Dakar Project Proposal for YOUR COMMENTS!
Ecole des Sables
I propose that we use the 5/6 days at the Ecole des Sables to draw upon the work we’ve been doing throughout the year to develop a model of ‘theatre’ as we now understand it (according to us, from our experiences) and to devise a series of ‘performances’ through which it might be demonstrated.
To do this I’d suggest spending our time there focusing on the following:
Conducting a summarising discussion that we would structure to allow us to reflect on and identify:
areas that we have experimented with
roles that we have occupied, how they have functioned
what has been useful in these things for us as artists
how we have used these things in our own practices
and to determine a rationale that would provide a guiding structure for our model. These are the questions on my mind when I’m thinking about this now:
is this potential model ‘a theatre for ‘use’’?
what is the relationship between ‘use’ and ‘content’?
what is our content?
how can we demonstrate the model to others?
does demonstrating the model require inviting others to participate in it?
learning through doing?
what does it mean to teach others?
how do we describe our own sense of ‘why’? (what kind of consensus around ‘why’ could we achieve?)
From this we would develop a series of situations/scenarios/exercises that we perform with/for each other and possibly also with/for others.
I’d like us to maintain a chronicle of our work, in the way we have been doing with writing notes for our blog. Maybe we could develop this by thinking about someone specific who the notes are being addressed to.
Perhaps during our time at the Ecole we arrive at some kind of written statement or summary of our work. Perhaps this summary is the content of the work, or becomes a script or at least a spoken part of it (or even a visual part) and feeds back into a ‘performance’ of practice-theatre.
In addition to this there should be a time when we can try to show/explain some of our work to some of the dancers from the company who also work sometimes at the school, and maybe to take a dance class with them.
PLEASE USE THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW THIS ENTRY TO START ACCUMULATING YOUR OWN IDEAS ABOUT ‘WHAT’ ‘WHY’ AND ‘CONTENT’ THAT SHOULD INFORM HOW WE GO ON TO USE EVERYTHING WE’VE BEEN DEVELOPING SO FAR DURING OUR TIME IN DAKAR.
PLEASE ALSO REFLECT ON AND LIST ANY MATERIAL YOU THINK IT WOULD BE INTERESTING FOR US TO TAKE TO DAKAR TO DISCUSS, WHETHER THAT’S REVISITING TEXTS WE’VE ALREADY BEEN READING, ASPECTS OF OUR EXERCISES OR NEW MATERIAL (TEXTS, FILMS, MUSIC ETC.).
practice-theatre 
In the last presentation of our thoughts and gestures, I was with Emma and she made with us a very nice exercice. Very simple exercise that I think it can be useful for us. Since everyone were using a prop we had to think why we brought that particular object, and what changed in each of us by using it . In result of our thoughts, each one built a gesture with the sugestions of the whole group.
My sugestion is to take advantage of what each one of us does better (or what feels most comfortable in doing) and work in groups exploring this individual skills. It’s a simple gesture but for my last group (I hope you are all of the same opinion) was relevant to the reach a final consensus.
What I find particularly interesting, since the beginning of the year, is the way we built up a group. Of course, we gathered because of our interest in performance, but without a common goal in mind. I remember the first day, when Vanja (was it you?) took away my glasses during the performance, this gesture felt so violent at that time. I was really surprised and we even started to discuss the limits of the private sphere. Later, I made you wait for twenty minutes, my hands shaking, stomach twisted, before reading out loud a short but very intimate text. But finally saying those words, because by that time, a sense of trust had build up between us. This aspect of trust popped up once again in another performance, standing in a circle, as the performers were inviting the audience to take part to the performance with a gentle gesture.
What I got from the experience until now is a sense of fluctuation between the audience and the performers; not knowing for sure, sometimes, who is performing and who is looking. I am personally interested in carrying on blurring the border between audience and performers, the power relationship that exists between the two categories : the silent/ignoring/protected audience VS the omniscient/confident/precarious performers.
Maybe a way to stay accessible to the audience, to allow them to participate, is to allow ourselves to laugh, to improvise, to step out from the performance if we feel like, to break with the steady/serious performer look.To stay playful, like we did in March.
If we use props, if we use text, we should allow ourselves to share them with the audience AND ALSO to pick up props or text from the audience. It is also a way to connect to the context in which we are performing.
I find great Lara’s idea of using our knowledge in the performance, but l would like to push it further by stating that we need to share our knowledge by sharing an experience with the audience. Once we make our knowledge accessible to the audience, it stops being only ours but gets enriched by a new experience. It starts being in movement. And maybe then the border between audience and performers becomes blurry, as we form a group by sharing a common knowledge.
– I really enjoyed how our form opened up last session, it’d be great to continue this line and find a means to refine this.
– I think it’d be good to spend some time probing our physically abilities and challenging our comfort zones. It would be interesting for me to think more physically, thinking for example about, poise, rhythm, mimicry – in some way stretching the physical language we have so far. Thinking in a more refined way about our physical presence.
I like also the idea of moving in unison as we see in the Clark video above.
I look forward to the dance class(es)!
– I like Lara’s thought, it’s something some of us discussed in march, it’d be good to have the opportunity to look at individual questions/strengths/areas that people want to work on and to discuss and work on these aspects within groups, developing that individuals question together.
– Witta suggested an exercise that we practiced in our work group last session. We concentrated on text only, someone initiated a dialogue and the following speaker took the last word (or a word) from that phrase and developed it into a new phrase. We tried to incorporate questions and response and the unexpected, sometimes relating back to phrases from earlier in the dialogue. It was effective way of generating new texts to develop from. I can imagine translating this exercise and concentrating on movement could be a good way of generating a movement vocabulary.
– I would perhaps think less about the ‘participation’ of an audience, but rather that they are already a part of the performance simply by sharing the space. (This goes in line perhaps with what Eric has also suggested.) In some way framing the stage as being the space that the audience also share/inhabit, perhaps incorporating their gestures, or speech (as Sander’s group had experienced in Sonsbeek) Or in some other way being suggestive that the performance is precisely about the position of audience, performer and stage and their relations and repositioning. This might also naturally lead to the audience feeling invited to participate more actively.
I was thinking about performance as a transcendental experience or action. I think that this transcendental exprerience is very different for each person. What might be transcendental for one person, might be completely obvious and daily to another. And what might be transcendental to another, might create a complete block ot irritation for the next.
I think this is interesting, especially in relation to our trip in Dakar.
However much we might not want to adapt our own research to the ‘exotic’ location, and however much we might share in today’s global world, we will be in a place where people will have a set of goals, signs, symbols and experiences quite different to ours.
Within our group there are also many differences, although maybe less obvious. Maybe it will be a good reason for us to start to talk about differences. Differences between our own interests, limits, transcendental experiences, etc as a group. But also differences between our group and the people we might be working with or performing for in Dakar.
Of course we can not really foresee what these last differences might be, but I think it is important to allow space during our trip to start a dialogue about this. Acknowledging differences, it would be really interesting to engage with each other’s transcendental experiences, aims and goals.
For ourselves as a group I think it would be really good to try to get away from repetition, copying and unifying ourselves. If we find ways to exchange our different needs, experiences and body languages other than copying, it could maybe open up our trip a bit as well.
I have the impression that our content in this case is related somehow with the the notion of form and process. Rather than finding a content below the surface or in opposition to a form, the form in itself becomes a content. Like what is called in mathematics a “Klein bottle” which is a non-orientable surface with no boundaries, in which notions of left and right cannot be consistently defined. In other words, I believe we do not make sense but we make the act of making sense, a production that represents itself to be the sense.
defining its own logic
in terms of content – voice and transmission – first come to mind
transmission, relating back to the first Boals text that we read; the transmission between the chamber, antechamber and exterior- the auditorium, the foyer and the street. and the passing on (and adaption) of spoken word, rhythm and movement.