21.26pm Monday the 24th

21.26pm Monday the 24^th

  

Writing this blog somehow became an exercise to focus and put in words some of the personal issues I had to deal with in rehearsal.

I have realized that sometimes the most interesting material or contribution happens when I distance myself from the original task. For example, Fleur asks me to develop material around a subject and a situation but when I perform it and follow my mistakes to a new universe, I end up discovering something new and eventually that will replace the old material.

I wonder sometimes if I distance myself to much from the subject matter…

Today we explored the riots in Blake’s universe and it proved quite difficult to make a riot inside a dance studio. Let’s just say that the dance studio seems too clinical of a space to riot. But eventually words came out of our brains and the spoken word alongside the dance made the riot quite something new for me.

There is a feeling of liberation and being heard.

Blake is disclosing himself to me bit by bit, the other day I was reading the paper on my way to the studio and I fond myself staring a David Hockney picture and wondering if he could be Blake this days. It served me as an image to work with in the studio but by the afternoon I had already changed my mind about Blake.

By the end of the day I thought that I might look like Blake.

The revelation for me was to understand that Blake is a free spirit and a content and satisfied person. He made work from the visions and he made work because he wanted to make work, regardless of the feedback from the communities around him.

I am working on playing Blake as a free spirit. Witnessing the environment and producing material that I find relevant today. Not material that is beautiful or fits in, none of that.

 It’s Monday night, 21.57 and Patti Smith still makes me wonder about Blake and London in my bed.

Ezekiel Oliveira