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Dis-Quiet Project - Performance Revisited

An experimental performance at Reality and Its Disorders! 

 

In 2019 I started exploring through performance the sense of dis-quiet that I experience in certain pseudo public spaces in London.  I use the term dis-quiet to capture the way this can be almost sub-awareness and well below the level of anxiety, a sense that I just don’t feel quite right in a particular space.  I used a sound recording made at Neo Bankside to develop the choreographic pyramids, which were then used in a performance that others could join in if they wished.  I talk about this performance here.

 

The choreographic pyramids are used like dice, they are thrown and the drawn shapes on the sides are then used by participants to create a physical response to the idea of an apparently welcoming but actually unwelcoming space.  

 

For RAID I developed a new set of choreographic rules of engagement with the working title Dis-Quiet (Private) that explores in physical movement the types of dis-quiet and their management during shielding.

 

Whilst shielding on occasions I experienced a permanent low level of anxiety that I couldn’t quite put my finger on and was unable to deal with by taking action to reassert a measure of control over my circumstances.  This was interspersed with periods of lockdown lethargy.  But equally there were many occasions when I was able to assert my usual levels of equanimity on an “it’s a grand life if you don’t weaken” basis.  From my researches I am aware that emotions are experienced in the body and feelings are the labels we put on them.  I turned this experience into choreographic rules of engagement as a means to express the embodiment of these feelings through movement.

 

The video is a recording of a performance using the choreography dice at the exhibition Reality and Its Disorders at Espacio Gallery in September 2020.

With thanks to Degrees of Freedom for the opportunity to take this project forward.

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