Week 14 - Joker / Invitation to revist or invent with playful disturbance - Deborah Light

After some time away from each other we re-gathered with a curiosity and openness to each others current creative and personal states. Ahead of opening the stater task we recognised a collective desire to root the weeks research deeply in the body; specifically our bodies – women, 40+, holding personal and collective grief, weight, trauma, desire and possibility.

We recognised a need to be where we are and who we are – to make space, to not move on from, but move with the grief – to fully inhabit ourselves and our experience with trust and courage.

The starter invited us to re-visit or invent a tier in playful disturbance.
This gave us permission to meander intentionally through the generation of movement and meaning.

Through the week we met and worked together with the Portugese collective sharing practices and scores contributing to the playful disruption of our processes – we were giving space for the body to arrive somewhere unexpected.

This was a week of physical, emotional, conceptual content coming together and the imagining of a potential future work.

Here are some poetic reflections on the week from each of us:

Jo:

Specifically not having an agenda

Productive Rebellion

Meander

Start with body / movement

Not quite development but play, effortless discovery,

Open / ease / well being / move between ideas,

Working in the unknown,

Permission for things to appear.

Deb:

Being in the body with all it’s knowledge, trauma, experience, weight, joy and pleasure.

Being where we are.

Bringing our whole selves to both familiar and unknown territory.

Making space for grief - moving on, moving with.

Stay in the light.

Push to move - a physical task and a concept:

- it is generative

- we encounter each other as part of a bigger landscape, as autonomous systems.

- Moving with autonomy, generosity and care.

- Is self care fascist?

Anna:

Acknowledging a new chapter coming for us - a restructure - embracing the unknowns – making space for our grief.

Starting our week with a meeting in the park - soaking up the sun and warmth. Feeling immense gratitude for the opportunity to be in Porto and sharing space with the Porto dancers.

Encountering new bodies, languages, cultures, nuances of expression, different nervous systems and lived experiences.

A score emerged:
- Push to move - air, ourselves, others, floor, surfaces.
- This became our anchor for the week.
- This and our other scores about gaze created potential for absurdity.

Key emerging physical scores centered around – push to move, gaze, generation through rhythm, breath wrapping around the spine.

A key conceptual anchor was to head towards the light.

The week concluded with a sharing by the Potugese collective which resonated strongly with us all – their individual presence within the work was powerful and the location of their sharing on a rooftop building site resonated with our own interest in a surreal collision of performance elements.