thursday 11 august 2022

another very interesting time in studio today. felt very much the "channeling" i was doing over winter, letting something come through. really realize how much of it is showing up and listening (i mean, all the sages say this but really it's very true). and then doing that consistently.

began with stretching and it felt like that was all my body wanted and needed. with each stretch so much grief. so much grief. like the muscles were tearing and out of the tears the necessary mourning of invisible particles that i'm not even sure who or what or why.

stayed with stretching a long time, whilst listening to the breakfast show with Zakia on nts. was nice to have this floating community alongside me, everyone doing their things but connected through music and airwaves. after a while though, none of the music was working or feeling correct and that's when i realized i probably just needed silence.

the pelvis was VERY LOUD today, very much wanting to take the lead, so of course, i let it. weight. a lot of gravitational weight. i'm actually surprised the pelvis didn't come through more because it was so central to what i was doing in winter. but i guess its got its own timing. then finally decided it's time to get properly naked. filmed that. felt stupid and scary and very contemporary dance, skinny white body but also just for me and i saw and felt a lot, disturbed a lot, upset a lot, tipped a lot over and watched something strange fall out of it. very useful for me. politically the image is - well, i donno. felt good to be able to sit with the politically associations of the image of my naked body, and then the political sensations of the experiences of my naked body. very - powerful, their co-existing dissonance.

said out loud the things i feel (eyes closed).
said out loud the things i see (eyes open).

afterwards wrote a lot, which was helpful. there have been two post-dance swift-writings in my notebooks that i should probably transcribe. at some point.

after and during the writing, i felt this energy, strong energy in my centre and i realized it wanted an energetic dance, it wanted a sweat and a scream. (mars conjunct ascendant today) so i typed in "Mars" into the nts search function played the first ten minutes of "Scary Things with DJ Bempah, JK & Rico Mars" - danced pretty hard but loose and found some really interesting moves, like - a loose swing that popped and tensed, something of my ballet meeting an oceanic anger that stayed very soft? got very silly and strange when i went to the floor, which was a good sign, somehow. the stuck felt like encouragement. didn't film this, ran out of space on the sd card.

(oh yes. became very nauseous during naked dance)

(oh yes. watched a lot of mr. bean yesterday and laughed a lot)

wednesday 10 august 2022

had long stretchy warm up in studio, spent time with the pain, the stiffness. my sweet ass told me it's fucking tired of sitting so much. warm up moved into a quite inspired dance, like - following a certain soft knowledge. i felt myself watching myself, i felt the critical eye, the corrective voice, every move potentially a repetition of an old old pathway. but also, one eye corrective and critical, the other eye kind and curious. a corrective voice with the texture of love, loving wonder at the movement of this body. this body i'm in that is the landscape i move across to make sense of the countless landscapes i meet every day, through difference, joy and tension - each landscape so different and all connected to each other.

it's so interesting to feel the resonances of ballet in the way i dance and move. for a long time i couldn't stand this echo - so violent, so dance-less, so devoid of any kind of curiousity - the corrective voice shouting. ballet - the embodiment of imperial concepts, colonial thinking, power and hierarchy and a total lack of humility. but after a good ten years of non-ballet training to balance out the good ten years of ballet training, i think i'm arriving at a place where ballet is beginning to be able to co-exist with the rest of me, the depressed parts, the highly erotic parts, the sexually charged parts, the absolutely enraged parts, the disgustingly romantic parts, the weeping weeping weeping parts. gathered together around a fire place, exchanging stories and looking at each other with soft eyes.

speaking of soft eyes, felt this half closed half open trance like thing that allows me to enter the inside. after this nice long dance, i took a break to drink some water. saw that coila wouldn't come in today which meant another long afternoon of an online session of work, which is specifically what my sweet ass didn't want. felt disheartened and confused.

then i read this quote by Walter Mignolo and it made me contemplate this idea of "de-naturalizing" - and i wondered if what i'm trying to do, when i talk about making myself strange, is to de-naturalize my body that has been so shaped by Eurocentric concepts? i think this is happening with the current phase a lot with gender, but also rippling into other places. after some contemplation, i felt confused again. i almost gave up. then lena replied to an earlier text and i asked her what should i do. and lena told me to lie down and breathe until something else came in. so i did that, sent two emails and then finally did a closing dance which i filmed, and will watch now.

felt and saw something very hard and granite in my centre. felt and saw a great capacity for collapse. felt and saw a more or less consistent trance in my eyeballs. saw (didn't feel) a more or less consistent tension in my lips and jaw.