Containers

I am trying to write something each week but time goes by so quickly and I sometimes feel I have not moved on from the last thoughts in the last blog post. So for this week I am going to share my notes from listening to a talk and watching some work on-line by Ralph Lemon.

The talk was loosely about two pieces

‘come on Charley Patton’ and ‘How can you stay in the house all day and not go anywhere?’

His process means that a work takes years to make.

He talked about a container: the puzzle that is the inquiry that holds to together a activity. You can’t solve it, it’s a thing you read about, think about explore but it is not to be solved. The container is what holds a dance; it is an opportunity.

I am thinking about the containers we are so used to we don’t notice them – the things we do because we just always do and the assumptions we no longer question. What Janet was saying on Hopal’s blog about considering yourself a certain way like seeing yourself as ‘good’ and how that container is so helpful in that it houses you safely but also so restricting in that it houses you safely. What Hopal was saying about time as a container. Thinking about paradigms such as positivism is about the kind of container you use to organise being xxxx but this is also about the container being the assumptions you are willing not to question. Things you will let slide. In terms of research the container is the framework the assumptions you are aligning yourself with the assumptions that will inform your questioning.

He spoke about self-exploration as ‘tourism of My Self’. He talked about the gap where you want to follow your own rules but can’t. I think this is the space artists are brave enough to face again and again. In dance we explore what we do once we have figured out how to balance by tilting ourselves off balance again.

It was amazing how in questions and answers people had talked about habits, impulse, inhabiting the body – all of this Dewey writes about and yet the world of dance and ontological theory very rarely meet and share ideas.

When asked how he manages to keep up the tiring task that all artists have of questioning yourself he mentioned the importance of coming to terms with your Self – being kind

“I am beholden to trying to be as kind to myself as possible”

My final notes to myself in terms of teaching technique are: I am teaching toward - being a good dancer is not about virtuosity it is about being true to yourself, your body and your intent, to the possibility of your practice. That is what I want my students to learn when I teach a technique class. To that end I try to set exercises that through up physical questions that can be answered with the integrity of technique – or that is what I am working on anyway.

So what are your containers as you look at your past experience, or plan an inquiry project or carry one out??

What do you think?

Adesola