Sunday 1 November 2009

UNPREDICTABLE SPACES – NOV 2009

Nov 2009

Hi Steve,

Oh my god what a lot of trouble! I'm really sorry to hear all that. I hope everyone recovers well and swiftly. All very worrying I'm sure.

You've also been on my "to email" list for a week or so - but I'm also overwhelmed and I'm afraid it slips down below other more pressing but far less interesting stuff.

I had thought of suggesting a climbing session indoor or outdoor before xmas - but that looks tricky now. Tho it might be possible. If not how about early jan?

I've been thinking a bit about it and at the moment my head keeps repeating "unpredictable spaces" as an idea around climbing which sums up the anxiety of not knowing if you can or will do it and what will happen if you don't or it goes badly wrong. But it's also a positive thing about uncovering or revealing what seem like new spaces or experiences.

I know jan and feb will get very busy - so it might b wise to try to identify possible dates to do something.

Hope you are having better luck now,

Dan

14th Dec 2009

Hi Dan,

I'd be up for a session together before christmas if we can find a few hours.

I'd love to get you into the dance studio and give you some ideas about how I am concieving of movement composition at the moment and to see if anything in my "systems" sparks interest or resonance in you.

" Unpredictable spaces" is full of interesting texture for me.... it is a sculptural or architectural description.... how can a space be unpredictable... actually it is the time element which invests a space with the quality of (un)predictability.... I like the fact that this description which is aimed apparently at one parameter actually speaks about another. I work a lot with tightly composed and rehearsed scores but which are always different according to the moment by moment choices, taste, values of the performer and the element of serendipity or accident.... there in the composition I am trying to frame events so as to conjure up the harmonic consonance or dissonance which might be a synonym for pedictability or unpredictability. In this way I suppose I have some connection with jazz composers or some writers of modern music or with stand up comedians who "riff" on some theme but don't stick to a refined script. The interesting thing for me is that the "grammar" of movement is radically different to the grammar of sound or text (or to that of a painted canvas etc)..... so the management of predictability and unpredictability and consonance and dissonance demands a very different set of "educated" subjective compositional judgements bith in "writing" a score and in performing it.

... yeah.... I could get into unpredictability as an issue and the connection with fear connects the idea of performance with the idea of physical challenge... limits... discovery... and it raises nice routes into the ideas of exploration (geographical, and personal, historical and political).... I've been reading about the Stalinist period in The Soviet Union (spending lots of time in Russia so digging abit) and it is almost a description of the failures of the revolution (maybe any revolution) that the participants, both by choice and by fate, did not find it easy to make good evaluations and judgements in an unpredictable, unstable context.... is this, in part ,why we need Aikido, Alexander Technique, Zazen?

.... end of rambling..... I like this rhythm of exchanges.... even though it is by default this time. I'm looking forward to going through more of these mind wanderings and collecting them up later to see what shape they fall into...

I'm doing fine.... a bit tired from driving up and down to The Royal but generally good... my "luck" is immaculate .... it is other people's fortune that causes the strain....

Hope to hear soon,

Steve