Project 3 - The Ikebana dance sculptures are go.

Last night I met up with a dancer and choreographer to discuss the idea of a collaboration for project three and I am happy to say that it went brilliantly and it's now definitely going ahead. He is studying an MA in theatre and consciousness here and we are entirely on the same page with the ideas I had for this project, I cannot in fact believe how much so. We are now both going to use this idea as our final MA pieces and he is someone who is 100% dedicated and driven to produce something fantastic so I think we will be both be able to work well together.

The idea now stands that we will use Ikebana principles, which he is already aware of, to produce some site specific sculptural dance pieces using both natural and non-natural locations. We will work together to fine tune the concepts I have developed already. He will then work on the choreography and finding dancers and I will create the visual aesthetics and produce a slow motion video piece, which has the capacity to be both an installation and work as a live performance.

He is also familiar with and a great admirer of butoh, which we both agree should be drawn on to inform the choreography as well as some of the principles of contact improvisation which we have both practiced, though obviously he has done this to a far greater extent than I. We share a very similar visual aesthetic as it turns out so I think this will work out well. Although ideally we would work with a total of eight dancers, he felt this might not be achievable in terms of practitioners who work in this way in Lincoln so we are looking to work with a smaller group and use some natural forms, for example driftwood, as part of the sculptural form. He felt this would also be more cohesive for this kind of work in terms of the dynamic between the dancers. We both want to have as wide a palette as possible in terms of the look of the dancers, so age, gender and ethnicity variations is something we hope to be able to incorporate.

The research will be informed by current trends in consciousness theories as well as heavily drawing on the contemplative traditions of japanese artforms. I am very excited by this. I always intended to produce one project as part of this MA that was based on these kind of principles so I am very pleased that it can go ahead.