The Rowan, or Mountain Ash in one of my favourite trees. There’s a long row of them opposite the petrol station in Wirksworth - dense clusters of orange berries against deep blue sky this brilliant September. Mountain Ash is such a resilient tree – I’ve seen them growing high up the mountain side, wizened and
leaning against the wind.
I lay awake and thought if the year represented a lifetime, where would the seasons begin and end? I suppose it’s different for each person – we all grow up and grow old at different times. Autumn – a time of change and intensity of colour, of weather, of light.
On Saturday I went to a dance workshop in Derby and had a great time moving fast, swooping down to the floor and back up again, trying not to mind that the edges of my movement phrases were ragged, and that sometimes I skimmed through the gist of the sequence, rather than achieved accuracy. There seems no
time left to work on refinement, and what would be the point? I was at least twenty years older than the teacher as well as the other dancers, and I don’t really want to dance like that any longer.
How do I want to dance? I’m thinking about it, working ideas, reading, moving a little between my classes. It seems to be in a state of flux. I only know that I will dance into old age like those extraordinary women on Fabulous Fashionistas, shown on channel 4 last week. And that I’ll carry on teaching
movement. It’s a way of life – the best way of life.
This short film, Works on Grass, by Welsh choreographer and film maker, Joanna Young, created in Wales, and redolent of the poetry of R.S. Thomas, recalled me to everything I love about movement – intensity of purpose, a physical and emotional connection with the earth or the space we move in, and am economy of form.
No gesture is superfluous. There’s so much noise and manic activity in much dance I see. This small dance filmed in a field in Wales is fine as a poem - a beautiful thing.
leaning against the wind.
I lay awake and thought if the year represented a lifetime, where would the seasons begin and end? I suppose it’s different for each person – we all grow up and grow old at different times. Autumn – a time of change and intensity of colour, of weather, of light.
On Saturday I went to a dance workshop in Derby and had a great time moving fast, swooping down to the floor and back up again, trying not to mind that the edges of my movement phrases were ragged, and that sometimes I skimmed through the gist of the sequence, rather than achieved accuracy. There seems no
time left to work on refinement, and what would be the point? I was at least twenty years older than the teacher as well as the other dancers, and I don’t really want to dance like that any longer.
How do I want to dance? I’m thinking about it, working ideas, reading, moving a little between my classes. It seems to be in a state of flux. I only know that I will dance into old age like those extraordinary women on Fabulous Fashionistas, shown on channel 4 last week. And that I’ll carry on teaching
movement. It’s a way of life – the best way of life.
This short film, Works on Grass, by Welsh choreographer and film maker, Joanna Young, created in Wales, and redolent of the poetry of R.S. Thomas, recalled me to everything I love about movement – intensity of purpose, a physical and emotional connection with the earth or the space we move in, and am economy of form.
No gesture is superfluous. There’s so much noise and manic activity in much dance I see. This small dance filmed in a field in Wales is fine as a poem - a beautiful thing.
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