Gravity & Levity

This has been an interesting process for me, as so far, most all of the value in rehearsal has been concerned with musical circumstance, rather than movement circumstance. Or rather, the movement results have been perfectly functional, and produced by the efforts of making sound, the form of the movement following the function of sound production. Perhaps, in a longer process, the movement would be considered more at length eventually, after we had become more secure or consistent in our musics. And getting through a run without dropping beats is a plateful for now I reckon.

In some ways, it reminds me of meditation practice in as much as I need to be able to count to 16, without losing my focus. I can watch my mind during this process. I am becoming more confident with it as a musical proposition in that I am beginning to be able to 'feel' phrases of 4,8,16 etc, in my body, and trust that kind of body/music/phrasing intelligence to keep me on the score, and know where I am in the unfolding of measures. It's been a fantastic music practice this way.

I realize how dependent I have become on structures such as melody/verse/chorus and the like to know where I am in a song structure, as this piece of music so far is something else again. I am calming down more, and becoming more able to differentiate amongst the different sounds being made by the different performers.

I sometimes feel as if I am playing a big rhythm machine, and am curious to know what the machine looks like from a more observatory view. Also, how the work will be lighted and so forth as a theatrical object. I imagine being a puppeteer as much as an individual performer, and my focus is on the object I am affecting as much as my own body. All of this has provided me with a relief from 'contemporary dance' concerns really.

One little concern, the company goes on to spend a month creating another work with another choreographer now, and I feel we were just getting confident to play the piece at the end of the rehearsal time. I will try to keep referring back to my notes and score in the interim.