From the inside

Dancer Jane Diamond writes about the creation of a new work by Perth’s Fieldworks.

The performers are at the centre of the work, co-creators of the performance, each moving from their own historical centre, revealing an individual kinesthetic experience of the space. The work is not about demonstrating virtuosity or even thinking about what the movement ‘looks’ like while being executed, but being finitely aware of the intention and sensation of images that oscillate into clear, powerful movement images.

Underpinning Fieldworks’ practice is a somatic approach to the body, which encourages a highly tactile and sensuous way of moving. Somatic awareness is like navigating one’s self through an unknown terrain, a place where enormous physical and emotional information lies. Here, the life experiences of the individual are housed in cells, fluids, tissue and bone. Deep physical memory or somatic connection brings us closer to the self that inhabits the body. It is from this place of awareness that we improvise, moving, using dialogue, sound and voice, revealing fragments of experience, memories, somatic remembrances, which are pulled together to form solos and duets.

Coupled with the complete use of the architectural space, there is a filmic quality as the piece is slowly woven into a non-linear narrative, a montage of moving images, speaking of the waxing and waning of human relationships.

I Lean On You, You Lean On Me, Fieldworks, Old Peninsula Hotel, 219 Railway Parade, Maylands (opposite Maylands Railway Station),Wednesday-Sunday 16-27 April, 8.00pm

RealTime issue #18 April-May 1997 pg. 37

© Jane Diamond; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]

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