The last dance of the day evolved from a tuning score, resting on one another, sensing, and paying attention to the relationship. I was working with Celine. The score builds ‘watching’ into the work, so you don’t actually end up dancing with your partner (although that may happen). What occurs is a series of short solos, observed by your partner, but then these solos develop into longer activities, for the most part involving duetting in various forms.

The progression was something like this:

• resting head on belly of partner, then swap roles
• resting legs on partner, then swap roles
• sit back to back - this was a strong position - directing gaze outwards from the ‘couple’.
• one starts a short solo, the other observes
• roles exchange, and gradually the structures loosens until the room is ‘alive’. But, the possibility of watching/observing within the live room remains.

Celine and I kept ‘checking in’ throughout the work - it was a gentle ’spine’ for the loudness of the room, to return to one of us watching the other, sometimes from up close, but more often than not from a distance.

After the dancing, when most people had gone home, Christian and I were talking about generosity in relation to working within a group. Of serving (and respecting) a group with a generous spirit. This might be manifest in stepping back from the work (which is different from leaving it), in silencing one’s own actions, etc. But it also might mean pulling the energetic state of the room upwards.

He also described wanting to maintain that idea even whilst soloing. This appealed to me - but to whom am I being generous to (or ’serving’) within the context of a solo?

Later, Kirstie talked of that seemingly mystical state that an improvising room can attain in which it is nigh impossible to tear the fabric of the work. One might walk out of the room even – but still ‘know’ the group, the room, and the multiple states existing in the work – and then return to the room without having lost these tracks.

I remember doing some work with Sara Shelton-Mann in NYC that specifically sought this experience (through a simple repeating pattern of repeatable material).

But, putting all that aside, once again this work seems palpably important in informing a way of living … (far beyond the dancing). In approaching exchanges, relationships, and dialogues with a generous spirit, and in acknowledging that their scale is beyond one’s own importance.