a transcript, with clickables:
What is going on? I am stationary again. I think this is a win for everybody.
Last week started with the second sharing of my new work. It was a closed sharing in comparison to the one before, which The Place had put on and was a mixture of my peers and people whose opinions I value and tastes I trust, and organisers, sorry, organisations and venues that I might want to partner with and whose support I might want. We shared half an hour this time and I made a point of indulging in contextualising the work a little more. I shared a video from super early post- lockdown sessions of myself and Jevan and then took us into sweet spot sundaze which had sprung out of those sessions and shared a recap of that and then on into iii and a video where we’d kind of used improv instead of the choreographic tools in the week1, which to be honest, is becoming less of a thing in iii.
And for me, it feels like.. Yeah, a sidebar, I mean, this whole podcast is one big sidebar, but I think my choreographic process is changing and I think I’m more into witnessing that for me than getting it down on paper to share, which would speak to why that aspect of iii is forever shifting or just not feeling like a priority for me. Anyway, I focused on telling that story on that evening and in deciding to do that and pulling the footage together and figuring out kind of the timeline of it all and which parts felt most important to touch on..
I did have everyone for two hours, but you don’t want to just take two hours because you’ve got it because you risk saying unimportant things, losing attention and interest and such. But in figuring all that out and thinking it through, it was like, oh, I am pitching. This is a pitch. So I pitched and I think I did really well.
I think because the work is built upon sweet spot sundaze and iii and those I can speak with chest on the value and importance of those two things to me, to artists and to the community, I think that helps me speak about the work with chest, which could be difficult because it is new and in development and is so open to shifting. Like what I think it is really might not be what it ends up being in the long run, which I’m up for. Yeah, I enjoyed it.
I was so tired after it. Like, I can’t even tell you how exhausted I was and how that really took me by surprise. I’ve put it down to holding the work since I had my first Choreodrome week in July and then had a month and then had the second week and then like a week or so and then sharing, then another week and then the sharing that just happened. And although I had ‘dropped it’ in between out of necessity because I have other things to do, I didn’t entirely, I don’t think. And I think that kind of prolonged holding of it and thinking about it somewhere, I felt it when it was time to really release it.
Another thing on dropping it in between.. I think I’ve said this in another episode, but I’m so well wired to this make the version of the thing that you’re given the resources to make that it just is. And I’m not sure if I spoke about this. I’ve definitely spoken about it to people, but the producers that I’m working with had said, like, it would be great.. It was by no means like dictated, but it was said that it would be great if I came out of Choreodrome with a draft, like a full draft of the work. And I was like, if that happens, fine, but I do not want anyone to be under any illusions that this works takes £2500 to make. I don’t want to set the tone, that for that amount of money, you’re going to get a 50 minute piece out of me. Obviously, it’s highly improvised, so it is more probable and I did make maybe a third. I do have a draft of maybe 35, 40 minutes, but by the by, like I’m not prioritising that. And also, Choreodrome is a development programme. If I had nothing at the end of it, I think that was okay. Like that was going to be okay. So, yeah, definitely did not prioritise having a full show at the end of 10 days of which I had two days with dancers, like, are we having a laugh.
Anyway. Eclipse season. I struggle to ask for help. I’m getting so much better. I’m feeling the necessity of it as I want to scale up my businesses and different strands of my practice and just very clear of what I am not capable of doing, so needing to call in that support. Also very clear on things that I don’t want to get any better at doing and calling in support for that and delegating those things. But there are things that I can do and don’t mind doing and that sort of stuff goes in a strange basket where I will just do it and then afterwards will be like I could have done with not doing those things and I did have a bit of that on the day.. I wasn’t holding so much that I felt that I couldn’t do the bits that I was there to do but it was only after.. this is so silly and this is not a judgement on sweet lovely production support but I had to keep on switching the lights on and off between me talking and the videos showing. And of course I’m just going to run to the door and turn off the lights. But in hindsight, I really would have loved someone else just turning off the light. It’s okay to me that I didn’t think about that before the day started. I would perhaps argue that I think what would have helped and which we didn’t really do was have a kind of pre-pitch meet. Touched base in like the slightest way, but I think as I move forward with producer support and like learn what that even is, I think, and I will voice this to them that like I could really do with the lead being taken as opposed to me and not be proactive and do it, but even in the conversation of what might need to be done, I could do with that coming from like the top down. And I guess I am still like top of the food chain because it’s my work, but I would actually like to feel like I’m not for once and I did feel that on that day and it was only after where I was like, ah, that would have been nice. And like a silly thing, like someone just walking in while we were still rehearsing and me having to ask to not let anyone else in and that feeling to me like something that should have just like not happened in the first place. Teeny tiny gripes, but I’m allowed to have teeny tiny gripes because I’m an artist and I’m sensitive about my shit. So that happened.
Then I was very tired, but I went straight, not straight, like the next day, I went back into Clarence Mews in Hackney where I’m in residence. I know I’ve spoken about that before, speaking about it again. Kissing my dog, sorry. I had such a good time. So I’ve kind of prioritised or I had prioritised outside of studio time, writing while I’m there. I wasn’t in the mood. I’d also prioritised output. That’s been my thing for the year, just focusing a little bit more on my creative output and if not coming out of the year with work, at least setting pace for that to happen and making room in my life and career for that to come through. I’d played around, had some dancers very graciously give me some time. Last time I was there, taught them a thing and aspired to come back around to it and film a thing. And I just don’t care. I just don’t care about it. And I think that it was actually enough to have dancers in the space and just play around with a thing. I’m not.. Part of me had written about even if you go cold on the idea, just keep pushing through to get it done. And I’m like, now.. I get it. I do understand why that is a noble pursuit, but not for me. Like, if I don’t care about it, just move on. Just keep it pushing. Just go where the energy is. So I didn’t revisit that and I did clock how useful that that was.
And again, as I think I may have mentioned before, I think if I zoom out to my creative life, I can see how doing that helped to illuminate where else in my career I’m getting things done outside of like, stick with that idea that feels stale now, just to show that you can get things done. Like girl, I’m getting things done. Shut up.
So let that one go. All that to say, I went into the studio the evening that I got there and I started moving the way that I normally would, which is just like get in my body and float around and just do what feels nice and move to the music that I’ve been listening to recently. And I was just not feeling it. I don’t even think I finished one round before I was like, this is not what we need to do today. What I want to do is move and sweat and be in my body, but in a somewhat mindless way. And of course, it takes mindfulness to apply what you might be being taught but I think there’s a surrender in like ‘just tell me what to do just let me enter the space and just tell me which parts of my body need to go where’ and I played around with.. I wanted to do one of Diana Matos’ tutorials for ages.
So I went there and was having a look and like could have and then I was like, you get Mayoral’s, you get Dylan’s platform for free, go on there, see what’s going on there. Then I saw a couple of pieces of his that I really wanted to learn and then was about to do that. I was like, no, I don’t need to learn sequences right now. I don’t, yeah, I don’t, I didn’t feel like I had the mental capacity for even that. So I ended up doing a weight exchange drill of Frankie J’s and I had such a good time. Like, I think because it was like nine o’clock at night, I wasn’t at prime info processing.. I wasn’t at prime processing space? In prime info processing space, but I had such a good time very slowly learning a thing, speeding it up, learning variations of that thing.
And I think because at Choreodrome, I’ve been in the presence of dancers, specialising in styles, and I witness, you know, I witness that online a whole bunch, but I’m not like trying to become a specialist in a style by any means, but I think I’d been in such close proximity, it was just really nice to connect with a style that evening in really basic back to foundations ways. and then I did a popping drill, like 15 minute popping drill that I, yeah, I just had a really good time. I could feel and then I thought, right, whenever I’m back in space, I’ll do these because I’m so keen to liven up these bricks that I’ve got attached to my legs that I need to train that. That is not just going to come. I’m not going to feel light on my feet just by deciding that I want to do house one day. It’s not going to happen. So it was a really lovely thing to revisit and then to finish off the practising and come back round to listening to music that I love and just moving the way that I’d like and having accessed that through the styles was just a really cool thing to have happen at the end of all of that. And not what I thought would be my go-to being back in a studio on my own art after it all.
And then the rest of my time there was mostly spent figuring out Substack. So not creatively writing at all, just like right how does this platform work, where I’m going to want my writing to live, which was ultimately very productive and I enjoyed. Need to follow the scent on that because then I came back around to it once I got home I was like I can’t be bothered um and then there’s the toss up of if I wait until I’ve kind of cracked the code on how Substack works to share anything on there, it will be a really long time before I share anything on there. And no one is really looking at me right now. I can figure it out as I go along, just share the things. So I’m going to do that before the week is out, hopefully.
Yeah, and that was last week. I have monthly coaching sessions with the lady that runs the space and we had a really good one around what a sharing might look like for me there, what would be helpful for me and I am leaning less towards sharing work and more towards sharing ideas with people that might be able to help me execute them. Yeah, and even saying that, I’m like, yeah, that is what we’re going to do. So that will continue. I’ll hopefully go back later in the year and just keep plugging away at the things. But that was the week.
It felt chunky in ways. Oh, I also took class. I took Toby’s class at Playground. That had been a while. And while it took me out of the writing room, I thought it was still a really beneficial way to spend my London time because three hour round trip for a 90 minute class just is not happening. I love Toby’s class, so I had a really nice time. It’s always, I can’t help but zoom out from my experience as student, just like view the room.. and everyone seemed to be having a really good time. He made a really good point and I’m glad that someone who kind of promotes freedom in their movement and in their combos to still dictate, you know, where we should all be looking the same way. And I yeah, I did watch a a few people and wonder, like, do you know that you don’t look anything like him on that bit? Like, is that a choice or are you not able? And I do have some thoughts around how just in class do we do that like I am getting.. not getting better because I’ve always been able to do it, but being sure to be specific with my corrections and not to the room but to the the person that I’ve seen do the thing that isn’t correct. And I need to stay and want to stay on that.
Because I don’t think that cleanliness should be that thing that you don’t get trained on or expected to have skills in until you’re on a job. It used to be that you weren’t really used.. You didn’t, you weren’t trained to work on camera until you were on camera and like, you know, red dots and all that shit. Similarly with heels, there weren’t really heels classes so you weren’t really trained, you didn’t know how to dance in heels until you were booked on a job and then it was like ‘bring your heels’ and it’s like, ah, okay. Thankfully we were all dancing in kind of like Dr. Marten’s heels so there wasn’t really much of an issue with weight placement, etc. But cleanliness shouldn’t.. looking like the person next to you shouldn’t be a thing that you only train when you’re on a job. I think we are in like slightly dire spots if that’s becoming true, but it kind of feels like it is. Like I speak to peers of mine that work commercially as choreographers and it is often a thing of like, ‘my God, just so messy’ or.. ‘just so messy.’ It’s like, that’s just not a thing that we’re being taught anymore. So I do want to do my bit without discarding the individuality piece of my practice because I think it’s really important, but I think it is a bit less important now than when I started teaching or really got a grasp on teaching, when individuality and self-expression wasn’t so much a thing. It’s the thing now. So it’s like, right, where can we bring back some ability to dance in unison without having to go to a jazz class. Also so valid to go to a jazz class. I also watched.. This is my longest one, isn’t it? Wow, maybe it’s the stationary thing.
I also went to watch Bacchae at the National, which my sweet friend Ukweli Roach is one of the leads in and Fi Silverthorn’s in, Tash Gooden is in, a few other faces that we’ll know from the community and Kate Prince choreographed. And I watched Jamie Lloyd’s Romeo and Juliet and saw the writer in that as an actor. I didn’t know he wrote. But he’s rewritten Bacchae, which is a Greek tragedy that I wasn’t aware of. I think it’s Greek. Yes. Yes. 145 no interval. I laughed a lot. I did laugh a lot, but it took a while to get the tone of it. It was very ‘fam’ coded, a few too many fams for me I’ve got to say. I got it like I got it. I get where we are. I get what you’re doing. You don’t need to throw fam at the end of the sentences for me to understand understand that we’re in.. you’ve done it. But a delivery as well as like writing choice, I feel. And the dance was as I would have expected the dance to be from Kate, which is a compliment to their identity as a choreographer, I suppose. Yeah, I don’t really have to much to say about the dance. It was the dance. Ukweli was great. Very funny and I know he lapped up that role. One playing a god and two, just being camp as a row of pink tents. Um yeah, great. I just love seeing his work. And without standing at stage door with a programme, like I think I really do up fandom quite well because I do try to see him in everything. I just.. I’ve known him for a really long time obviously worked with him on Vice and as Luke and I bang on about just had some of the best times of my life with that piece and those people but just the journey from training as an actor into everything that he’s done and, you know, I work in theatre and don’t see as much as I could. So any opportunity to see great work, I will. And he was great in it. He didn’t know that me and my friend were going to be there, so that’s not always fun and I think they were, I think it was the third preview so a bit unkind but again, just taking advantage of being in London, really. So yeah, that was the week.
I feel like I end quite abruptly, but when I’m done, I’m done. Okay. Hope you’re all so well when you hear this months after it was recorded. Good day.
beautifully demonstrated in the video by Kyra Mills and Emily Piddlesden.
