Carol Brown Dances: Carol Brown Writes

Carol Brown Writes

19.01.05

Photo: Carol Brown Notes from the Isle of Wight, Quay Arts, Trading Spaces

When the curator of the event, Steve Munn, phoned me I misheard the name of the event. All the way to Newport on the Isle of Wight, via train and boat, I was thinking Treading Spaces, sculling water, keeping upright as different spaces unfurled beneath my floating legs. But Trading Spaces which is the actual name of the programme, is this and something else. Its the doubling and the working over of spaces and contents, a palimpsest inviting you to perceive one type of activity through a different type of space, to encounter dancing through fine art practice and video sculpture through dancing.

The dance screen installation, Electric Fur (2002) is in the theatre and the intimate installation performance, Court by Angela Wodehouse, is in the gallery.

Two 'dances' exploring two different ways of occupying and incorporating space, the former is a video sculpture which invites the audience to move, the latter is an intimate theatre, a sculpture of time and of the body as a many-timed wound experienced through close proximity and touch.

The event does not rely on numbers or on punters. We feel through each other. And we are few. How else to be experience this visceral thereness?

In Court I am with Helen. Helen who is to be the keeper tonight.
The presence of a Helen who reminds me of my own sister Helen
We are both dressed in black
The performers are dressed in white
We are in a circular labyrinthine space composed of white columns of fabric
Four form an inner stage where these two others, the knowing performers, lie at the end like sarcophagi
Only they are very much alive
They have a quiet sureness about them
An economy of gesture which draws you into their delicate theatre of interactions
We are part of this too
I like Helen she is a good person to be here with
Open and receptive but also unsure about what is expected of her
A novice not a professional nor a sceptic

Helen becomes a part of a weave
Her arm laced beneath and between the arms of the performers and for one exquisite moment
I am the solitary spectator of this interconnective system of the strangers and the familiars
Watching the turning of this woman into a construction of woven arms, like Ariadne, she is both the weaver and the fabric

We remove the voice and we have to listen differently
This is what I felt tonight
This listening for signs, for gestures for when to move and when not to move for when to rest
I could stay here all night in this calm, being bathed by their calm
Do they get tired?

They lie down and I do not want to stay standing
How simple life becomes when we understand what is needed
What is necessary

I sit alongside them also adjacent

He clenches a fist
She opens her eyes and looks over her shoulder
They both close their eyes
The fibrous tension lines which bind skin to bone release
Is this the end?

Next door there is no real ending and no real beginning
It just goes on and on
Infinity is a difficult concept
I see how different we were then
Electric Fur is a series of partial appearances, images of bodies in different states blur and dissolve and rapidly change. How do we construct an identity here from these pieces and vistas of partial disclosures? And from this mirrored reality of a different version of our selves caught in a looping terminus of eternal returns

In Court we are both caught and courted
It is a game and a ritual.

We are led separately and slowly
The woman takes me
And holds me briefly en route
She looks at me she sees me
I see her more shyly than she me

In the room next door the theatre is another body I can get close to

The performers in the screen dance are elsewhere doing other things now. Cat texts me about her job, Jo I don't know where she is today and I, well I am here but I look at myself through another version of myself

She floats with that faraway unblinking look

Time is different
In Court we are in the time of a continuous present, in Electric Fur a discontinuous present of cut ups and flashbacks, slow dissolves and rapidfire projections of desire. Thoughts stay close to the surface.

The Court performers touch us in very many ways. Hands feel the outline aura of my body
Eyes scan and settle on details and pathways walk indicative directions
We are gently guided on a journey
We are watching and being watched as touching and touched
The only sound is of breath
And the frame is 18 minutes the time it takes to be left and to be returned

I breathe lightly and notice details: The light beneath her skirt; his skin signature; the wrapped chair like a present; the opaque columns which look as though they could be brushed over they are so fragile.

When she reveals her neck, thick hair becomes horse.
And being all neck and horse she suddenly, shockingly, reveals this bare life between us, our creatureliness.

Email: carol@cranium.demon.co.uk

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