We feel the unpredictable nature of this year has not quite been captured by the material we have created so far. Time to party. Most of our interview participants participants spoke about moments of quiet and moments of upheaval. Plue’s personality and movement vocabulary is becoming clear, however there is a sense of ‘something missing’ when we stepped out of the studio.
We needed to rejig ourselves, add some ‘Sparkles’ as Abii and Letty told us. Aisha inspired us to bring a disco light in today, to see whether we could make a cleansing ritual of our own - cleanse the space of old ideas and electrify it with new ones. Queer night life is expansive, malleable, inclusive, hedonistic, playful and extravagant - a messy, splurgy, moveable feast. We wanted to see if we could move this feast into the studio and electrify our bones with some queer energy - re-find that looseness and plug back into the queer mothership. We put on the disco light, ramped up 90’s techno and bashed our heads around in the space. As Aisha had warned us, it didn't really work. We are both finding it quite difficult to splurge right now.
The resulting movement is weirdly disjointed from the other movement material we've made, but reflects a bubbling urge to grind, sweat and expand into other people and their bodies. We want it to signify the need to release in short intense bursts in such a contained time.
We are not enjoying- lots of weight on the wrists, being too big to hide, not having an outside eye, having an idea you loved yesterday become something you hate today, 4pm sunset.
More mirror play today.
Joe- I don't think we are 'in' the piece yet. Its not 'us' dancing.
Eli- Does it have to be 'us' dancing?
Joe- Yes.
Eli- Ok, next week we put Eli and Joe in Plue. I'm guessing no wigs then?
Smoke + Mirrors (Joe is Smoke, Eli is Mirrors) Part peep show, part hidden contortion act.
Major source of work place frustraition- We keep on seeing Joe's elbows when we shouldn't be able to see Joe's elbows.
Joe- How much do people deserve to see of me? I love to test what people expect to see me wear, act, say and do. How much of myself should I censor to make sure others feel comfortable?
Eli- I constantly self-censor and there are large parts of myself that I only feel comfortable exploring behind tightly closed doors. I have a heightened awareness of other people's comfort, which I am inclined to prioritise over my own.
We've been playing with the idea of self-censorship and concealment - what parts of yourself do you choose or feel comfortable sharing with others. We used what M and J said about 'hidden features' as a departure point. We've been particularly interested in how something that presents as calm and collected could be performing an awkward series of contortions behind the scenes in order to skirt under the radar.
We are enjoying- neck turns, scratching the floor, London in winter, having pretty shoulders, when we are one colour, lying on each other, the view from Artsadmin, banjos (well Joe is, Eli not so much).
We've been working with what Jo and Marta said about intimacy today - how Lockdown has warped and given it new meaning. We've been trying to find ways to embody:
-That clunky, awkward feeling of trying to connect with someone and totally failing
-That feeling you get when you've been talking with your friends on Zoom, then you realise you've been sitting alone in your room for hours - Being together but realising you're alone
When exploring this we turned into weird, stilted automatons. We transitioned into this way of moving organically, like we ran on hydraulics. Neither of us has moved like this before and we are both a bit bewildered by how natural it seems to feel . . .
Plue’s movement vocabulary is starting to take shape now. This controlled, stiff and mechanical response feels right. The awkward small talk and robotic responses are crunching across our muscles and bones. It feels great.
We've have also been playing with the idea of signalling. We are interested in LGBTQIA+ handkerchief codes as a way of covertly signposting concealed parts of your identity to other people. Questions like- 'How much do I choose to let you know me?' have been circulating and we have been ruminating on what Abii and Letty said about 'being outed'. We've been exploring ways to use Plue's costumes to 'signal' to each other and ways we can communicate with others without the use of touch.
Space to play. Finally. We want to play with illusion, reflection, humour, awkwardness and definitely colour. And we do that.
Today we've been working with imagery from our conversation with Alex and Liam- For them, the beginning of Lockdown was a tangled mesh of different strands of their lives, all colliding together at once. We tried to embody this idea and use it as a departure point to experiment with making optical illusions. There's been some gentle and interesting clashes of choreographic preference, (Joe likes to fill empty spaces with action and noise. Elinor likes to sit in stillness and silence for awkwardly long periods of time). Somehow, a strange, hybrid way of moving is emerging and its got far too many legs and arms . . .
Costume designer Chloe Mead [www.instagram.com/cjsmead] made Plue's vibrant pink and blue costumes. The idea for the half and half costumes was what first propelled us to make this project. We want people to be confused about whose body is whose when moving in the space.
The costumes are purposely jester-like. We are playing with thoughts surrounding how some rural queer people (ourselves included) sometimes feel conspicuous in public. Sometimes we stick out, inadvertently disrupting people's expectations, sometimes inadvertently providing spectacle by just going about our daily lives. Its fun to push and play with that and when confronted with situations like this, Joe especially takes great pleasure in playfully testing people's embarrassment and/or weirdness thresholds. We are quite privileged to be able to easily chameleon straightness as a cis woman - cis man couple and as a couple and individuals, this allows us to dial up or down our queerness to suit different contexts. We want Plue's costumes to mimic this shifting, chameleon quality.
28.11.12 - Interviews finished
Thank you Taunton Pride, 2BU, Somerset Lesbian Network, Diversity Trust and Q ART for connecting us with such generous and inspiring people for Plue's interviews.
It’s so important to keep connecting as a community. LGBTQIA+ people don't always see their queerness mirrored back to them by mainstream society. Support groups and events that connect LGBTQIA+ people are, for some, the only places where they feel seen and accepted as totally uncensored versions of themselves. Covid restrictions have blocked many LGBTQIA+ people across the UK from accessing these spaces. So let’s keep pushing for visibility and reach out to share stories, resources and friendly smiles.
