Practicing at my studio room at solitude
Performance artist Savyon created a score for a mental-physical session, a self-guidance practice that everybody – dancers and non-dancers – can use on their own. »Travel & Trouble« is part of the chapter »Becoming The Other« from the Issue Soft Power […] that discusses forms of the self and the other; engaging, exploring, decomposing, and reconsidering new forms of togetherness toward a potential future.
»Travel & Trouble« is an ongoing research practice I developed during my residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude, among other projects. It’s a physical-mental session, a journey in which you are the view and you are the viewer, a space to experience otherness, a structure of becoming.
You are welcome to use the instructions and practice with your friends or alone. Don’t be afraid (of your own body)! In this sphere there is no »right« or »wrong,« It’s all about your interpretation and imagination. It’s an experimental experience …
Practicing at my studio room at solitude
Practicing at my studio room at solitude
The Score
The score of the practice has four stages. Recommended time for each stage is 15 minutes. It’s an individual work, but it’s possible and recommended to practice as individuals in groups. It’s possible and recommended to practice with music.
First Stage: Travel
Find a structure in your body. Travel. Move inside the structure. You are the view and you are the viewer. What are the body’s landscapes? You don’t have to travel the entire structure. You can focus on specific areas, periphery, center. When you finish: Go to the next structure. Make it clear to yourself when are you in between structure A and structure B. What is structure A? What is structure B? You can use the floor or the walls to reinforce the support for your structures. Don’t compromise! Don’t visit sites that you already know again and again … Insist on finding new and exciting structures of your body. Structures you are not familiar with, or less familiar with, will challenge your body and arouse your imagination. In order to make new structures you can go to a familiar structure and change something small that reshapes the holding of the structure. What kind of quality this travel-in-the-structure has? Is it intense? Is it kind of a rest? Allow yourself to change the quality of the traveling each time. Remember to keep yourself a traveler, not established, not based, always exploring … How long do you stay in each structure? Of course, duration can change between one structure to the next one. Give yourself the time and pleasure to stay as long as you wish … When we are traveling, new places arouse new feelings, state of mind, thoughts. Allow different places in your body to unfold and discover something new about you, to you, within you … Traveling is fun! Take some time for resting… If there is a special inspiring structure of another body in the space – feel free to join it within your own body. Wander and wonder your body. Traveling sometimes gets dangerous … Challenge yourself sometimes with a little risk …
Practicing at my studio room at solitude
Practicing at my studio room at solitude
Second Stage: Trouble
Trouble yourself. Make a problem, a crisis, by moving your body. Trouble the time and space of your body. Trouble physics. Trouble the presence of your body. What kind of a danger are you inviting? Puzzle yourself. Disturb yourself. Disorder yourself. Dis yourself. Chaos appears. Not only in the form, but especially in the state of mind. In order to trouble your body, you have to actively make it vulnerable, to open it for something disturbing to happen. Troubling has no preparation. It just happens. As soon as you realize it’s happening – it might be already gone … It’s not an easy task. It’s not an easy state of mind. It’s inconvenient. It’s a mess. Make room for the suppressed. Make it active and visible. Be aware that anything can happen and allow it to happen. By choosing and inviting the trouble, you gain power!
»In order to trouble your body, you have to actively make it vulnerable, to open it for something disturbing to happen. Troubling has no preparation.«
Third Stage: Home
Choose one structure and repeat a gentle pleasant movement. Welcome. You’re home now. You are at home. You are the home. Try to be loyal to this one movement as you can, to persist, to go deeper in yourself in it. Concentrate and focus on the silent and harmony this one movement creates. You are one connected form. You can feel comfort and comfortable. You’re safe and secure. Collect and gather yourself. You identify with your body.
Practicing with Solitude fellows
Fourth Stage: Open Space
Rest, Imagine, write, sketch, mediate, dance, listen, explore, take selfies, observe, reflect …
Some thoughts about the »Travel & Trouble« practice
- Structures
Structures contains information, energy, states of consciousness. When we are forming a structure in our bodies, we are connecting not only to ourselves, but also to the possibilities that the structure offers, that are already within the structure. - Body
Each body is a radical body. Mysterious body.
The nature of the body is once you step into it – it changes and changes you.
Can I redefine my body through this practice? - Place
The body is a place, a space, a location, somewhere.
A constant changing place. A liminal place. Always becoming. - Otherness
Nowadays we are detached and foreign to this place (i.e. the body). Both the travel and the trouble stages of the practice reveals this strangeness. Therefore, it’s a possibility to practice otherness. Otherness within you.
Maybe, if I’ll practice otherness within my own body than I would feel more comfortable with real others. More compassionate.
The travel and the home stages offer visiting this place, staying there and hopefully becoming less strangers …
As I practice otherness – I go deeper within myself. But also the other way around, as I go deeper in myself – I discover other selfes. The »self« and the »other« come closer. - What is this practice?
Is it movement research? Is it mental? Animalistic? Therapeutic? Physical? Spiritual? Is it a party? Is it about consciousness? Energy? It’s all of them and none of them … It’s what you (wish to) make out of it …
For further discussion please contact me: fisha6@gmail.com