It finally warmed up today. I’m attempting to put the new vocabulary in new containers.

Today I will let go of the notion of steps and instead look at movement as a series of states. A state always suggests a particular consciousness or mindfulness hanging in the air while you are moving or even when you remain motionless. But is a state a picture or a sort of vibrating image? It brings up the question of what one is actually creating in dance, live art, or performance. Images or pictures? Motion or action? Are we choreographing transitions between images or creating motion? Maybe we interact with a chain of events happening without creating images.

This can be a physical research: throw myself into a physical situation and, wherever I end up, try to recognize the place I am in. I want to understand the physical structure of that state and try to separate it from the moment when I start to represent, when I give names to the material or sensation. Can I dissociate the moment of recognizing where I am from the representation of it? Am I a person standing or am I a person standing staring out to sea? Where am I and where is my weight? And can I be between these two things?

Maybe states are a different way of trying to understand feelings (I’m full of ‘em out here). That is, the feelings I have and how I embody them. The modern dance tradition aimed to evoke and represent emotions, whereas states seem more related to feelings or rather the concept of “felt sense” (maybe?). Feelings come and go. I cannot always name them. Sometimes many feelings are present at the same time (like today). Feelings dwell in the realm of uneasiness, anxiety, or desire—perhaps these terms are too big, but they tie states to a “felt sense,” to sensorial issues and physical existence, to sensation without addressing them immediately in a theatrical or psychological way.

I’m really lonely today.

My new friend and fellow Artist in Residence, Laura Brunellière.

A rare moment of lightness. Trying to remember lightness.