Weekly report 1
- Jul 20, 2018
- 6 min read
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxIaS6PJaRg&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ur_VkDeqQg&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iXzNOIUX8s&feature=youtu.be
Sonia: Converse and Ballet shoes
Even though Sarah and I decided to focus on different lines of enquiry, we are after all working together. Therefore it seemed logical to start by knowing more about each other’s practices, passing through a process of learning more about each other as people. For example I explain to Sarah how I try to cope with social anxiety and she express her views on beauty and why she has to be beautiful all the time. Creating a bond takes time but I believe that is the best way of working, especially when we are focusing on the process. My usual method is to immerse myself in what I am researching, so I can relate to the topic better. Only after I can distance myself and evaluate things critically. It is, obviously, too early in the process to know if this method is appropriate or not but, so far, it has brought us closer together. My main concern has been: how can we challenge each other while supporting each other?
After the brain storming
Going from the initial conversations into practical work was not easy. We are both very organised and used to having a structure to work with. Nevertheless going to the studio unprepared but willing to experiment and to let the other person lead has had its benefits. Regarding to the topics we are exploring we both brought something that, in our opinion, illustrated them.
Sarah brought this song:
I brought this text: https://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/12/a-brutally-raw-insight-into-social-anxiety-poem/
After doing a mash up with Sarah singing and me saying the text we decided to work on each other’s source material individually. That allowed us to:
Get a better understanding why that song/text resonated with the other person
Bring our own interpretation to that material and then look for common points
Experimenting on each other
With a background in ballet dance and singing for musical theatre, Sarah has the tendency to perform flawless. After watching her dancing and singing I asked myself two questions:
Why is she always so controlled and beautiful?
How can I break that form?
I wanted to understand her better and therefore I tried to put her in uncomfortable situations, such as:
Singing karaoke
To dance while I tried to distract her (video)
Sarah did the same to me by:
asking me to dance like nobody was watching while she was reading “my” text
sing “her” song with her and then alone
Reflections
Beauty and social expectations of women: I realised that, even though we express ourselves in different ways, we both think that a woman must be “perfect” all the time and that is reflected on our actions of taking care of everybody, organising, singing and talking in a sweet voice because we want to be liked (common points found in the lists we made).
Depression and social anxiety: Comparing the videos of us dancing to “Gravity” we noticed that there are some similar movements. That could be due to the fact that we influence each other but also to our response to the lyrics and the notions that emerged: loneliness, weakness, willing to hide, something pulling us down…
Collaboration: During the dance we did together I noticed specific moments that I can relate to the topics above. Specifically the moments when I am grabbing her feet and making fun of her gracious movements.
To be continued…
How to relate our own experience with the dictionary definitions of the topics we are exploring?
How to be critical and use humour about something personal?
How to relate our ideas of the “ideal” woman, public image, hiding and using masks?
… To explore during next week :)
Sarah: Initial provocations
As we enter our second week in the studio myself and Sonia have been progressing well with our ideas and have made some positive and productive steps towards our final outcome. We have now had four studio based rehearsal sessions in which we have conducted a series of experiments and have used the outcomes to inform and progress our final performance piece.
We have tried to push and test each other in our work and have used the time to discover how we can enhance each other’s work and how we are able to combine our skills sets and disciplines to collaborate in the creation of new material. We benefit from both being able to adapt and compromise when working together and I feel confident when collaborating with Sonia that I am in a safe and supportive environment in which I am able to progress.
This week’s experiments
To start our series of experiments we both decided to bring a stimulus material to the rehearsal space. I brought the song “Gravity”written and performed by Sara Bareilles. And Sonia brought the text “When Strangers Dictate Your Calm”. Although we did not discuss what we would bring to the space the materials we brought turned out to be indicative of our experiments so far – Sonia has been focusing on text and the use of it as recorded or live sound. I have been focused on song lyrics and using them out of context.
We both performed out text to each other and were able to familiarise ourselves with the way each piece read and flowed.
We then both performed the other persons piece – I read the text and Sonia sung “Gravity”.
We both danced to the text being read as a recorded voice.
We both danced to the song (alone in the studio)
I danced to the song whilst Sonia tried to break my form and stop me from moving by using her body and physical force to stop me.
We wrote lists of words which were associated with our line of enquiry and tried to find similarities in them.
We undertook some free writing tasks we gave ourselves the following headings
How I feel when anxiety strikes
What other people think of me
When do I break my public image?
I spoke about things that upset me and made me angry and I then danced to a piece of music using the anger and frustration that I had built up as a stimulus for my movements.
All of the above exercises came from the two initial stimulus materials and we were able to play and experiment with them for our ongoing work.
Observations
The main points of observation we pulled from our experiments were:
Sonia is far more confident and comfortable when she is performing without being seen (voice in the dark or behind a curtain)
I always perform in a ‘beautiful’ way – I find it very difficult to break form.
We can both take on elements of each other’s style of performance and use these elements as a common ground for progression of our work.
We will both allow ourselves to be pushed out of our comfort zone.
Both of our ‘styles’ as mentioned in point 1 & 2 relate directly to our area of enquiry in some way.
Subversion and Questions
From our initial experiments the question now comes of where to take the material going forward. We are both aware that we have chosen a subject matter that could be stating the obvious at times and telling the audience something they already know – we are very conscious of making sure that we are posing questions that do not necessarily have an answer and that we are not just stating the obvious –we need something more. This is where the subversion comes. We need to subvert and create work with subversion within it. Undermine and question the power and authority behind theories and societies accepted ideals and opinions.
I feel that this word, and the meaning of it, will play a key role in the success of our final piece.
Over the next few rehearsals we would like to focus on this concept and will aim to question the work we are producing with this in mind.
During our experiments, we made some observations directly related to our themes and questions.
Beauty and Social Expectations of Women
We made lists of what we thought made a woman beautiful and what the expectations were of women in our society and we found that through both of our lists it ultimately came down to the fact that women are expected to be perfect. Perfect may mean different things to different people but as women it is something that we all strive for in varying ways.
Depression and Social Anxiety
We also made lists to describe how these conditions feel or felt to us. We found, as you would expect, that many of the words we used described a state of mind and a mental state. However, we also had words in common that described a physical state – this then related to our dance work and we noticed that when we both danced separately to the same song we used movements that in our minds were representative of the debilitating physical effects anxiety and depression can have on a person.
The questions we have going forward from here are:
How can we subvert the work to say something more than what is on the surface?
How can I break form and perform with less ‘beauty’?
How can Sonia break her form? Why does she want to be hidden?
How can we use masks to explore our themes?
How can we add humour to our performance work?
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