Found objects: Laboratory slabs [2007]
Glass (x7)
Patterned by preparing specimens for study
50 X 77 X 18 mm
Unsigned and undated
exhibitions: Sur Polar, Buenos Aires, 2008
Provenance: unknown science laboratory -
The Bower recycling centre, Sydney -
LR collection, Sydney

Workshop

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

The theme for today's dance workshop

is moving between extreme states.

Small glass slabs will be our scores.

They resemble ice blocks
with crystalline patterns suggesting ways
of moving and drawing.

The fellow at The Bower Recycling Centre,

where I found the blocks,

said they were used in scientific laboratories
to cut and crush material
to observe under microscopes.

Their random cracks are sharply formed
amidst otherwise pristine glass.
The cracks suggest a dance
of sudden, unpredictable lines,
punctuating through clear fluid.
They could be ice forming in water,
or perhaps clear ice fracturing.

A resident scientist, Mark Taylor,
had suggested the blocks are metaphors for human lives,
with their cracks tracing the past
life experiences that shape us.

In anticipation of working with the glass,

I begin the workshop with the idea of neutralising

the positive or negative values we often place

on shapes and or movements that we make.

Rising is often experienced as more positive than lowering.

Opening upwards is often felt as positive.

Closing downwards can feel negative.

We can bring our residual feelings into our body shapes and moves.

Standing and feeling the spine drawn upwards

by an imaginary thread,

we bend our knees to lower the whole body.

The downwards vertical motion is imaginatively neutralised

by the upward image of the line drawn upwards.

At the extent of the knee bend,

we push our weight downwards through the floor,

with a downwards pressure to rise.

The rising motion is neutralised by the downwards push.

Other movements explored are opening the chest,

and then opening the shoulder blades.

This last move is typically experienced as the chest closing,

rather than shoulders opening.

There are always, however, other ways of describing
and experiencing, the same move.

The aim is to experience familiar movements

in unexpected ways,

as we may in an unexpected space
such as many find Antarctica.

In response to the glass blocks,

we move between extremes of sudden, unexpected shapes

and fluid motion.

We hold these different energies until the point
when change suggests itself.

Using this dance as our score,

we brush lines with ink and water

on long paper scrolls along the floor.

We take turns to dance in pairs

and to be observed and drawn.

Dancing while watched and drawn

changes how we move -

towards clearer body shaping and phrasing.

This play with the glass objects

helps us to connect metaphorically

with what is familiar and what is not.
Cracked glass is like Antarctic ice.
It is frozen motion that some may connect with
frozen emotion.

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