R&D Insights week 2: The Deluge

Day 1

Today has been a creative day, we started the day with a lovely class taught by Abi Mortimer which had numerous movement phrases, which warmed us up a treat. We also did the exercises in two’s, which was a nice way to get into the mind set of being with, and dancing with just one other person, as for the rest of the day we focused on duets. 

The primary focus involved duets with a single jacket. One between myself and Sarah Golding, which is a very subtle, and confined duet which gradually builds in dynamics. Starting very close, and both of us in the same Jacket sharing an arm each, manipulating each other to a point where the viewer isn't sure who's arm is who’s. Then starting to slowly break apart and wrapping around each other, and climbing on, and over each other. 

The second Duet involves Carrie Whitaker and Aya Kobayashi which is a much more physical, and energetic duet, whereas one person falls out of the jacket the other feeds themselves into it. Constantly swapping and changing the jacket wearer in not so pedestrian ways. 

 Jamie Morgans :) 

Day 2 

In sunny Eastleigh, the funfair has arrived. Many vans and lories are standing by to unfold the children's dream just outside of our studio window. Let's see what magic we can construct this side of the window. 

Carrie taught the class this morning. As always, she lead with a very considerate, thoughtful yet fresh, spring like bouncy energy. We had a few beautiful young dancers to join us, which was lovely. I have been dancing with Carrie for sometime now but when I'm learning it, I still find her material illogical(!) to my body, in a good way! It's so refreshing and I enjoy the challenge- thanks Carrie for stimulating morning! 

Our favourite writer, Nick Walker joined us from this afternoon. Welcome to Eastleigh! Nick was intrigued by our jacket manipulation section that we call 'invisible man'. ''I would say 'I like the jacket bit!' if I was in the audience! Ha ha'' I love Nick's genuine and honest comments! Nick also liked the way we the invisible man's personality is organically starting to show: ''He is an ordinary guy that sits next to you on a train, kind of clumsy regular nice man''. 

Abi is leading us in developing a phrase to build one of the sections. Well, we don't know how this phrase will be placed and shaped in the whole piece, but I think the material is so distinctive and tight! It's quite a rare case now, that Abi choreographs something in advance and teaches it to us. Of course, we work together to polish, chop and change, swap around, and chuck more rolls and shifts as we go, but Abi was in control of realising what she sees in the piece and we totally trust her. 

Jamie and Carrie worked on their duet. The relationship seems quite complex. I won't tell you about their roles but the duet pulls out big physical risks from somewhere between 'needing and not-needing' 'courage and discouraged' -Beautiful. 

Sarah and I worked on the scene, where Sarah finds some familiarity and connection- things she misses from my gestural movement. We explored its hypnotic quality: we know the movement from our bones... and we tried to separate the brain signal and 10cm away from top of scull, but still the body remembers with a very thin signal.. Nuts! 

Lila's new immersive piece becomes like the lories in the funfair field, things are packed in funny shapes and still quite a jumble, but waiting for the moment when the magic is unfolded. 

Night. 

Aya x

Day 3 

If you haven't ever been inside the Creation Space at The Point you really should, especially in the sunshine - a perfect place to think, dream, do...and of course dance 

Thanks to Sarah for a lovely class this morning that got us all shifting and tumbling through the space, it was great to have a lovely collection of dancers from the local area join us and we hope to see you there tomorrow for Aya's class at 9.30am. 

Capturing the total experiences of today is rather overwhelming as many exciting and unexpected tangents of creativity spiralled from the collective thinking/devising of Abi, Nick, Dougie and the dancers. Perhaps a good way to open up what it was that we uncover today would be to start by saying that we entered the life of each of the characters with a greater sense of who they are as ordinary people with ordinary thoughts. This gave us a connection between the epic nature of the overall work that has drawn these characters together against the intimate journey of each individual within this narrative. 

Each dancer began to tune into their character and this was very much assisted by a short dialogue written by Nick Walker - interestingly each statement was extremely different and spoken with such varied texture that the characters seemed to enter the space anew. 

Jamie began to uncover a solo that pulled and pushed him through space as though captured in an unseen and unruly crowd. Aya reopened her suitcase on her ode to Japan with beautiful accuracy, and Sarah told a really bad joke whilst pedantically inscribing the space with the details of her past. 

As a team we breathed life into our ordinary man once again (as Aya talked about in yesterday's Blogg) who took us on a journey of meeting and parting across the space. This section feels like moments in your life when you recognise someone across a crowd but are not sure why or where from and then all too quickly, they are gone; glimmers of recognition. 

I felt engulfed by the textures within Dougie's sound worlds in which he has discreetly been balancing both depth and lightness in various concoctions so as to make you feel both grounded but also sort of unsteadied. At times it's a bit like someone quietly shouting or silently screaming, at other moments it's like being slowly submerges by a wave of unexpected emotion where your head occasionally bobs above the surface. It certainly partners us in unusual ways. 

Just a final note - a huge thanks to writer Nick who has fuelled our thinking over the last two days with a fresh perspective on the evolving work. It has been extremely enjoyable and inspiring working alongside him, looking forward to our next encounter! 

 Carrie xx

Photo by Jamie Morgans

Day 4

What a pleasure to start the day with a packed class of familiar and new faces, led expertly by our own Aya. Aya has a wonderful way of creatively engaging you in somatic thought processes that lends suggestions to the body about how it might move. The class always starts with a thought or a collection of thoughts that she then grows from the inside out so that you eventually find yourself moving in complex patterns with relative ease in the joints. Aya can make you find energy without drawing any attention to effort or exhaustion- a perfect transition out of the morning and into the working day. Thank you for those that joined us and lifted the energy in the room. 

From the beginning of this week I have been working with the cast on finding the material language for this piece. On this occasion, this process began on my own body in the form of a phrase, and I have continued to add/alter/edit ideas on their bodies. This is really a process of information gathering, it is not about finding an end form but identifying the right "matter" for this work from which to build bigger blocks of ideas. Meanwhile Dougie goes through a similar process with the musical composition. He also is composing a library of possibilities, which lends differing moods, gestures and sometimes content. The next phase will be a process of crafting whereby we will need to decide the "right" choices in the "right" order. 

Our thoughts this week have been very much influenced by writer Nick walker, who has also been contributing fragments of thoughts into the process. This mainly comes through his observing and response, but occasionally shifts so that this writing is formed into more task- like situations which we actively explore in the space thought the explorations of different texts. However he also contextualises our processes, giving the characters back- stories, providing a tangible setting through detailed paragraphs and "colouring in" the world in which this work might play out. Much of the movement, sound and narrative angles has taken interesting spins in response to nicks voice and it is a pleasure to have him with us. 

Today we collated our thoughts and further explored the relationships we set up throughout the week. This piece explores several meetings of 4 characters under a particular circumstance and each meeting has a different flavour or intensity. I have worked with the dancers to really find what is driving each meeting, and discern what they are thinking/feeling in the articulation of each new relationship. It has been an exciting process, often involving various props. Solo material has also been emerging out of these explorations, it seems that the individual is becoming more defined when we understand more about how they respond to their different partnerships- I am wondering if this is a metaphor for life!? Dougie has been finding interesting counterpoints to the sections that I have found extremely powerful as they leave enough space for dreaming by NOT reinstating what is already there. 

Massive thank you to the team who have worked so hard this week and who's energies have been truly inspiring. Is there any other way to celebrate the last night at The Point than with "friendly sushi" I think not! Thank you friendly chef Aya and sous- chef friendly Sarah. 

Abi xx  

Day 5

So it's our final day in the Creation Space at The Point and after an evening of "friendly sushi" and late night friendly massages we are getting ready to conclude the week.  Again, it was another packed class this morning. Such a lovely way to end the week, with so many new faces and fresh energy in the space. We had a real treat as class was lead by both Jamie and Carrie. Jamie lead some much needed morning yoga and an energetic final phrase, while with Carrie we woke up our bodies with some rib exploration and revisited the floor phrase from her previous class. It was really interesting and useful to be able to work on two very different but complementary movement styles in one class.  We began rehearsals by working on the phrase that Abi has been devising on us all week. At the beginning of the week felt like an impossible task to remember the complex movement and find the right quality for it, but thankfully it's now feeling a lot more embedded in our bodies so we can start to play with different speeds and qualities. However, I have heard and am starting to become aware of Abi's love of changing material just as it's starting to feel comfortable so I'm not certain how long this sense of security over the movement will last for - definitely keeping us on our toes.   Over the last couple of days we have revived a 'duet' that Carrie and I worked on in my first week of R&D with the company. I say 'duet' because by definition that it is. But physically the movement and energy we are executing could not be more contrasting. I think this is becoming my favourite section as this is the first time my character receives something back from another character; resulting in Carrie resembling the role of an older sister.   We then continued to re-cap material in preparation for our 4pm sharing.

It was then that I realised how much much material had actually been created this week and how productive we have been. The the colour of the overall piece is definitely becoming visible - very exciting!!   It was great to be able to show an audience what we have produced this week. And also listen to the complementing yet challenging sound scores created by Dougie. It's funny because a lot of the time I when I am dancing the material, I struggle to notice the sound because it profoundly part of the same world that we are in as characters and movers; and very much does not feel like an added extra.

Although when I do get a chance to stop and listen, what I hear seems perfect! Cheers for the awesome tunes Dougie!! :)   The sharing went very well and we had some great feedback from the audience that came to watch. And as mentioned in Aya's blog earlier this week our fantastic writer and friend Nick Walker was right... The first comment of the feedback session was indeed referring to the brilliance of the illusion filled jacket section. This was the first time we were able to get feedback from an audience that could see us from all angles rather than just from the front. This was really useful for us to hear what works spatially for our immersive physical theatre piece so we know where changes do or don't need to be made.   We also challenged the audience with the text we had been working on and recorded during the week. It's so interesting to hear how connections between text and movement are made so quickly even if their creation process had no connection what so ever.   Thank you everyone who came!

Sarah xx

Cover image/photo 1 & 3 by Dougie Evans. Dancers: Aya Kobayashi, Sarah Golding, Carrie Whitaker & Jamie Morgans, Carrie Whitaker & Jamie Morgans.