Stop, Collaborate and
Listen: A dancer and a visual artist begin a journey in a library.
Simon Garfield's On
the map provided a starting
point for an exploratory day between dancer Sophie Tickle and I at
Chester Lane Library in St Helens. Having never worked together
before, the question 'Where do you want to be? provided a useful way
to begin the collaboration. We started by talking a bit more about
what each of us do, what tools of our trade each of us had brought
with us and considering how to begin.
We started with a map of where we are now.
St
Helens.
In
a library.
Feeling
a bit self conscious.
Not
wanting to sit around talking all day.
Wanting
to play.
Shelves
of library books surrounded us, so to find out how each of us were
interpreting the question, we searched the shelves for titles that
sparked a connection. We both brought back books about journeys: I
selected Thirty Nine Steps and Sophie selected The girl on
the ferry boat and Let not the waves of the sea.
'Where
do you want to be'
the
importance of the journey to get there
a
process
the
trials of the journey
Which
led us onto books that were barriers to getting to where we want to
be: Crossing the line, Overcoming anxiety and Money money
money featured here. Physical borders, mental barriers,
financial obstacles. Some of these are self help books, linked into
the idea of finding our own way through life, which linked into the
next group of books: Letters from Skye, The woman who went to bed
for a year, The inquisitor and Girl in the Mirror.
Sending
a letter to yourself
Time
to reflect
Asking
questions
Where
are we heading? That was represented by only one title: The wish
list.
Wishes,
hopes,
dreams.
The
things that spur us on through the journey.
Walking
through the shelves caused us to start thinking in metaphors.
A
journey through a library,
a
place that can transport us to anywhere.
The
aisles in the library as different paths in life.
We
unfurled rolls of fabric that I had brought with me, imagining them
as paths on our journey, or letters that we might write to ourselves.
We wove them in and out of the books, passing them from one aisle to
another thinking of them as the time along the journey when we
reflect on where we have got to.
Playing
in between the shelves we lay down on the floor thinking about the
lows in life, and how the view looks different from down there, how
we could glimpse each other's eyes through the gaps between the
books, and climbed up onto chairs to see the view from on high. It
all got a bit philosophical as we built barriers using the fabric and
Sophie experimented with moving through those barriers, then pulling
the fabric to create tension between the different paths that life
could take, getting tangled in a web of our own advice and that of
others, of life unravelling and paths becoming more difficult to walk
along. While in the large print aisle we got our only question from
a member of the public, who asked if Sophie was doing her exercises.
We made a film of movements glimpsed between the books, and started
to imagine how this could translate into a performance or an
installation, or both.
We drew some diagrams, made some notes and thought about an audience.
How would they experience this? As an installation to navigate
through themselves, with barriers to duck under and stairs to ascend
changing their viewpoint and causing them to move differently.
Videos of eyes watching them from between the books. A viewing
platform where they could take in the whole thing (the audience
playing the part of hindsight). Shelves populated with books
selected by the audience, the books obscuring the view from one path
to another. Thelibrary as a performance space where dancers could
tell the story of these multiple selves that we take on our journey.
A movement score that uses verbs from our initial playful
explorations:
tension
reflection
unravel
tangle
divert
And then, we realised that our initial collaboration, starting from
nothing, had become an exciting potential project combining dance and
visual art. So we're meeting again next month to play some more,
only in a different library this time. Can't have the lady in the
large print aisle thinking that there's a monthly exercise class
there.
