My bedside reading recently has been The Anatomy of Hatha Yoga by H. David Coulter. I was a little sceptical at first. I have a one and a half-year old yoga practice, I have a smattering of anatomical/physiological knowledge from university and I have some background of history of science.
What I wanted, what I was interested in, was a western modern medicine view of anatomy, related to yoga. I was worried there would be some spuriousness, some yoga philosophy weaved in that made me doubt it all.
Thankfully Coulter - a yogi and anatomist - leaves to one side all discussion of yoga philosophy and restricts his discussion strictly to anatomy and physiology, whilst applying it to yoga postures. It's written in technical but clear language; at a level nearer my uni anatomy textbooks than A-level biology, but written so beautifully smoothly and logically that if your anatomy is a little hazy (as mine is), it still makes sense and is easily absorbed.
Coulter demonstrates characteristics of, for example reflex reactions, by describing experiments you can carry out yourself, which are a superb complement to the written stuff. Illustrations are well placed, clear and detailed. The references to yoga and how the anatomical issues addressed apply are just the kind of thing I have been curious about. All in all, I am very impressed.
And excited, and astounded. The more I read about the tissues and fabrics of my body, their tricks and habits, the more I feel completely in awe of this body I live in. It's astonishing.
This cements in me a feeling that I would like to study more anatomy, and therapies that build on anatomical knowledge (massage, osteopathy).
Which would come in handy for myself now as it happens. I had my head wrongly placed to go up into headstand yesterday morning and as I started to walk feet towards head a bolt of pain flew down my neck and across my shoulder blades and upper back. I am in pain, with limited movement in my neck, and stiffness all over. I am resting; it's not so awful my body won't be able to fix itself, but it is another reminder how precious and important physical health and free movement is, and how important to be informed and knowledgeable to avoid injury so far as possible (but not to stop attempting headstands...)
The website of the book - http://www.bodyandbreath.com/Book.htm
Thursday, 29 November 2007
Thursday, 25 October 2007
Hofesh Shechter
I still haven't written about Hofesh Shechter! It was weeks ago I saw Uprising/In Your Rooms at Sadlers Wells. And I loved it. But somehow I've found it difficult to find the words for it.
Time has already eroded my impressions from the night, but what I remember standing out in particular was a looseness that I don't remember seeing in much other contemporary dance.
A repeated movement that was reminiscent of a chimpanzee running and a skanking kind of movement lodged themselves in my mind. Loose necks, heads, arms. A lovely organic rhythm. Echoes of other worlds.
And there was a real sense of integration and overall vision. Of creating something with the dancers, the lighting (which was beautiful) and the music (which was awesome - at the start it was viscerally heartbeat-esque).
And of effect - use of force and stillness and formations (I remember vividly all the dancers in a line pushing both arms in the air in time with the music. Simple and very powerful). A subtle kind of imagery so that although I hadn't seen the running order I knew from the dancing that the first piece must have been Uprising, because it gave me a feeling of uprising, without being blatant.
I liked it very much, and I look forward to more Hofesh in the future... Will his style lose its magic for me if I see more similar work, or will it grow and evolve in fabulous ways?
See Hofesh's homesite http://www.hofesh.co.uk/
I mentioned skanking. If you're not familiar see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlnHQ7Y6WA4
And http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1aWYHG7lho which, as the kids say, is not real skanking - it's like a slightly hip-hop variant. Pretty cool though.
Time has already eroded my impressions from the night, but what I remember standing out in particular was a looseness that I don't remember seeing in much other contemporary dance.
A repeated movement that was reminiscent of a chimpanzee running and a skanking kind of movement lodged themselves in my mind. Loose necks, heads, arms. A lovely organic rhythm. Echoes of other worlds.
And there was a real sense of integration and overall vision. Of creating something with the dancers, the lighting (which was beautiful) and the music (which was awesome - at the start it was viscerally heartbeat-esque).
And of effect - use of force and stillness and formations (I remember vividly all the dancers in a line pushing both arms in the air in time with the music. Simple and very powerful). A subtle kind of imagery so that although I hadn't seen the running order I knew from the dancing that the first piece must have been Uprising, because it gave me a feeling of uprising, without being blatant.
I liked it very much, and I look forward to more Hofesh in the future... Will his style lose its magic for me if I see more similar work, or will it grow and evolve in fabulous ways?
See Hofesh's homesite http://www.hofesh.co.uk/
I mentioned skanking. If you're not familiar see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlnHQ7Y6WA4
And http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1aWYHG7lho which, as the kids say, is not real skanking - it's like a slightly hip-hop variant. Pretty cool though.
Tuesday, 25 September 2007
Stillness and Antony Gormley
Sad to see the other day that the Antony Gormley man had disappeared from Waterloo bridge. The bronze casts of Gormley that stood and silently stared out from their perches all around the South Bank had been with us all summer. I'd heard about them before I encountered the one on Waterloo bridge, but it was something different to see it in the flesh, as it were.
I felt a kind of pulling. I felt as though if I stood as still as that 'man' was, I would feel stuck, and pulled. There's such an onwards rush in London. We people, like molecules, flow along as rivers, as streams (watch the suits emerge from London Bridge station in the morning - they pour over the bridge into the City - it's quite a sight). And to stand still amongst all that is just not done.
Yes, tourists dither, consult maps, take snapshots. And there are homeless people who are separate from the fray - hunched at the side of the streets. But who stands, just stands and is?
Just the little bronze men, so far as I know.
That was really powerful to me. It made me want to stop and stand and see everything rushing around me. And it served as a contrast, a quiet comment on our franticness.
Others have made much of the way the statues seemed to look after or over the people below then. How it wasn't clear whether they were surveying the landscape or contemplating a jump.
I just loved the stillness. The reminder to be still.
Pictures of the sculptures http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/2007/may/03/art?picture=329805762
Interview with Lalitaraja about stillness and meditation in dance http://www.dharmalife.com/issue26/stillness.html
Article about recent collaborative work between Antony Gormley, Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Nitin Sawnhey http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1526373,00.html
Sunday, 23 September 2007
The Wellcome Collection
...is really rather good. Its very slick and stylish and modern. It's a real exemplar of novel ways to present information, and also of how to play with that information in the first place. The modern medicine room is cross-disciplinary in a really exciting way; science and art meshing together completely comfortably.
Short recorded lectures about malaria speak just to you as you sit in a chair. A gigantic plaster model of a distorted body, representing 'I can't help what I think' stands next to a graphical representation of heartbeats, a beautiful glass scuplture of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, a piece made of mosquito nets and little photos about AIDS in Africa. Glass cases hold exercise videos, diet books and other familiar artefacts of our modern obsession with size and health - emphasising the point that our own present culture can be put in a case and labelled and studied just the same as that foreignness of the past.
And the events... really innovative and interesting. See links below.
The staff are helpful, the cakes in the cafe look good, and the building - where I used to go and read and fall asleep back in my degree days - is lovely as ever. Can't wait to see the new sleep and dreaming exhibition coming soon.
The Wellcome Collection http://www.wellcomecollection.org/
Witness live heart surgery http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/events/WTX041264.htm
Books to make you better http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/events/WTX039485.htm
An experimental and experiential insight into the materiality of flesh http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/events/WTX041288.htm
Short recorded lectures about malaria speak just to you as you sit in a chair. A gigantic plaster model of a distorted body, representing 'I can't help what I think' stands next to a graphical representation of heartbeats, a beautiful glass scuplture of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, a piece made of mosquito nets and little photos about AIDS in Africa. Glass cases hold exercise videos, diet books and other familiar artefacts of our modern obsession with size and health - emphasising the point that our own present culture can be put in a case and labelled and studied just the same as that foreignness of the past.
And the events... really innovative and interesting. See links below.
The staff are helpful, the cakes in the cafe look good, and the building - where I used to go and read and fall asleep back in my degree days - is lovely as ever. Can't wait to see the new sleep and dreaming exhibition coming soon.
The Wellcome Collection http://www.wellcomecollection.org/
Witness live heart surgery http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/events/WTX041264.htm
Books to make you better http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/events/WTX039485.htm
An experimental and experiential insight into the materiality of flesh http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/events/WTX041288.htm
The way we walk
This is what I was wondering the other day as my mind gave up determinedly focusing and drifted away from the business finance it was supposed to be taking in: I was wondering about the ways people walk and why I like some gaits, find some gestures annoying, am irritated by some gesticulation or posture. Why I even notice it consciously at all.
I often find myself watching people and analysing their walks, the way they exit a room, drink a cup of tea, sit down, stand up. If I know them, I might match it to what I know of them; if I don't I might make spurious conjecture about them based on it. Or I might just follow the patterns, studying the peculiar way they curl their figures as they speak or the angle of their feet as they stand.
It made me think about the idea of dance as a language. You are building up your vocabulary, your dictionary, our choreography teacher used to tell us at Birkbeck, so that when you know enough of the technicalities of the language, you can say what you want to say in it.
I wondered whether my habit is in part because I am traditionally not a person particularly adept with spoken language. Articulacy is much easier for me on paper than straight from the brain into the air.
Maybe being quiet, being careful with words, means I am more likely to try and take more from the unvocalised language of movement?
Who knows. But what of the movement itself? The movement we all unthinkingly act out every day. The walk with which your close acquaintances can recognise you way before your face comes into focus, the way you sit in a chair, the little tics - pulling hems of shirts, playing with hair, nodding, gesturing, the rhythms to your being in space. How are they learned? How do we manipulate them? How much is physically limited, how much is driven by other factors and what are they? How aware are we of the style we move? What can we read into them? Do I see someone and match their swagger to the arrogance or defensively shielded vulnerability I have already detected in them, or do I imagine that characteristic subconsciously because of the swagger?....
I was in a training session the other week with a trainer whose hand movements were jerky and repetitive; whose spine curled over when he sat, whose head twitched from side to side as he listened to our comments. I wanted to attach some kind of movement sensors to his ears, his nose, his elbows and his fingertips. And then to film so that we could watch those movements without their body, to see people mapped out by their habitual positions and postures and unthought out shapes and motions and drawings in the air.
I often find myself watching people and analysing their walks, the way they exit a room, drink a cup of tea, sit down, stand up. If I know them, I might match it to what I know of them; if I don't I might make spurious conjecture about them based on it. Or I might just follow the patterns, studying the peculiar way they curl their figures as they speak or the angle of their feet as they stand.
It made me think about the idea of dance as a language. You are building up your vocabulary, your dictionary, our choreography teacher used to tell us at Birkbeck, so that when you know enough of the technicalities of the language, you can say what you want to say in it.
I wondered whether my habit is in part because I am traditionally not a person particularly adept with spoken language. Articulacy is much easier for me on paper than straight from the brain into the air.
Maybe being quiet, being careful with words, means I am more likely to try and take more from the unvocalised language of movement?
Who knows. But what of the movement itself? The movement we all unthinkingly act out every day. The walk with which your close acquaintances can recognise you way before your face comes into focus, the way you sit in a chair, the little tics - pulling hems of shirts, playing with hair, nodding, gesturing, the rhythms to your being in space. How are they learned? How do we manipulate them? How much is physically limited, how much is driven by other factors and what are they? How aware are we of the style we move? What can we read into them? Do I see someone and match their swagger to the arrogance or defensively shielded vulnerability I have already detected in them, or do I imagine that characteristic subconsciously because of the swagger?....
I was in a training session the other week with a trainer whose hand movements were jerky and repetitive; whose spine curled over when he sat, whose head twitched from side to side as he listened to our comments. I wanted to attach some kind of movement sensors to his ears, his nose, his elbows and his fingertips. And then to film so that we could watch those movements without their body, to see people mapped out by their habitual positions and postures and unthought out shapes and motions and drawings in the air.
Monday, 20 August 2007
Namastey Trafalgar Square
Watching things that don't work is, I think, like adding the shadows to a picture, the contrast delineating more clearly the light areas, making the image as a whole emerge more clearly. You need the bad in order to understand the good - and the mechanics as a whole - a little more.
I was watching what had promised to be a 'Bollywood spectacular' at Trafalgar Square last Friday, part of the Trafalgar Square Festival and India Now. After abseiling painters had finished the giant mural, Les Passagers, a group of 'aerialists' (about whom I can not find any further information) performed a vertical bollywood-inspired dance piece across it.
Dancers suspended against a giant backdrop, in a huge open air arena, with great lights and music: it should have been - or could have been - fantastic. And yet somehow it just... underwhelmed.
The backdrop with its huge characters and swirling colours detracted from the dancers - they were almost camouflaged at times; tiny creatures hard to make out, and their movements even more so.
After some intial confusing disparate action, things started to look up with some coordinated movements and twirling umbrellas, and then large sweeping runs across the mural. And still, and still... I could kind of sense what it should be, but felt it never quite got there.
The sad thing is, I'm sure it was incredibly hard work and the cumulation of a huge amount of effort and thought and skill. And up close the movements may have been beautiful.
But when you're working on a big scale, the picture is not the dancer, or the sum of all the dancers' individual movements; it's the whole thing - all the components are painting the whole picture. So the backdrop and the lighting and the space and the patterns need to be worked to advantage; worked to work.
If they had been on a plain coloured background; if the lighting had played up shadows so the sweeps and the turns, the flicks and the falls and gestures could be seen at the back of the square instead of only by the front row (who would also be able to see all the illusion-ruining harnesses and ropes); if the backdrop had been used a bit more like a giant clean sheet of paper, instead of just a stage tilted 90 degrees; if the fun effects - confetti and streaming silk ribbons and props - had been used to their most dramatic effect, then perhaps it really would have been spectacular.
Trafalgar Square Festival - http://www.london.gov.uk/trafalgarsquare/events/tsf/week3.jsp
India Now - http://www.visitlondon.com/events/special/india-now
Picture of Namastey Trafalgar Square on Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/99104042@N00/sets/72157601567252269/
I was watching what had promised to be a 'Bollywood spectacular' at Trafalgar Square last Friday, part of the Trafalgar Square Festival and India Now. After abseiling painters had finished the giant mural, Les Passagers, a group of 'aerialists' (about whom I can not find any further information) performed a vertical bollywood-inspired dance piece across it.
Dancers suspended against a giant backdrop, in a huge open air arena, with great lights and music: it should have been - or could have been - fantastic. And yet somehow it just... underwhelmed.
The backdrop with its huge characters and swirling colours detracted from the dancers - they were almost camouflaged at times; tiny creatures hard to make out, and their movements even more so.
After some intial confusing disparate action, things started to look up with some coordinated movements and twirling umbrellas, and then large sweeping runs across the mural. And still, and still... I could kind of sense what it should be, but felt it never quite got there.
The sad thing is, I'm sure it was incredibly hard work and the cumulation of a huge amount of effort and thought and skill. And up close the movements may have been beautiful.
But when you're working on a big scale, the picture is not the dancer, or the sum of all the dancers' individual movements; it's the whole thing - all the components are painting the whole picture. So the backdrop and the lighting and the space and the patterns need to be worked to advantage; worked to work.
If they had been on a plain coloured background; if the lighting had played up shadows so the sweeps and the turns, the flicks and the falls and gestures could be seen at the back of the square instead of only by the front row (who would also be able to see all the illusion-ruining harnesses and ropes); if the backdrop had been used a bit more like a giant clean sheet of paper, instead of just a stage tilted 90 degrees; if the fun effects - confetti and streaming silk ribbons and props - had been used to their most dramatic effect, then perhaps it really would have been spectacular.
Trafalgar Square Festival - http://www.london.gov.uk/trafalgarsquare/events/tsf/week3.jsp
India Now - http://www.visitlondon.com/events/special/india-now
Picture of Namastey Trafalgar Square on Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/99104042@N00/sets/72157601567252269/
Monday, 6 August 2007
Good Morning Baltimore!
I want to wear big frilled skirts and my hair two feet high; and break into song as I eat my breakfast; and rush home from school to dance in front of the tv. I want to ride to work sitting on the front of a rubbish truck with my arms wide open greeting the day. I want to skip around the streets in a shower of song; and break out of a basement room to take part in a protest, singing down the street with candles in our hands...
Yes, I've just seen Hairspray. Gloriously feel good.
And now I am seriously considering whether I can fit into my schedule something like:
Danceworks' Theatrical Jazz class or one of Pineapple's jazz classes...
Go see hairspray - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427327/
Danceworks' timetable - http://www.danceworks.net/DancefitnessFriday.asp
Pineapple jazz classes - http://www.pineapple.uk.com/descriptions/jazzandtap.htm
Yes, I've just seen Hairspray. Gloriously feel good.
And now I am seriously considering whether I can fit into my schedule something like:
Danceworks' Theatrical Jazz class or one of Pineapple's jazz classes...
Go see hairspray - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427327/
Danceworks' timetable - http://www.danceworks.net/DancefitnessFriday.asp
Pineapple jazz classes - http://www.pineapple.uk.com/descriptions/jazzandtap.htm
Thursday, 26 July 2007
Channelling beauty
So, when you go to a yoga class, sometimes the teacher will tell you to 'check in'; to see what you are bringing to the mat; to see just how it is you are right then.
A lot of yoga is about self-knowledge. About being able to identify what we are doing, how we are feeling, how we are acting, in order to strip back reactions, reflexes, actions which don't reflect us and work towards making the way we live full of integrity; not ruled by emotions and defences.
I think I've always previously thought my aim when I practice is to be aware of myself certainly, but to put distractions aside and just concentrate on the linking of breath and movement.
The morning after I went to see Augustine however (see previous post) I stood on my mat and I thought about bringing things to the mat, and I remembered the feelings of great contentment and inspiration from the night before. I hadn't had a camera, to capture it visually, which initially I was regretful about, and then I thought no, I'll just try and capture it in my mind and heart instead.
And so it was there, and it occurred to me that I should concentrate on these feelings. I should re-live that joy in the beauty of every day life, the inspiration I took from the vitality of the dancers, the determination I took from them to put my all into things and live myself fully, the great joy at enjoying beautiful vistas - be it sun-lit skyscrapers or leaves moving in the breeze, the gratitude at being alive and happy.
So I concentrated on all those feelings and recollections throughout my practice, and as I worked through my sun salutations I thought also about the rhythm of the breath and how - when I saw the sunlight on the church I thought 'I know what this is! This is harmony - it's the architecture and my eyes and my brain and the light all together to create beauty - that's harmony' (I had been reading an essay by Haruki Murakami on harmony in writing recently). And my movements took on a rhythm and a kind of harmony. A flow, as they should do.
And as I worked on, I found trying to feel the energy to my finger tips and to every cell in my body, gave me a feeling of having more energy from the inside. I heated up, I worked harder than I normally do, I maintained a great sense of momentum, I got into poses I normally struggle with, I opened up into upwards bow with such ease it was astonishing. And all the time, the joy and the beauty and the vitality I had felt was feeding me.
Which made me reflect on how what is in your mind can really affect how your body moves. I can tell you exactly where to put your hands and feet, how to breathe, how even you should feel in every muscle, but the inspiration and the impulse will come from you, and whatever is in your mind will make all the different to how that movement is to you, and to others who may be experiencing it.
Where I practice yoga - Triyoga
Haruki Murakami essay - Jazz Messenger
A lot of yoga is about self-knowledge. About being able to identify what we are doing, how we are feeling, how we are acting, in order to strip back reactions, reflexes, actions which don't reflect us and work towards making the way we live full of integrity; not ruled by emotions and defences.
I think I've always previously thought my aim when I practice is to be aware of myself certainly, but to put distractions aside and just concentrate on the linking of breath and movement.
The morning after I went to see Augustine however (see previous post) I stood on my mat and I thought about bringing things to the mat, and I remembered the feelings of great contentment and inspiration from the night before. I hadn't had a camera, to capture it visually, which initially I was regretful about, and then I thought no, I'll just try and capture it in my mind and heart instead.
And so it was there, and it occurred to me that I should concentrate on these feelings. I should re-live that joy in the beauty of every day life, the inspiration I took from the vitality of the dancers, the determination I took from them to put my all into things and live myself fully, the great joy at enjoying beautiful vistas - be it sun-lit skyscrapers or leaves moving in the breeze, the gratitude at being alive and happy.
So I concentrated on all those feelings and recollections throughout my practice, and as I worked through my sun salutations I thought also about the rhythm of the breath and how - when I saw the sunlight on the church I thought 'I know what this is! This is harmony - it's the architecture and my eyes and my brain and the light all together to create beauty - that's harmony' (I had been reading an essay by Haruki Murakami on harmony in writing recently). And my movements took on a rhythm and a kind of harmony. A flow, as they should do.
And as I worked on, I found trying to feel the energy to my finger tips and to every cell in my body, gave me a feeling of having more energy from the inside. I heated up, I worked harder than I normally do, I maintained a great sense of momentum, I got into poses I normally struggle with, I opened up into upwards bow with such ease it was astonishing. And all the time, the joy and the beauty and the vitality I had felt was feeding me.
Which made me reflect on how what is in your mind can really affect how your body moves. I can tell you exactly where to put your hands and feet, how to breathe, how even you should feel in every muscle, but the inspiration and the impulse will come from you, and whatever is in your mind will make all the different to how that movement is to you, and to others who may be experiencing it.
Where I practice yoga - Triyoga
Haruki Murakami essay - Jazz Messenger
Augustine, Darkin Ensemble
How extraordinary... A day or so after I decide I am going to create a blog combining interests in the movement/performance field and interests in the study of bodies and history of medicine field, I come across a listing for a dance piece based on hysteria in Paris in the 1890s of all things...
Titled Augustine, and performed by the Darkin Ensemble, choreographed by Fleur Darkin, it was based on the photographs of patients at the Salpetriere, and one particular patient, the eponymous Augustine.
Hysteria is fascinating. I wrote about it for my masters in History of Science, Technology and Medicine, and read many articles in medical journals of the time about particular cases. As a concept it had been around since the Ancient Greeks, linked to ideas about pathology connected to the movement of the womb. Though this theory changed much over time, it stayed very much connected to femininity. The cases I looked at were stark in the disparity of causes identified - hysterical women could blame it on their anatomy and their overtly feminine disposition; hysterical men had probably been wobbled too much on the railway, or suffered another similar trauma.
We don't use the word in the same sense today. They didn't mean wailing with tears, or crying with laughter. Hysteria was the name for a vast constellation of symptoms, any collection of which the patient may possess, but which in all cases, the commonality was the absence of any clear physiological cause.
Having been around in one form or another for many many centuries, it faded out as a disease category in the 20th century. What happened to it, and why it was used as a label for specific groups of 'patients' down the ages has been investigated by many.
Anyway, the dancing, the dancing...
If I explained it in terms of components, more likely than not, noses would be turned up in disgust - disgust for 'experimental new-fangled nonsense'. Yes, the costumes were sparse, there were boxes to encage the dancers, there were cries of anguish, there was a soundtrack of breathing, panting, there was frenetic movements and tussles, there was a man laying out violins across the stage talking to himself about how the world was extinguishing itself...
But. There was also this - a visceral energy to the dancing that was so powerful at times I almost reeled as if hit by it. There were moments of captivating rhythm and soothingly sad melody. There were sequences of movement both fluid and frenetic that were enchantingly beautiful. There were 7 people on stage putting so much into it that it all held together and arrested me.
I liked it very much.
I liked the cellist on the side of the stage - who also provided the breathing soundtrack, some unconventional violin playing, and a lovely song-voice.
I liked the soundtracking to breath. Funnily enough I had been experimenting with this kind of thing walking home the other day - making the kind of sounds that people make inadvertently - sighs, umms, ahs, sounds of exertion and impatience and so on - to movements that felt appropriate. Yes, I must have looked a little strange, but so do most people on the streets of Archway. Anyway, it really did feel quite satisfying - the moving and the making of noise. A certain sound would match a certain noise. I liked it as an idea for a troupe of dancers. The same sounds or a cacophonous variety of sounds. I thought it could be quite impressive. A further kind of exploration of dance quite literally being a language - adding the expressions of non-verbal sounds on the top...
Darkin Ensemble's breath was not quite like that, it provided emphasis for the movement and heightened the sense of frustration and exertion that the dancer in the box was creating. But it had this great rhythm, which was quite hypnotic for me.
I loved the poses the 'hysterics' took. Trying to portray the complicity between doctor and patients in displaying the illness to academics, Darkin had her dancers contract themselves into taut and jagged shapes, which qualities travelled over into the movement pieces. The vibrancy of outstretched poses and flinging limbs reminded me of times when I've had such great rage or frustration that the body just seems full of some potent energy, almost forcing your limbs out, forcing a flailing, fighting, scratching release....
Release was the last section. There was not too tight a narrative; symptoms, treatment, release were the stages, but the first two seemed to be a collection of ideas and images - the helplessness of patients, the relationships between doctors and patients, frustration, delusion, performance... The third, release, really did give a feeling of release though. The patient/doctor accoutrements were removed, and in neutral clothing - just as humans - the dancers let go of the fight and just moved with energy and lyricism.
Above all it was the energy that impacted on me - jumping into another's arms, fighting, contracting into a pose. Everything was done with such startling vitality. It made me feel alive and it made me want to live harder, brighter, bigger, more hungrily.
I left the centre feeling gladdened. It was my first visit to Laban, and it's an awesome building - the angular hills, the shimmering colours, the shed-like humbleness, combined with smooth, vast majestic curves...
And the whole of the walk back to the station was bathed in golden sunlight. A tower block in browns and whites looked truly beautiful against a deep blur sky. Razor wire and barbed wire were calmly coiled, making pretty shadows incongruous with their nature. A little church spire took on a pumpkin-coloured hue, traffic lights winked at me, even an abandoned sign behind a fence struck me as being in the perfect place - it was like walking in a work of art.
I sat at the front of the DLR and watched the sun squeeze out its final deep rich rays over canary wharf and the wonders of east london and felt filled with riches.
Listen to Radio 4 programme on Hysteria http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20040422.shtml
Great book on hysteria and female psychiatry http://www.amazon.com/Female-Malady-Elaine-Showalter/dp/0860688690/ref=pd_sim_b_1/103-9546212-5033427
Review of Augustine http://www.musicomh.com/theatre/augustine_0507.htm
Fleur Darkin http://www.writingthebody.co.uk/writingthebody/Fleur%20Darkin.html
Darkin Ensemble http://www.writingthebody.co.uk/writingthebody/welcome.html
The Musician http://www.sarahmoody.co.uk/
Titled Augustine, and performed by the Darkin Ensemble, choreographed by Fleur Darkin, it was based on the photographs of patients at the Salpetriere, and one particular patient, the eponymous Augustine.
Hysteria is fascinating. I wrote about it for my masters in History of Science, Technology and Medicine, and read many articles in medical journals of the time about particular cases. As a concept it had been around since the Ancient Greeks, linked to ideas about pathology connected to the movement of the womb. Though this theory changed much over time, it stayed very much connected to femininity. The cases I looked at were stark in the disparity of causes identified - hysterical women could blame it on their anatomy and their overtly feminine disposition; hysterical men had probably been wobbled too much on the railway, or suffered another similar trauma.
We don't use the word in the same sense today. They didn't mean wailing with tears, or crying with laughter. Hysteria was the name for a vast constellation of symptoms, any collection of which the patient may possess, but which in all cases, the commonality was the absence of any clear physiological cause.
Having been around in one form or another for many many centuries, it faded out as a disease category in the 20th century. What happened to it, and why it was used as a label for specific groups of 'patients' down the ages has been investigated by many.
Anyway, the dancing, the dancing...
If I explained it in terms of components, more likely than not, noses would be turned up in disgust - disgust for 'experimental new-fangled nonsense'. Yes, the costumes were sparse, there were boxes to encage the dancers, there were cries of anguish, there was a soundtrack of breathing, panting, there was frenetic movements and tussles, there was a man laying out violins across the stage talking to himself about how the world was extinguishing itself...
But. There was also this - a visceral energy to the dancing that was so powerful at times I almost reeled as if hit by it. There were moments of captivating rhythm and soothingly sad melody. There were sequences of movement both fluid and frenetic that were enchantingly beautiful. There were 7 people on stage putting so much into it that it all held together and arrested me.
I liked it very much.
I liked the cellist on the side of the stage - who also provided the breathing soundtrack, some unconventional violin playing, and a lovely song-voice.
I liked the soundtracking to breath. Funnily enough I had been experimenting with this kind of thing walking home the other day - making the kind of sounds that people make inadvertently - sighs, umms, ahs, sounds of exertion and impatience and so on - to movements that felt appropriate. Yes, I must have looked a little strange, but so do most people on the streets of Archway. Anyway, it really did feel quite satisfying - the moving and the making of noise. A certain sound would match a certain noise. I liked it as an idea for a troupe of dancers. The same sounds or a cacophonous variety of sounds. I thought it could be quite impressive. A further kind of exploration of dance quite literally being a language - adding the expressions of non-verbal sounds on the top...
Darkin Ensemble's breath was not quite like that, it provided emphasis for the movement and heightened the sense of frustration and exertion that the dancer in the box was creating. But it had this great rhythm, which was quite hypnotic for me.
I loved the poses the 'hysterics' took. Trying to portray the complicity between doctor and patients in displaying the illness to academics, Darkin had her dancers contract themselves into taut and jagged shapes, which qualities travelled over into the movement pieces. The vibrancy of outstretched poses and flinging limbs reminded me of times when I've had such great rage or frustration that the body just seems full of some potent energy, almost forcing your limbs out, forcing a flailing, fighting, scratching release....
Release was the last section. There was not too tight a narrative; symptoms, treatment, release were the stages, but the first two seemed to be a collection of ideas and images - the helplessness of patients, the relationships between doctors and patients, frustration, delusion, performance... The third, release, really did give a feeling of release though. The patient/doctor accoutrements were removed, and in neutral clothing - just as humans - the dancers let go of the fight and just moved with energy and lyricism.
Above all it was the energy that impacted on me - jumping into another's arms, fighting, contracting into a pose. Everything was done with such startling vitality. It made me feel alive and it made me want to live harder, brighter, bigger, more hungrily.
I left the centre feeling gladdened. It was my first visit to Laban, and it's an awesome building - the angular hills, the shimmering colours, the shed-like humbleness, combined with smooth, vast majestic curves...
And the whole of the walk back to the station was bathed in golden sunlight. A tower block in browns and whites looked truly beautiful against a deep blur sky. Razor wire and barbed wire were calmly coiled, making pretty shadows incongruous with their nature. A little church spire took on a pumpkin-coloured hue, traffic lights winked at me, even an abandoned sign behind a fence struck me as being in the perfect place - it was like walking in a work of art.
I sat at the front of the DLR and watched the sun squeeze out its final deep rich rays over canary wharf and the wonders of east london and felt filled with riches.
Listen to Radio 4 programme on Hysteria http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20040422.shtml
Great book on hysteria and female psychiatry http://www.amazon.com/Female-Malady-Elaine-Showalter/dp/0860688690/ref=pd_sim_b_1/103-9546212-5033427
Review of Augustine http://www.musicomh.com/theatre/augustine_0507.htm
Fleur Darkin http://www.writingthebody.co.uk/writingthebody/Fleur%20Darkin.html
Darkin Ensemble http://www.writingthebody.co.uk/writingthebody/welcome.html
The Musician http://www.sarahmoody.co.uk/
why?
why? because even though i cried on the way home from ballet aged 11 for feeling a failure, I knew the feeling I got from a waltz in time with the music, or the rhythm of a tricky enchainement, was worth pursuing. because when I performed even in front of a small bemused crowd on a rainy afternoon in swindon, i loved the thrill of showing what we had done, of working together. because when we sat and discussed each other's work for Foundation at Birkbeck, I found something inspiring in that environment of cooperative creativity and support. Because when I was tired and I went to capoeira anyway, I walked home feeling utterly elated and enlivened by the challenge and the energy and the community of it. Because of the importance of breaking through my own barriers, whether it be saying a word out loud to many people, or sharing my own work. Because of the awe and delight I felt watching the beauty of free-runners using the built environment as a playground. Because all of the times my heart has swelled up watching dancers perform with every cell in their body, watching a language talk to me through movement and pace and energy. Because of the moments of revelation. Because of the grounding my yoga practice gives me. Because of the fascination I find in reading about the human body. Because when i read about the symbolism of the heart, or bodies in history, or isadora duncan; or when I see friends performing, or a circus performance on the South Bank, or Sylvie Guillem; or when I go to an acrobatics class, or a choreographic session, or I dance in my kitchen... then I feel like these are pieces of a puzzle. That there are all these strands which fascinate me - anatomy and physiology, the history of dance, the study of performance, medical histories, views of the body, dance and movement in communities and for individuals, yoga, martial arts, circus arts, dance, dance theatre, physical theatre, movement therapy, choreography, choreology.... that somehow I want to collect and collate and tie all together. To explore and to build on and to collect together.
Because although I don't know exactly what I want to do, I know I want to pursue all these avenues and see what comes of it. Because although I may not become a professional choreographer, a yoga teacher, a massage therapist, a researcher in dance anthropology, or any of the many other ideas I come up with, I shouldn't let that detract me from exploring those things that inspire me and excite me and I shouldn't let that stop me from being fully open to all possibilities.
Millions of dancing cells, in my body all the time. Millions of dancing people that I meet along the way. Millions of dancing ideas, searching for context, in my brain. Millions of inspirational moments, dancing in the world around me.
I just want to record somewhere altogether, all the things I always think I want to capture and do something with. And build for myself a scrapbook of ideas and support, and inspiration and memories. And maybe for others too - an interesting repository of things seen and experienced and thought.
That's that. That's why.
Because although I don't know exactly what I want to do, I know I want to pursue all these avenues and see what comes of it. Because although I may not become a professional choreographer, a yoga teacher, a massage therapist, a researcher in dance anthropology, or any of the many other ideas I come up with, I shouldn't let that detract me from exploring those things that inspire me and excite me and I shouldn't let that stop me from being fully open to all possibilities.
Millions of dancing cells, in my body all the time. Millions of dancing people that I meet along the way. Millions of dancing ideas, searching for context, in my brain. Millions of inspirational moments, dancing in the world around me.
I just want to record somewhere altogether, all the things I always think I want to capture and do something with. And build for myself a scrapbook of ideas and support, and inspiration and memories. And maybe for others too - an interesting repository of things seen and experienced and thought.
That's that. That's why.
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