An extract from my practice research journal 20/03/2020
Lockdown restrictions involuntarily thrust into a ‘place of suspension’, a term used by choreographer Rosemary Lee to denote a spatial–temporal link where the choreographer is between two places, where they have been and where they might be going, where they want to catch a glimpse of what is beyond, but perhaps do not want to leave what they know behind (2006 168). When Lee articulated the existential nature of the choreographer’s predicament, she could never have imagined the situation we now find ourselves in. COVID-19 lockdown rules had imposed a new space and it is both existentially and physically challenging. This new unchosen space suddenly became a multitude of isolated studios. As performers we need to reflexively engage with the potentiality of this new performance architecture, this new spatiality. We now find ourselves between two places, in limbo, negotiating the space between home and studio, and re-imagining the home as the studio.
Rather than vaccinate against paradigmatic changes so that we can ‘return to normal’, my practice research explores how we might employ turbulence and precarity (the unsteady state condition)todisturb the dominant processes andstructuresthat inform performance making. In this way, the work engages with ideas of liminality by exploring ‘separation’ from ordinary social and performative lives that existed before COVID-19. It examines a spatial setting wherein COVID-19 has placed performative models in limbo, between past and present modes of daily existence and creation.
Lee, R. (2006) ‘Expectant Waiting’, in Bannerman, C., Sofaer, J., and Watt, J. (eds) Navigating the Unknown: The Creative Process in Contemporary Performing Arts. London: Middlesex University Press, pp. 158–185.
Sadot, P. (2020) Lockdown, The Unsteady State Condition. Available at: https://paul-sadot.squarespace.com/blog-native/2021/1/18/lockdown-journal-extract (Accessed: 18 January 2021).