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