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TASK: Blindfold investigation. Rachel Sweeney during Mapping Project, ROCKface, Dartmoor Devon UK, March 07. Photo: Kevin CliffordResidency
Throughout January/February 2009, dancer/maker/designer Marnie Orr takes up a residency in partnership with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Arts (CIA Studios) in Newcastle Street, West Perth Australia. Largely presented as a facilitated movement research laboratory with a group of 10, the residency engages in a field/site-based dance mode of inquiry. The laboratory consists of three stages: physical training; performative outcomes; and a performance lab.
Motivation
The residency at CIA Studios forms the final project of a research MA Professional Practice (Site-based Dance) at Middlesex University, London for Marnie Orr (the title in brackets is presently in negotiation with the university board). The motivation for the nature of the project is founded on a philosophy and research practice that perceives the body as an interdependent entity subsisting as part of the ecology of its surrounding environments. The underlying belief is that the longevity of our planet and our social and professional communities will more likely be sustained by engaging in activities that focus on the development of a cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural vernacular around body-place relation. This research draws on more than a decade of experience as a performer, project designer and facilitator.
Working/Research Method
The training period brings together performers with other individuals from either artistic (visual arts, film) or other arts/science-based fields of practice (anthropology, psychology, education, music). The majority of participating people hold a movement /performance background (dance, theatre, Feldenkrais, Body-Mind Centring), with other professionals feeding in within a consultancy role (indigenous consultant, ranger). It is envisaged that bringing in professionals from a wide range of disciplines will inform the dialogue to encompass vocabulary applicable to a much broader scope than performance.
The group of invited performers and non-performers work together within highly defined tasks at the CIA studio. Each session the tasks follow a workout known as an ‘MB’, standing for mind/body, muscle/bone, derived from Bodyweather movement training (see below). The tasks are then taken outdoors to locations including Perth’s inner city spaces and sanctuaries, and the stunning Kalamunda National Park in Perth’s foothills.
Marnie will employ research methods based on generative principles of openness and sustainability for the purpose of creativity and innovation. These methods have been developed over the past three years whilst working in collaboration with Rachel Sweeney as ROCKface performance research duo, based in Dartmoor National Park, Devon UK. The residency will also be directly informed by the cross-cultural work of InVivo Movement Research Collective (London 2007), a group of four artists working across four languages investigating site-based movement to develop common understandings and definitions in the English language describing the relation between body and environment.
Language
The laboratory employs a Bodyweather movement training structure, embracing a philosophical foundation of the walking, working body as it is experienced in place (in country, in terrain). The self-reflexive practice of project leader Marnie Orr will drive a critical engagement into the very nature of interaction and relation, as the lived body experiences it (phenomenology). Drawing directly from the long term inquiry of ROCKface, the language Marnie works with has evolved from challenging existing dance vocabularies through exchanging dialogue with artists from non-performance disciplines, and scientists. Past projects’ contexts and collaborators from other fields of study include deep ecology, education for sustainable development (ESD), physical geography, open-process psychology and psycho-geography (situationists). The language is ground in a cross-disciplinary context.
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CROSS-DISCIPLINARY APPROACH - During a field trip Dartmoor National Park Authority collaborating geographer Willem Montagne explains to Mapping Project participants the geological and historical significance of granite, near an abandoned quarry, Devon UK, ROCKface 2007Aims
In Movement Laboratory, language-building processes are applied within a physical training structure in order to engage in critical, reflective thinking through embodied experience so as to nurture the creativity and innovation of participants. The project seeks to achieve this by engaging both the individual and the group within an open investigation into existing environments (ecologies) both internal and external to the body, and into the nature of the interaction between those environments (eco-systems).
The project content aims to describe body-place relation through shared experience, across discipline and culture. Furthermore, Movement Laboratory instils sustainable, manageable, and maintenance-based processes, with a goal to develop the Lab as directly feeding in to participants’ other processes within their professional practices. The idea is to feed Marnie Orr’s long term aim of developing a creative approach to practice applicable to a broad range of professions, based on a principle of embodied philosophy.
A specific aim is to disseminate the work of Marnie Orr and that of ROCKface. The project plan includes a web stream for international and interstate based peers.
Philosophy
Bodyweather process is embraced through the working method of the Laboratory. The training and philosophical basis for Bodyweather was developed on a farm in Japan by Min Tanaka and his Mai Juku Dance Company beginning in the 1980’s. Bodyweather identifies the body as a tool for movement, existing in a constant state of change. Like the weather, the body holds its own climates and atmospheres. Embracing both eastern and western philosophical views, the broad-based movement training has historically been applied to performance making. Marnie Orr’s training under senior Bodyweather practitioner Tess de Quincey (1999-2001) based in Sydney forms the foundation for her understanding of Bodyweather as a comprehensive movement training system.
Observation and feedback processes are embedded within the laboratory both internally and with others. This includes peer view & response sessions where people from outside the process are invited to observe. Feedback centres on the nature of the project and its research structures rather than content or individual process. Marnie believes that integral to the success of the research for the purpose of the MA, will be a balance between peer reviews and formalised individual consultations with participants able to provide insider knowledge through first-hand experience.
Transnational Forum
Plans include the transmission of the process live over the world wide web. It is intended that performative outcomes are web streamed, and pre-recorded video, writings, sound and image material is uploaded bi-weekly. Identifying a forum for live transnational peer exchanges are a goal, for the purpose of broadening the dissemination of the work, and identifying how such ephemeral/corporeal-based projects can bring the observer in as participant.
Research Line of Inquiry
The research investigation focuses on the creation of dynamic and transformational space within places and within people. That is, developing space open to constant change, making adaptation more possible, for the purpose of longevity. For this reason Movement Laboratory embraces an ideal of transformational space and transformational beings - or open bodies - by working largely within a reflective practicum scenario to create highly engaged bodies.
MOVEMENT LABORATORY STAGES
Stage 1 - Training Lab
2.5 days/week over 4 weeks, 9 Jan to 10 Feb 2009
Participants experience methods of physical immersion within both city architecture and natural terrain. This immersion will be informed by historical, cultural, social, geological and geographical inquiry opportunities (observation, literature, local consultants brought in to the process).
However the training focuses on physicality: the mapping and navigation of sensory perception and perspective, and the response-ability of the body as it exists within ecological systems. At the core of the process is the development of shared vocabularies of spoken dialogue in parallel with physicality. Over the 6-week Lab period these vocabularies of physicality and speech formulate as a facility available to people as strategies or tools for the navigation of situations, life, space and time.
PHYSICALITY - Moni Hunt, participant at Bodyweather Lab led by Marnie Orr, London 05.Stage 2 - Performative Outcomes
Performative presentations at Bridgetown Film Festival 30 & 31 Jan 2009
Media Jam at CIA Studios 6 – 8 Feb. Open to audiences 8 Feb
Review – 10 Feb
The tools for navigation will be trialled in a number of performative presentations. Firstly during the Bridgetown Film Festival working closely with site, and secondly a Media Jam at CIA Studios. Media Jam brings the movement people in to play within an audio-visual environment. They are joined by a small number of artists (electronic sound, percussion, installation, light and video people) who will install their elements into the space’s architecture in parallel with an artistic dialogue with the movement people who are inhabiting the studio environments.
An aim is creating transformational spaces (both within bodies and within the studio’s architectural spaces) via an inhabitational process developed through artistic dialogue across the elements. Audiences are invited to experience the Media Jam for what it is – an experimental space exposing the process of drawing together production elements to enhance the potential of transformation within a performance setting. This is the final outcome that concludes the training stages.
Stage 3 – Performance Lab
4-Day intensive – 12-15 Feb
Artist Talk & Sharing – Fri 13 Feb. Open to the public
Durational Performance / SSA- 15 Feb. Open to the public
As the final stage, Performance Lab is made up of a smaller group consisting of the few professional, seasoned performers from the Training Laboratory. Over an intensive 4-day period (12 – 15 February) Performance Lab will develop vocabulary to be presented over a durational period of time to the public/invited guests (between four and six hours on Sunday 15) within the capacity of a Self-Sustained Activity, or SSA. SSA is a concept developed from Marnie’s InVivo-based research following Bodyweather training with Frank van de Ven in 2006 (Bodyweather Amsterdam).
In Performance Lab the SSA replaces a ‘performance’ in the true meaning of the word. The process leading up to the durational SSA will involve a series of Open Body Actions, or OBA’s. OBA is a term describing a research practice process developed by ROCKface in 2006/7. The term replaces ‘improvisational performance’, as Open Body Actions are actions not dependent on the presence of an audience, and by definition is live research (or live research actions) whereby the movement of the active body is in direct and constant relation to its environments.
This elaborate research design is the basis for Marnie’s case for her research Masters title, Site-based Dance, and forms the current pinnacle of the research practice with long term collaborator Rachel Sweeney as ROCKface. As a valid performance-making process the aim of Performance Lab is to further the application of the training at a professional level towards establishing a new compositional blueprint for collaborative dance practice. This blueprint has been trialled on a number of ROCKface projects in UK, and is the first time it has been applied within an Australian context / on Australian soil.
More info:
CIA Studios -
http://www.ciastudios.com
Bodyweather -
http://www.bodyweather.net
Bridgetown Film Fest -
http://www.btownfilms.com/films.php
ROCKface –
http://orrandsweeney.blogspot.com