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You start to have kind of an implicit knowledge, you know this might do this but this might
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take you off there but that's the kind of strangeness that you might want. It is, it
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is, a bit knowing and a bit not knowing and it will require some time, yeah.
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I know in my own choreographic practice the things that are the most difficult, the things
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where you feel that you've come to the end of something with, the things that if you
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push them hard enough are the things that yield you the most expert, interesting, and
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rich newness. I really felt that with the Becoming process.
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This piece, Becoming, has a creature-like form that decides how to modify its body and
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then plays out the consequences of that modification. So it has bones, it has nodes, it has muscles
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and it responds to gravity, so it will under the circumstances, tend to fall down because
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gravity pulled it down. It knows about the edge of the screen and in fact the edge of
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the screen has friction so in certain circumstances it will actually jam itself against the edge
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of the screen and kind of get stuck there. We've moved away from providing a tool for
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Wayne or his dancers to use and instead provided, in a sense, something like an eleventh dancer.
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It doesn't take orders very well but a presence in the studio that will be there whenever,
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ambiently that Wayne and the dancers can respond to.
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So we've tried to make an object in Becoming that actually elicits a kinaesthetic response
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that is something compelling to be with, that compels you not just aesthetically but actually
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kinaesthetically as well. If it works, it should work by making you move or at least
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being aware of a desire to move, a desire to respond because it is like a body in a
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space. Even just the fact that the screen has a kind
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of like, bodily dimensions and it's actually in a space where you feel it is another body
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and that's something we've worked a lot with James Leach in trying to understand what is
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a body and what could a body be and how could we, ehm, make sure that the transaction of
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energy actually works with bodies in that space and I think the Becoming instrument
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is really allowing us to do that. It's also a phenomenon you can actually see it in 3D
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and so all of a sudden, now you have a relation like you can with a dancer in the studio,
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of a relation of this dancer that in some way extrudes backwards and forwards and you
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feel connected to it energetically and dynamically. And what I have understood through my research
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around the company and with the choreographer is that he is working with this kind of kinaesthetic
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intelligence with the way those bodies elicit a response from other bodies. That there is
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an inevitable responsiveness to a body in a space with another body. If we could capture
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just something of that in a choreographic object, then we would in fact be revealing
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something, not about the techniques of making movement but about the substance, about the
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material that the choreographer is working with when he has these techniques in play.
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I think the first time I experienced working with Becoming, it was more of an intuitive,
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so it was just like a play, which was great because I think it's something kind of just
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new as a presence, something that is moving, it has colour, it's 3D, we're wearing glasses.
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So there's a lot of information, it's very rich and stimulating which is great. I thought
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it was good just to start with - ok, let's see what happens; we're just playing with
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it. What I do notice, it makes me physically want
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to move differently. And I know myself when I've done some improvisations with it I'm
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inventing things that I wouldn't normally invent because I'm seeing things kinetically
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expressed that I've never seen before in a real human being.
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And perhaps also because it's 3 dimensional and it operates with colours and layers and
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so that gives you a feeling that it exists as an object in a space and it moves as an
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object in a space so it has a sense of being a live creature.
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It provides in some way a mirror to the work and to their own body but also, at the same
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time, it reflects back something that is totally alien and it's the alien aspect of it that
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I think is going to be super resourceful as we move forward.