Into the Mountain (group)
Reflective regrouping: A walking conversation with performer-collaborators in Glen Feshie, Cairngorms. Scotland.
21st September 2019.
Images: Simone Kenyon
Abbreviations of Names in order of appearance:
Simone Kenyon (SK)
Caroline Reagh (CR)
Petra Söör (PS)
Jo Hellier (JH)
Keren Smail (KS)
Nussatari (N)
Walking up via short route towards the place of the performance in Glen Feshie.
SK: How does it feel to be back walking on the route that we spent a month walking on every day?
CR: Its lovely. It’s very different. The colours are very different the heathers longer, the grass is a different colour, well the sun is shining. it’s very beautiful, it feels familiar and different really.
PS: Yes, it’s like new and different things catches my eye somehow. And then at the same time it’s like walking by- like some of the tree, the stones, the different landmarks where we were, it’s the same, but not same. Its changed.
CR: A lovely familiarity isn’t there? I mean even this tree up here that we know, I remember where all the bugs were when we we’re filming. It is pretty wind-blown this tree, it’s hanging on and looks as though it has filled out a little bit.
PS: Yes, something hear about walking together and recognising things here and in one another and yet at the same time, time has passed.
CR: I know, the colours are so gorgeous, aren’t they?
PS: The light is really glistening.
JH: How does it feel to be back? It feels wonderful, really normal. Really familiar, but also lovely to see the landscape in a different season as well. Because it is quite different.
KS: I want to take it all in, try and figure out what’s happened to it since we’ve been away…and sort of acknowledging that it has changed.
JH: It’s really golden, the colours are really different, because the deer grass has come out, that’s the big difference.
KS: The movement is still really familiar. Like watching this grass move is familiar to me and seeing the whole mountain…shimmer.
JH: It feels like coming home I think, a bit for me.
Like passing the same points of reference. Even small things like particular parts, of particular rocks, I feel like I can recognise, I recognise that every day, I’d see that and check-in. It’s great to have those memories, those memory trigger-points. I remember this still here, this happened on the day when it was crazy crazy hail, and all the paths started rupturing.
KS: It’s almost like those memories, that you haven’t forgotten, but that have just been re- acknowledged.
JH: Memories that I wouldn’t, I didn’t, I can’t recall them when I’m not here.
KS: You couldn’t sit down and spin the story of the journey
JH: I wouldn’t be able to remember that particular part of that rock I just went past, because I wouldn’t have even remembered that. but as soon as I’m back its very easy to remember.
KS: Like little check-ins the whole way. Like little hellos.
JH: What about in your body? Does it feel like anything in your body?
KS: It just feels really comfortable, just really open, sort of relaxed, but sometimes when you’re approaching, like I’ve been out walking in new places which is different…whereas here I feel like I’ve sunk into it again like I’m just with it, rather than exploring it.
JH: I think I feel much less fit than last time I came out here, but I can still feel the rhythm. I guess a kind of confidence in walking this route. . .I know when the moments are to speed up and I know in the moments are to take it easy… and even things like what to do is my feet, when to move them…when to be more like a sidestep up the hill to save my calf muscles and all that kind of stuff… it’s good to be back!
SK: How does it feel like to be back?
N: Really good, I couldn’t imagine it yesterday, In the midst of such like crazy office stuff, I had 10 minutes to pack my bag. I couldn’t imagine being up here and was like, I will or forgotten something or have forgotten what to do. It’s kind of like riding a bike in a way…coming back is really beautiful it feels familiar, it’s nice to have had time away and to have missed it and then be like, oh, we get to go back. It feels different. I think we’ve been blessed with this sunshine today. But it’s nice to remember when it was like crazy hailstones and stuff.
SK: Yes, this path was covered in massive white balls!
N: Yeah, it all just carries on, you know.
SK: How does it feel physically to be here?
N: It feels really good, it’s even like filling up with water again and being like, oh there’s sun. I actually don’t want to shade to my face, I want to open my face, it feels nice. Feels like
I feel the benefit of all that time out here physically…my body’s missed it and my head as well…and it’s just amazing to see everyone.
SK: What was it like on you on the way back (after the performances) on your return? Do you feel like anything remained for a time?
N: Yeah. The place that I moved into… and starting this new job in the place (The Tramway, Take me Somewhere Festival) that had just hosted the festival this was part of…and like, oh, wow, this is what was going on here, all the time that we were up there. And just getting a sense of that context, which we were completely away from here. Be like, yes, I was part of that.
N: I think people were really interested in it, so to come back and people ask how was it, what was it like?
SK: How did you describe it then at that time, like, how do you retell things to people afterwards?
N: I was like…It was tough, but it was great. But you can’t imagine what it is like up there… The things that are possible here, in terms of… If I feel like the weather, the weather going to these extreme situations you end up in. You can’t really imagine that…In the end it was like, I like physical challenges, especially now to be like, oh, my body can do this. Yeah. I enjoyed the feeling after getting over the challenge of certain things and to being like- I did that.
SK: And those challenges feel more possible now or you know in your body.
N: And it’s part of me know, it was over this period of time. When I moved into this new room, the nice thing about it is it’s got these little shelves, this corner shelf. It’s quite shallow so you fit little things on it. On one shelf I have the stones that I collected on this path; I just noticed every so often. I’ve got my little pink cup, my tent peg was somewhere as well, there’s little remnants of it…that’s part of me now.
(a windy moment of being blown about)
SK: What is your relationship to the mountains and the cairngorms now?
(more wind)
KS: Woo hoooooo!
SK: well and truly windy
KS: It’s like an ocean or something isn’t it!
KS: Well, this is my first time being back in the Cairngorms. It’s so …it feels so safe. Which is ridiculous.
CR: This particular area?
KS: Yeah. I think because it’s all soft edges.
CR: And when you’re on a path, when you know where you’re going, you know what to expect. I suppose for me, that’s for the cairngorms. I know I have not walked all of it, you feel there is a familiarity, so maybe that’s why you feel safe, although it’s not to say that you don’t have respect.
KS: No, I think the reason I feel sort of safe, maybe settled is the right word, is because of the time spent wondering the Cairngorms.
CR: on this project?
KS: On this project and other times, but I just sort of know what’s around it. I know what makes it what builds and the shapes of it…
CR: yeah, and what’s over that skyline…
KS: because I think when you first arrive here it can be overwhelming and a bit daunting and huge, but when you feel like you know the shape of it and all of its
Connections…
CR: And also, the history and the culture which sits within it as well. You kind of feel that …
KS: And also, just being outside with you guys has given me so much more knowledge for it and love… because being all of you, showing me different things, has made me know it even more, more than I would have done on my own
CR: I think, I’ve had that, where you say being out with other people and with us as a group, it’s given me a different perspective on it. I looked at it with different eyes continuously… it’s not just like, oh well you could look at it this way, because we did it, looked in-depth in a particular way. It’s like a micro study…
But there still big! Still big open area.
KS: I’m so happy when I’m in it and on them and around them and looking at them!
CR: I think there’s something about outdoor being outside here, that creeps up inside you, it’s a bit like dancing away, when you do you’ve not dance for a while and then you dance. Then you realise, oh, yes, it shifts, it shifts your energy inside, not just your energy it shifts a whole lot of things inside. It’s like you your cells are being moved around and put back into the places where they are supposed to be … settling and grounding you …even though you’re out in a place where you like well, you’re having to, like we are just now, think about the elements and not get blown over and still somehow manages to settle you.
KS: It’s a sort of a shedding, isn’t it?
CR: A shedding and a focus.
And about the mountains in general?
KS: They just make so much sense to me. They are the thing that make most sense to me in this, in my life, at the minute.
CR: Really?
KS: Yes. I’ve been going out recently and just filled with so much love,
so many reasons …how it moves, how, what is going through, how its adjusting, it just being there, the space, its offering and also the offer of this new knowledge, new skills to be able to go outside on my own in the summer…Yeah, I just love the mountain.
CR: I mean, even if I don’t go out, I think for me, mountains, because I have spent a lot of time, in lots of different mountains, lots of different places and different countries and, you always know that they’re there… even if it’s in the background, you know that it’s always something that’s there…that does give you …a sense of, I don’t know what that sense is…I mean even to look at them, even if you’re not in them, you can even have a memory of them… and you hold that memory… kind of quiet inside, or you remember …when you were on a mountain and you’re always there.
I guess mountains for me have been a part of my life…still are a part. Even if you’re in them on a regular basis or not, there’s still a part of your life, like your family or your pets, they’re just part of your life…
KS: Yeah
CR: I mean, I like reading about mountains or reading about trips or reading about
coastal region or by mountains or written about trips or even you know, you can then engage and connect with something from somebody like halfway around the world.
I don’t know if you saw that guy in Australia and he went for the walk, he fell down a waterfall and broke his leg. Did you read that? And he had to carry his broken leg to get into a clearing, to be rescued… So, you just have you been in mountains yourself, it makes you have an empathy and an understanding of what’s going on with people, and weather and situations and relationships with other people and with groups of people… and you get a closeness to people…You know, that you don’t without it being forced?
(Wind intensifies)
KS: It’s so windy!
CR (laughing and talking from the winds point of view to herself) Listen to me and stop talking! Just wise up. Let me, let me speak! Let me speak and just kind of move through me, rather than battle with me!
KS: Yeah, the voice of the mountains is talking…I just feel it’s more and more important to get more people out to see them for that reason, you know, that just builds empathy and the quickest way I think.
CR: yeah, and with each other.
Although sometimes, it’s good to get people into them, although I sometimes concern myself, that there’s going to be too many people just going out … what you’re saying, to go out on your own I think is very, very special. To go on your own, I don’t really do that. I go for lots of walks on my own, but probably not longer mountain walks.
KS: I think if there’s too many people, we just need to get more creative. Like what a walk is. Doesn’t have to be on a path to a peak.
CR: Yeah, yeah, right.
KS: We’ve forgotten. You can still take people out and probably have a better experience and they’ll be less people if everyone is spread out and get off the paths.
CR: Maybe it is changing and maybe the way people experience mountains, there is a change in the air of not just going up peaks. There’s a change in the air…thinking about the ecology, thinking about where you go, why you’re going?
KS: No, I still think it’s a long way to go. There’s a lot of people go up and I see them reach for their phone and photograph far too soon…before they’ve taken a breath, you know.
CR: I guess these long-distance walks or something that’s very special that people do.
KS: Yeah. Yeah.
CR: mountains!
PS: What’s your relationship to the mountains and the Cairngorms Jo?
JH: I think feel in love with them. I feel like yeah, it feels like love…Like the love you have for family…Something like, a bit besotted, but also really warm towards them.
PS: Yeah. I was thinking something similar. When I started pondering the question, the first thing that came was the feeling of love and both a kind of appreciation of that relationship,
and a sense of gratitude somehow.
But also, working, working things out…like not taking things for granted, but something makes me think of what Nan (Shepherd) says in the book of getting to know another is endless.
JH: Yeah.
PS: So, something about being in love and recognising a relationship but that it’s like…
JH: Endless…and the more the more you know, the more there is to know…and like the more time you spend, the more complex it gets, the more complex the love and the relationship gets.
PS: Yeah, but what you said about family also resonates like the relationship to this place, but also something about, sometimes sharing that experience in the kind of wider collective and also with you all, being in family.
JH: Yeah, I know what you mean. I think I remember talking about this at the end, last time, when we did the performance, this, there’s a feeling like, everyone is my limbs.
PS: Thinking about leaving how it would feel like to have …
JH: extras.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And like I know, I feel, I know the Cairngorms through the other performers, through the other walker’s…but I also feel like I really know it in, through my body, as well, it’s entered, it’s in me, yeah…I feel like I know the Cairngorms more through the ground than through the view.
PS: yes, or a map.
JH: yeah!
PS: Definitely, like through time spent and somehow time passed and time in change.
JH: When I’m not here, I think about the things I see… I think about the water and the moss and the heather and the texture of the soft ground.
PS: and sensations.
JH: Yeah.
PS: Like visceral memories.
JH: Yes, and it’s quite interesting because, I flew up here and I could see the Cairngorms from in the sky and we went over the top…
(passing the burn)
SK: What memories come to mind as you’re sitting here now?
CR: My beautiful lime green flush, near my spot…I’m looking forward to seeing that again, but it will be different probably, won’t be a lime green flush.
JH: I’m really looking forward to seeing my place as well, and I feel like a lot of my memories are of, a lot of things that come to mind are of that little spot. Because there’s these beautiful peat haggs up there and then a stream. I’ve got a lot of memories of that…and also of coming together, the moment when we come together in the performance. I think about that a lot. I think it’s one of my strong memories.
SK: Can you describe what it is, what the feeling or the memory.
JH: it’s, it’s where we’ve all run down, when we were running down from our spots, like water, just taking the easiest route and kind of finding different directions down. And then, there’s this moment where you can feel, I can feel that we’re just going to converge, that our routes are going to cross. And then there’s this dance between us. which feels really special where we’re just coming, we’re coming together and then there’s no its there’s no break. I guess just like water. There’s no break. We just get closer and closer and then we’re carrying on straightforward as one. And it always feels pretty special that moment.
CR: Yeah, it’s nice. It’s nice feeling that you’re moving together and not speaking. But your, you know, even you’re not speaking, I love the feeling of when everyone is running down and they’re all quite far apart. And you do come together. Yes, it’s just lovely, the feeling of moving together through this space and the heather and the site without any talking.
KS: Yes, I always feel quite…like the memory of that is…like a really giddy memory. Think just like the energy will play, where you’ve all been, like sitting up there, kind of anticipating and viewing, sort of knowing that you’re all super happy in your little spot, and grinning to myself, and then the little journey coming down just builds and builds like that kind of giddy feeling. And then when I can see you all emerging and yeah, that dance that you said Jo, Yeah, it’s just really special. I think because everyone’s just so content in what they’re doing. And it just becomes such a, like a chorus, but of individual voices but singing the same song. It just feels, yeh just feel really giddy with it.
CR: Yeah, I mean, we are actually dancing with it. It’s weird getting that, a feeling of the place that we’re feeling…
(by the burn, the usual resting place)
PS: Yeah, there’s something that comes to mind, but to my body, somehow sitting here, of how this formed really part of the working day. And being a spot where, for some time we were just here, and there was some practical things around maybe, like layering up, or changing something that got a bit damp and everyone having a bit of time to do what you needed to do, whether that was to get cracking eating your sandwich or whatever you brought, but in the shared holding space which felt really, again, there’s something about not always speaking so much, but at the same time being a kind of intimate space and then because of kind of settling into some time here, that yes, seeing the weather change or just noticing, ah actually the clouds are moving that way, or we might have some snow in a bit or…one memory that comes really strongly for me is one afternoon…there was a sense of seeing how the wind was moving because of how the snow was so clearly falling both vertically and horizontally and there was clouds moving down. And then the snow was coming. I don’t know, just these mysteries of air and sky and being revealed because of the …
KS: the landscape.
PS: Yeah, super gorgeous.
CR: Well, I suppose when we were sitting for lunch, it’s the time where…there is no task really, and so sometimes when there is no task, you can fall into something, another space almost, allowing us… if the there’s no task another something almost comes into you, because there’s nothing being asked and so there’s space for something to come in, that you then notice maybe something new or different or you focus on what’s the sounds or… slowly- it takes- its slow isn’t it, it takes a while for it to come.
KS: My memory of that and its strongest, with the spot where we start.
CR: Yeah
KS: That waiting- I remember doing it, it wasn’t raining but it was really wet air and, just seeing the heather with all its drops of water on it…just waiting to be absorbed either back into the earth or fall down into the earth…
That noticing when, like you say, you stop, and you don’t really have a task. You’re just there. I just remember always feeling extra connected to what was also planted right next to me because it was just sat on the hillside like me, at that moment in time.
JH: I always imagined when we were up in those starting places, what it would be like to stay there, forever, like all the other things around you. There’s this interesting thing happens to time because we were always there waiting and watching out to see, for a signal – see the audience going around the corner. I felt- I always feel very with, very with all the things, like with the heather and with the rocks and everything up there, in that place…and I remember, right at the end, having this feeling like I’d, been there so many times by the end, just feeling like I’m just one of the, I’m just one of the rocks here, or like I’m just one of the objects that belongs here. Which is, was a really nice feeling.
KS: Yeah, it kind of felt like the landscape had started to accept.
JH: yeah.
KS: Or felt like I was welcomed by it.
JH: Yeah
KS: Less like I was really busy loud visitor/guests, but I was just like- you know, that person that’s lived there for a long time and doesn’t need to say anything or rush around put the kettle on I could literally just…
JH: Sink in
KS: Yeah.
JH: And I felt like I could have slept there. Yeah, there was a heat somehow in the earth where it was like, I could just sink in and stay there for a long time. Strangely, because it’s quite high up and quite exposed in a way, but if you can get low enough in the heather, because the ground is so multi layered, multi levelled that you could just, you can go deep into it and be warm… And there was the noise of some animal up there which I never figured out what it was. I heard it most days. I don’t know, I never knew what it was, but it only happened when we started doing the waiting, right when we had to stay there for like 20 minutes plus, I started hearing some animals. Some animal or bird.
SK: How was it for you (N) because you moved sites, didn’t you? You had one for a bit of time and then moved.
N: Yeah, when I got to my second site, I would lose where it was. So, then I’d find a new bit and I’ll be there. So, this will be fine, I remember the first time I went up too high, and it took me too long to get down. So, I would find a slightly new bit every day. And then I ended up on the edge of this hole or something. There’s one I could literally sit in, this hole or this bowl…
There’s a time there’s this big group passing. I was trying to hide from a group that had to come down that way, that particular day because of the weather. I was inside this thing, I don’t know if they can see me, and then just really feeling like a kid or a bird and being able to see some of the people that were down here…and being I’m fine, I’ve got what I need.
I used to sing to myself up there and hum because I always thought that my bird call (n.b.- a sound the performers made to signal to one another to start) would sound really shit because my voice doesn’t project very well, so I used to hum a lot- this little song that I had made up, so I could get the high note and I’d practice pitching it…because there’d be nothing worse than me getting passed the call and then I’d be like waaa!…the audience is here now you’ve got to do it good…
And that time of feeling really interrupted when that group was walking along that pathway… like, this is my world. These two women walking past being like, what is she doing? And I’m sitting there like, hurry up everyone’s waiting…I’m just stretching my leg, nothing to see here, and actually everyone down there was probably waiting for them to go, so that we could start…
I always had fun up there. There’s the same feeling of that first time when I was away up there but always being able to see. Or id do a little clock like this (n.b. looking around). Sometimes I’d lose you, I’d lose Petra all the time. I’d lose Keren, I’d lose everyone really, up there and just be okay. It’s nice that feeling of, safe enough because we’re all in the same situation, we’re just far apart. I think that’s what makes it really fun, when we end up back together…how was your spot today, all those things aren’t being said but yeah!
SK: How much of the moving feels connected to the site and each other? And the research process? How much of an interplay do you think is happening? How much are you moving with site, with one another, and with the memory of the research that has happened before – the lead up to that point of performing? And of course, all your life experience and everything else that is part of that.
KS: Me personally, all the research was teaching me more about how to be present and constantly with and be affected by the site. And so, I felt like I was never working from a memory, it sort of really felt like I was working from now. But I don’t think I would have been able to have done that if I hadn’t done the research and spent so much time here. And being here every day taught me how to deal with the now, because you’re constantly shifting and altering, and it always looks different, and the winds always blown a different way, or the waters is falling a different way or its being held, or the sun is coming from a different direction. And so, performing, it really felt like, I was reading and with it and literally each step would be slightly different each day. And then that would affect, like the running down, if I would be veer left or right or I’d go backwards, or I would even spot Petra for a minute, and it would pull me one way, or the other and different people would arrive at different points at the bottom. And so, it felt I think it just felt really true and honest. And so, it felt really…yes really connected to the to the present moment. Site and people.
JH: Yeah, I feel the same.
PS: Yeah. And something about how the relationship to those, that might have been a sort of trajectory, but there was something about the momentum and the almost locomotion of things that came from all that- somehow. Which why, there was maybe a journey that would reoccur in the performance, but it was always different and lived differently and that was also kind of chaffing somehow…I remember times where I think that maybe today, there might be a tendency in my body for this to happen and then actually not at all because of, of the now, in doing it there was just so much else present that then would…things would express themselves slightly differently in an unexpected way….that’s weather and site and people in one somehow…and then also something about sharing it with more people after being a smaller collective.
Something about seeing people wander into this place and maybe, I remember sitting where I was, I could see most of those journeys for a while and thinking where they’d come from and then seeing them settle and then us flushing through like this stream downhill and then meeting and suddenly for a while that be something quite still. And I remember also a point where the choir would hold the sound for a while and then that being really different times…quite differently felt- emotionally and the kind of surprise of how I could feel that in this place. So, the kind of macro world and the micro world converging somehow and people’s remembering seeing people’s faces, like flashes of memories of people’s faces, once you were close up.
JH: I think there is something interesting as well about, you’re dancing in response to the place, but you’re not really dancing in response. Because it’s like you are, it’s in you, it’s gotten in, it’s the place has gotten in you and there’s not really-it didn’t feel like there’s some big separation anymore. And I think that’s because we did so much practice so much, so much training outside and practising this, practising moving in the site, and then letting it into the body and remembering it in the body and using our imaginations as well. It feels like, it felt really easy by the end to get into this mode of being where you don’t have to make any separation, in your mind, between this movement is a representation of a shape of a rock. And this movement is just what I feel like when I think about a rock, or it’s the rock in my body…. Being a rock, you know, so that it felt really fluid for me by the end, and a noticeably more fluid than it did at the beginning… I think that’s partly because of the specific work we did and the specific exercises we did, but also just the time and length of time in the landscape and letting it come into your body through walking, if nothing else, just like through being out for so long and having so much time to listen and feel it.
KS: It felt more like it became…like at first, we were tentatively learning the language. And we’d learned like a few words. And so, we could start building up this, what it was to be amongst heather and speak the heathers language but at first it was sort of quite broken, broken vocabulary and just slowly but surely, it felt more conversational. And so, you felt like by the end, that you could just slip into it as a conversation rather than digging for language.
JH: Yeah.
N: Like we had gone through different ways in, of what is it to move in response to being here and I suppose these somatic ways of taking in an image, of that you see it front of you and taking it in and working that through. I see, what was the rock, the rock inside me. But there’s also what felt …was also a lot of joy in…what felt really natural, for me – like remembering. Just literally remembering what my body was doing to get across this kind of terrain or just running, I didn’t have to think about what I was doing because I was just getting down the hill… That’s what we’re doing but then, that is what the movement is and enjoy these really straightforward things…remembering, when we were up in the really rock bits and deciding I really wanted to go up high and climb across and make life quite difficult… but it was more fun…there’s all these ways that my body has to coordinate the limbs, like folding and passing through and, to notice that functionality… and to be in a different terrain…I enjoyed that – and those moments of leaning in the wind…I enjoyed how it was…we’re doing this because we’re doing this, not because we’re dancing and you know, it didn’t feel like that which is nice, because it was quite a new way for me anyway, to be. Yet to have permission to wait for that movement to come where like, this is the movement. Okay, that was, that was nice.
SK: Which makes me think about how it relates to all our improvisational practices or what we would consider to be improvising and how that might feel the same out here, or it might feel different. It’s interesting what you’re saying about- I’m not responding to the site; I am the site. Yeah, because there’s not enough time to cognitively somehow manifest a response and then put it out there.
N: Like that day we ended up rolling across, maybe we were leaning in the wind, but the wind was so strong, and then we ended up just us doing what our bodies felt like doing in this particular condition…it felt really true.
KS: Yeah. Oh, feel like you can see it all around you… like that acceptance of this branch has had to grow over here because that other one grew and top of it, and it had to go around that and then the wind blew it. So, it’s that kind of acceptance that, I felt like, the location and the landscape, it just taught me to, it’s fine, you can still do this task or whatnot, but it just might not be what you pre-planned.
JH: It might not be how you move.
KS: yeah, you can’t draw the line. Yes, you can’t. You can’t plan it.
CR: Yes, it’s like the landscape or the terrain is the other performer, and that you’re dancing with that.
KS: Yeah.
CR: And you’re not quite sure what the other performer might do at any given time and so your like- Right, okay, we’re here now-we might have to change.
JH: Yeah, might be snowing.
CR: Or we might have to change how you move your arm… you think that you could go into landscape and do some of the moves that we did, like on day one, without any of the rehearsal at all- but it just wouldn’t feel the right, I mean, it just wouldn’t feel right inside yourself. Until you’d kind of done all the research in a way…yeah, it felt okay, that is so okay, understand, really, that this arm moving, is just somehow fine.
PS: Also makes me think we’re still being in the relationship to place …sometimes spent discovering more…and that was all the way through and no different in performance at all… because it’s like you, you’d run or hump across there, the heather there and then quite a few times where your legs would fold in a certain way or you would go through and there’s is stream down here! ha-ha
You couldn’t know if you didn’t walk or move across it. So, that would give birth to the kind of expression of the dance that very day. But and we would gradually maybe know a bit more, but that was also something about both joy and caretaking in ..Yeah, I don’t know quite how to put that, us developing a language of how to…I remember at some point there was this thing…what if someone falls down through the heather…nobody might see that you’ve disappeared because of how the land undulates, but maybe you need either a break before you can carry on… just to check in with an ankle or something or you maybe cant- what are the other strategies to communicate, ‘Hey, you guys just move on. I’ll join you later’ Later Oh, actually just…
JH: I needed urgent help!
PS: Like spreading up on the hill… thinking strategies ahead that you thought might work, but then actually learning, ah no because, when the mist comes and we can’t wave, so then this an audio sign… so layers of ways of communicating being here, that also became part of what we were…Yes part of the movement language, not just the movement but the being in it.
And I think that connects to that thing of it’s no other, it’s that being in it. It’s like what do you call it? It more than a dance, a performance is a being in the thing.
CR: Yes, dance is a funny word for it. really isn’t it.
PS: And yet maybe its conversational nature. But yeah.
CR: a movement dialogue
PS: A being dialogue
KS: And then we come together and then it’s all going fine, and someone just falls in a hole, and that tempo shift for a second, where everyone’s like, ‘eerrr …and we are off again ok’
SK: That weird suspension, of assessing or something?
PS: Or you need another body to come out of the hole.
Group: HOLE HOLE (whole group saying HOLE as a memory of the how they would shout to one another when they had fallen into a hole)
JH: I still think, in hindsight, one of the funniest things ever happened was when we first went off to a original places and snow came in and I had this, image of you (Simone) at the bottom just like- come back! and none of us being able to hear you and just going.
SK: Not me just screaming, but me blowing a whistle as loud as I could and the wind just taking it down the hill- none of you could hear anything- I just lost sight of you all and I have to say that is the first real moment of absolute fear of my responsibility towards you all…but at the same time, a total lesson in trust and, that you were all there looking after yourselves but yeah, oh my god. It was. It was sort of a amazingly beautiful and terrifying moment wasn’t it. Just that moment when you just all disappeared, just the panic of not been able to visually see you anymore.
JH: And we couldn’t see each other either.
KS: it was really the first time when I acknowledged and realised, like the fire that was within all of you, so it was complete whiteness, it was freezing cold and yet you will have that little fire in you, to get yourselves back and we’re all like woooah, but it didn’t put out that flame in us… even now, gives me strength to imagine us all up out there on our own and come back.
JH: Yeah.
KS: And then laying when we got together under the snow, do you remember, when we were flocking and just this flakes slowly falling on us.
JH: Yeah…it was a really amazing warning from the mountain almost and it was right at the beginning as well…It was like- it is dangerous. Yeah, it is. It may feel okay. But don’t get too comfy.
N: Yes, don’t be feeling too fab.
JH: Yeah.
N: I See you; I See you!
JH: I’ll let you down, but just watch out.
N: Meanwhile, I was having a party inside my safety blanket tent.
JH: Oh yes you were just listening to tunes, weren’t you?
N: yes.
SK: Just riding it out.
N: I was a bit scared. But I was like, oh their fine
SK: This was your first white out, wasn’t it?
N: That was my first white out, but because I was in my sac…this is fun. And then I got come comfy and played a song. I took a photo cos I’m going to have to show people this when I get home because no one’s gonna believe me. I was trying to film the snow. I think I did film a bit through the sack, you could see this snow, how thick it was, and I was just like wow! I’m just inside this really thin thing, that I can see out of, but I’m warm because it was completely under me. And I’ve got signal!
Ultimately in the depths of this crazy, elemental situation, there’s my 4g…being very glad I took my phone up.
SK: And I’m glad you were feeling more secure than I thought you were up there.
N: Yeah.
(walking back down after a re-run of the performance to remember the material)
JH: What was it like?
KS: Well, if I’m really honest, I didn’t really get there. It was nice for me to… I feel like there were little check-ins with locations.
It felt like I was, like, acknowledging the places again,
and loved that, but the movement…
JH: Felt like a re-enactment?
KS: Yeah, I was like… Yeah, I don’t know. I think I just need to do everything twice maybe.
JH: Yeah, yeah. I felt similarly actually…the best thing has just been doing this walk again.
KS: Yeah.
JH: This feels really similar, and I feel like I’ve got there, whatever that means.
But yeah, I feel like I’ve got back to that place.
KS: Yeah.
JH: From doing the walk up and the walk down, sitting and having lunch, but the actual material, I felt like there wasn’t enough time to properly reconnect with it.
KS: Yeah, I feel like I didn’t…I feel like I didn’t really look at it enough.
JH: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess it was an unusual situation, wasn’t it? Because we were
stopping and starting and it was really brief. But to go back to the site was really nostalgic to me.
KS: Yeah, how was it going back up to your spot as you approached it?
JH: Really exciting… I mean… It felt, just like, felt like no time had passed, actually, at all, when I was up there. It was like, oh yeah, this is my little nook. And there was even still an indentation where I fit in the exact place I sit.
Yeah, so that felt great. And I feel like the walk, the walking up and down, as I said before, feels really meaningful somehow.
KS: Yeah.
JH: And actually, just dropping back into being together as a group feels really, really beautiful.
KS: Yeah. And I think being together is also re… like the hands and feet section.
JH: Mmm.
KS: I feel like your eyes, all of your eyes and your hands and fed into my veins again. Yeah, so I feel like I’m definitely more, I naturally sit at a big landscape macro level.
JH: Okay
KS: and I feel like through this process you guys have given me more micro. Yeah, and so that that section again was like reconnecting with it. Yeah, yeah.
JH: That’s really interesting.
KS: Yeah, because it’s sort of been there, and it has always been there. I feel like I’ve noticed things, but it’s normally within the big picture.
Aha. My eyes sit wider than they do.
JH: Yeah.
KS: So that’s really nice.
JH: That’s really great.
I feel something a little bit like that with running. I feel like I am imagining being you when I’m running down. There’s a lightness, that I don’t have. And I think, yeah, I feel like I learn how to run in that landscape for me.
KS: Yeah.
JH: Maybe it’s something that I wouldn’t naturally do.
Yeah. I’m quite like…
KS: Yeah, yeah.
JH: Like, steady and grounded.
KS; Yeah. You’ve taught me to use the hands in the landscape… That earthy texture.
JH: Yeah. Ah
KS: That was nice. Yes.
LAUGHTER
CR: So, what did it feel like…doing the same material again? After June, July, August. So, it’s nearly four months actually.
N: Yeah. Felt familiar but not. Yeah. It wasn’t that easy to jump into it.
CR: Yeah, I find it quite difficult really. I mean I find, as you say, easy but not easy to…recall the material, but not easy to, not do it, but I don’t mean do, it wasn’t easy to… physically make it feel the way it did four months ago. There was a really strong memory of it all. And sometimes you think, you know, when we were walking in there, I just thought, well, it’s like no time has passed. When we went off to go into our own places, you know? But then I guess I felt I was doing the memory of it really, rather than… yes and I feel weaker physically.
N: Yeah. I think it also felt different because it only became what it was like the day before the show opened.
CR: Yeah.
N: So, it really became itself with the audiences that we had.
CR: The choir.
N: And the choir, that felt really different, yeah.
CR: I mean, the choir gave a…huge amount of energy and drive and connection and holding it. It’s kind of amazing that we only did it with a choir like a day before the actual performance isn’t it?
N: Yeah.
CR: But it certainly made it come alive, didn’t it? Yeah. I think it’s also different doing it when it’s being filmed as well.
N: I think it’s also different when its being filmed as well, it does feel different.
CR: Yeah, when you’re not doing it for an audience. But I mean, yeah, as you say, I think that’s the crux of it. It’s very familiar and easy to recall, but difficult to do it in the way that you would want to feel that you would do. I think that’s it really.
PS: It’s all coming back, all coming back while I’m being here. Oh my gosh, look at the light. Jesus, Jolly Ho!
KS: Oh, isn’t that just magical?
PS: It is magical.
KS: What’s it like for you to revisit this?
PS: Yeah, I think it’s revisiting the magic of the place. In so many ways,
And there’s so many physical sensations that come back, like physical memories.
Oh my gosh! (referring to the place/light again)
And also new, like still discovering things… and the same thing kind of, going back to the journey of the piece, some things are so familiar, and yet that thing we spoke about before of ‘the now’, makes it different.
PS: Oh, my my, look at that…I just feel really lucky.
KS: We are lucky.
PS: The whole day, I’ve had this sense of gratitude, just been allowed to be as a witness.
KS: so often in life…we forget that we can be a witness.
PS: I have this thought, when I came down from my spot …I was thinking of the things…What I think as I, isn’t really anything, other than all of this, just this…I’ve had this thing- in May, I had these trippy thoughts around how the water of this place becomes a water of your body, but I was thinking of something around the sense of self that’s starts to dissolve.
KS: Yeah, yeah.
PS: Yeah. Yeah, I do not quite know exactly.
KS: No, I know exactly what you mean. The edges feel less like edges and that interconnectedness suddenly becomes…
PS: Like intra.
KS: like really apparent and real. I feel like in society we’re taught to find your separation, find your independence, you are your individual person, you need to strive to set yourself up as yourself.
PS: Actually, it’s the opposite- and identify that and distinguish that.
KS: It’s finding your connection.
PS: Even if, you know, sometimes the conditions are quite intense and strong and like today the wind is really present, but then I’m not separate from that. I’m really… that is shaping my perception of everything…or like that… and sitting somehow in the spot, waiting to start, I had that reminder of, when I’m here, I see how the wind affects the heather and the grasses and the clouds, but I’m in it too. And in that moment, I’m affected by it, so then I’m not separate from it… a sense of not being held by it… not being on top of it but … immersively just in it, which is a great sensation
KS: Yeah…I know what you mean.
PS: And now also walking down, there is something so familiar about how the day has weathered you and changed you and that you are maybe fuller and maybe the thoughts you were busy with going in, now it’s dropped down into. I feel often much more in my full body.
KS: Yeah…That smell is so good.
PS: This bit. That’s nice, isn’t it?
(change in microphone and background chatter)
SK: (Questions) How you might approach dancing in the studio or outside of the studio through improvising. And what you think your training as a dancer/performer/ maker experience of being outside… recognizing the skills that you have in a different context what you think those relationships and crossovers are…
I’m trying to think about training, how mountain leaders train and what we as artists have a potential to teach…that wouldn’t necessarily go into that framework. I think that you move and see this place really differently and I just wonder if you see that or feel it, or can articulate it…how this place might change the way that you dance and move as well, or vice versa. It’s quite an open-ended thing…if we as a group were to write a new Mountain Leader Training Handbook, what would you put in it?
JH: We should definitely do that.
KS: That would be amazing.
CR: I think my brain’s gone into meltdown, actually.
SK: I know, it’s getting late, let’s go. Let’s go.
KS: Oh, it’s exciting, that thought, isn’t it, really?
PS: Yes.
KS: Yeah, I think…It’s actually really interesting because a lot of my outside time is spent with people that have always approached it in very much a sport way.
PS: Yeah.
KS: And I always struggle to find my place in it. I always felt like, well I really enjoy this, but not like you do. And wondered whether that meant I liked it as much or not. But since obviously over the years now, I’m feeling quite confident in abilities, has made me realise…sometimes I feel lucky because, I feel like I get a lot more from a day out, which is really big headed to say…
PS: No no
KS: but I’ve really been enjoying, inside, really enjoying and finding a lot of things humorous often out in nature- like the way something moves, looks like it’s dancing sometimes, or you know like the way a little beetle like gets all rolled over because he falls over a tiny little rock and then he figures it out, like a caterpillar slumping itself around and about the leaves and sticks on this path that millions of feet are walking but nobody looks down to notice, or that toad that’s randomly halfway up a mountain just at the side. I feel like from this experience but also from dancing and with that creative eye, the periphery is bigger for things and noticing things.
PS: Yeah, it makes me think about ways of paying attention or noticing things… or participating in things have the same sense of preconceived goal or notion of achievement and what that might be, or those might be, and that there is so much more to dialogue with or to be in discovery with…or in conversation with, than you might even have conceived before you’re heading out, and so to leave room in experiencing, and for the experiencing of those somehow, which makes me think of the difference of dance forms- that say, or suggest that this is exactly how the movement is executed, not necessarily because of the process that proposes, which could be a thing as well, that these are the elements that we put together or pass through as an exercise or as a means of discovery, but…has goals of achievement… for example, that are purely aesthetic, but with not necessarily any context to it, or versus movement practices or processes that include the discovering of the processes, that is the thing.
And it might have a… form and therefore an appearance in the world, but it’s not necessarily that is preconceived…If you were to rethink mountain leader training, something of inviting people to be in that immersive, participating, conversational nature with place and recognizing, for a moment in time also constituting that. So how do you attend it, to it, and how do you care for it?… something we spoke about before, about that sense of the separation dissolving so…I feel that is really urgent somehow, like if we think of our place in the world as actually being one body, then the call for care feels really urgent.
And not just because it is us, but also in solidarity with aspects of it, that is really suffering at the moment and that can’t speak for itself, in ways that we humans always hear.
Something about training perception or questioning how we perceive things and what perception is and where…maybe also problem solving…Sometimes when you’re involved in creative processes and do a lot of improvising and that part of being out doesn’t feel so scary or alien or something. We’re kind of…used to multitasking and working things out practically… and collaboration.
KS: I feel like maybe that would be a good way… because often now people who are taken outdoors don’t have any responsibility, or habitats to invite them to be there rather than follow a footstep.
PS: Yeah and I think there’s something that’s come from this project about how we create a distributed group mind and we learn different things, but also collectively, but how something that one might be, observing or learning or figuring out, it travels through the group…that’s like the collaborative nature of being out together, even though your experiences might be really specific and very personal, emotional inside to how a day is run.
KS: I was trying to wonder, how do we get to that place, you know? How is it just ingrained in us as people…but actually, if you think about it today, we’re all really different. So, it’s not that we’re just similar people, so we get it.
PS: And that feels important, to ask that it’s a kind of…exclusive in that way, that there is a certain kind of way. And yet how can you practice things together?
KS: I think it was the invitation to all partake in the same thing, but you had your own time to discover your curiosities, but also there was so much time to share.
PS: Yes.
KS: The way Simone would ask us ‘notes from the field’…and sometimes one of us would say something and someone would have a completely different experience. And how then, that would affect and evolve. And I felt like I kept growing new senses after every discussion.
PS: Yeah, wow look at that sun.
KS: Look at that sunshine! Wooo
PS. I saw the sun come up through the train window (this morning).
KS: So, you saw the sunrise and sunset. Magic.
N: Coming to the mountain as a dancer …
CR: Coming to the mountain was a completely new experience for you, wasn’t it? Quite new, wasn’t it? Not completely new.
N: I think what’s been, well the first thing that was nice, is that the sort of things I think about when I’m doing a practice or making something… I suppose I think of the body, our body’s, people’s bodies, as its own ecosystem. And the ways that our bodies hold our experiences and things that have happened and physical memories. This whole, ‘body is archive’ thing, but not really that, in the sense of remembering dances, but I sort of liken that a lot about to layers of earth or rock…there’s lots … it’s just nice to be a lot closer… be in that and be working in that… like, cycles. I can’t help thinking about cycles of life. When I first came to the research, I just kept seeing the heather and this white, it was these branches, but really white and I kept thinking about lungs or the meeting point between life and death and how that was just really new to me, being outside. But not working with it as this imaginative thing but being- here it is.
CR: You’re not having to invent it, it’s real.
N: Yeah, and it makes complete sense. You know, it’s like, our bodies are, what is it, 70, 80% water?
CR: Yeah.
N: And I’m always really affected by the moon, which of course is affecting, or affected by the sea, and I draw a lot of relations between my, our bodies… the bodies of water, and how the sea holds a lot of memories, like what’s happened in the sea that doesn’t go away, you know…so that everything’s carried in the way that we carry things from our previous generations.
CR: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting, a friend of mine…has been told…when I sometimes feel that I’m not doing enough… It’s easy to get held in the house and… not to go out and do your creative practice…she suggests, just go out each day…come back and do something right…because it’s all in there…what she’s meaning and what I really think is true…you do hold so much…You hold your whole life in your body. Everything that’s happened to you, all the experiences, all your dances. Not that you can recall every move or anything… they all have a feeling and an emotion and a something, it’s maybe not the actual movement, it’s just where you were when you did it or who you were with or …
N: A smell
(interruption by a walker passing by)
(sound of the wind and chatter in the background)
SK: Thinking about Nan Shepherd, how she’s showing the place through her experience, do you have any thoughts?
JH: Well, I guess it’s just something fundamentally we’re trained to be… Well, I feel like in my training anyway, it’s about being present or getting yourself into a mode of being where you’re hyper receptive to as many things as you’re capable of receiving at once. So, like, what you can see, what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can hear, what emotions are rising up in your body, what images that creates, in your mind. And that, feels essential for exploring landscape. And that would be, on a really basic level, just getting away from everything being visual – or like encouraging mountain leaders or people outside to explore beyond just what they can see and getting away from this kind of museum looking- where it’s about identifying what you can see and allowing…everything else in as well.
KS: Yeah.
JH: Yeah, because you can learn so much more and you can remember, I think it’s a real memory tool as well, like how to remember what you see and remember how to identify a place when you’ve explored it with your whole body is so much easier.
KS: Yeah.
SK: Maybe there’s something, certainly in relation to you two as well, I know that since doing this project or the( mountain leader) training, not that you weren’t thinking about it before, but what was it about ( the project) that made you start to think about doing mountain leader training again? So, you Keren have done yours now in between the rehearsals and the performances and it’s got you thinking about doing it again and Petra thinking about it, what is it? What ignited that in you? What do you need in terms of a confidence to think that could be a possibility?
JH: I think for me, well part of it is, so I can facilitate me being out on the mountains more, how could that be my job? But more importantly it’s a feeling I understand how to be in these places more now…I feel really calm and confident in them and I feel I could bring a lot to somebody’s experience, beyond just finding the way and looking at the view…I trust more in the value of that and I trust more because I think other dancers would…be receptive to that kind of work… having taken all those new audiences up and working with all the different people who came along with us, each day, like all those mountain leaders who already work here and seeing their response to what we were doing and how into it they were and how receptive they were to being there, being on the mountain in a different way.
KS: I know what you mean…I was just saying to Petra, just being surrounded by people that have always had sport, as an agenda, I wasn’t really sure if that’s what I wanted to do. I thought that’s what being an ML was….but over the years, getting confidence enough to take friends and family out, just realising…the gifts that you can give someone, from walking five minutes out into where you can’t see any buildings or roads or…just being there and inviting them to stop. I think quite often I can feel them like, are we there yet, Keren?…I’m like- we’re not going anywhere, we’re doing great. I think more and more people really appreciated it; I can see it. I can see the confidence growing through the achievement, but it’s a different kind of achievement that I feel a lot of ML’s give. People often feel a bit broken and unsure if they’d ever be able to do it again on their own… I just want to invite that confidence, like you…first make it all feel comfortable outside rather than, I will make you feel comfortable, you will follow me, and you’ll be fine.
JH: Yeah…rather than leading, you’re just going on a walk and facilitating them to discover it. Which I think is largely what you’ve done, Simone, with us and Mags and other people who led us out there. It’s like…creating a situation where we can find the place and explore the place… I think that feels so different from somebody dragging you up a hill and it being like – got to get to the top.
KS: And this is the time…the way that you bend time (to Simone), I think has actually inspired me, because it’s like, there is not really a right or a wrong you know and it’s like life.
KS: Midges, midges. midges.
JH: Are they mosquitoes?
