After a full week of workshops and rehearsals at the NYXXX collective at Rökridån, Frances and I had worked on a couple of new performance ideas with ropes and with masks. This is a slightly new enterprise I started in recent performances. Exploring the theatricality using latex masks. There is a distinct perception of the material and the combination with domestic settings and quotidian actions, which I think are worth investigating. The way we used them, they generated a sort of anthropomorphic quality in the movement and the reading of animal relationships. It was not about animal play though. They are also an interesting tool to generate choreography from a different mode of body awarness, because of the slight deprivation of either the eye sight, or the hearing ability. How do we move, dance if these primary senses for orientation are reduced? How do we eat, bike, wait and so on.
Two weeks ago I taught a workshop at Meg Stuarts/Damaged Goods new production ‘Until Our Hearts Stop’, dealing with topics around intimicy. After a three hour warm up, they got the masks to improvise, and most dancers were in one or the other way flashed or inspired. Mostly I think they experienced a certain freedom and strangeness in motoric impulses. Allowing a strange way to move and a different sense for timing. Something shifts when the cat, pig or the dog become personalities. When they encounter or make human decisions. We will continue this research! Here are a couple sweet moments from the performance.
