Jerwood Bank 2007

The search for the necessary or distilled fragments of movement rarely come to us quickly. The search is often a meandering or even disjointed path, and often we are clear about what is not right before finding the thing that is particular. It is a constant cycle of building and editing.

……because my computer froze i could not publish the following (6/10 08 2007):

The task we have been given so far have opened up a window on duration of movement.

Around tuesday: (FIRST TASK) I closed my eyes and dipped my head and body into a sea of events eventually finding 8 of them short fragments/thought/idea numbering them and combine them with the notes of a musical score.
Around thurday: (SECOND TASK) I closed my eyes and dipped my head and body into a similar but not quite, sea of events, eventually finding one event, a movement originating from a reaction to something. After splitting it into fragments I shuffled them around and combined them with the note of a musical score.

Long process of struggling to fit the movement to the structure, struggling to keep the “in between” movement alive, struggling to avoid the movement to become mechanical, spending a long time refining the movement, figuring out what it was exactly , trying to be as detailed/true as possible.
Found the first task more difficult then the second one, didn’ t manage to get to the end of the musical score, didn’ t allowed myself to any “artistic licence”, thought I was not fast enough to fit the movement to the given structure, learned an interesting way to create material or extend a movement/action.
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End of day 7. We have given the difficult task of finding the simplest , or should I say, most spare movements. These ‘moments’ then have to be put through a short musical score so that literally a move relates to a note. The song can then be sung physically…. This is a demanding task on many levels: It forces the body into connections it wouldn’t normally make. It cuts through any attachment you may have had to the original movement and what is was doing or trying to express. It demands that you remember how the movement relates to the score physically, before you can begin to refine your ’song’ in terms of quality. All this just so we can move forward to the main ideas for this year’s Bank, and all in one week.
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7 days into the process: lots of information.
Income-outcome:
Excitement-exaustion.
Internal-external.
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Roberta’s clip from the 9th August. 
Duration: 16 seconds

Susanna’s clip from the 9th August.
Duration: 30 seconds

“Then it occured to me to ask what it is that man does when he dances, not only as artist but as man. He expresses that which cannot be put into words; he gives voice to the ineffable, intangible meaning and condition of being alive; he puts himself in touch with forces beyond the purely pesonal and mundane; he swims in a river of movement that refreshes his spirit.”
From Reflections on Metamorphosis by M. Starks Whitehouse

we are just starting to work with the second song… it is a play between the uniqueness of a given STRUCTURE and an immense nember of POSSIBILITIES

on the 100lire song I was struggling to finish the task getting the rythm “right” getting each movement “right” … and then I was stuck!
I am interestd in this moments: I am stuck my creativity seems to be reduced to zero and my body feels rigid not open to movement
then something, a word, an image (often an external element) helps me shift my attention – and frustration – and here we are: a flowing state of open and not judgmental state in which anything can emerge!
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The following is what I wrote last night but failed to log on to the bank07 site.

Today felt like i had entered into the process. I had fun exploring the material and getting into the next level when we started condensing,editing and clarifying the thoughts and the movement events. But when we showed our material to a partner, either my thought became blurred or my movement lost the essence of the original idea. It’s like the context and the movement event wouldn’t connect. For what I can see, I had mainly relied on the physical impulses or actions to form thoughts,images or pathways of the breathe and I wonder whether I should try the other way around. Well, I’ll do that tomorrow.
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As it was our last class with Gill, I thought I’d mention some highlights.  Generally they’ve been really useful to help provide a source and tool box of ideas for the afternoon’s activities.  One particular highlight for me was the class on legs. It was wonderful to realise how much possibilty there is, and how I usually think of the legs as being what enables the body and arms to move.  I had some really nice, surprising moments of finding pathways in and out of the floor without any effort, finding myself somewhere I hadn’t expected to be.  I like her expression of something being a gift.  The lesson on legs was a gift. 
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So the blogging can be put off no longer and I am determined to at least write something before this first weekend is over. It is a daunting task and while we all seem ready and willing to be open and vulnerable in the studio, it is an entirely different matter in the permanent and scarily literal world of words. Sometimes I think that this is one of the reasons why we choose dance as our expressive medium, because it can be abstract and open to interpretation, mysterious and transient.  Writings hang around forever, dammit.
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The Jerwood Bank Project 2007 ran between Wed 1 August and Tues 11 September 2007. Led by Sarah Warsop and Doborah Saxon, six professional dancers (Hilary Stainsby, Jennifer-Lynn Crawford, Jia-Yu Chang, Roberta Pitre, Rohanna Halls and Susanna Recchia) were given a unique opportunity to experience the creative and working methods of Siobhan Davies Dance. Watch the project as it developed by stepping through the archive, navigate by date or dancer, or view the image, audio and video documentation. 
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