27 October 2014
Worm
24 October 2014
Nästa 2013-2014
There is a Konsthall in Tensta, Sweden. I am sitting there about to perform a dance score I created in 2010. It is 7°C outside and the winter air has formally arrived and sat down, made its self comfortable, and announced that it will stay until April, at the very earliest. It seems that announcement has caused me, the trees, the fruit sellers and the stocking caps to droop a little lower and drag our feet. Tomorrow we will "fall back" one hour. I imagine many people will set alarms for 07:00, most likely wake up at 05:00, sigh with relief when they realize it is 04:00, turn over and sleep happily for another few hours. Day Light Savings. We are about to save some day light. In a light bank. In our memory bank. In a savings account located in ones collar bone where one can make a with drawl mid-february for a little dose of needed day light. A dose that must sustain until April. The pressure now is not a pressure to accomplish great feats of explosive strength and change making, but a pressure to endure and sustain until the explosive power of spring returns. Practically speaking, this could mean that one should refresh ones film list, book list, and recipe list. This means it is a moment for language learning, dictionaries and journals.
Hence, oktober 23rd. A new entry and a new recipe.
Updates are in order, and I will do it chronologically so as to begin where I last left off and arrive back to oktober 23rd.
January 2013 The Cullberg Ballet was in Hamberg, Germany performing "August did not have what is commonly considered good taste as far as furniture is concerned" by Tilman O'Donnell.
Why is it that the german language gives me a bit of a wider walk and sharper jaw line? In Germany I hear myself talk sharply. I ask questions to clerks with a strange confidence and efficiency. In Minneapolis and Stockholm I play my way through interactions like a pin-ball game, I take detours. In Germany I tend to travel from point A to point B like it is the only option. This trip in particular, Hamburg and the Strinberg Project I notice myself differently. I have been training a new thing. I have been noticing phenomenon differently, for this piece asks the participants, dancers and watching audience, to wait and meander and go forward with confidence, yet anticipate interuption. Awareness of outer and inner lanscapes. I notice that the skill sets I train in my work permeate my life. The standard speed of walking (according to ergonomic specialists) is 4.8k/h (80m/m). In 2013 in Hamburg Germany I walked between the Heilkotel and K3 theater, a distance of 1.28km, in 21 minutes. That is 61m/m. That is 19m/m slower than an average walking pace, and my personal slowest tempo yet recorded in the history of my walking in Germany.
February 2013 creeps by. I continued a slo-mo-way-of-being. Benoit Lachambre was with our company working on a new creation. He coached another type physical interrogation. One is to sense the domes of the body: the foot arch, the peranium, the diafragme, the soft palate, the dome of the skull. He talks about the co-current throbbing jelly fish action of these domes. He accesses movement from these places. He throws, expands and contracts energy. He sees space as a medium for this energetic interplay. One can in fact see it. I don't know what it looked like, but I remember knowing that I saw it. I remember leaving work and commuting back to the city center on an underground metro feeling my skull pulsate and scanning the train for other pulsating skulls. Today I don't remember what this felt like, but at that moment I knew exactly what I was feeling. It was some insight into the connectivity of seeming unrelated parts. Its was a fleeting thing and it made me giggle. I felt it again on July 24th 2014. I giggled then too. Perhaps I can only identify it by the accompanying giggle.
March 2013 came and I decided to stay in Sweden. I remember it feeling like a moderately warm bath and tasting like room temperature water. It was easy and comfortable to decide: this is where I will live and work. Shortly there after I learned a new word: lagom.
April, May, June was another creation time. Jefta van Dinther was creating Plateau Effect with our company. We began with another type kinesthetic research. It was a physical research of textures in the anatomy of the human body. We spent time sensing the organs of the body. Their weight and volume, their pressure upon each other. We "kneaded" organs. Moving the organ parts of the anatomy, one eventually runs into those structures that house the organs. The organs can "knead" against the structure. The structure is made of various types of tissues: muscles and cartilagenus tissue and bones. There is fluidity and rigidity and mobility and constraint. We took this microcosmic activity inside the body into the larger context of society. We looked at our group as a culture, making agreements, arrangements, relationships, tensions. It became a way of seeing all my encounters. Some feel fluid and mobile, and at others feel rigid and constraining. This piece and process consumed me, and this consumption is pervading. We continue to play this piece and find new volumes of space and sound.
July 2013 was summer. That part is private, not professional, and off the record.
August, September, October, November and December of 2013 was the return to Plateau Effect and a search for an Artistic director to take over our company. Some days slip by fluidly, and some have a much higher viscosity. These days were slippery. There were many cities and many hotel key cards. There were no hotel keys, except for an old hotel in Östersund that still have keys that resemble keys. I remember that key being very temperamental. I was pleased with myself when I learned how to press gently in and up before turning. Key and Lock relationships are delicate ones.
Then 2013 was over and 2014 started.
January 3, 2014 21:30 the front desk worker at the vandrahem informed us that 22:00 was a good time to go stand outside if we wanted a chance to see the northern lights, eller, norrsken. We were in Abisko, my friend and I, searching for some proof of magnetism. The punctual wings of the northern lights swept across the sky at precisely 22:00 painting the darkness electric green. I remember feeling the fissures of my skull pulsing, my knees swirling, my teeth throbbing, my nose running, my chapped lips smiling. I remember thinking a very easy and fluid thought: "wow. not bad." Hands down the best dance performance I have ever seen.
Winter Recipe:
(pause for dinner. 2014 To Be Continued)
Hence, oktober 23rd. A new entry and a new recipe.
Updates are in order, and I will do it chronologically so as to begin where I last left off and arrive back to oktober 23rd.
January 2013 The Cullberg Ballet was in Hamberg, Germany performing "August did not have what is commonly considered good taste as far as furniture is concerned" by Tilman O'Donnell.
Why is it that the german language gives me a bit of a wider walk and sharper jaw line? In Germany I hear myself talk sharply. I ask questions to clerks with a strange confidence and efficiency. In Minneapolis and Stockholm I play my way through interactions like a pin-ball game, I take detours. In Germany I tend to travel from point A to point B like it is the only option. This trip in particular, Hamburg and the Strinberg Project I notice myself differently. I have been training a new thing. I have been noticing phenomenon differently, for this piece asks the participants, dancers and watching audience, to wait and meander and go forward with confidence, yet anticipate interuption. Awareness of outer and inner lanscapes. I notice that the skill sets I train in my work permeate my life. The standard speed of walking (according to ergonomic specialists) is 4.8k/h (80m/m). In 2013 in Hamburg Germany I walked between the Heilkotel and K3 theater, a distance of 1.28km, in 21 minutes. That is 61m/m. That is 19m/m slower than an average walking pace, and my personal slowest tempo yet recorded in the history of my walking in Germany.
February 2013 creeps by. I continued a slo-mo-way-of-being. Benoit Lachambre was with our company working on a new creation. He coached another type physical interrogation. One is to sense the domes of the body: the foot arch, the peranium, the diafragme, the soft palate, the dome of the skull. He talks about the co-current throbbing jelly fish action of these domes. He accesses movement from these places. He throws, expands and contracts energy. He sees space as a medium for this energetic interplay. One can in fact see it. I don't know what it looked like, but I remember knowing that I saw it. I remember leaving work and commuting back to the city center on an underground metro feeling my skull pulsate and scanning the train for other pulsating skulls. Today I don't remember what this felt like, but at that moment I knew exactly what I was feeling. It was some insight into the connectivity of seeming unrelated parts. Its was a fleeting thing and it made me giggle. I felt it again on July 24th 2014. I giggled then too. Perhaps I can only identify it by the accompanying giggle.
March 2013 came and I decided to stay in Sweden. I remember it feeling like a moderately warm bath and tasting like room temperature water. It was easy and comfortable to decide: this is where I will live and work. Shortly there after I learned a new word: lagom.
April, May, June was another creation time. Jefta van Dinther was creating Plateau Effect with our company. We began with another type kinesthetic research. It was a physical research of textures in the anatomy of the human body. We spent time sensing the organs of the body. Their weight and volume, their pressure upon each other. We "kneaded" organs. Moving the organ parts of the anatomy, one eventually runs into those structures that house the organs. The organs can "knead" against the structure. The structure is made of various types of tissues: muscles and cartilagenus tissue and bones. There is fluidity and rigidity and mobility and constraint. We took this microcosmic activity inside the body into the larger context of society. We looked at our group as a culture, making agreements, arrangements, relationships, tensions. It became a way of seeing all my encounters. Some feel fluid and mobile, and at others feel rigid and constraining. This piece and process consumed me, and this consumption is pervading. We continue to play this piece and find new volumes of space and sound.
July 2013 was summer. That part is private, not professional, and off the record.
August, September, October, November and December of 2013 was the return to Plateau Effect and a search for an Artistic director to take over our company. Some days slip by fluidly, and some have a much higher viscosity. These days were slippery. There were many cities and many hotel key cards. There were no hotel keys, except for an old hotel in Östersund that still have keys that resemble keys. I remember that key being very temperamental. I was pleased with myself when I learned how to press gently in and up before turning. Key and Lock relationships are delicate ones.
Then 2013 was over and 2014 started.
January 3, 2014 21:30 the front desk worker at the vandrahem informed us that 22:00 was a good time to go stand outside if we wanted a chance to see the northern lights, eller, norrsken. We were in Abisko, my friend and I, searching for some proof of magnetism. The punctual wings of the northern lights swept across the sky at precisely 22:00 painting the darkness electric green. I remember feeling the fissures of my skull pulsing, my knees swirling, my teeth throbbing, my nose running, my chapped lips smiling. I remember thinking a very easy and fluid thought: "wow. not bad." Hands down the best dance performance I have ever seen.
Winter Recipe:
Mushroom Pumpkin Soup
1/2 lb. mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 tbsp. butter or oil
2 tbsp. flour
1 tbsp. curry powder
3 cups vegetable broth
1 can (1 lb.) pumpkin
1 tbsp. honey
dash nutmeg
to taste salt
to taste pepper
1 cup cream, milk, or coconut milk
optional creme fraiche or yogurt, topping(pause for dinner. 2014 To Be Continued)
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