The solo that first saw the light one
January evening in Bangalore in 2010 is in the process of being dusted down and
life breathed back into her. She’ll be
closing Arts Care Gofal Celf’s D12 dance festival which is part of
Pembrokeshire Fish Week. I’ll be
performing La Blanche (the white girl)
at about 17:40 this Sunday, June 24th at Port Authority, Milford
Haven. The stage is going to be built under a bridge
(so safe from any drizzle on the day) and facing the sea. Those who know her know she’s a solo about
growing up on and in the sea in Gabon, so I’m excited about the setting, if a
bit worried about some of the technical quandaries (the marriage of live spoken
and recorded sound outdoors, dancing on the toe I broke just over a week ago…)
Through Arts Care Gofal Celf, I’ve
also been working with a class from Milford Haven Junior School, creating a
work in progress based loosely on the poem in La Blanche. The children will be sharing what they’ve made
at about 17:15. So if you’re anywhere
near Milford Haven, please come! And if
not, please send blessings.
Here is some of what I wrote the day
before I performed La Blanche in Cardiff last July (2011):
I have a sense she has shifted where she lives in me since her first and last outing in Bangalore in January 2010.Thoughts – in no particular order – on this revisiting of the SOLO:Nicky (Visser)’s thoughts from her email responding to the film There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in – that for a change, the film allowed her to enter in to the SOMATIC experience of the moving. I started thinking:SOMATIC → SOMA, elixir, ecstasy, somehow EROTIC – so the truly somatic is also deeply and subtly erotic. At any rate, this seems true now in this piece: creativity / embodiment / eroticism emanating from a felt sense of the second (and first) chakras – the language, especially the poem “Vaguely Waving” must honour this – and suddenly this poem seems charged with eroticism – the goddess exploding from my mouth and senses… the rhythm, the sounds, the shapes of the words in my mouth, the images – I had never realised this.So the task is to embody, be present, be fully alive to the sensations evoked by the story of the piece – the physical and not the mental story (let the structure take care of that) to be my focus…Thoughts of Kirstie (Simson) “maybe I’m just a sex maniac”…Thoughts of Nancy (Stark Smith) – bridging the gap in experience between practice and performance – something about the body chemicals of “performance” sending me out of my body and more into my head → control. My seed for tomorrow is to be conscious when this happens and re-embody.TRUST: myselfmy bodymy experiencemy practicemy trainingmy creationmy workImage / message in meditation this week: red flow, Shakti, (kundalini?) rising up between my legs, out the top of me and expanding spherically from me – strength / power comes from this core deep within me, not an external hardening (of my carapace), an external impulse of fear wanting me to shape, to contain, to control. Instead work to soften, dissolve this outer shell so the red → white explosion can expand from me, expand beyond measure. Power but not mine, and yet mine.
This may be a bit too
stream-of-consciousness processing for some, but in case people are curious,
here’s the movement score as it currently stands for the varying sections of
the piece, and the text of the poem, for readers of French:
LA BLANCHE SCORE – JUNE 2012
strong Atlantic waves:
disorientation → head lead → soft →spirals
vaguely waving (poem)
fishermen’s song:
pleine d’écume et de sel et
de sable pointu (motif) → waving
sting rays & calm waters:
piercing the circles, stillness, balance
the women’s song:
body touch, fragments of set material, low ground, Shakti, sacral
chakra, kalari serpent & elephant
We’ll see what changes by Sunday. At the moment, it’s the last section, the
women’s song, which is the least secure, not least because it involves some of
the more challenging movement on my broken toe.
And finally, here’s the poem, for those who like French:
(VAGUELY
WAVING)
I wave,
waver, waive
Wave at
the ocean –
Green grey
Waves
coming into shore.
Pictures
of sine waves breaking on the beach
Vague trigonometric memories
Vague, wave
Vague, vague
La vague sur la plage qui
s’écrase,
La vague qui écrase la plage
La vague qui m’écrase sur la
plage
La vague qui m’écrase sur la
plage
Forçant le sable dur
Forçant le gros sable dur
Dans ma bouche ouverte,
Dans ma bouche ouverte
Pleine d’écume et de sel et
de sable pointu.
Vagues vertes
Terrain des raies-requin
Que les pêcheurs tirent
Que les pêcheurs noirs
Tirent des fonds verts
Des fonds lugubres
Des fonds si profond que j’ai
peur.
Les pêcheurs noirs
Qui traversent les vagues
vertes
Dans leurs pirogues marron
Qui traversent les vagues
vertes
Qui traversent la troisième
vague,
La vague d’où – si on la
dépasse –
On ne revient pas.
La fille blanche regarde
Les pêcheurs noirs
Qui traversent les vagues
vertes
Vagues vertes-grises
Dans leurs pirogues marron
Dans leurs pirogues en bois
marron,
Les pêcheurs noirs
Qui trouvent les raies-requin
A travers les vagues,
Raies-requin couleur de sable
Couleur de sable dur et
pointu
Dans ma bouche pleine d’écume
et de sel.
La fille blanche regarde
Les pêcheurs sur les vagues
Qui vaguent.
I vaguely
wave
At the
fishermen.
From Lucy, with love xx
© Lucy May Constantini, June 2012
