Deptford: not Creaking but Potent on th'Equinox

By Creekside this morning, taptapping on this hired pc, I shyly invoke Blakeian sprites of Spring: today, Vernal Equinox: same lighthours as darkhours. Is it arbitrary, credulous, plain silly of me to fancy this an astronomically-auspicious day on which to show our Blake in premiere to London?

Seriously, that doesn't matter; but I joyously take any observably cosmic cue for the greening, the springing-forward of our metropololitan debut - as a great omen. Yet I'm trying not to be superstitious. Towards the end of run/reheasal yesterday, actor David and I looked up into the black drapes of the "flies" and mused on the life-echoes that might haunt this creekside space.

Here the waters meet, not common even in this capital where so much happens at once. I daydreamed the spirits: neolithic folk, Boudiccan Britons, their hapless Roman occupiers, the uncounted generations down to Dickens' umbral villains and killers, to luckless cadavers in Deptford muds.

Still, keep it cheery, Paul. Blake is in us, I know, empirically, truthfully: we set his words, we act his boy-visions. Blake is in me thro' his works' enduring. I hope my shaky candle is worthy.

Next week we'll do it all again for Bristol, my adopted home. Now that is scary.

(Although tonight's show starts in just under nine hours, my adrenal addiction has already started pumping in my veins wee, slightly-paralysing doses of The Fear.)

I hope my falsetto isn't too false, my distortion-effects not overly so.

What would Billy Blake make of us?

Pray for us, William.

London

I come from where those feet did walk, to wander down the charter'd streets, near the shuddering Thames and nearer still to the slithering Creek.
I bring my own darkening Green, through an ocean of buses. It echoes with boy and girl and elation and guilt.
I watch the rioters dance.
I watch the dancers riot.
I once again marvel at the company I keep and wonder what Blake may have thought of us. Of the pictures that we draw, of the prints that we press. Our game of sticks and ladders...

Lost and Found

When I am young again I will be a lamb.
Open-hearted, but I will keep my secrets.
Carefree, let me care less.
I will know less, let me know less.
When I am young again I will be young.
Feel youth serve me.
I will be all colour, play, inspiration.
I will know know what to do with colour and inspiration and play.
I will make friends,. May I? Let me.
I will communicate better, I will just walk away.
I will no longer hunt alone,
Hoarse with making moan.
Did the one who made the Lamb make me?




Tiger

Salisbury

I arrive at Wellington academy slightly late as my taxi driver was very chilled out! At the entrance I meet a very enthusiastic dance teacher that takes me to a room of 30 young dancers.
In that room we crated something quite amazing as the youngsters where very surprised with my introduction to the human body. The fact that they are so young allow their minds and able bodies to embodied the concepts I explore in class. By the end of it no one was sure weather the head was on top of the neck or weather the feet were the hands... We did 'tondues' with our hands, 'chasses' on our arms and the concept of being up side down, up right was all mixed up! I tryed to offer my very particular views on contemporary dance....
After this great session I get on a bus towards Salisbury, the journey took approximately one hour, but 15 minutes into it the driver stop the bus and went out for a fag! So, at this point everyone wondered what was wrong with the bus, but everything was fine. The driver finished her cigaret, jump back in and started the bus. I didn't give it to much thought as the landscape was beautifully green and the sun was shining:)
On the landscape I noticed something diferent. Man, soldiers running, chatting, smoking.... I was going through a military base, the absence of women and children made me feel uncomfortable to be honest and
then I wondered what would take one to serve a country and go to war.
I don't think I could ever do that myself and I still can't understand why would you go to fight a war against another country, man, children and women.
The landscape changed shortly after as I arrived to Salisbury, a beautiful small place blessed by the spring.
Tomorrow we perform Blake Dipytch and I can't wait to fall in love with Catherine again, to cry as my mother speaks about the fears and vissicitudes of William.
I can't wait to see angels again,
I can't wait to share the stage with this blakian family that has inspire me to make more work and to transform the establishment of dance.
A personal thank you from my heart to all of you, I can not believe that this tour and experience is coming to an end.
'Come on William, life awaits'
Ezekiel Oliveira

New to Blake, new to Blogging, but I see them!

I do see them! See them on a delicate whisper, on a genuine smile, on a generous hug, on a particular someone's sweet and goofy laughter, as the sun wakes and says bye bye...Upon the recollection of a pleasant time, around couples in love, in innocence, in joy, in rebelliousness, in naughtiness... 

I see them in what's turning out to be an almost compulsory, yet rather spontaneous Fleur Darkin Company’s pre-class morning group laughing session. I see them when I hear some music or certain voices. And Yes Paul! That joyous music you 'play' with Ezequiel's wholesome joyful solo, is most certainly allowing me to see them.

But, I last saw them in Newbury, as I turned around to catch a glimpse of a falling tear on William's cheek…

I felt welcomed. I'm on board! 

Vanessa

At what point does a backhanded compliment become a forehanded insult?

Hello.
My name is David, and I'm an actor who has just parachuted into the middle of a dance show.
My career has taken some strange turns, but this is one of the strangest.
After my first day of rehearsals my wife (another actor, but one who unlike me, DOES dance) said "I bet you feel really untalented now...", to which my only answer was "Yes!"

Reasons:

I'm surrounded by people who have worked long and hard to make what we are presenting as heartfelt and personal an artistic venture as I've ever witnessed, where the technical and the emotional blur to create a narrative that is beyond words. Then I come along and plonk some words on it. I hope and trust that I'm doing it well, but as I saw my comfort zone disappear over the horizon weeks ago, I can only guess. I do get rewards though: little signs from my colleagues, moments of connection and strength.

Even my audition was a wake-up call. I'm used to reading dialogue with a director who's stumbling and mumbling through the other role. Not the case this time. Oh no. There were two of us in the room, myself and the director, and right from the off she's BANG ON: off the page, full-tilt and dragging me wild-eyed with her to places I've never been before. So I'm thinking "I'm the second best actor in this room" and then I'm thinking "Up your game, David", and I've been thinking it pretty much ever since.

Taking over a role from someone else is never easy. You get stuck between what your instinct tells you to you and what you think you should be doing. Thankfully the whole rehearsal process has been so fluid that by the time I filled the role it was vaguely me-shaped.

Then there's the fact that, frankly, I've been miscast. I'm usually the good guy, and for those of you who know your Dickens I need say only two words: Joe Gargery. But for those of you who know William Blake try these for size: His Dad. "You're just too damn nice!" I was told hours before my first performance. Compliment or insult? I'm not sure. But as kicks up the arse go it was one of the best.

That first performance was tentative. Too much to think about. Too many conflicting directions. But something happened on the second night. It felt good. I got the weight. Maybe Fleur was right. Maybe it was the beard...

Q Again

So we're back. Some new faces, some old, a rebirth (actually we popped out 3 after a wilful winter, but I digress) and a national tour.So there are gaps in the narrative of this blog..... I see Paul has left the gate open for the rest of us. Maybe Ez will excercise his words. Maybe Audrey will tell a tale, might Riccardo whip up a metaphor? Vanessa ought volunteer a well balanced perspective, David could introduce himself, Fleur will have her say, Nadine will organise us. But for now let me offer you this, to Anna, Morgan, Kirsty and Zoot and the rest of us.

http://vimeo.com/37736667

Yearning to Hone by Paul Bradley

As the BD at last goes "live" by having toured via Newbury and Taunton, I'm rightly, really proud of us, and me. But I confess to a frustration at insufficient day-to-day momentum with this live work, the kind of daily, multiple passes of the pieces which together refine, strengthen, hone and, overall,  transpire new life into the whole thing.

However, I'll pretend not to complain, as "some work" is far better than "no work". As for my own passage thro' the doors of propertour, I've been consistently indulged by the audiences' (this I observed empirically at the Corn Exchange as well as Tacchi-Morris) heightened whooping as I took my show-end bow. In fairness to needed skepticism, I stomp onstage last to savour my plaudits; but the feeling is true, and seems genuine.

None of this vindication stops me being scared of all forthcoming gigs, though, especially Laban and Bristol. For this latter, my chosen home, I'll bear an extra frisson of dread-full selfconsciousness. Good for the constitution, I'm sure.

Yet, how momentum would lift us, lift me, lift the sense of the mission being truly mobile, really activated. I hope there are more gigs. Apart from all else, my commitment to this excludes other work - yet this contract miserably fails to pay anything like a living wage. I can wholly understand why at least one of my erstwhile colleagues from the reheasal-/preview-phase - itself, ironically, perversely,  the sweet source of more than twice as much paid work than the "tour" itself - may have been driven away by the sheer dearth of working days. 

I can't afford this. Skint artist dreams of retainer.

No matter: I'm not a quitter, and at least my ego gets a soothing rub, even if it's the overdraft that's swelling.

Sanguine and more sang, whine!

When did I last have a decent night's sleep in this cult? Yes, I love to earning my £11.25/hour (with no sniff as yet of any negotiable structures/prodecures for reflecting overtime...) as a creative musician, but feeling like blood-donation is next on the call-sheet, esp. when I'm particularly sleep-deprived (and that from a man who's parented 4 times!) is, er, tricky.


But stuff it. I/we can do it! In my 49th year, my 35th as a creative musician, I'm at last salaried and - albeit it temporarily, till some phantom axe fall - fulltime in my chosen career!


Hooray!

So: first preview last night followed hot on dress-rehearsal. Both alright, preview better than alright. But ways to go till aspirant-perfectionism is attained. That is: I know I can do EVEN better. And I'm quite decent already.

Let's see how tonight goes. As Zoot said y'day, one of us ought hide in toilets for surveillance, post-show...Hear what the punters really think.

Break My Legs. If the Pedals Don't First!



Paul Bradley

ciocfaidh mo la!

Hands

Young articulate hands expressing solitude and rejection.
Hands that truly believe in the self and in the artist.
A pair of hands that at moments equal angels. 

10 long fingers that have artistic autonomy to think and create. 

Young used hands that stop me from walking down London to wonder about the circumstances I find myself in.
Hands have never been so significant.

The exercise of not using the spoken word to deliver a thought allowed my hands to flourish an idea. The latter as repercussions in the body that allow the choreography to immerse in the theatre space. 

Ezekiel Oliveira

Q4

http://vimeo.com/31306051

The angels

The angels appeared to me, William.

The angels aren’t representative. They exist and they have a very distinguishable essence and purpose.

William and the angels communicate; they inspire creation and open the mind to perceive the surrounding world in a poetic manner.

Those that see angels are ‘privileged’ and perhaps experience the world in a more intimate and sensorial way.

I wonder how Catherine lived with William, his visions and the angels.

To accept what you can’t see, to trust on your beloved. To be so blindly in love that acceptance becomes the norm and you find yourself living with the angels that you can only imagine.

Blake is now an emotional turmoil for me.

The emotional turmoil happens due to an availability to sense the surroundings in the work.

The different emotional states are rooted in each counter point.  There is no stability in the action, and the latter is constant for over one hour.

The very interesting experience is to listen to the all ensemble on stage. The story is written on the set, in our faces and damaged bodies, the references to William and the angels, William and Catherine, William and his parents and finally William in the world as an artist are spread everywhere.

I can now see the work, even if it is bouncing inside a specific frame waiting for the time to settle in a more concise form.

The sense of being an individual with a generous personality is settling in everyone, and alongside this personal experience the ensemble is together as a whole.

Experience is this ensemble of personalities that speak Blake’s world, visions, desires, frustrations and passions.

 Ezekiel Oliveira

Us must trust us

Dear Quang, Dear Kirsty, Dear Zoot, Dear Paul, Dear Audrey, Dear Ezekiel, Dear Anna, Dear Morgan,

This is for you, company.

I  am writing this here because it feels private (!) (Is anyone reading this other than us? Welcome, whoever you are.) And  because reading gives you more chance to absorb and respond. It is general, so it wont be specific to you, your job is to apply it to every scene you're in, every transition you're in, every letter you build and see what you need and where this is useful and where it isn't. 

Company, thank you for sharing some startling visions yesterday. You made my heart leap. You made our guests' hearts leap. As we all know, there is greatness in the room, as we all witness, it ebbs and flows. Our task is to capture it, and manage the energy of the piece so that we can build the journey. Your task is to make every detail great. ("Well, I will make everything great when I know what I'm doing" you cry. 

"But you do know what you're doing" I reply. 

"And when you don't, if you don't, the specific scenes where you know you don't; it is your job to make a decision on how to play it. Decide you will try it this way or that way or from this angle or from that. ""But how will I know which way to play is the right one?" 

"You wont know it in your brain, you will feel if it is authentic." And it your sensitivity isn't yet attuned, I will feel it for you.

"What does authentic mean?"

Authentic does not mean we stay friends in the group, and we all get along, and treat each other onstage as if it were real life. Authentic in the performance zone is different to authentic in the real life zone. 

This morning I will be in the Laban cafe, sculpting the structure. Know that all that matters is the performers. Truly. What else is there? Isn't going to watch something onstage an acknowledgement that we as audience want to understand how the performers feel so we can understand how we feel?
 Your energy, your emotional truth. Is all that matters. It is the beginning of the story, the end of the story.

The rest is window dressing.

If you are real in a scene (Kirsty asks Quang, what do you mean 'Real"? Ezekiel thinks "What does real look like?" Quang thinks, what is real is the imaginary box I'm squeezing, and the cigarette I smoke after will also be real") then the scene can come at the beginning, middle or end of the structure.

There will be a slight change in the order and the sketches that are most thin will be cut so we can work on what is major.

Let's make everything real and build this great show, together. One of the myths of making work is that the Director has power and the performers are the servants.
We all see the visions.
I am in your hands, and you are in mine.

Fleur

'method' dancer

'Method' dancer

Questions...How deep? is it going to be cold? is there anything on the bottom? will you come in and get me if I don't come back up? Then I can jump with real commitment. The less information I have the harder I find it to let go... Are we going somewhere or is this just friends? Do I like you more than you like me?...art imitating life/life imitating art. I get the impression Quang's had enough of my questions! Nurse. My face turns green and pale. Watch from a distance. Stand in the background while you play.  

Kirsty

go back to bed - zoot lynam

The pressure builds up.

We find things. We lose things. I get tired out.

I fluctuate between worrying about how the show will turn out and fizzing with excitement for how amazing I think it's going to be. The dancers are amazing. The music is amazing. The source material is amazing. The vision is amazing. But... can we pull it off?

Sometimes I think we might be being too ambitious. Maybe we should just stop pretending and go back to bed. (At least then I'd get some rest!)

Today we did a first draft of a run through. The complete structure. Mostly I had no idea what I was doing. I had some great flashes of inspiration for what I could be doing. And I learnt that there's some things I can't do. Like be in two places at once. (though I would very much like to).

So many question marks linger over us at the moment, and it is getting so close to our first “performance”. Although it is intended only as a preview, a showing of work in development, it still feels like a lot of pressure.

I am here to serve the work, the piece. My last entry in this blog may have given the impression that I was precious about my role in it – I am not. I was just wanting to explore some immediate feelings to let them out and move on. I am here not as an inner child driven ego wanting all the toys and the box they came in. I am here with that inside, and a higher self who knows that the body of work we are creating is going to be far greater than any of us imagine.

And I trust us to get there.

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

Arses, Elbows and Angels by Paul Bradley

October races on, sun unaplogetically shines, we aim to make the show.

My weekend has been multi-locational and fairly dizzy: Friday night - back to Bristol (home) for a demanding, entirely-unrehearsed, but very satisfying gig, playing tricky music.

Then: Sat. 5.30, up for 6.30 train back to London; for a Saturday rehearsal. As it turned, this scheduled children's and families' workshop got cancelled, in favour of an even longer day's hardworking rehearsal. Goalposts: move.  Still, we were professionals., and undertook the noticeless re-adaptation with aplomb.

Then, i.e. now, happily holed-up in East Molesey (nr. Hampton), seeing my wife and the younger two of my four offspring. This eve I'll train it back to Greenwich, where's there's no laptop, no internet. This is my chance to blag a friend's computer, to tap my happy hexes to, whoever's reading?

Weekends like this one let me feel more keenly my solitariness as the sole team-member who doesn't LIVE in fecking London! But what not kills me, makes me potenter...

Through all this delirium I keep reminding myself that I'm working, fulltime, in music, in art, being spontaneous, collaborating. As my saner shell crumbles off with the shakes of the madder musicgenerator within, I feel FULFILLED!

Come on Monday!

zoot lynam demoted

This is pretty tough.

As an actor, coming into the world of dance, I am not sure of my place.

I am unfamiliar with the process.

For the past weeks I've been flailing. Disconnected tasks and exercises to try to bring something alive - Blake as he was aged 8; or me as I was aged 8; or me today - without much sense of where to begin, nor how Fleur sees these excerpts being used in the show. And Fleur is clearly a choreographer not a theatre director.

I can sense I'm not giving her what she wants. I feel as unsatisfied with what I'm doing as I imagine she is, but neither am I getting a clear enough sense of what is wanted from me.

At one point I felt I started getting somewhere. Although I'm not a dancer, I worked on a rather lovely little movement sketch with a ladder. Simple. Beautiful. Poetic. I enojy it.

But today the weather has changed. I've been demoted as actor. For now.

It's hard not to take it as a knock on my acting abilities. Hard, I guess, because I know that it is. I know I haven't been doing it right. I just don't know what “doing it right” is for this show.

I would prefer to be told straight up - “We're not happy with what you're doing. Here's why. And here's what we're doing about it. What do you think?”

Whether that is actually what Fleur thinks, I don't know. My inner 8 year old pipes up: it's because I'm no good and mummy's been desperately trying to get rid of me, but not knowing how to tell me. Not wanting to hurt my feelings.

I'm sure it's partly true, but I also fully trust that the decision is in the best interests of the show.

My insecurity is only temporary. And minor - I'm not having a career crisis. I know that I am a good actor. (Of course, I also know I can improve. Always.)

So. now I'm just in the music corner, with Paul. It's been difficult to know how to join in with Paul – the music he makes is great, but I've been intimidated by what seems like a very confident man doing his thing with loops and pedals - not really knowing what I can do to fit in. Today, however, we really made good music together.

And it felt great.

Q3

Hello all,

another intense, strange, productive, wierd and at times frankly bonkers week has come to pass. We've soared in celestial paradise. Rioted like filthy horny pigs. Crashed and burned to the raging resignation of "hey ho". There have been some radical changes (BTW, I love hyperbole as u may of gathered) with Tanya (writer) and Lou (dramaturg) coming in and landing some heavy-weight punches..... as if we weren't battered, bruised, bludgeoned enough already!!!. It's also been a week of birthdays (the jolly good fellas being Anna and Kirsty) What's for sure, is that this is most definatley a coming of age experience for most of us (at least the more melodramatic ones anyway)
However, amidst the chaos, the adult arguments, the delinquent chatter, the bull$(!% sound and fury, Angels of resplendant beauty seem to be emerging. And it's up to us to keep them partying.

Kirsty

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAqUNJGKjCQ


Last weeks never made it up...so this blog is a little overdue...today is a link, the song popped up on my ipod a few days ago....this affair with Blake is encroaching into all corners of my day to day.


Last week....

-dancing like me is proving harder than one would think. As an improviser it is perhaps unthinkable to have few sneaky traits or (hushed tone) 'moves' ready to throw in a dance of which the sole essence is the here and now...?right? But good intentions aside...video evidence supports that yes there are a few dominating features that tend to occur throughout my dance. Pin pointing those into set/choreographed material has been my challenge. I could argue that finding my 'signature way of moving' occurs in the search for something else. I walk like me when I am walking to the bus stop, not when I am walking like me with the intention to walk like me. I have a movement quality but my aim is to shake it off/up, not be confined my it...to be accessible...Is it OK that I don't like the movement stereotype of myself...? Perhaps my ego is reluctant to acknowledge I have one...the ability to appreciate, utilise and even change the intuitive patterns of human action, can be what create the opportunity for creativity...A dancer who has a heightened sense of awareness of and over the actions of her body, has access to faster and potentially more intelligent decisions during improvisation... perhaps why setting material whilst dancing 'like me' feels like myself just settling for the obvious decisions at the moment...

-which leads me to the second question Fleur brought up in the studio yesterday.... When to set, when to improvise. A challenge I find often occurs for me. Sometimes set material sucks the life out of an otherwise interesting idea, by containing it, diluting it into a series of forms and shapes...and sometimes the here and now in a performance situation has the potential to distract from the interesting idea if a dancer is too concerned with the audience. Dance set material as though it could be improvised, and improvise as though the movement were set. A friend/colleague of mine mentioned this idea of a sliding scale- 'set in stone' at one end, 'completely free' at the opposing end. How much of a memory of movement we 'solidify', or how closely we 'rein in' an improvisation, depends on where we place it on this scale.

On a lighter note...a morning session with 4year olds (we are researching for the matinee performance) is definitely a great way to start the day...I lost a contact lens and Ana got hit in the face...instigating chaos in a nursery does not come without consequences...