I STILL MARVEL AT HOW LIGHT THEY ARE:
In January 2021, I had the privilege of (safely) re-setting a piece from 2015 with almost the same cast. They are better trained movers, and I am a wiser choreographer. Much of the movement was inspired by words from Hugh Aldersey-Williams’ “Anatomies”. As a synesthete, phrases like "Never mind the quality, feel the width", make so much sense to me. Often I would coach movers based on sensation rather than objective. "Can that moment feel more like velvet than like plastic", for example.
I hope you’ll enjoy the full film capture of the piece, along with more excerpts from the book below.
Pg 131 - the study about the heart being a little brain of its own - being capable of information processing.
One of the clips I've offered below is actually inspired specifically by that idea, and includes inspiration from
Pg 128 - "Unlike all the other internal organs, the heart is clearly discernible as a site of activity: it beats, and beats at a rate that changes in response to the world around it..." as well as "When I hold a heart in my hand, it is immediately obvious that it must once have done something." and not least, from Pg 127, "The heart is forever inexperienced".
Pg 107 - at several moments, one of the dancers departs from the rest of them and experiences a bit of an "identity crisis", as inspired by "How do we know we are the same person we were ten minutes or ten years ago?" "Is it even important to be the same and to know it?". and how then, do we feel confident in pg 102, "asserting our individuality".
Pg 92 - "Sometimes, languages wander off round the body in search of new inspiration...".
Pg 62- Perhaps mostly deeply at the root of the movement: "I am forced to acknowledge that the skeleton is not a rock-hard armature like the steel frame of a building, but an entirely organic fluorescence, subject to shaping by chemical and external forces."
Pg 60 - "It must perform its structural function at the same time as it grows with the rest of the body. Bones develop in response to stress. Tiny cracks form when they are subjected to forces during normal exercise. These cracks send chemical messages instructing new bone tissue to form." There is a section where the movers are entirely on the ground. They do not look out at the audience, they go within. They patch some cracks, they nurture new tissue.
Pg 56 - "As you might expect for a substance that spends most of its time supporting our weight, bone is somewhat stronger in compression than it is in tension."