Wednesday 30 April 2008

Wanderungen: Performance Lecture in Freiburg, Germany 10.5.08

Good News -

I am off to Freiburg in Germany to deliver a performance lecture next week, with my friend and collaborator Mariella Greil. Wanderungen will reflect on various aspects of our artistic practice, walking, dancing, listening, intertwining text and movement, and Mariella will have the difficult job of translating me into German. We are flying out on Tuesday the 6th and will be back on Sunday the 11th. The Lecture has been organized by dance artist Tommy Noonan, as part of a series.

Our Peformance schedule looks like this:

Friday 9th May: 10AM-12: Wanderungen (Workshop): Guided walk in the hills around Freiburg for 5-to-15 participants.

Saturday 10th May: 8.3PM: Wanderungen (Lecture), Kammerbühne / Freiburg.

For Deutsch-detailz go to: http://www.pvc-tanz.de/~programm/projekte/72 .

I am currently in Chester (until Friday 2nd) devising material for the lecture with Mariella. We had a good day yesterday coming up with movement stuff. Our best moment came from working with the following text, cut from the first of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets:

Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future / And time future contained in time past / If all time is eternally present / All time is unredeemable / What might have been is an abstraction / Remaining a perpetual possibility / Only in a world of speculation / What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present / Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened (…) My words echo thus, in your mind / *** / At the still point of the turning world / Neither flesh nor fleshless / Neither from nor towards; at the still point / there the dance is / But neither arrest nor movement / And do not call it fixity / Where past and future are gathered / (...) / Except for the point, the still point / There would be no dance, and there is only the dance / I can only say: there we have been, but I cannot say where:

With my Rules & Regs money I wanted to buy a swanky new North Face Jacket, but I judged myself too poor. I settled for a swanky new North Face bag, a big black one, with enough room for my computer and traveling gear:

AND - a new pair of knickers for my MacBook:

The next morning, unsated, I downloaded Glenn Jones' album 'This is the Wind that Blows it Out' (2004, Strange Attractors Audio House), which is becoming a family favourite. You can hear some of the stuff that Strange Attractors put out here, and you can hear / download probably the catchiest track on the album, 'Fahey's Car' here, a thrilling three and a half minutes of rattling good slide guitar, and further grist for my John Fahey obsession. I have been trying for a quiet weekend but there have been a few outstanding little jobs to do before I submit my thesis amendments. In between I also downloaded the first series of Peep Show and am impatiently willing on series 2. There is 69 minutes to go for episode 1. Waiting.