Cycling Through Awareness Protocols

Published in 'improfil' , 79, May, 2016 Berlin

Joe Tornabene

Music and performance creation in heightened body perception

For over 30 years I have been developing a music creation practice based in a process I call ‘cycling through awareness protocols’. I also apply this process in trainings for dance and theatre.

Here are some thoughts on the process and a brief history of my involvement, the influences, and ideas for daily practice.

… a question which emerged in dialogue with friend Valeska Schöne, an original member of the Amsterdam Working Group:

Valeska: What is the beauty of the work in its potential?:

Joe : How can one really write about in concrete ways or outcomes of a potential of a type of work which in essence proposes ways to get out of one’s normal way of creating into uncharted territory? How can one talk about this potential in words other than simply ‘potential’ and that the work could evolve into strikingly original pieces based in this open architecture for improvisation/interpretation within the body’s ancient energy qualities and transformations? What do words like the Third Entity and Embodiment mean if one hasn’t experienced them? Or, having experienced them, as is often the case with fine performers, without a deep awareness of the full potential with awareness, can these experiential processes become fully guiding principles for creativity?

Deborah Hay, speaking of her dance Lamb, Lamb, Lamb wrote: (concerning a figure onstage throughout the performance for 41 performers) It was a woman, whose movement direction was to witness and reflect, as simply as possible, whatever she saw in the large cast of dancers onstage. Few people mentioned the subtlety and innuendo evident in her dance. I find this fact to be a yardstick for the time it will take audience and performer to appreciate and explore shade above power from a brilliant sun.

So I say, as the work evolves, I envision the potential shaping as individual performers, musical ensembles, dance companies, or theatre companies thoroughly experienced in awareness practice – fully able to access body energy qualities and transformations through experiential anatomy and body energy systems, deep relationship dynamics through embodiment explorations, witnessing, etc., and developing the ability to step outside one’s normal way of creating, the Energetic Signature, into uncharted work.

Initial Influences

"This is the room where your music began” Tom Robbins

Exploration: Begin with a simple gesture – the raising of the right arm and the gentle moving of the arm in space.

1. Initiate the same gesture and movement with awareness of the bones in the upper and lower arm as well as the 27 bones in the hand. Become aware of them moving inside the flesh, feeling weight, structure, form, etc. Spend some minuets exploring. Then rest the arm.

2. Initiate the same right arm gesture and movement from the awareness of the muscles, lifting and moving the arm in space. Luxuriate in the muscle quality of the movement. Then rest the arm. What has transformed in the sensation ?

3. Now lift and gently move the arm in space from the awareness of your right lung. How does this organ transform the energy quality from bone and muscle ?

During this period I was also working with Frances Kimmel who, beside her BMC studies had recently completed her Laban Movement Analysis Certificate at the Laban Center in New York, so I was exposed to Rudolf Laban’s Space Harmony and Effort theories.

Working with oppositions: they open tensile dynamics energetically – the “pull” in contrary directions – I feel more dynamic—and this engages my full being at deeper levels.

Over the years in my teaching and exploring I’ve used a chart of Laban’s Effort Qualities (which are divided into Flow, Weight, Time & Space) set out in oppositions. For example in Flow – Streaming out/Holding back; or in Time -- Urgent/Expanding Time. It is not only this “pull” of the oppositions but the quality that is experienced between the two opposites which attracts me.

Laban and BMC became during this period two streams of ideas which began to enter my way of sensing sound and music creation.

My journey inward was on a very personal level through the 1980’s, being influenced as well from exploratory forms such as Authentic Movement, applied adaptations of phenomenology through readings of Thomas Clifton’s Music as Heard and Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, and biofeedback trainings. The writings of John Cage, Eugenio Barba, Ruth Zaporah, Deborah Hay, Jerzy Grotowski and David Bohm are also contributing to the forming process.

Thomas Clifton was my first introduction to Phenomenology. I really began to understand something which had been in front of me for years working with dancers – that our experience of music and sound is profoundly influenced by the fact that we are beings who move – we are movement on countless interconnecting levels. I was creating music in the dance studio experiencing Clifton’s vocabulary – movement towards and away from, far/near, overlapping/expanding, acceleration/deceleration, interruption, insertions, extensions, etc. These perceptual links between our experiential understanding of movement and our ability to unfold meaning in and develop relationships to music and sound were driving me.

Another crucial phenomenal discovery for me in the 1980’s was the experience of the Third Entity which is arising and nurtured within relationship. My first clear experience of it in performance was in 1981 at the American Dance Festival where I attended a performance of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company with John Cage in the orchestral pit with his colleagues. In this première performance, the dancers were hearing Cage’s music for the first time (score and choreography were created separately -- the way in which Cage and Cunningham always worked together). The score was not composed to support the dance, and the dance was not choreographed to the music, but they were to occupy the same time and space during performance. Both choreographer and composer gave up the traditional relationship to attain something larger. I was completely astonished with what was happening on stage. I sensed this third energetic element arising between the dance and music which was immensely intriguing and immensely beautiful and which would become a very important part of my personal artistic vision. This third entity had a true independence. How to nurture this ? How to develop training processes which would allow this to emerge ?

In 1993 I organized a seven country teaching tour of Europe, bringing the personal explorations out into the public workshop dynamic. And longer-term faculty* positions became laboratories for the development of the processes.

Holidays

Feb.19,1996 Amsterdam:

Bone exploration

—a thing of fine porcelain – internally…inside the middle of flesh – attracted towards the light, heavy today. How effects Space? Time? Weight?

I could ‘see’ and ‘hear’ with the bones.

3 dimensional surfaces. Energy travels around fingers, up hand, up arm, through all the bones…

Walked backwards with spine and ribs’seeing’ the way – lost idea of ‘front’ & ‘back’.

We worked with a very simple design. A piece of recorded music was played and participants grabbed personal relationship dynamics from the piece – tonal qualities, rhythmic and harmonic aspects, phenomenological aspects such as fore, mid and background dynamics, and emotional images, etc.

Then, for over an hour, we would experience a body system, say the bone system, through touch, movement, images, the imagination to bring into awareness the qualities of this system on a personal level. Movement for example from these body systems gives the experience of how the body systems can lead us to access often radically different energy qualities, sensations of weight, time, flow and space.

The recorded piece of music played before the bone exploration would then be reintroduced, and we would process the subtle, large, and often beautiful changes perceived in the piece. The body system, in this case the bones, had elicited quality changes in the way in which we perceived. We had entered a perceptual state initiated through that body system. Form, integration, dissonance, time, movement qualities, silences, etc. would take on wholly new dimensions. The music became something more completely lived through. **

_________________

*Department of Dance & Choreography, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA - 5 years;

The International Theatre School of Holland, Amsterdam – School for New Dance Development -1 Year;

Advanced School of Dramatic Arts, APHX, Athens Greece – 5 Years

** Discussions of the investigations of the Amsterdam Working Group were published in the international journal Contact Quarterly, vol. 22 #2, USA, Summer/Fall 1997 in English ( French translation, Nouvelles de Danse, Belgium, vol. 48/49 Automne/Hiver, November 2001; Greek translation, Horos (Xopos), vol. 24, Athens, Greece, Oct. Nov. Dec. 1996).

imagine

The development of the imagination in the workshops and in private practice is spirited, fluid, alive. What role does the imagination play here ? – It’s an expansive experiential source for energy qualities and their transformations directly applied to the creation process.

“When you do something, if you fix your mind on the activity with some confidence, the quality of your state of mind is the activity itself”. Shunryu Suzuki

Balancing the imagination-based processes in the act of cycling through awareness protocols demands vigilance towards internal patterns and qualities of energy and their transformations in time, and the complex external performance situation. This external situation includes attention to ones’ sound in space, relationships with other performers and spectators, theatrical values, etc. The balance arrives through being fully open to the internal and at the same time maintaining a strong external orientation.

“Imagination is not a… superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.”

Jean-Paul Sartre

The ‘observer’ in us

The witness plays an important role in this process. Merleau-Ponty describes the witness as “the nobody who sees”. The witness is the part of consciousness which objectively watches and tracks with a ‘watchfulness’ or ‘universal attention’ towards all of the performance parameters. Through a non-judgemental detachment (ideally) it is in ‘dialogue’ with the body system or energy movement and the energy quality’s forming potential. The ‘observer’ in us becomes an objective ‘audience’ for our real-time creation work.

To embody

I have never been able to find a fully satisfactory definition of ‘embodiment’, and it always proves difficult for translators. The knowledge is experiential and thus challenging to

“Embodiment gives us a lot of awareness, attention and perceptual tasks to engage.” Ruth Zaporah

The Inter-psychic Characters: In 1998, at The Advanced School of Dramatic Arts, APHX, Athens, Greece, I began developing an embodiment practice with my acting students which I call the inter-psychic characters. The training and subsequent process is focused towards the embodiment of energy quality and its transition to the stage. Over the years it has had a profound influence on my music creation process. The three principal Inter-psychic characters are the Shadow, the Guest and the Bystander. The Main Character is the scripted stage character or its equivalent.

The first function of these explorations is to find the deeper physical/psychic core of the Main Character. It is a decoding of the invisible -- the unconscious comes into view.

“One does not work on the body or the voice, one works on energy.” Eugenio Barba

The Bystander – creates a dynamic outside of the energy quality grid created by the other characters. It is outside of the action looking in – but strongly influences the inner action through its presence. It changes the weight value and tensile qualities of the stage space.

The Shadow in Crete

In Crete (24-25 October, 2015) I was co-teaching with Thalia Ditsa. We had 16 participants from various backgrounds, dance, theatre, professional, amateur in a beautiful studio used primarily for tango classes.

The two-day workshop, 10 intensive hours, was about building an awareness sensibility, playing with attention and perception through perceptual aspects of touch, space, movement, voice --- and developing deepening partnering relationships. It was very important for them to develop a strong relationship with one partner so that the second day’s work with the Shadow could be entered with open trust and freedom.

Merleau-Ponty wrote that…”the first operation of attention is to create a field, either perceptual or mental which can be ‘surveyed’.”

Literally, that’s exactly what we did the first day with ‘Landscapes’. I presented two possibilities for them to imagine.

Marianthi chooses Landscape I -- It is night, there is a rectangular field of grass and at the far edge, at a distance, the beginning of a forest. At the threshold of the line of dark trees is a single lit candle.

We ask Marianthi to perform her character, which is located in Landscape I. She begins upstage left and gently moves downstage to downstage center. She mimes a relationship with the candle. It is a simple, exquisite three or four minutes. We then ask Marianthi to describe her character’s action. She mentions emotional states such as fear and loneliness and the comfort the candle gave her.

Marianthi has partnered with Anna for nearly two days now. They have grown together through the sensing work --- and are now ready to explore the Shadow.

Anna’s Shadow creates a new meaning spatially and energetically, a completely new feeling state – a new dynamic in Time – something seemingly so simple has immediately and recognizably brought forth a precise quality which resonates in a thoroughly poetic way, and everyone there senses this.

We have peopled the stage.

As I walk with Thalia after the workshop I consider what has happened as something of beauty in the art of performance – but what actually happened?

In less than 10 hours performers of various levels and backgrounds where able to perform something richly poetic without rehearsal or conscious planning. They amplified their attention through various awareness protocols and peopled the stage.

Vowel Man’s Geography

As Deborah Hay famously put it:

“My perception is my creativity”

Each of the seven major energy centers or chakras is its own atmosphere and quality, rich in archetypes and body spatial sensation. Each center is also a radiant synergetic aspect of the entire body and spirit. They are dynamic perceptual sources.

personal order

Awareness protocols address our Energetic Signature – our personal order and quality, the recognizable way in which we are in the world – influenced by which body systems we naturally and historically express in; influenced by our culture and environmental history – and as artists this manifests in various “styles’ and ‘patterns’ which attract us and which we duplicate. Accessing differing energy qualities to our Energetic Signature has the potential of expanding our expressive range and evolving and transforming the way in which we are in the world.

Current Practice

As a baritone saxophonist, all of my daily practice (all technical work as well as open explorations) is processed in some form through an energetic modality. These include the experiential anatomy work, chakra work, and embodiment explorations.

Imagine, in exploration, working with a single pitch, multiphonic color, chord, etc., ( a sound element with a distinct and independent existence) and to cycle through awareness of the different body systems, different energy centers, imaginative processes, oppositions….and simultaneously witnessing the subtle transformations of the sound element.

“Sometimes the body leads the imagination, sometimes the imagination leads the body.”

Evan Parker

I begin with placing my awareness into the lungs. I start to feel a warm expansion, a transformation of my sense of Time, and weight – a type of enlarging out into the surrounding space .The sound element, the mulitphonic, has subtly expanded in its middle harmonic changing the color and density. In my imagination process I introduce a light quality – Reflection—and stay with this quality for some moments and witness any adjustments in the sound quality. I introduce an awareness of my third chakra, so that the focus is three dimensionally placed into my solar plexus, and again witness transformation. The body system is then gently shifted to my lymph system and the multiphonic takes on a much more thoroughly edged and focused nature. I shift the light quality to Brilliance and the geographic location of an energy center to my fourth chakra area. The sound element has again subtly recolored and I witness the transformation. I then bring in an opposition – cool fields receding / hot fields advancing, and witness any sensual change in the character of the multiphonic.

Postscript

Karlheinz Stockhausen experimented in the 1960’s with what he called ‘Intuitive Music’ – his construct of music creation in real-time. In his view, these were not satisfactory experiments. He said “it needs a different type of musician” and “intuitive music should have a chance…. How to prepare musicians for intuitive music creation? Trust ourselves…we are instruments ourselves.”

Baritone saxophonist, sound artist, stage and film actor, Joe Tornabene has been performing, composing, sound designing and exploring performance practice for music, dance and theatre for over 43 years.

Joe was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Award at the 46th Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Greece) 2005 for his role in Kyriakos Katzourakis’ film, Sweet Memory.

Two of his sound designs have been placed in the permanent collection of the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts in New York.

He has worked extensively in Greece with the award winning dance company Lathos Kinisi (Wrong Movement), directed by Konstantin Mihos, and with the handicapped dance company Dagipoli. He was also an actor with Theatro Technis (The Art Theatre of Greece).

Joe has taught experiential workshops and long-term courses concerned with the relationships of perception, embodiment, movement, music, sound, and improvisation in major dance, theatre and music academies in 10 countries.

He has begun writing a book documenting his teaching and performance practice.

Joe Tornabene currently lives in France.

Site: http://joetmusic.wix.com/joe-tornabene

Special thanks to Valeska Schöne, Thalia Ditsa, and Konstantin Mihos

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