Put on one of the music tracks and start anywhere
or
It could be nice to start low, lying on the floor, breathing.
Begin with continuous slow motion,
when you started you do not stop.
Moving in and out of the floor.
Use weight shifts
which allow for travel through space – slowly.
Use the spiral, the twist,
in your spine, in your whole body, often – slowly.
Look at each other – see each other –
seeing is being seen.
Once in a while repeat for yourself the question
“How slow is slow?”
Slow Rave
(something for your soul)
Slow Rave for Peter
The first Slow Motion Rave I have facilitated was during the Body IQ Festival in Berlin in November 2019. It came from the strong wish to slow down on the dance studio floor, combining experiences I had in the past with instructions and scores from teachers and colleagues, from my solo work twisted trident, from dancing in clubs and watching dance on stage:
Nancy Stark Smith’s score “low-slow-flow” from years ago merged with an experience with Kirstie Simson on an outdoor dance studio on the Croatian seaside where we were moving slowly and constantly for more than an hour, making it possible for sensing more detailed gravity and motion. In slowness I could give attention to places in my body that I would otherwise skip, when moving faster;
Keith Hennessy and Maria Scaroni’s single action scores that often end with a section of slow motion “with weight sifts!”;
My own obsession with the possibility of twisting from the spine, and the opportunity to see the whole room and everything and everybody in it and beyond through the possibility of that twist and spiral;
Giselle Viennes group choreography Crowd, that I saw at the big stage of Volksbühne Berlin was literary a slow motion rave,
All of it I put into this score of the first Slow Motion Rave in November 2019.
A month later I was invited by Marcio K. Canabarro to the first CARE meeting in Budapest, it was here that I proposed the Slow Motion Rave with the live music by Bela Associação, a 90 minute experience with 60 bpm music (60 beats per minute – resembling the heart rate) in the dance studio of SIN-Arts.
For easter 2020 the Slow Motion Rave was planned to take place during Stretch Festival in “the Village” Berlin, a queer mens community space for mind/body/spirit, but due to the pandemic it got canceled.
So it is all still quiet fresh, and for this January issue of the Grand re Union online magazine I have invited the musicians Jonny Kadaver (from Bela Associação) and Marc Lohr (from Cranky Bodies a/company) to provide a 60 minute Slow Motion Rave music for you to dance your own version or to dance the score with your chosen family or in safe distance from each other in other spaces.
Before Covid 19-times and coming myself from a practice of Contact Improvisation I would say touch and physical meetings are allowed and encouraged, nonverbal consent is easier negotiated in slow motion.
In the more sex positive space of the queer Stretch Festival where the sensibility towards the importance of consent negotiation is heightened, I would have included, after some time, when the score has established a certain energy and ground, the possibility of slow motion undressing yourself and one another, as in the Cranky Bodies a/company costume rule “naked is always a costume option.”