a pulse from distant shores

Bonjour artfarmers,
It feels like a while since i last posted here, but that may just be because of the overwhelming intensity of the past week. I've been sick with a gastric virus (nasty stuff), and the weight of working so much for weeks on end is starting to bear down. I cancelled tonight's rehearsal due to sheer exhaustion. There is no other excuse. But we do have a lot of time up our sleeves (famous error of judgement), and the choreography is shaping up very nicely.
Recently i have staged a return to the works of Samuel Beckett - a writer who i can identify with. I had not before read the play Happy Days, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the play's main speaker, Winnie, is half submerged in a mound of soil in the center of the stage and does not escape from this position. This image bears a striking similarity to one of the key images in The Women of Troy. Priam awakes at the beginning, to find himself stranded on a tiny island of rice. The implication being that Troy, a beach fronted city, has shrunk down to only a tiny piece of earth, surrounded by nothingess. His kingdom extends only as far as the place he stands.
To discover a similar image in Beckett's Happy Days is a very reassuring experience. I remember a little while ago i downloaded a podcast by a band from New Zealand called "Over the Atlantic." I was excited by the band's performance and wanted to tell a colleague at work about them, but couldn't quite remember the name. Compiling the sound bytes i could recall, i came up with "something like 'Atlantis over the Sea'." We agreed that this was a beautiful title - you wouldn't believe my disappointment when i discovered that i was mistaken. There is, however, something very reassuring in this. Though there may be "no original ideas left", in our flawed efforts to remember the past, maybe we shall stumble and fall upon something new and exciting. You might have noticed that this little trip provides the title for my new email address. Anyway, the whole point of this diatribe is that although i might have liked my idea to be exclusively MINE, i am more than happy to share it with Mr Beckett. To think that we came up with something that can be likened to something from one of his plays is a very encouraging thought.
The choreography has found itself rubbing against the point of Cassandra's dance sequence. After playing with several ideas, Daniella pushed me to move on, as we cannot begin to manufacture movements until we can work with the music. The music i have, but a soundsystem we have not had. Something to secure for next week's sessions.
The body and walk of Talthybius has been discovered! And some very creepy hand gestures to accommodate the sequence with Andromache. But at the moment we are wading up to Hecuba's lament for her sons - a scene that happens in the dark, fades to black, then erupts in machinegun fire. I guess i'd better find some sound effects to work with before we get to that!
Until next time.