The ground beneth our feet...

One and a half years ago conversations began about creating an outreach trip to Japan. At the time, the trip was more about cultural exchange and cross-culture collaborative performance than the teaching and performance & technique workshops we are focused on now. There are still elements of those original plans, but as is inevitable things change. Over the course of our project’s development our numbers fluctuated - in terms of both personnel and finances – our destinations and partnerships shifted, and the general aesthetic of our purpose was, to say the least, rearranged.

I’m not opposed to change, and think of myself as strongly adaptable. This doesn’t mean that change is always easy for me to handle or that I won’t voice my concerns and frustrations at having thoughtfully-laid plans altered. In the end, you’ll still have a well-crafted product or result or whatever is appropriate for the given situation.

The kiln-dried project we now have in our muddy hands is vastly appropriate for the size of our party (now three, down from the original six or seven) and the skills and abilities we have brought along with us. Our project still shifts like tectonic plates - slowly and subtly, creating larger shifts in the shaky terrain of my mind - and while that tends to make me a bit uncomfortable, it is not a bad thing. It's a part of what we're doing and it's a part of what it is to be human.

Our humanity, or someone else's,  is central to our art and is the focus of both the solo works and collaborative piece that we've brought here. Being in stasis, fighting or shaping change and transition, creating or breaking tension, crying, laughing.... they are aspects of what we do and the core of how we (all of us) live.

Without those things, I'm not sure I'd quite see the point.

b.e.