if . . .

:: Note::  ... our performance group Untamed has created a piece ... coming soon ... after 12 workshop sessions and 15 rehearsals we are about to be ready ... a few more sessions when we return from Mongolia where we perform our signature piece " Untamed " ...  then " Abandoned: a thousand tongues" will happen ...   

... was most impressed with the community work/play of KsambDance troupe ... witnessed their summer presentation To The Heart ...  ... checked out their video Be Lonley - a response to "Covid news spread and restrictions became increasingly strident, KSAMB Dance Company thought, WE MUST KEEP DANCING!" ...  ... they reached out inviting my participation on one of their regularly scheduled Wild Card Movement Friday gatherings at Saskatoon City Hall Square ... witnessed their October 30th special edition, with video projections and audio by Miki and Nicole ...  ...replied "Wonderful work! All elements: sheets, light, projections, sound and playing with space. The elements, especially the gentle wind conspired to create a flowing free like comfortable disturbance of shadows, cocoons, wings, inner-outer spirits and wrappings of careful protection to struggles and strangulations. Fleeting surfaces capturing airy memory places ... nice “collaborateurs” ... my question is doe...

There was to be a meeting.  A meeting at the Mill.  A gathering to give thanks - a homage. They arrived, bought provisions & slept.  They began to drum, sing & recite text. They found a small clearing in front of the Mill & hung a sheet. They created a series of songs & text following memory & instinct. From within a story emerged. Three days passed. It was time to prepare the feast. They cooked all afternoon. Everything was ready or at least as ready as could be given the time. The guests, who were actually the family and friends of the caretakers of the land, drifted to the place. There was a meeting, a feast & a giving of thanks.  This was not the meeting. There was another encounter. A facing. "Miller, you sleep" he suggested.  Who are you? Who is knocking at the door? Crying out for the door to open Without even searching for me. Even though I don't know you I can't bare to leave you. I try to open the door. The door is latched from ...

Finally, after close to fifteen years of following reports, articles, books and personal imaginings I attended a presentation of the Workcenter of Thomas Richards and Jerzy Grotowski  on a wonderous July evening in Lari, Italy. Both teams of the Workcenter participate in the Collinarea Festival . We ascended ninty-five steps to the top of the Lari castle where Mario Biagini, director of the  Open Program  we are about to witness, greeted comers with an open-hearted smile, bending down to chat with children and embracing friends as they arrived. As we trickled in t he two male and five female actors sat, squatted or stood on the periphery of an open space. A box, staff, cane, bones and percussive instruments (bell, rattle, stone, tin pan) were discretely though obviously carefully placed in the 30X20 foot  cobble-stoned square. We sat on chairs or carpets surrounding the space. All were dressed in white and barefoot, exactly as I had seen in the many documente...

... associology is not highly plotted, but certainly is elaborately structured ... plot, character, setting and theme logic are potential paralysis ... related or corresponding event, recurring image and action are the essential substance of meaningful density ... repetition is a pattern of associology and also of dream and neurosis ... a condition ... without tradition, without belief the process is that of filling or emptying ... ... associology is breakdown or breakthrough work ... the self is the obstacle ... the only consolation & grace of work is to obliterate or to encompass ... "Now what?" Is always the question. Now what? A workshop. A workshop for creative workers exploring inner aspects of action. Starts with the whole body in space listening to the bones and singing the sound to develop a capacity of open, vigilant awareness. Moves to playing with & devising materials in improvisational time to experience and discover personal impulses of place...

Elements towards a Cartography of Training to Performance sources      vocabulary   environment   structure   interaction constraints  sequences   transitions      rhythm     exchange (training)    (etude) (score)           (play)     (performance) accept         commit         develop          offer          share         Glyph       Petroglyphs       Practice        Witness         Audience          substitution to augmentation to modification to redefinition                                     Three Key Characteristics  ...

Reflecting on classes just completed. The body is, yet not only, movement. In work there is the emptiness called space ... or is it heart or rigor? In play the space parts then moves in to fill where the body's been ... or is it  absence that parts and fills or energy? We have deeply personal reasons for moving, working and playing. Yet always we partner to hold the space and to keep things whole. Memory is on our side as long as we observe, listen, encounter and reveal in dancingness. "It is about finding a true sense of your path in the theatre and in life and finding where it links. The only way it makes sense to me in any literal way is through the analogy of the waves of the ocean hitting the beaches of the earth. I see that theatre and art and the way of the actor is the ocean, a vast swell of the human spirit, whose full potential can never quite be tapped (though we strive to do so) and the earth represents our human, mundane life, it represents the ...

... term concludes ... an exploration ... last summer returned to the source of my beginnings & was given the gift this term to practice a reflection ... began with see-listen-encounter-reveal ...  Thus 'revealing' is not as much an act of showing as it is an inner deed of letting, releasing, and offering ... a transition from the 'outer' to the 'inner' ... from 'work' to 'deed': "The actor should not use his organism to illustrate 'a movement of the soul,' he should accomplish this movement with his organism.  (Kris Salata. The Unwritten Grotowski . p.55 with the embedded end quote from Grotowski's Towards A Poor Theatre . p. 123) ... term concludes with a deed ...  a deed without a name ...  Deed, by means of movement/dancingness/aliveness, is merely an instrument of the body, the heart and the breath of the doers ... :: Note :: ... my humblest thanks to students so committed to the way ...

Expressive Movement IV: The way towards a personal movement training. Investigating creative potentialities through a rigorous confrontation with the elements of an actors movement/action.   Aspects of inquiry: - Centering, grounding, body mapping, rhythm and flow - Space awareness devoted to:  taking care and reacting to the space,  spatial   balancing, creating partnership with the space, in the space with an object.                                      - Pre-creative potentialities of movement. - Plastiques and Corporals  (Jerzy Grotowski and the Teatr Laboratorium) - Relations between precision and organicity. - Associations: the impulses / the vigilant mind. - Associations within a structure. - Gesture (Michael Chekov) - Methodologies: theory and performance praxis    - Dancingness: Aliveness, presence a...

Fundamentals of Movement II: An actor ’ s movement training. Investigating an actor ’ s training through a rigorous confrontation with movement on the body, movement in space and movement as encounter.   Aspects of inquiry: - Centering, grounding, body mapping, rhythm and flow - Space awareness devoted to: taking care and reacting to the space,  spatial   balancing, creating partnership with the space - Plastiques and Corporals.  (Jerzy Grotowski and the Teatr  Laboratorium)                                      - Mask in movement. - Relaxation, flexibility, discipline, spontaneity. - Attention and connection. - Working with the dreaming body. - Associations and impulses. - Gesture. (Michael Chekov) - Energy, lightness and precision. - Creation of a movement score: its logic and actions. - Methodologies: theory and perf...

Workshop Impulse concluded .  Awkwardly first described as Towards Action (from impulse through association to elements of inaction) the ten day sessions ultimately examined the practice and vocabulary of Joe Chaikin and the creative actor. "I felt a terrific longing for a kind of ensemble," Mr. Chaikin told author William Goldman, for the book, "The Season." "I wanted to play with actors, actors who felt a sensitivity for one another... In order to come to a vocabulary, we had to teach each other: we had no ambitions other than to meet and play around... " ( Playbill ) The days submerged into seven investigations: space, place, territory, emblem, sphere & zone, occupation & inhabit.  The individual body & voice training exercises moved subtly into acts of mapping and connection forming constellations. Words flowed from reflective actors lips: spontaneity, silence, source, partner, community, ether and beacon. Fra...

Workshop: Towards Action  (from Impulse through association to elements of inaction) Participants: Stefan, Kristen, Jared & Andrew Monday, May 21 - Friday June 1 @ The Temple 7 - 9 pm. Day 1:  Space:  Introduce Centering, The Plastiques, Cat and Voice              fundamentals of breath, chant & body connection. Vigil. (Stefan, Kristen, Jared & Andrew) Day 2:  Place: Centering multiple times with movement together. Floor work.             Establishing place & enter with exchange. (Stefan, Kristen, Jared & Andrew) Day 3: Territory: Searching connection/ contact. Weight & Balance.              The inner dance & the solo. Dancingness. Silence. (Stefan, Kristen, Jared & Andrew) Day 4: Emblem:  Entering the space one at a time.  Breath and Vibration ...

Plato said the human soul is composed of reason, will and desire.  Throughout all my experiences in theatre-making it has been the ensemble which is the backbone of the process & paradoxically the most neglected and unrecognized aspect of  the "work".   In my mid-twenties in Vienna, as a member of AMoK, Zbigniew Cynkutis , founding member of the now legendary Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre , chastised us in broken english, "You don't know your places. Listen to each other. Acknowledge each others role within the group and you will be more creatively strong."  These thoughts surfaced reflecting on the latest incarnation of Skit Skit   following their seventh show Skit Skit Unplugged . They are a sketch comedy ensemble working together now for four years and for this show were five: 1. Big, brash, bold & egocentric, 2. Lively, fun, relaxed & selfless, 3. Studied, sharp, smart & driven, 4. Intense, fall guy, outsider & ...

I   A wintastery Rice paper lanterns float on cascading milky ways. Thoughts stand frozen like star prints in the meridian. On the glacier  under the snow – the bones were crackling with the wind. Memories drift from the gauze of moonbeams – like a veiled volcano. Sleeping in the sparkling. There, I buried – forgotten in the frostline. II   Sharp claws of black scratch the surface – a curious rejection.  Roused from dream. I met an immense shadow in a pair of eyes. These meetings set out under ice  flows inside out. You see me I see you another no other. III   Go quiet as breath,   toward the density.  Troubles are a search. I hear the lament - the ballad of yesteryear. The red rhythm beats La neige blues meet We all fall down. I have been there - lying in times past gradient back traces. IV The ice fields open and he doesn't see...

Poster by Lindsey Rewuski :: Note ::  ... a training turned performance ... performed by Kristen Holfeuer & Jules Mercier | Music by Matt Voyno | Directioned by Raymon Montalbetti ... YouTube montage of For the You ... FaceBook Event Page  ...

Drama of Associology a statement Associology  is not a discipline.  It is the evidence of a drama. Drama is a relationship.  The relationship is ongoing.  Associology is an act of devotion in the relationship. I want to believe that in associology the act of drama is its own reward. I want to believe the drama, when one devotes oneself to it, extends beyond the boundaries of drama. I want to believe associology values inquiry over conclusion. To attempt to be conclusive is to attempt to make dramas that are, in effect, statements. Attempting to make a statement with associology undermines the idea that drama is a relationship. These words are a statement and they are not associology. :: Note :: ... statement heavily influenced by Douglas Witmer  ... the idea of Associology came from supervalentthought  :  A poetics of associology whose noise world sits me down in disbelief at the rare freedom of other people’s minds. Not bec...

... reaching for a perception founded on the unexpressed emotion within an image ... moments of open beauty, solid emotional tones, symbolic substance, and inherent abstraction ...  “I prefer winter and fall, when you can feel the bone structure in the landscape---the lonliness of it---the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it---the whole story dosen't show.” ― Andrew Wyeth   :: Note :: ... working title Tundra ... joy of playing with Jules & Kristen ...

The practice begins with the creation of personal material by freely improvising physical movements and vocal sounds until a clear physical and emotional association is established. A series of associations are then created. These associations are then individually refined to become as exact and repeatable as any structured movement. Once the association is refined it is called a Glyph. An aspect of Glyphs are they keep their improvised quality being immediate and may seem to the spectator to be created on the spot, but in fact are highly scored. Upon creating a series of Glyphs, they are then put together in a larger sequence called a Petroglyph. The Petroglyph is a montage of physical and vocal scores (Glyphs) combined in such a way as to create an action. Shaping the Petroglyphs through pacing, duration, tempo and dynamics allows dramatic arcs to be rendered. The Petroglyphs are then aligned and rendered again into a piece with a rhythmic coherence. For the You is made up of fou...

Kristen Holfeuer / For the You / ᕦ What happens when we remember? What happens when we delve into the memories of others? Are we entitled to the knowledge contained in the memories of those who came before us? I don’t feel like this piece was created so much as remembered. If process, form, and content all inform one another, it is only right a piece about memory should be created by remembering and then shaped like memories floating (or sometimes hiding) in the brain. - Kristen ... engages the ancestor, lets her speak giving back her voice. Tells a story to the ancestor in ourselves. For the lives of others to truly matter the ancestor must be encountered to open the present. ... Walter Benjamin in 'The Storyteller', "less an answer to a question than a proposal concerning the continuation of a story which is just unfolding." ... enlists the ancestor to an attentiveness that lives & moves from breath to breath, body to mouth, sound to word singing the world we ...

A path through the drama is merely where the words aren't: an immersion and connection. What's it about? Where is it? These are not exactly the right questions; It is an entering deeply into relationship that is the way of following. It is surrounded by actions; if it had a nature, it would be the associations all around that touch and shape the territory within it. That's where you watch, isn't it? That's how and where you wonder. Everything you've seen you've seen from it. At every instance you expect what is hidden everywhere. You know it because you are the story. :: Note :: ...... apologies to Samuel Menashe Reeds Rise From Water & Crispin Sartwell (The Green door Issue 4 Here / Now / Here ...) ...