"keep dancing" by Wendy Houston

About one month ago I went to see a performance called “Keep Dancing” by Wendy Houston at Battersea Art Center.

At the time I saw it I found that it wasn’t even worthy to speak about it. After our last seminars with Douglas, where we spoke a lot about the relation with the audience, the role of it and its expectations that are being fullfiled or not…I thought I could refer to it.We are speaking a lot lately about the spectators leaving the space of the performance, being irritated or bored or seeing something without a clue…
“Keep dancing” was playing a lot with the expectations of the audience but (according to my opinion) …it disappointed it in the end. The performer was speaking to us in a way like…”Now you are probably thinking that I came to see one of these performances that nothing happens” for example. Anyway….there was some action…some videos… a voice from a computer… and in the end what we were watching was her dancing in a silly way for about half an hour, singing the words “keep dancing, keep dancing”. She stopped and started again!Everybody was waiting for something to happen, something to change… or at least to stop. So she stopped. And we clapped. And we left.

In my opinion she shouldn’t have stopped. It should have been the audience to give the end to the performance by leaving the room. Like this we could challenge the limits of our patience and of her physical strength. By finishing the performance like this I think it was unfinished. I couldn’t see the point.Anyway, I am not sure if making some people leave from your performance is a success, unless you have made some others love it.

It is interesting to play with the expectations of the audience but it is really difficult because you can never predict the response of it. And it is really easy to fall in the trap of doing something just to shock or provoke the audience, without any meaning.

"time-piece"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT2fQOhwJr8

Yesterday we presented our short performances for the workshop of Dave Gale.
Each of us had to write a beginning, a middle and an end of 3 different stories and then we became groups of three and put our beginning, middle and end together!

In my group with Milka and Ilka I put the beginning, that was a dream, or to be more precise: a nightmare. My idea was based on the dream in the beginning scene of "Wild strawberries" of Bergman. I find this image of the clock without arrows very powerfull! You can create a whole story around it.

It was amazing that our three stories matched together really naturally!

The short performance was supported by a video that was playing

behind the performers and presented the whole story.

water projection testing

This video on the water is what I was going to show in the presentation on Friday, that was cancelled because of.... "organization problems".

(All this story made me think that sometimes being "extremely organised" -(health and safety, booking spaces in advance, papers, forms, requests, confirmations etc. etc.) in the end is exactly the same with being unorganised, like in Greece for example. You end up without a space to present your work. The difference is that at least in my country you know it from the beginning and you are trying to resolve things in your way.)

Anyway, as I wrote in my previous post, I wanted to experiment with projection on the water.
I didnt have the time to make a video especially for this occasion, so I edited some footages I allready had. The objective was to see how the projection works on the water, and not what is projected on it. After a morning, working in the wood workshop with the precious help of Julian, I made a structure supporting a mirror, in order to project on the water that was on the floor.

I was not extremely happy for the result. I need to think more on how to use the water and in what sense, but it was a first attempt to create something, that gave me a push, so this was very positive. It was interesting for sure to see how the light and the reflections work on the water, and how this can change by moving the water (creating waves).

water

Last night, after seeing a performance at Tate Modern,that I don't feel it is worthy to talk about, at least for now, I had an idea. I was standing there, in front of Tate, contemplating the lighted city. But my look was directed towards the river and the water.
So many colours and reflections and a soft movement, giving liveness to it.
Water is amazing. I think it is one of the four elements that is more near to Time. It can be the symbol of Life and eternity because of its movement and continuous change (sea), or it could even symbolize death, when we refer to stopped and dirty water.

I will post again a favourite sequence of a movie. "Stalker" by Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky is using water very much in his films.

A layer of water is covering old objects, items important or not, litter, objects from everyday life or symbols. A thick layer of time is covering every single thing. Everything looks like old memories, conserved by the water. And the whole image that is being scanned by the camera looks like a big abstract painting, full of textures.

Water can be used as a layer covering things or as a surface to be "covered" with lights or projections. Its movement could give another dimension to the projection. This is what I want to try to experiment on Friday. How projection on the water could work. What kind of textures it creates? And how it could be combined with the body of the performer.

How to start?

I am lost, for one more time. Always when I start with a new project, my head is full of a lot of different ideas and subjects that I want to put together. And I love each one of them, so I cannot put them aside easily. “You never go as far as when you don’t know where you are going”, James Therree is quoting Christopher Columbus. I found this sentence very “convenient” for me, because I really don’t know where I am going to. But it’s always like this. In the end I will arrive somewhere.
How to start? I was thinking which is my subject? I need a story. I started writing down some words. Considering that I want to “play” with a fragmented narrative, with the deconstruction of narrative and time, I thought on the following: [memory and dream], [coincidence and fate], [fear(s)]. They are subjects that can create different space-times (chronotopes according to Bachtin) inside the one space of the stage. These should interact one with another.
If I try to imagine a picture now it would be an image like this…

Complexity: an interplay of spaces, times and bodies. Could the body of the spectator enter as well in the “installation” and experience the narrative, or (even) create his own narrative (?)

“Is it by accident or by design?”

Some things are happening lately that made me thinking about coincidences. And Fate, as well. How can a moment change our life? How can a moment of somebody else’s change our life? I was thinking on this sequence of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. Dance was her life. What if one of those small stories was a bit different? The future would be different? Or this was her fate? Life is made of stories. Our stories and the others’. They are interacting all the time, even if we cannot see it. In this short video there are five different stories of people and the Story of Daisy. A chain of insignificant events that could have started anywhere in the past is changing Her life. If this was a live performance… I could see Daisy, live in front of me, and all the events, passing in different screens… Or the opposite… Daisy recorded and the stories live in front of the audience. The possibilities are more, as we can play with “live” time as well. And it is “live” time that is changing in the end. It is the present moment that is directed towards infinitive possibilities.