Saturday, July 18, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
much news, many people
8 in the morning. a quiet morning, a cold morning. i've had to light candles in hopes that it will warm up the room. in the time since i last wrote, much has shifted and changed in our house. it is alive & buzzing with new people and many new ideas! oh it's all so exciting!!
hope arrived on wednesday afternoon and, after a patio picnic of mystery meats and rose, we started moving in the living room. we let our bodies warm up through impro, moving however it felt best, often talking, sometimes just listening to the music. i chatted about my piece and the ideas behind it, rambling and letting a stream-of-thought fall out, and hope asked questions and challenged me on some of my approaches. it was so good to have a fresh opinion on things, and hope was suggesting ways to push the movement and challenge the choreography (and the choreographer...) that caused the piece to go in completely unexpected (and highly welcome) directions. the movement phrases shifted and grew, and by the end of our little session i had a whole new piece of material in front of me. there was something brilliant and simple about some of the things hope was saying. she pushed me to move the piece in space: something i had been subconsciously avoiding. i suppose with the knowledge that this will be performed in a closet, i've been restricting my movement to fairly small, gestural phrasing. but to create a better contrast between the film and the closet, and letting the piece grow and gain momentum, going bold will prove much more fruitful. i'm so stoked for this weekend when jasmine, henning and i go into the closet room and we can explore how the larger phrases have to be modified. the challenge of altering more grand and spacious phrasing will be so much more exciting and will hopefully create interesting concepts and ideas in the tiny performance space.
next we welcomed jasmine back to the house late thursday evening. we had a large "family" dinner and jasmine became acquainted with ben, daniel and hope. i taught jasmine three phrases of material: a floor phrase that developed from one of jasmine's impro tasks, the root phrase that the rest of the standing work was developed from, and the root phrase as it was developed to move in space when hope challenged me. we are ready for today, when i will take the piece to the next level in the closet.
hope and i went on a walking adventure in town, taking a lovely coffee break in the central square, and taking pictures of signs in the streets and swans on the canal. hope reignited my thrill of the city by reminding me, with her first-timer excitement, how beautiful, quaint and unique this city is. while we were out, jasmine picked henning up from the station and they were here to greet us when we returned. now we are six! i taught a yoga class, and we roped dan and henning in - first-time yogis who cursed me as i made them balance in side plank and rest in warrior II. and ready for the next surprise of the day? ... henning brought his slackline!! after yoga, henning slipped out into the field behind our house and strapped the line between two trees. when i came outside he happily playing, walking and jumping, on the line. i am in love with slacklining! (don't worry, i didn't know about it until recently either: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacklining.) henning gave me a tutorial, walking me through the first steps - just getting onto the line. he broke it down in a way that i could understand, cleverly relating what i had talked about in yoga to how i have to think and move on the line. we played around outside on the line, and toyed with some flips and tumbling on the grass.
meanwhile the brothers were busy at work painting the bedroom ... ooh it looks so good! and around 10pm we all sat down to a huge dinner and discussed plans for approaching the work we have to cover on the weekend. we have a lot of work to do, but with all this fresh energy and these new games, i think we'll be fine. it seems we're all in a really good place to work, create, explore, trade knowledge, and learn from each other.
← tea time / hope in town → 
our couch surfing painters at work on the bridge near our house
(dan in the foreground, ben on the right)
hope arrived on wednesday afternoon and, after a patio picnic of mystery meats and rose, we started moving in the living room. we let our bodies warm up through impro, moving however it felt best, often talking, sometimes just listening to the music. i chatted about my piece and the ideas behind it, rambling and letting a stream-of-thought fall out, and hope asked questions and challenged me on some of my approaches. it was so good to have a fresh opinion on things, and hope was suggesting ways to push the movement and challenge the choreography (and the choreographer...) that caused the piece to go in completely unexpected (and highly welcome) directions. the movement phrases shifted and grew, and by the end of our little session i had a whole new piece of material in front of me. there was something brilliant and simple about some of the things hope was saying. she pushed me to move the piece in space: something i had been subconsciously avoiding. i suppose with the knowledge that this will be performed in a closet, i've been restricting my movement to fairly small, gestural phrasing. but to create a better contrast between the film and the closet, and letting the piece grow and gain momentum, going bold will prove much more fruitful. i'm so stoked for this weekend when jasmine, henning and i go into the closet room and we can explore how the larger phrases have to be modified. the challenge of altering more grand and spacious phrasing will be so much more exciting and will hopefully create interesting concepts and ideas in the tiny performance space.
next we welcomed jasmine back to the house late thursday evening. we had a large "family" dinner and jasmine became acquainted with ben, daniel and hope. i taught jasmine three phrases of material: a floor phrase that developed from one of jasmine's impro tasks, the root phrase that the rest of the standing work was developed from, and the root phrase as it was developed to move in space when hope challenged me. we are ready for today, when i will take the piece to the next level in the closet.
hope and i went on a walking adventure in town, taking a lovely coffee break in the central square, and taking pictures of signs in the streets and swans on the canal. hope reignited my thrill of the city by reminding me, with her first-timer excitement, how beautiful, quaint and unique this city is. while we were out, jasmine picked henning up from the station and they were here to greet us when we returned. now we are six! i taught a yoga class, and we roped dan and henning in - first-time yogis who cursed me as i made them balance in side plank and rest in warrior II. and ready for the next surprise of the day? ... henning brought his slackline!! after yoga, henning slipped out into the field behind our house and strapped the line between two trees. when i came outside he happily playing, walking and jumping, on the line. i am in love with slacklining! (don't worry, i didn't know about it until recently either: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacklining.) henning gave me a tutorial, walking me through the first steps - just getting onto the line. he broke it down in a way that i could understand, cleverly relating what i had talked about in yoga to how i have to think and move on the line. we played around outside on the line, and toyed with some flips and tumbling on the grass.
meanwhile the brothers were busy at work painting the bedroom ... ooh it looks so good! and around 10pm we all sat down to a huge dinner and discussed plans for approaching the work we have to cover on the weekend. we have a lot of work to do, but with all this fresh energy and these new games, i think we'll be fine. it seems we're all in a really good place to work, create, explore, trade knowledge, and learn from each other.
← tea time / hope in town → 
our couch surfing painters at work on the bridge near our house
(dan in the foreground, ben on the right)
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
our latest guests
i moved inside from my nice morning on the back patio as the sky threatened, yet again, to downpour. it's been sunny then breezy then sunny then chilly, and it's got that feel of rain now. so i sit here, procrastinating on beginning my choreographic exploration for the day, and i thought - what better thing to do than make an entry! i should introduce our latest house guests!
two couch surfing graffiti artists from australia, ben and daniel, have joined us for three days. after already months on the road with camping gear on their backs, they're touring the better part of the netherlands to paint and explore. as i write, they're at the main graffiti wall - the bridge that separates our ghetto from downtown - and hopefully by this evening i'll have some photos to put up. we've also managed to convince them (it wasn't hard) to do something in our house. it's a medium jasmine and i don't dare try ... plus we like everyone who passes through to leave a little mark of their own.
two couch surfing graffiti artists from australia, ben and daniel, have joined us for three days. after already months on the road with camping gear on their backs, they're touring the better part of the netherlands to paint and explore. as i write, they're at the main graffiti wall - the bridge that separates our ghetto from downtown - and hopefully by this evening i'll have some photos to put up. we've also managed to convince them (it wasn't hard) to do something in our house. it's a medium jasmine and i don't dare try ... plus we like everyone who passes through to leave a little mark of their own.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
14 july: impro task from jasmine
i watched the video of the work i did in jasmine's impro task for today. it had a different feel than my previous impros this week. i like the calm. i like the angle: shot from the floor, much of the back, not the face or any expression. i like the relationship between the camera and the dancer. there's less intrusion somehow - maybe in the simplicity. maybe the dancer is not trying to show off?
there is an aspect of the video that feels almost defeatist. interestingly this gives new light to my exploration of the hidden self versus the exposed self. rather than using the "hidden" as a larger, angrier, bigger, more forceful personality, while the "exposed shows a refined person, maybe the energies can be reversed. maybe the hidden person is the internal monologue, and the outgoing one has aspects of a put-on, larger-than-life being.
thanks for the task, jasmine!
Monday, July 13, 2009
showing 5 july
with many thanks to STeC (the other group, along with id11, organizing FLAT_land) and the photographer viola onderdelinden, i present the following pictures. these were taken at our first showing on 5 july.
and with many thanks and much excitement to the upcoming rabbit dance, here's a glimpse at liset's personalized masterpieces. these are the rabbits she made just for us, and we will take them out for a dance in the park (or, if rain keeps up, into the passage or train station) to film a piece and bring her art to the streets.
and with many thanks and much excitement to the upcoming rabbit dance, here's a glimpse at liset's personalized masterpieces. these are the rabbits she made just for us, and we will take them out for a dance in the park (or, if rain keeps up, into the passage or train station) to film a piece and bring her art to the streets.
impro tasks and a dedication to chenoah ellis
after jasmine left yesterday, i took my notebook up to the bedroom to sit at my newly-placed desk. a big wooden chair (one of three that we found in a garbage pile on the other side of the bridge) was put in front of the desk when we set up the work corner. so i sat on it for the first time! ... and it broke from underneath me. turns out it was in the garbage for a reason. go figure.
sitting on the lopsided seat and doing most of the work with my own feet, i looked up at the wall in front of me. nailed in a line were five folded letters, each with a date and "to merryn" written on the front - one for each day jasmine is gone. i took the first, labeled "july 12 209 to merryn". inside it explained that each letter had a note and an impro task that i was to take on.
you can imagine what the next few days of blogging will be about ...
but first: more pictures! at dear chenoah's request, i will go on the hunt for shots of me & jasmine dancing.
sitting on the lopsided seat and doing most of the work with my own feet, i looked up at the wall in front of me. nailed in a line were five folded letters, each with a date and "to merryn" written on the front - one for each day jasmine is gone. i took the first, labeled "july 12 209 to merryn". inside it explained that each letter had a note and an impro task that i was to take on.
you can imagine what the next few days of blogging will be about ...
but first: more pictures! at dear chenoah's request, i will go on the hunt for shots of me & jasmine dancing.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
groene thee met ginseng / a glimpse into my piece
jasmine left for groningen this afternoon. she'll be gone until thursday, which leaves me three full days of solitude (before hope joins me here) to work on the bulk of my choreography. jasmine and i have it scheduled that i show my piece to her and henning this saturday, so henning can work on the music for it and i can teach jasmine material. but, in honour of the work we've been doing, and in honour of the rain and the grossness of the rain outside, i decided to take a weekend day. it's actually my first day off since i got here. the day off will really relate only to dancing, since i will still work conceptually on my piece and maybe try to edit some of our videos to upload for your viewing.
i am attempting to create a work that involves three mediums: live music, live dancing, live video feed. (and perhaps pre-recorded video feed, but that isn't for sure yet... nor does it sound so good with the three others in the "live" theme...) i am using one of our spare bedrooms: the space nicknamed, quite appropriately & in honour of some improvisations jasmine and i did in there, the "closet room". the piece will explore social boundaries and reservations, our insecurities and social awkwardnesses. there are so many ways we sensor ourselves - bodies, language, phrasing, what parts of our personalities we deem appropriate to share and what aspects of ourselves we decide are unfit for social interactions. i will be looking at where the roots of these decisions are; when it is the individual who decides they should look and act a certain way, and when the media or our upbringing places these restrictions in our minds, affecting our habits and choices.
however, on a grey and rainy day like this, all i want to do is curl up by my [non-existent] fireplace and read a good [not that i have one] book and drink tea. well, i managed the tea part! today is just for groene thee met ginseng.
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