13rd March 2016

One week ago I was in CCB and I embraced Sandra after a performance.  

I realized that her vocal dance has been a door to cosy inner homes.  

Suspension.

I was today in CCB and I spoke with Pedro Ramos after his performance. He was in another dimension. 

Also, I looked to the installation and I had a different sensation about the space. It looked like it is in another dimension, out of time.

Pedro told me that he feels that he is now an inhabitant of a whale’s body. 

Then, I understood. I believe that also the installation feels that it has become an home. 

Suspension.

I changed my beliefs about what is an inhabitant and what is an home. 

So, I transformed my home.

Isn’t this what is art for ?

5th March 2016

Afterthoughts on "ZYG Variations” 

"ZYG Variations" is a training proposal addressed to adults that work with infants and children (educators, kindergarten assistants, teachers, artists, psychologists, music therapeuts, etc) very much inspired on the ZYG playing atmosphere. 

In contrast with the most part of training courses, there are no settled aims to attain in this short training course. We just want that trainees have the opportunity to experience the same type of enjoyment that infants and children can experience with ZYG. We just want to provide opportunities for playing, for being in self contact, for being in others’ contact. We care the carers, they will care of others.  

No aims, just a sentence guiding body and vocal improvisation: “music is needed when sound is not in tune”.

No aims, just an expression guiding sensorial contact: listening in spatial time.

No aims, just a key word: readiness. 

No aims, just a key word: authenticity.

No aims, just a key word: presence.

“Communicative musicality” is a seed inside of every human being. It germinates in companionship of meaningful carers. It flourishes when, besides being prepared professionals, carers are genuine persons.

How to prepare to be unprepared.

Zyg is an open installation which can lead to the sensations and also risk. The performer in improvisation can at his best offer the child a joint exploration and together they experience time and space, hopefully in a playful way. In the process with the performers we have emphasized to prepare for being unprepared. Through physical exploration and reflection the installation got significance for us who participated in the process. Practitioners have saved their experiences in the body's archive and with their archived experiences they now face the youngest children. Zyg is a room filled with opportunities and where an overriding goal is to offer the child a meaningful meeting. The meaningfulness in this context relates to providing the child interaction and response. Being together in experience, discovering the layers and to lift the child's initiative up is stated objectives. The open improvisation has its structure and it is always an artistic intention behind each installation. In the meeting with the child, the work completes and it gets its shape: new, unique and different from the previous one, never the same as the next. The performers must listen with all their senses in order to provide a sensoric experience, at its best children's sounds and movements are woven into the performer's interpretation of time and space. Other times it's more difficult to create a good meeting for everyone. The knowledge of the performer attached to such an open improvisational form requires a lot and presence is the most important tool to carry into this meeting. To be seen, heard and taken into exploration of time and space can create the most beautiful moment, that is how we want the child to experience Zyg.  

Opening and Further

ZYG has been a wonderful experience. A path developed over several months, initiated by a sharing of ideas, built by many doubts and a very strong desire to ask what is the essence of communication and how art (at the intersection of sound, movement and space) can create the lap where time and space inhabit the body of each person, in particular the babies. With the debut of ZYG, the presence of babies and parents, children and educators, brought the gazes of amazement, the impression of listening very deeply and a feeling of being in a profound relationship with the here and now.

During the next few weeks (until 12 March), ZYG will be at the "nest" that welcomed it when it was still an idea, the Fábrica das Artes, CCB. It has been a privilege. The affection, the accuracy of the work, the time, the exchange of ideas. There will be further presentations and also a number of training sessions that were called Variations on ZYG. They will be a living-reflection about the importance of artistic experiences in early childhood, constructed with the building blocks of ZYG´s universe. We are born musical, with the ability to make and enjoy sound and movement and it is essential that, since an early age, children build an "emotional / aesthetic" vocabulary made of rich, deep and diverse experiences. We will look at ZYG in three different ways. The first session will start by promoting an "emotional / sensorial" contact, followed by a "deconstruction" of the creative process and a set of listening activities and sound / musical expression. In the second session we will propose a look mediated by ideas such as communicative musicality, proto-comunication, nonverbal language, authenticity, inner availability, play. The third session will bring a vision from "inside the body" very influenced by ideas like "embodiement" (sound, space, time) and musicality of movement. It will also be the look by who is "being really there". We will not explain what can not (and should not) be explained: amazement is still the most fruitful way of knowing things. We will seek, with the adults, to continue learning what babies have taught us: to listen to the whole body, to look to the sounds, the touch the forms.

Opening

The first ZYG performances occurred on Friday 19 February with children from a kindergarten (3 years old). On the following Saturday and Sunday there were performances for groups of 6 babies (the groups were generally mixed, from 2 months to 3 years old) and 6 adults. On Saturday afternoon there was also the conference-performance, a format that included a first experience in the performing space (with Pedro and Sandra in a "dialogue") and then an open discussion with the audience (educators, artists, programmers).  It has been a wonderful experience: the presence of babies, their amazement, attention and communication brings a total new dimension for the work. The performance-conference, too, was a new breath. It was wonderful to share and discuss all the process. Always learning.

Artistic Residence @ CCB #2

Week 2: impro work, reflection and structuring

Artistic Residence @ CCB #1

Day 1 and 2: assembling the structure and loudspeakers

Day 3 and 4: impro work

Samples4ZYG