Parts and the Whole

On Saturday we had the whole group together for the first time in a long time. Through the day there was a perceptible shift from remembering units of the dance as separate chunks to beginning to dance through and feel the piece as one thing. This comes with repetition and remembering I guess, and what it feels like in the room is commitment. We are all letting go into the co-created piece of work.   It’s interesting that , in parallel, something is

changing in the relationships. In a moment of reflection at the end, one of the participants, Roberta, observed that people had stopped only thinking about their own bits, but had started noticing each other and becoming more of a group.

I remember directing a touring show where two of the actors had a really difficult relationship. It made it quite a challenge for everyone to do this movement from the parts to the whole – other actors were tense when these two played a love scene, and the two of them had to do some hard work to make something work in the fiction that wasn’t working outside it.  But they did manage, and it was possible to see the container that the performance makes, where it is possible, if you are all  willing, put all your energies together.