ABSTRACT
The messiness of the rehearsal room with all its set-backs, deletions, connectivity, surprises, rejections, energy shifts, startling intelligences and found moments of ‘rightness’ is the subject of this chapter. Such messiness, like the kitchen in the midst of cooking or the shed during a carpentry project, signals the degree of work, energy and trial and error that underpins each performance. It is not an explanation of the final performances that is sought but rather a language, a way of talking about and reflecting on the distinctive ways that pieces come to fruition. Time to dwell on making processes is often fleeting, particularly in a company such as JVC where new work is created alongside an extensive touring schedule, a growing training commitment with JV2, and regular educational engagement with a range of institutions. The interviews with company members and collaborators that contribute to the material of this chapter have an interesting status therefore of being at one remove from the process. They have taken place in a moment away from the activity and are articulated verbally. The difficulty that arises in any such attempt to verbalise movement experience is obvious, but the strands that emerge, best described as ‘first approximations’, contribute to a growing
field of discourse applicable to other performers/devisors, students and researchers on subjects such as collaboration, interdisciplinary communication, stimulation of invention, ownership and ethics. The main performance example for this chapter will be PARK, which premiered in 2005 and was revived in 2014, allowing for the inclusion of original cast members’ interview material (Vinicius Salles, YunKyung Song and Mafalda Deville) alongside discussion with new collaborators/performers for 2014 (Salles in a new role as Rehearsal Director, Luke Burrough and Geoff Colman, Acting Coach).
