toolbox

ASANA are movement forms which arise as part of my movement practice. The FORM solo is made directly from that asana, the STREAMING practice allow the asana to emerge, to appear and disappear through the engagement with the practice.

The allowing of this emergence connects to how I approach surrender, a surrender (returning back) to my physicality and my movement material.

The underlining premise of formlessness (see clay pot example) is not needing to have another experience other than what is happening in that moment. It is the knowledge that existence is free from the form inhabited and the knowing that it is technically impossible to not move from form. To understand this in relation to dance practice can be liberating.

It has given me a permission to work with notions of form in a way which serves me, rather than limited to what I think the form of dance is or should be. There are many histories and conceptions about dance, both as a tradition and also within my own dancing body. These ideas are both constructive but also restrictive. Even within improvisation and somatic based work, there is a particular language and aesthetic associated with these processes.

To finally acknowledge and own asana as part of a suppressed physicality within certain dance contexts is starting to unravel new potentialities and experiences within my movement material and practice.This is one of the ways I claim an agency through surrender. An ownership of material and choice in how I engage with dancing. Dance Improvisation can often be taken as a dancing in response to external influences as the dancer comes into relation with those things. This puts the dancer at the will of other agents.There is also a narrative within improvisation which is about the requirement to break or escape habits and the finding of the unknown - in order to find new. My practice proposes through surrender as a "return back to the self" that an emergent practice does not need to be at the will of external agents or finding the new, but can allow the new to emerge through consolidating a relationally to what is already there.

1. FORM solo - a cycle of movement patterns gathered using a process of "returning to movement" from June. Durational in its engagement over time (an ongoing almost-daily practice) and in its relation to the time in which it is practiced or performed in (returning as a repetition of movements).

Now in March, it has a form of which I enter into in order to encounter a state of surrender. It begins with form as a way to access formlessness.

It is spatially fixed to a certain parameter in space.
In performance lighting is used to enhance this relation.

2. STREAMING practice - begins without form, an exploration of formlessness.

This practice is spatially expansive, it takes and wanders through space. It has a meandering emphasis with movement and allows asana to emerge through it as a practice.

I don't want to know or drive the asana that is about to come, I only want to be inside of it. I am not trying to make the asana arrive, I don't want to recognise or know it until I am really inside of it.

Begin here and read the introduction first.

You will then enter the research toolbox, there are no hierarchies between the materials included in the toolbox.

They are each in dialogue and together allow for my research question and notably the state of surrender to emerge.

Therefore in viewing the research toolbox, I invite you to follow your intuition, scan across the space and spend time where you land.

There may be points where there is a clear connection or line of thought to follow - they are indicated.

Take care to ensure you move in all directions across the page, otherwise you might miss something!

My costume is part of the surrendering process and is a contributor to surrenders emergence in my movement practice.

The style of the costume is typical of modern yoga trends. It is not the typical contemporary dance style costume.

My dance training as child was in competitive Disco Freestyle Dancing, the costumes were extremely elaborate. It was quite a shock for me to go into contemporary dance and be told to wear jeans and a baggy t-shirt from the back of my wardrobe.

A costume should enable a transformation for the work, it should support the state and quality that the work searches for.

In experimenting with performing the work to spectators, the metallic in combination with the lights creates a visually striking effect which heightens the affective relation and sharing of surrender from performer to spectator.

I wear trainers because they make me feel grounded and strong. They take the attention away from my feet, which I refuse to point and extend fully because it has never been possible for me to do that. Therefore I refuse to accept comments about whether my feet are pointed or not. It is completely irrelevant in my exploration, however because its such a typical feature of dancing - I know it is something I will never be able to escape.

My hair is quite unique. It is dominant, untameable and wild. When I work in a situation with my hair down/ uncontained (as in to the extent of which it is possible for me to still move), it acts as a physical cue within my body. It releases the neck, it allows me at times to hide, it allows me to find a relationship to my spine deriving from the weight of my head. There is a wildness and lack of control not always associated with me. It has become essential when working with surrender to have my hair in this arrangement and allow some form of escape to happen through the hair. Additionally it contributes to sharing the state of surrender with witnesses in how it moves with the body - creating sensation of weight and gravity.

HOW TO VIEW THIS BLOG

To understand notions of surrender as proposed through Vedanta, the clay pot acts as a diffraction to understand the nature of reality, the self and existence. It is an exploration of form and formlessness.

The basic principle of formlessness that is important in relation to my definition of surrender is the understanding that there is no need to be having a different experience from what one is having right now.

The clay pot is a form, it does not have a reality beyond that. The pot is given reality status (is-ness) through the form.

From the perspective of the clay, there is no pot. There is only one thing in existence, which is clay. The pot does not have an individual existence.

The pot only has a problem when it does not understand that it is clay. It is the difference between feeling limited and not feeling limited.

Taking on that understanding can bring a knowledge that one is whole, complete, full already. Existence can not be stepped out of. This can bring a relaxing into the self, a knowledge that individual existence is never at stake and that one can be unaffected and untouched by any other form.

My existence is free from the form that I inhabit. Embodying this as an element of surrender within my dance practice, means that through movement I can start to work in a way which is not limited to what I think dance is and should be. It has led to an exploration of

- Clay Pot
- Asana
- Space
- Costume
- Hair
- Sound
- Witnesses
- Video Archive
- Notes

as a key part of my practice.

2. STREAMING practice

Surrender in the FORM solo is explored through set conditions.
Spatially this includes:
- fixed, within a set parameter (as shown above)
-returning to the same position that the hands, feet take to move through the movement landmarks that form the form
- Orientation - back to the spectator/camera
- As the performer my Drishti (gaze/focus point) is facing wall

I am limiting the possibilities for distraction (Vritti's - thoughts, fluctuations, blockages of the mind) that would affect my descent into my process and pull me towards other things.

The FORM solo consists of movement landmarks.

Spatially unfixed, movement can emerge in and through space without set conditions.

When I invite witnesses into this process, I want to see the extent that I can remain in the state of surrender that I cultivate when I work through my practice in solo. Again exercising being unaffected by other activities or influences around me, not being at the will of needing to attend to the witness (or as considered more generally, audience).

There is an emphasis in my research in how to share the state of surrender with others.

For the state of surrender to be shared with integrity, it has to arise from the genuine experience I share through my process. In that, I mean not looking for ways which make an obvious response to the audience or developing frameworks which mean I am not within my own state of surrender.

The philosophy of hospitality fits well within this sharing of surrender. If hospitality is examined closely, it is not about the host of a space giving up complete control in order to welcome the other. It is instead finding a mutual reciprocity in giving and receiving (Gere and Corris, 2008). In this way the space is framed through what the host offers and then how the other comes to encounter this in relation to what they offer the space as much as they take from it.

I consider four distinctive witnesses to my practice:

1. CAMERA

I developed a relationship to the camera which approaches the camera as a witness*. The camera always takes the same proximity and perspective in relation to the two processes.The camera is not there to record a performance and should not induce 'a performative state' within me.

The camera allows me to give up my own responsibility to witness myself in the FORM solo and instead be fully immersed in the movement experience.

It records and documents how surrender emerges physically through the body.

2. SPECTATOR

How can I remain unaffected by the presence of others, rather than being at the will of their presence. How can I share practices which are currently done in solo with spectators in a way which feeds the underlining element of my practice yet also others the other into this.

3. ME WITHIN THE PRACTICE AS WITNESS

In STREAMING I witness myself as the material emerges. I am still identifying how fruitful this is in happening in the immediacy of the movement.

4. ME AS A WITNESS TO THE VIDEO ARCHIVE

The archive forms a space to visually look back at the experience of movement. To identify and extract key features from the experience. I used to watch these back straight after the experience of moving. Now I am waiting before doing this. Honouring the experience, sitting in the resonance of the experience and writing or moving further from this. I am actively trying to still a need to change or drive the process forwards.

There are now 54 videos in the FORM solo archive. The videos do not show an obvious or loud sense of change or progression, although that is something that I have experienced within the practice from engaging with it from November - now.

A video archive in this sense might ordinarily be used to criticise or correct parts of the practice to progress it forwards or start "setting things","choreographing". Breaking apart this aspect of my process has made me realise that I am working with a process which set out to have no aim as such other than to move through the practice itself. The FORM solo has taken a certain crafting, and I name it as a crafting instead of a choreographing because I am purposefully trying not to fix the emergence of the movement landmarks. I didn't want to demand of myself to have made a solo by then end of the research, it seems this is happening through the engagement with the practice - although it is always in the process of becoming and never landing.

*I have experienced the notion of 'witness' from Authentic Movement practice, although I detach it from the therapeutic aspects which fall into the defined witness from A.M. Instead I approach through the reflexive attitude of becoming conscious of being with movement as it arises in a non-judgmental and non-projecting way.

Sound enables me to find a descent into the self, into the process.
It creates the hospitable space for surrender, by filling the space and creating an atmosphere.

It is a support to finding the state of surrender.

I do not actively move in relation to the sound, I am not responding to the sound and I am not in relation to any lyrics that might appear.

There are certain types of sound which bring out the state of surrender in me. I believe it has a connection to dancing to pop music as a child. I have a natural inclination towards dancing to music. I can't really help the musicality that appears in my body.

As a yoga teacher in my vinyasa classes when not working specifically with breath, I carefully curate playlists which allow students to fall into the movement. The creation of a hospitable space to practice in, to allow for them to descent into the self.

In the practice, I form playlists which do this to me. Within the concept of *returning*, I usually come back to the same tracks. However this then fixes something and makes me aware of time passing. Particularly in the FORM solo, it evokes a need to almost show all the movement landmarks which form this. So I am constantly switching between playlists and creating new playlists so that I can keep not forming a relationship to the sound, other than how the movement and sound appear together.

In regards to form and contemporary dance/improvisation - there are certain sounds which are typical of these genres. I am using sounds which allow me to find surrender, rather than what I think I should use - this could sometimes be pop songs, electro, lyricalness pieces. The sound should not dominate over the movement, they are running alongside each other in parallel. But, I feel it will be up to the witness to see if they can follow the subtleties of the movement and stay with that rather than be deterred by the sound.

Now in the STREAMING practice I have started working with a vocalist and guitarist who allows the sound to emerge in relation to me and my moving. This places movement and sound in a horizontal hierarchy.

After I move, I write from the practice. It is a poetic condensation of my experience with the practice. I write in order to discover more about what I am doing, to identify perhaps in an intuitive way which doesn't jump out of the process.

I work in the studio with iterations, in that I return and go into the practice several times in a session. It takes a cyclical structure. The writing does something, as I return to movement. In a very vague way it crystallises the phenomena emerging, it processes the practice.

Clay Pot Example:
Coles, L. (2021) External Mentoring Tutorial. [Zoom Tutorial]. Conversation with Tighe, E. 3 March 2021.

Diffraction:
Perazzo Domm, D. (2021) Diffracted temporalities : Trajal Harrell's other dance histories. Performance Research, 25 (5), 56-62

Surrender:
Restaino, J. (2019) Surrender: Feminist Rhetoric and Ethics in Love and Illness. USA: Southern Illnois University Press

Vedanta:
Dayananda, S. (1989) Introduction to Vedanta: Understanding the Fundamental Problem. India: Vision Books Ltd

Witness:
Adler, J. (1999) ‘Who is the Witness? A Description of Authentic Movement’. InAuthentic Movement: Essays by Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow. Edited by Pallaro, P. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 141-159

Hospitality:
Gere,C., and Corris, M., (2008) Non-Relational Aesthetics (Transmission: The Rules of Engagement). UK: Art Works Press

*Please note the titles in the Harvard Referencing have not been italicised due to a limitation of the platform