‘This is how gorgeous it feels’ - Liz H project reflections
Photo Credit : David Wilson Clarke
When Clare first said -
“Just because you don’t know where you’re going, doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing”
it quickly became our mantra for the making of our first Third Bite piece. I’ve loved the way this project has unfolded; from the initial ideas and prompts, the production and evolution of material, then the selecting and refining into a structure - leading to the final stage of editing and presentation. Because it’s been such a rich and layered process it’s not surprising that initially we couldn’t envisage what the final piece would be like.
Right from the start Lucy encouraged the use of notebooks and free-writing. We started the first session by improvising to ambient music that had been produced by Richard the project sound artist, Lucy then asked us to free-write from the internal sensation of the movement. We didn’t have to make sense or read our words back - it was just a noting of the associations and qualities inherent in our bodies. We underlined selected phrases which were then used to develop further movement.
We wrote a Dear Body letter to ourselves which provided a frank opportunity to consider some of the pleasures and frustrations of our lived experience. Again, Lucy asked us to select phrases which particularly resonated and to send her the text that we were happy to share.
Something particularly exciting in this project was working with Andy the poet who further developed our use of text as source material for movement, especially his technique of generating gorgeous concepts by choosing a list of adjectives and nouns from two separate books and combining them. How else could we have conjured up “aromatic dust” or “migrating giants”?
By this process of selecting our favourite phrases from all the written material, we each ended up with a short text from which we developed our individual solos. It was stimulating to generate movements which were inspired by these phrases, for example “hapless canon” gave me a quality, but also a concrete image that meant our movement vocabulary could be unhooked from an expectation of “pleasing dance moves” - it felt like we were freed from trying to make something look typically appealing, to producing work that was genuinely intriguing.
I think we all also appreciated the fact that our individual texts were a combination of our own and others writing, so that although we were very separate physically because of the Zoom experience, our work developed in a very collaborative way. Even the unison phrase, which Lucy put together and taught us, came from our own movements.
Doing the project via Zoom did allow us a certain amount of privacy when we were writing or developing our individual solos. Lucy would give us time away from the screen during our 3 hours where we could make a cup of tea and work at our own pace on our material. The use of Zoom’s break-out rooms also allowed us to chat through ideas in smaller groups of two or three.
When we did finally meet in our Covid-safe groups of six for filming, it was fantastic for some of us to be meeting for the first time. The pleasure I think we all felt during these days was also down to the easy and joyful atmosphere created by Lucy and Aaron the film maker. He managed to film us in a way that felt totally unobtrusive and relaxed. He and Lucy will now edit the wealth of footage into the final film, and Richard will embellish his existing sound track.
Doing our first project online did of course, largely prevent us from developing movement together, and I think we all really look forward to being in an actual studio space where that element of creativity can take place. I also look forward to seeing each other all together to socialise and talk - it feels like we have shared a lot about ourselves but I have really missed people’s’ actual presence. However, I think it’s testament to Lucy’s skill as a devising artist and enabler that we have been able to bond and grow as a company as much as we have throughout this fantastic project.
- Liz Hall, May 2021