Mansions

I once saw a dance piece titled Many Rooms.  It was at The American Dance Festival 2001 or 2002, created and performed by a beautiful woman who has worked for Trisha Brown and many other beautiful downtown choreographers.  The piece had shafts of light coming from multiple directions in the grid above the stage.  She was dressed in simple blue pants and a blue long sleeve shirt.  Her blonde hair reflected in the shadowy light and her lines were intricately woven to precision between arm and leg flows.  She moved through the shafts of light as if they were the rooms themselves, stretching, turning back on herself, lengthening in multiple directional vectors at once.  That was it.  Stunning in its simplicity we felt the hollow labyrinth which is full of interior meanings.  

digital print by Anouk de Clerq

In Ecuador I had a vision of "our" mansion, the children and I and the multiple people who inhabit it...  The mansion is a large stone building, several floors, with windows stretching out along all floors on both sides.  Some of the windows are quirky and unique.  There is a gate into the estate and some mid size fields in front of the house which we use for installations and crystal sculptures.  

Behind the mansion to the left is a ceremonial field made of corn with a large circle in the middle of it and some tepees for sleeping and when we prefer to have a roof. Just behind the mansion is a large arts centre which we build ourselves, out of new technologies.  The centre is a circle once again and there are many artists studios surrounding the inner chamber, each with their own outer door.  The grid above the inner chamber is made of a fantastic new material which is resilient and lightweight, making it moveable and adjustable for total variety in use.  The panels of the space are oxogonal and the acoustics are amazing.  Behind and to the right of the mansion is a large kitchen garden where we grow an abundance of herbs and salads and exotic grains.  A small greenhouse rests down the hill to the right and is home to many tropical essentials such as lemons and coffee, guavas and avocados. We come in and out of town on our vegetable oil powered scooters, and our many friends there bring us fresh bread and rice and fruits because they love us.  

There is a river not too far off and there is an arrangement with the folks on the other side of the river for horse riding and possible stables.  Lots of people live there, there is a broad range of interests and the work is shared in a happy motivated energy.  Inside the mansion there are fabrics hanging at odd angels and sparkles dangling in odd corners and little detailed paintings can be found in the loos and elsewhere.  Broken coffee cups litter the counters and books and bean bags lounge about waiting for bottoms and minds which want a think and a rest.  There is a tutor who teaches the children in sacred geometry, astronomy, chemistry, calculus, theatrics, molecular biology, creative writing and other essential arts.  Eccentricity and the joyous harmonies of communal living are a part of the matrix and we manage it beautifully by living as our highest selves.  

I don't know how this mansion is coming to us.  In my current imagination I could see us squatting a place and buying it for about £1 in the divine deal of the century, or perhaps a large gift or lucrative work project affords the means to buy it outright, or one of us inherits it and is in love with sharing my dream, or there may yet be another way.  I don't know the timing of its materialisation, but it is walking toward us now even as I write.  The children saw this vision too, before I did even, and now I am putting it out there to the world so that in speaking it becomes one step denser and can find a place within the hearts of all who will live there.  Buyah!  May the angles send this post to those who are meant to see it :)

refrigerator art, my home

Yesterday in rehearsals Jeremy H and I walked onto an analogy of many boxes inside a large container, the likeness of many pathways connecting into pure potentiality for expression.  We talked and worked with a dance "box", the tempo and and flow and rhythm of release technique, its effortless effort, and the way this both frees the body for line and momentum and also inhibits theatrical qualities.  We worked with a comic "box", full of effort and fast rushing energy toward expression of one tiny point, which focuses attention on specificity of action and its subsequent absurdity.  We worked with theatrical "boxes" including text and voices, costumes and props, candles and lighting.  The space "box" is really cool...working with the consciousness of the space, whether that be a piece of land outside or the accumulation of psyche in a studio or the flow and history of a public space inhabited by people and the bustling world.  There are endless "boxes" and the container is fluid in its shape, accommodating whatever we choose to discover, play with.  Performances then develop their own unique crystallisation, whether that be planned or emergent in the moment, according to the rooms we choose to inhabit within that container, that mansion.

And what then, if the rooms are not boxes but emergent shapes within themselves?  

digital print by Endre Balogh

Christ said, "In my fathers mansion there are many rooms."  Mevlana Rumi said, "Let the beauty we love be what we do, there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground."