Contemplative play

I woke up at half past four this morning, still full of impressions from yesterday, so I got up and wrote for two hours before sinking back into deep sleep and waking up several hours later than usual.

Yesterday, after meeting with Phil and Rufus, we drove to Kenilworth to meet Rhiannon from school and take her to a dance event in a studio theatre in Coventry University's Ellen Terry building. By sheer co-incidence this was Rhiannon's second visit to the city centre of the day, as her class had been on a visit to the Cathedral and its museum, as part of their study of the Second World War. Kath and Anto had a Wriggledance gig in Oxford, but as she knew we were coming she arranged for us to go to this particular event which she was bound to miss.

One of the people making the show was Tim Rubidge, a friend of ours from nearly forty years ago, when he and three partners were forming a dance group and needing accommodation in Bristol. They were recommended to us by Jane Winearls, doyenne of the contemporary dance scene whom I met in my Birmingham days and worked with as a University chaplain. The four lived in attic servants' quarters atop our vast St Agnes Vicarage for two years. There were two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, and a living room floor large enough to double as a dance studio. We all got on well, and I guess having dancers in the house influenced Katherine, then of nursery age, as she and Tim now share the same profession. She and he met up in Hexam last autumn during the Wriggledance tour, where Tim now lives. It was wonderful to see him after a quarter of a century, now a dance guru with white hair, not quite as athletic as he was in his youth, but still moving nicely.

The show was a work in progress, born of what participants call 'The Pneuma Project'. It's an extended creative reflection on the nature of pneuma = breath/life/spirit, improvisations in music and dance, in a given setting, lightly defined by its stage props - a curtain of white muslin cotton strips blown randomly by a fan offstage, lit occasionally with projected images of random curves and lines, painting light patterns on the curtain and on performers. Apart from this, the empty space with a few lights was occupied by dancers moving in response to the sounds being created by two instrumentalists.

Two accordion players began by walking slowly around the stage drawing air into their instruments and expelling it, resembling the sound of living breath for many minutes of silence, before moving making and developing the soundscape with musical notes. Tim first appeared moving slowly, carrying over his shoulder a long bare dry branch from a tree in perfect balance, an exercise in mindfulness setting the scene for unfolding improvised dance movements against the soundscape with no overall narrative to define the evolving whole, but driven by the dancers; response to their environment and to a lesser extent, each other.

The focussed stillness of the audience of about thirty, mostly dance students, was remarkably intense for the forty-five minutes of the performance. It was an amazing rich experiment in sound and movement in which time seemed to be suspended, or determined by the rhythm of breathing alone. Very much like being inside a meditation, though without the formal structure. Not quite dream-like, though full of a sense of mystery and wonder. A spiritual experience? Yes, but without the usual defining conceptual boundaries. Simply playing with silence and breath in whatever way emerged in that space and time. An expression of pure spiritual freedom born of trust in each other and trust in the process.

It was offered as a work in progress presented to an audience for the first time, therefore a learning experience for all involved. It was very much the kind of experiment I wish Christians and other religious adventurers could get into and work on to discover new depths in the living relationship between the Word and the Spirit.

Despite late rising we got Rhiannon out and ready for her youth theatre workshop in time, and picked her up from Warwick University Arts Centre afterwards. After a lazy dozy afternoon, Kath and Anto arrived triumphant from their penultimate Wriggledance tour gig, and we went out to supper at Zizzi's to celebrate Anto's birthday.