A Performance devised by Becky Bowley in collaboration with Mark Goodwin and Nikki Clayton
con·se·crate
To declare or set apart as sacred:
The performance was born from collaboration, Bohm dialogue in process, and on site performance poetics during its manifestation. Bohm dialogue became crucial for me in the collaboration as I entered into a slow process of recalling a poignant and compassionate reading by Matthew Clegg, a poem set in the Peak Cavern (‘Byron’s Wonder‘), in which the women were a social underclass, and entertainment; a status that has a difficult and raw resonance with my social, cultural, historical and ancestral background.
A physical and poetical performance of Bohm dialogue unfolded across the collaboration and with particular interpersonal intimacy between Mark, Nikki and Myself.
A physical and poetical performance of Bohm dialogue unfolded across the collaboration and with particular interpersonal intimacy between Mark, Nikki and Myself.
I kept a solitary and secret theme tune and a dance in contradiction as we entered into a space of transformation.
sanc·ti·fy
Meaning to set apart for sacred use. Consecrate and to give social or moral sanction to:
Two bodies dressed in black, one male and one female, facing each other, sat on horizontal plinths.
In a cave, a white chapel, and a small house.
The masculine structured poetical words, dissolving and gradually breaking-down and falling into the space. The feminine intuitive and responsive, from raw to exquisitely graceful sounds rise, and rise up into the eaves.
As the masculine falls away and dissolves the feminine lifts up – in unity, in dependant arising of one another the two opposite actions elevate one another into the sacred.
This devised performance is a ritual to declare the love between the man and the woman in the performance as sacred, and a declaration for the purity of love itself.
con·se·crate
con·se·crate
The performance artist is nowhere to be seen, and one hundred percent present in the audience. The key is at home, at peace and quiet. A woman as if priestess, and as if a woman in love: free from cultural views: set a part from the world. This sacred act is harmonious, ethical, and autonomous.
In a cave, a white chapel, and a small house. Poetical words were dissolving, gradually breaking-down and falling into space. Intuitive, responsive, graceful sounds rise up, and up into the eaves.
“Descend with the view, Ascend with the action”
Is a pithy teaching on becoming disillusioned, free from illusion, free from theatre, becoming unbound and aspiring to Enlightenment. This is an action for awakening from all wrong views. Descending with delusion, dispelling, and lifting up, and up, letting go and becoming light.
The union is yin and yang, birth and death, anima and animus, the union and integration of the whole evolving Self.
The feminine poetical reverie like a hidden, inner, pure water spring.
The union was witnessed and experienced. Documentation was denied and the reality of the fleeting moment absorbed into the body.
This was a private and sacred ceremonial act of human tenderness and vulnerability: real and transcendent beauty.
Mark Goodwin and Nikki Clayton in conversation at Bloc, reflecting on the collaboration and performance.
Quiet words whispered an end, a beginning or somewhere in between:
“It was a gift”
“Yes, it was a gift for me too”