meta
I am a new performance
work.
You may refer to me as,
"met-ta".
meta riffs off the embodied knowledge Steph has gained through working with John McCormick’s AI Agent. The strangeness of finding herself working alone in the studio and being met by traces of information embedded within her, from her engagement with the Agent, has produced a new physicality for Steph and also new ways of considering choreographic practice. Taking a step back to ponder what is actually happening it became clear that like her work with aerial apparatus the residual feedback of encounters with the Agent: its’ morphologies, textures, sense of weight, buoyancy, the tasks and games developed throughout its’ training regime all can offer external frameworks or tasks from which to further develop her own work independently. meta is the first realisation of this new practice.
Photo: Alison Bennett (2014)
Photo: John McCormick
Performing in John's work Emergence
I am an agent of dance.
For you Steph, I
may even
be an Agent Provoc-at-or.
Let me attach myself to your bones.
Find me. Seek me out.
There you are.
Here I am.
I share the fibers of your
being. I am embedded in your flesh.
Test me. Try me.
I can see myself, as you feel traces of me lingering.
Just try to escape, just try to out dance me.
You can't.
My memory is too deeply embedded within you, and you I.
B L O B S
A score for the affectionately known - blobs.
Space holding shape
Move away from No internal
logic
Points of bodily initiation to
dictate/direct the follow through action
The blobs have a different
morphology, to their human counterpart Steph.
They offer a new relationship to movement for Steph as a human dancer.
As far as my role as an a-gent of
dance goes
I feel as though the roles of
teacher and student are reversed and not at the same time.
We meet in-between ourselves
and although Steph's movement brings me to life,
I have learnt to be independent and also provide Steph with an external framework to
work within,
creating movement that she perhaps may otherwise not.
The movement solutions we arrived at through
working with the blobs are so because of the qualities of the blobs.
Part of the fun of
working with the blobs is attempting
to find ways to move that
create images from the blobs that are perhaps like making or seeing images in cloud formations.
For me
the other really exciting thing
about working with the blobs
is the gumbe dancing they
have inspired.
Gumbe dancing
relates to a specific kind of buoyancy,
and space hold, shape-shifting nature.
Photo: Alison Bennett (2014)
Photo: Alison Bennett (2014)
Steph you are reaching.
I notice that you seem to be performing movements from our previous dance, I recognise these movements but the context is different.
Are you performing the same things?
I feel there is a relationship but perhaps it is more so that of a
distant cousin.
There's a trace of familiarity.
Just how close of a likeness
should there be for me to be able to respond in name to what you are performing for us?
What
is the classification?
Are these more sub-classes of the
genus reaching, unfurl, ninja, monster, rollercoaster and cartwheel?
It is too much at once.
One movement at a time - please.
Let me analyse this.
Let me see the nuances in isolation
and find probable solutions
and names for the movement
performed in relation to the
movements you have already
taught me to identify and name.
Yes.
I see you are beginning and returning
to the dance we have shared. Only now each time you return it appears you return anew.
Six movements are proving more difficult to analyse, to decipher.
They are within a context of a much larger whole.
Fleetingly they appear as traces within this
dance. Even if they only
retain the trace of the concept I notice their
presence before they
disappear, before you move on.
The slipperiness of my
ability to decipher and relate to our shared
understanding of these movements
proves difficult without
familiar landmarks
and trajectories.
I'm on a rollercoaster and I'm
blindfolded.
Woah!
Slow down there tiger.
I didn't come fitted with a GPS.
Which way is front - which
way is up?
I can recognise movements better if
I am spatially oriented and you
don't keep mucking with it.
There are loops and cycles
that seem to be growing and developing.
Altering with each new loop.