A durational dance work exploring time, distance & memory through T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets

Sunday 23 May 2010

little bird listening by Jess Allen - Tues 1st June, 3-6.40pm

little bird, listening is a durational work exploring distance (in space and time) through endurance (of body and memory). It uses the rich and complex text of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets spoken continuously from memory whilst moving and performing tasks with objects. The words form a continuous sound score that is spoken in relay between the performer (live) and her mother (over mobile phone from Aberystwyth), for the length of the train journey that would reunite them (3 hours 40 minutes in Coventry).

Within this overarching structure, the work attempts to address how and where memory resides in the body-mind; how pre-occupation of the cortex with the conscious act of remembering text allows movement to arise from sub/unconscious; and how text – whether imagery or pattern – can become truly embodied through a regular practice of speaking-dancing.

The Quartets are perhaps the most famous twentieth century poems to deal with the nature of time but are also contained in the one slim volume that I mistakenly picked up age 6 and precociously read out loud to my mother; the book in which she once wrote my lessons in grammar and punctuation and the notes for her own mother’s epitaph. Now these words form the basis for this exchange, exploring, through text about time, the distance between who we are now and who we were then, and how we transcend or distort it through the un/reliable lens of technology and memory.

So I find words I never thought to speak/In streets I never thought I should revisit/When I left my body on a distant shore

T. S Eliot | Little Gidding | Part II


Saturday 22 May 2010

the hedges white again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness...

Little Gidding | Part I




Between the live and the dead nettle...

Little Gidding | Part III



Harvesting nettles for tea, 2010 vintage, Caplor Farm May 22


Pigs Can fly or In the Rigging and the Aerial Part II

Taking some time off from Eliot to fly with pigs and Blue Eyed Soul Dance Company in a barn near Worcester...




remaking the aerial piece TAKE; a dance in the park made last year on an outdoor rig...

for a theatre space... first perfomance VSA Arts Festival 9th June Washington DC! Then back on the rig for the Unity Festival, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff 28th June.

Sunday 16 May 2010

At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial...

is a voice descanting...

The Dry Salvages | Part III

Wednesday 5 May 2010

you whose bodies will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea

or whatever event, this is your real destination

The Dry Salvages Part III



Mrs A has another story for me and, thanks to the miraculous self-indulgence that is blogging, you...

As this piece is about d i s t a n c e (see what I did there?) part of the process has been exploring the distance between both who we (Mrs A and I) were back in the day,


and who we are now...


but also the literal distance between us, populated (through postal exchange) with objects that link us in place and time: a mobile phone, a fan steamer, a taffeta dress...each with a story of their own.

I wanted to widen this postal exchange too, to include (some of the) four elements that each of the Quartets respresent. For water (and specifically the sea), and to turn Mrs A. into an ever more bewildered co-collaborator in conceptual art, I requested some Cardigan Bay seawater to be collected from fair Aberystwyth beach.

Once we had established the practicalities (not Mrs A's strong point: 'but won't a bottle smash in the post?' me:'not a plastic one' Mrs A: 'where will I get a plastic bottle?' me: 'buy some mineral water and drink it?' So you see the texting really is a miracle) she was away...

But in true Mrs A style, this story is already legend, as recounted by mobile phone and later by Post-It note

me: so did you really go down to the beach?
Mrs A: well, yes and I even had my wellies with me, but I thought, honestly, I'm 72 I can't go all the way down to the sea. (You don't realise how decrepit I really am now) [yes Mrs A really does use brackets in speech] so I saw this outdoorsy hippy-ish woman in walking boots getting out of a van and I went over and explained that you were making this piece about us and the distance between us and that you wanted me to send you some sea water and she was very direct and looked very capable said 'yeah, I can relate to that' and then she took the tupperware box (I thought it would be easier than a bottle) [ooh a stroke of genius - Mrs A going into overdrive with her technical thinking] and ran down over the sand and kicked off her shoes and strode into the sea and then came back over the beach with it. I said 'oh dear, i hope you have a towel. Do you have a towel?' but she said it was OK'

So, thank you, Margaret of the Sea Water, wherever and whoever you may be. Thank you for so readily getting your feet wet in the Aberystwyth sea.




------------

Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,
Pray for all those who are in ships, those
Whose business has to do with fish, and
Those concerned with every lawful traffic
And those who conduct them.


The Dry Salvages Part IV

Saturday 1 May 2010

If you came this way in may time...

you would find the hedges white again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness

Little Gidding Part II | on the home strait now!

I'm no longer surprised by the strange synchronicity of the echo between lines I am currently learning in these poems and events in life (though I have some vague memory from Richard Dawkins along the lines of 'there's no such thing as coincidence/coincidences happen all the time/they're only significant when we choose to notice them'. Hm, spoil sport).

Had a good talk on the phone about the poems and difficult pronunciations with Mrs A on the train between Birmingham and Bromsgrove, with some technical issues:

me: are you there still? we might get cut off, I seem to be in a tunnel
LONG SILENCE, emerge from tunnel which was only a bridge
me [perplexed, check phone, call still seems to be open]: look, are you there?
Mrs A: YES. But there was a long silence...
me: BECAUSE I WAS WAITING FOR YOU TO SPEAK

gah

later:

me: why do you keep cutting me off when I call you back?
Mrs A: well, If you call me back and my phone is aleady open I don't know what to do
me: so you shut it?
Mrs A: Yes, but what should I do?
me [exasperated]: PRESS THE GREEN BUTTON. I can't believe you don't know how to answer your phone.
Mrs A [disgruntled]: Look, it's a miracle I've got this far
me [laughing]: Sorry, yes, I never thought to see the day you'd send a text message
Mrs A: Yes well it did take me forever [pause then, scandalised] Did you know S [similarly non-technical friend] has only just found the punctuation button on her phone?...

And we're back to punctuation AGAIN.

I begin to wonder if we've ever had a conversation which is NOT about language...

"She must learn to OBEY her mother"

(So said the little bird, listening in the tree)