Awareness through polyrhythms
When I was working on Dinner, many years ago with an international company that didn’t know each other and hadn’t worked together before, I devised a whole series of exercises/compositions loosely based on poly rhythms to enable them to work and create movement song and improvisation together.
In the years afterwards I taught workshops at various places, including Goldsmiths and Laban Trinity. This culminated in the performance Crowd, a 40 minute piece that I made over several weeks with BA dance students at Laban Trinity. And then I with acting students from E15 acting school.
I now want to revive some of these compositions with a group of performers who like rhythm, counting and pattern which probably means professional singers and dancers who will
develop these exercises into a performance training program and accompanying book.
Make a performance based on the songs, the video, sound and still image documentation of the rehearsal and performance will provide material for the book and training program
It is easy to make a pulse -clap or stamp every 3rd beat, and it is easy to make a pulse -clap or stamp every 4th beat
but it is not so easy to do both together- clap every 3rd beat whilst another person is clapping every 4th beat.
This work:
teaches being able to maintain your own rhythm, whilst listening to another rhythm.
Helps developing a tension free awareness.
The skill grows as an inevitable consequence of the developing awareness of working with two rhythms.
This awareness helps one to–
A) be able to continue what you are doing, without cutting out what is happening in the world around you.
B) listen to yourself whilst listening of others.
C) be inside an activity and outside watching it at the same time.
D) be able to listen to others without, being seduced into their rhythm, or, on the other, trying to coerce them into your rhythm.
E) see yourself a as part of a stage reality created by the space, yourself, other performers and the audience.
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