Over but not out

Well we're done. 3 weeks has passed by pretty quickly. After a reasonably late thursday night frolic the generous late start was not late enough it seemed. Not wanting to buck the trend B.Ed, through a combination of bag misplacement and "traffic congestion", managed to arrive an 1hr behind schedule. They do like to keep me on my toes. It was a pretty chilled day in the studio by all accounts. We treaded some new ground with our own hybrid of contact dancing with wrestling/sumo. The object being you had to remove your partner from the mats in a semi-non violent (and creative) way. This went down a treat and may well feature as part of the R2M regular exercise programme. We ended with a 15 min solo improv from each of the crew. Was great to feel the openness from everyone and see people flowing. It's been a packed 3 weeks and it has given me a lot of food for thought for developing the work further. Now it's time to head of to Cornwall for clotted cream and christmas. I'll also be able to edit together some vids but in the meantime...have a good one. xxx

Dinner Dance

I write this as the penultimate day of our 3 week residency comes to an end...at 3:56am. I had invited in a well experienced colleague, Chris Devaney, to give us a little feedback on what we had been doing in the lab for this time. It always amazes me how other people see things differently from oneself and discover things from viewing work that you never even thought of. All in all a very worthwhile endeavour and it was good for us to perform some of what we had created. We wrapped up the day with another session of conditioning and the daily highlight of the handstand assault course. I managed to squeeze in some last minute xmas shopping before scrubbing myself up and heading down to a nice restaurant to meet the rest of the crew for some end-of-project chow. Be.D were slightly late as they decided to take a more creative route into town but nevertheless rocked up in matching denim shirts, sliver chains and with some good banter. The socialising carried on to the other side of town where we met up with some other friends. A bit of larking about and a lot of dancing was had with the occasional wigging out session. In at 1pm tomoz...it is christmas afterall.

R2M crew picks up their glasses while Tony picks up the bill :) good guys & good dinner

Some of the local heads join us for an after dinner boogie

Ed decides that Ben should go it alone on the denim shirt front

Chillin' with hostess Kerrie Sauce

Half Volley

What a day...i feel absolutely busted. Could be something to do with Ed Spoons passing on a wintery bug or how much dancing/volley ball we did today. Yes...indeed, Volley Ball was the name of the game today. Our warm up of keepy uppy with Wilson from famed shipwreck movie castaway had extended into some full blown court action. The Musselburgh Men's Beach/Indoor Volley Ball squad had their debut match against...well each other in a little pre-season tete a tete. Teams were Me & Dan vs Ben & Ed (also known as B.Ed). After a cautious period of sussing each other out the game began to open up and after a while some clear dominance was asserted by myself & Dan. Point scoring was in fact pointless. Occasional flashes of inspiration were shown by the B.Ed duo, especially once Ed finally found his serve. But no sooner had it been found, it was lost again and indeed lose they did overall. This might appear a bit one sided but history is often written by the victors. You may be able to find other accounts of todays underground and off the books match, but hold fire for the Top Gun pastiche trailer coming soon...minus the sand and great weather.

It took 2 of them to block the big man...

The Squad...2012 is gonna be a big year on the UK beach volley ball circuit

Staying true to form we did of course do some dancing today. Something that everyone is good at :) :) :) Myself & Ben make the cut for this one....

Dancer in the dark

My carpentry skills seemed to have paid off thankfully. After class the boys got stuck in to put the finishing touches to some frames i built. This is in an effort to recreate a sort of rear window-esque scene, as we peer into the individual lives of the crew but gradually come to sense that something is not quite right. That is the idea anyway. We spent the bulk of the day in the dark after blacking out the space as much as we could. There is some video but probably due to the bad light was out of focus for most of it. I'll try and do better tomorrow. I've been kept so busy that xmas shopping has been last on the list. I plan to get it done in one go (hahaha...unlikely but you never know) for late night shopping on thursday. I did hear about an interesting present in the form of Miracle Berries. Apparently these berries are native to Ghana (bonus points scored) and have the ability to alter the taste of food you eat. So if you fancy giving someone a taste sensation for xmas instead of aftershave then try these at miracleberry.co.uk. I can also recommend the stylophone for hours of fun and musical mastery in minutes...retro and very cool.

This is us trying to get into the right frame of mind...ahem!

Videos that made the cut from yesterday. We managed to get quite a lot of stuff of our chest (yes that's 2 glorious puns in one day folks...more of the same tomorrow)

Out of the box

We kicked of the week in fine form as i forgot my training trousers and had to spend the day in my corduroy jeans. The lads got a good squint at my lean legs in my long johns during our warm up also. There's a christmas treat one won't forget so easily. We spent the whole day playing with an old chest that belonged to my folks and has been hoarding bed sheets for a number of years. Built to withstand the test of time it also dealt with us jumping, sliding, climbing around and even flipping off it (not me personally...that's more ben and dan's territory). It's an homeage to Hitchcock's movie "Rope", where some poor fella is strangled and packed away into a chest in the living room while his murderers throw a party in his honour. Ideas were flowing and there's many options to take with this material...but i'll need to bring it back to the subject at some point as it's just too easy to get carried away sometimes. I stayed on in the studio til late with some wood, a saw and some screws. Tune in tomorrow to see what DIY carpentry mysteries i've conjured up.

I've decided this is how the dancers will tour with the show...they look happy enough!

There was some good material that could have easily made the video post today. But, i've left it way too late to start uploading so you'll have to be happy with one of my favourite tunes from the 80s which i think is quite apt given today's carry on....

Final furlong

So it's sunday night. It's been a big weekend. So big i never got round to doing the friday night blog post so here it is...a couple of days late. Friday involved blowing off a lot of steam. A series of events unfolded that lead to me remaining horizontal for all of saturday, meaning i missed out on what was probably one of the best xmas parties to be held in the Burgh this year which was being thrown by a friend of mine. Ah well there's always next year. So it's the final week already. Things have moved pretty fast. In the beginning i thought to myself how was i going to fill 3 weeks and keep these boys busy. Now i wish i had even more time. I had planned to get on the prop building tip this weekend, but friday's antics put that idea out the window. Regardless, ill be couriering more odds and ends down to the Brunton on Monday morning. One would have thought i would have learned my lesson after creating Watch iT! I do seem to have found a use for my mother's old wooden chest that has been sitting around in my flat for years...watch this space. Friday's polaroid also didn't turn out so good. I've got 8 captures left so i better make them count.

Ed Spoon makes the video post cut with his keepin' it real rant...top stuff!

1st drafts on the bboy fallout...

I exchanged lateral recumbency for a more upright position today as i actually had to work. As part of another project i'm involved with, I had to lead an audition today. This was my debut attempt at this. I think i did ok and didn't fall into the realm of abusing my power. You can find out more about this project here at glitchchoreography.wordpress.com

Down but not out...

We took things pretty lightly today after the past two days of solid graft...even skipped conditioning. We'll double up tomorrow though. I've developed a bit of a taste for the savoury pastries on sale in the local bakery near to the theatre. So much so that i felt the need to indulge after class. They reminded me, funnily enough, of the croissants i used to get on a saturday morning from the Bakery i would visit during my school days. Must be something in the doe. The only other place I have sampled the same taste was in Inverness. Considering one of the first things ill do when i'm in a new place is check out the local danish pastry offerings, then it could be said that Scotland has something unique...in it's doe. Well anyway...it's another late one after finishing rehearsals and then heading over to Glasgow to drop bombs of the dance knowledge variety on students at Strathclyde University Dance Society. I've been asked to create a short dance piece in a hippity hop stylee for some competitions they wish to enter. After much deliberation i settled on some Prince for the soundtrack...



Dan took upon himself to undergo the up-to-5 minute challenge. It gradually became a 10 minute challenge as it was clear his attempts to create France's most iconic landmark with the left over bits of the mats wasn't going to happen. He settled for a new addition to the crew.