The Mobile boy

14.3.2010.


Since writing the last piece on Contact Dance and pressure-release I have been thinking about B. a boy of around seven whom I worked with last year. As I begin to describe him now here I know initially-it will be in the negative- what his body can't do- but I know that he has come into my mind as a quality and feel of interaction that was completely enmeshed in this kind of viscous atmosphere of everything affirmative that occurred- this quality of flow and containment- water tumbling and catching into momentary enclaves. This kind of humming buzzing flight that met by accident and held small pockets of suspension- a hovering over areas- a fusion- where bodies shored up from this tumbling trail. Stoppage as re-wind- an elasticated continuum- like local insertions that had an affect because they were a change of direction, or a halt into body mass, fabric or the folds of cushion fiber, then a jumping up- jolt and firing into the unoccupied space above. The buzz of sounds- a certain frequency- played with in the same way as the body - a melting and withstanding- articulation in this body-sound locomotive that could also be played out in intensity- sinking down, leaning back, nestling, burrowing- then the reverse flip- a fish breaking the water film of one medium to be airborne.

This section as it turns out is not about negativity. Not using script, and reportage and case study in the usual way- i.e. problem-answer. Do I hold the answer, set apart in a concept of health or what needs doing? No. But in that fusion of content through space and time and a content arrived at as an interface where the mass of bodies take their cues from small surface probes; minute sensors of giving way and holding in place, the bodies joint together and are articulated into phrasings. The jointing falls in and out of place in this scattering and re-grouping,- plastic flesh.- as mobile as music. That singing atmosphere; joy demonstrated in a meeting.

The boy could be obtuse, clouded, immobile. The body with no memory- no sequencing device. Not even to lift a head upright. Each tilt became the new figure of a body- not a passage between states. Island moments. Only the point of push against some other surface created the traction or counter balance for a feedback where positions became these trapped interruptions. How to join up these immobile trappings with this unstoppable spread?. To make them work off of one another into a kind of rotary multi-dimensional shaping? Given the chance this would happen all on its own.

He is tracking out shapes in the feel of small objects placed in rows and loops- color wells of condensed placement. He is going into and down through these vessels of color that are narrow- tunneled. Being here or there. But from one to another there is no fusion- just another universe started again- like pearls of water with their own skin- they do not affect one another, do not bleed into a stream. From one instance to another the body lands like a fly from pebble to pebble. Then this placement and trailing gather speed- guiding the body- implicating it though its own gestures and the patterns that he is making that feed back and invigorate the process. The boy now is speeding and as if the wind caught onto the irregularities of his body, there is this buzzing and he begins to voice out his stops and starts- the level of pressure - of going down and propulsion out- of pushing on and off in the course of these trails. At some point the boy comes into contact with the reality of his own weight. The pearls of water get pierced or they offer a quality of resistance and bounce him out. That's where the joy comes in.

There are cushions, fabrics, pockets of air caught inside vast rubber balls that push back when the boy pushes into them. He is rocking and tumbling over the terrain- A tumbling inside-out push-me-pull-you body. Jolted into action in the soundings of every contact. I play on and off of this bite-back or reversal where what we push into pushes back. I lean into his leaning, concede, then stop, spiral counter ways into his falling weight and gather him up like a counter-pendulum against my off-centered turning. His whole body suddenly stretches out to a flat plane and he becomes a stream-lined air-borne feather. There is a point in time mid-flight where this re-angling creates an absolute state of weightlessness. He is the extremity now and my body takes on a down wards plunge. Yet just before that happens there is this hovering where he is in lateral flight but not actually travelling and I am in upwards thrust but not actually moving up. It is as if we are moving through each other- in this directional lock-in and meshing together. A way of actually sticking together- of being together in connection arrives out of this situation not from any wish-list. We are going nowhere but every kind of directional energy is running through us allowing in this admixture this poised stillness. Breath expands. Body loses tension. There is a letting go but remaining in place. It's not important to understand how this happens. Only that at an almost molecular level- where frequencies as slow-motion collisions don't fight but go into that collision giving rise to shapes within the messaging of these hidden cues. It is accommodation. There is an organization of bodies going on in the real situation of these motionings. A communication and feeling embroiled into one another creating definite margins for pause and acknowledgement by going into and through these margins and re-setting them minutely here and there. Not only negotiating but actually making the conditions of the boundary point by point as an on-going concern. A condition of dialogue. That is done by continually testing and breaching those conditions where different speeds set up different possibilities in rising up, falling down, turning, spinning and pause.



I give into the down-ward plunge and my body becomes an earth-driven dart. The boy reacts to the change in air current; the sudden vacuum and enfolds around me into limp matter that too is designed and designated to go down. There is a crumbling into the floor together. A softness. I begin to work with this softening through Shiatsu into small gradients of contrasting leaning in and off his body, going with the viscosity of the flesh- its elastic give and take- the patterns of the incoming and outgoing of breath. His body spreads, stretches, lengthens, snaps shut, then seems to continue downward into the floor. Once more it unfolds. There are breathing cycles building in his upper back, his chest. There is restraint and release here. He uses it as a working edge. He actually uses the aggravation in his own system. This is intelligence. His limbs are loose and his fingers and wrists flitting and mobile. There is a sense of the muscles of his belly gathering. His ankle joints turn inwards and outwards. His feet flex, then give way. His hips open. He tilts one way then the other. He rolls from his back onto his front. I put my attention to an area at the base of his back. I am drawn to this area. I create a point of contact with the flat of my hand. I link this to his upper shoulders- around the scapula and then at an area where his head meets his neck. I keep this connection between the lower back and the back of the head. There is this quiet contact for some time. His inflating chest lifts him up from the floor. He slowly falls back down. Then he begins to roll across the floor from his front to his back and then onto his front again. I stay where I am.

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This writing is dense because the movements and layerings are dense and piled up. It is the body of the ground in its cross-section and testing rather than it’s strung out sequence in a single passage across the floor.

Languaging and narrative are affected by how we find out about this ground and how we use it. The boy's tumbling movements and tumbling word-sounds are the fray and wash and back-wash of his own particular inquisitiveness that comes from his way in the world. That comes as much out of his "problems" between rigidity and flow as his manner of using incidents by pressing into and out of his own falling and rebound in order to know placement by feeling out responses from his environment. That initial problem is the starting point of his experience of life and his languaging. It is much the same as how a Blues harp player, deep within his own sound, will scramble notes to blend together elements usually kept apart that are neither one thing or another but are exactly a situation of tensions. That creates a clarity of emotional presence because it is the real-life condition that one finds oneself in so that one is constantly using and morphing what is available; teasing it into ever new shapes.