INTERVIEW STRUCTURE

Description

Recorded and edited oral history segments of the dancers play over the sound system while the full group performs a partially improvised movement score. 30 minutes.

Prior History

This is related to a performance practice that I had been experimenting with for a few years under the title The Octopus and the Interview. In that version, the interview was performed live and the physical component was a contact-based accumulation score we call The Octopus of Sensation.

Distinct Value/Goals

Juxtaposition of separate physical and verbal tasks.

Process

At a certain point in the Body of Text research process I removed the live interview process and replaced it with recorded oral history interviews by the dancers. This freed the dancers from the balancing act of simultaneously speaking and moving. Talking and moving at the same time creates a challenging juxtaposition because a natural porousness in mood, timing, and image content arises between the the speaking voice and the moving body. I had been interested in this influence, but was now curious about freeing the dancers’ attention so they could be more present for a complex layering of movement tasks. Arriving at this moment (combining an audio edit of the dancers oral histories with a detailed physical score) was a culmination of several strands of the research.

Audio track

• The recordings are a result of oral history training. The interviews were recorded at Hudson retreat and influenced by the landscape maps. Those interview recordings were later edited by Karinne and Nichole during an NYC retreat.
• We removed the live verbal aspect to more clearly separate the verbal score and the physical score.
• This felt like a temporary draft. There is a desire to record additional interviews, to create space for live speaking to be interspersed with the recorded score, and to include music. Additionally, the sound quality of the recordings is not strong: they were our first forays into recording, and the space had a fair amount of ambient noise.

Physical score

The physical score in this section is comprised of several components, such as the physical interview structure, the octopus of sensation, and a range of set movement material generated from the landscape maps and the prose poems we wrote from them. The score is made up of emotional suggestions, spatial prompts, and specific movements with an overall map that slides back and forth along the continuum of known and unknown material.