Born in a Taxi

The Born in a Taxi people are running a week long intensive improvised physical theatre workshop at Dancehouse and we are making it part of our creative development. Today was day one, locking our little stack of bikes up on Alex parade and finding a place on the wide shiny dark wooden floor.

There are lots of familiar words – school of fish, initiator, responder, solo, group work. There are lots of familiar directions – notice the weight of your feet in the floor, notice which parts of your body touch the floor…

And there is something very familiar about improvising with Luke and Christy. The first time we ever did this as a trio was with Kate. And yet we know each other so well. The physicality of training acro, the trust of having been spotted by them both when I feel like I’m going to die, long nights dancing on some crazy dance-floor and being ridiculous, outrageous and bouncing off each other across the room. Saying the scary thing and it being made ok. Teaching classes with both of them where you pick up on the others’ idea and run with it and Luke and I always say ‘planning leads to unresponsive teaching.’

So the feedback that we got is that it was ‘sophisticated’ it ‘walked the line between theatre and dance’ and everyone went ‘Oh!’ when someone said we worked as a trio. Which, of course we do, yet working this way together is new to us.

New things too, new scores, new ways of moving, new people, new group dynamic. Beginning to take people’s weight who you don’t know, making eye contact and a connection and creating a story after just a short moment of play. Watching the stories arise on the floor.

Feels like a luxury and a privilege to be able to spend a week doing this.

Cycled back to Pigeon Hole with them afterwards and climbed on the new bunk beds, Luke explained his so many ideas to me. Then drank tea with Christy in the Pigeon Hole kitchen while Luke and Tim looked at the set and talked structural integrity and tour-ability.