written and performed by Fitzgerald and Stapleton
Blackout: The stage is empty. The dancers enter in silence. One dancer enters and remains upstage right, the other dancer enters and remains upstage left. Both dancers make the sound of incense as it fills, purifies and clears the whole space.
Lights Up: – Stage and Houselights: Magnificently alone together in a sacred space the dancers travel towards the altar located downstage centre.
The dancer on the left travels a straight path, as she travels her right arm, held in a straightened and extended position extends incrementally upward.
The other dancer swiftly raises her hands to a full extension overhead before instantly dropping them – she travels a curly path to the alter, during this journey her left arm, held in a straightened extends incrementally upwards.
The dancers use the extending arm to balance and measure the space around them – the straightness of the arm and its gradual yet arrhythmic motion upwards functions as a counterpoint to any predictability in the journeying upstage.
Having reached upstage centre each dancer conducts a blessing with the legs upon the audience.
Each dancer emits a brief sound which calls to mind our sins in the same way a shepherd might call his dog.
By means of many small separate, articulations of the bones of the hands and arms the dancers gradually extend their arms to an open “T” position.
The dancer who travelled the straight path contorts violently in a bid to abolish symmetry – the desire to abolish symmetry carries her all over the stage where she leaves a trail of fire behind her. The act of abolishing symmetry also serves as fodder for a wind which blows her. This continues until she gradually acquires a form which eliminates the hazard of wind.
Through-out this action the dancer who initially travelled a curly path gradually brings her arms down to her sides.Without stillness both dancers then adhere to a straight path which renounces sin noticing that inhabited space transcends geometric space. They travels from stage left to stage right and each step leaves an illuminated print where the foot has been – in the same way that light travelling through a stained glass window leaves an illuminated print.
During this a-rhythmic stepping journey across the stage each dancer spontaneously turns her head to the audience in order to hear what sounds the eyes of the audience produce – ‘speak to me only with your eyes, it is to you I give this to’ at particular moments both dancers can briefly draw the upper-lip towards the nose while turning her face towards the audience and drop the upper-lip while perceiving a rose petal falling from the sky past her nose.
Spontaneously – one dancer follows a curved path which takes her into the audience where she sits down and sings a rock song inspired by both the sounds she has collected from the audience’s eye-speak and the following text from an informative poster about hens,“avec ses deux ailes la poule pourrait voler longtemps si son corps était moins lourd”
This dancer continues her song which simultaneously makes her light enough to fly, lifting her from her inhabited seated place to upstage centre, following an enlightened radiant path, with the back of the body twice as illuminated as the front.
The other dancer follows this radiant path and is directly parallel to it, counteracting its lightness by perceiving darkness until they meet upstage centre to assume the position of the virgin and child. When two strange images meet they become stronger.
Blackout
Lights-Up
The dancers can see everyone but no-one can see the dancers as they move to assume a position inspired by Saints depicted in stained glass. One dancer is up-stage right and standing and the other is downstage left in a position which ‘occupies the floor.’ Light travels through each body illuminating them like stained glass windows in a chapel.
The dancer up-stage right begins to find a simple and repeatable sound and travelling-movement – the fruits of her labour and the bread and wine of the performance.
The dancer down-stage left finds and offers stillness and silence as the fruits of her labour.
Here begins the great prayer of the consecration in which our bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood alone capable of offering us dignity and saving us. The dancer who is upstage right repeats sound and movement which travels in a wide arc curving across to down-stage left, looping outside the other dancer and travelling inward towards the centre of the stage.
The sound and movement repeatedly produced by this dancer are transformed during interstitial pauses into the body and blood.Simultaneous to this journey the stillness and silence of the dancer downstage left are transformed into body and blood. This dancer uses sounding and dancing to Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana to transform the fruits of her labour into the body and blood.
Having completed the offering each dancer maintains a still position in a standing pose which replicates a stained glass window, and spontaneously sticks her tongue in and out to erase any element or elements of the performance so far.
The dancer centre stage begins to move backwards through a continuous doorway of light which she creates by singing the song of the angels, this doorway leads in the direction of the other dancer. The second dancer eats this song by simultaneously eating and regurgitating the word “eat” until the whole song has been eaten. The arms of the dancer who deals with ‘eat’ withdraws her hands via a series of imperceptible movements until they hang long and empty by her sides.
In this way the audience are given communion and experience a personal transformation.
When the two dancers are side by side they bend over and touch the floor gently with their hands – this is to be done solemnly and respectfully – a gesture displaying the typical flexibility of dancers and a tribute to training and discipline.
Contact without context is the theme to the carrying of one dancer on the back of the other as they pass from downstage left to right.
At downstage right both dancers hop towards centre stage where they perform a raising and lowering of the arms accompanied by tiny celebratory movements in the feet. Waves of tranquillity spread out from the centre of their intimacy and reach the ends of the world. They continue to travel an upstage diagonal; the motion of the arms through the air balances any excitement resulting from the celebratory movements of the feet and hops. Upon gaining positions upstage left, without pause, they turn around and begin to repeat the same movement travelling towards centre-stage.
As they near centre-stage the motion of the arms and use of legs to command direction becomes warped. This effect may be due to the proximity of the ending at this point which creates a drag on the dancer’s future relationship with her dance.
One dancer folds herself into an economically reconfigured pose on the floor – occupying one fifth or less of height usually occupied and one third or more of floor space (extended limb of choice not to be included in calculation).
As the other dancer exits stage left she is accompanied for part or all of the journey by the folded dancers interpretation of division in vocalisation.
Exit locomotive dancer, Blackout
END
published 8 December 08
