AUDIENCE: INNER AND OUTER

What you experience in your inner reality illuminates your actions. When you work with a particular image, it transforms the way you move, the way you navigate your attention, the  spatial and temporal choices you make. What you feel and live within remains in a constant relationship to the outside. Your image-based action moves the world and becomes an image for the audience. You can work with inner images and simultaneously attend to the images perceived by the audience.

Through observing my dreams, I noticed that I experience a situation from different perspectives simultaneously. Being all characters in my dreams, I move closer to or further away from the heart of the action. I shift between being a doer, to witnessing a situation from close proximity, to becoming its’ distant observer. Naturally, I flow through these three perspectives, shifting between them in an unnoticeable manner. However, for the purpose of practice, I decide to work with them separately. Later, I discover a similar idea in the work of Rosalind Crisp and Mark Tompkins.

 

GENERAL PRINCIPLES:

Doer, witness, and observer are aware of each other at all times.

Doer moves with a chosen score. 

Observer observes from the outskirts of the space, taking on the perspective of a spectator. 

Witness senses, sees, and feels the movement of the doer. Witness takes into their own story what the doer does. Witness doubles the doer, takes on snapshots of their movements and carries them in the space. The snapshot appears at the time of the movement, with delay, as a memory, as a prophecy. Witness witnesses standing, sitting, or lying down. Witness is at all times visible to the observer. Witness works with the attention of the audience. Witness makes close ups and zoom outs. Witness composes the space between the doer and the observer. Witness creates perspective, context, and rhythmicalizes the space. Witness supports the doer in localizing their dancing, rooting dancing in a place and time. 

Doer, witness, and observer work with what is to reveal the magic of the unseen.

Doer, witness, and observer play with foreground and background. They use the power of the triangle to focus. 

Developing the same task, change roles. Observer becomes doer, doer becomes witness, witness becomes observer. Circulate the triangle 3 times. What do you create?

Hone the movement material of the doer. Develop it further through rotating the triangle. 

The first rotation: work with what you attracts your attention. 

The second rotation: work with the patterns you notice. 

The third one: name the latent potential of the material and ask how you can manifest it through movement. Work with the question. If there is a necessity, address it through movement.

Doer is developing a movement material. Witness notices what attracts their attention, what patterns they see, where the potential of the movement lies. Witness mirrors the doer as closely as possible: their movements, texture, emotionality, spatial and temporal choices. Witness dances with the doer, taking movement clues from them. Witness chooses where to do the movement and in what spatial relationship to the doer to be. They play with time. Doer leaves and becomes a witness. The procedure repeats.

Doer dances.

Witness observes the dance and changes the context around the doer by bringing in and removing objects. When witness places hands on the doer’s back, they signal they want to change the doer, and take on their movement material. 

Witness becomes the double, amplifying doer’s dance.

When doer steps down, witness steps in.

Do an imagery exercise. Find a partner and describe your experience to them in the present tense. Everyone at the same time, move with what you have described to your partner. Draw a map of the experience, letting your pen move on a piece of paper continuously and marking events you remember. Find a new partner and tour guide them through the experience, placing the events from your map in the actual space. Speak to the events in the present tense. Describe all that you know about what you have done: sensations, feelings, emotions, images, and movements. Your partner asks any open-ended, clarifying questions they have, to be able to imagine what you see.

 

Variation 1

The partner embodies the story in their own way. After you have watched them, revisit your movement material, adding anything that resonated with you to your own exploration.

 

Variation 2

You find another partner and embody your story in front of them. Change roles and experience the story of your partner. Playfully exchange roles between each other, alternating between the two stories.

Partner work / group work

Doer dances

Witnesses observe the dance and change the context around the doer, bringing in and removing objects

Witness may place hands on the doer, and replace the doer

Witness may become double of the doer, amplifying their dance

When doer steps down, one of the witnesses steps in

Music, lights are part of the context work

When you have composed a choreography, step down from the stage into the audience seat. Imagine yourself dancing on stage. How does it look? What attracts your attention? What moves you? What do you learn about the dramaturgy of images, the spacing, the rhythm of the work? What needs to be made more precise? Is there something missing? What would you like to shift? Return to the stage and address the necessities you have seen through movement.