This sounds very simple but implementing it took many months (if not years). It involved such minor quandaries as getting ten year old video footage onto DVD, and then converting that into something a program could edit. There was the small matter of more DVD footage traveling from south India to California to find me, and then completing its circumnavigation of the globe until further conversion and the lending of a computer (from Switzerland) that could actually do the editing (thank you, thank you, thank you Simone) was possible.
There were more logistical conundrums, but you get the drift. Just because I was bored silly by them doesn’t mean you should be too.
The inherent frustrations came to a computer-hazed apotheosis last week, semi-sleepless, reducing me to a state last experienced during the self-inflicted essay-crises of undergraduate days. I’m not sure the results bear fitting testament to this struggle. Dance never films quite as I would like, not unless it’s been specifically designed for it. And film is not my medium of expertise. In the end, it felt more important to get the thing done at all than to worry too much over any intrinsic artistic merit.
So here we are.
I find it pleasingly appropriate that each of the three films comes from one of three different continents.
This first is called On Your Island Does the Night Fall Later? (The title comes from a poem by John Berger.) It’s some straightforward footage of a performance in Cape Town in September 2001, performed by Malcolm Black and Nicola Visser.
Next come some excerpts from the group piece I made on six dancers in Bangalore just over a year ago. It was very much a work in progress, lots of new ways of working for all involved. I called it The Spaces Between and it is performed by Nayana Bhat, Pia Bunglowala, Charan C. S., Marjory Dupres, Sowmya Jaganmurthy and Vibhinna Ramdev.
And finally, the solo, La Blanche, I performed on the same evening. I am still mulling over it and considering ways to re-work it. My long-suffering brother accompanied me to one of the beaches around Swansea one morning last autumn to film some ideas from it. The movement material isn’t quite what I would like, but some of the themes are probably clear…
Or if you prefer, here is the link to their home on my Youtube channel.
More words and stories will follow soon, probably also on dance, as that has been the theme of the year so far.
from Lucy, with love x