The 1st move.

Welcome to my site! Please join me in my exploration of the body in constant motion.  

Body in constant motion will be a six-month placement with Natasha Gilmore, a Glasgow based dance artist. I was interested in having the opportunity to assist and observe Natasha’s practice as she is at a very exciting stage in her career. She is an established artist who has strong roots in her strict dance theory background. After seeing Natasha’s work “The Blank Album” and “Songs of Home Songs of Hope” I became fascinated with the way she allows the human qualities of each performer to shine through, whether they are experienced performers or not. By working with one particular artist I hope to deepen my knowledge of how to use ones particular skills to collaborate with experienced and non-experienced performers. I want to investigate and challenge how different ways of moving can be explored through the body intentionally or by mistake. I want to explore the boundaries of when we call something dance, movement, performance, theatre.  Why do we struggle to classify at that utilizes the body as the soul purpose to entertain, inform and challenge those who watch it?  

At this point you are probably wondering, well why? Why am I interested in movement as a performer?

The expression and theatricality that the body is capable of expressing captivates me. It is the complex vocabulary of movement that each of us contain, with or without realizing it that forces my body to crave a deeper understanding of why we choose to move and what makes movement such a powerful medium of expression.  This query alone will be difficult one to pin down and understand, but I believe that by questioning our fascinations we can only enrich our understanding with the power of performance and inevitably the world we live in.  

In this blog you will find myself sifting, deleting, managing, expanding and exploring my own thoughts in a way to categorize my own learning by immersing myself in another artists work. Whether this is through observing or taking on responsibilities within the world of this artist.  I hope to widen my knowledge about movement and its meaning, especially in direct relation with my ever growing fascination with the body’s attempt to break out and at the same time conform to the environment it is in. Even now, I sit here typing, moving, and putting to use the capabilities of my body to communicate to you. All around us our body attempts to accommodate and mould itself to the digital world.

…I came to see that movement is one of the great laws of life. It is the primary medium of our aliveness, the flow of energy going on in us like a river all the time, awake or asleep, twenty-four hours a day. Our movement is our behavior; there is a direct connection between what we are like and how we move…As people begin to move in their own way, they are faced with feelings of surprise and delight and often of anxiety and embarrassment. Judgments, corrections and explanations are of no use. It is their movement, and it happened just that way.

Mary Whitehouse

 

I hope that during my time with Natasha I can use film and photography to enhance my exploration of movement.  This site will be a laboratory for self-exploration and development of an artist who is drawn to the body in constant motion. 

~ by stephblack on October 5, 2008.