Shock-waves into movement

16.5.20



In the Contact Dance class I am struck by the body organising on contact, living out a possibility or curtailing it in prohibition and a confrontational impasse.

The psychology of either state comes in after the event of that process, acting and redistributing minutely. The on-going procedure thumps out a tuning- an accord or discord in this hit and miss- a conceding to a quality of impact and a leading it out from there or else its holding and stiffening.


When we got going early on with a whole sequence of things to be done one after another in order to tumble into place something resembling acrobatics the crushing impasse set in. I could not place the first incline the right way and all else fell away. I had no memory of the procedure to be done and in that blankness I could not even talk and fumbled my words trying to explain to a newcomer what it was we were to do. I was caught in an entrapment of looking at the procedure as a second hand demo done by the tutor and another participant and could not re-enter into the feel of the thing- find the niche where the thing flickers open like a multi-facetted pocket knife. Rather all the selection of different blades was apportioned in a regimented order of appearance and I could not make that happen. I landed rather awkwardly on the shoulder of my partner who backed away in pain.

Contact Dance seems to me to be about going into the point of abrupt contact and where the natural inclination is to tighten and set up a clear boundary, to instead receive that impact and take it further into a continued conjoint movement- In other words to learn from the impact about a sense of speed, volition, texturing and to enact and pattern those impulses arrived at within a charge of other impulses and to sweep them up into the formation of a process under way. A kind of hoovering up and reformulating a consistent paste out of the sweat and particles of a generalised direction. A rough sketching that gets to a gist of the thing- an atmosphere or temperament that is built upon portion by portion. Not the bricks to a house but the depth of land mass that cakes together and amounts to something of its own.

So there cannot be an outer authorship or only a very crude and make-believe level before the atmosphere of the piece breaks through and carries the movements into this smooth pasting.


With each different partnering, different capabilities and different set-backs break to the surface and become the visible psychology – the relief and stutter of the occasion. Characterisations are grasped – an invitation carried over- tweaked and aggravated into response then rested with. How can this animation and body organisation rear up like a beast on the slightest of touches? - a known responsiveness at the filiations of skin to skin which is more than this- it is the flesh tenderising or not, pulping into one another or cutting and hardening as bone on bone- then a sentiment coming through out of this testing into some kind of anguish and hope – between tiredness and invigoration- lethargy and exuberance- anger and tenderness- sympathy and doubt. These terms are not

Stand-alones. They are dealt through the paste of this mixing and the factory of becoming that certain cuts, certain engagements, rebuttals and back-spins- like churning one way and then threading backwards into a verticality reaching its limits and swamping back down again. It’s a drama acted out knowing itself at each point of contact. Yet contact is always mixed up with deflection- deferment- a breaking off- a gasp for air in the watery substance of this embrace.

The music too soon may jar with the technicalities of sequences and body mechanics, of waiting and falling. An awkwardness- the motion played into a formula too soon. Later it catches into the catchments of the small spaces between meeting and bouncing apart. It percolates and furthers this rinsing through and so is open to affect as another discrepancy or extension- another angle of configuration- of slowness and speeding.


So bodies begin to organize around these pulsations and there is an open questioning where the thing is held over- the rudeness of a wake-up call. Exhaustion –tendrils stretching out- ligaments on the ground – tapped and perturbed by another body. The habit of recoil out on hold and a going into this adjunction –internalising it into a movement- configuring against an invitation to extend than the limitation of a counter force- two bodies pushing and pulling –levitating and levering off of one another and a collapsing into the ground until weight is taken up in to continued momentum- then a catching in and a jamming into a locked anchorage- a hinge. Gradually the two bodies move in the body-as-one, the breathing capacity redistributed over this doubling of systems that become simply an intensification. A jointing working itself into signatures then unravelling and extending as if they would escape such capture in obliviation and at the last moment, the tendrils pulling back through into the body mass feeling a passage through in the filaments of conjoined trunks, conjoined bellies, bordering, arching and twisting back off of one another. The dance makes itself. Before formulation again sets in and learned responses kill this entwined receptivity. The comic ridiculously takes over from a passion of energy and tenderness that is unsustainable.- yet not adequately discharged this time.

The dancing raises an emotional threshold. That once in place allows for easy conversation- off from this tangible bar-level built up in the folds or minute distances of co-relational responses across bodies. Only after it has evolved can it talk about itself and spin off of those levels to talk about other situations- historical, psychological, immediate, environmentally related. For the ground has literally arrived out of which all other considerations- all other measurements unfold. But try to inject words, dialogue, narrative too soon before this level threshold has become attainable-tangible and all slips and slides off of one another. Nothing is held in place for long enough to provide a secure foothold in which to place anything else. Everything dislodges off the back of everything else. There can be no presence or permanence. In that state language absolves- It become non-verbal -goes back on itself. Words that are spoken by others lack legitimacy. Their traction of dialogue breaks apart.


After the dance was made, there is a resting in the relief of these contrasts- they continue to play out like an after-glow. Words slip out in a jovial-seriousness of that state of conjoint consideration- an intimacy- attention that is rooted in the physical, mental, emotioning jointing of this occasion. Words formulate as the last thing to position patterns, juxtapositions, impulses, momentums, resting places that are anyway already worked into gear. The words are affirmations of an idea already got going in physical propensities enticed and disinclined. The body is the outcome of this imagination let loose in the dance. Affinity- empathy- emotional relationship is worked into a pitch of resonance from multiple angles according to small local gauges of mediation- through touch, speed, sound, smell- sticking and letting loose again- intervals continually shifting. That is the building of an emotional landscape- the intensity of that landscape gears into presence the animate body, the animate thought process- the shared interlinked imaginative landscape- an enchantment of convivial living. Words like sweat come out of that .


It is not the acrobatics- the physical dexterity of a body as a separate unit catching a ride on another- it is this temperament of co-ordinated affect- the continual way bodies reorganize in the pitch of that moment around one another- redistributing the way the flesh falls and folds; the passage off and on the floor – through the space that is popped into significance out of these holdings and their momentary escapes.

Tightening and release. That is not about the image of the body- its weight or age or even its flexibility- its habitual living or eating patterns- the way it proceeds in the morning or at night, the clothing or hair coverage- the composure of the skin- the sweat glands or breath tincture. It is this quality and capacity for enfoldment and redesign on the verge of every meeting- the giving way at the very point of a resistance- the recalibration of the shock response to contact resisting habitual separation and the ideal of individual perfection to a more dis-eased state of intoxication- yet whilst also remaining lucid and coherent. The dance is the emotioning of this state of an idea of collapse and reformulation. It is engagement- taking something and doing something with it. A grasping by opening up the entire surface of the body as interface- the operation of intelligence calibrated and brought into actuality on each touch whether that is up against the surface of skin or as an interval affect through sympathetic rearrangement or enfoldment of a rhythm of movements and a way of being on the threshold of consciousness, on the periphery of what is usually let in as relevant. Experience then opens to the inclusion and the double entendre at the edge of every “normal” limit. Capacity for listening grows. The organs of reception splay out beyond their visceral reach- lingering in a conjoint atmosphere. It’s an idea- an emotion made into a tangible experience. An occasion for all.


To realise something keep doing it, through the faults and wide range deficit to either side of the supposed mark. Broaden the appeal and let it linger in that spaciousness.

Over this continued rough grafting, something of an atmosphere of what is to be got at will emerge- the lines will grow more stable- an establishment will become asserted in this arrangement and joint consideration that over time comes to gradually right itself – cohering into something that just feels right, through this continual trial and error.