Last Doubles?

Doubles today – which some of us suspect may be the last doubles of the workshop – but we could be wrong. Entered Viewpoints today to find Christian Frederickson from the band Rachel’s setting up to accompany us live with a mixture of guitar, computer, and viola. I had met him the day before and really just kind of babbled to him. I love Rachel’s music and they are largely the reason I am here – after stumbling on Systems/Layers the collaboration with the SITI Company. It was fantastic to have someone shape our movements with sounds that pushed us faster or slower or toward one mood or the other. Really interesting to watch and to be within. GM led us today in a very relaxed, freeform class.

Suzuki was taught by Tom – he has been in our classes for a few days, but this was the first time he taught us. Some wonderful information about form, but more importantly, some good clear images to keep in our heads as we try to execute these weird movements. While some might argue that we should have had this information earlier in the training, I’m not convinced we would have known what to do with it until know. I’m reminded that SITI have been training folks for 25 years and so have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t and the timing on when to provide information.

Lunch then right back into it. J. Ed taught Viewpoints this afternoon and I have to admit, he is not my favorite Viewpoints leader. Some of this comes out of the fact that he seems to focus more on teaching than sharing. I know, there is a subtle difference between the two, but teaching always feels a bit more aggressive, a bit more locked into a specific objective, whereas sharing seems like a peer-to-peer dissemination of information. Although, I do have to say - his classes have produced some wonderful combinations and images. Once we had the Viewpoints vocabulary down it has been a matter of working in open Viewpoints with small groups. Today was the first day we had groups of three, two, and finally one. I really have to give it to Arianna for talking the solo piece. It was delightful to watch her playfully investigate the room.

Suzuki was taught by Bondo (Will) in the afternoon. For many of us I think he is our favorite teacher. He is the one that had the first class and he always approaches the material with great humor and clear instructions. Since we have a good chunk of the basic vocabulary down we just stepped though it one by one. We started with Basic 5 – the 7 walks we know and worked a couple of the more annoying ones a few times. Basic 4 is statues – crouching in a really uncomfortable position and then rising up at three different levels – high, medium, and low – each accompanied by a series of knife (imaginary) movements. There is also a sitting version where we start in a tuck and then roll legs out and freeze with arm positions. Basic 3A – stomps to the side, pull into center, plié, up. Basic 3B – raise and hold leg, stomp, push forward, up on toes, raise other leg, etc. We skipped 3C - crouch into spinning upright position to the right and left and went on to my favorite Basic 1- stomping in a circle, falling down, and getting up slowly and slowly walking down stage.

We have actually learned quite a bit in a short time. The idea now seems to be to work on refining this material. Of knowing what we individually need to work on – my balance is shit and so is my weight transfer – so that when we go home those that continue training will have clear objectives. It’s hard to believe we are nearing the end of the third week – it seems like we have been here just a short time, but also it seems like we have been here ages. 12-14 hour days with largely the same people creates a kind of odd time bubble. I know what day of the week it is, but I’ll be damned if I know the date.

Rehearsal went well, although probably not as any of us expected. We have gone into shaping the material with a few good strong ideas. We started with ideograms and a bit of improv – which has helped us to uncover an interesting sibling rivalry between the three sisters. Whether by gender or age we seemed to naturally fall into a pattern of the two women against me. An alignment of Irina and Olga with the middle sister Masha seemed to make sense – so I am working with the depressed middle sibling. Moving into the performance space we started with our ideas, which were not gelling. Our director Emma identified that we seemed to be preoccupied with the objects rather than the emotions or attitudes. Removing them helped and I believe we have a good clear staging path to follow over the next few days.

Tonight we have an opportunity to watch a SITI company rehearsal of act I of Three Sisters. Looks like they will have lights and sound as well. I’m looking forward to this as long as I can get my cough under control. Half of us seem to have something – a cold or whatnot – which moves though a group like this pretty fast. Mine has hovered in my sinuses for days and dropped into my throat yesterday. Came with laryngitis last night, which makes me wonder if it is some sort of viral thing. I’m ambivalent about visiting Heath Services for them to tell me its viral and they can’t do anything about it. If it gets worse during the weekend I can always just visit one of those doc-in-a-box places.