Edges of Light : more..

2004

I wanted to develop a body of work from one piece of choreography, immersing myself in the piece and exploring it as a single coherent flow of work rather than a series of disconnected images from different dances, different times and different dancers. Natalie Fisher was choreographing her Pieces of a Dream with Ballet Theatre Afrikan and kindly allowed me to follow the development of the piece from the first rehearsals to performance. The work does not attempt to re-live the experience of the performance. It is a choreography on paper of moments of light, colour and shade, using as it's foundation the less-conscious vision of the third eye. At one level this is a purely visual celebration of this magnificent piece of dance.

It is under the protection of darkness that the very beginnings of all things are conceived; fragile, not yet known, tenuous. At the edges of light we first come to know ourselves and others in conscious reality. On the cusp of our inner and outer worlds are found these fascinating half dream-like creatures – our inner cast of characters, primitively erotic, powerful and un-contaminated by the dictates of sensibility, ego and reason. The edge is where discoveries are made, where we fall in love, find fear and wrestle with half-known shadows, sometimes plunging into the unknown to emerge wet with mystery. This is the edge of change, of growth where life is abundantly in evidence. This dance uncovers bits of my own mythology. The new is brought to consciousness through sensual ritual. Time is allowed out of its cage to curve and twist spanning ancient and future, known and unknown.