L A Y E R S . P E R F O R M A N C E . R E A D Y .

This past MIL was a meeting of a duet. The other MIL member and myself have been practicing together for some time and have worked together a couple of times in our own duet. This MIL we would try out the Sestina parts for the first time. After discussing the feedback we'd received for selecting the 6 parts we narrowed it down to 6 main ideas and crafted their wording so as to support a more "poetic" "phrase." I've listed the Sestina parts in the left margin of the blog, but for celebratory purposes, this is what we landed on:

A | THE VOICE OF THE BONES
B | VOICE OF HERE
C | LAY WITH THE LAND
D | AWARENESS OF THIS WORLD
E | SLOW MOTION OR NOT
F | EYE PRACTICES

We also came up with a more clearly timed structure for the MIL as we move through the next 6 lines of the Sestina Poetic Structure.

1. (10 minutes) Warm Up / Opening Ritual
2. (15-30 minutes) Open Improvisation
3. (60 minutes) Sestina: exploring each part for 10 min [6 parts at 10 min/each = 60 min]
4. (5 minutes) Closing Reflection / Sharing

We've also identified some foundational elements that we would like to be conscious part of every MIL Sestina Line.

• Witnessing. Take the time to step out as an audience member or Director. Observe the composition. Feel free to make vocal or physical directions. "Reverse that, move here, pause, replay, etc..."
• Leave your mark. Inherently the space will have changed after we've been in it. From subtle energetic and vibrational levels to more obvious physical ones. In the desire to make more contact with physical objects, be open to the possibility for leaving your mark by way of interacting with the environments and the things in it.
• Use Sound. Continue to link the body and the voice. Using the full range of the human capacity for expression.
• Be aware of your Audience. Love the watchers. I'm going to talk about this at the beginning of the next MIL, inspired by Mary Overlie's concept of "playing the piano." For now the audience space will be represented with chairs or seats. We can play with where they are from week to week.

Notes from the experience of last week....

LAYERS! unfolding, folding. Conscious, sub conscious. A rich format for performance. We need to do a show! we must. After the 7 Sestina lines have been MILLED. We perform the Sestina in it's entirety.

Ballet. Poor GOP states. Montana. Kentucky. Tennessee. Lower the middle wage to create more jobs. Yeah, Right. Feels good against the wall. Being in unison without attaching to being exacting. Performing the essence in unison. Voice. Animal. Troll. Primal. Ape. Japanese. Communicating without words but a lot of sound! A lot of voice. breath. body. what is it that your are creating? Contemplative Movement meets the swamps and zip lines of freedom. Look! Left eye. Right eye. Soft hard focus.

We had a nutty music mix. Everything from ordinary pop songs, to classic music, to ambient abstract.

The MIL...

A new Season. A new Cycle. A new Idea. An old Body. A new Body.

Spoons, Valerie Fisher

I want to thank BeBe Miller for all her brilliance and for sharing the Sestina with me. It has changed my performance making incredibly! This season of MIL is inspired by the poetic structure of the SESTINA. Here is a little bit of history about it:

The sestina is a complex form that achieves its often spectacular effects through
intricate repetition. The thirty-nine-line form is attributed to Arnaut Daniel, the
Provencal troubadour of the twelfth century. The name "troubadour" likely comes
from trobar, which means "to invent or compose verse." The troubadours sang their
verses accompanied by music and were quite competitive, each trying to top the
next in wit, as well as complexity and difficulty of style.

Courtly love often was the theme of the troubadours, and this emphasis continued as
the sestina migrated to Italy, where Dante and Petrarch practiced the form with
great reverence for Daniel, who, as Petrarch said, was "the first among all others,
great master of love."

The sestina follows a strict pattern of the repetition of the initial six end-words of the
first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, culminating in a three-line
envoi. The lines may be of any length, though in its initial incarnation, the sestina
followed a syllabic restriction. The form is as follows, where each numeral indicates
the stanza position and the letters represent end-words:

1. ABCDEF 2. FAEBDC 3. CFDABE 4. ECBFAD 5. DEACFB 6. BDFECA 7. (envoi) ECA or
ACE

Spoons, Valerie Fisher

Here is an example of a Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop.

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.

She cuts some bread and says to the child,
It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

Spoons, Valerie Fisher