Finding Common Ground

The company dancers and I are mid-way through the re-working period of things in between. Originally created in 2004, I am taking the opportunity now to find new ways into the subject matter alongside the dancers and new collaborators who are bringing their own responses to the subject matter into the studio. We are finding our way, slowly each day, coming to terms with the new group, new energies and lots of exciting potential. We began the season by spending two weeks training in Viewpoints, a theatre-based approach to training actors and making new work. Articulated by American Anne Bogart with her company, SITI, it is a refined methodology that looks at the basic building blocks of creation: time and space. The irony of the approach, which is gaining a considerable following here and in the US, is that it was first articulated by a dance artist, Mary Overlie, who began her research and investigations during the seminal post-modern movement of the Judson Group in New York in the 60's-70's.
Bogart's writing is powerful and clear. I intuitively knew, and have used, many of these strategies and ways of working for years but was energized in particular by her dependence, intentionally so and in the most positive sense, on the artists who were in the room with her and how she relied on them as primary collaborative contributors to a work's content and form. I had been craving ways into understanding and talking about such a model as a direct response to my own experiences as a performer. With some exceptions, of course, for most of my career as an interpreter for others, I had acted as willing and malleable clay in the hands of some outside creator, whose vision I had no say in, no contribution to make, other than to respond as faithfully as I could to the directions with all of my skill and ability. This vertical model brought me great joy and satisfaction for many years. But something was missing. Or maybe, something else was possible. Bogart revealed that there was. More on that the next time...