Good morning world.
I was planning on sharing something a bit more poetic today but then found myself writing on completely different topics.. So, here I am.
Today I would like to share with you how I concretised my first task of the Rope Manipulation methodology. HANDS FIXED POINT. Or mani di colla as other people call it (Italian for glued hands).
I needed a method to create my method. “How to breakdown and theorise my raw play to generate tasks?” I asked myself.
So there began a process of observation and verbalisation of my practice during my Masters’ at DOCH (SKH).
At the time, it was Covid and I was training at home. Firstly, with a rope hanged at 1.80 meters high. Later, I installed a point at 3. I noticed that as a result I was constantly moving on the spot because obviously there was no vertical space that I could use. And that for for most of my sequences, the constant was myself hanging off my two hands.
This is how I extrapolated my first task. From my practice. I found a constant and I turned it into an exercise.
From this, I realised one essential topic of my research was and still is RESTRICTION. Ironically, at a time when our whole life was restricted during the lockdown, the vertical space was as well restricted, restriction became my very method of work. I adapted and learnt from my surroundings to evolve my practice. FIXED POINT IS THE RESTRICTION in this case.
The focus of Hands Fixed Point is to always move and think through knots. To manipulate the rope around the fixed point and to find ways to create spaces and going through them.
3 things I benefit from it:
ENDURANCE improves. When your mind is busy with knots and pathways, your body doesn’t realise it is also training something else. As Murakami calls it, the art of doing something to do something else. Since training this way consistently, my endurance increased substantially.
The ultimate goal is to think through knots. Hands Fixed point is a step in the process. A task-based improvisation to train the body, the mind and the creativity to think through knots without getting lost, within confined spaces of research.
Avoid SHUFFLING. In my aerial practice I found myself using my hands to change a wrap and always re-gripping. There is a lot of places that you can get into with very minimal hands’ shuffling. This stimulates the body to discover alternative ways in and out of knots as well as it challenges it to be more engaged and wholly present in the actions.
It is a way to explore knots, body articulations, movement and rope manipulation.
It is a moment to experience the rope intimately and a great way to generate material.
A lot of my sequences come from this.
Thanks for reading me. And as per usual, feel free to share with me your questions, doubts, curiosities, if you have any and even videos of your practices if you want to share with me your research.
Have a great day!
G
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