In early research and rehearsals with Forced Entertainment. The collective talking, fooling and digging around for clues, trying to get a scent or catch a hold of something we want to pursue. This part is always hard hard (hard hard) work, and in some way (perhaps an optical illusion) always seems to feel harder than ever before. Ratio right now must be something like 5 hours talking to one hour of practical work. In the studio we are circling and looping and blundering around in the same territory though so something seems to be happening, unable to get a clear position but slowly certain landmarks become clear as they come into view repeatedly thru the fog and the mud. Seems strange that a process so utterly unforgiving (florescent light/no daylight, relentless pulling apart of ideas, diet of coffee and water, room is concrete) can also have me crying with laughter some days. And sometimes, when you really expect nothing, people make the smartest moves in improvisation and suddenly the whole conversation is turned on its head.

When dancer and choreographer Wendy Houstoun first worked with us on Bloody Mess she wrote this piece describing “… a sense of waiting for some silence to fall over the group – of waiting for everyone to give up trying to make it better.” After this kind of silence is generally when something can happen.

Kate McIntosh, whose Loose Promise rehearsal I wrote about recently here, mailed me an image from the studio.