The lost body.
The lost body.
Summer landscape | The body landscape extended discourse.
From Deptford, to Normandy, to The West Coast of Ireland.
A suitcase of costumes, a mind full of characters, repetition finding their form. Travelling from landscape to landscape, collecting on the body fragments of experience; the sensation of the ground beneath my feet and its shifting texture.
When considering the body as archive; I sit here now, remembering in my fingertips the sensation of each landscape repeat in slight differences of the landscape and how now it manifests in the images which now act as micro container for each sensation.
To choreograph, not to dance, not to talk about dance; is the act of framing the intricacies and simplicity, the complexity, the magnitude, the purity and the complication of the body moving in space and time.
From the study of choreography as socio-spatial review, my practice seeks to explore how far choreography can function as a social and personal methodology as to how far the body can be seen and actively seek to embody the conditions and context in which it exists.
The body in my practice exists within the perspective of archive and site; a complex tapestry of the realities in endures, indulges, and passes through.
How far can choreography become a social ‘framing’ method which highlights the socio-political context which the body is immersed in, further more how can revelation, exchange and documentation create a wider social dialog as to multiple and contrasting realities which various humans go through.
This can be a complex task; this can be a simple task.
Over this summer; I have been journeying from place to place exploring the sensations of each landscape I have passed through and from this, I am now making a work which intends to unite all these explorations into some form of cohesive whole.
When referring to the body as archive and container, this does not necessarily have any accordance to dance or the complexities of the dance world, rather it becomes a mechanism for the interaction and exchange mechanisms which occur during the orchestration of the movement of the body through space and time in its relevant and varies contexts.
When exploring the sensations imbued within interaction with and between alternating and coexisting realities the body can actively pick up sensations, from movement learnt and movements observed, picking up a book, stepping over a puddle, shaking hands, nodding the head, walking, all of these “basic” actions are flooded with contextual narrative which can be contained within the movement when developing choreographic material it can be removed, leaving the shell of the basic body action. Such process of decision making cultivate a specific approach to the anthropology and sociology of choreography, if the movement or series of quotidian movements is:
– removed from contextual container
– deliberately re-performed within the confines of contextual container
– re-presented to subject within the contextual container they executed in
– performed by a observer who has effectively learnt the movement within the contextual container and then attempted some form ( subjective) of deconstruction of the context focusing attention on the physical complexity of the movement itself.
The ability of a choreographer to effectively play and orchestrate these categories of quotidian movement analysis enable a dynamic social terrain to emerge: but the issue i would like to present is the scales of inter-relativity between this task as a choreographic methodology and a task which enables a qualitative social data felid to form.
Then to choreograph is perhaps to develop a means to communicate a specific individual perspective of the world and the bodies moving within it. Choreographic practice thus functions as a tool for the participants and the audiences; to take the time to watch the complexity and purity of a body moving in a specific space and time; removed, or perhaps amongst the rigmarole of daily life.
The body to the choreographer, and its context and history is the choreographer medium. The limitations and potential, asceticism and functionality of the body become framed by choreographic practice; enabling a vision of the body and society to be presented for evaluation and further deconstruction. Successful choreography, in my eyes, has to enable and nurture the space for such questioning, not forcing grand conclusive statements; rather presenting a framed dialog between the body in space and time as a platform for dialog in whatever form that may take.
How can all these movements when removed from their initial context form either an impression of the experience I had of the location, or create a new performance environment which only initially refers back to the memory of landscape sensation as stimulus and resource for the development of further choreographic materials.
All text copyright to Beatrice Jarvis ©
These materials were collected from the following explorations:
Deptford Practising Space extension Study with Beatrice Jarvis and Zaira La Ragione. Photographs by Zaira La Ragione. Project: http://www.practisingspace.com/
Normandy: Carteret Beach explorations: Beatrice Jarvis and Benjamin Bailey. Photographs by Benjamin Bailey. These are stills from a film in development.
Nomadic Dance explorations of Carrowkeel. Improvisation by Beatrice Jarvis and Aurelie Bauer Photographs by Benjamin Bailey. Part of Nomadic Dance experience: http://nomadicdance.org/
Urban re:passages 