This is a rough edit of the documentation of the Live Bodiverse Non-performance from 10/28.
Movement, Text, & Voice Recording: Melanie Miller
Live Music: Manfred Fischbeck
Video: Mathew Davis
Body Writings: Megan Bridge, Angela C. Gilberto, Brian Mawser, Jeff Carter, Erika Twining, Ashley Wood, Michael Balotti, Cheryl Carson, Nan Greis, Drew Greis, Lois Welk, Terry Fox
Bring your hands here,
a rendezvous with sun
& spine, your fingers mingling as buttons & holes.
We include our impulses in everything,
tucking into envelopes & contracts
glued to our heart.
When you said you had
a "bitchin" time, your tongue
persevered longer than our
joints, which moved in solar & lunar opposition.
This is what we call
empowerment, age seeping
into solar plexus, hands,
spine, joints, then heart.
This text was written in less than 10 minutes using the 17 words that were written on my body as part of the 10/28 interactive live Bodiverse event at the Meetinghouse Theater in Philadelphia.
Each Live Bodiverse Non-Performance was created in collaboration with the audience and "performed" and documented in collaboration with Manfred Fischbeck (Music Improvisation), Mathew Davis (Video), and Sayaka Ueda (Photography).
Prior to entering the theater, audience members received the following:
1. A program
2. A release form
3. A description of Bodiverse and their participation in it
Here's part of what the audience read:
FRONT:
Bodiverse: Interactive Process
http://bodiverse.blogspot.com
This is not a performance.
This is a living process.
“The Body is one’s BEING. The Body is the poem.
The Body is the epic of life, and if I can actually transform
the poem into Body and the Body into poem, I will have found my
‘something that’s big enough to fit it all in’."
Ongoing interaction with body, language, space, time, you.
“The body, as a map, provides direction,
and at the same time its complexity
and multi-dimensionality distorts and distracts.”
Please participate.
Participate…
the thought:
1. How and where do you experience yourself in your body?
2. E.g., what is free, contrived, controlled, contradicted within your body?
the action:
3. Write that into one word anywhere on my body.
4. Choose your word and physical location carefully. Please make it legible.
the experience:
5. Your experience as body language will inform this process.
6. It will direct my movement.
7. The language of my movement will represent the conglomeration of experience in this room.
the result:
8. Read the back of this page to learn about what will evolve from tonight’s process.
BACK:
Our Process:
1. You write your experience into my body. This is where tonight's process begins. But in reality, it began when you began. You are bringing your life into this moment. This process will be videotaped (by Mathew Davis) and photographed (by Sayaka Ueda). Please make certain you have filled out a release form if you participate.
2. While the other artists are presenting their work, Melanie Miller will be in the Kumquat Dance Center office crafting your text into a poem or drawing or both and then recording it with a tiny voice-recording device. Both the act of repositioning your text and recording it are "performed" as improvisational actions. This recording will be played during the live process, adding a further layer of influence.
3. Mat will be editing and rendering the video of your entrance, or the writing of your experience onto my body. This video will be projected into the space, also adding another layer of influence.
4. Your words, as they are written on my body, will create/direct my body into motion. This improvisational response should be a sincere interaction between the physical self and the emotional and intellectual self.
5. During the live process, Manfred Fischbeck will respond to all of these improvisational happenings with music improvisation. This is the first time that music has been including in Bodiverse. This is also our first collaboration.
6. The live movement process, which reflects all the processes that led to this moment, will be videotaped with two cameras.
7. Mat and Melanie will co-edit the final work, which will also incorporate Sayaka's photography. The act of editing is improvisational composition and will be created with the same intention as tonight's process.
8. The final process piece(s) will be posted at http://bodiverse.blogspot.com. Please visit the blog and continue the conversation however you like—with text, a video response, a visual response, etc.
9. You will be listed as collaborators. Your names will be collected from the release forms.
10. Thank you for your participation in this process. If you would like to continue your involvement in Bodiverse or Junction Dance Theatre’s other interactive movement projects, please e-mail jdt@junctiondancetheatre.org.
***
Here's a video clip of what the audience experienced when they first entered the theater:
The body writing lasted 10-20 minutes each night. And each night the audience interpreted their interaction differently. It's evident just by the words they chose:
10/27
power
being
rejoice
bicep
hope
bizarre
temptation
core
breathe
flowing
construct
in between
shame
internal
one
tender
woven
constricted
banana
10/28
my heart
joints
move
button
persevere
hands
rendevous
solar
plexus
impulse
empower
bitchin'
spine
hands
be
include
envelope
joints
The word banana from the first night was written by a stuffed monkey.
This performance was the first time other people, most of whom I had never met before, wrote on me. I actually found the experience to be more comfortable with strangers. The moment of writing created a relationship between us, literally between us; not necessarily between two people but amongst air and cells and intention and meaning. And that relationship was colored by our interaction, the way they stood around me, how they held the marker, the pressure with which they applied their words, their level of comfort. Some people began writing immediately while others stood and contemplated where and how. With the people I knew, it altered our relationship at that moment in time.
On October 27 and 28, I presented the first interactive Bodiverse process in Speil Uhr, a performance featuring dance and video works by emerging and established choreographers. The posts over the next few weeks will show the process and results--from the tech rehearsal to the non-performance to the final, or rather semi-final, film. Here are three clips of a tech rehearsal discussion with other Bodiverse collaborators and fellow Spiel Uhr performers.
Pictured: Melanie Miller, Manfred Fischbeck (Bodiverse Musician & Group Motion Artistic Director)
Speaking: Manfred Fischbeck, Melanie Miller, Matt Sharp(Lighting Designer), Dancers
Video: Mathew Davis
