Emma is into the second half of her seed residency with Jo Pollitt. Much has been accomplished since July. Together they are working with the improvisational processes of Jo’s ‘Response Project’ (a series of compositional and performative strategies Jo has been developing and working on since 2000). Using this technique your body is as much a thinking, relating organ as your brain. 
How you feel and respond physically is equally important to how you think and intellectualise a response. Along these lines there are a lot of written exercises that go hand in hand with the physical improvisation and dance.
The work relies on the fact that the body stores information just as the brain does and over the course of one’s life and career you accumulate physical knowledge, patterns and reactionary traits. The work provides a means of accessing and recognising this information and the next step is making decisions about what to do with it and how to use it.
Serena Chalker and Quindell Orton of AIVDT came into the Ludwig studio a couple of times. Their presence and their experience of the work provided Emma with more to respond to and also helped show how others respond physically to you.
Cass Mortimer Eipper, Timothy O’Donnell and Rhiannon Spratling are currently joining in the practice from time to time to give Emma further physical feedback and responses to her own practice.
Archive for September, 2010
Strut Seed Residency
September 30th, 2010 by EmmaTouching Blue week 3
September 26th, 2010 by Emma
It has been an interesting week of progress in the studio trying out a few new methods of movement creation and choreography. We started the week with the decision to attack one of the more physical scenes to Moby’s Run On. As the week moved on we chose some of our earlier scenes and decided to revisit them, layering them with more complexity.
Each week we move through our development, ideas change and evolve. There can be no question of the importance of good long periods of creation time. It is necessary to try a great many things out first, then discard ideas and allow the work to evolve organically.
Touching Blue Week 2
September 17th, 2010 by EmmaIt is the end of our second week on the Touching Blue development and things are starting to take shape. In our first week a lot of material was produced and many scenes of the story were begun, laying the bones of the piece. This week, as the characters began to develop, we revisited scenes and built in more movement and personality traits. As we make decisions about the soundtrack and the structure, we are gradually finding the flavour of the work.
Beginning the development!
September 12th, 2010 by Emma
The dulcet sounds of Dan Kaplan are back in the Ludwig studio! We have begun our long awaited development of Soul Searching, henceforth referred to as Touching Blue. 
Ms Spratling and her dynamism are back and in addition we also have half the contents of Cass and Emma’s home to serve as props.
It’s been a great first week and we’ll keep yo updated on our progress…
On Bananas
September 7th, 2010 by Emma Few people could have missed the fact that this year’s So You Think You Can Dance Australia was sponsored by the Australian Banana Industry, advocating a healthy snack alternative.
Why are bananas so good for us? The short answer is that they are nutritious, low GI and satiating.
Your average Joe banana (100g peeled) contains around 370 kJ (90 cals) therefore sits happily in that “under 100 cal snack range”. It teases us with its creamy texture but has no fat or cholesterol. On top of this it also contains a good dose of fibre for good bowel health … and there’s no one more uncomfortable than a constipated dancer!
Bananas are also a good source of potassium and folate and are the best fruit source of vitamin B6. Pertinently for us dancers, bananas are rich in carbs to fuel our muscles and brain. So we can keep working well through class, rehearsals and performances, we really need a good store of glycogen in our muscles to burn as fuel. When this fuel depletes, so does our strength and focus. Bananas are an excellent, natural way to energise our bodies and maintain our concentration and power those leaps and turns and lifts.
For your own curiosity
It is interesting to learn that archaeological evidence suggests bananas were cultivated as long ago as 5000 BCE at Kuk Swamp in Papua New Guinea. They reached Egypt 1000–2000 years ago and it wasn’t until 1899 with the establishment of the United Fruit Company in the United States that bananas became a familiar fruit the world over. Today, they are the world’s fourth largest fruit crop.
Another interesting fact is that as they ripen, bananas give off more ethylene gas than any other fruit. This gas stimulates ripening in other fruit which is why it is recommended to put unripe fruit in a brown paper bag with a banana.
Personally, and contrary to many, I like mine on the unripe side…
Bananas Emma-style
Mashed with brown sugar and milk; sliced on top of a piece of toast with ricotta; chopped over cereal, ice cream or yogurt; in a fruit salad with strawberries, mangoes, passionfruit and a squeeze of lime juice.
Thanks for the info on bananas to dietitian Glenn Cardwell www.glenncardwell.com and for even more information on bananas visit http://www.australianbananas.com.au/
Residence at the Centre Culturel du Mont-Dore
September 5th, 2010 by EmmaTwo weeks in New Caledonia has flown by! Emma’s residence with Sthan Kabar-Louet at the Centre Culturel du Mont-Dore has been a pleasure – creating together in the studio and being able to rehearse on the stage.
The theatre itself is lovely and seats 400. The main stage has a perfect depth and breadth for a performance for two!
We began at the very beginning… 
assessing the project and deciding what we each wanted to express and interpret in this work. Although certain parameters were already in place (that we would be dancing a work inspired by Schubert’s “La jeune fille et la Mort” for the biennial Festival de Danse du Mont-Dore) there was room to move to shape the project into a work in which we are both expressing some of our own ideas on the subject.
We now have a work which takes the public on a journey over “5 Chapters” dealing with ideas surrounding and inspired by the title “La jeune fille et la Mort” with a simple set, some projection and hopefully a lovely lighting design!
So, at the end of my first “sejour” in New Caledonia the bones of the piece have been put together and on my return mid-October we’ll be detailing and rehearsing the work ready for its premiere on the 12th of November.
Yellow Energy…
September 4th, 2010 by EmmaI never was a child who had to be told to eat her fruit and veg…always loved them. Mostly I loved apples and pears – cores and all. In latter years, however, my allegiance has shifted towards the satiating, energising and easily digestible banana… Stay tuned for more on this golden fruit!
