Adam

& Zahra photo by Claire

MAP Research Week Three
Where is the ritual? Looking for regularities, honing in on specific qualities and ways of
being, and trying to make rules with lot of space within them.

Arriving at the studio on Tuesday after a challenging week on the home front where my
7yr old has suddenly become like a stroppy teenager and my two year old likes the
sound of screaming, I realize how much the act of walking into a large bare space that is
available most of the day for me to simply immerse in my art form lifts my spirits
hugely. I shake off the ratty mum feeling and worries if there is anything in the fridge
for dinner tonight, and commence the first ritual of the day as a dancer and dance
maker; changing my clothes for something more loose and comfy, some thick socks and
a warm jumper or cardy to help soften the contact with the floor. The swift dress
change (with no need for modesty or a changing room) leads me to the next ritual
some kind of rolling, twisting, writhing, stretching movement on the floor followed by
an odd hip-crease stretch or fold forward over cross legs. This ritual is nicely distracted
by ritual number three; put some sounds on. A few minutes later some kind of
electronic sounds are enclosing the space and reminding me of my mechanics and
functions, which somehow helps to generate a series of random mobilizations to
lubricate the joints, open the spine and prepare the mind for the body. This
energy/body state with (in this case) the welcome interruption of participant dancers
arriving, chatting, summing up the week of stuff going on and then re immersing into a
privately shared time of body focus and thought processes towards the tasks of the day,
is crucial to this trade, this work environment, this field of contemporary dance
practice and has been a similar personal experience for many years in a diverse range
of dance studios and run-down halls all over the world.

But are they rituals? Rituals (aside from known collective ceremonial events such as
weddings and funerals) can be considered in the society as the relationship between
nature and culture in which ritual enculturation and classification of the body imparted
boundaries, identities and sacred meanings to the tribal collectivity and the individual
(Shilling, 2007, p.3), yet personally poses some difficulty in recognizing where the ritual
lives in my daily life or on my yearly calendar, and I wonder if I am alone in this query.
It seems the obviousness of rituals in todays society has altered greatly and as much as
society itself has altered to the age of technology and social media. It is an age of
visibility, where at any time we can surrender our identity, activity, relationship status
and recent funny story to the Ethernet. Never before have we been so seen. Yet the
ritual seems to be less seen. Has it disappeared or transferred to another plane of
existence? Are the mindfulness or meditation retreats and festivals our way of
ritualistic community gathering for the bettering of our beings, our souls? Or do these
rituals quickly suffer being over popularized and lose their ritual status slipping easily
into a fad or trend? And does our expanding knowledge of what everybody else is doing
create a lackluster for the desire of sanctity?


I recently read a short passage in my bedtime novel depicting a struggle of
displacement, poverty and war (go figure) from Ethiopia to London in the 70s and 80s
that resonated directed to this current inquiry and questioning on our loss of tradition
and community. It read, somewhere in the last seven years need became superstition,
tradition became voluntary, and then ritual further degenerated into a subject of some
embarrassment (Gibb, 2007, p.240). Anthropologist Victor Turner (1982,) reinforces
this statement and places in tune with his flow theory (p.55), which denotes the
holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement (ibid). He writes that
in post-industrial societies, when ritual gave way to individualism and rationalism,
the flow experience was pushed mainly into the leisure genres of art, sport, games,
pastimes, etc. (p.58).

From a personal perspective, the ritual seems to stem from a functional aspect of the
craft such as the preparation for a dancing day, that through a regularity, a natural flow
of events over years, creates a mindset (and bodyset), a quality which gives the sense of
a necessity to the cause of being a dancer and a synchronicity to the calling of the dance.
Invited by the ambience of the room, the knowledge that this is a place to dance in, to
try out a different physicality and step outside of everyday temporality, feeds the
allowance to explore a body time that can be altered and morphed, express thoughts on
the moving body and indulge in orientations of the physiological and creative kind.

This state of space and body are what I propose can fed this particular choreographic
process with a focused attention on the qualities we move through each day rather than
the movements themselves. As I am working mainly with dancers who understand this
set of rituals then I am curious as to what contrasts this in their regular daily activities
and environments; what other body states/ambiences create their flow during the
day. How does this flow become interrupted? Do we feel the omens lurking if we forget
the ritual?

This weeks Tuesday research session, with a couple more new participants being
induced into the process, followed its regular chart of initiations and then branched off,
as it should do, with diverse interpretations from a common base, into explorations of
the space between the fields and the supposed public place. I am particularly enjoying
offerings of ways to move from one field to another. Sometimes we played with silly
walks (in silliness I believe brilliance can arrive), or gravitational pulls. Bourdieu uses
the analogy of a football field and the game to recognize that the state of relations of
force between players defines the structure of the field (Bourdieu & Waquant, 1992).
The rules, positions of play, concurrence or beliefs (doxa) in the game, and levels of
competitiveness all acknowledge the stakes (p.98) we have in the game and therefore
informs our objectives and how risky or cautious we are within the field. Even outside
of the field, the act of trying to pass someone on the street, the dodging and stuttering
side stepping that occurs, has a moment of struggling for space and perhaps could be
reinterpreted as a soccer player dribbling the ball and defending his/her line of attack.
The analogy of the game as a boundaried site of play to social fields occupied by social
agents who take part in rule-bound activities consequently defines the limits to what
can be done, and what can be done is also shaped by the conditions of the field
(Grenfell, 2008, p.54). In any case, the social game is regulated, it is the locus of certain
regularities (ibid).

Talullah photo by Claire

From Escape To Restraint And Back Again

The open Wednesday evening research lab often sees a fresh bunch of faces and a
welcome regularity of others, who continually reopen the questions on how we can use
the social body analysis to move us through an improvised structure. Questions on the
limitations (too much? too little?) continued as we trialed out more definitive decisions
with the space and with our precision in bodily intention.

I decided to start with a pure body/spatial initiation without engaging any determined
ideas of fields and habitus. Using three Labanesque spatial constructs to move with, the
cylinder, the sphere and the cube, and still employing the spatial fields with a task to
interact and intercept with others in the sectioned areas, the space was alive with
kinetic connectivity and interesting relational activity. I found myself allowing the eyes
to roam and pick up on any situation concurrently occurring. This manner of multiple
gazing (the multigaze as I call it) does not bother me as a viewer and actually makes
sense when confronting a work that is confronting society and its social condition. It is
busy, and we choose what we want to engage with. But the question still arises; is it too
much information in terms of the foundations for a choreographed event? Wonderful
randomness is fairly easy with a bunch of creative individuals, but it is the collective
(and micro collective) actions and energetic forces that are asking for attention. With
this in mind I decided to give more instruction.

Draw a map of the fields. Define more acutely the qualities employed in each field, try
moving in a specific way outside of the field where it might reflect the field it has come
from or going towards. You can use the objects in the spaces but maintain the focus on the
bodys physical temperament, its modus operandi.

Something changed. The outcome of this interaction with the space and body and with
the directives in mind seemed to constrict the energies and actions more than the
previous flow of movement tasks. It was for me a true reflection of what structures and

restraints can do; they can stem or kill the flow. The flow in this case being that the
person is at ease with a situation, not needing to overthink or try to fit a certain
directive. The flow is signaling an openness where the individual agent is not just fitting
into a structure of bodies, objects and spatial boundaries but is tuning into that
structure and making the choices he/she feels are worthwhile for that moment with no
pressure to produce a meaning through the movement.

Memory jog: Circumstances are radically different for people at times.
I remember clearly in a dance improvisation class a long time ago, where I set a task to
simply move from an anatomical purity, respecting the folds, extensions, spirals and
curves within the bodies anatomical flow. One student was rooted to the spot and could
not even begin this task. I asked her what was going on and she said it felt abnormal for
her to move without a phrase or very clear direction of a situation. She was blocked. It
was only momentarily as I then asked her to lift her arm, then step on the left foot, bend at
the knee and then she was away. Whilst others feel completely at home with this open
task, it is good to be reminded that all experiences will feed us differently depending on
what has made up our past, what is happening in the present and what is our sense of
freedom.

Flow (no flow, stuttering flow, ebb and flow) is intrinsically defined by the individuals
situation, experience and knowledge. The diversification of the ways of beings in this
research series to date has thrown the performance potentialities into a wild mix of
cultured expressivity; timidity and extraversion, intensity and complacency, and
somehow I cannot defer or deny what the individual feels is relevant for them as they
improvise. That would seem hypocritical to the cause. However, although I do not aim
to try to override the natural instinct of the performer, I do aim to gather them into a
certain time frame with the added incentive to individually find the familiar, if not
ritualistic regularities and through this generate the yearning for collective action and
energy.




Novelty emerges from the unprecedented combinations of

familiar events.



Turner, 1982, p.27





References
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. University of Chicago
press.
Shilling, C. (2007). Embodying sociology: Retrospect, progress and prospects. Blackwells.
Turner, V. W. (1982). From ritual to theatre: The human seriousness of play. Paj Publications.