Assignment 1 study i... can BN feet be in conversation with blackness?
PW: BN feet to Moten Gift
https://vimeo.com/157516620
No specific feedback necessary because it's still in the very very rough raw unfinished phase, but you find anything interesting or problematic, let me know please!
PW: BN feet to Moten Gift
https://vimeo.com/157516620
No specific feedback necessary because it's still in the very very rough raw unfinished phase, but you find anything interesting or problematic, let me know please!
I always feel weird giving feedback when there aren’t explicit feedback questions, so take all of this with a grain of salt. Also, I was able to watch this once, but somehow I can’t get the password to work now.
ReplyDeleteIt’s interesting how the camera is always focused on the feet-in-motion, and we never see your full body or face. I see how the partiality of this view might reflect the “less than” aspect of Moten’s theories (though I’m not sure about the “more than” aspect.) I wonder how this partiality will be reflected in live performance? Will you create a way for the audience to only focus on your feet, to see parts of you, or will the audience see your whole body? If they will see your full body, how will your facial expression, the collapse or erectness of your spine, be employed to convey emotion? Do you ever acknowledge, in movement, your racialized and gendered body and your skin color, into relation to Moten’s words?
I enjoy seeing/hearing your feet respond to Moten’s words. Sometimes your feet serve to emphasize phrases of his – sometimes they have the potential to compete with or drown his words out (you never quite drown him out). To me, your performance reads as a response to something fixed, not as a conversation, since you are forming yourself around him, and he never responds to you.
The idea of “drowning out” his words reminds me of your pegboard study, how one can erase or cross out in order to reveal, to focus attention on particular images, to generate new meanings that are already latent in the words. This is a gentler approach, fitting around and between, very respectful -- you don’t erase or cover up here in order to create new meanings.
One possible idea of an improvisational “score” might be an abhinaya approach: to identify a sthyai bhava and sequence of vyabichari bhavas connected to the text, or more simply to chart what emotions you feel as the words progress, and to have your feet reflect that emotional score. Moten’s tone of voice remains calm, with a sense of invitation that has a quiet urgency throughout, without much of an emotional, dramatic, or rhythmic/sonic arc. Would you like to overlay such an arc onto his words, or not?
I’m not an expert in BN rhythms, but from a quick listen it seems like you’re mostly improvising outside of a clear sense of tala or traditional rhythmic compositional structures. I don’t mind this, but it could also be interesting to consider the possibility of using Indian rhythmic and affective structures to embody some of Moten’s ideas. From my free-write: “What cultural and aesthetic resources are available to us that would allow us to claim this condition, which is already ours?” (Moten)…What is love-in-separation but the recognition that you are more than and less than one? And how do Indian notions of time and rhythm play into this? Is sam but the illusion of wholeness that disappears as soon as you touch it? What would it be to create a series of rhythmic compositions where sam is always khali: empty?” I’m also curious about your original proposal that you first dance to his words and then later dance to silence, with his words living inside of you.