Talking with Simon – 13th March 2011
1st interview
Simon “I hope this is OK …..we don’t have too long but I can see you again after the next set.”
Sara “That’s fine. I intend to respond to the work rather than review it, to just dwell in and around the piece. Vida and Claire thought it would be good for us to meet up and have a dialogue around this piece as my research is focusing on stillness.”
Sara “So how many times have you made this work?”
Simon “We did it last year with a group of dancers actually. 8 dancers at St Pancreas in London and Claire saw it there. It was a commission by the Place and St Pancreas. Then I forgot about it really, and then Claire said would you like to do a version for Nott dance. It makes perfect sense, historically, in terms of what nott dance has been about. Things that are right on the edge or have fallen off the edge in terms of dance practices. This one was a little bit different, because most of these performers have little dance experience. So being in the rehearsal room was very different. I was curious what it would be like. When you’re involved in the embrace a lot goes on. Very basically it’s quite a long time, not that long, but you do start to get a bit sore and it’s also its very emotional. Embracing someone even if you don’t know them…..”
Sara “Or maybe particularly if you don’t know them?”
Simon “Maybe particularly if you don’t know them. In hindsight of course……I find that….well just how significant that act is to humans. We’re not supposed to be statues or anything like that. It’s not about trying to get money from….like buskers. But the guys here that aren’t trained they tend towards that. The idea of moving, doing movement that is not drawing attention is quite hard. Then if I think about my dance training….to scale back is quite difficult.”
Sara”Yes, sometimes when I have worked with dancers, working on the untraining of the bodies, the everyday-ness, has been more challenging than working with performers who are physically competent and aware and knowing but haven’t got those traditional techniques.”
Simon “Yeah, that’s right. Very complex. Those kinds of people would be ideal. Not that I think with this there needs to be a particular kind of person. For me there is something very pleasurable about the idea that it doesn’t need a certain kind of person. Indeed that was one of our ideas because they were all dancers last time they just tend to be a little more uniform, so it’s really lovely that its different ages ….I think that suits the ideas in the work much better.”
Sara”So how do you get them to ’become’ still then?”
Simon “Two weeks ago we had a two hour rehearsal…..with a group of about 5 from the city council and I spent the entire time getting them to a point where they would just be comfortable hugging someone they didn’t know. Then what happened, not surprisingly was that 3 of them, there were all these redundancies being made, so 3 of them have interviews on Monday (tomorrow) so they said we can’t do it. So none of this group were at that rehearsal. So we met yesterday ……laughs….that’s fine, so I really had no time so I said to them well we’re just going to do that. In a way it’s probably better….so what we did was we did a little task in pairs where we would say the things that were on our mind at the moment and at the end of it we had to try and do an awkward hug, what would an awkward hug feel like? There were lots of parodies…….everyone met everyone. It takes quite a long time maybe a whole hour.
I said this work involves two things embracing and waving………………it’s pretty casual and then we set up the exercise and it was interesting because basically we’re interested in each other, humans are interested in each other, how quickly it was for them to get to a point where they were engaging in this prolonged embrace, some of them knew each other but a lot didn’t and that engagement is deeply pleasurable for me. Then there’s the practical things; like how do you get your feet right so that it’s not awkward. So we made a couple of rules, like lets have our feet either side of each other one on the outside one on the inside, little things that people who are not working in body practices are not used to figuring out for themselves. …..so then they’d shift to the next person and have a conversation about the hug they just had so there’s a sense that if I have a conversation with someone who I didn’t just hug I might be able to say different things and it might inform how I hug this next person. Then it was 2 minutes, 3 minutes, then I tricked them into 4 minutes, then 5.”
Sara “Are you interested in those conversations the performers have, those dialogues?”
Simon “No …… yes. Well, I was trying to give them as much space as possible but because I was also involved I became aware……we’d check in together as a group. If there’s anything that they think is important or if there is anything that they’re not sure about then those conversations reveal a lot about what people are remembering.”
Sara “Where’s the inspiration from? Can you track that?”
Simon “That’s a very unusual experience. I was at the Place in 2009 and I was doing some research in the studio. Chris from The Place stopped me and said we’re applying for some money to do something at St Pancreas next year, are you interested in doing something? At first I thought of a technological thing, embedding screens into the floor but then I said I wasn’t interested in that as I do that a lot I wanted to do something that was right at the other end of the scale. I was thinking about this place, this zone, which I’ve experienced a lot in train stations and airports. Bob and Lee talk about it as a ‘no place.’ The zooming in on a place that is public and open. The significance of that. “
Sara “What’s really interesting as well is how active people are within that space.”
Simon “Yeah. We spent much longer at St Pancreas, so we spent a lot of time just watching. Also St Pancreas is such a different space to this. People notice immediately here whereas in St Pancreas…..wow….. (looks at watch) I need to go.”
Sara “Go.”
2nd interview
Train times tannoy in the background.
Interview cuts in to ……..
Sara “I had to have a practice I could do at 45 I love the way the kind of yoga I do is framed.”
Simon and I talking about yoga – yin yoga
Sara “Just letting go – gravity. It’s to do with fascia you just have to let go in order to be still to meditate.”
Sara “Can we talk about audience?
“My experience is that I had a narrative journey of it, in the sense that I was moving through a number of sections.”
Simon “Yes”
“How significant is it that D4 are giving out a card that says this is a piece in nott dance, connected to a festival? That frames it in a particular way doesn’t it?”
Simon “Yeah. It’s not my ideal situation it’s fair to say. But also I think there’s always those constraints, in understanding the realities of the situation. My idea was if people really show curiosity you might go, here’s a card, so you know, a year ago when we first started talking about it we had postcards……..I wanted the idea that even if its only 4 people in 6 hours I’m not really concerned with the number of people; if they want to know more they can take a card and go and look it upon the website and see a little bit more information…….. But how to manage that (the giving out or availability of that material). It’s been very tight. It’s not a complaint but…..
Even using the word performance is problematic.
1. Yin Yoga contains the ancient, and some say original, form of asana practice. The sages who pioneered the path of yoga used asanas to strengthen the body, so that they could sit for long periods in contemplative meditation. If you have ever sat for a long time with legs crossed, you know the hips and lower back need to be strong and open. The sensations you felt were deep in the connective tissues and the joints. These are the deep yin tissues of the body, relative to the more superficial yang tissues of muscles and skin. Yin Yoga opens up these deep, dense, rarely touched areas. www.yinyoga.com
Yin yoga is relaxing and therapeutic. Yin Yoga uses long holds of supported postures to release fascia. Fasica is the connective tissue that holds us together surrounding muscles and muscle cells, attaching muscles to bones (ligaments) and bones to bones (tendons).
Muscle fibers are red and can only contract. Fascia tissue is white and can only lengthen Fascia takes a long time to warm-up and changes slowly. Once lengthened the changes to fascia are long lasting.
http://www.michellemyhre.com/2010/12/relax-deeply-yin-yoga-sequence.html
There’s a performance on. Because what people understand by the word performance to be is very narrow. I’d rather say there’s a little thing going on. There’s something gentle going on.”
Sara “What is that negotiation with D4 about? Did they feel that they had to signpost it in that way?”
Simon “No I don’t want to overstate that. I said the thing we did last time was like a business card. As a programme….”
(Conversation about D4 logo –Simon being paid…… but no-one else being paid)
Sara “How different it feels because of that framing. It’s interesting and very obvious to you I’m sure that idea of leafleting – because it’s loaded. People resist that…..I used to be a promotional girl in London when I first graduated so I’m bringing my own stuff here ……
Simon “I had said if people were curious…...but they’ve been much more….but you know its ok…its fine. If people say no…..But for every one of those there’s people that aren’t getting something but notice.”
Sara “Absolutely.”
Simon “It’s the people that come to see something because they know there is something on…..it’s never what I wanted. It’s not made to be performed at particular times where people turn up and wait to see something. It doesn’t work. The idea is that the audience is accidental or incidental. …accidental But what was interesting…something I hadn’t considered is that people turned up because they had read about it and they looked and looked and looked and started seeing it everywhere before they even found it. They started looking and seeing …..maybe that’s it and that’s lovely. That’s what we are dealing with. A range of human actions from the smallest of nothings, extraordinary virtuosity – its Schechner it’s all those kinds of people…”
Sara “I felt privileged to have that opportunity because it’s only by being here and dwelling in it that you see these lovely duetting moments with the people that are passing by…”
Simon “Yes.”
Sara “That’s a perfect place for that to happen, I would have choreographed it that way, that’s beautiful.”
Simon “Yes …there are exquisite moments….of theatre…..people performing when they don’t know they are…they are so in their world and that’s really beautiful.”
Sara “Yes and how it draws your attention to that quality because its something to do with that difference and repetition isn’t it? The quality they (the non-performers) have within that feels so different.
Simon –“Yes you can ….and can’t even imagine trying to train people to do that? If I understand the word presence…then your commitment to the leaving, your sensitivity to that moment in time, the leaving, however long it lasts is so present ……we talked about it yesterday (with the performers) the other extreme is when you are not participating in the hug at all (personal anecdote I was physically present that was all…is it too soon to leave…….terrible other extreme). Maybe some of those are in there as well? (Referring to non-performers leavings).”
Sara ”Also there was a moment just over there where a man was crying as he was leaving his partner (crying in the embrace) and the profundity of that was much greater…I felt like I had to avert my eyes.”
Simon “Yes…because it felt voyeuristic. I don’t know whether I’ve thought deeply enough about the voyeurism. We don’t normally really watch people like this ….watching these two now……”
(we turn and watch)
Simon…”The cards thing………….made me”
Sara “It’s my stuff as well…”
Simon “No, No, No …it’s about the clarity of the organizing. They’ve been really good actually…not publishing times…..that’s really hard to get an organization not to do, it runs against all of their priorities but its just about being really clear spending time with them (foh) (on the stuff that goes around /alongside the piece).”
Sara “I don’t think we’ve met since I did this…but we made Dream Work for the last nott dance …..which was a performance walk through the city which ended at the station so this is my first return to the station as a performative space and I was having to do all of that care around the performance through the city and its very different experience from ….I do have a certain heightened sensitivity towards all of that.”
Simon “yes but I completely agree with you – it’s problematic”.
Sara “Can we dwell upon the different experiences of it in the different spaces around the station where because of where its placed and how busy it is, this last piece feels so much more incidental and less staged then other parts …can we talk about your experiences of that?”
Simon “I was always interested in and still am interested in …where the edges are …its full on us waving through the barriers …some people don’t want to look…. so going from that to the choreographed part on the over bridge …all the way to this traveling sequence …when I was first thinking of this idea THIS was the territory I was first thinking about….I was curious about how little do you have to do before something happens in a space? In a way you could say we did too much, even in this last part. I was amazed at how active the space was. It’s an interesting tension when you are a choreographer because the idea is people watch what you are doing; it’s so counter-intuitive to your training, the economy of it. This is unquestionably my favourite part. “
Sara”Is that because it feels less staged, less theatrical? There’s lightness about it. That (the barriers) becomes pros-arch doesn’t it?”
Simon “Yeah but also ….we’re dealing with a group of people (the performers) that if they are dancers they are right at the beginning of their training or not dancers at all so in a way when I was thinking about space I was trying to think about what gives them a way in to performing…how do they cope with these different situations? We could have done an hour here, no problem. The over bridge is in a way photographic, it lends itself to being photographed. It’s so highly choreographed.”
Sara “It’s a beautiful long-shot.”
Simon “Yeah. ….These are good questions…in a way if I think about what I’m like when I’m standing on stage what I’m seeking is this very thing here in the sense that I’m not asking these people to look at me. How is it that I can be on a stage where I am not asking people to look at ME? It’s a long way from look how…..high I can jump?”
Sara “Absolutely.”
Simon “I can understand how that is interesting for people, I understand how culturally we are fascinated by that kind of virtuosity but I do like the possibility of standing on a stage and disappearing. It’s impossible it’s like standing on stage and trying to fail as soon as you have failed then you have succeeded.”
Sara “Or to try and ‘be boring on stage…”
Sara “Of course what happens to me is…and I don’t know how much I was influenced by what you said to me or I was thinking about it already (before) but how you are or how Dwane (another dancer) is in that in the stillness compared with some of the other performers is so vastly different.”
Simon “That’s ok. I keep saying…just a little less movement. Just a little less movement because the problem is I don’t want them to be statues. But that’s complex. That is very complex. Even like me, I’m thinking about all my performance experiences and how I’m standing. Actually the people that are best at it for me are elderly people, there’s less of a self consciousness about who they are, what they look like, that seems to have disappeared. I really like the way they are.”
Sara “I wonder if that is connected to slowness? I don’t know how good we are at being slow?”
Simon “It’s not rewarded. Culturally it’s not rewarded.”
Sara:Anecdote “I’ve just been to Kenya. You probably know this. Do you know how the Masai Mara men get their ladies? – it’s how high the jump. There’s something that I can’t get yet about their technique of dancing of jumping but it’s….”
Simon”Amazing.”
Sara “Amazing.”
Simon “These are interesting things you’re asking. With the elderly, yes there’s something about slowness but also I do think its something about they’ve stopped caring about what they look like. I’m 42 now but it’s still pretty important to me but in your twenties or as a teenager that’s pretty much all you are thinking about. Look at this guy here, that one armed hug, he’s patting his head, it’s all pretty interesting….”
Sara “We should stop.”
Simon “I better go….”
19mins
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