Notes from conversation with Laura Gonzalez:
Cue the dramaturge. She wants to call it ‘The Possibility of Inhabiting the Body Differently’ or ‘Complicity in the Production of Difference’. What is difference? And how does difference affect the way one inhabits the body?
References: Jerome Bell/ Disabled Theatre, Company of wolves, Kristin Link later
There is now a methodology, and it’s rolling. I enter the space, a space, (any space?) and capture my voice/inner movements. I speak to implicit collaborators and viewers, I guide ghost dancers through a meditation on exiting and re-existing, I project a performance, and I allow my voice, my state, and the affect of the meditation to be revealed by my voice. Noticing aural difference.
Q: Is there a way to push this vocal work more? Consider the voice as movement, as dancing, as another part of the body. The words are not necessarily as interesting as the affected sounds. HOW the sounds are made provides a source, a blurry source, or a felt source. How can I push sounds rather than embody WORDS (the voice in the body, not the voice in the brain). How can I transgress the parallel lines between the voice, the body, and the image. Silence supports the voice as well.
Voice References: Dv8, Josette Bushell-Mingo: deaf theatre company
Note: Clear content gives collaborators drive and a sense of urgency: the same kind that dancers working for Dave St. Pierre possess. How does he do it? Sensing his impermanence? Urgency...
THE CONTENT. Find a way to identify this as clearly as possible. This will help me articulate my position and my questions to the audience. Cue the dramaturge. Clean my research.
Difference... its production, its emergence, the way it appeals to something we already possess.
The danger of not knowing what we don't know. Thrusting the subconscious through the skin and taking a look at it.
The video, audio, and performance complete each other. They have proximity. They are all projections. The video is fascinating, and could be used as OUR projections (the performers). The video as a way to ACTUALLY project our body. Consider how EDITING is also choreography.
In NYC:
A video, a performance, a sound meditation for ghost dancers. GET lots of headphones.
Things I learned from the December 7 showing:
- The arc as it was attempted, followed the gaze: travelling from inward, peripheral, and onto another body/organism as a projection medium/ strange mirror
- How to talk to an audience is critical as to the feedback I might find useful
- We (3 dancers) tried projecting onto each other – ‘an impossible duet’ of purposefully thrusting the subconscious outward, onto another person (strange mirrors). This section seemed to resonate most.
- We are enough. There doesn’t need to be linear instruction/ interpretation delivered in the audio, but I will want to make our different choices apparent: the audio, and the movements of the dancing bodies
- There is only one voice, but is it important to know it’s mine? What Happens to this voice is important
- Hearing my effort stimulates the viewer’s imagination
- How to increase ‘difference’: one of the artists has a headset with differently TIMED instructions. We see a delay. We see the same activity happen at different times, and also done differently. Can tracking this delay become difficult/unpredictable? (look up The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma piece in office cubicles)