August 2018, on Buratinas
1
It began. That’s it. How necessary is it to think about the real circumstances. I guess Mars was having a little twinkle blinkle with Jupiter, which angered Neptune to blow up in tears, which made Brussels a rather rainy place in November. Then snowy. To keep us warm we thought of action. Each of us due to different reasons, but each of us, meaning Michel and me, with the need to do it with Caroline. So we did it with Caroline and that’s how we three met. Do you want to enlargen your vision of dance?
Three women got together in a borrowed free studio that doesn’t exist anymore. They began sharing voice and practicing together. They agreed on some form and played together. It was winter. It was quite cold in the studio. There was no heating in the building. They wore many jumpers and layers. They were excited and pleased to be together. They didn’t know each other that well. They had never all worked together before. They were feeling around and trying things out. One of them said she would lead the tasks.
She had been asking her to try some stuff for some time. He happened to call her to do the same. But it was his first time. He was sick. She played ukulele. Their common friend brought the three together. And they began. They began in a space the common friend happened to have temporary use, an artist squat. Rooms & spaces full of different artists squatting their ateliers, working space.
2
She wasn’t in shock. It was in her lungs. Breath. Inhale. Exhale. How else can she reach it? Touch it? Move it? Get closer to it? She called a friend. Would you like to get together to do some voice work or something? Yes, singing could be good. She wanted her body, her lungs to tremble. To move the molecules. To let her cells know she was there. She existed. That it was not alone. We’d do this together.
Frustration, Sadness, need for community. Cancer, loss of belief. First you go down until you see the light coming up again. Oracle began as a light through difficult times. Michel was just diagnosed with lung cancer, Caroline and me being rather frustrated with the ordinary way of how art is produced and the demand for an institutional way of working. Oracle came into being to shed some light into our misty brains, show new perspectives to work, form community around an art practice.
One woman had discovered that she had something growing in her lung but even before this she had asked if the other woman could explore/practice voice together. “I want to do more vocal work. Can you do that with me?’ Another woman joined. And actually I think that it was the young woman that put the idea of putting a form onto what they were doing. There was suspension, unknown. Time seemed to have stopped as they found out that the woman was sick.
3
You know what? I don’t know. But what i know is, that it is the best thing that happened to me in the last three years. Oracle became Home. Oracle became Hope. When we met the Oracle, we didn’t know that we met the Oracle. We were walking in wonderland without realizing it for quite some time. We met something very strong, that’s clear, otherwise we probably wouldn’t have stayed connected artistically in all our differences. Oracle was the beginning, now the web is more complex.
I was excited to work and play with Justine and Michel. Such an unusual couple. They didn’t know each other before. I think we were all looking for answers or openings, definitely beginnings and research. Playing – serious playing with who we are and who are these other people? Looking for alternative ways and answers to working with oneself, our bodies in a different way. And voice brings body and psychology together. It puts one on the spot, in the moment. The voice is idiosyncratic.
She was sitting at home. Writing. Knitting. Her son had just arrived. Time to get him a snack. She pulled out the chocolate cake that she had just baked. Gluten free. The phone beeps. It was J asking whey they could meet to play the ukulele and sing together. She realized she hadn’t told J about the temporary access to a studio. Now would be perfect to practice this stuff there. She turns on the water kettle.
4
Imagine. It began with imagining. Imagining that things can be different. Work different. Life different. It began with differencies, coming together in harmonic disharmony. (From A to B on a mountaintop). It began with belief. A belief in vocalizing together, a belief in the healing power of doing things together. One of the first questions was: How to be yourself in community. It articulates with a desire. Oracle began with a desire.
The need, the desire to reach inside one’s voice but in the company of another. To use the body differently to enter the twilight zone of being inside of oneself and also outside and with others at the same time. To voice and not necessarily sing. To improvise. To use the voice as a physical manifestation or activity of oneself. To find out more about oneself. To have the freedom to move inside one’s voice within a guided and protected for, well at least a form that allows free falling and catching, looking inside and outside.
The email flashed through her mind. She thought about last night. Her friend hadn’t been drinking. But like she was drunk, she had been non-stop. Her energy was moving her nonstop into her story. The sickness, the caring and not caring about finality. How is she now? Yes, she’ll ask her to join her and J. Why not join?
5
A carpeted floor in a building that is not existing anymore. Caroline being the interface for this meeting.
A peeing position. (Strange, i’m so bad with peeing in a jar.) A peeing position. Three blind mice, see how they sing, see how they pee.
A carpeted floor in a building that is not anymore. Caroline being the interface.
We meet. We sing. I’m wearing the same jumper as on the first day we met. The peeing-dog-jumper.
A carpeted floor that is not anymore.
Looking for answers that have never been proposed before. Hoping to have something from the future. Reading the air, the environment and the future from this time, now, which is already the past. We strived to test, to take time, gently with two others. We wanted faith. We wanted to build faith in the body, voice, self, time, space, art, life, friendship, ridiculousness. We were looking for connection, fun and some healing time.
It as a dark and stormy night. J and C were warm & cozy inside by the fire drinking tea. The Auberge de Pecheurs offered a nit Hot Toddy. How could they refuse? The doorbell rang. Boris, the butler, led in the new arrival. A dark haired woman dressed in a long gown. Hair wet from the storm plastered to her face. Face white from cold. “I have a cough,” she said.