Coventry II

In real life I am in Ekaterinburg in Russia, but in my blog I am still in Coventry because I haven't been able to get a Internet connection to my computer to work. In an effort to catch up I am retyping the blog on to the Internet from my computer.

I have a rule that if I am going to take electronic equipment with me I have to have bought it at least two months before I leave. It is not a rule I keep. On this trip, I bought a camcorder just before I left. I didn't really unpack it until I got here. I read the manual on the plane. Then since I needed to download the software CD's that came with the camera, I needed an external CD for my small travel computer. And the salesman who sold me the camera, said I needed an external hard drive to store the videos that I take while I travel which I believed. So I have one computer, one external hard drive, one external disk drive, one camcorder, two still cameras and three telephones for various countries, plus appropriate chargers and connecting cables. I need a better plan.

I found the camcorder easy to use and now have recorded six repetitions of our twenty minute score as well as a little bit of rehearsals. Now I need to get them off of the camera onto my hard drive so I can record some more. I manage to hook up the external drives to my computer, but something went wrong when I installed the software so I need to deal with that. Oh, well. Next time I will do everything perfectly.

Caroline and I took a brief walk around central Coventry and I was impressed by the interior space of the new cathedral so on Sunday when I had some time to myself, I went to Eucharist in the Cathedral. I was peaceably enjoying the service in a quiet Anglican way until after Communion they had a station set up for healing. Since I was instrumental in having lay people do healing after the Eucharist at my church, I went to the station for the laying on of hands and I began to get emotional, but I breathed and calmed down. Then they started the closing hymn and it was “How Great Thou Art.” This was the last hymn that my grandmother heard before she emigrated from Sweden at the age of 18 in the late 19^th century, and perhaps the last hymn I heard her play on the guitar before her stroke (I was quite young and there are two possibilities). Because of the association with my grandmother the hymn always had special significance for my family. I started singing and the tears welled up in my eyes and I had to stop singing. This happened again, and then on the third time I began sobbing silently with my eyes closed. When I opened my eyes, the procession of the clergy out of the church was passing my pew and everyone in front of me had turned around to watch them, but instead they were watching me. The woman next to me was very sweet and said that crying was what churches were for.

After the service, they were playing the bells in the cathedral tower. I think they have a peal of 12 bells and they were doing different peals with a different number of bells. I love the sound of cascading bells. It was wonderful to sit in the shell of the ruined cathedral and listen to them.

In the afternoon I napped, got up late, hurriedly washed dishes and then walked to the Uni to meet Caroline. I was supposed to be there at 4:30, but didn't get there until 4:45. Then we went and had pizza at the Pizza Express between the Uni and the Cathedral. We each had a glass of wine. I felt like such a grown up. It was very elegant pizza.

Then I went back to the Cathedral and heard Monteverdi's Vespero della Beata Virgine 1610 performed by the Saint Michael Sings, Girl Choristers of Coventry Cathedral, Monteverdi Plainchant Consort, and two orchestras, QuintEssential (old instruments) and ESO String Consort, a regional orchestra. There was also organ continuo from time to time and six soloists of which I especially liked the tenors, Simon Wall, the tall one, and Matthew Long, the cherubic one.

On the previous Saturday, Caroline and I and four students had the final showing of our piece. We did the piece three times, once in front of an audience, once for ourselves during which we had a chance to be silly, and one more time in front of a different audience. This went very well. I enjoyed the performances and then we had a feedback session and I talked briefly about my 42 years of improvising, and how, when I was young, I and my fellow improvisers would talk about what it would be like to improvise when we were old, and now I am old and still improvising. I talked about how moving I find working with the video that was made at an college that no longer exists and working with students who are just starting out on their careers. What a great cycle it is.

Dartington College

Please read the following blog, Coventry I, first.

This weekend Caroline and I are driving to Dartington College in Devon to join Barbara for the closing festivities of the school. It has functioned as an center for the arts for over 50 years, and as is now being reorganized by the Trustees, so this is the end of the school as it has been, but it will continue under a different arrangement. Our piece will be performed twice. Caroline who has taught there for a long time, will also be performing in a couple of other pieces.

Caroline and I rented a car. Caroline worked through a central agency and that was a nightmare requiring 24 hours of phone calls, but when we got to the local rental agency worked out, and the staff were very friendly. The young man behind the counter, wearing one of those ill-fitting suits that young men who stand behind counters are required to wear, was very funny and helpful. They gave us an old driving map of England that turned out to be very useful. The drive down to Devon from Warwickshire was tantalizing. British motorways are so constructed that it is impossible to see anything outside of the motorway except in brief flashes where the terrain has made it impossible to keep the outside world completely hidden. There was also a nice elevated stretch where the motorway passes through Bristol between the port and the city where one had some views. Once we left the motorway the view was also obstructed by the tall hedges Devon is famous for but I did not mind that so much because the hedges were very local whereas the windbreakers along the motorway were planted with generic, motorway trees that gave me no sense of where I was.

I stayed in Totnes with Barbara Bridger, one of the three collaborators, and her husband Clive, in their house, “The Old Vicarage.” “The Old Vicarage” is their official postal address and Barbara is worried that when she sends her writings off to publishers that they will return them without reading because they think they will be about knitting or kindly spiritual advice. They are shortly moving to another house called “The Dairy” – not much of an improvement. Totnes is a beautiful ancient town built on the side of a hill. It is on the sight of an ancient castle and abbey. The exterior of the castle is intact and serves as a landmark. Not much of the abbey remains except for parts of the principal church. The high street runs past the church from the top of the hill to the bottom. The high street is about a five minute walk from Barbara's house so I walked their every morning to carve out some personal time for myself during the weekend. Totnes was a magnet for hippies and there are still tell-tale signs of a town with a hippy past that has evolved into a middle-class artistic retreat and tourist center. There is an Oxfam used bookstore there and I bought a small book, the memoirs of a woman who grew up in Cairo with recipes included – one of my favorite kinds of book. I am looking forward to visiting the Oxfam bookshop in Coventry and finding another little book as I have finished the first one.

This morning I walked to the High Street, bought some playing cards for Chloe, stopped in at the church, admired the stone screen and the graveyard and saw maybe my first squint in real life. Then walked down High Street, couldn't find the silicone film for my face, had a coffee and meat pie. Stopped into a cheese shop and bought some fresh goat cheese for breakfast. Then came home. Went with Barbara to Dartington to see Caroline perform, first singing and then moving in a long piece where she moved with another woman and played with melting ice. The band was good and I liked the songs. Helen, Barbara's daughter, played the mbela. Then I saw a very good video that was shown against these screens that had cutouts of the scene. It was great. The Ice Book, I believe. I think I have the web site. After that I walked to Barbara's, she is making dinner. After dinner, we are going back and seeing a theater piece.

The weekend was very intense. It would have been even if we hadn't been performing. Caroline was a student here twenty-odd years ago and both Caroline and Barbara taught here, each for about 20 years. The two of them were always being caught up in conversations with former students and teachers so it was hard to walk with them for more than 2 minutes before they stopped or were stopped by someone and began talking. Also, since this was the closing festival of Dartington College of Arts, they combined the annual weekend where students showed their work with the Dartington Festival at which teachers showed their work. Since this was a historic occasion, there were more people here than had ever been or for either festival, or probably for both festivals combined.

Dartington College is on the site of a former country manor, formerly owned by the kings of England, Richard II's name comes to mind (I heard a history of the place from the Head Gardener who gave a tour but already everything is a little hazy). The site is located at the top of the tidewater stretch of the River Dart as well as at the last ford of the river before the sea. Therefore it was been inhabited since early times and the church is located on a pre-Christian site. There is a beautiful medieval Great Hall and courtyard with a Saxon entrance arch and barn closing one end. It was owned by one family from the 16 century through the middle of the 18^th century but they ran out of money and moved away and by the early 20^th century, Dartington was identified as a ruin on some maps. Then an Englishman went to America to learn modern farming, met and married the fifth richest woman in the world, and brought her back to England where they looked for a place to practice modern farming. They found Dartington and bought it shortly after the First World War and spent $4,000,000 pounds (at current currency value, much, much more than that) restoring the place, establishing a colony of artists to help restore and decorate. Gropius did some work here and there are beautiful banners in the Great Hall that were made at a local weaving facility the owners established. When the owners died, they left the estate in the hands of a trust with the provision that there had to be an educational instituion on the land.

Our performances went well although Caroline and Barbara wished more people had seen them. I thought the audience size was just about right. Unfortunately, the Festival was chaotic and it was difficult to keep track of what was going on and where things were going to be. Also, they had recently renumbered all the studios, so the old students didn't know what the new numbers referred to. We were gioded bu Barbara sp we saw m,aoinly good work.

The theater work I saw was very physical, non-narrative, quite funny. I saw one dance piece which used ordinary actions like holding one's breath as its basic vocabulary. At the end they poured lines of water and salt across the length of the floor for tears and there was a long saying good-bye. The piece broke into two halves, with the first half more interesting for me.

I avoided the closing ritual and my instincts were good. Everyone hated it. The final event was an outdoor concert in the Tiltyard a field about half football size surrounded on three sides by grassy terraces that form a wonderful amphitheater. There was an African drumming ensemble, a Japanese taiko group and a gamelan. The African drumming didn't carry very well, but the Japanese drumming and the gamelan were wonderful. Barbara, Clive, Caroline and I were sitting facing the principal flower garden, a beautiful yellow and blue planting along an old wall. Behind that we could see the Great Hall. And below us the Tiltyard was filled with people in colorful clothes and children running around and dancing to the music. To our right, the view opened up to the beautiful hills of Devon.

And now Caroline and I are on the road driving through Devon on our way back to Coventry. It is a beautiful morning and the hills are very green with the fields marked off by the high hedgerows I noticed on our way in. The computer is in my lap. I am a little irritable and depressed which often happens when I have been around a lot of people and in intense situations. Caroline is crying and apologizing for being sad. We are driving through Riverford Organic Farm, one of the first organic farms in England. And now we are back on the motorway. It has been a wonderful weekend.

Coventry I

I am sitting in the living room of a small apartment in Coventry, England, looking out on a small lawn and garden. There is one purple foxglove, a hand full of yellow poppies, a couple of white, daisy-like flowers, and something that might be a stunted princess bush. I will have to investigate. This is the beginning of a seven week trip, the first one I have ever taken that is devoted entirely to dance.

The apartment is about a 20 minute walk from the University of Coventry which is where the “Summer Dancing” festival is taking place. Coventry is an industrial city in the Midlands of England. It is where Lady Godiva lived and it was heavily bombed during the Second World War. Every day on my walk to the “Uni” as it is called here, I pass a statue commemorating the inventor of the bicycle. It was also a famous site for mystery plays during the Middle Ages, but only fragments of the texts have survived.

I am here with Caroline Waters, one of my collaborators, who is an Artist-in-Residence at the festival and we are working on a piece that uses video taken during a 23-hour performance of Erik Satie's “Vexations,” a piano score which can be played one time through in under two minutes, but asks for 840 repetitions. The 20 minute video was made by Barbara Bridger, a playwright, writing teacher, dramaturge, videographer, and colleague and friend of Caroline at Dartington for many years. Caroline and I doing research here on using this video as a starting point for an improvisational structure that can be performed in different sites with different numbers of people. The first performance was with just Caroline and me at Dartington College this last weekend. I will write about that in my next blog.

During the piece, the video of the Satie performance is projected on the wall, and the performers do ordinary actions on the stage in front of the images. In the studio, we worked on selecting which movements to use. We have a list of eight, walking, sitting, lying, standing, crawling, rolling, leaning and hugging. All of the actions that we are using occur in the film. We arrange them in an order and then we perform the actions in that order and when we come to the end of a sequence, we begin again at the beginning. When Caroline and I perform it alone, we talk from time to time, but with the students, we are probably not going to include text. Tuesday we did a sharing here where we did three successive performances in three different spaces. A very funky domed area at the top of the building, a beautiful white room with windows and a piano, and the studio where we have been working. We are now working on adding objects that are seen in the film such as back packs, pillows and coffee cups.

One of the main questions that came up in the discussion after the sharing was what is the point of the video in relation to the performance as a whole. I came up with three different foci that can be used both in watching and performing the piece.

A focus on watching, performance. When are the performers viewers (since from time to time we watch the video)? When are we performers? Is there a viewing space and a performing space? How separate are they? How integrated? Are the performers ever audience?

A focus on mood. What creates mood? How do actions create mood? How responsible are you individually for a mood?

A focus on form. “Vexations” is a piece with 840 repetitions. How many repetitions does this piece have? What is a repetition? What is the role of repetition in [your] life?

Yesterday, Caroline and I found time for a walk around central Coventry. Because of the bombing, Coventry is one of those places, much more common than I used to think, where everything has been restored. Dartington is another. Most of China is another. I find the center of Coventry moving. There is a range of buildings from the medieval period through the 18^th and 19^th century that are very nice. The post-war architecture isn't always up to the mark, but the overall impression, once one leaves the heavily trafficked streets, is peaceful and, too me, comforting. We had tea, well, coffee, at a very nice cafe/bar/bistro in a quiet side street at the end of our journey.

At the beginning, we paid homage to the statue of Lady Godiva. Lady Godiva and Peeping Tom are ever present in Coventry, in images and place names, and Coventry probably has more nude performances than any other place in the world since so many performers here want to reference the good lady.

Then we moved on to the cathedral which surpassed my expectations. The original cathedral (actually the second since it had been almost completely rebuilt in the 14^th and 15^th centuries) was bombed and the ruins have been left as they were. The walls are complete all around up to about twenty or thirty feet and in some places, such as the west end of the church where the altar is they go much higher. As you enter, at the east end, the walls are quite high and there are bits of glass left in some of the tracery that I found moving. The interior area is large and open to the sky and retains its sense of a sacred space. There will be a performance here Sunday afternoon and I am looking forward to it. Starting tomorrow, Caroline is taking a three-day intensive workshop and I will come back and explore the cathedral more, including the new cathedral which stands beside the ruins. There is also a church very near the cathedral that is intact and I hop to visit that too.

Then we went home and cooked. That has been one of the great things here. We have our own apartment and markets nearby so we are cooking our own meals. It's been fun for me figuring out what is and isn't in the markets and working with a minimal but serviceable kitchen.

On to Dartington next.