“The body is a clear place.” 

Remember that the art must alway come before the discourse.

"I feel it in my bones…Thinking is a combination of our rational mind and other tools for language. How doe we think through language? 
How do we feel things in our bones? There is some tension developing over here…and there is something dangerous over there…you feel it.
You feel things out in your shoulders and arms. How it passes through your body…
There are 2 forms of thinking. Language thinking and a 2 year old's thinking (before language) when they know there is tension between parents but they can't say it." A selection of somethings Simone Forti says when talking about body mind world…this 'other' way of thinking. (personal notes, workshop 17/03/14, Salts Galata, Istanbul)

I am building up a structure for somatic tours which can be offered to individuals with little or no movement practice to enable them to access specific somatic experiences. This structure includes cues taken from classes with somatic practitioners such as Steve Paxton, Eva Karczag, Gill Clarke, Rosemary Butcher, Lucia Walker among others.
Below are some cues which appear in the structure of these tours:
- 'Let the spine rise to support the skull' (Steve Paxton)
- 'At the centre of standing observe some small movements. I call this the small dance.' (Steve Paxton)
- '...remember this sensation.' (Steve Paxton)
- ' Notice how the scapula reacts to the action of pointing with different fingers.' (Steve Paxton)
- 'Half of every one of your organs is in the back of your body' (Eva Karczag)
- ' Finding the place where your bones support themselves.' (Natalie Heller)
- 'The parts of your body not in contact with the floor are suspended.' (Natalie Heller)
- 'The arms float, reaching out from the spine.' (Natalie Heller)
- 'The pelvis as a bridge between the torso and the ankle.'  (Gill Clarke)- 'Feel the movement within stillness.' (Rosemary Butcher)
- 'The body imprints itself in the space.' (Rosemary Butcher)
- 'Becoming aware of the traces you are leaving ...the traces you make with your 3-dimentional body in the 3-dimentional space.' (Rosemary Butcher)
- 'What do you reveal as you move.' (Rosemary Butcher)




 

Now that First Impressions is complete I am in the process of making funding applications to take the work to  festivals in Europe. Working on the proposal I articulate my working methodology and find it interesting to share this here as a sort of 'so this is what we were doing' post.... ;)

"For the creation of this piece I have been using an adapted version of British choreographer Rosemary Butcher's choreographic methodology. In rehearsals the dancers are guided on movement journeys where they are invited- through skeletal direction and the use of metaphor- to explore certain concepts kinesthetically. This movement material is then refined and archived within the dancers body-memory. I work on how to distill the material and how to enable the dancers to kinesthetically remember the highlights of their movement explorations so they can re-visit them on stage. An intrinsic part of the methodology is to provide an environment in which the dancers are supported to find their own expression through the work. In this sense First Impressions should be considered a collaboration rather than a hierarchically authored work."

The premier of First Impressions which was meant to take place on the 31st May in Istanbul was cancelled due to the protests that night at Gezi Park. Nobody knew what they would escalate into. We will take the example of the Standing Man (a good friend and performer Erdem Gunduz) and will be silent and still until the time fe