No metaphorical brackets: Boom! And I’m in it.
Sally Doughty
Image : David Wilson Clarke. Coworkers Nicola Carter and Sally Doughty at NottDance.
Osmosis
I’ve been reflecting on the whole of my experience in Satelliser and how difficult it is to separate the process/rehearsals/preparation from the performance in Nottingham. So much about the process shaped my understanding of and engagement in the performance, and informs how I look back at it when thinking about this writing. There’s a lot I could write about – so much came up for me through Satelliser – some ideas connect like a rhizome, they connect and weave through my thinking and into my practice. Others are discrete, standalone observations and thoughts.
I’m sitting on the sofa, attempting to thread
embroidery silk through the eye of a needle.
I don’t want to lick the thread to bring
together the unruly ends of the silk
into
a more manageable point for threading.
I also don’t have my glasses on.
These two factors conspire to ensure that
I do not thread that needle
and neither do I embroider.
I found myself doing the work of Satelliser without realising that I was doing it. I noticed this some way into our first online meeting in which Natifah, Nicola and I (as the three new coworkers for the show) met with existing coworkers Neve and Shivaangee for a rehearsal. Facilitated by Neve, we introduced ourselves, talking a little about what we had been busy with that day and then about 30-40 minutes in: Boom! That’s when I realised we were already practising the work through our conversation.
No transition between life and art
I experienced this again in the next online meeting with other existing coworkers. We did a similar thing: spoke about what our day had been like, where we had come from (work, the train etc) and then suddenly: Boom! I’m in it again.
That invisible and subtle transition made possible through the blurring of boundaries meant that I suddenly found myself in an activity without quite knowing how I got there. It's like driving somewhere, reaching my destination and having no recollection of how I got there: did I stop at the traffic lights? Did I signal to turn?
It reminds me of doing Deborah Hay’s Solo Performance Commissioning Project in 2011. She said ‘we’re going to learn the choreography’ and I really thought that she was going to teach us some set material (but I would have been very surprised had she done so!). But as we worked our way through the score of the solo, I realised that that was the choreography. Without knowing, I had already been at work for some time.
Knowing I was ‘in it’ could change how I engage with the work
Sally Doughty in 'I Think Not' at The Culture Factory, Tallinn, Estonia (2012). Image courtesy of Hana Vojáčková
In my own improvisation practice, I’m fascinated with noticing what is available to me in any one moment. I enjoy noticing the shifts; the changes; the rhythm and flow; the decisions I make, and the potential. And yet, it took me a while to notice that I was already in the work of Satelliser in those early online meetings, I wasn’t simply introducing myself to others and talking about my day….So much for my noticing skills!
But, this experience has reminded me that just ‘being’ (not being in performance mode) but just ‘being’, can support an engagement that is open, curious, receptive, generous, attentive and responsive: all things that I aspire to embody in improvisation and which I felt in these meetings. The way that Neve held and facilitated those spaces fully allowed me to just ‘be’, particularly as a newcomer to the work. I didn’t know what to expect in the meetings (although I did wonder if we would learn the movement phrase online), and so Neve’s gentle and carefully managed invisible shift from doing introductions to doing the work allowed me to remain in that state of just ‘being’ and to recognise that that, in and of itself, is enough preparation to be able to enter and engage in the work.
When does the work actually begin?
Where are the lines/parameters/borders that I cross to begin working?
When I drive to work in the morning, I’m not physically at work but I’m working: I’m thinking about the day; what lies ahead; the meetings and conversations I will have and with whom. I resonate with what Neve proposes around this: that the drive in and home again at the end of the day often serves as a transitional phase that can ease us out of one world and into the other, and I’d add that there is no definitive temporal or spatial demarcation that identifies the start or end of each world.
This was my experience in our Satelliser online meetings.
I’ve previously written on the different modes that we inhabit in improvised performance practices (Breslin, Cowley and Doughty 2015¹), and use Erving Goffman‘s ‘episoding conventions’ (1974: 251-269²) as a means of marking an activity as different from another. Goffman proposes that episoding conventions are metaphorical brackets surrounding different activities, and that the opening bracket is more important than the closing bracket because it establishes an episode and provides signals that inform what kind of behavioural transformation should be made (1974: 255–256). So, for example, a curtain opening at the beginning of a show signals to the audience a shift from one role (that of theatre-goer) and its associated mode of behaviour, to another (that of onlooker) (Breslin, Cowley and Doughty 2015).
I was caught out by these Boom! moments because there were no episodic conventions to signal ‘Ok, introductions are over, let’s get to work’. And I love to be caught out and surprised like that.
Image : David Wilson Clarke. Coworkers Bonni Bogya, Nicola Carter and Sally Doughty at NottDance.
I’m recalling the different worlds that I inhabited during Satelliser: witness, coworker, performer, mover, embroiderer, converser, audience member, responder, instigator. None of these were discrete or isolated worlds - they were multiple and connected and rhizomic and porous. I watched others whilst resting and sitting next to an audience member/visitor who was embroidering. At what point did I transition from an audience member seated by another audience member, into a performer who was asking them about the embroidery they were doing (and being thankful that I hadn’t licked that thread earlier on); whether they did it as a child, how they learnt to do it and if they had done any other crafts. The episodic conventions that Goffman proposes were nuanced and embedded in the noticing, the listening, the watching, the sensing, the talking and the moving between us as performers in Satelliser, and in the developing flow of the performance.
The borders between these worlds are porous and slippery and fluid and prone to an osmotic back-and-forthness. They are gentle, liminal worlds.
Hard edges
These fluid, subtle and gentle borders are completely at odds with a hard-edged transition that I experienced in the performance of Satelliser.
I had chosen to take the last lunch break, which meant that I had a 3hr performance shift; a 1hr lunch break, and a final 1hr shift. I chose that pattern because I imagined that the 3hr shift would allow me to embed myself in the work before taking a break. I was right, it certainly did do that! It also threw up questions about exhaustion, repetition, searching, digging around, situating and sustaining myself, but these are not for this writing…
When it was time to go on lunch, easing myself out of the world that I had inhabited with coworkers and visitors, taking off my jacket and leaving the space proved to be a really difficult transition. However, my return after lunch presented a much larger challenge. My reintegration back into the world of Satelliser and back into that community of women was very difficult to navigate because that transition offered none of the porosity or ease that I had experienced so far. And so I found myself in the performance space, jacket on, searching for a way back into the work.
Goffman’s episodic conventions were crystal clear here: lunch break was over, get my jacket on and get back to work.
What were my coworkers talking about?
What had happened in my absence?
How on earth can I rejoin?
I was cold, my body was tight after my pre-lunch 3hr shift.
Can I even do this movement phrase any more?
Goffman’s ‘opening bracket’ felt more like a gaping abyss here as the episode it established was not simply one of returning back to work: there were multiple complexities for me to grapple with and it took me some time to re-find my place and re-find my groove.
This was a very different kind of Boom!
I’m interested in this as a post-lunch phenomenon in Satelliser and I wonder if other coworkers felt this too.
Note to self: ask.
Stitching
In rehearsals, Neve spoke about how sewing stitches of different lengths connects to different dynamics of vocal conversation, different lengths of delivery and pauses, and how that can “allow space in our speaking to allow others to contribute”.
I also like to think of a simple stitch reflecting my journey throughout Satelliser, and particularly how it speaks to the regularity and continuity of the movement phrase that acts as the constant in the work.
Running stitch: a simple form of hand stitching,
consisting of small stitches that look
the same on both sides of the fabric
Stitches, amongst their many other functions, support fabric: they secure, strengthen, shape, form and fold. If the style of stitch changes, the principle remains: that of a needle piercing fabric. There is a parallel here then between stitching and the way that we prepared for and performed in Satelliser. We (all metaphorically, and some literally) stitched together as we talked and rehearsed to create a cooperative, supportive community of women who secured, strengthened, shaped, formed and folded. As a new coworker in Satelliser, that approach ensured that I was guided into the (fabric’s) fold with care and a generosity that allowed me to find my (ever changing) place in the group and in the work.
Boom!
And so when I returned after lunch I found myself in the predicament of, as Neve observes, figuring out how to re-enter a world that was already well established and that we were not starting out on together as a group. I struggled to re-find the needle or the thread.
I don’t remember very clearly what decisions I made in my re-joining, but (I imagine) I would have found my way back into the communal stitch – the movement phrase - as the familiar constant. And from there layered myself back in to the listening, to the speaking, to the embroidery, to the visitors: back into doing the work that is Satelliser.
¹Goffman, E (1974), Frame Analysis: An Essay On The Organization Of Experience’, Boston: Northeastern University Press.
²Breslin, J., Cowley, J. Doughty, S. (2015) Will you play? Implications of audience interventions in improvised dance performance. Choreographic Practices. Intellect, 6 (2), pp. 297-315.
Sally Doughty and Pete Shenton in 'This is...'. 2016. Image courtesy of Jason Senior at Redpix
Sally Doughty (she/her)
Sally Doughty has an international reputation as a facilitator and performer of improvisational practices and is published widely. Her research interests span improvisation, choreography, documentation, and dancing and drawing. She is Associate Professor/Reader in Dance at De Montfort University, Leicester, and is Research Director for FABRIC (Dance4 and DanceXchange together).