Contemplative MIL

Calm. Simple. Clear. Only Two.

• 15 minutes of silent seated meditation around the perimeter of the room. Holding the space.

letting go, quieting the mind, noticing what it feels like to consciously shift the attention to the right brain from the left brain. Listening to the breath.

• 15 minutes of personal awareness practice.

checking in. Returning to an empty mind. Releasing expectations. Heightened awareness for every part of the body. Waiting. Allowing. Waiting. Moving. Waiting. Noticing.

• 45-60 minutes of group improvisation. This can be either personal awareness or group interaction. Bring the 'emptiness' cultivated in seated meditation into movement.

Waiting. An entirely new sense of 'flocking' for me. Just letting it be whatever it needs to be. Moving in and out of interaction and personal space. Softly brushing aside. holding the moment in between. Coming together. New pathways for moving and shifting in space. A sense of total control by relinquishing all control. Achieving a large sense of accomplishment and satisfaction without any agenda.

Tibetan singing bowl meditation sound score...


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An idea for Performance:

Photo by LeAnn Brubaker of 2010 Pathways I Sculptformance by Amelia Charter in Durango, CO

We've been tossing the idea around about what a public viewing for the MIL would mean and where it would take place, maybe what would it look like. After this past MIL experience, we'd wanted to find a way to somehow share that experience with an audience. However, even though the slow, nurturing, meditative, waiting and abstract movement can be incredibly compelling for the performer from within the piece, it can be terribly boring for an audience. So how do we engage their attention with the work? I'd mentioned that parts of this contemplative practice was very familiar to elements of Sculptformance. But with Sculptformance, an audience is able to walk around, sit, stay, shift, walk, etc... and change their viewing perspective throughout the duration of the piece. It is like colliding watching theatre in the round and seeing 3-dimensional, 360 degrees of kinetic sculpture. With that in mind, we'd had the idea of each audience member having a disposable camera. Their "ticket" is the camera. And throughout the performance, audience members could move around and take photos of the work. We'd somehow organize it so that all the photos could be shared online where people could view each other's shots.




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Photo by LeAnn Brubaker of 2010 Pathways I Sculptformance by Amelia Charter in Durango, CO

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