What influences, processes and methodologies did you use to activate and extend your own imagination?
JASMINE KEADY:
My main influences emanated from Pina Bausch’s performances that displayed a clear indication to the difference in gender roles. This created a gateway for my imagination as I was able to relate our own ensemble of four females and one male to a performance that could use these genders to our advantage, for example the power struggle between a man and woman in Bausch’s performances inspired us to reverse the gender norms, creating a situation whereby the Male’s force was weaker than the ‘Witches’ force. Café Muller (2011) presents a scene where there is a male controlling a woman and a man’s embrace through repetitive movements. This gave me inspiration to incorporate a movement sequence that represents the ‘Witches’ attempt to stop James’ character from falling in love with Sunny’s character, it also highlights the hidden forces that are behind the internet, and the consequences that arise from attempting to disrupt the forces.
The process of repetitious movements was influenced from Bausch also, ‘’through repetition, the Wuppertal Dance Theatre transforms stable polarities such as dominated-dominator, dancers-audience, movement-words, body-mind, women-men, spontaneity-artificiality, daily life-theatre, individual-society, meaning-form.’’ (Fernandes 1995) This pushed my imagination into thinking past the thought that all movements should be ‘synchronised’ because that’s not a true representation of ‘individual- society’ or ‘dominated-dominator’ especially in the contemporary world that is surrounded by technology as our ‘third eye’. Repetition also aided my imagination because as I repeated each movement, my body parts took shape in a new way causing me to notice how my body could move and consequently exploring the endless possibilities, Fernandes supports this ‘by including its controller’s method (repetition) and subverting it , the body becomes responsible for its expression within the symbolic’ (Fernandes 1996: 102).
The repetition of our ‘witchy’ movements and whispering of the same spell gave us a bigger opportunity to delve into the world that we had created because we focused on our own agenda instead of being conscious of the other character’s movements. Another process I undertook to expand my imagination was the research of the phrase ‘witch-hunts’, this advanced our vision into the 21st century by focusing on witch hunts dominating the internet. However; through our use of balaclava’s, we kept identities hidden to suggest anybody could be a ‘witch’ in these witch hunts and to allow our bodies to be the heavy force behind the performance. Elizabeth Tonkin ”sees the mask as a means to articulating power, the power of the individual to transform and become “other”, and the power of the spectator to take cognitive control and to accept experiences”. (Tonkin 1979: 238)
SOURCES
Fernandes, C. (1995). Pina Bausch and the Wuppertal Dance Theater: Repetition and Transformation. New York University.
Kadlecova, H. (2014) Cafe Muller from the film Pina (2011)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCQ29EUwvrI
Tonkin, E. (1979). Masks and powers. Man, 14, 237–248.
Fernandes, C. (1996). Pina Bausch And The Wuppertal Dance Theater. New York: ProQuest NYU, pp.100-102.
SOPHIE JUDD:
In the rehearsal process influences came like a chain reaction, one sending us on to the next. Knowing we wanted to create a piece based on witches, we read into some British witch trial tales, our favourite being the story of The Devon Witches and Temperance Lloyd, a woman who was charged of murdering a young lady after allegedly transforming into a crow, and pecking her to pass on a disease. (BBC Local History Devon, 2006) From this we looked into transformation as being a pinnacle moment we wanted to convey in the piece. It seemed to us through playing around with tableaux’s and a series of movements that this looked more beautiful and captivating than having a piece that revolved heavily around speech.
As for conveying that we were witches, it seemed that extenuating physicality’s was the aim, as opposed to wearing a pointed nose and a hat. We discovered the etchings by Francisco Goya, (Lucientes, 1799) and I personally felt inspired by the fact that the witches or creatures shown in the etchings were close to human, but also so far from what we consider resembling a person. It was almost dreamlike, and offered the distortion I wanted the audience to feel disturbed by. This reminded me of an artist that I had seen on Instagram, called Sam Bee. (Bee, 2018-2019) His work consists of warped faces painted in oils, with the paints swirling around creating this bazar looking flesh. It was then we decided that we did not want our own faces to be shown throughout the performance, as we agreed that gave the audience something familiar to hold onto, finding it harder to believe we were in this weird dreamlike world. James however we decided should be the one to not wear a mask so the audience could relate to him as the underdog character. With all these influences, it was easier for me to imagine when moving and performing that I was not human, and if I was then not totally, something else entirely.
Through being introduced to the work of Pina Bausch, we discovered we loved the use of separation and space often used between men and women, and repetition with force. I particularly enjoyed ‘Rite of Spring’ and ‘Café Muller’ (Wenders, 2011). Through these influences and devising exercises we were able to ‘imagine the probabilities’ as (Saul, 2001) refers to imagination used by scientists when talking about mad cow disease, ‘they were capable of lateral thinking’, ‘they didn’t need proof’. These influences acted not as proof, but as a key to unlock our own imaginations in generating devised work.
SOURCES
BBC Local History Devon. (2006, 08 10). Retrieved from BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/content/articles/2008/02/27/witches_of_bideford_feature.shtml
Bee, S. (2018-2019). Portraits. New Zealand.
Saul, J.R. (2001) On Equilibrium. London: Penguin.
Lucientes, F. J. (1799). Spirits. Nassau County Museum of Art.
Wenders, W. (Director). (2011). Pina [Motion Picture].
JAMES QUALTROUGH:
To begin with, our group was deeply rooted in the idea of physical theatre, studying the work of Pina Bausch, a German dancer who created experimental methods of dance through ballet. To begin with our group did realise the potential of this in our piece as it was resplendent of the movements of a witch; Jagged, decrepit and such.
Although this did interest me I found much more interest in documentary theatre. “A (flexible) intention to preserve the authenticity of source can unite documentarians whose political and aesthetic agendas may otherwise be highly divergent. (Inquest is like a tragedy, Quilters like a comedy and Fires in the Mirror midway between performance art and the “direct” cinema of the 1960s.) Whether this sort of creative editing obscures or, as the playwrights would certainly insist, reveals a truth corresponding to the real, might be merely a dramaturgical problem were it not that the writing of history, here instanced in docudrama, interpenetrates with the making of history, that is the political activity—an intercourse which the majority of documentary playwrights especially and explicitly invites.” (Favorini, 1994)
My interest in documentary theatre was formulated as a result of my pre-existing interest into U.S Politics and the internet; I read a newspaper every other day, I read online articles and I occasionally use 4chan
By combining our two styles, we were originally going to perform a piece of documentary theatre however but I was superseded by physical theatre. Although I did find this sad and unmotivated at the time, I slowly found an interest in this field. ““To understand what I am saying, you have to believe that dance is something other than technique. We forget where the movements come from. They are born from life. When you create a new work, the point of departure must be contemporary life — not existing forms of dance.” (Bausch 1989:91).” (Climenhaga, 2018) I mused on this quote often, it was a complete divergence from my point of view. This is possibly the reason there were such points of contention in my group, because as a result of not finding our inspiration from the same sources, we could not understand or truly enjoy each other’s work.
A middle ground was struck in the end however and we managed to perform our piece. Heavily influenced by Pina Bausch and isolationism we contravened our previous work. In the end, the group created a much more convincing and true pane of work.
SOURCES
Climenhaga, R., 2009. Pina Bausch (routledge Performance Practitioners). Routledge.
Favorini. A REPRESENTATION AND REALITY: THE CASE OF DOCUMENTARY THEATRE: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/269C0BECA33D002D4A320B9D68AE7B1E/S0040557400002775a.pdf/representation_and_reality_the_case_of_documentary_theatre.pdf
FRANCESCA SCANDARIATO:
At the beginning of the process, the idea was to discuss witch hunts in general and what that term meant to each of them. We then researched the classic dictionary definition as well as some other classic meanings of the term alongside the ‘Urban Dictionary’ one which gave us a modern explanation of the term. With this information we discovered that the classic version involved a “moral panic or mass hysteria”(Wikipedia) whereas, the modern definition involves a “targeted attack against one person, for reasons that are not necessarily tangible”(Urban Dictionary). With these definitions in mind, we then decided to think of words we associate with the term witches/witch hunts. The idea was to look at the words we chose and see in what ways we can embody them or physicalise them in some way.
In an attempt to extend our imagination and creativity, we discussed some of our favourite conspiracy theories and some of the most well known such as: 9/11, Pizzagate and Madeleine McCann. We felt that lots of these conspiracy theories, if not all of them had some form of correlation with the terms we deemed to be witch hunts. We wanted a piece that really conveyed all of our imaginations into one performance. Our initial plan was to create our own raps, spells and spoken word. There was a process of trying to write what came to mind in an impromptu session where we all felt at our creative best. It naturally turned into spells and spoken word that felt the most fitting to our piece and what we wanted to achieve.
Physicalisation was something we wanted to focus heavily on as a group as we wanted to create a powerful movement piece that resonated with each member of the audience in some way. My personal influence for this was Pina Bausch. Upon researching her greatly and watching clips of her performances, I enjoyed the “hypnotic, savage, thrilling and terrifying”(Allardice, L. 2019) and the way there is no need for language in her performances. As heavily as we were influenced by this sort of work, it became almost a homage to Bausch that motivated us to perfect the movement and allow it to inspire with awe.
A crucial part of the process for me was to analyse the works of Pina Bausch and gain ideas and how she conveyed story and message. The two performances that resonated most with me was a clip of Cafe Müller and Rite of Spring. There was something so powerful yet sinister in both pieces that made them unforgettable. Something i noticed within her work was repetition, which made sense within our piece to create the sense of ritual. In a review by Jan Bolwell, she mentions that repetition is a “device that Bausch uses to powerful effect in Café Müller, but unlike her less able copyists, Bausch uses it to wrack up the tension before it dissolves because it has to”. This finding within her work then led us to have the same method within our performance as we wanted to create a sense of confusion, power, evil but not leave the audience overly traumatised whilst still keeping the idea of the performance strong.
SOURCES
En.wikipedia.org. (2019). Witch-hunt. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-hunt [Accessed 10 May 2019]
Urban Dictionary. (2019). Urban Dictionary: Witch Hunt. [online] Available at: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Witch%20Hunt [Accessed 10 May 2019].
History TV. (2019). Conspiracies about 9/11 have circulated for years… Here are just 5 of the best.. [online] Available at: https://www.history.co.uk/shows/road-to-911/articles/5-compelling-911-conspiracy-theories [Accessed 11 May 2019]
NBC News. (2019). How Facebook connects ‘pizzagate’ conspiracy theorists. [online] Available at: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/fire-pizzagate-shop-reignites-conspiracy-theorists-who-find-home-facebook-n965956 [Accessed 11 May 2019]
The Independent. (2018). What happened to Madeleine McCann? Five possible scenarios explained. [online] Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/madeleine-mccann-disappearance-latest-what-happened-scenarios-a8632886.html [Accessed 11 May 2019]
Allardice, L. (2019). She Persisted review – a fine rebalance. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/apr/14/she-persisted-review-english-national-ballet-sadlers-wells [Accessed 13 May 2019]
DANZ. (2016). Café Müller/The Rite of Spring Review. [online] Available at: https://danz.org.nz/caf%C3%A9%20m%C3%BCller%20the%20rite%20of%20spring%20review [Accessed 13 May 2019]
YouTube. (2019). Pina – pair scene from Cafe Muller. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCQ29EUwvrI&t=1s [Accessed 13 May 2019]
YouTube. (2019). Pina Bausch – Extract from the Rite of Spring. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VqaGkKQRCU [Accessed 13 May 2019]
STANISLAVA KUBRATOVA:
My first inspiration came from the great American-European experimental theatre stage director, playwright, sculptor, painter, video, sound and light artist Robert Wilson. He has very ‘visual’ ideas, I did not. The first thing I watched was The Black Rider created through the collaboration of Robert Wilson as the theatre director, Tom Waits as a musician, and the writer William S. Burroughs. I did not understand anything from the word go but little by little, after a lot of thinking and analyzing, I found the Expressionism very close to me as a dancer. This time my group and I tried something new, suggested by our course leader. Some of us did not like to do things incidentally. We believed that something is here because something else is there. We did our work very intuitively but not necessarily conscious sometimes. This became our workshop formula: We, as a group, do not like the idea of hierarchies for performance. Not we, as actors, are important but the power of our performance. All of our movements have created visual images, we all were different pieces of the whole image. To make a greater sense of detachment, we chose to wear masks, balaclava face mask to be exact. Also, we carried candles and wool to convey a dream-like sensation. Part of our movement exercises encouraged us to perceive ourselves differently- not as a character but as somebody who performs ‘other’ who is in you but is not your daily self.
Looking at Pina Bausch work and mixing it with the abstract visions, it helped us to create specific characterizations which invited the audience to experience the poetic reality. We did abstract scenes with words, sounds, movements, dances, masks and objects. It’s time to add something, in my opinion, which is important. Breaking the Ice exercise. We did that exercise at the beginning of the year. I and my colleague James have a scene with mirroring and showing two different world- the human world and the world of the emotionless nowadays technologies. As we know, technologies can be very helpful and vital for our lives, even beautiful and seemingly alive but they are not real. The group tried to express the connection between humans and humanoids with movements such as mirroring, glitching and walking through space. To create this world, we needed to create the inner world. Grasp Exercise: James and I stood opposite each other. Next step was to established an eye-contact. Keeping on a straight line, we gradually made our way to each other and saw if we could find some sort of contact with each other. We already have done this exercise before and recreate this connection from before. This is how we brought the inner world to the audience. As I wrote above, we are showing another part of ourselves which even we do not know.
SOURCES:
Pereira, S. (2018). The Experience Theater choreographed by Pina Bausch. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul.
Shevtsova, M. (2007). Robert Wilson. London: Routledge.
Zinder, D. (2002). Body Voice Imagination. London: Routledge
