R&D Insights week 3: The Incredible Presence of a Remarkable Absence
Research and development continues for The Incredible Presence of a Remarkable Absence.
Week three takes us to Bournemouth for a week at Pavilion Dance, and we have two additional artists joining us in the studio. Rita Brown is a figurative and abstract artist living and working in Bournemouth, Dorset, and it is a real treat to have such a vibrant and unique artist with us in the studio. Our other guest is musician, Tom Downing, who has brought an impressive array of sampling hardware that dwarfs my 'in the box' laptop set up.
It will be interesting to see what processes Tom goes through to generate some of his music, as he and I share similar philosophies in our approaches to composition. However, the contrast in the equipment that each of us use is so clear that the others have coined the nicknames 'Digital Doug' and 'Technical Tom'.
My process is referred to as 'in the box' which means that I do everything through a laptop, using digital software to process, edit and arrange everything. His is a much more traditional collection of hardware including MPCs, analogue FX processing, and sequencers. What we share is that both of us work with found sounds and field recordings rather than synthesized audio. Working on a laptop allows me to zoom in on tiny fragments of audio to pick out elements of the recording that can be used to construct a beat.
Dougie
“Another great day at Pavilion Dance, lovely to have four young dancers from 2BU Youth Dance Company in the room with us today observing, discussing and responding to our work. 2BU created some really interesting nuggets of movement material in response to the Lila’s campfire section, could see the imagination really beginning to fire up.
Here’s what they had to say...
We are all loving the experience of working with the Lila Dance, and feel that our dance creativity has progressed massively within just the couple of days that we have had so far. We are especially enjoying the opportunity of closely working with the amazing dancers of the company, as well as the use of props to interpret a mood or meaning.”
This week the work has started to take a little more shape. We have joined together some sections and as a result the narrative is beginning to emerge. For the last 2 days we have worked on what we have coined "the campfire" section. 4 very small buckets act as moveable seats (that sometimes fly through the air) that also provide the arena for game like behaviour or "time wasting games". The scene involves capturing spontaneous action and its effects on the group. In order to achieve this, I worked with the cast to devise real games which they play in live time, there are rules and structures and for many small moments there are also winners and losers. This game provides the context for what becomes a choreography of very intricate and fast actions and reactions. The dancers have to be aware all of the time, if one falters for even a small moment, the whole thing falls apart. When you add to the equation the tiny metal buckets which fashion as the most uncomfortable seats in the World, you can imagine how demanding this rehearsal process is. It is fast, furious and sometimes dangerous; we have had some near misses and some minor "hits" but the dancers have been fearlessly lion-hearted! I feel very excited by this section. It feels very satisfying to reveal narratives, identities, and hierarchy within the group in very fast moments that almost "flash through" a series of conclusions to cinematic effect.
Abi
“ I was set on a task to work on my solo for a section in the work we call ‘say you are happy’. This section requires me to take the journey of my character and show what he has been through. I started with a physical approach to this task ending with a unsatisfying feeling toward my connection with my character which led me to scrapping what I had made. After that I spent some time writing down all the sections we had worked on and what my character may have experienced, thought and felt. This gave me a structure of ‘how’ to move and reason into ‘why’ I was moving, giving my solo a place within a story rather than just a dance. ”
Photo Credit: Cover image and all photos by James Rowbotham. Dancers: Kai Downham & Joe Darby, Carrie Whitaker, Aya Kobayashi
