SHELLEY LASICA () and Jo Lloyd () 12/3/2010 Why were you keen to be part of the 24 HOURS project? Oh I love it when anyone asks me to do anything because it s so rare! The way I like working, I guess, is solving puzzles, or solving how can you do something? And if you re given constraints, it makes it more interesting, or a set of parameters rather than constraints. But I also, over the last year or so, I think post Vianne (at fortyfivedownstairs 2008 and in Dance Massive 2009), which was such a longwinded process, which I liked, and went through so many different periods with developing the work and my thinking about the work, and had so much to do also with how people changed during that period and how that piece built in layers. After that, not as a reaction, just as a kind of segue or response, doing FULL COLOUR (at Chunky Move Dec 2009) and Duelle (choreographed and performed with Deanne Butterworth, Centre of Contemporary Photography Dec 2009), I wanted to find ways of making work that involved much more of a lightweight construction and a lightweight structure, that could be more adaptable, more immediate and things that weren t necessarily repeatable too. Not that I ever think that any performance is the same, but to really make it so they are these one off events, rather than something that you even think about repeating in a similar way. With FULL COLOUR it wetted my appetite, in terms of thinking about sorts of projects that could be done, and then that s it basically. It s not that you don t keep developing the ideas, or you don t keep on developing what happens. I think it s very pertinent at the moment to how people are thinking about making work. Also how, after an extended amount of experience, after working for 25 years, to be able to make something fairly quickly is very invigorating, because you have to draw on all your experience and decisionmaking and I think that s immensely fun. I think it does make you jump start through some patterns of making, so rather than you just relying on ways of evolving material or even talking about material, ways of constructing things formally, it makes you think about those things entirely differently because you re not going to spend five weeks teaching people phrases, because you can t. So it makes you think about the actual materiality of the dance and how you evolve that in to a performance. Duelle was based on something that had been going on for a long time, two existing solos, to make it happen at that moment with the piece. I m working on a couple of other projects at the moment which are specifically to do with this idea of creating events almost, and when I say event I don t mean, as in a social event, just these moments that are an occurrence, that happens, something happens.
With this project it seems that the lack of time, thinking time, and the lack of resources is almost a plus. Sometimes restrictions are actually positive. I think given constraints, it does make you then find different solutions and that s what the whole process post History Situation (2002) was all about. In some ways that s what we (choreographers) are hoping for when we re making. I find you get to a stale point and I think by rustling it up you become quite appreciative of messing with your process, because you know the outcome will be something fresh. It just makes you investigate it again and not take things for granted, not any part of it for granted, you actually have to really dismantle things a bit, which is fun. Do you think working this way, over 24 consecutive hours, will alter the way you would normally create work or do you think it will just compress your normal process? I think it s both, you can t be outside yourself, so I think this will have to do with my normal process, but it will change it too, and some things will get compressed and some not. The other thing is, the rules of it, how much can I think about it prior to doing it? And how much do I want to prepare? And how much am I going to let happen? I guess for me the rehearsal process is, I think, completely fascinating and I don t like prescribing exactly what s going to happen. I like setting up a situation where you can allow things to happen. And I guess in some ways, although I haven t thought about it this way before, there s something about FULL COLOUR which was about I mean not really because you can never do it, but it was about exposing that uncertainty about process into a performance, where as, it s something that I watch all the time in rehearsal. Things do have a life of their own, you have to set the situation up to make those things possible and to allow the protagonists in there, who are the dancers and the other collaborating artists, to be able to do that. For me some of the most exciting things that happen in rehearsal are, when it goes somewhere and then you have to really, really start thinking, how do I keep this going? How do I make something that I can see is a possibility? How do I make that happen? How do I help that? And it s not by standing there with a stick saying, do that, do that! And this wasn t my plan for rehearsal today!
Exactly. I think as I get older, having the confidence to actually pull back a bit and allow things to happen, but also having the confidence to set things up quite specifically, without manipulating people at all, but to set the possibility. Like preparing for an experiment, getting the temperature right and the right chemicals and the humidity right, and all of those sorts of things. Then allowing the freedom for it to work. Exactly. With FULL COLOUR, there was this element of uncertainty with the performance, involving the wild card performers and the sound artist. Is this something that you want to carry into this project? Do you like the idea of previous works morphing or growing into the next work, or do you like the idea that you finish one and the way you approach the next is quite clean and a different tangent? It depends, it s interesting, sometimes often there ll be an element of one work that I get particularly interested in, once I ve finished it, or once I m in it and I realise that that for me is somewhere that I want to keep on going. Say with Character X (1996 Next Wave Festival), there was a part of that that I suddenly thought, for me; this is the most interesting thing. And that basically was the seed that I then developed all the situation works from, which was about setting up the situations and working with the dancers in a particular way, to create a seeming randomness that was clearly not random. I think it created a really complex narrative and a formal mode to those works. As I said, after I finished Vianne, it was in some ways reactive from being involved in this very, very long process and wanting to do something that actually the process for the performance was more related and shorter. It depends, I think. When I was making solo work, I was like, it s another solo, is it really any different from the previous one? You re always within your mode as well. Your choice of artists for this work, you have some that are brand new to your process and haven t been in your work before. Did you consciously decide to mix it up? Yes absolutely, I find that that works really well having done it before. So there s people who have some understanding of what I m on about and others who I think will take it on reasonably easily, but differently and maybe not in a way that
I can anticipate. It will change it for me as well. It means that I don t have to go back to square one in the rehearsal process but it gives everybody a little freshness. Working with Milo (Kossowski, sound artists) I know he can work fast and I have worked with him a lot now. I like the fact that I can t anticipate exactly what he s going to do and it s the way I like working with collaborators a lot, however he understands what I m talking about very clearly. The other collaborator for the work, Belinda Hellier (designer) we ve known each other since we were six, I think, but we have never worked together, so that will be interesting. What, if anything are you concerned about going into the project? Are you scared or excited? I don t know whether I can stay up all night! You d like to try? No. We ll work the way we need to work basically and I think...i actually, you know, I don t feel like I need to do that anymore. And resting is part of it. Resting and socialising is very much for me a part of the process, and I know it seems superfluous or perhaps frivolous, it s not, it s so important to make the work and to slightly shift the situation in which one is working into something else that is apparently not working, but of course it s working. It all becomes part of it, and it s part of your resource. Do you have a natural feeling of excitement about the project or dread? I actually have no dread at all. I m really excited! Have you thoroughly thought through what you will do, or how long, or an area of interest?
I have this idea which is I don t know exactly what happens but I want it to because it s such a discrete amount of time the thing that I m thinking about is that, it s like it happens in reverse, or you build up to something and it s the beginning, but that s actually the end of it. Do you think it s going to be a challenge? Well I hope so! Do you think perhaps because it is a dense period of creating, even if there is rest time or social time, do you think you might reach a place, not so much like an altered state of conciousness, but do you think you may get to a place where you like when you work late at night, you often do your best work. Do you think that might happen? It might do. If you change the conditions of working, if you alter them in different ways, it does alter the way you work, yes. Why do you make work? I often think, oh really, come on, lets do something else now, and there are other things that I have done and I continue to do and I enjoy very much. However, I always come back to the desire to make dance, live work. I guess whether it chooses you or you choose it. It s the fields that I have experience in, but for me it resonates as a template for so many things, because of the way I think about making work, which is always in relation to other things, but not in a descriptive way. Also, I think it s to make it, and then to show it, so I think they re two different things. Working by myself is one aspect of that or working within a confined, a closed space without an audience is one aspect, actually showing it is something else. They are related but they are slightly different activities and I think one does them for different reasons, and they obviously feed one from the other. But it s not just about showing or telling something. To me it s about the process as well, it s allowing the possibility, for the audience though, not just the participants in the making of the work, but the audience then to be involved with finding something, seeing something, feeling something, in all the different ways and modes that that happens. Often when looking at the way choreographers create work over the course of their careers, when they get to a certain stage, I ve noticed they
sometimes get unfulfilled by movement and it doesn t become a useful element in their work and their work becomes more driven by other forms. I assume this hasn t come about for you because you have always had strong collaborative elements in your work, you have always had a balance. Do you know why you haven t abandoned steps? You really still have a respect, or a confidence in what the movement delivers. Often choreographers find the movement doesn t achieve what they need it to, or they go through a rejection phase. I think one s collapse in faith in having the steps and the body as a central thing, is absolutely vital to keeping on working with them, and if you don t have that rejection, you re fucked. If you assume that that s kind of a reasonable way to work all the time, you are completely going up a drainpipe. You have to allow that to collapse and then re-find it all the time and work out what it is about that, that you need and why it is important. And I think it s very fundamental, it makes you address what it is that you re working with. I don t have much expertise in other modes, but I m interested in other people working in those and bringing that in. However, there have been periods where I have worked with theatre companies, particularly because I wanted to see how that operated. So I worked on two different projects with The Builders Association in New York, as assistant to Marianne Weems, the Artistic Director. She works a lot with technology and she works with actors and it s a completely different working situation from the way I work, and she works with a script too. To be immersed in somebody else s process, using different elements, sometimes using dance, but using them in such a different way from the way I would use it, it was really fascinating. It hasn t made me want to then make work like that, but it made me think about different ways of constructing work. But I haven t wanted to become a DJ or a video artist. Oh, that s actually not true. I have made a few little films of my own and I think there s something interesting about that, with the race in technology at the moment, it is interesting how easy that s become to do. But I think it s the live thing that is for me the most interesting. I guess it s the visceral thing and all sorts of things about actual live performance. I ve fallen in and out of love with very theatrical, spectacular performances. At different times I just love that artifice, and then other times I just can t see those sorts of things, but I think one continually interrogates that as a form. Can you think back over times when you have lost your faith in movement? Oh, absolutely. And you have worked your way through it?
Yeah, cause in the end you find a way back in to it and enjoying it. A lot of times when I ve lost my faith in movement, its is actually not loosing faith in movement, it s loosing my faith in my ability to its that difference between, ok I can be working away in the studio, but it s got to go out there and it s got to become part of a context. Loosing my faith in the way that might happen. And you know, I think Australia s a very interesting place, culturally, everybody s talked about this ad nauseam lack of population and the cultural slant here. Have you thought about being in this work? Not really. Not this time. I think I need to be out of it this time to get a clear perspective. When was the first time you didn t perform in your work? Was it in 1997, when you made the duet Deanne Butterworth and I performed, Situation Live: The Subject? Yes. It was so hard. It was such a big change for me. Then History Situation (2002) seemed like an even bigger change. Maybe because there were five performers involved? Yeah. There is an immense responsibility in a way. Also, you have to relinquish responsibility too. It s very interesting. I found performance time, when the audience came, excruciating. But you stayed out of your work? You didn t jump back in because it was horrible to be on the outside of your work? No, no, no, no. Especially with History Situation and Vianne, there is no way I could have made the work if I was in it because I needed to watch and see. I needed to be able to view what was happening all the time, when the dancers were eating their lunch, when they were dancing. I had to be able to see it.
Sometimes when I perform in my own work, I m not seeing the work from the outside, so I can t get disappointed. It feels like it s all right when I m in it. In a way I m blind to what it really is. Do you ever experience that? I ve never thought about it that way, but that is obviously true, that s a reality, because when you re in it, you really have no sense of what it was like. You watch it on DVD and the difference, when you have been watching it live and then on DVD, it s so massive. That s the other thing that keeps on bringing me back to live performance and dance. There is something that happens that you cannot replace or replicate in any way in live performance and it doesn t really matter if you are in a very large proscenium stage or wether it s a very, very intimate performance, there is something that happens. It s not only spatial. it s not only that it s flattened out to 2D, that s not it. With my earlier question about the uncertainty in FULL COLOUR, setting up a work where there are choices that happen in performance. Will that be an element in this work? Oh, I don t know maybe possibly!