I accept the invitation from my dear collaborator Meg Foley: Score for active relating.
Take 1:
I take my car and go to the Centrum w Ruchu in Warsaw. On my way to the small studio I pass by the storage and pick up one box of props made by Alicja Bielawska for my solo piece Wychodząc od działania. I choose 2 objects and 2 groups of objects and I place them in the space. I think of Maija Reeta Raumanni and how she taught me to notice objects and pay attention to their presence in the room.
I move backwards. I move back in time. I move backwards and I want to arrive at a time before the pandemic, before my burnout, when I practiced and performed this dance. I am somewhere between 2016 and 2018. Moving backwards I meet my body. My body is in 2021. I am 42 years old. I live in Poland. I am a single mother. It’s been 5 months since I last performed. I practice once a week when I teach. I hardly dance otherwise, and I don’t exercise much. I have pain in my right knee and my shoulders are lifted most of the time. I feel very alien improvising alone in the studio in front of a phone camera. I feel vulnerable as I try to attend the score. Moving backwards is impossible. The present moment is all I have. Uncomfortable. Alone in the room with my body, which is shy and unused to attend to scores. An orange wheel is hanging on the wall. Pink folded fabric on the floor. A few steps further a few clay objects, red and pink, a step further a collection of small blue clay stones. I keep moving between Alicjas objects and the smartphone for 20 minutes. Camera shifts my attention to the visual outcome of this moment. I am not working with the visual. I am figuring out the sensations of my moving body, the sensation of my anxiety and my intentional relation to the objects. Their simple beauty and my trembling attention and presence. I leave the studio disappointed.
Take 2:
I am writing this contribution text. I edit the last 2 minutes from 20 min of video and try to select a few pictures.
I decide to move backwards again. I push the floor with my feet and travel back on my chair. I move slowly and let this be nothing special. I drive backwards on my chair away from the computer. I pass the bookshelf. I meet an orange armchair. I see the reflection of the shadows on it as I move it with my leg. Sunset followed by an immediate sunrise on an orange plane.
I think that my violet dildo would look great as a part of this orange landscape. I let go of this image as I move back on my chair, lift my legs off the floor and float supported only by my bottom on the chair. I sit in front of an empty armchair. A woman alone in the room looking at an empty chair in front of her. Who used to sit on this chair? No one really… me breastfeeding my son many years ago. Then my body twists and my chair rotates 180 degrees, a line of chairs facing the same direction like on a bus. The seat behind me is empty. And then slowly my body drives backwards away from chairs and narratives, towards the front of the room, I begin to shake my body, then move without stoping, fuck going backwards, I move across the room, I see moving shadows and furniture, I pass the bookshelf and think I could count all the books with the word BODY on the cover, I see the stairs to the attic, like vertebrae of a dinosaur, I enjoy steps up, then my journey down all the way to the floor, I roll on my back, I do some uncoordinated back rolls, I discover a corner of the room, the floor, the space to stretch my arms out. I am happy, that movement is so careless, that the somatic sensation is so satisfying, so available, inner pleasure, getting to know new areas of this space. I am so happy there is no going back. I hold the sides of the doorway with my two hands and I elevate my chest to the ceiling. I enjoy the stretch of the front of my body, I see this lockdown “living” room backwards. New space opens in my body and from the ceiling down. I feel this travel is soon going to end. I walk on my four to the corridor. I forgot to switch off the light to the bedroom. I roll my vertebrae back to standing. I walk to switch off the light. When I return, the dance is over.
