slightlymoving

i re-found an email conversation between Lloyd Swanton and myself from June 2000.

i’d emailed Lloyd sometime after first seeing The Necks live. i’d heard their recordings a number of times before then, but it was the live experience that gave me a better understanding of how they worked. after the live show i was curious about their process. at that time i had been working with State of Flux for a few years - Flux work[ed]s (more on that another time!) with real-time choreography using contact improvisation as a foundation. it featured 5 dancers; janice florence, martin hughes, wendy smith, jacob lehrer and myself. we research[ed] contact through teaching and performing. group dynamics and development of material and structure in the moment were an important part of the work of Flux.

so, from that basis, i was interested in how The Necks worked as a group. i don’t think Lloyd would mind me sharing some of the responses he wrote to my questions about process, but to be fair i’m going to show what i wrote too:

i’m interested in what your process is… how you create structure and keep track of it real time - what arises through performance - how that may differ from rehearsals - how you communicate to each other - what your understandings are of what is occuring when playing together - how you negotiate the line between leading and following the improv - what response the audience can generate - i think i could go on here…

so, a bit sketchy from me - but reading this again i remember how i was interested in how in a group improvisation each participant can have wildly differing understandings/thoughts/stories about what is occurring, what has occurred and what will occur. there was a time when with Flux we explored this through reporting on what we thought was occurring as it happened - each person naming how they saw the material and structure evolving as it did. in a way this helped define the improvisational practice further while also showing us where our ideas converged and departed.

but back to Lloyd. there are a few great things he wrote about that I wanted to share. the first is related to what Jacob and I call entwining or entanglement. before performing we would take time to just spend time together noodling - maybe physically, maybe verbally, maybe both - often with no particular focus other than to start linking in - throwing lines over each other, weaving threads around each other, removing the focus on the upcoming performance. i get the feeling jacob could describe it better than that. from Lloyd’s email:

Before a performance, (huge trade secret being given away here!) we’re usually doing something stupid in the band room, like a kicking competition with a Coke can and a wastepaper bin. Perhaps this clears our minds, wipes out stage fright, helps us relax. Perhaps it’s just stupidity. Whatever - we’re certainly not sitting there psyching ourselves up.

preparation can occur in many different ways - and i think what lloyd wrote has a link into both the notion of entanglement and a decluttering or neutralising. a group functions through it’s relationships and it’s communication - sometimes the focus on the relationship can allow the opportunity to connect. more from Lloyd:

However, we’re talking about the broader concepts of music constantly when we’re just hanging out, or travelling on tour, (and we’ve been together a long time) and I think these ideas settle in our minds fairly subliminally; they consequently lodge there very firmly, and help to give a unity in the direction of our improvisations.

i’ll continue this later. got to have some sleep now.