weaving Voices 01.04.2025 issuu - Flipbook - Page 21
Without further instruction available I assumed to be
invited to ask questions myself or do something, that
would be my research that day.
I loved it. What terrifying freedom to commit to a
question without answering it but actively asking it. And
defending the space of that as dance. A whole world of
shaping crumbled right there.
“…there is no way this looks!”
Deborah Hay21
became more sensitive towards what was there instead
of fixating my perception on what I thought should be
there.
“When I refer to ‘the writer,’ I may be
referring to a writer of text or music, but
also to the author of experience. The part
of you that creates the narrative of your
existence and that is constantly trying to
find any thread strong enough to pull you
through the blank pages of one day into
the next.”
Kae Tempest35
The next day Margaret Cameron opened her session
with the words:
“Learning how to sing is learning how to
love.”
Alfred Wolfsohn 36
Going into resonance with myself through my voice
can inform and awake different levels of perception.
Things that were ‘sleeping’ come into consciousness.
The voice opens the space towards depth and towards
darkness. In moments when a new sound arises from a
vocal journey, it can feel like ‘Was this me?’. Then I am
ready to ‘meet the stranger’ in my voice, the ‘spirit of
the depth.’
“The elephant said to the mouse, You
are very small. The mouse said to the
elephant, I have been sick.”
Margaret Cameron
“In the Red Book, Jung explores at length his idea that a
person is governed by two spirits: the spirit of the times and
the spirit of the depths. […]
The spirit of the depths is the ancient part of you. The part
that responds to the invisible world. The part that makes
no sense and speaks in heavy symbols. Your madness, your
dreams, your visions. The spirit of the depths communicates
through archetypes, masks, animal shapes. It is drawn to
nature and wilderness.”
Kae Tempest 44
“The elephant said to the mouse, You are very small. The
mouse said to the elephant, I have been sick.”
Margaret Cameron22
In a blink of an eye I knew that a new dimension of what
used to be it was about to enter my world. It already
loved abstraction in the ever shifting non fixation
of form we pursued in the improvisation study and
performance work with Magdalena Inc+. Yet it was never
there when I needed it.
Margaret (and Deborah) seemed to suggest that the
asking of the question was it. It is not the preparation
of form, it is the form itself. It is always there when you
need it!
“What if alignment is everywhere? So therefore to bring
that back to the field of dance – are you kidding? What if
alignment is everywhere? The permission, the joy, the power
just to undo that fixity of behavior… using my body as a
site of experimentation. My body being this cellular body…
site of experimentation. My body being this cellular body…
21 Hay, D. – paraphrased from memory by Christiane Hommelsheim – practice instructions, SPCP, 2007, Findhorn, Schottland.
21 Hay, D. – paraphrased from memory by Christiane Hommelsheim – practice instruc22 Cameron, M. (2016) I Shudder to Think: Performance as Philosophy. Brisbane: Lady昀椀ntions, SPCP, 2007, Findhorn, Schottland.
ger Press, p. 184.
22 Cameron, M. (2016) I Shudder to Think: Performance as Philosophy. Brisbane: Lady昀椀nger Press, p. 184.
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This is when I started listening for qualities, for shifts
and other levels of information in the voice, that
connect within me or others. Then it was a natural step
to authorise myself to be touched and moved by the
sound of my own or another voice, to become resonant
and responsive.
35 Tempest, K. (2020) On Connection. Kindle Edition ed.
London: Faber & Faber, p. 9.
35 Tempest, K. (2020) On Connection. Kindle Edition ed.
36 Wolfsohn, A., Roy Hart Theatre Archives – from a collection
London: Faber & Faber, p. 9.
of quotes from Sheila Braggins, one of his students.
36 Wolfsohn, A., Roy Hart Theatre Archives – from a collection
of quotes from Sheila Braggins, one of his students.
44 Tempest, K. (2020) On Connection. Kindle Edition ed. London:
Faber & Faber, p. 28.
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