common things to talk about

Performances at the MA Show

2011-09-02T09:19:00.004+01:00

The Performing Book

The Performing Book is an interactive choreographic work developed during MA study at Camberwell College of Arts. The work aims to facilitate a playful relationship between an audience and the cast of dancers. The Performing Book happened outside the college on Saturday 3rd September and during the private view on 6th September.

More photos can be found here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccwmatt/6111918734/in/photostream/

Cast: Luke Birch, Iris Chan, Katharin Cooper, Hayley Durward, Laura Greenhalgh, Janine Harrington, Alexandrina Hemsley, Katie Keeble, Alice MacKenzie, Stephanie McMann, Katja Nyqvist, Heloise O'Donoghue, Lizzie Sells, Susan Sentler, Lucie Sheppard, Eleanor Sikorski, Alice Sunderland.

reflections on MA study

2011-08-25T13:09:00.003+01:00

Narrative feels to be a partial gesture without the reader.

My projects explore relationships between reader and book/ an audience and performance. My original intention (to create work exploring the relations between episodes and a whole within book structures) has developed to embrace my choreographic and writing practices. The metaphoric function of the book has been decidedly enabling for my choreographic thinking, for example The Performing Book takes the metaphoric codex/ flipbook structures as its beginning and asks the question: what if this were dance? The material content is movement; the relationship to audience is book-like. Solo work Stranger (like a leporello) explores the interweaving of texts, movement and image sequence across a projection screen, flipcharts and large roll of paper. Stranger shares much of its material content with leporello the whole day slipped toward the window, and was an important developmental step toward the resolution of that book. In this regard, laterality has become a legitimate research strategy, different contexts revealing possibility.

These themes of possibility and revelation are embedded in the methodology I have been developing. For example, a continuous leporello structure has been an important way of generating new relationships between texts in my writing practice, and has become a tool for thinking about composition. In the video work 10 Minutes, an embodiment of time is explored through a simple task methodology, the choreography of the work arising as a by-product of this. In The Performing Book, the manifestation of the choreographic content is negotiated in a real time relationship between dancers and audience. In both works there was a decision to program content, a clear rule structure and the possibility for difference and change to occur. In both works the live relationship of the audience to the work is foregrounded, whether they are asked to question where they are in time, or what affect their co-ordinates in space and time have upon the work.

The writing of philosopher Jacques Rancierre (e.g. The Emancipated Spectator) has influenced my thinking about the role of the audience in my work, and this consideration has encouraged my previous choreographic practice into a visual arts context, which now seems an organic process but was not a conscious intention at the beginning of MA study.

10 minutes

2011-08-16T10:59:00.005+01:00

Clip from 10 Minutes*, a video work shown at the MA show in September. 36 people were asked to contribute 10 minutes to the project, marking each minute with the turn of a page. The work is a development of performance lecture 7 Minutes, shown at Camberwell College of Arts in June as part of the MA Book Arts course.

*10 minutes/ Rachael

10 minutes/ Yuan

10 minutes/ Ellie

10 minutes/ Fiona J

10 minutes/ Rosalie

10 minutes/ George

10 minutes/ Laura

10 minutes/ Seydou

10 minutes/ Sarah

10 minutes/ Rachel G

10 minutes/ Linzi

10 minutes/ Lisa

10 minutes/ Wiebke

10 minutes/ Caterina

10 minutes/ Warren

10 minutes/ Christine

10 minutes/ Paul

10 minutes/ Susan

10 minutes/ Kathy

10 minutes/ Lucie

10 minutes/ Christopher

10 minutes/ Deirdre

10 minutes/ Rowan

10 minutes/ Rob

10 minutes/ Franck

10 minutes/ Rachel A

10 minutes/ Fiona M

10 minutes/ Alice

10 minutes/ Lizzie

10 minutes/ Katie

10 minutes/ Helka

10 minutes/ Elica

10 minutes/ Nora

10 minutes/ Janine

10 minutes/ Sara

MA show

2011-08-16T10:56:00.004+01:00

The MA show is happening 2nd-8th September at Camberwell College of Arts. The private view is Tuesday 6th September 6-9pm where I will be showing The Performing Book outside the college building . This work will also be shown on Saturday 3rd September in the afternoon (2.30-3pm and 4- 4.30pm) if you would prefer a quieter visit to the show. Other works to be shown include 10 Minutes a video work and the whole day slipped toward the window, a first in a series of books.

There may be a sneak preview of a work in progress, Have you ever seen a whale? in the book shop. If you can't see it, ask me. I'd love to talk to you about the whales. Aswell as the work in the exhibition I will be selling a book made last year, It didn't have to be this way. The book shop will be open 11-6pm each day, 11.30-5pm on Saturday.

As part of the MA Fine Art programme I have been asked to present a performance work in those show spaces in the afternoon of 8th September. With Katja Nyqvist I will perform a semi improvised work whelm/ voke/ tract/ vise/ sist/ pates a score of partial, variable gestures which accumulates in relationship with the installed work and it's audience.

Exhibition open: Mon-Fri 10-8pm, Saturday 10-5pm, Tues 10-9pm (last entry 8.30pm).

www.wearebookarts.co.uk

seven minutes seven days...

2011-07-03T18:22:00.006+01:00

performance presentation for symposium 2 at Camberwell this week.

We had to present an aspect of our work/ research. I was struck by the difficulty of how to do this in the allocated 7 minutes, with 3 further minutes for questions.

My presentation was a performance of these 7 minutes, plus the embodied sense of 7 minutes filmed over the previous week.

The result was seven films and a live reading, a meditation on my practice in seven parts.

The work is a sketch for a larger project I plan when I finish MA studies.

photo:Les Bicknell

We are each other

2011-05-09T10:52:00.006+01:00

we are from we are watching each window on the early in the early each other we are dangling

being by on the early platform from the window sitting on convection container we are a stage poised don't make it out on we are the own fluids watching container cureent from each other tiers early in the early the brimming so full in case current convection a each other might stage on the hill we are on the hill watching the own fluids sitting on back early in the we are we out of brimming the own fluids don't make it on sitting each other container watching taking from the edge out on turns convection we are back watching the own fluids sitting on on the hill brimming so full a stage poised all brimming full out of each other we are each worry we are of watching back

Photo: Wiebke Kowal

A poor quality video only gives a sense of the action of the book.The text looks more lke this:

Stranger

2011-05-09T10:36:00.008+01:00

the aeroplane climbs over a distance and through a height

there is a certain hanging feeling when it has taken to the sky

when it takes when it stays when we have taken when we have stayed

turning over inside this suit

grasping nothing but a carrying expansion

bewildered by this surface you will think of it for a long time

how it slipped through your fingers

how yours was the last face

New experimental work right at the intersection of practices: lecture, choreography, artist's book. A performance of a book. An exercise in text, movement and composition. First draft commissioned by What Now festival in 2011.

Photos: Wiebke Kowal.

the universe held on like we were a good book

2011-04-14T11:27:00.003+01:00

A friend told me that I should look at fuckyeahbookarts as she had seen a piece of my work there. It's funny how the Internet washes things up unexpectedly.

That book was first shown at the exhibition I am currently preparing for (two years later), it opens tomorrow.

That book A day to disappear was stolen two years ago, but it is living out there somewhere. The new work I am making asks questions about disappearance, the Internet as a place to live in and information going all-out-of-scale.

Interesting to not know what happens to your work on the Internet, that it comes back like a boomerang.

http://fuckyeahbookarts.tumblr.com/post/4338406376/handmade-book-by-janine-harrington

The Future is Social

2011-03-22T10:29:00.002Z

For the next 2 weeks I am involved with this residency at Flat Time House with Sonia Boyce and a group of post-graduate students froma cross Camberwell-Chelsea-Wimbledon graduate school of UAL.

There will be updates on the website daily and a symposium at Camberwell on Friday 9th April.

There will also be an open-house session at FTH on Friday 25th March 6-8pm where youcan get a sense of what we are doing.

http://thefutureissocial.sumacdevelopment.co.uk/

2011-03-15T07:53:00.004Z

I am currently working on a *new* performance work to be shown at What Now in April. The work is another/ further development from the body of work I have called Arena. In this video I have tried to animate the Triangulation books to form a part of the performance. Unfortunately the transitions don't seem to work on this blog post, and they are as important as the text-images. The video should also keep looping... Onward.

The festival happens at Siobhan Davies Studios April 15-17th and is curated by Gill Clarke.

2011-02-21T20:41:00.003Z

Here above my left
Here above my right;
Growing in the slipstream of light
Into the world

Are two becoming.
Beings very old, seeking a new

Rooting through me
Back toward the earth.

making and unmaking: triangulation, centres and peripheries, body and text

2011-01-30T22:59:00.005Z

Presenting/ performing/ reading at Making and Unmaking Text conference, January 2011.

The work is developing into a multi-streamed research.

Beyond Text: Making and Unmaking conference

2011-01-01T22:24:00.007Z

My proposal to present my writing practice at Beyond Text has been accepted. I will be presenting "Writing Centres", a practical investigation of the relationship between spatial and compositional structures in my current project Arena. The presentation of practice will explore text images in relation to performance, the resolution of movement practice in text, how a physical and writing practice meet...This research ground has evolved through my current post-graduate studies at Camberwell College of Arts and TrinityLaban (visual arts and choreological studies).

I will be exploring spatial concepts beginning with the assignment of a centre within the kinesphere, the physical space constituted by our physical structure, the far reach of which is determined by motility. I will consider this concept in relation to text- where is the centre of the text, what centre of gravity? Through this analogy to the body I will ask questions about peripherality and multiple centres, exploring how this spatial strucuturing functions in my current text project Arena as I experiment with book and performance structures.

Central to the rationale for such a discussion is the usefulness of information transfer between disciplines- the understanding of one thing in terms of another and the possibility afforded my these multiple lenses.

Making and Unmaking Text is a dialogue addressing sites of language in contemporary practices. The three day event looks to expand the notion of the academic conference and is funded by AHRC as part of Beyond Text research.

http://textmaking.blogspot.com/

The Performing Book

2010-12-29T15:10:00.016Z

About the work

The Performing Book is a structure for five or more dancers. The work aims to facilitate a playful interaction between the active audience and performers. The stucture is activated as an audience member enters a "channel" of the space, their movement programming the danced material in a certain way. As the activator becomes aware of their role as co-author of the work they are able to play with the structure, changing the properties of the movement in relationship to space and time.

Exhibitions/ performances:

• What Now festival, Independent Dance. April 2011.

http://www.independentdance.co.uk/what/activities/springseason.htm

http://www.independentdance.co.uk/rsc/WHAT_NOW_2011_Booklet.pdf

• The Wapping Project: Frontiers And Fragments: Dancing the decade. January 2011

http://www.thewappingproject.com

http://www.timeout.com/london/dance/event/211908/frontiers-and-fragments-dancing-the-decade

• Siobhan Davies Studios: Feedback Forum/ sharing. October/ November 2010

• The Pigeon Wing: WRITING/EXHIBITION/PUBLICATION exhibition program in conjunction with Deptford X

http://www.thepigeonwing.co.uk/news

• CoExposure, group show. Camberwell College of Arts. June 2010

Cast:

Vanessa Abreu - Alexandra Baybutt - Paola di Bella - Luke Birch - Anais Bouts - Mark Carberry- Iris Chan - Katharin Cooper - Andrew Graham - Janine Harrington - Lena Kimming - Stephanie McMann - Katja Nyqvist - Katy Pearce - Susan Sentler - Lizzie Sells- Rosalie Wahlfrid

Documentation:

Video excerpt from Independent Dance Feedback Forum sharing. The purpose of this performance was to gain critical feedback on the work as it developed.

The work has been developed at Camberwell College of Arts and TrinityLaban with support from the Bonnie Bird Choreography Fund (2009).

falling out of rhythm

2010-12-28T21:07:00.003Z

The grief was not passive. Overtime I found that it possessed a rhythm of its own, and when I started to feel differently I would jar against it the way you fall out of rhythm with a trampoline and find your body flung around. It would turn like that from time to time. Those punctuative changes alarming but quickly transitioning to a different pulse, a support.

a small excerpt from a text project I am working on.

2010-12-15T11:26:00.002Z

The second track on the album is the hit.

You can hear around the corner.

No one gives a damn about what you don't do.

Parliament Hill to Farringdon

2010-10-10T22:25:00.006+01:00

In the cafe older women force children to make choices between complicated biscuits. He wants to run around, Nana, he just wants to run.

In a high window polystyrene dummies kiss blindly.

Feeling like a foreigner in a real computer game I remember the teacher saying that sometimes the rhythm of your feet may be different to the rhythm of your heart.

I kick-start it. I run just to get out of here.

2010-08-22T18:25:00.002+01:00

The park was lovely. I had a sleep full of birthdays.

Squeeze Spot the difference tour commission

2010-08-02T11:17:00.005+01:00

In May 2010 Alexandra Baybutt and I were commissioned to work with film maker Colin Rozee from r2productions to make visuals for the Squeeze Spot the difference USA and UK tours. This was filmed at Greenwich Dance Agency, where Squeeze played their first gig!

Find out more about Alexandra here:

http://www.alexandrabaybutt.co.uk

Autumn 2010

2010-08-01T21:35:00.003+01:00

In August I am working with visual artist Emma Wolukau- Wanambwa for her Spiral residency at Camden Arts Centre. We are in residence 10-15 August with an open studio from 3-4.30pm daily.

You can come along to the Spiral open weekend on 28th and 29th August for all kinds of free events including a workshop on how to dance like a stadium rock star!!

See the link opposite for information...

This autumn sees the return of The Welcoming Party as a development for Deptford X festival with Lizzie Sells and Tiffany Charrington. This work was orginally developed with Russell Harris for Duckie but will be re-invented for a new environment as part of the festival program.

Additionally the Performing Book Experiment Number 2 is going on a little tour to Siobhan Davies Studios and The Pigeon Wing in September.

Big Dance 2010 teaching and performances

2010-07-25T11:29:00.004+01:00

My teaching practice reflects my interest as a maker in using information from a wide range of sources to support creative exploration. I worked with the Hopla children's classes at Siobhan Davies Studios over the summer term exploring ideas of flight. In the 5-6 years class each child designed their own bird using my template. The children performed with their birds as part of Big Dance on July 11th. It was fantastic to see each child identify with the characteristics of the creature they had created and use this in their movement exploration-balancing, taking off, landing, crashing, flying, hovering, spinning, twirling, jumping, suspending....

With the older group of 7-9 year olds I worked with the idea of unison and formation, looking at images of synchronised filght such as the Red Arrows team and sky-divers. We also practised different ways of dealing with each others weight in elevation- lifting one person as a group, lifting each other in pairs. The children really loved learning how to do this and after a lot of excitement, were able to do this in a safe way.

(permission has been granted by parents/guardians for the publishing of these photographs)

Performing Book Experiment No. 2

2010-07-10T22:39:00.020+01:00

Performing Book Experiment No.2 is a structure for five or more dancers. The work aims to facilitate a playful interaction between the active audience and performers. The stucture is only activated when an audience member enters a "channel" of the space, their movement programs the danced material in a certain way. As the activator becomes aware of their role as co-author of the work they are able to play with the structure, changing the direction of movement, its relationship to time...

Performing Book in rehearsal

Performing Book at the coExposure exhibition, Camberwell College of Arts with Alexandra Baybutt, Lizzie Sells, Katja Nyqvist, Rosalie Walhfrid, Vanessa Abreu and Paola Di Bella.

Cast: Lizzie Sells, Katja Nyqvist, Rosalie Walhfrid, Vanessa Abreu, Anais Bouts, Mark Carberry, Katy Pearce, Kat Cooper, Lena Kimming and Laura Greenhalgh.

It didn't have to be this way

2010-07-05T22:50:00.006+01:00

It didn't have to be this way

Casebound, edition of 10.

2010.

As an index of uneven exchanges this work draws attention to the relationship between the bookwork and the one who activates it, exploring ideas of provocation, rejection and responsibility.

pedestrian axis fall

2010-06-14T20:40:00.004+01:00

A pedestrian re-sets a bicycle swung around its chain pivot, lying quietly in the gutter.

A crowd of pigeons throw bread crusts over their heads with the intensity of pecking.

A jogger disturbs the scene watched by a small girl. Following the spiraling flight of the birds this toddler rotates on the axis of her mother’s upward pull, turning all the way around to meet the ground on her belly. There is an uncertain pause as she wonders where she has landed, why she did not fly too.

It was total: The Living Room by Charlotte Darbyshire

2010-06-13T14:44:00.000+01:00

Laura's hands were curious conductors, taking the voice away, draining it out.

There was a quieting theft. A sudden death after a very short illness. The presence of a ghost. The terror of an emptied stillness so close to the recent hugeness of Joanna's voice. The track of her voice not yet played out, still hearing it in the air and turning to find the body beyond the dubious promise of a breath. Being complicit. There was a murder. Gently administered, accidental. Lenny's cupped hands squeezing a fragile body. Careless hands picking out tubes and wires casually like moss picked off a wall and then the consequence: an unwilled act of destruction. Deliberate, precise action under a film of vacancy. Side affect as sum. An automatic ghost. How it was happening somewhere else. The film led away after Joanna became still on the floor. I don't know what happened next. It was perfectly suspended that way. It was total.

The Living Room

Directed by Charlotte Darbyshire

Performed by Laura Glaser and Joanna Weeks

Film excerpt seen at Laban, June 2010. First developed for In the Moment at TrinityLaban, 2009.

visual thinking: there is something i think i see it now

2010-05-30T22:45:00.001+01:00

performing book experiment number 1: a score for 5 voices

2010-05-20T17:54:00.007+01:00

Translation and Verbal Mutation Friday 28th May

7.30pm – 9pm FormContent, 51–63 Ridley Road,London E8 2NP

This live event on Translation and Verbal Mutation will be set up and recorded on the evening for a Formcontent audio podcast. Punctuated with texts, performance, sound and converstation by artists and writers experimenting with language and its parameters. Guests include ” “[sic] Tim Goldie, Ruth Beale, Patrick Coyle, Jennifer Hirons, Wojciech Kosma, Pablo Larios, Rebecca Page, Jacob Dahl Jurgensen, Janine Harrington. Hosted by Eleanor Vonne Brown from X marks the Bokship.

This evening is part of the FormContent exhibition HaVE A LoOk! HAve a Look!

The score for 5 voices comes from a book I have been working on where the structure allows texts to sit in differing relationships to each other. Depending on how the book is opened the text will emerge. There are 5 main reading configurations which form the score for 5 voices: opening from left, left page then right page, from centre, from right, right page then left...

Helping me to realise this first stage of the experiment of book as verbal form were Lucy Hayhoe, Tiffany Charrington, Laura Greenhalgh and Katja Nyqvist.

A recording of the event at FormContent will be availible soon!

2010-05-12T21:25:00.003+01:00

Dear Internet

2010-05-12T18:36:00.003+01:00

let's go somewhere else

at the Whittington

2010-04-20T20:10:00.008+01:00

From a chorus of muted concerns a soloist sings out a complicated name like a call to prayer. Clarifications overlay for a moment in a round of voices speaking this name as a question and an answer, harmonised briefly.

A man with bulbous under-eyes stiffens to a pause on his crutches. The last chair marked with the belonging of an absent person . He wishes to sit. A seated woman asks if he wishes to sit, tells him to sit if he wishes. He can't, he says. No, you can, she says- you're doing well. No, he says. No. I am not well. I am very unwell. He says it with a certain generosity afforded to those apparently capable of such a misunderstanding, with a tired resignation. We all are, she says. If you are well you are not here, you are outside.

I am here.

politics and making

2010-04-15T23:35:00.004+01:00

I started to make banners this week. A way to give myself something I need- the encouragment to keep trying.

2010-04-10T17:04:00.004+01:00

A photograph of the night,

The best dark I have ever known.

It steals all of me but the eyes

Which find some light and send it out again.

Come in white my love,

Come in mirrors.

Come unblinking when you come hither.

Deal highstreet

2010-04-09T17:57:00.004+01:00

A dour woman in navy two-piece on the highstreet pushes (what must be a purpose built) two-storey cat pushchair. Inside each compartment a grey cat is hanging out, and -as I look at them I imagine- feeling slightly embarassed to be part of this spectacle. A little dog trots along beside, conventionally on lead.

triangulation book

2010-04-06T17:15:00.006+01:00

shark, cow and donkey: something small is happening

2010-04-06T16:54:00.006+01:00

something small is happening

a sketch from Studiowork, Eva Hesse at Camden Arts Centre

2010-03-16T10:17:00.000Z

Growing toward a moving light source, the taller projections have the greatest freedom of movement due to their wider arc.

Straining to hear a distracting call, all shaft is an organ of hearing scanning. The hub of the group are younger, engaged in the story being told, collectivised by that attention. It keeps the teller telling as the distraction passes and strainers are returned.

Cords conducting or transmitting some message. Severed at different lengths by an uneven cut. Missing pixels and digits. An incomplete picture reloading at various scales of decipherment.

Fibres or hairs fastened in a grasp taughtening some and bunching up others. A skewed grasp...

Privilege to some. It doesn't matter how. Grow some more.

Some consensus regarding what to look at. Evidencing something overhead. We can know that. The taller able to see more sky without falling over.

glug

2010-02-19T20:47:00.002Z

disappearing
isappearing
sappearing
appearing
ppearing
pearing
earing
aring
ring
ing
ng
g
g
gg
ggg
gggg
ggggg
gggggg
ggggggg
gggggggg
ggggggggg
gggggggggg
ggggggggggg
gggggggggggg

2010-02-09T16:39:00.002Z

Snow book. Hope, Derbyshire 2010.

Submerge (-d/r)

2010-02-06T20:32:00.001Z

Shark braying of dog hulk pulling at,
wrestling with
bulky submerged/ submerger.
Foam water of possible mouth
bloodied, pink and hairless as scar tissue.
Blood of something.
Freckles converge to continent around this fat head,
so fat a baby could only come by the knife.

Buoyed
and flirting with drowning like two strong boys kissing,
punches ensure the fight continues.

Horses in a computer game level-peg, evening Stephens out.
Two animated bar charts averaging over time
the same interval between expenditure
and rest,
appearing unwinning and unlosing
as the best
of three
becomes five, seven, nine.
Just to keep kissing.
To keep wrestling,
afloat, alive.

2010-02-01T21:39:00.000Z

Is there any 3am as friendly as this red metal face indicating a destination close to home?

two silences

2010-02-01T21:19:00.000Z

Ok.

Pausing, holding the attention of the room is a luxurious position for as long as the financial contract imbues the leader with authority. There is a critical point between expectation and delivery that is being straddled by two silences: that of the group and that of the leader.

So I want to start somewhere else for a minute.

The boldness of such a silence is genius. I wonder if anyone else doubts it. We are 23 women sitting in a circle, that is offered by a man. He is a scientist. 23 is the number of chromosome pairs of the human genome. So we are a gamete, collectively female, except for the analogical inconvenience of the males.

The two gate-keepers.

Silence charges as the weight of all words fall upon it, bounce with a hum of feeling and are absorbed.

Silence can collectivise. Silence can seduce, especially if it has a seductive perpetrator. She is self-possessed, but there are notes of doubt sounding in the circle. They come unexpectedly in a propensity for lower scale fidgets which rub against the silence as if to spread the load amongst us all.

She breathes deep, rooting, sourcing.

I feel a bigger fidget building and try to disperse it through my own body with smaller flickers of movement. A twitch on my face, an open eye, toe curl and extend, pinch of shoulder blades together. I try to contain it. Occasional simultaneous fidget is collectively smothered but the tone has shifted since that first speech, that mental plank outstretched from the uncertain now to the eventual...the eventual...

This hypothetical plank and an invitation not to walk it.

How bold it is to co-author this on a presumption.

skirting

2009-12-11T01:09:00.000Z

just ajar
slightly shy of
lightly brushing
nearing and going away again
fraying the edges upon
pulling the door to
drawing an arc around
crossing the line through
fading away from
washing out
hovering over
fracturing
cracking the glaze of
softening
blurring the edges
wetting the sleeve
losing the thread
marking the place where
tracing a finger across
unloosing the hair from
easing out of
skimming over
thumbing through
blind endings
like sellotape

Brooches for sale at £8 per piece!!

2009-12-09T20:02:00.010Z

Felt bird brooch (this one is Hayley's).

These are for sale at £8 per piece plus p&p or a London pick-up

email if interested! janineharrington@ymail.com

thebodywhichmakesthebody

2009-11-07T14:35:00.003Z

Book work based on research at the Wellcome Collection, London.

Hand felted. Oct 09

2009-10-26T18:01:00.004Z

Bodies in urban spaces

2009-10-08T22:07:00.006+01:00

I'm in blue!

Cie. Willi Dorner (Austria)
bodies in urban spaces

Im performing in this.

Fri 16 & Sun 18 October, 1pm
Sat 17 October, 1pm & 4.30pm
FREE OUTDOOR EVENT (booking not required)

Starting point: Needle sculpture, south end of London Bridge

A day to disappear BORROWED/ STOLEN from The Treehouse Gallery

2009-09-06T23:16:00.008+01:00

Over the summer I have given some of my time to The Treehouse Gallery, a free for all project in Regents Park. I ran a book making workshop which was well attended by small children right through to senior citizens. As everyone else involved in the project I gave my time and materials for free. I often talked to the public about the project, encouraged people to participate, shared what I had and what I knew.

To the Spherical Reading room part of the galleries I lent my handmade book A day to disappear. It was a fragile and beautiful object, but I believed that to experience the work it needed to be handled, not locked behind glass and so I left it in the care of the gallery.

At some point in the last week or so my work has been removed from the gallery without permission and has not been traced. I am hesitant to say that is has been stolen, but in effect this is what has happened. Anyone who has seen the book will appreciate the enormous amount of work it takes to make such an object, and anyone who has read it will understand the sensitivity of the content and the hurt I feel at not knowing its whereabouts.

This work was not intended for mass consumption, sale or ownership. If you have taken it, or you know somebody who has, please just get in touch- I don't care why you took it and I won't ask, there won't be any repercussions for you except the ease of your own conscience at doing the right thing.

You can post a comment underneath this blog post, email the Treehouse Gallery or email me directly janineharrington@ymail.com

http://www.thetreehousegallery.org/

You can say that you found it, I won't ask if you stole it. Can't say fairer than that.

Janine

Sleeping content

2009-08-11T21:44:00.004+01:00

Musicians arriving with cases and soft cases of most specific design. Many of the men dressed in green blazers with red turn ups at pocket, collar and cuff. A little chatting. Children enlisted from running to move chairs. An occasional cymbal. Pushchair breaking the line of shadow, balanced on it's diagonal by shopping bags and sleeping content. A low brass pomp pomping and a gentle chorus of laughter. The suggestion of tea.

Entering the marquee with due attention to ropes and pegs. A passing salute to rain. The memory in my own mouth of basil leaves, fete trinkets, wedding and funeral parties. Insects, especially wasps. Green tree fruit falling, the arrival of guests into this low summer post coital calm of the gardens.

unnatural times

2009-08-11T21:40:00.002+01:00

And we live in unnatural times.
And we must make them
Natural again
With our singing
And our intelligent rage.

(Nobel Laureate Ben Okri, 1995).

Teetering

2009-06-25T23:04:00.003+01:00

A semi-circle crowd gathering. Some small children bobbing and nodding around the knees of taller people. Little unthinking hands patting indiscriminately. The ceildh band trying to find their way into Twinkle Twinkle. Clutches of notes surfacing recognisable briefly, the wide eyes of those children and the narrowed eyes of the players in concentration. All teetering on tiptoes or heel rocked ready to fall into the swells of the music, the overwhelm of expectation.

small battles

2009-06-25T22:28:00.005+01:00

A woman's thinness losing small battles with time. Holding grip of this woman's arm at hand of young girl, little boy pulling shopping basket proudly his height at an angle off the curb. An older woman circling around this unit with the general trend of halting and re-gathering, the fragile balancing of these women. A sudden motorbike sends all the arms of these mothers blurring. The group re-emerging from dust with spilt contents of basket and tantrum and care.

a life with less

2009-06-21T22:52:00.005+01:00

A place where shoes are cast-off, keys lost, money no resource to map the territory of land. Of potato sleeping in the ground, of cockerel checking friendly hen, of pond ponding, field fielding and sky to sky unmarked, unmarking of me. Yet housing quietly holding and shifting gently the mass of my body against the own all; that I can ever, will never know.

Terraced courtyard. Very early and oh sun! Not held in a group by words, all stood, sat and wandering. The understanding of waiting in the calmness of morning. Space for the sound of animals and grass. Passing round a mug of tea. So much shared and space for the returning thought raising its volume: that so many words are wasted, their economy, sometime efficiency undermining what we can already know: the edges of the group, what each needs to be maintained.

migraine

2009-06-20T23:23:00.000+01:00

In migraine everything is environment, even my own thought is insurmountable.

The Welcoming Party at Brixton Academy

2009-06-13T23:19:00.012+01:00

a critical welcome

a long distance welcome

a jiggly welcome

a trainee welcome

a professional welcome

an ambiguous welcome

a foreign language wilkommen

a Brownie welcome

a long welcome

a thorough welcome

an informative welcome

a wedding welcome

a therapeutic welcome

a disasterous welcome

an organised welcome

an holistic welcome

a legal welcome

a Jerry McGuire welcome

a tiny welcome

a tidy welcome

a warm welcome

a group welcome

a trophy bride welcome

a secret welcome

a department store welcome

a never-ending welcome

a competitive welcome

a limbo welcome

an officious welcome

a necessary welcome

a safe welcome

a welcome parade

an ambitious welcome

an un-welcome

a welcoming party

The Welcoming Party in action.

Duckie are purveyors of progressive working class entertainment. For them RussellHarris and and I collaborated to make a scene.

a scene

Louise in The Welcoming Party.

Janine and Elodie in the bath in rehearsal

At New Year we hosted the Duckie bash at The Eagle in Vauxhall. This Summer we present a lavish shop window display at Girly Shame 09, quite counter to our meat-market offering last year for Masculinity at The Coronet.

The NYE cast.

Shame 09 cast:

Elodie Escarmelle, Lizzie Sells, Louise Tanoto, James Gorrett, Liz Watkins, Gemma Williams, Katy Pearce, Jinn & Am Elemara

Brixton Academy, July 4th 2009.

Binga Bong music video commission

2009-06-11T14:45:00.003+01:00

Video commissioned by Glenn Tilbrook and The Fluffers for their single Binga Bong.

October 2008. Co-directed with Alexandra Baybutt.

Summer

2009-05-14T00:54:00.002+01:00

Young people throw their bodies upside down.

A stray football runs gently over the stomach of a reclining man, he unflinching.

Sitting with a stranger, a bird flies very close through the space between us.

Boys with bare chests jump high wall to wall. Another group organise themselves in a circle practising skills. No one gets hurt. No one goes home early.

Wilding

2009-05-11T23:38:00.004+01:00

Wilding was a workshop/ research lab led by Rosemary Lee for Independent Dance in March 2009. Below are some of my writings from that week. We wrote, walked, watched, read, danced and discussed ideas about the wild, the urban, escape...

Layers of deep. Can I tell how suspended I am on this flat? Can I sense the layers beneath me?

All around is designed, but wilding is not an un-design. The wild is not undesigned. Is the the then the "natural". Can we think that the natural is wild? Order, much order is made from the natural- the impulse to be close/ far from bodies including those of animals, attraction, gravitation toward the known...In our urban it is wild to adhere to these "naturalities" where here, as always, there are so many problems with the word natural. If the urban is to collect then wilding is to scatter.

The crab apple was brought to the UK 7000 years ago by animals. Nowadays we might understand crab apple trees as any wild uncultivated apple tree, even those grown from the discarded cores of our own designed varieties.

The body odour of the men was wild. The creature scuttling in it's branched habitat thought itself wild and free and I a threat.

Young men peripheralise the estate calling to each other through mobile telephones. This is their pack-wild.

The wild in me knows where I am, it locates.

I can feel the trains moving deep below the surface as the rabbits know the farmer's boot.

The sun is not wild. The sun endures, the wild is forever in flux. That sheet is fixed about that building but it is not still, it is not unchnaged by the intention for it to remain so. The wind has torn, no worn or less- affected. The wind is and has and will be until the fabric is no longer there, but scattered. The environment processes us as we do it. We design but the wind is sustained. The tree roots have lifted the paving making it pucker around the base.

The earth recyles its own materials. We have come from, will return to, the earth and each other.

Critical pathways: understanding the nature of one's own practice. Part 2:

2009-05-10T16:04:00.005+01:00

Having hugely narrowed my focus and recruited Lizzie Sells and Katja Nyvqist as dancers, this second block of the CP group feels quite different.

Having been asked to show work at Brockley Max festival in June I have given the project the working title of Satelliser (or to put into orbit). I have the feeling that the work which results from these 6 weeks will be only one choreographic output from these broader enquiries. The challenge for me seems always to narrow narrow narrow, and naming the beast is helping me to focus on one of many potential avenues.

There will be a sharing of this work at Siobhan Davies Studios on Friday 5th June in the evening and again on Saturday 6th June in Hillyfields park as part of Brockley Max Festival.

Critical Pathways: understanding the nature of one's own practice. Part 1:

2009-04-11T17:08:00.062+01:00

chatting
Augusto Corrieri & Charlotte Darbyshire.

witnessing
Dancing: Louise Tanoto, Helka, Linda Mulot.
Witnessing: Nikki Tomlinson.

researching
Janine Harrington.

risking
Temitope Ajose Cutting & Sarah Jackaman.

resourcing
Vangelis Legakis.

absorbing
Karin Fisher- Potisk

In January 09 I embarked upon a ten week "course" of studio space, opportunity for peer feedback and mentoring from Rosemary Butcher. The group was hosted by Independent Dance at Siobhan Davies Studios, Elephant and Castle. http://www.independentdance.co.uk/ .The participants were:

Augusto Corrieri
Temitope Ajose Cutting
Luisa D'Ambrosio
Charlotte Darbyshire
Janine Harrington
Katie Keeble
Lizzy Le Quesne
Vangelis Legakis
Karin Fisher-Potisk
Nikki Tomlinson

sharing
the group

For Rosemary Butcher, teaching has always been an important dialogue with her choreography and indeed she has mostly worked full time in education alongside her work as an artist. She originally obtained a teaching qualification prior to taking up her scholarship to the USA in 1969. On her return to Britain she worked for the Inner London Education Authority where she established Dance on the curriculum of Pimlico School, before becoming an Advisor to the Inspectorate for both the London Boroughs of Westminster and Camden. With the disbanding of the ILEA in 1990, she was appointed Dance Co-ordinator at the Holborn Centre for the Arts in Education, a London wide facility for schools and colleges.

In 1994 she took up the post of lecturer in choreography at the University of Surrey, Guildford where she taught for three years at both BA and MA level, before joining the staff of the Laban Centre London as Head of Choreography, teaching and supervising students up to PhD level. It was during her time at the Laban Centre that she was awarded her Honorary Doctorate from City University. Awarded an Arts & Humanities Research Board grant in 2003 she joined the University of Middlesex as a Senior Researcher in 2004. She continues with this post.

http://www.rosemarybutcher.com/

In the initial meeting Rosemary gave us time to think, move and write- to clarify what we were bringing to the group and where we were at within our own processes. The resultant sharing contained all kinds of revelations of frustration, ambition, fear, challenge, intention, history...Some participants seemed to bring ideas for work different to their previous enquiries, others were less sure of what they might make, for some a connection with the group and their own self as maker seemed more pressing than than a certain idea. As a group we met each other on the terms of what each member brought, Rosemary taking time to support each enquiry/ sharing with her own questions.

As I listened to each person divulge something about what brought them to the group and share their ideas of what they might do, I found myself writing down Rosemary's questions. I have since suffered the loss of the notebook in which this work was recorded, but what keeps returning to my mind is one question RB asked

"Do you feel you have what you need to go into the unknown?"

Lizzy Le Quesne

Rosemary had different questions for each of us, depending upon what we presented with, though somehow I felt that each had a direct line to my own questioning of my practice ( where to talk of my own practice is somewhat uncomfortable- as if I have that all worked out). I entered in the CP program with the thought that I had previously spent time in collaborative situations which were nourishing in some sense, but restrictive in others- that what I wanted was to push myself to work on my own, go solo and perhaps in the process to illuminate something of my spontaneous preferences as a maker. I think I had hoped that I would succeed in making something, even sketchy, and that this momentum would help me to continue in my enquiries, less retreating into a dilute place of collaboration for reasons of security rather than necessity. I was excited by the opportunity to explore my critical pathway - to establish what originated from my artistic concerns and what was layered with collaborative dialogue...To better understand my priorities as a maker I needed to make!

Some collaborative situations: Lola's treasure trail with Elodie Escarmelle. Shame 08 with Russell Harris.

Research at Autoitalia and Big Red Telephone, both with Helen Cocker.

As we got a sense of who was in the group we organised ourselves with the rough structure of arriving, taking time to work and then meeting/ sharing in the last hour of the session where it was also fine to continuing working if necessary. We decided too that it would be possible to ask questions of each other in a more private way- for feedback, witnessing and chatting about process. There was also plenty of space to feel the energy of each other's focussed enquiries support the whole working space, something that I found especially positive as I worked on my own.

As the weeks flew by I felt as though some people's work was more visible to me than others- depending upon how we had individually chosen to use the CP shared time. Luisa, Karin and Lizzy really got into moving and I could see their work progress over the 10 week block. For some, too, the ideas were perhaps clearer than my own, or if not clearer then more focussed. The world of my enquiry felt, and persists in volumes of circularity in which it is difficult to find orientation. Rather like my sentences it seems. I think it is partly my choice of subject, partly my methodology and the overriding fascination with the behaviour of memory which made this project beginning so, well, circuitous. Enough.

Karin and Luisa.

I was working with writings about a song. In the song there is an astronaut in space. He talks to Houstoun. He floats around and sings about life, love, the universe. The song zooms from the man to the ship, the earth at once tiny, distant and containing, unknowable. The lover is the ship. The lover is a fiction. He watches the planes ahead. He is the plane crashing to the ground and the fated pilot. He is his own maker, he makes all things equal in his cabin outside of the earth's forces.

I was interested in the first instance in the composition of the song- the layers of music, text, voice and inside those components- the narration. I was interested in this idea of forces acting on the body, and later on memory too. I liked the ridicule of the lone figure singing his story in space with no one to hear, how he goes on rambling. As I listened to the song over and over I felt that I was experiencing its layers- content, structure and that somehow it corresponded to some space in side my head- a visual stage space. I could imagine the scenes made from paper continually changing scale. I could feel the elements that bound the images together through the whole song, and I started to think how these would map in a spatial rendering of the song- something notational perhaps. From the interests in structure came clearer ideas about cross-section and planes. The plane in the sky and the planes through which we move...

And so. I tried to narrow down the scope of my enquiry, focussing on the body in an altered state of gravity. I was working at exploring the rules of that world physically and secondarily trying to know them through language. I got a bit stuck. I believed in the world I was working in, but I was struggling to get any further with it than the surface information. There seemed to be other things going on that were distracting, necessarily so, all coming from the place that I was trying to work out. Instead of getting to know my subject matter over the weeks, something quite suprising happened.

As I worked choreographically I also started to spontaneously create paper structures, molding them in a manner which felt continuous with the shaping of the movement exploration. And as I was trying to give language to my process I was reminded of some older writings- a story and a commentary that was written several years ago. I had previously put this writing aside without any plan to re-visit it but it seemed now that my moving, and more specifically the language of my moving, had a direct line to these writings. I examined these writings for their place in the current project space- just the few sections that I had remembered. These with the paper structures and film sketches I had made led Rosemary to ask the question

"Is it a movement piece?"

Rosemary Butcher (centre)Gill Clarke (right).

Was it a movement piece? Yes and no. Once I had allowed myself to work with the writings I was faced with a problem: the reluctance to get involved with this old material and the strength of the ideas I was having about how I might work with the content. I wrestled with it a bit, but having been encouraged to pursue my writing-type-making, I quite quickly gave in and started to draft out a book-form.

On several occassions RB suggested (or maybe it is my interpretation) that there is a duty to remain faithfull to the choreographic situation as it arises-the material that comes from the investigation- that somehow you are dealt your cards and that is what you must deal with. The situation that had arisen for me did not feel like one I could deal with through dance, and more- why should I need to work within dance when the content so presented itself in another form? (I talk more about this in the "a day to disappear" blog article below).

A day to disappear handmade book. 1 of 2. 2009.

I didn't feel great about the situation really. I felt guilty that maybe I was letting myself and the group down by pursuing this book course, that maybe it was a distraction. As I worked on the book I did continue to work in the studio independently of the book project which I was trying to keep seperate, though of course it had sprung from the original enquiry. I found it difficult to work physically at this stage- feeling then that the book was what really needed my undivided attention and that the studio time suffered as a result of this distraction.

I analogised this situation to being like a queue of documents waiting to be printed and the printer idle- when the printer is turned on the documents must come through in sequence. I felt as though I hadn't been independent as a maker for a long time, and that the book content had been in the queue before the physical project, I just hadn't been able to, or had any desire to access it before. When the printer was turned on there was a lot of information pending!

Anyway, I made the book(s) and have since been able to re-find focus in my physical enquiries which is where this article will take us next after a review of the first ten weeks of the CP project as experienced by the other participants.

You can see what Nikki Tomlinson is working on by visiting her blog at http://nikkitom.blogspot.com/ .

A day to disappear (book work)

2009-04-10T18:48:00.003+01:00

This is my first book wook. It marks a deviation from the medium of my formal training in dance, but could not have been made in absence of that history. The information which has given rise to this work is experiential, anatomical and psychological, collated over time through various studies and employments.

The text comes from two "project spaces" which became integral as I understood the contextualisation of the primary relationship set against the mass, two-ness against all else. As the narrative inter-digitates with a broader commentary each is framed by the other and made more remarkable in comparision- zooming in and out of the public and private.

The themes of this work extend into my general practice and beyond: the experience of memory and time, dreaming, communication and censorship, filmic framing and narration.

The body in gravity/ the mind in time. Memory creates its own forces through time.

Cover and page detail from "A day to disappear" artist's book 2009. This work was exhibited as part of "What Now" festival at Siobhan Davies Studios 18-19 April 2009, supported by Independent Dance, Trinity Laban and ACE....

afewsquaremiles...

2009-04-10T13:54:00.001+01:00

A few square miles in geography and 22 years in memory is being shown at the Viewfinder Gallery in Greenwich on May 15,16 and 17th 2010.

stills from afewsquaremilesingeographyand22yearsinmemory 2007

In April 2007 Lucy Hayhoe and I decided to make something for the Brockley Max festival, which happens every year in and around Brockley, south east London. We had both lived and worked in the area for quite a while as we studied at Goldsmiths and Laban respectively. We were good friends, having met whilst working at Moonbow Jakes (now sadly closed) but we hadn't worked together before.

If my memory serves me, I had originally come up with some kind of elaborate plan for a performance which would happen outside the shop front and be viewed through the large glass window. I had wanted to work with a large swathe of fabric- that being cut into to reveal things happening behind. I think I talked to Lucy about it, and gradually we narrowed down the ideas to a smaller scale one-to-one performance experience inside a little booth. I'm not sure quite how we ended up working in film, but that is what happened. We based our rolling duet for spectator and performer in the familiar territory of Hillyfields park which sits between Brockley and Ladywell.

We borrowed a camera and a tripod and set off. It was a really amibitious project. When I think now of what we achieved in just a few days I am quite amazed. We filmed for 4 days and edited for around the same with the kind support of Laban. Neither of us had much experience either in editing, producing or directing but we got there with improvised story-boarding and some creative problem solving.

We were thinking about geography and time, the familiar and glimpses maybe of a familiar figure. We were interested in a playful disorientation and creating a real sense of embodied response in the spectator. The figure in the film falls from view, is barely seen, emerges and disappears, archs over and rolls away. The spectator is provided with the viewpoint of this vanishing figure and of their own position until the perspectives blur. There is an inevitability of the return of the figure, but never knowing where they will come from. The figure leaps high from a fall and time is suspended as a tiled path blocks itself over the whole screen before she lands. A tiny red kite shuffles its way across the park in stop-frame animation, the kite journeys down the arms of the figure and into her hands only to turn into buttons.

Through the work we were exploring a theme of time as currency and our currency being represented by little oddments and buttons. The work felt homemade and playful, though also quite sad.

In building a booth for one person we wanted to place the spectator half of the duet in the primary relationship. We wanted to get away from the feeling of other spectators' experiences and let each person experience the work in their own way.

It is past the meeting time in fives and tens and more. It is twenty past, and thirty past and an unknown hour to. I understood it as waiting; minded the days, the hours loose change, hoping the weeks would look after themsleves, not taking the years in hand.

Extract from the text woven into the soundscore of the film.

Direction: Janine and Lucy
Choreography, performance, words: Janine
Build and design: Lucy
Edit: Janine and Lucy

Jaws with the sound down

2009-04-01T12:42:00.001+01:00

Mothers' ruin:
A volume in me rising
Next to you
Very close on the big couch.

WHAT NOW exhibition

2009-03-16T21:48:00.009Z

I am exhibiting "A day to disappear" artist's book and research with Elodie Escarmelle (http://janineandelodie.blogspot.com/ ).

Sat 18th April 12-9pm, Sun 19th 12-5pm. Siobhan Davies Studios, 85 St. Georges Rd. Elephant and Castle.
Bookings +44 (0) 020 7091 9650
http://www.independentdance.co.uk/

In the moment

2009-03-15T20:15:00.000Z

Improvisation performance score directed by Lizzie Sells for TrinityLaban in February 09.

Autumn

2009-03-11T22:17:00.001Z

a brief conversation

2009-03-11T01:37:00.002Z

- I was just thinking of you.
-Really, what was I doing?
-I don't know, it wasn't a fantasy.
-Was I awaiting your imagination?
-Aren't we always?

Spring

2009-03-11T01:27:00.003Z

A man with shaking hands holding a camera infront of his face. Against the stone a pair of women sitting close together looking toward him.

A police buggy moving very slowly past, like a golf buggy with authority. A toddler and a woman just shy of middle age. This woman's fluffy hair. An older girl child in the background. The woman lifting the boy child into the buggy next to it's driver. Some time spent this way, moving slightly forward and slightly back.

Everyone moving anti-clockwise. Even when they are still the intention is against the clock.

Tour guides holding sticks fixed with flags, ribbons and trinkets. A parade of them in in in.

Rome

2009-03-11T01:21:00.004Z

The brick work patterns open and disappear again to the eye, like spines. Or ladders. Or spines of similar teeth growing from a softer texture, growing outta. Ossification. Bricks and stones, bricks and bones. Skin and bones will plunder stones until forever after. The mortgage rates a perfect arch.

How we are so removed from our hands now.

No women. Men with breasts. And horses mid air and cherubs some space above that. And all with common stumps at noses and legs and mouths. As if to say. This, this is your distance. In stone you are set, and set you remain suspended. Hands all gesturing, unreached.

Winter

2009-03-11T00:57:00.005Z

A little boy is chasing a bird. He thinks it but it has gone. No game. Off he goes strutting football hooligan between the big trees. Someone calls Frank but it is an improbable name for such a small child. Frank Frank Frank.

C is here somewhere too, I can feel it. I did not buy her the hat I chose. I remember to stop thinking of her and the heat escaping from her head.

Research at Autoitalia

2009-03-11T00:22:00.006Z

In autumn 2008 I was working with Helen Cocker at Autoitalia. These are some pictures of our research...more information to follow....

http://www.autoitaliasoutheast.org/

March 09 Logomotion:from a distance

2009-03-09T14:46:00.003Z

One year ago yesterday and on International Women's Day I embarked upon a residential workshop in Orvieto, Italy with a group of peculiar women from all around the world (well, nearly). We had all come to take part in Simone Forti's Logomotion program and were to perform in Rome on March the 16th, just one week after our initial meeting.

The event was hosted by Rosella Fuimi, one of seemingly few presenters of contemporary/ investigative dance practice in Italy.

The first person I met as I arrived in misty Orvieto the evening before the workshop, was Tihana from Croatia, friendly and warm in her red felt coat. Next came Patricia from the USA/Netherlands, then Defne from Istanbul, Joelle from Switzerland and Karen from Cambridge, USA. Later the group was completed with the arrivals of Chiara, Camilla, Glenda, Laura, Franca, Federica, Marina R, Cristina (all Italian), Katherine (USA), Marina T(Greece/UK), Elisabetta ( Italy/Netherlands) and Maxine (Germany).

It was a beautiful week of experimentation, learning and sharing facilitated by Simone within the remits of her own research and development of the Logomotion form. We worked physically and with the voice, a synthesis of information finding its way in and out of performance, mealtimes, walks around the town and personal writings.

The initial culmination occured at Teatro Vascello, Rome where we performed our improvised scores as solos, duets and trios, culminating in an open form- a score in which the whole company participated.

We have since retained links within the group, visiting each other for teaching exchanges, performances, conferences and holidays. I have made some great friends within this group of women and I know that I will continue my dialogue with them in the years to come- it just suprises me how quickly this year has passed: We had so many plans to work together again.

In such a large group with the many languages through which we filtered our ideas ( and personalities!) it has been difficult to develop relationships with each and everyone over the past year, but I know that as a group we have made significant in-roads toward maintaing those relationships, making contact when possible.

In May 2008 I travelled to Boston, MA to visit Karen, mainly to laugh and talk and talk and plan wild plans.... In October 2008 I was working for Valerie Preston- Dunlop at the Laban International Conference which was attended by Laura Delfini (Italy). I hope to be more regularly in touch with the group over the coming year with thanks especially to....

DEFNE! For taking the initiative to re-focus us on our time in Orvieto with the production of the flyer (above) which invited each memeber of the group to commerorate our process by performing an 8 minute solo on the 8th March 2009, one year after we had originally met.

It was inspiring to me to know that all over the place members of the group were remotely engaged with me, my dance and our collective experience in Orvieto. Already there were reports of dances in the woods, in jams, on stage, alone in the corners of the studio. One can imagine the same on the street, in public and private.

It was affirming for me to feel not only permitted, but required, more incited to perform for the group yesterday. It was a private affair for me, not advertised nor planned. Last week I was hit by a car and I am sufering physically now, aching and sore. I felt anxious that my offering to the group might in some way be substandard. Silly. I started, it didn't matter so much what I was doing this time- more the act of deciding to perform and perform I did. On my own (well with the cat as audience) but with all those beautiful women whose support I could intuit from afar.

Sometimes all we need is a reason to begin. So often I ask only that of myself and do not place enough value on my own need to create, the support of the others yesterday helped me to move, and more than that- to connect again.

e-counselling

2009-03-08T19:06:00.003Z

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2009-03-08T19:00:00.000Z

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roof top, Brooklyn,

2009-03-08T18:57:00.005Z

Roof-top linescape and shadow the conceding softness. The heat of this whiteness. The neatness of this height. Metal falling over metal and tyre on the bridge. All the protrusions. Rods and vents bent over and standing tall as a photograph of a crowd looking at its feet. Roof garden of emissions, top head of the building thinking of me.