panoramic of the hudson in 4 preludes
Performance created through correspondence in collaboration with Felicia Ballos, Flora Weigmann and Elisa Santiago with music by Alex Waterman, Lucky Dragons and Pilar Ayón. Performed at Sargeant Downing's Garden in Beacon, NY.
Felicia's score #1:
From a laying position (not prone on your back, but more like you're lounging like a big cat) imagine you are filled with sand and need to get upright & onto your feet. Each shift redistributes the sand to fall into gravity. Keep slowly shifting the sand to different surfaces of your body that are touching the floor until you find yourself standing. Take your time & experience pauses in off balanced positions. You may need to lay down & start over before you make it up.
hop stretch hop stretch hop stretch hop stretch
45 chassés changing directions. On the 17th & 23rd chassé, add a quick arm
Stop. Lay on your belly & find somebody to have eye contact with for way longer than is comfortable. Can be one of us or somebody out there. Think generous thoughts.
Locomote down low to an edge of the space. Try to recreate the 1st instruction with the outside of the space as the floor.
Elisa's Score #2 in Collaboration with Elliot:
Here are some images that I'd like to name A, B,C and D.
They are thought as "mental backdrops" for a segment of improvisation within the total duration of the collaborative score.
We could all be going through each of them at the same time and order, or we could assign one to each of us.
The time and place that we'll choose to execute them is to be determined. For now , I suggest the segment comes after Felicia's last part of her phrase:
" Locomote down low to an edge of the space. Try to recreate the 1st instruction with the outside of the space as the floor. "
The interpretation of each painting is open ended. The duration is aprox. 4 minutes for each (which can be looped)
During this week, it would be wonderful if we each wrote a reaction to each painting, with choreographic input, so there is a "common memory" written, and then easier to transcribe and recognize once we execute them in a shared space.
I will do so in a couple of days, as I want to leave some time for you to interpretate them freely, without my inprint.
They were conceived to be a guide for generating movement (and stillness) , but if they trigger other things, like sound, use of objects, or other elements, we can notate them.
Other thoughts:
As a performer, I am interested in experiencing the memory of the written score through different strategies. Felicia's was a word notation that produces memory in a very different way than an image. How that affects the process of executing movement, and relate to one another, is a curiosity to me.
The idea of retaining memory written from various sources (while working in distance), to then transform it to movement patterns and relation ship to space and time it's an intriguing process.
Felicia's Elisa phrase:
A: wearing a cape / arms in 1st position / long leggy lines / pointed toes dragging the body through space
throwing light
B: sitting folded like a grasshopper, enjoy the dance around you
C: slicing space with with details of different body parts, one movement interrupting the next, allowing interruptions to bring the body into
off balance, which creates many facing changes and dizzying spatial patterns
D: sitting on the floor with 2 hands planted behind the butt, push through both feet to drive the bowl that is the pelvis in slow circles and
figure eights.. feeling the contents of the bowl, the love/ the heat / the blood / the power slosh with the movement
stand up
find somebody and put both hands on them. on their back or their chest. use them as support and try a panchée while your head
follows a bumblebee
Flora's Elisa Phrase in Collaboration with Alexa:
A:
Mine: Head is steady in one place Feathers reach out of an area spreading, stiff, growing. Body responds fully. Reaches fullest. Small swirl with something that is free to do so. Head drastically moves to a new place and where you land starts a new position. New feathers grow from another place.
Alexa: Recreate the textures of brushstrokes through sound on the floor. Transition to recreating those brushstrokes with the space around you. Be the brush and move the space as though it were paint in varying brushstrokes. Become the paint and allow the space to move you as though it were the brush.
B:
Mine: everything is murky greys,blues, browns, maroon--- stormier colors. Move like those colors mushing together. Every once in a while a brighter color separates from the muted mass and eventually trickles back in. Many colors escape and return.
Alexa:
Feet are the head (transfer sense organs to feet). Feet-head is red. Everything else is blue. Let your feet decide where/ how the rest of the body moves. Find at least 3 level changes.
C:
Mine: Make some powerful, movements with clear definition. remember them enough to then attempt that bit again, but in a ghost-like manner--- or a dried-out version of those movements. Move on to try various sets like this
D:
Mine: Whip yourself around like a storm. When you're close to something solid and need a break, place a hand, or hands on the solid surface and push off when ready to swirl around again.
Flora's Score #3:
Walk around the area, your body can be affected by the texture of whatever vegetation is covering the ground
Find a spot you want to take root and visualize the earth under you. Root into it.
Embody the plants that took seed in that spot, be aware of where the sun is and how it is part of the growth process.
Find a shape out of that and change it into something that feels like a man-made object. Embody that object sitting in that spot.
The sun starts to break down that object slowly through time. Start to decompose into a ruin of that object. Once you have reached the present-day state of said object (your body) end by looking at the sun
Maybe changing ths--- but Alexa and I spoke about the time when you shift from expansion to contraction. She found a clear place that was fleeting where she finally reached as far as she could expand. And it was a joyful getting there but then switched to something kind of sad. Then we talked about aging. Or people who seem old when they're young because they are not curious or exploratory anymore. they reached their edge of expansion too soon.
can we prolong that?
Flora addition:
20 steps in a straight line (alter size to fit space). 8 steps backwards in an arc (either 1/4 or 1/2 turn),4 steps one in each direction to make a square (turn to your right to do so but you can either start in the direction you are already facing to finish in a diff facing or start by turning to your right and you will end up facing where you started. REpeat whole thing.
we could maybe do that for a long time following the pattern, then gradually change the number of steps (each of us improvise it) so that the pattern starts breaking down into a gentle chaos.
Felicia's "hop stretch" let me into a similar thing that was shoulder in a direction, straight leg in a direction, stretch/fall out, repeat.
Felicia's ideas
solos. somebody begins a solo, then each of us try to be in unison with the leader (you all know how i love that game)... but let's say the 1st person is dancing downstage and we end up spatially in a diagonal with each other. the 2nd person throws in a random move of their own. the 3rd person will be copying that and adding their own random move(s) that the 4th person will incorporate.
Sarah's Score #4:
Here's a start...this could really go anywhere in the order of things...
Find what is absent bury yourself in it.
Find what is present and peel it away piece by piece.
100 fire breaths in any position to transition between ideas
This score can be interpreted as literally or as figuratively as desired (except the fire breaths - those are literal), and can relate to the internal or external environment.