Embodied Improvisation Research Workshop (2023)
“Trust is the stacking and layering of small moments and reciprocal vulnerability over time” (Brown, quoted in Feltman, 2024)
"Trust: Choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person's actions.
Distrust: ‘What is important to me is not safe with this person in this situation (or any situation)." (Feltman, 2024)
The group session in which Noah Drew (actor, voice teacher, composer and my local PhD supervisor), Symon Henry (composer, pianist), Elyze Venne-Deshaies (saxophonist, composer), Gabriela Petrov (performer, teacher, improviser) and myself took part in was explicitly asking the question of building trust in a group with aesthetic and performative affinities but no prior experience performing together. In the description of the event I sent to the performers I wrote:
My motivation for this focus was to investigate what can happen when making explicit a condition my body felt necessary to satisfy in order to enable a fuller, more relaxed expression, in line with my artistic vision. If my motivations were first and foremost driven out of my desire to ease my own tensions, they were also heavily influenced by all the previous one-to-one workshops I did with each performer invited to this group workshop. Themes of sharing vulnerability, moving beyond habits, increasing the ability to take risks, enabling various types of attention, foregrounding implicit dynamics, incorporating movement and multi-modal explorations all offered shared resonances between us prior to this work. (I did many more one to one explorations with performers at Concordia and the performers invited here were the ones that resonated with the work the most and could make the event.)
To learn how our freshly crafted group dynamic could function, I invited some guidance or starting points from the people present. Gabriela opened the space (video timestamp: 00:00 min - 17:42 min) inviting us to connect to our sensoriums and to the space in flexible ways drawing from Viewpoints, Body Mind Centering and her own somatic and improvisation practices. After a certain time, both Noah (timestamp: 17:42 min - 24:30 min) and I (24:30 min - approx 32:00 min) organically added other invitations of engagement to compliment what was there, offering alternative avenues for satisfying impulses that could manifest in manifold ways.
The unplanned shared leadership fed on the momentary states we found ourselves in, including the desire or lack thereof to lead a group. Having this kind of mutual support available was an ideal resolution for my conflict of having to be both inside and outside a group, sensing both self and others.
The emergent improvisation (timestamp: 32:00 min - end), organically constructed in the aftermath of a more workshop-style dynamic, exposes natural impulses of engagement when said engagement has been encouraged to feed on our momentary needs, desires, and pleasures. In a way, this engagement is freed from a certain social responsibility of presence, connection, focus, responsibility towards an audience or direction of attention, having been supported to engage in ways that first and foremost feel right. The combination of focuses and embodiments define polyphonies of expression that expose a heterogenous but cohesive group, combining in duos, trios or various configurations that coalesce and break apart at will. This imprecise but deeply felt purpose, which, looking back at it now, I would characterise as expression within the incoherent sphere of feeling, is best sampled by engaging with the work itself.
My range goes from drooling floppy fluff to tense angry scream machine. I disengage and zone out and I hyper focus and deliver deep intensities. It can be very outward, shifting mountains, it can be very inward, softly tickling me and it can be almost absent, invisible, zombie like, sleepwalker, here-but-not-here.
Opening the range up to absence is risky. It can be a place of retreat, a place of hiding, a place of defeat, a place of cowardice. But it can also be a place of recovery, a place where tiredness/exhaustion/pause can become visible. Why are these processes considered unworthy to be seen? Stasis, pause, recovery - they are part of life. Why would they be inconsequential performatively? Why is the performer only worthy when they deliver a refined, distilled type of presence or attention?
My joy comes out of playing within this extended range.
(April, 2023, Montreal)
How can we, in a day, get a sense of trust between each other that can help us explore (with as much openness as we are capable of and not more) our collective artistic expression? I will come with a few approaches and propositions for starting points, but the floor is open for a more ambiguous leadership approach. We want to make sure that there’s space for our differences to thrive and for the unexpected to emerge.
(email to participants, June 2023)
"I’m in Canada. It’s been five months now. The first two were a write-off for more Covid reasons (in total I had 5 months off with that thing last year…) and a laryngitis that feels like my body’s saying ‘this transition is too much for me to take’. Voice does that, it knows things before I know them. It also over-feels things and responds in a hyperbolic way. It’s easy to believe it, to think that it holds the ultimate truth, but in reality the threats are not quite as life threatening as they’re perceived to be. Did I end up homeless in Montreal just as I got here with Covid - kind of. The move out of the cockroach infested flat with a twisted ankle and Covid fatigue was one of the biggest strains I ever put on my body. But I didn’t quite land on the streets. The hotel I stayed in became the incubator where my voice processed all of these threats and decided to pack it up and leave. Probably reinforced by the requests to re-live all that instability in repeated customer support calls with a neverending plethora of agents that couldn’t keep track of all I’ve gone through and kept asking me to say it again and again and again. Capitalism in action - can’t get your refund from the big corporation unless you re-live your fucking trauma again and again for them.
The memory of my weakness, all alone in this new city, dragging my suitcase behind me on one functional foot while trying to not collapse with exhaustion is still quite raw and difficult to bare. It was really hard.
Onwards and upwards, onwards and upwards and sideways and backwards..."
(Montreal, March 2023)
Context - Visiting Doctoral Research Trip at Concordia, Montreal
The visiting research trip I took in Canada for nine months came as a response to the Covid pandemic restrictions lifting, making in-person explorative collaborative encounters possible once more. Two things drew me to Concordia: 1) their inter-disciplinary performance arts research cluster LePARC which hosted under one roof performer-researchers from dance, theatre and music, and 2) the theoretical research I read coming from there that was foregrounding affective and sensory explorations, particularly Erin Manning (2013, 2016), Brian Massumi (2021) and David Howes' (2010) works. Prior to my trip I organised meetings with several Montreal artists meant as co-creative starting points. While I connected to these artists upon my arrival in Canada, I also developed new connections emergent from being on the scene. Some of the encounters materialised into something more, others slowly fizzled out due to artistic differences or life (illness, etc.) getting in the way. This, I came to learn, was an important aspect of starting collaborations with artists I didn't know before: being prepared for at least 50% of these open-ended endeavours to fail.
A lot of what I came to understand as being essential to my composition practice became clearer and more articulate on this trip: I dove deeper into the potential different types of attention have to influence and determine artistic material, I spent time with the affective and physical responses of my body, learning how to introduce them into collaborative encounters and continued sensing through voice on the tension-relaxation continuum. The many conversations I had with local artists post improvising together as well as the improvisations themselves were essential modes of refining the practice. Often times I didn't know what was really important for me until after the fact and sometimes many months after the fact. This longer time scale was essential: leaving time for the body to metabolise challenging emotions, to eliminate unuseful habits and to form new embodied expressive capabilities.
I include in this section a few notes on my ways of thinking through moments of doing from the time I spent in Montreal, as well as extracts from one-to-one workshops I had with two performers at Concordia: pianist and composer Symon Henry and improviser Gabriela Petrov. These snippets bring to the foreground a closely-knit emergence of specific ideas developed through iterative practice and critical conversation.
All of this work feeds into the final piece of practice I did at Concordia: the Embodied Improvisation Research Workshop. I present the outcome of this workshop as an unedited one-hour video. I'm including this longer form video to showcase the actual temporality of the sensual relationality process of group making. This temporality is present and important for many other works in this PhD but is typically not included as documentation.
I offer this one hour of work knowing full well the attentional cost an hour of engagement can have on the body. It is specifically the duration of this work that directly leads the performers in this piece to develop the kind of material presented here. Knowing that viewership is not the same as participation, I open up this video to be consumed in any of the following ways: 1) watched like an art video - a Warhol-esque depiction of a process that might draw one in or get one to zone out through audio-visual detail; 2) as a fractured video, skipped and split following the desires of the viewer and their attention span; or 3) as a companion video workshop that one can participate in post-factum, following instructions in one's own space.
Some conclusions
The questions around strategies for collaborative dynamics for an erratic and erotic composition practice or co-creative group form are only beginning to be answered with the work I undertook here and in the Splendor micro-residency. The resources of time, space and commitment of multiple partners makes co-creative group work a complicated endeavour that, in the context of this research, was deeply impacted by the Covid pandemic and warrants further investigation.
Despite all this, one outcome is clear to me: that possessing a practical toolbox of exercises that support and incite the body's ability to feel itself internally and externally in relation to others and express that sensation, is necessary but not sufficient. What also needs careful consideration is the kind of embodied knowledges and skills that a leader/composer/facilitator of this kind of work possesses. Skills that enable the facilitator to embody the work and lead through performative resonance with others, attuning and adjusting to sensibilities present in the room. This kind of sensory awareness is essential for supporting the moment to moment non-verbal dynamics that emerge in this kind of work.
This embodied experience remains difficult to be precise about in writing as it is deeply entangled with one's own psychology, sensoriality, personality, physicality or, in other words, selfhood. It can only be fully understood through practice.
Attention. The infinite flux and flow. Like sound, it is always in motion - sometimes in a spiral, sometimes in a knot, sometimes incredibly slow, sometimes extremely jittery…, sometimes magnetically attracted to an external force, sometimes narcisistic about its own existance.
In Ruth Zapora’s Action Theatre we practice attention to the whole, to the self, to each other. We are constantly prompted to be aware. In my performance practice it’s ok to disengage, to move inwards, to ignore, to wonder mindlessly, to really deeply trust and love yourself and anything that you might do while always being curious about what else might bring you pleasure, what else you’d like to express. it doesn’t have to be difference as long as you are honest. maybe today you only have one range in you, one thing to give, no thing to give. this service to the honesty we carry is the lifeblood of this practice. which doesn’t mean don’t lie - but lie only if deep down you believe that through the lie you’re being carried towards a truth. you don’t have to reach that truth but don’t lie to please others. lie as a rope, an aid, a crutch that pulls you towards the truth. but don’t obsesively hunt truth either. you live in an abundance of truths. there is a lot of richness, a massive belly full of truths.
(April, 2023, Montreal)
" ‘Yes; but women seem to fear their own strength, to be afraid of themselves.’ “Are they ever taught to trust themselves?" ‘ Ged asked, and as he spoke Therru came in on her work again. His eyes and Tenar’s met. “No,” she said. “Trust is not what we’re taught.” She watched the child stack the wood in the box. “If power were trust,” she said. “I like that word. If it weren’t all these arrangements–one above the other–kings and masters and mages and owners–It all seems so unnecessary. Real power, real freedom, would lie in trust, not force.” "
Ursula K. Le Guin - Tehanu (Le Guin, 1990)
There is a deeper truth in the body.
There are needs
There are desires
There are ssssssen——sssssations
There are ssssseeeennnn——si.bilities
There is a deeper truth in the body
The body
theeee bbb.b.r.b….b….b……brrrrroooooooooo.ro.ro.roro.ro.ro
Row-ro-row-ro-row-ro.row.ro row-ro. row.ro
Theeeeeere
Is adeepertruthinthebody
The broow ro rooow-ro brow-ro row ro.
The………………..
Brooo……………………………………………
Brooooooo………………………..
Brow….ngt
Bro……….wwuuuuuuUUUUuuuuuUUUUuuuu
The brow.ken.
The brow.ken.
The brow.ken
The segmen.ted
The ….tense
In.tense
the broooowken.
Ther eis a deeper truthin
Thereis a deeper truth in
There is a deeper truth. in
There is a deeper truthin
Thereis adeeper truthin
There is a. deeper
deep deeeper.
deep
Deeeper
The truth is
the truth is
the truuuuuuuuth
The truth
The truth
The body
thebrokenbody
the body
thebrokenbody
the body
the broken body
(April, 2023, Montreal)
