Tender and true: the place the time the particle

Abstract

This paper is premised on two vaguely related ideas: the thinking through of a performance practice that produces itself through ‘preparation’ and ‘doing’ (makes itself on the floor); the thinking through of an interior spatial practice that performs (itself) as an ecology of differences. Territory is (made or exhausted by) movement – movement that undoes, un(de)designs, yet is active like chance and carnival. Territory arising over and over by force – enduring without purpose. A space for the shaman, or transforming (through rites and rituals); composed or assembled – to see what happens, to be active not re-active. A space, anywhere, for intuition and improvisation, for performing as living-being in such a way as to disperse ‘territory’, make of territory a field – immaterial wisps, whispers, scents, touches, emerging from material the matter of experience, of relations, mixes, atmospheres. A field, almost imperceptible, for quietening, for losing one’s ground, for expanding the situation of the body, its velocity or shape, or its capacity for ‘joy’.

The images by Jude Walton that accompany this text are evocations from a rehearsal-practice where the dancer, Phoebe Robinson, informs her body of the placement and materials of everyday objects in everyday situations. By an insistent repetition the ‘thing’s teach her the exact relationship her fingers, hands, legs, head – her entire body bit by bit – must ‘take-up’ (an offering of the things) so as to remember and perform their absence. This rehearsal-practice is a collaboration between Jude and Phoebe; it eventuates in site-specific public performances.