PERFORMANCE BASED ACTIONS
NOTES, PLANS, DRAWINGS, TEXTS, INSTRUCTIONS AND MISTAKES
Since September 2020 I initiated a series of regular workshops with the performers Ash McNaughton and Lise Bocoun. Working with restrictions during lockdowns I was able to experiment, try out, and explore in depth the full range of what I call performance based actions.
I was not only developing a performance work but also a method of drawing and notating a visual performance score.
Part of this exploration as been to develop my relationship with sound, something that has fascinated me with my video works.
In my studio and during the workshops i introduced different sound sources. Sometimes sounds I had constructed and sometimes music. These include music by John Cage, Morton Feldman, John Woolrich and the live flute by Paul Chenour.
In the construction of Mirror Mirror one musical work in particular interested me, this is a 20 minute piece called Two6 by John Cage from the Four Walls Album. A duet for violin and piano.
I always record the workshops and rehearsals, they form a valuable resource to examine and develop the work.
As well as the improvised choreography by Ash and Lise, I have had the help and advise from John Woolrich and at times the live flute playing of Paul Cheneour.
I have permission to use this music worldwide in live and recording settings. This has been facilitated by Laura Kuhn, Director of the John Cage Trust in New York.
The outcomes of this project will be a series of multi-screen works and live performances, so the work can exist as both and exhibition or a live event or a combination of both.
WORKSHOPS
I gave the workshops the collective title WALK STAND STILL held at the Quarterhouse auditorium and the Glassworks dance studio in Folkestone.
This whole experience has been a huge and sometimes steep learning curve, I am still on the curve.
There are a number of works being developed that include Mirror Mirror, Intersection-interaction, a piece designed originally for the crossways junctions of New York. Other works include Bedlam, The Watcher, Ghosting, Performance, Chair and Command-control-shift. I am also working collaboratively with the performer Randolph Matthews on a work called Shadows.
There is also a series of works designed for galleries and museums called Between Walls.
Isolation, social distance, mental health and wellbeing have become something we have all experienced in one way or another and these are some of the themes that have been explored in these early sessions.
Since 2008 I see has much live dance as I can, read constantly about dance and performance and research online, youtube is really useful as a library for performance works.
This performance development is not new. I held and directed performance workshops when I was a student nad Goldsmiths in 1977. I saw Merce Cunningham dance on the New York stage in 1981. And I have been an audience member experiencing and thinking about performance arts since the mid seventies.
My influences include but are not exclusive to artists John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, Pina Bausch, Anne Teresa Keersmaeker. Theatre of Mistakes, Station House Opera and Gary Stevens.
Projects of this kind are a collaboration of people, energy, insights, talents and ambition. I am really happy to be working with the performers Ash McNaughton and Lise Boucon and the celebrated jazz flutist and composer Paul Cheneour. Crucial also in this project are the considerable skills of the renown British composers John Woolrich who is consultant, advisor and mentor.
The first version of Mirror Mirror was conceived, visualised and directed by Terry Smith with Lise Boucon, Sarah April Lamb, Rubiane Maia, Randolph Matthews, Ash McNaughton and Manuel Vason. Performed at the Quarterhouse Folkestone 18 September 2021
BACKGROUND
Since 2007, I have been working with musicians and composers, the first work called Broken Voices. The work developed on tour with live performances in Liverpool at the A-Foundation, London at the Riverside Studios and in Venice at St George’s church in Dorsoduro.
In 2012 I worked for the first time with dancers from the Laban Centre and the Place for a large scale work Combine which had five huge video screens and live and recorded music.
MIRROR MIRROR
1. Is a series of movements and actions performed by a variable number of performers within a set period of time. Each performer refers to the same set of instructions and each performance is different and interpretive by each performer.
2. The piece is performed once then there is an interval and then performed again.
3. This ensemble work came about directly as a result and response to the pandemic and to lockdown. The pandemic was just one of the world-wide events since 2017 but the one that as given almost the entire world the same shared experience.
4. Isolation, self-reflection and often a totally review of one’s life and relationships. It killed many, it left some people with long term symptoms. It changed lives and the way we see the economy and other people. It amplified many of the things that we have always dealt with and in this respect it gathers and unites people.
5. We became compliant, we did what we were told. We became scared of other people and we had universal fear sown everywhere.
6. We wore masks, avoided people, scared to touch and fearful of contact and closeness. We washed our shopping and our hands, and young people had their formative years shaped by this.
7. How do we come to terms with these social disturbances and disruptions to our lives and futures. Some benefited and flowered., some changed career, others melted and paralysed into non action.
8. Since the reopening of societies the idea of normal is being reset. Somethings have changes somethings have not and somethings are yet to resolved. People are working from home and the idea of the working week is being questioned.
9. So in Mirror Mirror I wanted create a platform and structure to examine and work through some of the issues.
10. The performers although following the exact same set of instructions actually create their own world based on their own experiences. The instructions are like a kind of score that the performers can interrupt and bring their own being into the part.
11. The components are carefully orchestrated and choreographed, but the movements and actions are the performers own.
12. The piece starts before the audience appears. The performers are standing still in the space and the audience walk in and take seats around the edges. They have the option to move and change their perspectives.
13. The music is Two6 by John Cage written in 1996 the year he died. The music is has many echoes of Morton Feldman. The piece is 20 minutes long and has two instruments, the violin and piano. In this piece the music and action has one interruption and one disruption. The interruption is in the music. After 15 minutes the sound track changes and a composed sequence of sounds enter the space. These are mechanical, industrial sound with a record player set at 33rpm played at 16. So very slowed down.
14. There is also a version of the Cage 4’33” and the disruption is in this case a photographer previously recording the work from the perimeter, gradually trespasses into the [performance area, getting in the way of the performers before gradually leaving the scene, to continue photographing the work.
15. The Cage music returns and the performer play out the end game. The eventually come to a complete stop, in the same places where they began but now slumped on a chair, laying on the floor or staring at the roof. One performer taps the floor in a casual, bored and disconnected way, keeping to some inner slow beat. The music stops and the performer continues to tap the floor. The lights dim and completely go to black out.
THE INSTRUCTIONS | INTERPRETATIONS | INTERRUPTIONS | DISRUPTIONS
A. There are a number of performers in the space, number are variable. There are two objects one, a chair is visible, the other is invisible.
B. The players begin standing in one place the music starts. They perform a ritual of looking in the mirror. It could be a bathroom mirror a small compact, mirror, a reflection in a shop window, or whatever. The ritual comprises of seven actions, performed slowly and carefully. When a sequence is complete, they take a step back
C. The process and development of this piece was made possible by the energy and brilliance, first of all by my year-long collaborators, Ash and Lise and the continuation bringing to the surface the results of these workshops into a publicly performed work. On September the 18th 2021. I am more than grateful to John Woolrich who is not only a great composer but a great thinker and teacher.
D. This whole process since 2020 have seen an acceleration of my ambition and learning curve that I found curves not only go up but sometimes down.
E. It has taken a year to evaluate where I was and where I ended up and now I am ready to take this work out into the world.
F. So, one year on I am now better at this process, more accomplished in the method and just as scared and uncertain as I was at the beginning.