Martin and I made this film as a way of documenting a beginning and start a conversation about the initial ideas that underpin Reading with Bach. I live in the City of London’s square mile, and 300,000 people come to work in the mile every day. Looking at the hundreds of hunched figures over London Bridge is like a Lowry painting, and no one is touching anyone else. Taking my young son across the city, crossing through the busiest intersection, Bank Station where 400,000people pass through every day, I wondered why I was so tired?; The very many adjustments, my mind was having to make- ‘shall I go this side of him?’, ‘where is she going?’; thoughts that are internal and hardly conscious when negotiating such a large mass of people every day, take up a huge amount of energy, as well as the emotional turmoil that one reads easily on people’s faces, if one pays attention. It was creating a game that made me begin to think of the ideas for this dance/music piece: we used to count the number of people who emerged from the tube, reading a book, continuing along in the flow of people, taken to work amidst and part of the stream of humanity, at least 4 or 5 a day.
Reading is, mostly a solitary act, and I mused, where do we go in ourselves when we read? We are taken into imaginary places and situations and yet these readers, allowing themselves to be buoyed by the crowd, continue to read in the midst of the public. This led me to consider the internal world of the reader and the juxtaposition between a private act and a walking presence in a public space. The use of ear phones, Kindles and texting has made these observations commonplace, but it was the people with a book that we noticed.
Bach has been a constant companion to me these last few years. I grew up in the 60’s listening to the Swingle singers and Jacques Loussier and love the rhythmic play between jazz and Bach. Having worked with musicians closely over the last 10 years, I enjoy the conversation that occurs between live musicians and dancers who share the same space. Dancers and musicians inhabit space in very different ways, but when the musicians move and the dancers sing, they play and move better with a deeper integration with the body as a source for playing and moving.
Can I, as a choreographer, through dance and music explore the notion of public and private with the world of books and Bach as a starting point? As soon as the dancer opens the book on stage, we go into her head, we hear the music she hears and as she is lifted up reading- she is taken by them on a journey. But who is leading who? Are they figments of her imagination, characters in the book she is reading, or are they, like Shelly’s Frankenstein, manipulating her vision, and writing the page before she reads it? We will play with the rhythm of this dynamic, asking the audience to read the work in a variety of ways.
Reading is, mostly a solitary act, and I mused, where do we go in ourselves when we read? We are taken into imaginary places and situations and yet these readers, allowing themselves to be buoyed by the crowd, continue to read in the midst of the public. This led me to consider the internal world of the reader and the juxtaposition between a private act and a walking presence in a public space. The use of ear phones, Kindles and texting has made these observations commonplace, but it was the people with a book that we noticed.
Bach has been a constant companion to me these last few years. I grew up in the 60’s listening to the Swingle singers and Jacques Loussier and love the rhythmic play between jazz and Bach. Having worked with musicians closely over the last 10 years, I enjoy the conversation that occurs between live musicians and dancers who share the same space. Dancers and musicians inhabit space in very different ways, but when the musicians move and the dancers sing, they play and move better with a deeper integration with the body as a source for playing and moving.
Can I, as a choreographer, through dance and music explore the notion of public and private with the world of books and Bach as a starting point? As soon as the dancer opens the book on stage, we go into her head, we hear the music she hears and as she is lifted up reading- she is taken by them on a journey. But who is leading who? Are they figments of her imagination, characters in the book she is reading, or are they, like Shelly’s Frankenstein, manipulating her vision, and writing the page before she reads it? We will play with the rhythm of this dynamic, asking the audience to read the work in a variety of ways.
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