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Rehearsal Day 6, 7

I loved getting a first impression of the exhibition - the bodies keep rearranging themselves at different speeds and in different groupings and positions so that you are constantly taken by surprise at where and in what kind of state and grouping they are. 

We've talked a lot about transformation and that was the effect the choreography had. A really exciting part of this project is how the very things that are normally hidden, ruled out, avoided, denied, in performance, especially anything with any element of improvisation, are here treated as part of the action. Thinking and clear intentions are part of what is going on - not deliberately displayed, but inevitable and valued along with the movements and states of the body.

Today it seemed there was also a political and philosophical aspect I had been unaware of. That is, that Xavier and Scarlet frequently underline the importance of our agency in Temporary Title. The score and the vocabulary of movement is given to us, but our attempt to use it is what makes the piece. It doesn't achieve its purpose by being perfectly delivered. So it is a really interesting process: not a collaboration, but a work that celebrates individuality and group. The individual isn't subjugated to the score even though that's what holds us together.

The philosopher Francois Jullien (The silent transformations) whom we've discussed talks about a traditional Chinese principal that I can't recall exactly but it is something like: not trying to make active corrections to complex situations but changing the underlying conditions so that new arrangements will occur of their own accord. That seems to be what the choreography allows to happen - but it happens in the way that it happens, as a cumulative result of everyone's own agency, not in a pre-set way.

- Peter Fraser, performer