RAW-(Material): RAW-(Material) at Weaverville Yoga

Dissemination of the RAW-(Material) project as a collaborative in-the-moment-composition Dance & Music performance.

The RAW-(Material) Dance & Music performance took place at Weaverviile Yoga studio space on Saturday May 14 2016 at 7pm.

My collaborator for this event was musician and composer Elisa Faires.

Elisa and I have been collaborating since 2007 and she has been involved in my process throughout the development of my performance method.

In order to represent the mode of my interactions with the raw materials of nature in the RAW-(Material) journal series, I prepared a basket of nature objects that we could respond to in movement and sound.

This basket was offered to audience members to pick out one item and to express their thoughts on that object.

We began with a series of short, two-minute “gesture drawings” on each of the objects that audience members had picked out, using their comments to inform our response.

These were as follows:

Shell (used to contain a life)

Yellow Flower (energy of new life)

Stick (old, dry, twisted)

Pod (angular shapes, soft fuzzy texture)

Feather (black & white stripes)

Ivy (interesting mottled pattern)

We then continued with a ten-minute piece, drawing from qualities of the nature objects I have interacted with throughout the RAW-(Material) series to inform our movement and sound.

Then concluded with an improvisation where we invited audience members to join us in responding to the nature objects from the basket and to each other.

Each section ended with the audience making wind sounds to blow the performance away in the breeze.