in between prayers – being looked at (work in progress 1)

For all the light I felt in Fara – thru all the bright eyes . . .

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                                                           How

                                                           Did the rose
                                                           Ever open its heart

                                                           And give to this world
                                                           All its
                                                           Beauty?

                                                           It felt the encouragement of light
                                                           Against its
                                                           Being,

                                                           Otherwise,
                                                           We all remain

                                                           Too
                                                           Frightened.

                                                                                 -Hafiz the Sufi Master

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During the Residential Workshop “Performing at the Edge” in Fara, Greece  -getting ready for the final performance in the island- I had many try outs for solo performances. I was mainly working on my own performative presence and ideas under the supervision of John Britton. During one of the work sessions, John held me and looked into my eyes and said “don’t do anything. just be. and when you feel ready, really when you “are”,  look into my eyes and smile.”

That was one of the strongest moments of my life where I had the chance to realize what my artistic and personal craving was at that time. There in this residence I had the chance to try my ideas for the continuation of my solo performance – in between prayers.

I was sure that I wanted to be observed boldly, openly. It was a physical task that I gave to myself and to the audience. During that period I was already practicing the “tree meditation” coming from qui gong- simply standing and allowing the mind and body to reach a restful, peaceful state (thanks to Yanael Plumet’s introduction). So why wouldn’t I -being true to myself- make my ongoing solo continue in a meditative, reflective, contemplative state.

Not trying to show anything but just, by mere being, making things visible.

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Below you can find the description of some of the try outs there and then in Fara, Lesvos and the feedbacks some of the audience (performing artist colleagues) gave to me. John’s initiation and the feedbacks were helping me so profoundly towards developing my next in between prayers performance – doing nothing, which found its “final” form as doing nothing in january 2013.

 

Note1: The feedback given to me by John Britton changed the shape of the whole performance to follow. He has made me aware of the work of Marina Abromovich and her work “The Artist is Present” which lead me to study more and also find the urge in me to keep standing.

The tree meditations, the standings in my dance practice (following the foot steps of Steve Paxton as I integrated “small dance” into my regular warm up practice – giving hours to it in studio and public spaces and the Global Underscores of Nancy Stark Smith which has already made the “small dance” available to many Contact Improvisation practitioners like myself and my students in Turkey) allowed this performance to be physically possible to realize.

Note 2: During this residence Aliki Dourmazer, Eva Tsourou and many other participants gave me very constructive feedbacks allowing me to see the importance of eye contact and difficulties of keeping the tension in personal space besides the functioning/not-functioning of giving written tasks to an audience.