How is this me?
I’m in the studio with Colin Poole at the moment.
We’ve never worked together, and as we’ve been finding out about each other, watching each other dance, dancing together, talking, figuring out what we are doing (open research? making a work?), I’ve been struck (again) by how and what it is that I recognise in an other—and in myself—dancing. I am thinking here of more than simply ‘habits’ (which tend to be considered pejoratively), but a more focused awareness and understanding of the make-up of our dancing. How is it that I know Colin’s dancing from just two weeks in the studio?
Posture, timing, gaze, repetition, the tendency towards particular areas of initiation, flourishes in the head and neck? (this list is incomplete!).
Many years ago I used to think about escaping my old dancing me in order to replace it with a newer (more sophisticated) dancing me. The urge to touch newness at the expense of the habitual was very strong. To step outside of myself, and see how it is that others might see me dancing.
The desire for alternatives is invaluable I think as a tool for listening or engagement whilst improvising, but I feel quieter in this quest. I get glimpses of the new touching the known, and in this quietness perhaps there is room (occasionally) for the ecstatic.
Apologies for the solipsism.