Entanglements of Two: A Series of Duets PDF
Preview Entanglements of Two: A Series of Duets
Entanglements of Two: A Series of Duets EDITED BY KAREN CHRISTOPHER AND MARY PATERSON 2 3 Contents Opening Gambit KAREN CHRISTOPHER 6 Foreword SEASON BUTLER 8 Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects Duet Collaborations, 2010-21 11 Introductory Fragment 1: The Two of You KAREN CHRISTOPHER 12 Between Two Somethings J. R. CARPENTER 14 Duet Walk KAREN CHRISTOPHER & MARY PATERSON 26 Resonance of Two KAREN CHRISTOPHER 35 Six Practices of Learning Together in Havruta ORIT KENT 46 Introductory Fragment 2: Heart and Lungs KAREN CHRISTOPHER 58 Consider This (Control Signal) MARY PATERSON 60 Images from Haranczak/Navarre’s duet series 64 Staying With the Tremble EIRINI KARTSAKI 74 What Never Stops? JOE KELLEHER 84 Invisible Partners Remain Themselves Inside LITÓ WALKEY 90 The Promise of More to Come (So Below) MARY PATERSON 100 On Creating a Climate of Attention: The Composition of Our Work KAREN CHRISTOPHER & SOPHIE GRODIN 104 Not so much balanced as balancing (miles & miles) MARY PATERSON 116 The Collaborative Artistic Working Process of Control Signal: A Drama-Linguistic Exploration of the Shifting of Roles ANDREA MILDE 120 Introductory Fragment 3: Tangled KAREN CHRISTOPHER 140 Imagining Seven Falls MARY PATERSON 142 Introductory Fragment 4: A Lot of Rope KAREN CHRISTOPHER 152 Always on Uneven Ground RAJNI SHAH 154 TwoFold: Questions MARY PATERSON 162 Always Already: Material in Progress JEMIMA YONG 168 A Physics Duet DAVID BERMAN 177 Conclusion: I Have Been Thinking of You This Whole Time MARY PATERSON 182 Diffractions: Record of a Passage DAVID WILLIAMS 188 Contributors’ Biographies 202 Acknowledgements 206 Opening Gambit KAREN CHRISTOPHER This book is about duets. Not duos, as we discuss in these pages, but an other form that is produced when two people work together. This careful distinction in language is important because a duet is a third element that emerges from its constituent parts. A duet is a creation, both more real and less real than the elements that made it possible. This book is anchored in the work of my performance company, Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects; specifically, it is anchored in over a decade of my practice working in duets with other artists including Gerard Bell, Teresa Brayshaw, Tara Fatehi Irani, Sophie Grodin and Rajni Shah. Like those duets, this book began as an invitation from me – or a series of invitations – each designed to expand beyond a single point of view. One of those invitations was to Mary Paterson, to co-edit the publication. Other invitations were sent to other performers, other artists, other writers and other people working in disciplines that are less often connected with performance: linguistics, pedagogy, physics. The aim of the publication is to reflect on these third elements – that which happens when a duet is formed – and, as part of that process, to generate new ones. Because sequencing is everything and every sequence tells a story (the story of the sequence), we have arranged the contents with an introduction that is more like a thread stitching through the book than a pile of words at the beginning. The usual transition from not reading to reading a book is all upfront; in this book, we have distributed it throughout and reflected back on the texts in the conclusion. 6 As co-editors, we are thinking about transitions and how they operate and how we make it from one moment to the next, drawing each receding moment into the oncoming one – healing the gaps with a moment of lingering, holding on for adjustment, bracing for change. With our distributed introductory fragments, we are acknowledging the many transitions encountered between the different pieces of writing that appear here. A reader (you) can certainly drop in at any moment, or follow a single thread, or follow a number of threads simultaneously. Apparently, a sentence in English can only say one thing at a time. We will see about that. Since 2010, Mary has responded to the work of Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects by composing creative responses, in written form, to the experience of attending our live events. They stand as works of art in their own right. These pieces now form Mary’s contribution to the introduction. My introductory fragments attempt to convey a set of preoccupations that led to the conception of this book project. In this way, we have tried to assemble the essays that make up this book into a continuous whole, while leaving them intact as individual entities. We are attempting to weave them together into a fabric of differentiated strands. 7 Foreword SEASON BUTLER Part One: The Urchin and the Octopus When I was 11 years old, I lived with my parents and sisters in an apartment a few blocks from the National Zoo in Washington, DC.1 There was a constant exchange between the smog of broad streets congested with big cars that, in the early nineties, had not yet fallen entirely out of favour and the impossible green of Rock Creek Park. This exchange was nearly imperceptible but much easier to notice during the slowdown of The Hundreds. The Hundreds refers to 100 days of 100° heat and 100% humidity that sets in the summer.2 Under these conditions, you have to go slow – so slow that you can almost see the exhaust exhale and the trees inhale; so still that the city is perfect. Under these conditions, I would walk to the zoo, a place with air-conditioned buildings but without store detectives and fresh air without audacious, catcalling would-be paedos.3 And if I was quick, I could meet Arthur4 there for lunch. Static hugged the afternoon: the overcast white sky, the buzz of big brown beetles, the songs of cockroach wings and the odd abortive cicada. Mosquitos bit welts into my straight brown legs on summer days and I scratched the welts to big round scars and I was almost a juvenile giraffe, all limbs and knobbly joints, legging my way through the city. I entered the Invertebrate House as black spots started to appear on the hot pavement with the onset of the afternoon rainstorm. Inside was close and clammy but a few precious degrees cooler. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the dim, but I knew my way by rote. I admired the cuttlefish first and proceeded to the ‘touch pool’ where 1. This is not true. When I was 11 years old, it took me a bus and a Metro ride, with a short walk on each side of the journey, to reach the zoo. 2. My use of the term implies that it is a regional institution, a common local saying. It is not. And the mention of the specific temperature and humidity is hyperbole but not too far from the truth. I am basically trying to make fetch happen here. 3. The would-be paedos at the zoo did not catcall, so I did not know they were there. 4. Not his real name. 8 I teased anemones that tried to grab my fingers and let urchins’ spines explore my palms until the time came to feed Arthur. Arthur, the giant octopus. He had eight legs and three hearts – facts I admired but did not envy. I took my place for the feeding demonstration, watching him and pretending he was watching me. That day, his craggy skin was deep brown. I turned my arm and squeezed the skin of my elbow to compare. Normally, the zookeeper would stake a shrimp through a long metal stick and walk it along the floor of the tank, letting Arthur hunt it as if in the wild.5 I made small talk with the keeper, who recognized me from my frequent visits. She eyed me up with scrutiny, raised her eyebrows in a come on, cheer-up, it can’t be that bad expression. I smiled back weakly, whereupon she asked whether, as I knew the drill, I would like to feed Arthur that day. My single heart leaped and my face formed the sincere smile people prefer from girls. I climbed a step ladder to the top of the tank while the zookeeper narrated for the assembled tourists and day trippers. I staked the shrimp on the sharp end of the stick and plunged my arm in. Arthur watched and strategized. But when he finally did strike, it was to shoot a tentacle from under his coiled body, not to grab the dead grey shrimp, but the more substantial meat of my right arm. It spiralled up from my wrist to my shoulder with the speed and strength of absolute intent. There was a short splash as he pulled, and my chest hit the surface of the water. Arthur’s grip was both elastic and unyielding, strange smooches from the animal I most admired, the outset of the contact so quick and wet, I was breathless and never wanted it to end. At some point, we made eye contact, and somehow, I knew that the event – what I would later decide was my life’s very first event – would last as long as our eye contact. Indeed, my rescue came far too soon; the zookeeper rushed to my side, climbing the ladder next to me, then reaching into the water to soothe Arthur by rubbing his big, wrinkly mantle. After a long moment, he relaxed his grip; his colour changing from brown to the deep red of an anatomical heart. I withdrew my dotted arm and hoped the blush red suction-cup circles would leave scars. 5. The rest of this story is appropriated from the zookeeper’s anecdote. Since I heard it, I tried it on as a lie so many times that it has become a memory. The story from here on is the lie I eventually gave up telling since no one ever believed it. But the memory of the lie is the best duet I have ever had. 9
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