My research started as an exploration of trust and how it can be used as a tool to provoke movement. I wanted to investigate which collaborative and choreographic possibilities this could bring to my practice as a dance and choreographer. I started my exploration proposing tasks to five dancers in which required them to trust themselves and each other. The material created had a sense of togetherness and risk within the exploration.
The rehearsals had to be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
I chose to continue my research collaborating with my housemates. With new dancers, lockdown and a restricted space created a frame for a gentler, more intimate and supportive material. I did not want to force my expectations of what I had created with the other group on to this new exploration. Even though we were creating material based on the same tasks, the outcome was very different. I tried to respond to what is happening in the 'bedroom-studio' and how we were feeling in this new situation.
Working on the material, there were recurring images of physical support which sparked a curiosity of architectural support between the bodies. I could see parallel between these images and our current times of social distancing. We were exploring being together physically but not emotionally. Like the world has been turned upside-down, everything feels a little surreal.
This process has given me a lot of time to reflect on how I am experiencing this situation. Most of the time it feels oddly normal and then there are times when it feel so obscure and surreal. It’s something we cannot escape. To me it seems like this pandemic has brought a shared sense of sticking together and wanting to support one another; for the ‘at risk’, the NHS, the ones suffering financially. There seems to be a increased responsibility to stay connected with the people close to you who might feel alone. Before we have been so busy living our lives, that we tend to forget the ones around us.
This project has become something completely different than what I initially thought it would just two months ago. It developed from the exploration of trust and was moulded by this current time.