February

Remember you are Water. Cry. Cleanse. Flow. Let go

Remember you are Air. Observe, Breath, Focus. Decide

Remember you are Fire. Burn. Tame. Adapt. Ignite

Remember you are Earth. Ground. Build. Produce. Give

Remember you are Spirit. Connect. Listen. Know. Be Still.

The final element I will immerse myself into for the month of February is Spirit (Ether).  Over the past 5 months I have taken the time to understand each element more intimately, by listening and observing and now that the light has returned, I’ll begin to act on all that I’ve witnessed, heard and felt and incorporate all the elements into my dance piece.  I’ll be collaborating with the mighty Fergal Scahill, Musician extraordinaire and Film Maker, to help me bring my ideas and vision to life.  We have had a few chats this month, and have settled on how, when and where we are going to create this film piece.  I am still developing ideas on the why and what questions, but I would like to keep an element of improvisation and spontaneity to the piece, so that I can remain receptive to impulses on the days of filming. Improvisation is my magic key to connecting fully with my dancing spirit, I need to be free of thinking, enmeshed in sound and texture.  Sound is an integral part of this piece and the sounds that I connect with and make in nature will steer the journey of creating visuals for the piece.

Your soul knows the geography of your destiny.  Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself.  If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.

John O’Donoghue – Anam Cara

My spirit needs places where nature has not yet been rearranged by the hand of man.  I need silence so that I can listen to the stories of our ancestors. Nature is my healer, my teacher, my place of solitude.  I need to put my hands and feet deep in the earth’s soil to feel fully alive, to remember who I am and where I have come from, to feel grounded in my place and to be aware of the messages and symbols that are sent to me to guide me on my path. I need to dance to communicate with my creative soul. When I dance, I connect with spirit. I let go of all self-conscious thoughts, I surrender, I go with the flow.  When I dance, I am telling my story.  It’s how I strengthen my will, it’s how I create harmony and balance to my emotions. I dance when I am sad, I dance when I am happy, I dance when I’m lost and broken, I dance when I’m ecstatic.  I dance in the light of divinity, I dance with my demons in the darkness. Sometimes after I dance, I feel exhilarated, feeling out of my body, floating and connected to a higher source, and other times I feel exhausted, broken, empty, in a heap on the floor.  

You need chaos in your soul, to give birth to a dancing star.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Faeries, come take me out of the dull world,

For I would ride with you upon the wind

Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,

And dance upon the mountains like a flame

W.B Yeates – The Land of Heart’s Desire

January

January has always been a month where I surrender to Mother nature and like the trees and plants,  I hibernate.  It’s a time for me to go within, to rest, to be fully grounded in my home place, where my roots are planted.  Its my time to imagine, reflect and prepare for the year ahead.  January is a good month for me to focus on the Earth element.  The earth is our mother, the womb from which all things grow.  We live on the earth, our feet and homes planted in the soil and we grow our food in the earth. 

As a percussive dancer, the earth is an essential element for me to express myself.  I have to connect with earth to create art, I make music with my feet as I connect with the earth.  I am always searching for and experimenting with ways of making different sounds with my feet and developing new ways to create new sounds.  I play the space.  And the space I dance in has a huge influence on the sounds and steps that I create. 

This month, I explored the different sounds I can make in and around my home, my little patch of earth on this planet.  How many different sounds can I make from just walking to the garden, I dance on soil, tiles, grass, muck, gravel, sticks and concrete.   I’ve always been interested in exploring ways to create sounds with different woods, so for this month I delved into the sound of my home place and how many different sounds I could find under my feet. 

What I love most about percussive dance is the always changing sound response to the space where I am dancing.  This can also be the most frustrating part of percussive dance, there is nothing worse than dancing on a shit floor. Whenever I am performing and it’s a new floor, I like to take some time to “get to know the space”.  I find where the dead spots are on the floor to avoid, where can I find a nice base sound and clear treble sound.  I always look down first whenever I walk into a room, checking out the potential dance floor.   Percussive dancers play the space.  The sound that I create has a huge influence on the musicality of my dance and enjoyment of my performance .  I respond not only to the music, but also to the sound of the floor and space. A good sound helps me to fully integrate and internalise the piece of music I’m dancing to and enables me to feel free enough to let go and surrender to the space and music.  In this letting go of my conscious mind and allowing my unconscious mind the freedom to act, the more I’m going to have a more spontaneous and joyous performance with magic moments. 

So for January,  I danced my way around my little spot on Mother Earth, listening to the different sounds under my feet and found that I don’t have to venture far to find a wide variety of sounds to play with. 

Stephanie x

Dancing to the garden

Audio clip – Headphones recommended!

December

I don’t know if it’s because I was born in December, that I absolutely love Winter. I love the layers of wool, hats, scarves, mucky boots and that feeling when the sun hits your face when out walking on a cold crisp windy day. I love the feeling of coming home after being outside and sitting by a blazing fire with a mug of tae. For me, it’s the time to hibernate, to be quiet and still. I look forward to the Solstice and the return of the light. I chose Fire element to focus on this month as most evenings I am stuck to one. I live in an old farmhouse so the fire is essential to keeping warm in the winter. I hate to leave a burning fire and I hate to see a hungry one, so I happily spend a lot of time tending to and keeping the fires going.

I’ve been transported into my own little world this month, with a new Zoom recorder. Wow, I’m amazed at the quality of sound. It feels like I’ve entered a new dimension of sound experience. This has opened up a whole new experience of everything I hear and has led me to learn about audio software, so I can play around with the sound and reverb is my new favourite toy. I am loving playing around with sound.

So for this month, I have been walking around with headphones and the new Zoom recorder, playing around with the sounds arounds me and feeling like a child again, amazed at what technology can do. I have zero technology skills, never had an interest in it either. But I have to say, I’ve had my head stuck in the computer this month, trying to get to grips with this new technology.

I have far too many recordings and I think the main problem I have now, it to choose which recordings to share.

I recorded this one evening as I was sitting by the fire, I could hear this strange rhythm from across the room, so I went to investigate.

Winter Blessing and a Peaceful and Harmonious New Year to all.

Stephanie x

November

Hello and welcome back to my journal. November went fierce fast, My creative mind can go off in a million and one directions, when I’m working on a project, so it’s been a good tool for me to have one element of nature to focus on each month and allow space for other ideas to come up.

This month I have chosen Air. Air symbolises movement and breath. I was immediately drawn to trees and birds when connecting with the element of Air. I instinctively began to look up and watch and listen to the trees moving in the wind. I observed that there were moments of what felt like a holding of breath, as if the trees were inhaling the air, waiting for the wind to touch the trees and move them to dance and sway, exhaling the force of air . This made me think about when I dance,that sometimes I unconsciously inhale and hold my breath, usually before I go to execute a tricky step or just before I launch myself into the air and then once I’m back in the flow of movement, I exhale again.

I was planning to work on movement and breath this month and to start creating choreography for the dance piece. I was very happy at the beginning of the month when 80km winds were forecasted,I had wild notions of dancing in the storm, throwin shapes with the wind and being at one with the forces of nature �� But the wind was taken out of my dancing sails, when someone crashed into the back of my car. Whiplash put a stop to my movement for a couple of weeks. Funny, when I decided to focus on movement, I am restricted in my own movement.

This project has definitely ignited a new childlike curiosity in me with regards to natural sounds. Normally on a stormy night, I am perfectly happy to be warmly tucked up in my bed when the winds wake me, but this month I was finding myself, getting out of bed at god knows what time of the night, to go outside and record the sound of wind and watch how trees, branches and flowers moved in strong winds.

I decided to also focus on the brief– Dance with natural sounds, in your natural setting, percussively. I started to play around with other ways to percussively make sounds naturally, using my breath and body. I was interested to hear how my voice and body sounded in nature. The lake is by far my most favourite place to make percussive sounds, it’s a natural amphitheatre. I had a visit from a fisherman one morning, who had heard me from lake and followed the sounds to the pier to see what was happening.

I’ve been collecting sounds to create a soundscape for the film. The sound of my piece has been my main focus so far. Once I have collected and recorded the sounds I need, I will begin working on composing the soundscape. I like to idea of creating the sound of the piece first and then creating choreography and aesthetic in response to the sound. My dance practice has always been focused on how my dance sounds. I don’t practise technique and steps much, I find focusing on the musicality and sound of my dance first, helps me develop new steps and techniques. A lot of the time when I am watching percussive dancers, I like to close my eyes to listen to them, to get another sense of their dancing. Percussive dancers are not only dancers, we make music with our feet.

So here is my little video I put together for this month, a little snapshot of sounds and ideas that I will develop over the coming months. Whiplash has been healed, so I’m back in the dancing saddle for next month.

HUP!!!!

Stephanie x

October

Hello and welcome to my journal for the Dance of Film project with Leitrim Dance Project. After many months of not performing, I was beginning to loose the drive and energy to practise, create and even think about dance. So I am so very grateful to Edwina and Liam for giving me this wonderful opportunity.

I've spent the last couple of weeks sitting and walking in the woods, swimming and playing in the lake and exploring the different sounds that surrounds me. With my microphone and camera, I've become like a detective, following sounds that interest me and paying attention to what sounds I like. I discovered that nature is pretty quiet most of the time where I live. I live in East Clare, which is on the shores of Lough Derg. I love living here, its simply beautiful and I always feel very safe and happy to be here, I’m protected by the ancient oaks and entertained by the lake and rivers. I learned that I had to wait and be silent to hear the sounds of nature on a dry and still day and on the windy and wet days, nature had a lot more to say. I learned to let go, be still and be open, so i could hear the forces of nature working together to create sounds.

So for my project I have decided to dive into exploring and experiencing the 5 elements of nature -Water, Fire, Air, Earth and Ether and for the next five months I will focus on one particular element a month. I will collect different sounds from each element, creating a soundscape which I will use for my dance on film. So every month, I will focus on one element and report back to you all on how I resonate and connect with the 5 elements. I have many questions, what can I learn, what do I hear, how does it make me feel, how can I express myself when I invoke the spirit of this element, how does it feel to embody this element?

The first element I will explore is Water. There is no getting away from the rain in Ireland and I go to the lake every day to swim, so water was the most obvious element to start with. I have created a short video to give you a glimpse into the route of my thought process as I work on this project. Dancing for me is about playing, to be in the present moment and to be free, so I thought it would be a good start to have some fun and play with the element of Water.

Stephanie