What would be another word for it?

Abstract

This is the score for a performed talk called ‘What would be another word for it?’, which is about practice, but also about the difficulty of describing the experience of practicing. It was written for a Stockholm series curated by Chrysa Parkinson, and was kind of a conversation with a video on practice she’d made some years before. At the time of writing I’d also started playing English folk music with a concertina player called Will Duke, who was making me re-think what music and dance practice might be. Both of these people are mentioned in the text. The second time I gave the talk I thought it should be more physical, so I memorized the words until the rhythm was in my body. This is also a practice that Chrysa Parkinson uses in her talks. Throughout the memorized performance I started and stopped a slow-motion projection of the dancer Katye Coe, altered by the filmmaker Hugo Glendinning so that Katye seemed to hover always on the edge of stopping, and the faces of the people watching were frozen in slow reaction. And between segments of speaking, I played a small button accordion and a harmonica, both instruments I practice every day. The button accordion is not an instrument usually associated with improvised contemporary dance, and I enjoyed how the connection between the film and my music was in the practice and not in the style. You will see that the score has marks indicating when I should start and stop the film, and when I should start and stop the music. Many dancers describe the way they vocalize while moving, making something like a low grunting sound, too quiet to be heard. If this text is choreographic, then it’s something to do with that kind of grunting, which is a feeling connected to rhythm and emphasis, and also to a sense of reaching out, from here to there.