Vital Signs fifth session with Kate Adams: working on structure

Following the exertions of yesterday’s extraordinary wrestling session with Steven Fowler, we welcomed Kate Adams back to the studio to pick up our dramaturgical work from last month. Also present was Clarissa Smith, our publicity manager, working away in the studio office getting our social media campaign underway and creating some wonderful images for Instagram. We also learnt from Clarissa that our website went live today (huge thanks to Nic Sharratt for all his hard work) — which you’ll know if you are reading this blog!

Today’s focus was on reviewing the co-composed poem which is at the heart of our piece alongside a list of all the movement material which we have generated so far in our studio work over the last few months. This was an absorbing deep dive into the genesis of our composition and Kate’s assiduous observation of the discussion provided some amazing insights into our creative thinking. Two key moments resonate at present — firstly, the discovery that, as we copied the text of the poem out onto A3 sheets (see photo), that individual lines could recombine in new and surprising ways and, secondly, the realisation of how differently Sarie and I respond to and think about poetry: Sarie relating to it more on the basis of embodied memory and me relating more on the conceptual level. Kate caught this beautifully by characterising our typical vitality dynamics as intensifying (Sarie) and deepening (Scott) — with all the possibilities of one turning into the other as well as counterpointing the other. Whilst this might not be entirely unexpected given our backgrounds, the precision of the insight as it related to our specific reactions to different pieces of poetic material was revelatory and now enables us to take much more control over these differences so that they can fulfil their full potential in animating our piece. Thanks to Kate once again for helping us take our work to the next stage!