Letters and notes from conversations

3.2020

Dear Magda,

thank you for your letter. <..>

I am right now living in a forest. Our internet connection is very shaky. So, right now <..> not really possible <..>.

I didn’t know how to start dancing here. I  walked, I fell asleep in the swamp, woke up, and took the wrong way. That made me curious. Soon I was completely lost. <..> A huge animal made a sound that made me stop. Slowly I walked backwards. I chose another way that I was before sure is wrong. Soon I reached the house. From today on, I feel the forest  differently, it appears to be closer.

Stay healthy!

love,

G.

29.5.2020

Dear Steve,

During last weeks I was reading Tim Ingold. I lived in this forest, danced there and my view slowly shifted to perceive that I belong here, in these fluxes of air, growth of vegetation, coming and going of animals; hearing what I hear in these sound, seeing what I see in the light, feeling what I feel out ‘in the open’ that is constantly in-formation.

When dancing, I experience supports:

-knowing about the sky as an openness in which/through which/which I am as a support. When I open the front of my torso to it, so much air, openness comes. When I shift so that I do not see the sky anymore, though I still know that it is there.

-The ground as where I can root my limbs and whole surface into.

(I guess these 2 (sky and earth) are about spatial orientation)

-horizon. I have a thought that I can shift it with my dancing. I either push earth as strong as I can. Or I play with change of balance. I do not yet know, how really and if it relates to the horizon.

-wind in the trees. Seeing it and moving in relation with it. Thinking of my body or part of it as what has its rhythm, as what can be moved and is also anchored. 

Reading Contact Quarterly gives me trust. I start to realize that I can be observing the breath, the heart beat, the tensions, the change of balance and weight. It is different to start dancing from there than how I would do before (aiming to ‘possess the space’, somehow). I saw it already with you, when we did ‘small dance’ and phrasing in the studio.

Dancing in the outside spaces, sometimes I think things. Other times I am part of them, I participate. Becoming part, becoming active is very interesting. I do not yet know a straight way of getting there but I think starting patiently, from breath and where my weight is, the seeing, the hearing helps.

Usually when I start ‘dancing in the forest’ it is first rather ‘adapting’ and observing. Dancing (when it starts) feels like I am in my body, there is curiosity, joy, butterflies in the stomach.

When not dancing but starting and thinking what to do, moving, I think that I do not know movements that would interest me. With curiosity, this ease, comes something where need to know movements is replaced by following a thing.

Changes in presence seem not less interesting than dancing.

I would like to talk with you on questions:

-’What sort of structure do I want in terms of spatial rhythm?’

Basically I think that I am interested in the rhythm of spaces, environments, places. But I do not know ‘how’ to explore this question. If I am in the meadow there is no border, and what is the spatial rhythm of it? I think of my rhythm and the rhythm of the meadow as two rhythms that meet and form rhythm of the dancing, of the being. I think of having a rhythm with something as an ability ‘to live with it, to enrich’. But how to practice this?

-another question is: ‘How could I trace my spatial path, when dancing. How can I learn to remember where I was and where I go and how I create this spatiality?

I think practicing ‘phrasing’ helps with that actually.

I think also knowing what I am in relation to helps here. But in a meadow or a forest there are so many things it is hard for me to know what I relate to. Earth and sky, yes. Sometimes I keep a relation to a certain tree and then think that there are many trees. But thinking of dancing in relation to a tree seems a bit a choice from the head than from the dancing. It somehow limits what I do or I start to think of that tree in a way I would think of as human and, then, I feel somehow a bit stupid. I don’t know.

If you could advise me on things to check or practice on rhythm and spatiality, I would be super interested. Although, already to try to formulate a question is helping, actually.

I hope we can somehow have a conversation starting from these thoughts or some of them.

Till soon,

G.

Notes from conversation with Stephen Batts 30.5.2020

‘I need a reference point, [I get lost, when dancing in forest, at some point I realize I do not know, how to come back]’

Steve: ‘set it up [the reference points]. You have some points, then, you remember other points.’

Human perception of the borders of space/place

Where is the border of this space? What is entering it? The natural feel of a human, where to put boundaries: a river, here trees, no trees topography we perceive. Animals perceive scale, light differently. Different scale: breath on the grass

Rhythm, pulse

In any kind of space there is a pulse, a wavelength in a cathedral

There is length, there is echo, some pitches resonate more than others. Rhythm not as 1 thing. Any space or a place has many polyrhythms. Rhythm is embedded. In the kind of rhythm there are always textures. You are a chamber that is polyrhythmic, you are part of the polyrhythmic orchestra. Not just speed, metre, rhythm. It is about texture. You cannot have rhythm, speed, metre without texture

What’s the rhythmic call? 

You either join consonant or dissonant

Most people first - consonants. There are things you think are dissonant but they aren’t. 

What I think is the fundamental rhythm of the space, if it is without me?

Trying to measure the pulse of the place: directionality matters. Pulse changes with direction. The topography and your relation to it. You crawl in cathedral looking at stone; You lie on your back looking at the ceiling - the pulse differs

Complex process of finding the core rhythm. The polyrhythms of it

Disciplining attention: through senses, more than 1 at a time, not having some - other experience in the trunk, in the endocrine system

Scale - how to bring attention to it?

Imagine ourselves a bee; standing in front of the forest, let your gaze dive forward, amongst the trees. 

When we think sculpturally, we fix time. It’s interesting to change time. Same place: morning, afternoon or evening, sunny, rainy.. 1st time is not the same as the 2nd. Where are the changing points?

Forest is damp. Forest is more damp than you

Later you are more damp than it

Dark or light: depends on your sensitivity

Memory/working towards what?-->how you save, what you do and at which point (is it a research towards an in situ piece, site-specific work, a film?)

‘we can recall, what we did not save intentionally’

In your memory you make things make sense.

You make the story work. We are concerned with making sense.

Accuracy might turn into science and poetics: does the dance, the movement makes sense?

Remembering, when I drown  - very particular, my memory is not 1 thing, it is also the embarrassment, embarrassment about the embarrassment. The memory is not 1 thing - it is an experience in itself. The dance is a creation in response to the memory. Dance - very complex relationship: memory->response->action

Phrazing

How you spend energy in site specific works is mostly very same and predictable. Phrasing has to do with containment and release of energy.

Nature

Danger: on making it a smooth holiday place, making nature very domestic

Work hard to not smoothen nature out in a way that nature isn’t

To what degree are we dealing with domesticated, pastoral or wild?

If you don't acknowledge your wildness it will tend to eat you up

'Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.' (William Wordsworth).

The wolves aren't writing a poem. They aren't going with you in poetry.

Steve: so are you making a movie, an in situ or a site-specific piece?

Grete: I want to see ‘what stays when places change?’

30.6.2020

Dear Steve,

<..>

Focus for me:

through dance to find a way to belong in the place, be part of it, involving the people watching. It therefore sounds great to me to allow audience seats to be the border of the limited space. So it is people that define the limit and yet, the actual space expands beyond that.

It is very interesting for me to move and draw with movement a passage in time: when I cross space? When do I stop?.

I carried a quote by Alva Noe: If a species of animal is observed to stop changing places, it is a sign, this species is going to extinct soon. What does that say about the need to move through? 

<..>

I thought, ‘what was the primordial question of doing this, what is now started?’.

I came to: to observe what changes and what stays in the environment, part of which I am. to understand more and find a way for this observation and being part of the environment to be in the how I create dance, dance work, how I approach it and in the part that is later shared with other people.

I thought the simplest way to observe what changes and what stays is to come to the same place at different times. sunrise and sunset seemed the clear points of change, then, i took middle times between them and i went to dance in the same constellation of meadows that my mind would border as ‘one place’ for at least 4 times a day.

I would later like to share some records from these.

I started by working with senses, restricting sight, concentrating on hearing, touch, sensation of weight and smell in different combinations. Then, I also worked with gazing (and scale, ‘camera’ way of being with it), mixing it with some other senses.

After some time I would go to move, dance, be changed by the meadow.

<..> I practice in these meadows to feel the pulse, the rhythms of the place from the angle/standing point from where I choose to look at. I seek to be with this pulse, these rhythms. Not so much to embody the pulse/rhythms but rather feel the multiplicity of pulses, rhythms within me and around me and dance as a communication between these pulses, rhythms. 

<..>

Notes from conversation with Hanna Kritten Tangsoo 6.2020

I asked Hanna about scores, saying I never write them. She sent me these: 

http://bocabienal.org/en/homework-by-meg-stuart/

Notes from conversation with Magdalena Meindl 6.2020

I told Magda I would like to write scores. She said: don’t you?
I said I write tasks

She said: what is the difference for you?

I said: the task seeks to control the outcome more than a score. It starts with already knowing what you are trying to get.

Notes from conversation with Stephen Batts 30.5.2020

How you decide what you leave in and what out?

dancing : what to work on? What to leave out?

What actual dancing do I want to do?

Scores

In order to do things again

I want to do it again because of x, y, z. I will change the a, b

1.

1-improvise intuitively

2-what was the implicit score process with formal parameters

2.

1-I write a score

2-do it

3-describe what it brought out in you and realize what is useful

You build layers of intuitive knowledge

Limited language to dance

1-get more detailed (Steve: phrasing, proximity, levels through space, the purpose to give sense to intuition)

2-give yourself impressionistic scores. How you specify much more clear for how metaphor inspires desire in you?

What appears to make sense?

What will make it be the same dance?

What counts as same dance?

What parameters are the same and what are not?

Write a score that could be done by someone else and it would be the same dance

Meter: division of time of the metronome. It stays the same, you can have a different relation to it. Time does not change, it is just divided. Nature rebels against this. Experiment: set meter of space

Pulse: changeable but changes over time (not quick changes) has a dynamic relationship. The feeling of the pulse of space can change (city center early morning and later in the day). You can start to understand the heart-beat of a place. What defines a place? Its range of heart-beat

Rhythm:  some pulses have more emphasis than others

Maybe you can change the pulse of the space?

You can align with it but double it. | you relate to it but you are not constraining yourself to it.

Diligence and not the right instructions-rubbish

Having the idea it should or would make pleasure - fooling yourself

Am I still in the realm of the Terpsichore?

-have the voice there

-leave for later

-bin it

30.8.2020

Dear Steve, (Steve’s responses in italic)

here are the recordings from doings June-July. It is quite a lot of minutes of material. So, I put them in line from my choice of what is more informative. Though, I am also really curious on what you would say to the recordings where things are stuck and not happening.

Recording 1 (very nice... great film just as it is except it ends so suddenly – maybe make a point of that. I like the way the movement isn’t sort of “nature-organic-flow” style.... it felt like watching a wild animal at distance – trying to work out what is going on.... The camera placement is excellent – lovely framing – sound is amazing but maybe slightly too much wind noise at times. Great moment when the fly visits the lens) [https://vimeo.com/444238923/eac44de794]

Recording 2 (amazing soundtrack! Nice movement but felt a bit more like an exploration than a composition compared to the first one. Not sure the back to camera works. Maybe you weren’t clear about the route of the movement – how far in what direction you were going. It could be very small journey but it needs to be “lived in” for what it is. Again lovely camera position and framing. Beautiful light. This could be cut as a very very short piece... a loop of a few seconds for example)

Recording 3 (again it felt quite experimental and exploratory – a first response. I like the committment and the voice cuts through nature sounds very strongly. It is a slightly urban, night club... S&M feel to it – Berlin? It comes over strange because of that – like the whole framing is contradictory. So, it is read more as the memory rather than the reponse to the current environment. Discharge?)

Recording 4 (much more embedded in the environment, this one. More “organic”. Very nice upper body movement. Timing overall is lovely but the phrase structure could be much clearer. Both in terms of when phrases begin and end and how they relate to each other but also the internal detail of each phrase. Feels like the lower body and earth could be explored more. Also the journey through the environment needs more attention. What is this travel from one place to another? What does it feel like? Mean? Why this way, this far?)

Recording 5 (I’d say the issue is that you tend to “do” sensing at the beginning of everything ... beginning of each idea/phrase. You don’t need to. It makes things a bit dull and really crisp, clear things get muddy.... you are already sensing so just stand... as if it is the most normal thing... because it IS the most normal thing... and then... when the moment arrives... just dance... because it makes sense... don’t waste energy on all that performance of the internal... ;-))

Recording 6 (very epic feel to this one. It needs a bit more sense of the overall journey. The song is great. The bare breasts/covered breasts theme is interesting. Something about power? Feels like there needs to be attention to the clarity between stability and instability in the body-wise movement and the space-wise travel. Finding the earth beneath the tree trunk – gravity.) [https://vimeo.com/444246536/332c7b0a37]

Recording 7 (I like the mid distance of this and the gaps between the dances. I could see a sort of installation/gallery piece with several projections with occasional action and a live performance. The movement material is good but needs more specificness. Especially don’t dither between ideas... don’t wiggle and hope. Wait and when something is clear do it and when it is finished stop. Either still or maybe repetition.) [Excerpts: https://vimeo.com/444128961/9604b182f1]

<..>

Last month I was in town. Now I am back. I am reviewing all the notes and records. From the notes I select, what would be interesting to come back to as 'scores'. I reformulate them, do them again. There are also many quotes in my notes from different conversations, interviews, books. I will need to publish documentation of this period of working in the forest at the end of September. That made me start 'reviewing'. And simultaneously and actually even more working now further I want to become more precise with what I do in the dancing. I hope to finish reviewing the notes, work on scores, film some doings and share them with you in a short while.

For today thank you a lot for agreeing to watch the records of the initial try-outs.

many greetings,

Grete

Notes from the conversation with Stephen Batts 30.8.2020

Compositional issues: | bordered, not bordered space

Are you making a film?

Are you aware of the camera? 

You carry a different disposition, different metaframe, address the issues that are relevant..

What comes out is different, when you carry a different metaframe

What is it that you are working on? What is it that it can live on?

Which one is it as we are working through ideas? Where does this go to? How do you need to do it again?

What you do seems very season specific

Feels a very particular time.

Attentional things about movement

-the way in which desire to move appears and is distributed till the end - work on much more rigorously, even to feel that it is almost unintuitive.

Habit to perform the internal.

Interesting 3-5 min. After it I cannot follow this because it is internal. In butoh, when the environment is very set - one thing.  But if done with reference points: why aren't you dealing with the environment? 

Rigore about the composition:

1-don't do anything before you know it is that 

The phrase is 30 min long without the breath

2-when you done - STOP

You rarely find something interesting, when you go ‘maybe’

Phrasing

Internal form of the phrase. What is the transformation in each phrase?

You should burn yourself completely in every action. Each time: that might be it. So: Is it worth bothering?

Either:

I write anything comes to head

Or

I am committed to whatever I do

You set parameters before you do it. Absolutely everything needs to be taken into consideration. 

Poet tries to write the best poem from the very first moment. I am doing. This is it. Then. you can edit.

Usual thing: explore->add composition

Proposition: first composition, then, do

Clarity of the earthing - without loosing the subtleties

Go into your feet, into the earth, without loosing your arms

When I move the limb - how does that change the trunk? Partial pattern changes the total pattern

When to go and where? → stability, instability

Journey you make but the journey is not clearly stated for me as the viewer

The foot connected to the torso - reflexology. Shinto - universe is made with sound: U - pelvis, o - belly, a - heart, e - shoulder girdle, neck, y - pakaušis

Vocalization is at ease

The arm is already verbal

Hands-talking-torso-walking organization of the foot

Ripple of the walking foot | ripple in feet to head: walking front | ripple goes down - backwards/ How these will connect to the song?- Emerging the song from the total.

Notes from conversation with Christine Quoiraud 30.7.2020

Why in the woods? Who are you? 

This Grete. You have changed. How has this solitude affected you? 

Nature is not only butterflies, also earthquake, litters, destroyed species

Dance is not only movement, it is communication through history, towards future social groups

Christine’s current question: ‘how can I touch others by my words, writings, who I am, when passing in the street?’

A beautiful piece she saw: a man asked them to watch from down. He was on a hill. He stood, sat down, lied down. ‘We saw a landscape transformed by him.’

‘How to erase the self? - main task of life.’

If the audience forgets to compare you with anything.

What does your presence do to animals, the forest?

Notes from conversation with Christine Quoiraud 2.8.2020

Grete: Why would I share documentation?
Christine: What is interesting for you, when you read, watch documentation? Why is it worth it?

Grete: it also says how they lived through the time, how creation merges into other things, what thoughts generated the artwork, it many times strengthens to go on, continue.

Letter from Christine Quoiraud 4.9.2020:

ok, so i watched your videos.

Here a few feedbacks:

• what merges? let it come to you

• watch out left side of your body, left arm

• How can you be focusing down, toward the ground and same time aware of the whole field/place. Of course same with focusing up;

• If you zoom on yourself how can you give yourself a deeper reason, deeper meaning?

• Alone in a field, what is the connection with invisible beings, insects, plants, moss, people, people from the past , birds who left the country at the end of summer..etc

• Deeply connected with life in yourself, watch out of not dropping consciousness. Tight awareness held non stop

• Exercising rhythms again and again as an exercise...then it becomes available in the body during improvisation. Exercising rhythms can be anywhere anytime

• everyday practice concentration. Not just for the stage. As a human tool. Not for yourself but to be part of the world

Dissonance is a good chapter.

I think I like most your second set of videos.

[Excerpts: https://vimeo.com/463704334/1d4452c139 ; https://vimeo.com/463704803/9fc87ec109 ]

Speak on tuesday?

Notes from conversation with Lyllie Rouviere 23.7.2020

How to transmit experienced things found through living, observing to someone else, who did not have that experience?

Extract it to a simple physical task.

Get feedback on: what is it for the others?

Work from there.