A S S E M B L E D : t i l t / d u s t / r h y t h m /

ASSEMBLED is a book-document extending out of the residency in the old school assembly hall at CAST Helston Cornwall UK in August 2017. The hall with its emptied quality, rough walls, unvarnished floor and dusty corners offered me a choreographic work-site to explore body and place in relation to themes of (dis) orientation and presence.

Moving, drawing, scoring, writing, installing and taking photographic stills were modes of working with and between sensations of seeing, listening and touching. ‘Rhythmic scores’ and ‘quiet positionings’ became choreographic modes of resonating with the hall as site.

After the residency I spent 10 days editing notes and distilling them into short texts under the headings tilt, dust, rhythm. The book-document consists of three large folded pages which the reader needs to navigate and turn, the pages themselves having no fixed up-down orientation. Please be in touch if you would like a copy.

Supported by CAST
c-a-s-t
assemblinginthehall.wordpress.com

Tilt/

Dust catches in throat: smell of damp dusty emptiness; skin absorbs a quiet weight and dense resonance.

Gritty surface, broken edges, dusty pipes, peeling plaster offer a re-shaping and pull the vertical and horizontal planes
this way and that. They add texture, smell to architectural building and act as a kind of force attracting body to touch, lie, lean,
brush, glance, gravitate to surface.

A road runs closely past the windows at a slant to the horizontal and disappears from view in the left of the window frame.
The steep slope of the road outside complicates a sense of firm ground inside and is slightly disorientating as the occasional
car, human voice, child’s gallop rolls past down the hill and drops out of view out of earshot.
This road on the other side of the windowpane tilts the sensation of the architectural space of the hall and this
is accentuated by a quiet dusty weight.

A quiet tilting space in which to enter and move: add weight, complicate angles, lie low, fall away from.

Rhythm/

score

repetitive rhythmic loops of movement that become sound too

short phrases evolving through persistent repeat and shifting slightly on each repetition

repeating to understand and change form

rhythm vibrates in the space, brushes surfaces, circulates air, disturbs dust

presenting as sound-movement, sculpting resonance and body-place

rhythmic loops as choreographic packages or kinetic objects that transform

in duration and iteration, temporarily imprinting themselves on surfaces

the body too is scored and vibrates

rhythmic scoring as a process of iteration and transformation and over-layering

fading and appearing rhythms generate shape through small incremental shifts of

accent, tension, weight, direction, attention, breath

Rhythmic objects transport to other places and other sites and other bodies

where they resonate differently

Dust/

quietly positioning body

low

close to floor

in proximity to walls

to add weight to surfaces and to site

to be in dust

part of architectural presence of dust

gravity as a force pulls a body down

a sensation of weight stilling body

a sensorial still place in which to reside for a while longer

to settle (like the dust)

to assemble oneself (body, idea, action, focus)

to structure the time-space of day, hall, sensation, stillness, movement, curiosity

to activate surface (walls, floor),

to stir still air

to orientate body in relation to chair, wall, floor, sill, radiator, doorway, window

to texture, weight, gravity

to light, view, shadow

to sounds close, distant, elsewhere, inside

to work with body-place through sensations of listening, seeing, touching, moving

– and  to sometimes become a slightly disorientated body?