....some thoughts about teaching
                                                  and what my interests and aims are when giving classes ...

My work is to make performance
- solo and company pieces - with dancers, musicians and other performers - and my process,
amongst others, is to create instantly on stage...
to compose instantly..to improvise.

This work demands   and has demanded    a thorough
and constant research into 2 areas:

one of COMPOSITION
   how things are made
     how theyfunction
       how they might go together

and

one of TECHNIQUE - abilities needed
to have a close relationship between
    the creative self
       and the mind/body

For many years I've been discovering and developing
ways to impart this knowledge, this awareness.

Naturally influenced by all various physical experiences
-sport, dance training, philosophy-,
I can say that the studies of T'ai Chi, Alexander Technique and
Ki-Aikido have been radical in the clarifying and inspiring of the
development of the technical area.

As for the Compositional area, I have been much stimulated
by musicians and writers as much as, if not more than,
choreographers; inspired specifically by the ways
many of the improvising musicians work together
in terms of the 'company' formation.

In the TECHNICAL area we study
how the body/mind works, how its energies are manifested,
the anatomy and its associated mythology and philosophy,
and how to direct the body to give and receive on
a kinesthetic wavelength.

Spine / hips / and skin are some of the central interests
in this area at present.....along with the need
to be able to handle the weight
the perceptions and the ordination/co-ordination.

In brief, the technical work centers on kinesthetics
rather than aesthetics.
and uses often a process of 'reverse engineering'
to re-discover how we move, are moved.

In the COMPOSITION classes I deal with the subjects of
       space / time / theatre / voice /
           entrance-exit / music / object /
              protagonist-antagonist-support.

These areas are required for at least 2 reasons:

1. to be able to have an awareness and a refinement of intention
when deciding spontaneously in the act of improvising.

2. to have some references as tools of simple analysis
to look in depth at what is made,
both by ourselves and the others when
working in a group configuration.

Without this ability -and the tools for it-
we are often at the mercy of our subjectivity and
seldom have the complementary power of our objectivity,
a state which can reduce the nature of our 'compositions' to the
merely personal and lacking in the 'universal' power.

The 2 areas of teaching - technique and composition -
naturally pose questions from one to the other,
       interacting as a figure of 8 spiraling
           through the passage of the lessons.

A main interest for many years now is
the area of the moving body speaking and producing sounds;
this, integrating with the observation that the mind taps into
a certain layer of intelligence when moving.

JH

SOME NOTES FROM 2007

..... work concerning the VOICE
and musicality in and from the dancing body.

Awareness is not necessarily spatial
... thus it can shock the spatial body, demanding it to re-orientate
itself.

Attending to the laws of space in the body, going through them to arrive at the non-spatial powers of consciousness.

Consciousness     leads
Ideas     push

control - concerning the body's movements
non-control - concerning what leaves the body participation in what happens around the body and extends from it

making gerunds out of ideas
rendering ideas gerundive

-

sound is vapour and air, which has another level of intelligence
than the mass and flesh of the body,
so they perceive different levels of life and therefore can touch
different levels of expression.
sound and mass have seldom need to be in parallel.

going below expression as a parameter of permission for our movements

dancing ..... displaces (tears the space from side to side)
voice ...... voyages through the space and travels all over and around

- dance opens up the wound in the space and lets the light travel in or out
voice heals or at least surrounds and touches all and in its touching, accepts and in its accepting, all is relieved, heard ... for the voice hears.


-

sound is so 'solitaire', so alone, thus it loves to mix with any other sound instantly all sounds join and fuse and voyage together

- some sounds - lead you visually and spatially to their source seem to come from elsewhere seem to come from everywhere else lead you to their surrounding silence lead you to their inherent fullness and quality


-


The concept of inversion
the glove turned inside out
the empty full, the full empty
the vacant space populated
the cruel, comforting
the reassuring, threatening.


Every sound is a question, exposing its next second
and breaking it open to inspection
beyond pre-conclusion.

The body speaks through flesh
the voice speaks through sound.

In the body there is an accumulation via experience,
with the voice, the air passes through and is essentially unable to be captured,
each second fading and having to be remembered for us to construct sense.
The flesh that is moved remains while the sound the voice evaporates and disperses fast.

Both body and voice have access to 'here' and 'there' but in vastly different ways.
Voice dies fast and never accumulates ...
but then again maybe it can seem to accumulate
when in or from a body that accepts its history and experience.


Repetition shows us that we can survive that moment or configuration;
thus it reassures us.
A public, watching a repeated piece, knows that the performers have 'survived' it and therefore
they can allow themselves
to pass in and though it and for it to pass through them.

So, in improvised work (work that has never been repeated) the performer must
give the actions and composition a 'history' instantly, even in the moment of execution.

The composing mind (a point of view in which the creator is sensing the activity instantly
adding up to a composition) aids this 'giving a history' as it already engages
an outside or beyond or context in which the actions are immediately housed.


-


Number is without context ................. 309 could be anywhere, anything, any size .....

Rhythm gives context, gives both house and elements therein.
And this allows elements to be together and to instantly have a common ground.
Rhythm allows things to be all in the same time,
even if they happen to be in a sequence.


Rhythm can be seen as - a number of elements or accents in a context
- as an atmosphere or context itself, regardless of the number of elements inside.
eg a waltz has a particular atmosphere however many notes there might be.


-


Articulation opens up space, opens up the spaces between elements, actions sounds, movements
.. ... even a space between meanings.

-

The superficial or surface. That which can be touched,
directly sensed and directly related to.
so the surface is the place to be pragmatic
and profundity is indirect and demands a further step of the imagination
than that used when we handle the tactile and palpable.


-


Association is 2 dimensional - it relates one thing to another thing
Imagination is 3 dimensional - in that it tends to give context
and works easily with a plurality of elements.

-

Humour helps survive consciousness.

-

4 places of listening:
fingers in the ears hands
cupped to mouth
and linked to ears normally in high winds,
where sound is ripped away fast
and can even become inaudible

-

Structure gives space somewhere in which 'other' can be placed.
Without structure, 'other' is always outside or away from, indeed every element is simply on its own

-

Permission - action - appreciation ..................... all at the same time within action.

-

Action is concentric
Appreciation is eccentric.

-

Body is soft      Clarity is sharp

-

Creativity allows freedom, rather than freedom being a prerequisite for creativity.
Freedom has received such high praise but i feel its often oversold and not so important.

-