Rehearsal, Day 2 (June 3, 2021)

Last night we began with a guided warm up focusing on four points in the body—the four ball/socket joints of the shoulders and hips.  We played with initiation from these points, and relationships between these points.  We started on our backs on the floor, and then moved horizontally and vertically.  Finally we began to explore movement and relationship to some objects placed in the space—a bench, three chairs and an empty aquarium on a small wheeled dolly.

After check ins, we continued with our writing exercise from our first rehearsal—a listing of places that one feels that they belong in.  For those who had already started this exercise, we continued to embellish upon our original ‘maps’.  And then we put these aside.

We jumped into crafting games in the form of movement scores.  I began by asking for assistance in placing the bench in the middle of the space.  The bench is a metal sculpture piece created for Beacon Dance for the third installment of our four-year Elemental Project, the piece we entitled Into the Inferno, which took inspiration from the element of Fire.  Scott Silvey (https://www.scottsilvey.net/) created it as well as other metal objects that we interacted with in that performance.  For this project we used it as an anchor to begin crafting our first score.  The elements of the score were as follows:

• Two people are working.
• You can be in contact with the bench for no more than 3 seconds.
• You must have one foot only on the floor when you are in contact with the bench.
• You must be looking  at a body part of the other person.
• You must never get any closer than 9 inches to the other person.

We cycled through everyone having a turn at participating, and then shifted to reflecting on what had transpired.  As in introduction to the reflection period I shared a very brief overview of the RSVP Cycles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSVP_cycles), a creative tool devised originally by Lawrence Halprin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Halprin), and developed further and implemented extensively by his wife Anna Halprin (https://www.annahalprin.org/) in her artistic process.  The ‘reflection’ portion of the RSVP Cycles is entitled ‘Valuaction’, and is defined as ‘the reflective and communication processes that deepen participants meaning-making and facilitate the score’s ongoing development and evolution’.  We talked about how the score was fun to do.  We talked about the laughter that occurred.  We talked about how specific elements of the score were more challenging than others to enact.  And then we refined the score through clarifying some elements that were unclear, and finally we added a role of ‘referee’. 

The job of the referee was to alert the participant when they had broken one of the ‘rules’ of the game, and to send them out of the game and to introduce a new player.  Rose was our referee and was excellent at the job.
We finished up that score/game, and moved on to a new game.  We purposely did not create a score, but rather began to simply play with the task of sending the empty aquarium on the wheeled dolly around the circle we had created by sitting on the floor.  Six of us were present.  After doing this for about 10 minutes we again opened up a period of Valuaction to see how we might refine the score.  We observed that when the aquarium is eventually full of water, it will be a very different thing to manipulate.

As our rehearsal time began to end, we had time for one more open ended score—to improvise with the chairs in the space.  I put on some music and we all began to find a new way to play with the chairs.  Towards the end Ashlee had somehow ended up with one of the chairs on her body, like a skirt.  We did a very quick round of Valuaction, and I asked about how the music/sound had influenced people’s movement choices.  All agreed that it did, indeed, influence their choices and tone of quality.

As we finished up, I shared some thoughts that I had had earlier in the day in preparation for our rehearsal:

• Does ‘might make right’?
• What is ‘right’?
• What is ethical?
• What is moral?
• What if you don’t care about ethics or morals?
• What makes us human?

Artistic Prompt, should you wish to experience our creative process first hand:

Create a score for yourself that has at least four 'rules' or directions and perform that score for at least 5 minutes.  (Example:  Make contact with one wall in your home for no more than 2 seconds.  Humm a familiar tune each time you are not in contact with that wall.  Circle one of your ball and socket joints when you are not in contact with the wall.  Focus your gaze on one body part when you are in contact with the wall.)

​Have fun!