Made By Katie Green

Night School event, February 24th 2012

2012-02-13T14:35:00.000Z

One of the many things I do alongside my work with Made By Katie Green is lecture in dance at University Campus Suffolk (UCS) in Ipswich. I've been working with second year UCS students to develop a new piece as part of their site-specific choreography module, and they will be performing that work as part of the NIGHT SCHOOL event at Ipswich Art School:

On Friday February 24^th2012, second year dance students from UCS will be performing their own choreography as part of:

NIGHT SCHOOL

Ipswich Art School (1 Upper High Street, Ipswich, IP1 3NE)

5.30-8pm (drop-in throughout the evening)

FREE entry

About the new dance work:

Drawing from the current Art School exhibitions by Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy (MBE) and Gareth Bayliss, the second year students from UCS have created a short, playful dance trail that moves around the gallery. Sampling movements from their own everyday rituals, the dancers create patterns that respond to some of the different spaces the gallery has to offer.

About NIGHT SCHOOL:

Experience the Ipswich Art School Galleries in new way during this evening of extracurricular happenings!

This evening’s programme will include temporary work around the displays including performance, music, spoken word and film as well as artist-led activities for everyone to get involved with.

This event is supported by Arts Council England.

http://www.cimuseums.org.uk/whats-on/2012/02/24/quot-night-school-quot-art-amp-entertainment

Please contact katie.green@ucs.ac.uk if you would like to receive more detailed information about the timings of the dance performances on the 24^th February.

3 minute Oxygen trailer

2012-01-22T17:16:00.001Z

Here are 3 minutes of dress rehearsal footage of Oxygen, the Made By YOU 2011 young choreographer commission by Alexa Mason. Oxygen tours as the curtain-raiser to Matters of Life and Death: http://www.madebykatiegreen.co.uk/madebyyou.htm

This is how Alexa describes her duet:

Oxygen is a journey for two people exploring things about themselves and each other. I have been playing with the idea of survival, looking in detail at certain things we do as humans/animals to stay alive. What happens when there are only two people fighting for the same thing when there is only enough for one? - do they argue? fight and manipulate each other for the space before them? or perhaps help each other on their way.

Choreography: Alexa Mason
Dancers: Marie Chabert and Rebecca Yates
Sound design: Max Perryment
Lighting design: Gareth Green
Costume design: Berit Laageide
Filming: Steve Hatton, Electric Egg

The Made By YOU commission was supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, the St Hugh's Foundation and Youth Dance England partners in the East Midlands: Dance4, Déda and Lincolnshire Dance.

7 minute trailer: Matters of Life and Death

2012-01-18T17:23:00.000Z

I've now managed to process more of the video from the Terry O'Toole Theatre to create a slightly longer look at some highlights from Matters of Life and Death. This trailer is 7 minutes long and integrates more footage from our dress rehearsal on the 20th October 2011.

Details as before:
Matters of Life and Death
Made By Katie Green

Dancers: Marie Chabert, Morgan Cloud, Adam Kirkham, Daniela B. Larsen, Rebecca Yates
Sound design: Max Perryment
Lighting design: Gareth Green
Stage design: James Perkins
Costume design: Berit Laageide
Filming: Steve Hatton, Electric Egg
Management: Morton Bates Arts Services

The Matters of Life and Death project is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, the St Hugh's Foundation, The Place, artsNK, Lincolnshire Dance and Déda.

www.madebykatiegreen.co.uk
@madebyKG
www.facebook.com/madebykatiegreen

Clips from Matters of Life and Death dress rehearsal, Terry O'Toole Theatre

2011-11-27T17:02:00.003Z

So finally we can bring you just a taster of what the final production of Matters of Life and Death looks like as an hour-long version.

Due to difficulties with file size and the capabilities of my computer I have been delayed in processing the footage of the whole performance. However, Electric Egg are working hard to process the dress rehearsal/performance footage from our premiere (Terry O'Toole Theatre, North Hykeham, 20th October 2011) so that my computer can read it. In the meantime, here are some edited highlights from the first half of our dress rehearsal on that day.

Matters of Life and Death
Made By Katie Green

Dancers: Marie Chabert, Morgan Cloud, Adam Kirkham, Daniela B. Larsen, Rebecca Yates
Sound design: Max Perryment
Lighting design: Gareth Green
Stage design: James Perkins
Costume design: Berit Laageide
Filming: Steve Hatton, Electric Egg
Management: Morton Bates Arts Services

The Matters of Life and Death project is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, the St Hugh's Foundation, The Place, artsNK, Lincolnshire Dance and Déda.

www.madebykatiegreen.co.uk
@madebyKG
www.facebook.com/madebykatiegreen

Notes on Intention: more from dancer Adam Kirkham

2011-09-25T23:09:00.000+01:00

We’re approaching our final week of rehearsals at Moving East. And the piece is certainly starting to take shape. I’m amazed at just how much material we have so far. Now comes the important task of bringing together everything we have learned both in workshops with Tom our Drama Practitioner and in rehearsals, refining qualities and intentions. Our now infamous wooden objects, Clive, Bridget and Astrid have been away at our designer James’ studio to be worked on. They’re back! and it looks as though they’ve put on a little weight since we last saw them. But they’re all the more sturdy for it... Important when you're standing on them!

We’ve worked a lot over the past weeks on performance intentions. Particular ‘buzz’ words for me have been Disgust, Panic and Guilt. Now in a position of piecing together, how do we make sense of these varying emotions in our performance? From where do they originate not only in our physical bodies but in relation to one another? How do we convey a dramatic intention as a dancer in an abstract piece in which our relationship to the other performers is constantly changing? How do you draw a line under one intention before we move on to the next? We are at the point where we have roughly set the first 16 minutes of the piece and I am trying to come up with a linear journey for my character to make sense of these questions. It's particularly challenging when the unconscious body plays such a vital role in the production. With the abstract nature of the piece we each find ourselves ‘unconscious‘ at intermittent points throughout. We are present as performers, and an unconscious body makes a presence on stage, but an unconscious body cannot have an intention in itself. It is finding these intentions in moments of transition that will give the piece its shape.

There is a scene when Dani wakes me up from being unconscious, the ensuing emotion seems violent, but only because I am trying to show Dani what has happened to me. How can I convey this intention without it looking like I’m simply being violent towards Dani?

I’m sure I will find answers to all these questions as the choreography is set. I’m looking forward to where our final week will take us!

Not wanting to give too much away, but we will soon be working in a blacked out studio at Chisenhale working with torchlight... Nothing like dark and shadows to set the scene for a murder!

Diary of a Dead Man: thoughts from Adam

2011-09-25T23:04:00.000+01:00

Slow. Blurred. Off balance. Rocking. Heavy, dragged feet.

Smack. Crashing. Angry. Foaming. Splash.

A hand. Two. Pressure. Neck. Back. Desperate limbs. Face down. No Air. Pinned under. Crack. Snap.

Calm. Cradle. Rocking. Lifted. Silence.

Morning. Dew. Crisp. Fresh. Silence

Shadow. Footstep. Gasp. Scream. Echo. Birds. Silence

Shadows. Feet. Running. Panic. Louder. Reaching. Pulling. Jolt. Heavy. Heavier.

Week 4: Thoughts from Katie

2011-09-25T23:01:00.000+01:00

Now that the piece is coming together, it seems harder to find time to write thoughts for the blog, because I am caught up in the doing of everything I'm reflecting about.

So it was very helpful for Kate Flatt, the choreographic mentor with whom I'm fortunate to be working for this project, to come and talk to the dancers and I last Friday. The outside perspective brought us a welcome opportunity to reassess the impulses at the heart of the piece and the Matters of Life and Death project as a whole. By continually rediscovering those impulses, as Kate encouraged us to do, we will ensure that the work never becomes tired or predictable. Anne Bogart, as Kate told me, calls the moment of beginning to set choreography having improvised for a long time a 'brutal act', because it can cause the performers to begin to repeat rather than to revisit and develop. Now we're entering into the final stages of realising the piece we need to continually find ways of revisiting our source material.

Some other gems that Kate encouraged me to think about:

What does the activity of repeating and/or rewinding signify in the work?

It is a deliberate, desperate act, which indicates the characters trying to escape from a reality that is too difficult to accept, or hoping with all their hearts that something will have changed when they come back to the original starting point.
No matter how much the characters try to resist going forwards in the piece, they ultimately cannot do so, and later in the piece it gets even more difficult to go backwards.

The characters are individuals throughout the work.

Even when performing as a 'chorus', collectively embodying something about the state of mind of one of the other characters, or creating/contributing to a particular atmosphere, they still have their own intentions, and their own experience of the movement impulses being articulated.

We have to always take care when handling the objects in the work, even when carrying out an ostensibly simple transition. It is never quite that simple.

We have to acknowledge the many qualities of contact in the work that are appropriate at different moments, so the contact never becomes uniform throughout the piece.

And finally for now, I have begun to notice the recurring importance of the ideas of:

'home', or of what is known
truth, or the real version of events
water

and the continually shifting sense of these ideas throughout the piece, represented by the characters' movement towards and away from all of them.

Thoughts from Rebecca after Choreodrome

2011-09-20T21:56:00.000+01:00

Two hard but good weeks at The Place, looking forward to coming back and continuing to work on the project and to see where it will end up. So many ideas. I find it hard to digest, and yet, still a lot of focused work on the design objects. Thinking about the bay and the sluice and where it happened has made me long for the sea and the water. I find myself walking up to the lake by my house in Sweden, looking out feeling the breeze and walking out to the jetty. Thinking.

Working with Tom Cornford (theatre director) made me think. Me and my flat mates were watching Achterland by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, and my friend (non dancer), very clever, says, “this is just like acting”. My answer: “this is why they do a lot of acting at PARTS". Where does acting start and dance begin? We talked about not expressing or letting the expression of your face be over-dramatic, but more about the emotion, what is happening inside this character, where does its journey take them. I found myself thinking or trying to figure out about this “journey of the character”. And slowly there she began to take form in me or in my mind. Still I can quite clearly see how she acted, maybe not in all aspects and all situations, and maybe she was a bit like me, but stronger. More independent.

Katie and Tom have then mentioned the unknown, the “not knowing”. This is something that I am finding difficult. And I only realized now whilst writing about it. Am I a dancer acting or am I an acting dancer?

I don’t know but there is something that we notice when someone has got “it”. They look fantastic on stage and you don’t even know what it is but you only look at one person, and that person steals all the attention. Now I know this is not acting, but if not, then what is it, because there is something you do when you perform? Obviously we are trained dancers and not actors, so there is a clear difference. It makes me wonder why there is no acting in a lot of dance schools; they do some physical activity, in a different way at theatre or acting schools. The question is where you find it, is there anything to find?

Physicalising emotions, but there is no dancing….We talked about the “inner” dancer, which I found quite useful. But there is something about keeping the emotion there and by keeping it, there is not too much need of any facial expressions. I find myself either feeling like I am doing too much and being maybe a little bit more intense than what is necessary, or not doing enough, as if what I am feeling is not being established for the viewer.

I do think that these two fantastic art forms combined create something very strong and an intense experience for both the performer/artist and the viewer.

Week 3: Thoughts from Clare

2011-09-18T22:22:00.000+01:00

Following on from our last blog post, after Clare Daly visited us in rehearsals last week she sent through some feedback about the work she had seen:

Katie Green very kindly gave me the opportunity to spend time with Made by Katie Green in rehearsal as part of my work placement. I joined them last week at Moving East for company class and to observe rehearsals for Matters of Life and Death.

There was a focused, industrious yet relaxed energy about the place. Katie’s ability as a choreographer to inspire and guide the dancers was evident immediately as the first rehearsal began. The dancers, Dani, Morgan, Adam, Marie and Rebecca are in turn engaged and enthusiastic. It is a relationship which enables an honest and natural work to emerge.

An element of the piece worked on during the week was the development of the characters' emotions from anxiety, panic and guilt to trust. With a dark theme the movement which materialised was beautifully expressive, aggressive and in ways ritualistic. The extracts of the soundtrack I heard, composed by Max Perryment, increase the haunting, raw and racing atmosphere of the piece.

Another aspect in progress was working with the objects, designed by James Perkins, which create a set like structure and astutely show progression of the story. This feature required technical and timing precision which Katie and the dancers worked on intensively.

It was a valuable experience for me to spend time with Katie and her company, to watch a distinguished choreographer at work and get such great advice from her!

I really look forward to seeing the finished work in performance and wish Katie and the dancers the best of luck!!

And thank you for having me!
Clare x

Video footage from week 3 at Moving East

2011-09-17T18:17:00.000+01:00

This week we welcomed Clare Daly into the studio. Clare is about to start her third year at Laban, and asked to come and see what we were up to for 4 days. As well as observing rehearsals, Clare participated in our open morning company classes and some of our bizarre afternoon warm-up games!

Clare put together this short video documenting some of the movement development we undertook this week at Moving East. Unfortunately a technical glitch meant that we lost the best part of 16 GB of video footage this week (of this and other projects), but we remained calm, and Clare set about collecting more footage in order to make this 3 minute video.

Behind the scenes and into the mind of...

2011-09-14T22:58:00.000+01:00

Hello all! Dani here to give you some juicy gossip from the inside.. err.. I'll do my best to anyway..

So last week was reflection week at MBKG and so.. I reflected.

Firstly I reflected upon how wonderful it is to be back in the studio with Katie Green - not to mention having the pleasure of dancing with Marie and Morgan again! Equally as wonderful has been the meeting of and dancing with the lovely Adam and Rebecca for the first time. It truly is a wonderful group, a wonderful time and a wonderful life! We have already had such a busy time together!

The second week in the studio saw us appearing in Touch Wood programme 7 at The Place alongside Company Chameleon, Amy Bell and Valentina Golfieri, and Shelly Maxwell. We also had a Choreodrome sharing - by which point, as well as dealing with Matters of Life and Death, we were also dealing with a small matter of a very bruised Adam Kirkham! Ever the trooper he battled through whilst we worked to avoid making him flinch with pain..! I'd say, both hugely useful and successful showings with plenty of feedback and ideas for Katie to ponder! Unfortunately the end of week 2 also brought the departure of our two wonderful apprentices Lucy and Phelix - so gorgeously open, hard working and eager.. the studio won't feel the same without their laptop lit faces and bubbling personalities around.

Back to rehearsals this week and I am beginning to have some 'BING!' moments about my role as we start crafting and digging deeper into the character side of things. Connections are becoming clearer and the plot is beginning to thicken - it's like a real life whodunnit in the studio! Every new task finds us all raising our eyebrows suspiciously at each other and finding (sometimes completely outrageously comical) links and discoveries. There are certainly many 'AHHH" moments not to mention the amount of inquisitive sideways glances that get thrown around. I can only describe this process as a metaphorical treasure chest, it's exciting and best of all it is full of goodies to be played with and had.

What threw me slightly yesterday was the incredible urge I got to shout ' GET OUT OF MY PUB! ' -

I just want to clear up, it has nothing to do with Eastenders or pubs, but you'll be pleased to hear - I managed to resist.. acknowledging quietly that what had been triggered here was the comical element of my psyche that instinctively takes over when faced with dealing with serious feelings relating to serious matters. And thus, it is something about the way in which the subject matter or the process seems to be tapping in to my unconscious mind in this way that only adds to my compulsions and drive as an artist involved in this process. Frighteningly, as I realise we have just two weeks of rehearsals to unfold this work I am also filled with excitement and intrigue for Katie's MASTER PLAN.. (7 double sided sheets of colour coded spreadsheet-idge later)..

And so, quite like nearing the end of a good book, I feel addicted and eager to know everything, whilst simultaneously wishing it to last! I'd say that I feel like we are now in a state of 'continuous acceleration' towards the final product (if how fast the days are passing is anything to go by).. I think Tom Cornford would perhaps describe this as 'Contracting Towards' - no wait, 'Expanding Towards'... no.. hold on.. I need to think about that..

Week 2: Seeing patterns unfolding...

2011-09-05T12:47:00.000+01:00

At the end of 2 weeks of research at Choreodrome at The Place, and the beginning of a week off from rehearsals, I find myself mainly thinking about overall structure.

Originally, I thought about the overall structure for Matters of Life and Death thematically following something approximating Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' Stages of Grief:
e.g. (in our version): disgust, denial (shock, panic, misguided hope), guilt (mistrust), regret (longing), hope, acceptance

Having spent 2 weeks in the studio with the ideas I'm less certain about starting out the structural work with something so thematically mapped out, and with each section focusing on a single theme. This isn't actually how the world works, and quite often when we're working in the studio on 'anxiety' for example, it can transform into fear or panic, and even into hope. It is the crossover that is interesting; the tension between two different emotions or responses and the way we see that tension being resolved or not resolved. So one person can panic, be comforted and panic even more as a result. Another can panic, be comforted and then feel secure and more capable of moving on. Another still can panic, be provoked even further (perhaps by another person, although that person could also be a physical representation of what is causing panic within the mind of the character rather than a separate entity) and something else will happen.

So, I think it makes more sense to me now to magnify elements of the original scenario within the work (the scene in which the body is found floating in a Fenland sluice), perhaps by focusing on what 2 or 3 characters are doing instead of all 5, or looking at things from a different perspective (which could also mean an imaginary perspective), and to allow these magnifications to show me how to structure the work, allowing for crossover rather than grouping thematic ideas together.

Overall the piece has to have a sense of development - it will begin in darkness I think, so it will end in light. It will begin with a frenetic, irregular rhythm, it will end with a flowing rhythm which shares the qualities of water. Through the process of repeating the original scenario or seeing it again in a different light we will learn more about its component parts - movement themes will help us tie everything together, but as the work goes on these themes will become increasingly interconnected and therefore more and more complex.

As we (the audience) know more about the original scenario, the characters also know more. However, as they (and we) know more, and things get more complex and multi-layered, we have to admit to knowing less. As David Eagleman writes in one of his Forty tales from the afterlives, if we were given an opportunity to see everything around us in terms of some kind of fundamental code and therefore to know more about how the world works, we would still most likely do things that the code told us that rationally we shouldn't do.

"being let into the secrets behind the scenes has little effect on our experience" (from David Eagleman's 'Blueprints')

Recognising the pattern shouldn't diminish the thrill of experiencing it or the immediacy of doing something without really knowing why. Eagleman uses infatuation as an example: "knowing the inescapability of heartache does not reduce its sting...glimpsing the mechanics of love does not alter its intoxicating appeal".

I think I also have to remember this in terms of my approach to making my work as well as the content of the work itself. Often I see things in patterns, or I try to look for patterns in order to determine the next direction. It's useful to have a certain amount of structure mapped out in order to keep rehearsals on track. However, sometimes there isn't a pattern - I just like something I see, for no discernible reason and my instincts take over. That is also okay, and a valid way of allowing the work to unfold.

Apprenticeship video by Phelix Cullen and Lucy Rowland

2011-09-04T16:37:00.000+01:00

Phelix Cullen and Lucy Rowland, Lincolnshire Dance apprentices with Made By Katie Green, have put together this short video documenting their experiences working with the company from July - September 2011.

To begin with, Lucy gives an overview of the time she spent with the company as a performer in the Moving Colour commission from the SO Festival 2011 and the Passage Festival 2011.

Then Lucy and Phelix document the time they spent with the company during 2 weeks of research at Choreodrome at The Place, including footage of one of the Contact Improvisation workshops they participated in, which was led by Jovair Longo.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the making of this video.

Life as an Apprentice: Part 2.0

2011-09-01T14:43:00.002+01:00

To think there are only a few days left of our placement at Team KG makes us a little sad. We seem to have packed so much in over the last two weeks but there is plently more to do. This week we have had two workshops with theatre director Tom Cornford that covered something totally new to the both of us. The workshops looked at the use of sensing the feeling of the inner body and how these feelings can physically portray different emotions and qualities to audience members. We are sure to take this skill on and use it in our future endeavours!

We have been editing more videos, some of which can now be seen here on the blog and our final apprentice video is coming along nicely. We are busy interviewing the dancers and asking them questions about Katie’s work and their lives as dance artists.

Katie is busy preparing multiple work-in-progress showings for the end of the week. We are intrigued to view some other choreographers' work at Touch Wood and to see Yossi Berg & Oded Graf Dance Theatre perform Animal Lost at the Robin Howard Dance Theatre. Not that Katie’s work isn’t good enough!

We feel really privileged to be in a situation where we can see and do as much as we can. We have not stopped learning. In terms of choreography, the main element I will take away is how to address emotive content within movement. Anyone can tell someone to look distressed, but will that be convincing? The dancers get around this by appearing to put themselves into the situation and feel what they would feel as if it were real life. They are a talented bunch.

Lastly, Phelix’s Parmesan Spring Chicken was a huge success and Katie’s house is still standing.

Lucy & Phelix

Matters of Life and Death: Rehearsal Footage from Week One at Choreodrome.

2011-09-01T11:47:00.001+01:00

Here are some early rehearsal extracts from Matters of Life and Death.

Video edited by Lucy Rowland

Choreography by Katie Green in collaboration with the dancers.

Dancers: Marie Chabert, Rebecca Yates, Morgan Cloud,

Adam Kirkman and Daniela B Larsen.

Extracts from the first sharing of 'Oxygen' by Alexa Mason

2011-08-29T14:22:00.000+01:00

Video edited by Lucy Rowland
Choreography by Alexa Mason in collaboration with the dancers
Dancers: Marie Chabert and Rebecca Yates
Original soundscore by Max Perryment

With thanks to Déda and the other Made By YOU partners for giving us the space and support to put this sharing together, and to everyone from the invited audience who contributed feedback.

Main (and ongoing) challenges: week 1

2011-08-29T14:18:00.000+01:00

The last blog post was getting a bit long, but of course I still have more to say! Here are some more thoughts about my main challenges this week, which were:

distillation: within the content of the piece, but also in terms of trying to find key focus points within the sheer volume of research that I have undertaken in preparing for this project since January 2010; I have been reassured by some of my observations of the work Jovair did with the dancers - if the body is prepared in the right way, the images it creates are connected to what you want to achieve without too much difficulty or forcing of the stimulus. I am certainly well-prepared for my rehearsals of Matters, so I have to trust that the work we produce is all connected, even if sometimes I find it hard to make the connection immediately.
rhythm: as described above, I have been giving detail about the comparative rhythms of different sections, but also focusing on the rhythm of particular movements
in reflecting about the week's work over the weekend, I've also had to challenge my previous understanding of the overall structure of Matters, asking myself again what the purpose of seeing the original scenario from Waterland from different perspectives might be, why we change the person who is unconscious, how we introduce this possibility to the audience so they have a better chance of understanding, or at least going along with what is happening. Or to put this another way, how do we signal that something about the logic of the performance world we are creating is changing, without also creating overwhelming (and therefore perhaps obstructive) confusion in the viewer. It seems that the key to this is to have a clearer trigger to acknowledge that we are now starting again (although maybe from a different perspective), at least in the earlier sections of the piece. This trigger could be a music cue, a lighting cue, the recognisable shape of the unconscious body when it is discovered, the particular pathways that those who discover the body take into the space, the spatial relationship between the unconscious body and one of the set-pieces, and probably many other things of which I'm not yet aware.
risk-taking: it is in my nature to want to understand everything that is happening at every point in time, because it is very important to me that the work I make connects with genuine human experience and the way in which we all see the world. However, I have to admit that this sense of understanding is very precarious at the moment, and consequently it feels like many things we try in rehearsal are shots in the dark. As I've said above, I know this isn't actually the case, as this piece has been in the making for a long time now, but the feeling of not knowing what is going to happen and sometimes not knowing what to do next when something unexpected does occur is still unsettling (and therefore exciting). When I was mentoring Alexa as part of the Made By YOU project preceding the start of our rehearsals for Matters, I felt very secure in what I know about how I work and why. That sense of security is disrupted by the vast scope of the source material for Matters, the number of collaborators involved and perhaps by my sense of responsibility to do the work and myself justice within this project. I am pleased that what I have taken on is so ambitious and I recognise that I will always feel unsettled at times throughout my working process: this encourages me to keep asking questions, and my sense of responsibility and ongoing desire to reflect means that I will always be making the best work that I can, in the best way.

Some thoughts at the end of our first week

2011-08-29T14:15:00.000+01:00

We've just completed the first of 5 rehearsal weeks beginning to develop our research from last year into an hour long piece called Matters of Life and Death.

This week we've been working on establishing a clear sense of our original scenario (the scene taken from Waterland by Graham Swift) or 'trigger image'.

For example, we have developed our understanding of the geography of the original scenario, working with designer James Perkins, and using the first of the set pieces James made for us. At the moment that geography looks something like this:


Working plan drawing by James Perkins

I've also been thinking about the appropriate rhythm for the opening of the piece.
Initially we're working with a slow-paced torchlight section, in which the unconscious body 'bobs gently', 'swivels and rocks', 'in the position of someone quietly, pronely asleep'. The body floats in this way throughout the night before it is discovered, and consequently I want to find an engaging way of replicating this sense of a great deal of time passing in the opening scene of Matters. By 'engaging', I also mean 'intriguing', but I would not discount the possibility of making this section (a prelude or overture to the main piece) uncomfortably long, so the audience recognises the need for something to change before it actually does.

At dawn, the body is discovered, and we see 4 people arriving on the scene: the emotions they bring in with them dictate the rhythm of their behaviour.
Elements that also contribute to the rhythm of the original scenario include:

initially there is a sense of disorientation because the body is discovered very early in the morning, and the characters have to deal with their disbelief that something like this could happen here, and on such a beautiful morning
the body is face down when it is found, making it difficult to recognise and to manoeuvre
there are several failed attempts to get the body out of the water
some of the people who discover the body work at cross-purposes, therefore making it harder to remove the body from the water
there is urgency and therefore time-pressure, due to the fact that some of the people who discover the body refuse to believe at first that it cannot be rescued

We've then skipped ahead a bit in what I understand to be the overall structure of the piece to see what happens when we use James' set-piece to anchor what is happening while we alter the perspective of the original scenario:
We've found that the pivoting action that occurs around the body as we rotate the perspective distills what is important e.g. in terms of

the movement getting more abstracted
our recognition of the more powerful parts of the space (the small part of the sluice in which the body is found and the 'safe space' that the people who discover the body carry it to)
the fact that the activity of pivoting itself is indicative of many of the behaviours we're dealing with anyway e.g.

by turning the scenario round and round, we represent a kind of denial of the fact that it happens in the first place: the pivoting action also represents a building confusion
there is a longing to go backwards which cannot be fulfilled which connects with regret, and also with hope
the perseverance indicated by the repetition of the original scenario also connects with hope
reiterating patterns are fundamental to life e.g. they connect with how we learn, with how we make memories, with how we tell our stories, with the passing of the seasons and the phases of our lives. Phelix and Lucy have done some research into the work of artists Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy in connection with this, and I have also been reading On Europa by John Berger and Sum by David Eagleman (amongst lots of other resources) with this in mind.
by accumulating a complex developing pattern of circumstances, we recognise the impossibility of a simple pattern, or of straightforward, unchanging, simple emotions

There are lots of alternative versions of the original scenario, or new directions in which we could take it, and this exploration of the alternatives will form the main content of the Matters work.

This week we also had 2 sessions with Contact Improvisation practitioner Jovair Longo, who worked with the dancers and Lucy and Phelix (our project-management apprentices who have been supported by Lincolnshire Dance to be with us during the first 2 weeks of our rehearsal) developing many things including:

an awareness of the spine, and the fluid movement resulting from this increased awareness
working with less movement, but with more attention to the detail of that movement
introducing an awareness of memory within the improvised work e.g. allowing the experience of an improvisation to imprint on the memory, also drawing on memory sub-consciously as a stimulus for improvised movement
revisiting patterns of falling (disorientation, thinking three-dimensionally), and spiralling
reminding us that the 'floating' image we play with a lot in Matters can be swift and weightless, it doesn't only have to be slow and sustained
registering different qualities of contact
recognising when we are active and when we are passive in contact with someone else, and acknowledging that sometimes we can make a conscious effort to shift between the two

From Morgan: thoughts on choreography and rehearsal studio floors!

2011-08-26T14:36:00.000+01:00

We have just finished Day 4 of our Choreodrome residency, and so far
so good! We’ve been working on bits and pieces of the work, toying
around with many different ideas. Having covered for one of the
dancers in a performance of the first version of the work, I have
learned material the previous cast created, and now I am experiencing
the tasks that were used to create some of that material. There have
been several “a-ha!” moments for me in these past couple of days,
where I realise how some of that material came to existence, and a few
other moments where I can’t help but compare the outcomes we’ve
reached in our experimentation - there are plenty of similarities
between the two versions, but the similarities are more like those of
cousins than siblings: it’s clear the grandparents are the same, but
their parents have injected a bit of new blood! (NB Katie I guess
you’re the granny in this analogy…heehee!)

Tomorrow is one of our longer days of rehearsal - from 10 AM til 8
PM, with three hours of contact improvisation in the morning. A great
way to start the day (Jovair is a great teacher, I remember his class
from my first term at The Place many moons ago) but it does tend to
make me very, very sweaty. Apologies in advance to the other company
members - I’ll pack extra deodorant, in case my smell begins to
overpower that of the floor!

Incidentally, in one of our short breaks today, I took a moment and
stuck my nose next to the floor to see if it stank as badly as on our
first day and lo, it now smells of bleach! Perhaps our days of
cheese-and-toast scented hands are over…

Life as an apprentice...

2011-08-25T22:57:00.002+01:00

Our names are Phelix Cullen and Lucy Rowland and we are Katie Green’s apprentices. We have been hired by Made by Katie Green in conjunction with Lincolnshire Dance as part of a graduate scheme as we have just finished studying at the University of Lincoln. The apprenticeship consists of two weeks working on Katie’s current work, Matters of Life and Death at Choreodrome, based at The Place. It is day three and rehearsals are well underway in London. The dancers are working hard to rework phase 1 of last years’ Matters of Life and Death project into phase 2 and we are hard at work creating facebook groups, editing videos and taking excursions to Oxford Circus. So far working as an apprentice has been a learning curve, most of Phelix’s learning has been about how to use the tube, and the fact that the Northern Line is shut until November at Tottenham Court Road. Lucy has spent most of the time so far creating some spectacular videos on her new MacBook Pro, which will soon ready for viewing. Keep your eyes peeled on the website!

The apprenticeship has been great fun so far, mainly because of all the different things that we have to do. Yesterday morning started with a very relaxing Yoga class lead by Claire Cunningham, a little bit of light shopping on Oxford Street and then off to rehearsals with Katie and the dancers. We both join in the warm ups which is great because it allows us to get to know the dancers a bit better.

Today was fantastic, we started at 10am with a 3 hour contact improvisation class with Jovair Longo, which was stress relieving to say the least! After a fantastic lunch laid out by Choreodrome we went hunting for torches and tape, which were found in the legendary Camden. Then it was back to the studio for more video making, networking, emailing and typing.

Over the next few days we have another workshop with Jovair Longo which we are very much looking forward to. Phelix has also promised to cook a meal at the Green residence... so watch out Katie, we’ll try not to burn your kitchen down.

Here are a few photos from rehearsals:

All Photos By Phelix Cullen

From Rebecca...

2011-08-24T22:30:00.000+01:00

Rebecca Yates, one of the two dancers in Alexa's Made By YOU piece Oxygen, has written a few words summing up the last 2 weeks we spent in Derby:

Looking back on the two weeks that have just been it seems as if it was so long ago since we started and yet at the same time just the other day. It has been a good start to this journey and I look forward to the next step. Being able to go away to Derby and to work intensively on a project is a very nice experience; it makes you focused and also allows for the time off at the end of the day to really be time off. It’s been great to be able to work intensively on the new duet from Monday until Friday each week.

In terms of working with Alex, I was intrigued by how professionally she has dealt with the project, not only having Katie asking her “why?” but also having two dancers asking her question after question. But she has always seemed to have an answer to them. I appreciate her determination to stick with her thoughts and ideas, but also being willing to try out new things and not being scared.

A few words from young choreographer Alexa Mason

2011-08-23T10:35:00.000+01:00

We previewed Alexa's new curtain-raiser duet, Oxygen, at Déda in Derby on Friday 19th August. We will try to put some video highlights from this first performance on the blog soon, but in the mean time, here are a few words from Alexa about her experience of making the duet:

I have learnt so much during these past two weeks, about myself as a choreographer and about what dancers need to understand when learning material. e.g, the intention of the movement, and also the dancer's character during the performance - they have to understand why they are doing what they are doing: perhaps there is a story behind it. In this way the movement and performance has a stronger emotion to it rather than just an idea.

I have been playing with the idea of survival, and what kind of thing you do to stay alive. Also, what happens when there are only two people fighting for the same thing - do they argue? manipulate each other and fight for the space? or perhaps help each other on their way...

Photograph by Daniel Clarke

Moving Colour thoughts from James

2011-08-18T16:48:00.000+01:00

Moving Colour has lived up to its name, with rehearsals spanning the East Midlands and performances happening in Skegness, Sweden & Denmark. The costume designers made sure the colour part was true too – just check out the photos!

Katie's process for this project was very much one of planting ideas, letting us grow our own weird and wonderful movement from it, and then harvesting those parts that worked for her aesthetic. This always makes me feel a much stronger sense of ownership about the final piece, and some pride in seeing the other performers dancing even just a small phrase that I created. It's also a lot easier to remember material you've helped to develop.

Skegness was its usual delightful self, complete with trips to the arcades, dance mats, fairground rides, the fish & chip shop and time spent on the sand (though we never quite made it to the beach...next year!) There's always something you can grumble about but looking back my impression of the whole festival was really positive, and I recommend you check out SO Fest 2012.

Sweden benefited from amazing weather all week, the fact we made it to the beaches several times, and that we had already performed the piece, so I may be a little biased in singing its praises. Helsingborg doesn't have Skegness's amazing bargain clothes stores, but it makes up for it with yachts, a beautiful arts building and massive promenade complete with seaside open-air gym and a massive basket swing that makes you feel 5 again! The Swedish team were massively welcoming and I am so grateful for Facebook so that we can stay in touch (and I can practice my Swedish reading their random statuses). The only downside was the 9½ hour train-plane-train journey..

Other high points include teaching Ninja to an international audience (I am spreading this game as far and wide as possible), spending loads of time with my roomies Steph & Alice, being praised for being able to eat all of my Full English Breakfast and getting to work with Katie again, who is one of the nicest people I know.

If I have one regret it would be the time my body came crushing down on Vicky's wrist. I felt so ridiculously guilty, but she gallantly waived it off and soldiered on inspiring me to simply put up with the 1000 tiny splinters I got from rolling across the length of the wooden decking in the first day performing in Sweden. Vicky, you are a hero!

Some photos from Made By YOU rehearsal with Alexa this week

2011-08-17T19:00:00.002+01:00

All photos by Daniel Clarke

Week 1 of Made By YOU project

2011-08-14T16:07:00.000+01:00

Photos throughout this blog post: Katie Green

19 year old Alexa Mason from Ashbourne in Derbyshire has been selected from a group of talented young choreographers to create a new duet for Made By Katie Green in August 2011.

The Made By YOU project was open to all aspiring young choreographers from the East Midlands, and applicants had to submit a one minute video indicating their ideas for a new dance piece. Click here to read the full press release about the project.

Successful choreographer Alexa Mason is about to start her second week in rehearsal with dancers Marie Chabert and Rebecca Yates from Made By Katie Green, and the ten minute duet she will create in that time will go on to be performed as a curtain-raiser accompanying Katie’s forthcoming work Matters of Life and Death. This project is being funded by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

We have had a really enjoyable time during our first week at Déda (thanks so much to Déda for providing the rehearsal space) and some of the questions that I have been asking Alexa have included:

What is your overall purpose in making this piece? Is there something in particular you want to convey to your audience? Are there any key themes?
What parts of what you see in rehearsal are memorable to you? What are you looking for when you watch? What do you do when you see it? If you want to capture a memorable moment, how do you do it?
If you think something is effective, why is it effective?
Is it possible to always maintain a sense of what you are heading towards, even if it changes when you start to build up a structure?
How do you structure the rehearsal? When is it necessary to work on something in depth (for a longer period of time) and when is it important to move on?
How do you find the transitions between sections?
How do you ensure that your work covers space, and doesn't become restricted to one facing? (particularly with only 2 dancers)
How much can you meaningfully develop within the time-frame of 10 minutes?

My questions have become more and more specific throughout the week, as I (and Alexa) get a clearer sense of what the piece may be about, and my attention turns to ways in which Alexa can tell her particular story more clearly. So we start to ask things like:

Is this a piece about survival? If so, what does it say about survival and are there any ideas which are of particular interest?
As an audience member, how are we affected when we can't hear the dancers breathing? How do we respond if we can hear breath sounds?
What is the function of reversal, and of repetition in the work?
What roles do Marie and Rebecca begin to adopt as the rehearsal goes on? Do these change? How and why? What are the crucial moments that signal something is changing?

Observing Alexa is a real joy, not just because she is tackling this choreographic task with maturity and creativity and a genuine eagerness to understand more about what she is doing, but also because it encourages me to reflect on my practice and on what I have learnt since I was Alexa's age! I'll finish with just a few images of Marie and Rebecca's more playful improvisations, with apologies for my lack of skills with a camera!

Moving Colour thoughts from Sarah

2011-07-28T23:23:00.000+01:00

What a great opportunity to be a part of Moving Colour, phase 1 - the SO Festival Skegness, I feel, was a resounding success! Now gearing up and looking forward to Sweden and Denmark.

To think that it was a matter of a few weeks ago that rehearsals started and we donned our creative Olympic hats and hit the ground running (literally) to put together what I think is a fabulous festival piece. Thoroughly enjoyed working with a group of dancers possessing a wealth of expertise enabling the creation of solos, duets, trios, lifts, contact, improv, stepping, swirling, whirling, twirling.....the list goes on! And all under the calm, patient, creative brilliance that is Katie Green (too much sucking up?? Nahh :) )

Hardest moment (physically) - Lifting James! Although in all fairness it was much easier than I expected
Hardest moment (mentally) - Remembering my cues boooooo :S

Best Moment - The Saturday night performance - everyone and everything came together perfectly - be it a little later than expected - see below

Worse moment - Forgetting my cues boooo (you may see a pattern forming)

Happiest moment - Wearing my unitard - is that wrong!! I think not, I have never felt so streamline! Thank you costume ladies, it arrived at the perfect time

Most unexpected moment - 'Put on something warm to wear you need to come and see this' - spoken by Katie Green in the dressing rooms 10mins prior to the Saturday evening performance and referring to the out of control foaming fountain. Delayed us a bit but fortunately the SO Festival tech team were fantastic in clearing up the mess and there is nothing like last minute mishaps to get you truely focused on turning negative into positive - a fantastic performance!! :)

Most enjoyable moment creatively - The spiral duet, the baton duet in the square with Rachel, making the explosive movement moments into lifts! oh and pebbles....

Most enjoyable moment in rehearsals - Getting outside and on to site for the first time and realising in the fresh air and sunshine that the stage areas weren't nearly as difficult to navigate as we had first envisaged - felt everyone worked brilliantly together that afternoon!

Scariest moment - seeing the stages for the first time! They were a bit small, tiny in fact, one could say almost minute..........itsy bitsy....:)

Least enjoyable moment - Yes, thats right you guessed it.....missing my cues arggghhhhhhh

Most enjoyable moment in performance - Lifting Vicky on the Sat evening performance at the end of the piece - it's amazing what adrenaline and the attendance of very, very important people can do he he! Great way to end!

Other fond memories......The Beyonce warm up, Vicky's bright pink knitted cardigan, Carl in a string vest!?, James ability to eat even more than I do (a brave feat indeed!), Lucy winning a Smurf and our problematic leggings (just too much gusset!), Steph's unbelievable skill on a dance mat, Rachel missing her train on Sat boooo!, but meant she could stay til Sunday and I had a wonderful roomy and travel buddy yeah! and....... Alice playing ninja - the grace and brilliance of a true martial artist ;)

And a massive big up to the Swedish dancers Melanie, Tanya, Moa, Jenny, Cara and Ellen who handled a foreign country, tricky stage, swift rehearsals and performances absolutely brilliantly!

Sweden/ Denmark here we come - Go Team KGB!! :D

More about the process of creating Moving Colour

2011-07-28T13:23:00.000+01:00

Reflecting on my Moving Colour experience so far, I just wanted to add a few thoughts about the challenges I mentioned in my blog post on the 19th July.

The Moving Colour project is really ambitious, involving 20 dancers in total from 2 countries, new commissions from choreographer, composer and 4 costume designers, 4 outdoor performance sites in Skegness, 16 in Helsingborg and 4 in Helsinore and nearly 30 minutes of movement to create in 2 weeks. We have had comparatively little time to achieve so much, and I think this has brought out a really positive work ethic in everyone involved in Moving Colour: everyone has shared the responsibility for making the project come together, and therefore everyone shares the pride and excitement when the performances are so warmly received.

Some of the main things on my mind when working with this intensity are:

trying to maintain the attention to the detail of the movement, even when we have to work quickly e.g. considering ways to keep the pace of the work up, but also varying the quality of the movement, allowing for rhythmic variation
considering the particular requirements of outdoor work e.g. the necessity for strength of performance focus, directing the dancers to embody what they are doing as fully as possible as well as equipping them to deal with the situation when they come face to face with their audience and may need to work around or alongside them as they move from site to site
ensuring the dancers take care of themselves, and that I prepare them fully for the task at hand: this is particularly important when they are working away from home in an unfamiliar environment, and the SO Festival took great care to ensure that all the dancers were well accommodated and well-fed! (thank you to the SO Festival catering team!)
planning ahead so that project management complexities are dealt with prior to the intensive rehearsal and performance weeks. It is impossible to cover everything in advance, in which case I have to be careful not to bring project management issues into the rehearsal room. I'm getting much better with experience at putting contingency plans in place so that there aren't too many surprises in the final stages!
staying true to my own way of working whilst also integrating the specific criteria of a commission that has been conceived by someone else; I have to make something that feels right to me, and it can be more challenging to follow my instincts under time pressure. So I have to trust that the preparation I have put into the project, including my conversations with other collaborators - dancers, Max the composer and the costume designers -will ensure that the final work has my choreographic signature running through it.
the audience. They are always on my mind when working under time pressure and within an outdoor festival context. I want the audience to engage with the work, I do not want to isolate them from it, and I love creating work for an audience of passers-by, many of whom may not have seen anything like this before.

Although challenging, Moving Colours has proved to be a wonderful opportunity, and I am immensely thankful for the energy and creativity that all the dancers have contributed. There were many moments in Skegness when I saw really satisfying audience responses: small children standing absolutely still and focused before starting to dance along with the performance, groups of teenagers who were laughing and joking but then stayed to watch the whole thing. And just before the final performance, the small team of girls who had been playing in the foam of the fountain (see previous blog post for details of bubbles incident) helping us to mop up the performance area with towels before sitting to watch the performance.

Photographs by Daniel Clarke

I believe I can fly

2011-07-27T10:44:00.000+01:00

Some Moving Colour thoughts from Vicky:

Vicky here reporting on Moving Colour at The SO Festival.

So we found ourselves in Skegness staying in these fabulous chintzy B&B's putting the final touches to the piece with the Swedish dancers. The Swedish team were brilliant, always applying so much energy and determination.

We were given tasks exploring Olympic ideas such as passing batons, track running, sporting frames, exploding energy, determination to win, false starts, warming up and the journey of a relay race between four stages. We developed material by enhancing movement with more height, explosion and expansion. Katie pulled material apart and edited literal vocabulary into qualitative excerpts.

When we performed the piece this weekend I felt a huge amount of team spirit which was enhanced by our Great Britain coloured costumes. Our team KGB (Katie Green Bean - no link to Russian intelligence!) as we liked to call ourselves! I felt a huge wave of energy from the audience as they followed us to each stage towards the sea.

A lot of direction we received was to reach more, expand more and to try to get each other higher and further. I was lucky enough to get lifted into one of the final reaches that pushed me very high and allowed me to see the whole of Skegness! So I will leave you with a video excerpt that inspired me to believe I could fly high!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba7rRfKIHxU&feature=related

Moving Colour thoughts from Lucy

2011-07-27T10:37:00.000+01:00

Here is the first blog post from Moving Colour dancer and Made By Katie Green apprentice Lucy Rowland. You will be hearing a lot more from her and fellow apprentice Phelix Cullen over the summer (the apprenticeships are supported by Lincolnshire Dance, and both Lucy and Phelix are recent graduates from the University of Lincoln). Lucy is also solely responsible for getting me on Twitter!:

So once I received the “you’re hired” email from Katie, I embarked on the first two weeks of my four-week apprenticeship. Little did I know that this involved crossing squirrels, spiralling Olympics, running around fake fountains and leaps of death. These are some nicknames of recurring sequences and material within Moving Colours that had been created in collaboration with all the performers and Katie. Unusual names for sequences seem to be a recurring tool that Katie likes to use, and evidently they are very successful in helping us remember what comes next.

An unthinkable amount of material has been created over the last two weeks, which Katie has moulded, developed and chopped into the four sections. For me, the piece certainly captured the energy, teamwork, exuberance and liveliness that the Olympic games can bring. However, when performing the piece, it felt like it represents something more than just the Olympic games. The four performances at the SO Festival brought together dancers from two countries, Britain and Sweden. The piece developed a sense of unity, togetherness and emotion. I have come away from this project with not only performance experience from the professional dance world, but I have also met a lot of great people. Thanks everyone!

Lucy Rowland

Also!

Katie Green is now on Twitter: @madebyKG

Selected performance photos from the SO Festival 2011

2011-07-24T15:22:00.001+01:00

The following photos were taken during our two days of performances at the SO Festival in Skegness. Thank you to everyone who made these performances possible, including the amazing SO Festival technical/production team who handled the situation so brillantly when someone decided to fill the Jolly Fisherman Fountain with washing up liquid 30 minutes before our final performance! (see extra photo at the bottom taken by Bryony Mylroie-Smith, who warned us about the situation just in time!)

Photographs: Daniel Clarke

Rehearsal photos for Moving Colour at the SO Festival 2011

2011-07-22T13:45:00.000+01:00

Photographs: Daniel Clarke

Moving Colour at the SO Festival 2011

2011-07-19T23:58:00.000+01:00

We started work on our SO Festival commission, Moving Colour, last Monday. The piece will be premiered at the SO Festival in Skegness on Friday (4pm and 6pm) and Saturday (3.30pm and 8pm) this week and then we will perform it again in Helsingborg in Sweden and Helsinore in Denmark throughout the week of the 1st August as part of the Passage Festival.

The concept of the commission, which is part of Igniting Ambition in the East Midlands and therefore a Cultural Olympiad project, is to create a series of 4 short pieces for 4 different areas, which can be performed as a dance relay. In Skegness these 4 different areas are spread along the Tower Esplanade, so the audience will follow the performance from the Jolly Fisherman fountain to the beach. For me, it’s important that each of the 4 pieces is connected, and the movement we’re creating for all of the 4 areas draws from sporting imagery (particularly the icons that have been assigned to the 26 Olympic sports: see http://www.london2012.com/sport) and the Olympic values (see http://getset.london2012.com/en/educators/the-olympic-and-paralympic-values).

Costumes are being created for the piece by four recent fashion graduates from the University of Lincoln, Laura Burrows, Amy Hood, Gemma Handford and Laura Hayward, and the music is being composed by Max Perryment. 8 of the dancers for the piece are from the UK (primarily the East Midlands, with a couple of regular Made By Katie Green collaborators from London, Vicky and Carl): James Bartley, Sarah Butler, Rachel Farrer, Victoria Hammond, Carl Harrison, Lucy Rowland, Stephanie Smith, Alice Vale. We are also collaborating with 2 sets of 6 dancers from Dunkers Kulturhus in Helsingborg.

My plan for the 4 stages is to focus on 4 different qualities of movement/Olympic values, and Max and I have also used these 4 qualities to inform the music for each stage:

Stage 1 deals with beginnings: the start of a race, or even before that when the dancer/athlete starts the process of warming up their body, preparing themselves mentally and physically for what they are about to do. There is a lot of forwards and reverse in this section.

Stage 2, created in collaboration with our 6 Swedish dancers, focuses on the spirit of determination, and different ways in which we can get from A to B.

Stage 3 has become associated with the individual striving for a goal, featuring a lot of reaching movement. It also deals with the elasticity of movement: how far, how high we can push ourselves. We have created movement for this section through the activity of passing a relay baton so there is often a transferral of energy from one person to another, or from one dynamic to another.

Stage 4 is about cooperation, and will involve a lot more unison than I am used to integrating within my choreography! We also integrate explosive movement into this section as an expression of energy and vitality. The British and Swedish dancers will come together for this finale.

As often happens when dealing with so many different factors within a production, Moving Colour has been quite a challenge to bring together. I want to try to write more about this at the end of the week when I have more time to put together a blog post. For now, wish us luck for the first performances at the end of the week, and come and see us if you happen to be in Skegness!

http://www.sofestival.org/pages/artists/moving-colour.html

Design Workshops

2011-03-13T17:29:00.001Z

On the 8th and 9th March, designer James Perkins and lighting designer Gareth Green joined me at Deda in Derby to try out some design ideas for the development of Matters of Life and Death later in the year.

It was such a relief to be back in the studio with the ideas having spent so long away from them, planning at the computer!

We made some really useful discoveries during our two design days. In order to understand these, you may need to be reminded that Matters of Life and Death is inspired by a key chapter in Graham Swift's novel Waterland, in which a body is discovered floating in a Fenland sluice (although it moves far beyond this initial image). It may also be useful for you to know that my plan for Matters is to develop the work up to an hour later in the year (subject to funding), so I am particularly looking for ways to structure the longer work in order to make it engaging and sufficiently clear for an audience.

Photograph: Katie Green

1. The Fenland sluice in which we have previously situated the first scene of Matters of Life and Death had a rectangular shape that spanned the width of the stage: this was not necessarily apparent to the audience, but we used the edges of this imagined space to create much of the movement in our first draft of Matters last year.
However, by making a different spatial choice about the sluice (James imagined the body is found caught in the corner of a sluice gate) we created more interesting physical shapes, increased the urgency of the other characters' attempts to get the body out of the water, and created a more distinctive opening image (to which we could return throughout the work).
Although it can sometimes present a bit too much of a challenge to adapt a fundamental assumption you have held onto for a long time, this spatial change made a lot of sense straight away, particularly in terms of the impact it had on the crumpled, three-dimensional shapes of the unconscious body. Suddenly the scene seemed a lot more real and urgent, and the behaviour of the dancers was less contrived.

Drawing by James Perkins: originally the shapes the bodies were making were very open and two-dimensional

Drawings by James Perkins: with the potential for added height in the design of the work, and imagining that the bodies could find themselves curled or crumpled in the corner of the sluice, the landscape seemed much more three-dimensional

2. There is potential to use a bespoke design element (e.g. several pieces of manageable set) to anchor the overall structure of the developed version of Matters.
As the dancers fed back after the workshops, the design elements establish a sense of a particular 'real' place at the beginning of the work, which we can distort through shifting perspective, and then perhaps return to at the end (the circularity might help me with the difficulties I have had with ending the work so far).
James quickly put together some wooden blocks of varying size during our design workshops, as well as collecting together various other materials for the dancers to play with. The wooden 'posts' (which could indicate the sluice space in various ways) were the most interesting. Fabrics produced some more cliched results; perspex was effective, particularly when bodies were illuminated through the perspex sheet, but less in keeping with the textures one thinks of when considering a Fenland sluice in the 1940s.
Incidentally, following on from my discussions with James, I think it will be useful to root the beginning of Matters more fully in the 1940s world of Waterland, in order to be able to deviate from it more completely later on in the work.

3. Working with the design objects, we learnt lots of other things:

The objects can be manipulated more functionally to begin with, but as the dancers become accustomed to their size and weight, they can also manipulate them through counter-balance, without using their hands, locking them into place with the mechanics of a sluice gate for example.
The objects can be replaced with bodies in the set up of the sluice - we didn't have time to try objects replacing bodies, but it would be ideal if the design elements became so intrinsic to the movement world of the piece that they ceased to be separate from the characters.
The set objects can be moved by the naturally occurring shapes of the dancers' pathways - it is interesting to think of this movement dictating the form of the work rather than the other way round.
We can use the wooden blocks, although only slightly raised from the floor, to create substantial height, and to float bodies upwards without them needing to be in contact with other people.
Simple things are almost always the most effective or descriptive e.g. the slow spiralling of a floating body, or an inanimate figure being slowly dragged across a passage of light.
Having established an overall system for how the positioning of the design objects might change throughout the piece (even though it was a bit rushed because we worked on it during one afternoon of the design workshops!) the dancers felt that they were then free to explore and experience different emotional reactions to the discovery of the body in a more organic/honest way; I know that having an overall plan for the structure of the work would be helpful for me, even if we didn't stick with that initial plan in the longer term.
If we were able to change the shape of the sluice, we could draw it forward to 'include' the audience.

Photograph: Katie Green

4. We also made some discoveries about light:

The lighting plan that Gareth has previously used for the work still presents many of the most effective solutions to questions that we were raising.
We discussed the possibility of dancers being able to manipulate theatre lights onstage during the piece, but as Gareth pointed out, it can be more difficult to remove oneself from the conventions associated with a theatre when you bring a recognisable theatre light into the stage space.
So we also played with the idea of dancers manipulating torch-light in the space in order to direct the audience's focus: the torch-light was much more in keeping with the atmosphere of the work so far, but we discovered quite quickly that it would need to be integrated into the choreography at the very beginning of the movement-devising in order to work effectively.
It is far more effective for the dancers to conceal the torch as they work with it, to learn just how far to turn the torch in order to create the strange radiance of a partially lit figure (sometimes only illuminating the edges of their body).
Weird images can be created by focusing the point of the light on parts of the body that are difficult to identify in isolation, then following the shape of the body to a more recognisable focus point, like the eyes (particularly the eyes at the exact moment when they open).
Gareth created some very eerie effects by focusing on the moving bodies with a torch from offstage: however, we questioned whether it undermined our use of torchlight instead of theatrical light if we were just going to use it from a distance rather than bringing it into the space (perhaps in the frenzy of the first time the body is discovered floating in the sluice). Will an apparently 'disembodied' torch-light from offstage make sense?

As you can read, from only two days there is plenty to think about! But I think the realisations I have had about effective ways to structure the form of the developed piece have been particularly useful for me at this stage. I now understand that it will be possible for me to have some kind of system/logic in place for the overall structure of the work, whilst also maintaining the collage-effect and the manipulation of perceived boundaries that are present in Matters as it stands so far.

Thank you to James and Gareth, the team at Deda, and to James Bartley, Chris Caffrey, Ian Dolan, Natalie Reed, Stephanie Smith and Alice Vale for participating so enthusiastically in the design workshops.

A philosophy of teaching

2011-02-25T20:26:00.000Z

At the end of 2010 I started working towards my Diploma in Dance Teaching and Learning (DDTAL for short) for Children and Young People. As a result of this, I've been observing other practitioners at work, doing lots of my own research, and reflecting on my practice (including videoing myself teaching which has been particularly difficult!). Having done this initial work it felt important to me to put together a philosophy of teaching: this will probably change over time, but the process of putting it together has encouraged me to consider the key aspects of my participation work in dance. I'll also add a fuller version of this to the green bean dance page of my website in due course.

Photo by Brian Slater; YDE Young Creatives selection weekend 2010

My philosophy of teaching

Clear communication is essential in effectively managing participation projects. Every situation is different, and every project will require a specific set of considerations, but I believe in and will always endeavour to uphold these general principles (which are given here in no particular order):

•    As a professional dance artist, I want to provide access for all individuals to take part in dance activities of all kinds.

•    I want the dance activities I facilitate to promote enjoyment of dance and to nurture the creativity of the individuals taking part.

•    I believe in empowering individuals: it is my task as a teacher/facilitator to enable participants to locate, put into practice and take confidence in their own creativity / creative decision-making, not to dictate to them how and why they should move.

•    I benefit from careful preparation for and structuring of the dance participation activities I facilitate.

•    Learning from experience and thoughtful preparation enables me to be more ready for the possibility that I might need to make ongoing changes to modify the content of a dance activity based on the particular needs of a group.

•    I believe in challenging participants and setting high standards for the work I do with a range of individuals. As an example of this, I think it is important for dance participation activities to include a range of performance opportunities (e.g. small sharings within a workshop, in-school assemblies or end of project performances in professional venues for example).

•    All the dance participation activities I facilitate will integrate opportunities for feedback, and that includes the participants feeding back on each other’s work, as well as me offering feedback where appropriate.

•    I believe it is essential to establish a good working rapport with the individuals in any dance session in order for those individuals to feel free to create their best work. I will be as honest and open as possible with the participants and encourage them to do the same. Through managing a safe, enjoyable working environment that is structured but always open to change I aspire to nurturing the participants’ respect, for each other and for me. As a result of this respect, I expect them to engage fully and to feed back thoughtfully and sensitively on what takes place in each session.

•    This management of a safe and respectful working environment also extends beyond the activity of the studio and into any spaces in which the project management of a dance opportunity may take place. Throughout any participation project, I will remain sensitive to the needs of any partner organisations, and I will take the time to communicate clearly with those partners, keeping them informed about the progress of the project.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-15T18:03:00.001Z

I start rehearsal with the third years at Lincoln University on Monday. Since writing just before Christmas, I have actually been to see the Shadow Catchers exhibition at the V&A Museum and particularly loved the work of German artist Floris Neususs. His whole body photograms are really intriguing – they have more or less detail depending on how close to the photographic paper the model is when that paper is exposed to light. This means that when you look at them in the exhibition, they appear to be floating: http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/68818-popup.html .

I was particularly drawn to Neususs’ work, ‘Be Right Back’:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/68820-popup.html

The presence of the chair and the shadow without the shadow’s subject has become a key ‘trigger image’ for me when planning for my work at Lincoln: an image around which I can hang all the other ideas I’ve been collecting following my research into the photography of Francesca Woodman, and, from there, the photography of others including Duane Michal and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

Unlike the ‘trigger scenarios’ I’m usually drawn to, the details of ‘Be Right Back’, particularly what happened before and what will happen next in the situation Neususs describes, are very ambiguous. This means we can work imaginatively to try and fill in those blanks.

In the work that will follow this week, I would also like to investigate:

•    distortion of time, and distortion of space – playing with the ‘Be Right Back’ scenarios we create, and shifting where, when, how quickly, how slowly they happen so that we reveal and dissolve different versions of a reality with a chair and a shadow

•    light and shade – inspired by the fact that the work of the Shadow Catcher photographers often takes place in the dark room, I think we’ll play with what happens when movement takes place in the dark. Structurally, I’m wondering whether much of the activity of the piece will take place in the dark to begin with (with torch-light) so we only gradually reveal the fuller detail of what’s going on to the audience.

•    the potential for an image (in this case a photograph) to be about more than documenting an event; for it to have the capacity to function like a metaphor for something else, something more complicated

Choreography for Lincoln University, January 2011

2010-12-22T15:21:00.000Z

One of my New Year's resolutions is to start using my blog more frequently - in order to do that, I have to work out how to distinguish between the different strands of the work that I'm doing.

Partly as an experiment, I'm going to post a few bits and pieces about my early research for a choreographic project I'm doing in the new year.

From the 17th - 20th January I'll be creating a new piece in collaboration with third year students from Lincoln University. At the moment I'm looking at sources including:

some of the photography of Francesca Woodman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Woodman)
the content of the Shadow Catchers exhibition at the V&A (http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/photography/shadow-catchers-camera-less-photography/exhibition/index.html)

Hopefully more to follow after the Christmas break!

Some more catching up

2010-12-03T22:37:00.000Z

These video extracts from week 4 of rehearsal in Lincoln and our sharing at the Terry O'Toole Theatre in North Hykeham (both edited by Tilly) got lost in the week we moved on to Derby, and I have only just managed to recover them!

If you are interested in doing an apprenticeship with Made By Katie Green next year, Tilly and Becky (who were apprentices with the company from July to August 2010) will be leading a seminar at Lincolnshire Dance (http://www.lincolnshiredance.com/contact-us.asp) on the 20th January from 7-9pm to talk in detail about their experiences. Contact katie@madebykatiegreen.co.uk for more information.

New video highlights

2010-10-20T21:55:00.002+01:00

Here are just under 2 minutes of extracts from our filming day at Deda in Derby on the 10th September 2010: filmed by Doug Smith and David Scott, with lighting design by Gareth Green. See http://www.madebykatiegreen.co.uk/workinprogress.htm for full list of collaborators.

Starting to fill in the gaps:

2010-09-21T18:43:00.002+01:00

Photography: Nuno Santos (www.nunosantos.co.uk)

We worked in our last week of rehearsal on integrating some of the excellent feedback we received at our Terry O’Toole sharing in Lincolnshire on the 20th August, particularly concerning the giving and receiving of weight, and the many implications of making physical contact with someone. In our research we became so accustomed to just dealing physically with an unconscious body that I think we needed reminding that this is not necessarily the strongest reaction someone might have to such a situation. Following feedback from the 20th, we’ve been encouraged to consider when we use different kinds of manipulation in the piece, e.g. when we look but don’t touch, when we touch but don’t manipulate, and when we make contact in order to manipulate.

I have to admit that in terms of structure, this piece has been a real challenge to bring together:

because we had so much material that we were trying to consolidate into 20 minutes
because I was trying to create a non-linear logic that could shift between reality and imagination
because I knew that there was more about this work that I wanted to develop next year (which meant that, for me, the ‘first instalment’ we’ve created was going to seem incomplete whatever happened).

In making structural decisions, and the many changes of order which took place in the last 2 weeks of our research (which I’m not sure the dancers thank me for!) I took on board what Anna (Williams) said to me in our last mentoring session about really trying to find the most important things I wanted to say and bringing them forward. This often meant leaving key moments to settle for longer before moving on. As a company, we discussed the way in which these periods of less activity or of a single kind of activity over a sustained period of time gave people watching a chance to reflect on what they were seeing. I also found a lot of what Tom (Cornford) wrote in his notes on our London sharing useful when making my structural decisions – particularly what he described as ‘collage’, or placing ideas that had a similar feeling about them next to each other, even if they weren’t chronological, and also what he said about describing many possible aftermaths of a single traumatic event, without suggesting that any one of those aftermaths was what actually happened.

I’ve been struck, as I always am, by the point at which the work becomes something other than what you thought it would be, and you accept that it has taken on a life of its own. This piece took me by surprise in the final stages, (e.g. felt much more eerie) but now I feel that that was just what was necessary to take a step in a new direction.

About ending: this has been a real problem for me this time, and actually it’s always difficult to find a resolution; for now, with this work, the ending doesn’t feel like an ending and that’s important. I want to put forward the ideas we’re addressing in a cyclical way, so the audience shares in the feeling that something else could happen next.

Photography: Nuno Santos (www.nunosantos.co.uk)

Update

2010-09-21T18:39:00.000+01:00

It’s been difficult since we actually finished our project on the 27th August 2010 for me to find a moment to reflect on what happened during our five weeks of summer research, and I’m sorry that the blog is now a bit behind. We’ve had a few technical issues with some of the rehearsal extract videos Becky and Tilly edited, which I will try to resolve as soon as I can.

I’ve now, with Déda, launched into the final week of preparation for our Derby Festé Flash Mob (video tutorials and more details available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7utrX6A9WJ4) and there are always a million other things to catch up on. But I will be writing an evaluation for the summer project in the coming weeks and it may be that I write more on the blog as I go through that evaluation process. We’ve also had the first (20 minute) instalment of the work filmed professionally by Doug Smith, so there will soon be a showreel for you to see on the website. We’ll also add a gallery of Nuno Santos’ beautiful images to the website, although we’ll be saving a few of the best photographs for the launch of the next phase of this project next year.

and finally from Tilly.....

2010-08-30T10:18:00.004+01:00

The final work in progress has been performed in Deda, Derby. This week the five dancers had the music to work with and costumes to play around in, both of which gave the piece a atmospheric feeling and I am sure with the lights added in a few weeks, this will only add to this quality. The piece which now has the title of Matters of Life and Death is only twenty minutes of dance, but in that twenty minutes you feel like you are being taken somewhere else and the intricacy of the movement vocabulary is the catalyst for this journey.

For me this apprenticeship is all done and dusted and I am on to new and exciting things, but having the chance to follow Katie and the dancers through this whole process has been an amazing experience and one I won't forget in a hurry.

Tilly's edited video highlights from week 5 of rehearsal:

Music recommendation from Tom

2010-08-21T19:03:00.000+01:00

I hope Tom won't mind me adding this link to the blog following our second day with Anna Williams last Thursday.

I want to find a reference for what we were talking about today concerning all time and space happening at the same place and time, where everyone can inhabit the same role and it is only our limited understanding of this idea that creates linear sequences, fragments of a denser reality....

Have you ever heard 'Embrya' on Maxwell's Album also called Embrya?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrya

It's both underwater and backwards. Time is re-arranged and submerged.
This is how today's run felt. Bubbles of different times, viewpoints and situations floating past.

Photo: Amber Hunt; Rob and Tom during our photo shoot with Nuno Santos

From Tilly. . . . .

2010-08-21T11:05:00.004+01:00

Another week in Lincoln - done and dusted (this apprenticeship is going too fast for my liking). Had Monday off this week as the dancers went to London to have their photo shoot for the marketing pictures with Nuno Santos, its amazing what you can do with a black backdrop and a watering can! Yesterday the dancers did their work in progress performance at the Terry O'Toole Theatre, it went really well, there was a fairly good turn-out, so hopefully they'll be some good feedback from it before we all head to Derby next week.

This week has been exciting for me because I got to stand in for the dead body on a few occasions when the dancers needed a body to focus on or manipulate. This was really fun and I have to agree with Carl, its strangely relaxing-Odd!!

Apart from being a dead body and helping Katie out throughout the day, during the warm-up sessions in the morning I have also been a lizard, duck and even an adolescent camel, one of the many things we get up to. But please don't let that put you off if you're planning on coming to these sessions next week in Derby.

Overall, another week that I've thoroughly enjoyed. It's been so interesting to watch how Katie works and see the dance progress over the last 4 weeks, I've definitely been learning so much through this experience.

Thoughts from Rob

2010-08-18T21:18:00.004+01:00

Marie’s antics this week have turned the project into a huge game of “Cluedo” a good old fashioned who done it! With every task and in every alternative universe the lines are blurred more and more, the path you thought you were on has suddenly taken an eventful twist, leaving Marie starting to blame Professor Plum and a candlestick; she has become a regular Miss Marple.

So that one famous line from “Sixth Sense” has been working its way more and more into my head this week, for many reasons, but the greatest reason of all is ITS TRUE…. "I see dead people”.

I have learnt to deal with this newfound skill; the only issue now is its only ever one body and not always the same one…HOW ?!! Stay dead, let me stand back and watch people deal with you, I am there to provide comfort (apparently) if needed, come on its not much to ask now is it?

Right this is short and sweet, but I have to go and work on my powers of levitating Carl, any tips feel free to send them my way otherwise might have to reread a Harry Potter or two!!!

Photo: Amber Hunt; one of the 'behind the scenes' shots of Rob, Tom and Carl from our photo shoot with Nuno Santos on Monday

More from Marie.....

2010-08-18T13:12:00.001+01:00

So after having referenced 'Moulin Rouge' and used the alternative realities of 'Sliders', the work today reminded me of '8 femmes' or '8 women', wherethere is no killer but everyone has a reason to be guilty, and then could have become a remake of 'Usual suspect' where the killer is the one we suspected the least...

and more video extracts from week 3 of rehearsal

2010-08-15T17:22:00.001+01:00

Video extracts from first work in progress

2010-08-15T16:32:00.000+01:00

Sorry it's taken a while to upload extracts of our first work in progress. Tilly and Becky edited this for me on Monday, but internet speed in Lincolnshire was not quite as fast as it is in London, so I've had to wait a bit to finalise this blog post!

From Becky and Tilly, end of week 3

2010-08-13T12:11:00.006+01:00

This week has been exciting for us as the company have come to Lincoln. They are rehearsing in the university dance studio where we have trained the last three years and were taught by Katie Green in our final year. This week the dancers have been conducting some of the warm ups and more dance artists from Lincoln have joined in these classes, which has given the project a community feel. This experience has been interesting to see the different and unique styles of the dancers. Having the opportunity to observe the rehearsals that continue throughout the day, we have been inspired by the creativity that has been expressed. The dancers are collaborating their ideas and thoughts with Katie to develop the choreography. While the dancers and Katie are working hard in the studio we have been editing the film for week three rehearsals. Also this week we had a new challenge to help Katie advertise this new project by going on a local radio station, Siren FM. This was a great chance for us to chat about the progress of the work and also about dance in Lincoln community. Katie spoke about the work in progress performance that is to be held in Lincoln on the 20th August, where the public are invited to come watch the company's work and give feedback. We are looking forward to this event here in Lincoln and to hopefully seeing you there!

Tilly and Becky

(Company apprentices)

and from Marie

2010-08-12T22:55:00.000+01:00

Thanks Carl for your comment and advice. I wish I could be the dead body sometimes. I mean, wait a second. I need to explain. As dancers from the 'Matters of Life and Death project' we've been fully immersed into diverse 'finding a dead body scenarios' for now 3 weeks, so being a dead body, a psycho, a witness or an emotive relative has been part of our daily life for a while now.

Well, it is just to make everyone aware that the weight of the words can be sometimes scary but can take another dimension if taken from a different perspective. So by now you can figure that Katie's work is deep, intellectual, emotional, but that it actually keeps some distance with the subject, in a way that it abstracts it.

It has been exiting to follow how this research evolves from the book 'Waterland' to different possible directions and tracks to finally come back to the atmosphere described in the book. I feel grateful to have been part of this experience so far with creative dancers and choreographer.

This week has been fruitful and I think it is due to the fact that we keep possibilities open as well as narrowing down the subject, as explained earlier by Carl. We've worked on phrases linked to 'desire' and manipulated material in any way we could, making duets, quintets, assisting, resisting, taking out dancers.... and always refining the intention, always making it closer to the natural feeling coming from the dancers. So it I guess that Katie's process departs from a clear and simple idea or sometimes an intuition and searches for intentions.

I like the part where there was someone asking questions to the person manipulating the dead body. Then we found out that this person could be the 'killer's conscience'. But then how does the so-called killer react to it? Does he/she feel guilty? scared? wants to escape? You see, the scenario can change depending on what feels right and why we do what we do.

Thanks for reading and trying to understand.

Hope it is useful

Marie

Marie and Rob improvising at LPAC

Thoughts from Carl

2010-08-12T21:33:00.000+01:00

Hello there, I'm Carl Harrison, one of the dancers and just thought I would share my thoughts as well! It seems like at the end of the 3rd week and after the showing last week that it has become clearer where we are heading with the piece; a scenario surrounding the discovery of an unconscious/dead body. I think knowing that we have this scenario as a source to bind everything has freed everybody up creatively. In this way we can move quite far away from this idea/scenario but we can still manage to find our way back.

Having said this, we have found it challenging to find honest or realistic reactions to impossible situations I.e. 'How would you react if you came back to life from being dead or unconscious?'. It seems like in these moments, it would be good to find some absurdity or comedy as it appears to be heading in that direction. I'm really interested in the filmic nature of the work and am interested to see how that will be developed much later on in terms of lighting and staging

I have had the pleasure of playing the dead body for most of the week and would just like to take this opportunity to recommend it to anyone as a form of stress relief!

Carl in rehearsal at LPAC, Lincoln

Thoughts at the end of week 2

2010-08-08T16:56:00.000+01:00

At the end of last week, we had our first sharing of work in progress (we'll work on some video extracts of the sharing to post on the blog early next week), and those who came were kind enough to contribute feedback, some of which I will integrate here.

More than ever after the feedback last week, I understand how difficult it is to make work that is all things to all people. Much of what people wrote about in great detail after last Friday's sharing or described to me directly contradicted something that at least one other person said. Given that it is in my nature to try to keep everybody happy, this is a very difficult (although not entirely unexpected) thing for me to come to terms with! However, it does indicate to me that a) at least people have opinions about what I am trying to depict in the new work rather than just sitting back from it and letting it wash over them and b) this piece has lots of potential.

The main question mark I have at this point concerns clarity. In terms of overall structure, how much do I have to show/develop (for instance) a single, original scenario in which several people discover an unconscious body in real time, with perhaps a more literal representation of emotional intention, before I can move away from that and begin to explore all the other things that interest me? Does that original scenario have to come at the beginning of the work? Do I then have to return to it later on?

I had a brief discussion with the dancers just before people arrived for the sharing on Friday in which we realised that already we were sometimes finding an organic route between our ideas, and at other times we were showing things consecutively or side by side in space that did not directly relate to each other. We discussed that if we were really going to open up the possibility of things moving (spatially or temporally) in unexpected directions in this work, we would have to make sure we developed both linear and (to use the term Tom Cornford gave me on Friday) collage structures alongside and through each other.

Some people feeding back seemed to want more grounding in a source idea, more explanation about what exactly was going on. Others were more interested in a place where "the lines between reality and subconscious were blurred and they began interacting". Finally, I think that it is possible to satisfy both of these instincts; to understand and accept key features about the event of discovery upon which all of our material rests, but then also to move on from there to engage in a much less concrete depiction of the tendencies that make us all human and the very many layers of experience that we all share.

New influences, week 2

2010-08-08T15:22:00.000+01:00

So this week, one of my big discoveries has been the work of Bill Viola, particularly Five Angels for the Millennium (2001), thanks to Anna Williams, my choreographic mentor for this project, and Eckhard Thiemann, who suggested this and other references after our first sharing of work in progress at Moving East last Friday.

http://www.billviola.com/

From what I've seen so far, there's much to associate with what we've been doing in rehearsal: for example, the use of water imagery to initiate physical change in the piece, but also to reflect something more than physical; the exploration of sensory experience on a personal level, but also ways of opening up personal experience to create something more universal; the use of distorted time, space and perspective to guide us to see new things in scenarios we might otherwise take for granted, or take at face value.

From the biography on Viola's website:

Viola uses video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism. Using the inner language of subjective thoughts and collective memories, his videos communicate to a wide audience, allowing viewers to experience the work directly, and in their own personal way.

and a Tate press release from 2003 (http://www.tate.org.uk/about/pressoffice/pressreleases/billviola_19-05-03.htm):

Bill Viola describes the piece `The human figure arrives intermittently as a powerful explosion of light and sound that interrupts an otherwise peaceful, nocturnal underwater landscape. Because the sequences run in slow motion, and are further altered by running backwards and forwards or right-side up and upside-down, the image is read in unexpected ways, and the disorientation becomes an essential aspect of the work's theme’

Thoughts at the end of week 1

2010-08-02T18:47:00.002+01:00

Last week I worked with Laure (Bachelot), Marie (Chabert) and Tom (Goodwin) to identify some key features of the movement vocabulary we will be using to devise the new piece over the coming weeks. Rob (Guy) and Carl (Harrison) will join us tomorrow. For more information about the dancers and about the general starting points for the piece, please visit http://www.madebykatiegreen.co.uk/workinprogress.htm .

I've been taking a look through my notes from last week and really trying to hone in on what's been most effective, surprising and poignant. Here are some ideas:

I think what Iona Heath says in her book Matters of Life and Death: Key Writings (2008) about patience, and the ability to explore "the depth rather than the duration of time" (p.68) is really important - the piece that I want to make is about the depth and quality of human experience, both in terms of the way humans genuinely behave at crisis moments (in this case the discovery of an unconscious body), but also in terms of how they live their lives prior to those moments, what impact those moments have on their lives afterwards, and how we might be able to represent something of the nature of experience during a moment of unconsciousness
we have already discovered that time in this piece will be fluid and manipulated in parallel with other alternatives - and that's how we have the potential to open up the briefest moment of unconsciousness or consciousness to find out what might happen there (e.g. what do we see? what do we think/feel and how does that change our behaviour? who or what do we remember? do we experience regret?)
in saying that I'm reminded that one of the other important things we've discovered is that there are more degrees of consciousness or unconsciousness than we thought
by about day 3, having worked with being totally passive and fully responsive and changing between the two, Laure, Marie and Tom acknowledged that they were able to experience an absence of panic in dealing with an unconscious body that surprised them (and reminded us of the varying ways in which different cultures deal with death) as well as an honest sense of relief at someone's return to consciousness
the lessening or absence of panic is where we might find water in the movement vocabulary I think - following the logic for creating movement that we've set up, when we can transition impactive, sudden, indirect movement into a continuous rhythm, there's a sense of relief that begins to look like floating
not surprisingly, denial or disbelief were common emotions that came up in improvisations based on discovering unconscious bodies, as well as the feeling of not wanting to be left alone by someone

other, slightly more practical things that have occurred to me concern ways we can use emotions or qualities as a stimulus for movement that is genuine, but not necessarily literal (so we can move into a more imaginative vocabulary, that allows us to shift in rhythm unexpectedly or do something that we wouldn't ordinarily do if confronted with a crisis) - Marie noticed it was increasingly possible to shift between abstract and literal movement when both were in her body following recent improvisation
I would like to find more ways to emphasise the difference between the lightness and heaviness of responsive/unconscious bodies and also extremes of human behaviour - e.g. I think in order to express the revelation of the absence of panic, it's important to deal with what panic is

Quite a lot here to begin with!

Video extracts from week 1 of rehearsal

2010-07-31T23:23:00.000+01:00

Natalie and Becky introduced themselves in our last blog post with a few initial thoughts about what they'd seen in week 1 of rehearsals. This is a very short video of their edited highlights from the first week. I think that in this short clip you can see the transition we have already made towards clearer, more specific images, although there's still lots of room for play and change.

Having recently graduated from the University of Lincoln, Natalie and Becky's apprenticeships with Made By Katie Green are being supported by Lincolnshire Dance. They are helping me with many different tasks in order to gain an insight into the huge variety of skills a dance project of this kind requires.

Rehearsals have begun!

2010-07-29T13:59:00.002+01:00

The dancers have been exploring through the methods of improvisation and contact improvisation. Investigating the surfaces of their own bodies they have begun to experiment with different actions and movement qualities. Creating characters and scenarios from the discovery of a dead body.

Video footage and photographs of the first week's rehearsal will be released soon.

Becky Hollis and Natalie Reed (Apprentices)

Welcome to the new Made By Katie Green blog!

2010-07-25T23:42:00.000+01:00

This is a bit of an experiment for me. I have set up the blog to coincide with the rehearsal for the newest Made By Katie Green project (there’s more information at http://www.madebykatiegreen.co.uk/workinprogress.htm, including video extracts of our earliest research for the piece). I will post videos, photos and thoughts about the work in progress, and will also ask my dancers, collaborators and apprentices for the project to contribute their ideas here. I hope this process will help us to reflect on what’s happening in rehearsal, and perhaps keep me on track when that becomes necessary, but I am also interested to see whether this is a useful resource for other people who want to engage with what we are doing in the studio. So please send me any feedback by commenting here or emailing katie@madebykatiegreen.co.uk .

You can also engage with the new project by attending open classes and free, informal performances of work in progress: full date, time and venue details are online at http://www.madebykatiegreen.co.uk/workinprogress.htm.