Lost in a world of art...

We moved into the wonderful mad world of colour. More specifically, how a colour moves... mmm... We discovered through abstract movement improvisations that there really is general consensus of how a colour moves... the crazy order of red... that knows exactly what it is doing even though it is kind of random. The horizontal lines of green... that gives structure and organises space. The wild energetic bursts of yellow... that gives itself away tirelessly and relentlessly. So now we are able to give fantastic arty feedback like, 'there's too much purple in that blue,' and everyone agrees. To the outside listener... that fly on the wall who's rolling his eyes... we must sound completely pretentious.

The point of this abstract work lies in the dynamic that is within the different colours - and it is this gives life to art... all art. Visual and expressive. Push and pull - expansion and compression - heavy and light - high and low - fast and slow - a moment of suspension.

Out of this - just when we thought it couldn't get any more abstract - we had to chose a painting by a master artist whose work compelled you in some way... and then through abstract movement we had to bring the painting to life... the colour, the dynamic, the architecture and ultimately the sentiment that painting leaves you with. The feeling that sticks to you.

We chose Munch... Not The Scream luckily. Although the work was heavy and really quite hard that we did want to scream rather often. Munch completely freaks me out. Makes me feel uncomfortable. His work is frightening, horrific, tragic and depressing. And of course we chose a totally down in the dumps painting of a woman looking out of a window at a world she is apart from... well that was my sentiment at least. And so we moved it. We found a balance between abstract and figurative - where we each found a moment to manifest her... her look, tying the knot in her gown, putting on lipstick, pinning up her hair. The rest of the performance took us through a whirlwind of colour, perspective lines, window frames, brush strokes... evoking a world out of which the figurative images could appear... and in some way to tell a story of a woman standing on a veranda looking out a window - not just any window anywhere - a window in Munch's world. From here we developed a linear narrative that contained within it the dynamic and the architecture that the painting had given us... the painting provoked the writing. Completely divine.

A movement studio transformed into an art studio...




That weekend on a manic colour high - we caught the bus to Siena. So pretty.


Cultural experiences with Vika - the Danish Queen - are simply divine. She's somewhat of a history book... filled with wonderful facts that enrich sight seeing tremendously. So this is a statue of the Wolf who brought up two orphan brothers, Senio and Ascanio who founded Siena. Apparently sons of the famous Remus (who founded Rome along with his twin brother Romulus - quite a family)... anyway the twins got lost somehow... and were luckily found by this Wolf who brought them up as her own cubs. But apparently this cannot be true... because actually it was the Romans who founded Siena... Yes... How spectacularly dull to change a perfectly believable story with fact. So now this bizarre statue of two young boys suckling on their Wolf mother is a rather regular sight on the cobbled streets of Siena.


A lone tree fighting for the smallest promise of sunlight in a city of high art and architecture... but a bit bereft of nature.


The Duomo of Siena... it's black and white... the one in Florence is green and white... thanks Vika. I would have missed that.


The old city wall.


The floor of the Duomo... you know - like where you walk. But hey we have loads of trees in the city... and Elephants... not in the cities... but you know what I mean. The Italians don't have Elephants. Elephants rock.


Middle age music books. With detail you cannot imagine and real gold detail - obviously.



On the ceiling of the glittery gold room that houses the massive music books... this is a classic image used to show the style of dresses back in the day... thanks Vika. Vika would like to dress like this on a daily basis. But that would be weird.


Freya and Tara in another of the many meeting rooms in the City Hall with grand chairs that looked very much like place for very serious wedding vows.


The main reason to visit the City Hall... two fresco's showing good and bad governance... this, in the good governance fresco, shows 'Peace' reclining on a pillow hiding the armor that has no place in a society at peace with itself. But should peace not be possible... at least they know where the armor is hidden... that's all I'm saying.



Tara, Vika, Lucy and Nicole looking out over Tuscan hills... an ice cold breeze picks up as the sky slowly begins to change... Vika sighs and announces 'This is Africa.' Yes, perhaps. If you have never been to Africa.




The sun sets. A fab day in Siena. Yay.

2011... begins...

The sun rise over the Alpes from Zurich to Firenze... ahhh...


At the Zurich airport I rode on a train with no driver and on this train-lift thing there was a sound scape of cows and birds... no really. It felt like being on the set of The Island.


I arrived back in Florence after a glorious break - of family, hand made Christmas cards, lanterns, wishes, gifts, sunburn, paddle skiing and far far too much food!

Back and straight into it... playing 'boiling water' on day one - yip - boiling water that 'spaghetti' gets thrown into... and cooked. Of course. It was fun. Bizarre. But fun. After finding the material dynamic we tried to turn it into a narrative scene of tragedy... A funeral. It almost worked... but it couldn't help but be funny. A mourning party of stiff rigid spaghetti strands weakened and softened by the bubbling and boiling-over grieving duo of water... Being funny is hard. Not being funny is also hard. Being abstract... a wonderful way of approaching a scene.

The kids on holiday. Missing them. A lot. Actually.

A Wedding in Wonderland

Deborah got married. From the little yellow brick road, the mad hatter blowing bubbles, the flower beds filled with spotted mushrooms to the tea garden filled with thigh widening hip spreading delights daring us to 'eat me,' flower filled tea cups, secret books awaiting stolen thoughts and lots and lots of keys... it was wonderful. Her dress was breathtaking. Her goofy manner in the dress made me laugh and cry. Her mother gently guiding her down from the side of the mountain with her vale catching the bits of greenery took my breath away...

Congratulations Deborah and Thurston. I am delighted I could be there to share the little that I did with you of this very special day. x

welovepictures: Our favourite wedding pictures of 2010 - Part Two

Just in case anyone forgot our wedding... he he... here we are featured again. I think we should all go back to the Eastern Freestate this May... Hang up some bunting and drink Champagne. Mmm.
welovepictures: Our favourite wedding pictures of 2010 - Part Two: "love, welovepictures"

Ahh.

Entering the silence...

It felt like in far too little time - just as we were beginning to fall in love with neutral mask - learning how to revel in it's silence - we were saying adieu. Neutrality is not something one achieves but something one continually strives for - a blank page of endless possibility. It was so much fun. Disappearing - just briefly. Anonymity becomes addictive.

We have now entered a silence of a different kind. The elements. Earth. Wind. Fire. Water. For dynamic rhythm, emotional resonance and scale... nature dwarfs that which ones limited experience can offer. It is very exciting. Journeying through the elements... finding the motivation, the narrative moment, when fire burns out and gives way to smoke rising from a pile of ashes... In the improvisation the audience witnesses a woman left by her love who turns from fiery fury to nothingness, as she tries to understand what has happened. All the actor has done is allowed fire to burn out and become air. Or a revolutionary leader drumming up the masses for action. Fire motivating a chorus of water to walk with the destruction of flooding river and arrive at the fence and stand with the rooted solidarity of trees... We will not move. Change is inevitable.

The elements rock. That's all I'm saying!







These pics were taken while we were in the Groot Marico - where nature dominated our intimate 2-day family get away.

3 days with Norman Taylor... What is Mime!

The studio at Via della Chiesa... Florence.

In life you move through space... in theatre you move space. Like the genius of a sculpture when the statue appears to move - of course it doesn't move... it's the space around it which does. Like magic. To take the audience into an imagined world where they can dream.

Norman Taylor - master of movement, brilliant teacher, very funny, a musician with his timing... British. And we had a 3 day intensive workshop with him - How lovely indeed!

The word mime means to imitate... like a baby who watches for months the big people moving around until one day he mimes them... and walks. Or when someone has a distinct speech pattern and we adopt it when chatting. Quietly and subtly we are all mime artists... this is how children learn. The other day Ella, who is 5 years old, was sitting at the kitchen table eating sushi and drinking champagne when her mom found her - now that's mime, if a little scary xxx

When we were in the forest and on the beach, Giovanni said that when we watch waves, or look up at a tree... we change. We begin to imitate them, and this is mime. We are not the same when we look at the ocean. Mime is not theatre without words. Mime is theatre of movement and gesture... Giovanni would like to call it shape shifting but feels that might not be the best advertising platform for the website. This is therefore all theatre... Physical Theatre... who knows. I think its just theatre.

The gesture is born with the idea... that was what was so amazing about Normans classes - so much time was spent analysing what the students did whilst we listened to him... so what appeared to be 'getting sidetracked' was very much at the heart of the lesson... the analysis of everyday gesture. It was completely remarkable and totally fascinating. You don't have to make anything up - life is packed with good idea's - we have to learn to observe better! Norman kept saying... i'm not going to teach you anything you don't already know - you just don't know that you know it yet.

So, he taught us to row the boat, lift the bar weight, climb the wall, jump, cut the sugar cane, rake the grass, dig a hole... and throw the discus! By the end of the second day he took one of the girls in our class and asked her to do the movement of picking up the weight, without 'dropping' it and to move straight into the rowing the boat sequence. As she did he narrated... and his words informed her movement... You see it and move towards it, you accept it, you make it your own, you change and without dropping it... once you have accepted this path and made it your own, you are ready to steer your life along... as which point she pushed off in the boat sequence. It was profoundly moving and the mistakes didn't matter. The narrative and the sentiment of the movement brought a silence that left the audience awe struck for a moment in a brightly lit, heated little studio somewhere in Florence. It was wonderful.

Mama's Bakery from the courtyard - whose chocolate chip cookies have settled many a sugar low...

Don't look down, don't prepare, you are fine as you are, the floor is there. The space is what matters... Norman Taylor. Yay.

in nature... in Tuscany

We had an amazing wonderful unique experience about two weeks ago - or one week ago - or just the other day... it's not important... what is important is that we went to the beach, the forest and hot springs in Tuscany. All this - as part of our exploration of the neutral mask - the horizontal... the sea, the beach, the horizon; and the vertical... the majestic hauntingly stunning beach tree forest. The springs were much less about analysis of movement and much more about relaxation - a gift from the school - that - and fantastic authentic Italian dinner... but that was much later.

Let's start at the beach...

So you can imagine there we all were, about 24 of us 'finding our vertical and horizontal' - you do this, of course, by "undulating" your body from your feet right up to the top of your head - so that you are the tallest you can possibly be - and as neutral as you can possibly be... tucking in bums that stick out - stretching chests that are sunken down - pulling back shoulders that are slouched forward... and so on. The undulation is a primal movement that we have have been doing from the early days when we were in the sea and then finally on the land wondering around on all fours until... after a few million years or so of evolution... we stood up... the undulation is still there - part of our core movement (unless you are in the army). So there we were, all 24 of us on this deserted drift wood stricken remote beach undulating to the crashing waves, imitating their erratic rhythm... studying the tragedy of the wave that wants to get to shore but will never make it. The wave does not retreat defeated it simply goes back as the next one approaches, with the same need to move forward... and like this, the tragedy of the wave continues. Why? Because. Neutrality!! Grr. It's so simple and so complex.

I felt a little like I was in the opening scene of Calendar Girls... But I couldn't think of my own cuttingly brilliant witty one-liner! And then of course I really got into it... The sea is like that - can take you to another world if you look at it for long enough. We then ran through the shrubbery and along the beach with the same intention as the waves... to move forward. Without judgment. Without comment. Without looking back. Neutrality. Ooo. It was fun. It was like being a kid again. Being present to the simplicity of what is happening right now. Not looking back. I had to work very hard to control my facial expressions - which I have become painfully aware of.

We then moved on to the forest, and it was all misty - which I thought made it even more special. The energy of trees. And with the mist - it was like being in childrens story - if you go down to the woods today... and all that! Here we studied the trees need to go up, how they grow in order to facilitate their continued growth - with their branches either filling the space if there is space, or their trunks growing tall and thin and bare in order to pass the branches of another in an effort to try and reach the sun... and make it! In this, is the tragedy of those trees that will never make it - but there they are - vertical. Of course we 'found our vertical' in the forest - rooting our feet on leaf stricken earth and undulating in front of these towering giants and bending back to see the very tops... in a sense we were becoming trees. It was wonderful and bizarre and terribly moving actually.


The photo's of the beach are courtesy of KT and this forest one, Sally - thanks guys x


Nature has the rhythm we wish to learn inherent in it - the gap in a tight forest where the next tree finds it place - a fat solid rock sitting between skinny trunks - the wave that retreats as the next one heads for shore, sometimes quickly, sometimes not. It was a special day. How this applies to our studies. Well. This is neutrality - or part of it at least. Rhythm. And the desire to move forward. Ya. Okay. I don't really get it either - well I kind of do.

We then moved on the the hot water springs - after you've gotten used to the rotten egg throw back memory to that standard 7 science lab experiment smell - it was fabulous - and seriously hot! The best part is that it was totally dark. Just a bright half moon peering out from behind a thin cloud.