

ahhh. as i see your words falling onto the page, the difficultly of being with self rest hard in me. i fee it in the base of the spine. yes and this makes flying so heavy for the soul and your spirit.  can you find a light place in your dancing writing .. being?? oh yes and its not so hard to let the music take my sense and sensibility from reason to the obscure and I hope to feel up lifted by the others who transform their bodies to show their self and seflessness when they are out of control and into the world of light and free being.  

.....

the spaces opens up as i write as the other voice joins me, opening new directions..

the warmth slips spills..
the rubbling music to my dance the eyes cast towa

welcome… well will writing dancing for a while…

shall we start with something small?
that would be good
the loud sound of the announcement cuts into my thinking being..
i feel it in by back…
the fingers rest… yours hover…
hovering considering what way i wish to type. how i type starts my thinking about dancing… my typing dancing is one handed -- did you notice.. my sideways dancing… falling over to the right…. i noticed how the movement of your right hand made the rest of your body move in a swinging / swishing motion across the table….. it made the shadow present on the table start the process of making me feel like my style of dancing is rather dull and a little restricted….

he looks up. the wine smooths the throat… what is your dancing drinking ?
i think my dancing is drinking the energy of the people around me. I’m sensing their movement and feeling that press against my shoulders…. the presence of someone i know influences my view and sense of ease about writing….that sense of ease has a pause, a sutter in me. i feel it as the room shifts around the sensation is loud in my belly. it jiggy piggy wiggy belly dance


he laughs the body shifts backward in a jiggy belly elly welly dance

laughing is always something I associate with dancing…. the breath of moving seems similar to laughing for me the same sensation of release and relaxing. i sense that about my audience …. i sense that they have a desire to smile when they watch us dancing writing

i really want to stretch - start the process of relaxing and smiling

we could write the dance of your our laughter … sometime

a lovely sound score ha ha ha ha - or for me t reads tee hee.

thank you for writing dancing with me.
thank you for really dancing.
....

I like dance I always have I wanted to be a dancer but was told at the age of 11 in my dance class that I was too big to be a ballerina!

i like dance i always have i want to be a dancer and hope to be one when i grow up
I never knew that there other types of dance like Contemporary or Breakdancing
If I knew that I would of tried something else.
I watched Ballet Rambert and Michael Clark I loved it!
I watched a piece by pheonix dance company with my school but i’ve forgotten the name
How do you feel dancing?
“i can’t quite explain it, i haven’t got the words…” - Billy elliot

It makes me very happy and I hope to always dance and embaress you at parties;)
Haha thanks mum.
mum tum… i feel it i recall hte sensation of being htat mum… tum
....

welcome to the page… shall we start writing together.
id love to
you might take a moment,,, sense the dancing the is in around through you right now..
loud loud loud voice
urgency  and that urgency pulls at me i feel it puling my attention..

it makes e want to move
run tumble
freely to experience more movement
seat seats sitting … the pressure to act to move.

can we continue after? of course
lets go!
.....

would you like to write with me…

light bending, the sound passing trough me…
yes I felt like the work
world was ending…in a club the pules ringing hte hte body - the figments of light constellations and big bangs.. bang bang.
the dance the flesh gone .. missing the those sound and ligh waves.. sweat swebetl  blinking  and folding hIe was with them he folds the world in his light. throwing out the die is cast .. casting out passing in ward they shift into nothing fall they followed each other up the stairwell, stepping, stepping upwards and outwards to a another world to to hte space we know but cannot see… and as ou sit as you are pulled by the clubbing sound together but separate at the same moment… they were free floating in the blackness like hooded, like astronauts ah yes hte covered heads the dipped necks as the draw to hte floor opperates againist those steps stepping stepping upward..incesant inside.into and we look on … are we in, on , part of hte world they create.. where I wanted to get up nad join in… walk through it.. into that folding light of beams of flashes of faces… and hte deep voice moving on …I felt young young young...

Skript/ #especes

-->

Skript 170303: After watching a live improvisation #especes, Rosalind Crisp (AUS)

the space between you  me us… moving reaching your arms out,, searching (re)searching!

the corner frames you ,  eyes all cast over me, away from you to him. but i

dwell with you …

your head curved to the side, my neck rotating, twisting to see feel your movement as the arms extend the back curving. breath heavy behind me.  ha,,, ho, pheewww. the feet pa pa ba, pa.. him as sound for you. your music .  laughter.

in front of me he drops, foot held in hand.  an in take of my breathe. i notice in myself the capturing of the picture. hold it vida, the moment pauses in my minds eye. the foot held in hand, leg at 90%.  and image to be recalled. replayed. re re replayed. the comfort between them resonates in the room. he and she.  the rock and roll comes back like an old friend, ally. yes the rock roll rolling hands. hansueli where are you? Default yes but take whatever comes and the choreographer wanted to stir things up break any english ness. the pair about and them together is see feel you curve under him.,ratbag. the play the connection resonates in us we feel you’re connected.  the solos too much extraneous movement. but in your parting.. in your distance across the room i feel his sound in your dance and your dance in his sound… rat pa pa rock and roll hole.. when we are five its a rat pack.  the rats run roll tumbling I like the animal, try not to spill it too much all over people, but when it come up from underneath it releases a tiger in me.  yes yes i heard the tiger in you very strong the breathing , arrghhhh. the energy filling the room… is it too much? the choreographer wonders… and when you sense the too much how it that in your body? its a reading of the accumulation of dynamic shifts in the space, does that make sense? for example my solo early on max was more busy than usual, he is supposed to be less active, so this brings up stupid questions which are irrelevant when one is in the studio playing, we don t know the limits of this work.

Skript/Bonington

 

Skript 170303: While sitting at Bonington Gallery foyer, Nottingham (UK)

 

2 columns of sensation either side of my spine, if they could speak in words i imagine them saying to other parts of me, get up, move, dance me…dance with me, move with me, i tire of this position, stillness in this position i hold for you…but if only…. moving into the blue red image.. the dust falling on to my face. running into the depths of the blue, red cloth, image.

i feel another part of me moving elsewhere , if a mind could dance into new places it would happily move into the depths of bleu and red…moving into and out of, with and beyond…not worried to be constrained by time and space, mind dancing, body dancing, all the same but only physics really holds me here…i long to escape…into dancing parts and whole, particles and molecules … our 100 billon trillion cells all doing the same dance.  or different dances, and also our two billion year old self also dancing with the self present, or thinking she is present, now…

crawling. i sense the pressure into the  knee the shift across the pelvis the tightening of the stomach muscles as the other knee moves forward… this is my two billion year old self knowing. memeboring. rememboring.

boring… re   member….boring….bearing….

bearing the weight. laughter. ha ha. what…

head falls forward, releasing the upper back the shoulders. if i crawl will i need this kind of release, if i crawl or dont sit will the needs of stretch and pull shift and alter

falling to the image.. the particles drifting .. me as particle drifting. in and out. do i have the same lightness.. do i fall on many surfaces? i sense a longing  long in lightness. my body as a piece of dust, part of the air around me. what would it be to touch you as the air touches us? the dis-appearing self that so compels me. 

a lightness in my arms, back and chest, i sense my dust-ness, feel into my dust-ness as i float in the air, and then there is something more, notice it, wait to find the words, the tickle and heavy quality of of of of…the keyboard, i hear him say.

the room shifts. i relocate, fight to stay the sounds. i work as work to press the sounds into the muttering background while noting the ways in which the inner fluttering increasing as the room dynamic changes. so loud.

the group stand to the left of me… forming a space that circles in on themselves. hello.. he says. join me.

the passing feet pause and the choreography of the room changes again.  do you sense it see it hear it? as you sit with me we might imaging the dancers, people as dancers.. passing around us centre stage? can you write the dance?  the sounds behind are our music…. ok ok … i sense the potential a drop a fall. great.

the hand on the lip a light touch. a pause. his dance your dance our dance all in the one gesture. a chinese gesture perhaps? 

an awkwardness about being centre stage. wondering what’s behind. what sounds to respond to, what movement might be happening behind my head. wondering what movement is happening with your head. its tilt as a dance? your lips slightly shifting the smallest moment movement are the thing. there is no need for more. ok. so mine is the choreography of uncomfort. the touching of my lips, the scratch of my head, the shift of my body on the chair. shifting as dancing. twitches. gesture. the patterning and repeats that shapes emerge ,,, the hand returns as your dance of gestures and twitches takes shape here now at the keyboard with me. and these gestures are the same i have when watching work i realise. the feeling of both performer and observer, by turns comfortable and uncomfortable depending on who’s watching and who’s being watched. we’re in this together, and this needs both of us. ah yes. i recognise that being with self whilst watching that which is presented or just is in front around me. being with my body my sense while noting how that shifts me with that i watch.

small feet catch the corner of my eye….

More people now. more sounds, more sense of being observed. and more to observe. with our backs to the action. and our observing is from our backs the eye in the spine…. the eye in the back of the neck.

Skript/Bonington

Skript 170303: While sitting at Bonington Gallery foyer, Nottingham (UK)

writing dancing … here with Jane at the Bonington..

red tiled floor…

white table

white chairs

blue white image.

it takes a while and as i type i wonder if i can use the process like a meditation. can i use the passing of the fingers, the typing of thought as a way to drop into the body. to focus in to locate myself.

french accent. the sounds behind my back pulling at my attention. pulling me from my bubble. i imagine it like a sphere of light around me. a cocoon. it feels like it needs/ i need that bubble in order to be here in the moment.

chocolate, the smell rolls inside me..

chocolat noir, sel, avant la performance.

breathing with some exaggerated concentration, a deep breath, moving inside, to see who is here

knowing who is here is more difficult that might be imagined…

lick lips, feet clump, voice booms, laughter,

sunday day grey…  poised in a strange place. flutter. lowering. pausin ggg.

pulling at me . dancing, a movement undanced. awaiting. can will desire. misplaced. as they look lok into i eye i. i  i tr y . come home. home body.

the quality behind my eyes…a low, dark, smooth quality…somehow my eyes are drawn both in and out… somehow my chest is drawn in breath….some how  how some can do these things…the thing ness of them compels me. thing ness. what resides in the tingness thing ness….?

a tinging.thinging…thinning… back up perching. belly open. oddly yes open, guts out.. swirling. exposed. or is it back up, belly closed…back open i feel the source of something not yet known flowing outward, from belly to back to open space…do i need this not yet known thing … the thing in space behind and behind to the  side… drawn to the what might be. being. tr y i n g. to be .. the inhale. opens. voices…i am drawn outwards again, and struggle to keep here and now, as though the voices were from some other time or place. stuart.. come and watch. were it resides. information. the logic of the information. what data  is found in other places i seek peek at them.

dancing. feet crossed. still. can i . i can imaging them shifting perhaps together with anothers.

skript: a micro-installation

Images from Waverley, Nottingham Trent University, UK

Skript: a micro-installation

images from Nottingham Playhouse, Nottingham, UK