This session, I decided to bring along my newest toy -a service bell, in the shape of a dome, with a button on the top- one that usually sits on a desk to call someone to come to you. We all gave it a go, pressing it, imagining who or what we wanted to arrive. Or as doorbell, waiting for our friend to answer the door for us. Nothing to do, just wait, and expect, or feel how we feel.
This session we were myself, Valentina Bongiovanni, Natasha Weinberg, and Antonio de la Fe.
We practiced a score of moving and noticing the beginning of things (inspired by a score from Rosalind Crisp). Each time I thought of a new thing, each time the detail stretched further and expanded out. The waiting becoming the doing.
We shared our physical sensations through talking, to our partners. We talked out loud what we were physically doing, in real-time, while we moved. We mirrored each other’s face expressions, trying to find the journey together… ‘Do I really look like that?’… The continuing feedback from ourselves and each other gave more detail, more colour, sensation and feeling emerging from the gaps. It was like a metronome of my attention, telling me about my sense of time and action, moving them in and out like a kid playing with a long spiral slinky.
We practiced automatic writing and shared this in speech and movement with each other. Pouring out our body, images, strategies, and conversations through the labyrinth of gaps. I wondered how much of my selection and choice was affected by how I ‘knew’ my witness. Waiting at the door and thinking, what do I know of this person I am meeting, who is meeting and seeing me? I played with different angles of looking and interrogating a thought, of cajoling it or grooming it into becoming present for myself and my audience.
Then, we ended with another score. One person moved, while the other witnessed and let out a stream of words describing feelings and images. I was inspired by Authentic Movement to use a non-imposing phrase to start each sentence, to emphasise the interpretative (rather than prescriptive) nature of the description- “I see you… (e.g. feeling excited) / (e.g. as a bird in flight)”. I wondered, who is making the meaning? ‘You, me, talking?’
OPENLAB's Archive 
Having just done a session facilitated by Thelma Sharma it is surprising how one theme melts and overlaps with the next…
Jan told us about being aware of the beginnings, and Thelma did as well… but also to be aware of endings. Somehow, however, it is difficult to pin down what a beginning and en ending are. Endings are new beginnings they say, and somehow it seems that maybe we should talk of change, or transitions… but sometimes, things aren’t seamless and even if the change isn’t a sharp cut there is a clarity between what is finishings and what is starting, maybe through fading in, then fading out; maybe through overlapping; maybe through different combinations.
With Jan’s session and as I practiced her suggestion the best way I can, I found that exactly that… that there are many types of beginning and that we can even try to catalogue the somehow. However, before I even attempt to write down a list of the kinds of beginnings I found with Thelma or Sharma, I would like to talk about what is the connection between the image of the door bell and the idea of beginning… or rather than talking, I would like to ponder about it.
Does the door represent the idea of potential beginning; and the event of an opening door the idea of the beginning of the event to happen? If so, what does the doorbell represent?
Maybe the whole action from the beginning of deciding to visit a friend, to the moment of reaching our destination and ringing the doorbell, is something like the intentionality, the desire the will-power or the planning of “the doing” to be. After that, there is always the polite moment in which we ring and wait. When coming to visit a friend, we don’t bang the door desperately because we risk our friend things we are crazy, or angry, or aggressive, and they may even end calling the police. We don’t try either to push the door down, or blow it away like The Wolf did to two of The Three Pigs. We know from the tale that this also may have terrible consequences. The fact is that normally if we come to visit a friend we generally surrender and wait. We don’t really control how long will it take for the door to open, or even the way in which the access is granted or whether we will be accepted or not.
In performance it feels like there are many doors, one after the other… and because of this intentionality and letting go probably have to coexist at the same time. Can we just be in the state of politeness waiting, free of the need to be the one in control, whilst we don’t lose our own agency?
This is what I think I see myself searching for many times in OPENLAB.
Thank you, Jan, for reminding me this.