Rise week 6 - Miracle, still

Witnessing-Observer group exercise

Half of the group are the performers.
The other half are active observers.
The observers walk through the space.
The roles will change during this
exercise.

I understood that all change their
roles at the same time. Synchronized
swapping. Over time I am not sure
about it. The changes from performer
to observer and vice versa seem to
be desynchronized. May be the score
allows individual changes. May by
I was wrong. However.

What I am become aware in this exercise
is that I am almost automatically
transform to the role of a performer
as soon as there is a direct connection
between a performer and me.
It's interesting.
Why is this like that?

During the first weeks I was looking
for connections with the others but
could not find them easily or not at
all. It always was hard work. Often
I felt confused, isolated and a bit frustrated.
Now in this exercise it's so easy to
connect and get inspired... to jump.

What has changed? -
Obviously a lot, but what exactly?

Miracle.

Rise week 5 - Some essence

We are a group of three.
One is performing the other two are watching.
There is the stage, the audience and the
performer's theme.
Each theme / performer gets five minutes.

I show my theme, I watch the others.
Then we shall go for a second round.
We are told to stick with our theme and to
take it more into the extreme.
More extreme!
That's at least what I understand.

No, I can not do this, is my first thought.
I can not going / developing it more into it's extreme.
If I do so then I am going to get injured.
I was already on the edge.
I already hurt myself today.
I am concerned.
Thinking desperately.
I make myself aware about the fact that this  is a workshop for performers, not for suicidals.
I say to my self, if your body is in pain then it is not your way.
But there must be a way, your way somewhere / somehow!

I find a way to the extreme without finding myself in
the hospital later.
It requires a lot of courage to go it.
But  I trust my audience.
It works.

I feel it.
It's the extreme of my theme and, I feel it.
I am happy, I am in the finding mode, I am performing,
I am finding, I am on the right way.
It's new, it's unbelievable, it's just great.
It works, it's consistent, it's self containing,
it grows, it all makes sense.
It's here and now.
I feel it, I am in it, in the extreme,
the essence,
the real life.
Five minutes over.

Standing up, taking a deep breath,
once again a deep breath,
and let it go in order to take it with me,
now.

gotcha!


A finding about essence:

(1) Each theme / idea / material has an essence.
(1.1) There is always more than one essence.
(1.2) Each essence is different.
(1.3) Each essence is right.
(2) The essence emerges from the material through change.
(2.1) One can not search for the essence.
(2.2) The essence can only be found.
(3) Each material contains all the essences of life.

Rise week 2

The Dance of qualities - as people arrive they start to work immediately, no need to wait for everyone, the space is there. Physical exploration led by Tree on cello. This is a warm up dance, so its many things, a letting go of where we have been and a coming into where we are. Here we are changing time, time we give to things, and what we give time to. Time changes by what we give it to. We have the ability to give time. Here we are changing the space, our relationship to space, both inner and outer. We extend ourselves into both. The time to do this work is now. If you have heard what i am saying let it go and find it for yourself. It takes time and space.

The dance of the eyes-  Move into your eyes. Your eyes are innocent. Receiving information. We work with our hands finding the boundaries and the periphery of our vision. We move taking our eyes on a visual adventure through space. Sometimes focusing directly on our hands and letting the information from the rest of the space spill in, sometimes letting our hands be our of focus but in continuous attention.We practice seeing, being and doing simultaneously.

The Open Score - here we are introduced to the open score. The only limitation in the open score is the limitation of time and space. We give 15 minutes, people can witness from the walls, the whole space is used. We do this three times. Each time i offer limitations or guides to tune in the score to each other. Many things happen. There is a general respect by everyone for everyone in the space which i am happy about. Introducing the Open Score is somehow a risk, because here i am saying, here is a time and space within which you can choose the boundaries within which you can operate. Its also a great way to learn and find out about how we think and make choices. Bring them into time and space and see.  

Discussion. Many points of view on what happened.

Rest. A good session.

Rise week 1 Report.

The Dance of Qualities. An ongoing movement research. Begin moving. Allow it to settle into the body. Notice the quality. Play with moving the quality into different parts of the body, localising or letting take the whole body. Change quality. Allow it to settle. Play with it. Move back to the first quality. Continue to explore. Try extreme changes of qualities. To begin in principle remain focused, gentle and small. Allow it to move the whole body. Remain playful and warm up the body.

An Idea : A culture of Gentleness. This is not a directive about what we should do but a suggestion, a question. What is the relationship between yourself and your experience, your emotions, your thoughts, judgements and ideas? The important idea is that we have a relationship with these things, not that some are good and others not so good, or that these things are fixed and can describe who we are. We are moveable and adaptable, aware and alive.

Take an exercise, a movement. You don´t have to understand it completely, just something about it. Put what you understand about it into movement. Show it to you partner. Watch your partner. Take the new information and repeat explore. Take turns in witnessing and interpreting. As you continues to exchange notice how witnessing continues as you act. It is the constant. Give that energy so that as you move between witnessing and action the witness is always there. Enjoy moving.

Swing your arms, punching the air infront of you. Speed up, slow down. As you speed up remain relaxed in the rest of your body. Notice when you clench your shoulders or your legs. Let them relax. Use only what is necessary.

The Dance of Changes. Find something. Explore it. When the bell rings change completely, a new state, a new dance, immediately. Inhabit with you whole body. Allow your eyes to remain alive. Notice when your attention becomes internal. Notice when you lose sight of the room. Try to remain in touch with both the internal world and the room, the people, the movement around you. Be inside and outside at the same time. Again the witness energy remains as you change, the room changes. Give that energy. The witness flies effortlessly through the changes.

Performance practise. Formally walk out in front of the audience. Allow yourself to do nothing, Witness yourself being witnessed. Walk back to your place. Witness the whole process from being in the audience to standing in front of the audience. Does your heart beat faster? Can you remain inside yourself throughout . What changes occur? Is it enough to watch to see others?

What is going on inside your body? How does it feel to be seen? Can you remain fluid? Notice when you are fixed. What is the difference between still and being frozen, fixed in an attitude. Can you feel those things? What images arise? Is it possible to remain aware of the whole space throughout the process?

Sit in front of a partner on a chair. Show them something. A word an action. Change roles. Become the witness. Where are you watching from? Infront of yourself? From inside you head.

From you chest? Is it possible to be neither reaching out or disappear inside, but simply be in your eyes and invite information, people, poems in?

Rest. Practise allowing the body to be inactive. A heart beat is two thirds resting. Inactivity

allows the body to recover and its unconcious actives to aline and happen. Allow space internally.

Rise week 4 - First harvest

My body is my body is my body.


Found at least two robust themes / ideas:

Theme 1: "Reborn as an alien"
Emerged from the periphery-exercise we did in week 2.

Theme 2: "Desperate goal achiever"
It came out of a quality I played with in week 3.

(Remark: I have stories for each theme but there are poem-stories
written in German. I am not able to translate without distorting them.)



The open score.
For the first time I felt right / satisfying being in the open score.
For the first time I was not waiting for the perfect picture or
scene on stage built up by the group. I just jumped in / on stage.

I am sure this change in my strategy relates to the creature-reflection in week 2.
(Remark: I am born as a scientist. I always look for cause and effect.
It's a habit and never the truth, very often not even a provable hypothesis.)


However, now questions remain:
What means "right / satisfying"?
What means "group"?
What means "waiting"?
What means "not waiting"?

Rise week 3 - Monster

Something is building up in me.
There is something developing.
But I can not catch it.
I can not catch it yet with names and symbols.
It's all in my body.
Hopefully it will grow, then I might be able to catch and save it.

Everyone is writing now.
I can not catch a thing between the pages of my notebook.
Barnaby is sitting with closed eyes.
Outside on the tree a pigeon.
The tree is huge and still without any green yet.
It's a huge tree in a berlin backyard.
It has to be huge in order to catch at least a bit
of sun and its warmth between the massive kreuzberg houses.
The evening sun projects the top branches of the tree
onto a high firewall made only out of bricks.
The wall is a monster, a beautiful monster
made of thousands of small bricks and
each little brick is an universe.

Rise week 2 - a different point of view

The periphery exercise.
Experimenting with my field of view. The whole becomes the focus.
My well known focus vanishes.
As I stop moving my eye balls, my center of the body
guides my visual perception.
This turns me into a different creature.
Being a different creature is interesting.

The creature thinks that either
no one is seeing it while it is able to see all the other creatures
or that everyone is able to see it while it can not see them at all;
or is it both, or none of it, or something totally different.
It's interesting to be a creature that is not sure
about other creatures around it. There might be
some other creatures or not.
There might be some sort of conscious interaction or not.
But, clearly there is something, something interesting.
The creature starts to trust that there is something
out there which the creature itself is unable to see,
only feeling it might be an option.

Rise week 1 - where to go

There is no direction, and it's not funny.
Waiting is not an option because it makes me disappear.
I feel it. It's not nice.
I fall into the search mode, tension emerges in my body and gets stronger.
I am not here to disappear, I am here to be present.
What ever that means?

My talking is movement, my watching is movement.

There is this watching-copying exercise.
Once again, my talking is movement, my watching is movement.
It goes back and forth.
Copying equal developing.
Developing equal deleting.
Deleting goes back to copying.
Copying equal developing.
It goes back an forth
while all of us turn slowly into shadows.

A crow jumps around on the roofs opposite the studio.
There is clearly an intention.
A woman is cooking in her kitchen opposite the studio.
There is clearly an intention.
I am on stage in front of an audience.
Just me.
Just the audience.
I try to do the exercise well, again just the exercise.
Apart from this no clear intention, again.
I stare into my emptiness again;
not brave enough again to look, watch, to perceive, to be.
I am aware of it again.
Then the judging "again" resolves, something happens.
First: This "again" makes me stiff, now I feel it.
Second: I take this stiffness as something to work on.
Happily I say to myself that there is always an alternative to stiffness.
Third: I am not worried, yes, I am not worried at all.
Finally, I am easy realizing that this stiffness is one point to start from.
Yes, here I can start... to
go finding, not searching.