The hnadspring goal

Today the plan was to work on the show after tumbling – which finishes at 7:30, but when I dropped by Pigeon Hole on my way to tumbling, Christy was smiling through some pain. She’d come off her bike and was bruised and bleeding a bit. Nothing serious, but a bit nasty anyway. We left her, bravely cooking and went to tumble without her.
Tonight in tumbling I did a handspring from a powerstart down only a centremetre drop. I looked at the set up after I landed it and though. ‘that means I can do it.’ I said to the group that I wanted to be able to do handsprings by Friday. It feels like a realistic goal and a get all happy just thinking about it.
When we got back to Pigeon Hole, Christy had cooked and we sat and ate with an evening of non-physical rehearsal hanging over us a little. Once we’d finished I looked at Christy who was still a little post-accident and suggested that we just ditch rehearsal for tonight and go to bed. I think the day you come off your bicycle you deserve to just lie down after dinner. As soon as we agreed, the conversation lightened and we all got ridiculous, standing in the kitchen laughing at each other. Some days it’s good to rest.

bunkbed choreography

Another day at Kingston. We set up the set, timing ourselves today. Luke on pole, Christy and I putting together the bunks. The pole takes twelve minutes and the whole thing takes twenty. “Definitely shorter than bubblewrap.” We sit with calendars and phones and do some planning, it’s been a week since we had a proper rehearsal and there are some scheduling issues to sort out. Café Sana as ever for an early lunch.
We do the newspapers as warm up. It’s getting smoother. Then we work the bunkbed play again, checking the footage when we forget, trying to get the moves into our bodies. We look at the tricks that haven’t made it in yet and scramble our brains trying to edit the footage into an order. Do the routine on the floor over and over again. Marisa in the office is very sweet and wants to come see a bit of what we’re doing. By four o’clock we have only just put together the routine and we call her upstairs to watch. Its brand new and we talk to each other the whole time – ‘kip over’ ‘nip ups’ ‘follow me’ ‘roll’.
At the end of the day Christy and Luke try some moves on the pole. We’re still trying to make a call about whether to sticky it or not. Much nicer not to get sticky on our costumes – but then there’s a lot more you can do once the sticky is on. Nonetheless, the pole is a total winner, goes up and down quicker than the bunkbeds and the slight bending under load isn’t a problem.
We pack down again and drive to black rock. Amanda hushes us at the door because Tarlo is asleep. There are piles of ‘options’ on different chairs. We all try various items on. She has op shopped like crazy and has the basis for our costumes, which she plans to then alter with details and stretchy panels so we can move in them. We all look ridiculous in our too loose or too tight daggy op shop clothes, but Amanda has a vision, pinning us up, describing where the lace, fake buttons, collar will be added.
We are starving and stop for fish and chips on the way home.

the pole

The pole is an ‘x-stage’ a free standing pole that packs and travels for pole dancers to take with them to gigs. It’s perfect for a touring circus show with a Chinese pole act. When I call Luke on my way home from work on Sunday night he has watched the instructional DVD and is setting it up. “Come round and look, it’ll be done by the time you get here.” Of course it isn’t, but it’s pretty close and I help with the final slotting together. We try it on spinning mode and adjust to staying still. It bends a little and it seemed to take longer than the 15 minutes they claim it will take to set up. It has 3 extra bags to what the woman in the online picture is pulling. I feel nervous we’ve made a wrong decision, but am ready to see how it goes.

the narrative letter

Christy is in Tasmania with One Trick Pony performing at the Junction Arts Festival. My housemate has swine flu and I have a sore throat and feel dizzy. I drive around to Pigeon Hole which would be ridiculous if I was well but feels very appropriate right now. I go there because apparently the pole is going to be delivered any day now. We write a letter to Kate who has been asking us, from Switzerland, about narrative.

Christy calls from Tassie and we put her on loudspeaker. She has been doing backflips on concrete in zero degrees. We laugh and read her bits of the letter.
Afterwards Luke and I stand in the kitchen and talk about the hero’s journey, different ways of structuring a show as you devise it. How we saw the structure of various shows: Slava, The Business etc. We talk about graphing mood, tension, skill level, plot points etc. We both like the idea of graphing shows.

rehearsal without so much sleeping

Amanda wants to meet us early in the morning at her house in Blackrock. I cycle round to Pigeon Hole at 6:45 in the morning and we pack the set into Nona sleepy and ridiculous. We watched Inception together the night before so we are driving and sleepy and laughing and saying, “But do you ever actually see the spinning top drop?” and “the moment where she jumps out the window, she’s actually in the same hotel room isn’t she?” and “so do you think he actually goes to a deeper level?”

Punt Road is Punt Road at rush hour and we stop start through the city and all the way to Amanda’s. She pours us peppermint tea and we all talk longingly of coffee. Christy peels oranges from her green bag. We look at Amanda’s drawings and talk through the designs. We look at swatches of colours, at tea towels and tablecloths, hold up orange, green, blue, red and make decisions about the colours we like together. Green and red, but is it too Christmassy? The pale blue is nice, nicer than the darker blue, no, not the orange…. Until we have four swatches of colour laid out next to each other that we like. We all take it in turns to cuddle and entertain Tarlo, who is crawling, standing up and falling, surprised onto his bottom.

Drive back to Kingston with only peppermint tea and oranges inside us and set up the set. We love café sana big breakfast and coffee. We run newspapers sleepy and full, and the newspapers fall all over the floor and our brains scramble and we laugh. There are so many moments when we freeze with newspapers held in the air and our faces eyes wide and confused. But the choreography is slowly getting more solid.

Then we play on the set. We put together the moves we did last week into short sequences, filming each little series of tricks that we like and then moving on to make a new set. Then we look back over the footage and begin to link it into a longer routine. By four pm we have two minutes of a routine which we film and edit, film and edit each time we run.

On the way home we are exhausted but happy. There is something so fun about the set and all our moves on them, about choreography that flows, about just missing each other each time and learning a pathway.

"I can feel my frontal lobe"

Newspaper choreography. It's completely outrageously ridiculous. We passing, sliding, holding, replacing newspapers quickly between us, learning an intricate routine between three people and four rolls of newspaper. We make up moves, film what we made, run it again, make up some more, check out the film to make us remember. And our choreography brains switch on and then slowly melt. Luke says "i can feel my frontal lobe" and the next minute we are stick fighting with the newspapers and falling on the floor with laughter. After two hours work we have made up a minute of material. It is fun, productive work. The junction between the brain and the body remembering. Crossing and re-crossing the line between focus and hysteria.

four weeks today

Tumbling without Luke and Christy because they are both a little injured and wanting to rest. It's strange to be spotted by unfamiliar people. Teach them what I need. Aren't sure of them so I don't go for it. Jess says, of my backflips, "she'll have them by the end of the term." It's been a long, long time of trying and not doing backflips. If I do get them I will be a text book case for perseverance in adults learning tumbling.

They arrive as tumbling finishes and Christy makes tea for everyone (soy milk, cow milk, black, this one on the corner is yours) we all stand in the round-off line and cheer the tea-maker.

We sit on the mats and talk - I say what I'm feeling: that the main thing I want to do is get on the set again. Anything that doesn't involve that doesn't feel quite worth it. Christy says that the day of playing on the set in Kingston was the best day so far.

We go and sit in the truck and think about newspapers. Lists of tricks have worked so far, so we write them: acrobatic tricks Luke wants to include as part of his super-newspaper boy routine, ideas for the Christy-Ailsa human bicycle. We look at the footage of the newspaper passing we did last week. It's surprising what works and what doesn't. We all agree about what we like and don't like and Luke edits the footage down to the best moves and we watch again. It's so pretty and I'm excited about putting this routine together and learning it.

Christy has a rehearsal for a piece she is doing at Junction Arts Conference in Tassie next week and she gathers costumes and music and races off.

We meet with Lena and Steph from Westside who say yes, they are happy to support our creative development which means we can set up the bunkbeds in the Westside space and start to run routines there. This feels like a big step forward in terms of planning the following weeks rehearsals. We open four weeks today.

butcher's paper time

I come to Pigeon Hole and sit by the heater. Christy gets butcher's paper and we start to write ideas about narrative.
I think of Ana Kokinos talking about a film's 'controlling idea' and i try to write some sentences that I think are our controlling idea. Luke is interested in questions, points of enquiry. We write some questions too.
Christy talks about how they made Quiche. They started with an aesthetic. I feel like we are very clear about what our aesthetic is - especially after last nights conversation with Amanda.
Christy gets a fresh piece of paper and writes "aesthetic: comic book suburban." Underneath we have chosen one of my 'controlling idea' sentences which is 'We are more powerful than we think we are" Then we spend some time choosing questions.
"What makes us feel less powerfull and what do we hold up against it?"
"What are the skills we have that go unnoticed?"
"How do we use the superhero fantasy?"

the most fun so far

"Our house is full of set - its a bit overwhelming." It's true. When you live in the back of a truck and you use it for transporting things, the things end up on your couch, on your kitchen floor, on the pathway to your bed. We unload the table and the bunkbed peices and the bits of acromat and the long roll of chequered lino. We talk about a trailor.
It looks like a lot of stuff to be touring round the country and lumping in and out of theatres. I'm daunted.

We stack everything in the elevator and then set it up on the stage. Amazingly it seems to only take about ten minutes. The set is bulky, but not heavy and awkward. Every piece is easy to carry. "It will be a quicker bump in than Bubblewrap" we say. Every piece of set/equipment we have needs to be considered in terms of touring.

We spend a long time looking at the layout of each item. the mats, the lino, where the astro turf will go. The aesthetic versus the practicality of where we want mats. the additional barrier of not wanting to cut foot holes for the table and bunks in the mats means we are limited to very particular angles. The relationship between the table and the bunkbed needs to be pretty specific. If we are putting the mats under the lino and the astroturf we really need to have very clear visuals about where the mats are and where they aren't.

Finally we come to a conclusion. For today. Lets play on it.
So we warm up and start with forward rolls in and dive rolls out of. We jump on the table and up onto the top bunk, we do table-slides onto the bottom bunk and forward rolls out. Then we start on the list we made on friday. We try each trick once or twice and most of them get a tick. Yes this one will be possible. So will this. Only a couple feel like they will require a lot of work. Our skills translate easily onto the equipment. By 2:30 we want coffee and treats but we have worked through the whole list of tricks.

Suddenly the set feels more vital to our training routine. We want to start putting together routines, we want to get used to working on this equipment. It's going to limit everything we do while offering us a million options for new things.

We look at the rehearsal schedule of venues with this in mind and make some phone calls, book Kingston for some more sessions, think about a proposal to Westside.

Then we meet with Amanda. She comes in and sits on the floor of the theatre and watches some of our impro footage on Luke's laptop. The Kingston people are locking up so we walk the cold streets of Moorabbin together trying to find an after-five cafe. The only thing open is subway so we sit there drinking orange juices from the subway fridge and brainstorming costumes. She says "You're magic, I think you're magic, you're going to just discover your dog ears and its going to be amazing" she says, "a quick change is easy you'll just need one other person..." and she explains the velcro. She talks about kneepads and her own childhood dressup box and an old black and white photo of a girl in a pretty white dress with flippers and a snorkel mask.

We talk about a black and white palate in the sense of a newspaper. With all the grainy greys and off whites - chromatic - and additional splashes of magical colour. I like that this is similar to Bubblewrap in a way - the very limited palate. It get's dark outside and we make dates. Plan to talk soon.

We drive back through the dark streets in Nona with me typing a proposal to Westside on the laptop and Christy alternately encouraging Luke's driving and looking over my shoulder to help me with sentences (but only at the traffic lights because otherwise she gets carsick)

improvising

Its the end of the week and after tumbling Luke's back is sore and we decide not to train. Instead we go to Auspicious. We sit in the warm and drink tea and eat too many jelly-frogs. We make a list of all the moves we would like to try on and over and through the bunkbeds and the table. We type and type and our list gets longer and longer. At the end of it we look at it and say "if we have a tenth of these the show will have cool tricks." We watch some of the footage from monday. The long improvisations, pulling out moments that we liked:
Laying out a map on the floor using the newspapers.
The dog-head girl saying everything she knows about dogs
The newspaper boy dance
The boat with the newspaper boy in the back
There were more. I forget...

catch me...

Left the house at 7:10am rather than 6:10am to go to training this morning. Spent a couple of hours after tumbling working tricks we want to use in the show. Things feel solid. Quickly ran through the list and kept moving, keeping warm, keeping our bodies busy. Slate roof, where I base and do nothing and it makes us laugh. Passing Christy through a bunch of high moves - which is always solid on the second go round. Surfing on bluebird which is easy but it would be nice to work a down from. Double flag with me basing - which seems to take a few tries but we always get solid eventually. I worked the kip over Christy's back from fear and two spotters to confidence and no spotting. I'd like to do it in the show just because it will mean i keep the trick. We try a bunch of "Catch me!" tricks. Christy jumping down to us and us needing to catch her in a hurry. It's fun. Christy lands and looks up with big eyes and says "fun!" and then scrambles up again to the height to try another jump.

We go to the Westside Circus bakery and eat sausage rolls and coffee.

goodbye montmorency, hello east brunswick

goodbye train-trips where i write on the way home. goodbye gum trees in the burbs, goodbye central heating, goodbye getting up in the dark and walking under the moon to go to training. Hello Lygon street and 5 minutes cycle to pigeon hole. Hello bedroom and housemates and the tramride to uni.

It takes a day to do two ute loads of furniture and clothes and to clean the Monty house. Now I'm back in my old hood and all my making-work feels like it lives nearby

arranging the set

I'm late because uni is so fun i have to stay there. I drive up to Pigeon Hole and we look at the set. It's ready to play on only the warehouse is so cold. The concrete floor feels like it won't be very fun on barefeet. We move the table, hold up the chequered lino, think about colours, curtains, the pole the mats. We decide to take everything to Kingston and lay it out there where we can see it against the blacks. Bring the mats so we can try all our moves. We go sit in Nona and talk, plan organise.

obsessed with newspapers

I am back from adventures in Byron Bay and outside my Montmorency house are the week's newspapers in so many plastic rolls. I pack them all in my bag and take them on the train to Kingston. Now we have nine wrapped newspapers which is a passing set and we are inspired to play newspaper games. I lead a round of newspaper passing like the group juggle. Christy suggests we play newspaper treasure corners.
We sit and write some of our thoughts about newspaper rounds and then we do impros in pairs bouncing off the written materiel, remembering the rule Kate gave us - if you get stuck in the character - go for abstract movement. It will work. The early mornings, the aiming for each doormat, the one handed folding, the bike that is so heavy with newspapers it falls over.

Christy does a solo impro. She dances with the newspapers, laying them out and stepping over them and cartwheeling in the gaps.

We have to talk about super-heros then, because we have been so excited about the newspapers and we feel like we need to connect it back.

I do a solo in my dog hat. It's very very fun. Luke puts on the Top Gun sound track and I do strange doggie ballet and read a book, pointing my toes and wriggling my non-existant tail. I have to work to stop myself from laughing. Luke asks me questions and I play more. It's funny and silly. I suck my thumb and talk about everything i know about dogs. I want to be the dog superhero.