twenty short performance papers

20 Short Performance Papers (amino essays) 

64pp hardback book, published by amino (2004)

PDF

http://web.archive.org/web/20161028070607/http://fionawright.org/writing.html

 

contents
1 preface
2 artist talks (part one)
3 gasp/jump text
4 breathe me
5 enthusiastic bodies/quiet bodies
6 trembling and disappearing
7 looking at looking
8 demonstrative
9 i was dancing (fragment)
10 watching dancing
11 some questions about dancing
12 watching watching
13 hearts and minds: digressions
14 artist talks (part two)
15 lying
16 artist talks (part three)
17 artist talks (part four)
18 citings from emails and a translation (and a word
about nakedness)
19 bodyweights
20 postscript


3 gasp/jump text
The starting position is like a preparatory move. Waiting to begin. Low, here - like
this, both hands - arms held behind, like a bird, like a diver; something like the
moment that comes just before take off.
Here is the bracing position of the swimmer, crouching down, poised ready to let fly,
to dive in and start swimming. But instead of flinging the body forwards the
movement sends the body backwards, upper body flexed and leaning forwards,
while jumping away, jumping backwards, with only the arms flying forwards, hands
last to follow, as if backwards is downwards and jumping away is like falling away
(the image as if from a movie scene, falling down a lift shaft or sucked through a
space craft airlock into outer space) while still reaching (for a hand to save).
Reaching towards while moving away from the start place.
Arms open, hands open, as if there were something or someone to clasp onto.
Hanging just a moment in mid-air. Not diving in and not flying forwards. Falling
backwards. Blown backwards. Back turned towards the direction of the movement
pathway.
A sharp intake of breath. Gasping for breath as if the breath has been knocked out
and now the only option is to take in air after an emptying out of the lungs;
drawing breath.
Arms open, mouth open, throat open; a gasp.
Breathing in and in and in with each jump, launching the body away. Lungs filling
with the movement of air. Entering the spaces on the inside, the inside side of the
skin, the side that faces in, where the sound of the air shoots in, filling narrow cavities
and swelling surface areas to volumes that move bones. Breathing out and out and
out with each fall into gravity and the ground. Grounding. Falling into line. Landing a
short distance away, behind the starting position, returning to the half-crouch, arms
tucked behind, re-assuming and imitating the initial body-gesture; the re-set,
reiterating the pose, before moving off, launching and leaving the ground again.
Momentum swings the arms forwards, contrary to the direction of the momentum
of body mass jumping backwards and integral to the opening up and closing down
logic of the whole move and its particular, peculiar motion.
Breath becomes bound to movement. Breathing necessarily interrupts the trajectory
of the gesture, forming, spacing and punctuating its choreography. Inhaling a sharp
new breath. Exhaling a soft expiration of now-used-up breath. Air enters the body
through a closing throat on a perceptible gasp of resonating vocal chords as the feet
leave the floor, so quietly. Air exits the body as the weight sounds heavily into the
floor and the release of breath empties like a loud sigh misting onto a mirror surface.