Encounters

Some of you know from Tara's blog that since we moved to the Northern Rivers region, I have been co-directing an integrated dance theatre group for young adults with and without disability, called Sprung!! (see www.sprung.me or like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/sprungdance?ref=hl )
Earlier this year I wrote a prose poem for the group to workshop. It is called "Calling" and its about the spaces we negotiate between our private selves and the melee of Encounters in public life... the value of times alone, but the necessity to have the courage to "go out into the world", and the jewels that we are given, amongst the scratches and the wounds, when we do so. "We have touched something we have never touched before... and we are not the same".
This poem has been the framework for our theatre exercises at our monthly workshops all year, in part because the primary focus of my theatre work with Sprung is to look at "being ourselves and being aware of others at the same time". This process really emerges in the exercise called Encounters in which our character (which can be ourselves, or an aspect of ourselves, or borrowed aspects that we would like to explore) crosses paths with another character... first without noticing them, and then, increasingly, noticing them (but with integrity i.e. with an internal constancy) and finally, responding to them in some way that may actually begin a little story.
The poem has been simplified and revised with input from members of the Group over the year.
On Sunday December 1 we will be performing the 5 scene interactive dance theatre work (now called, 'Encounters')  at the Alstonville Uniting Church at 730 pm. We have a guest artist, Michael Hennessy, ex Sydney Dance Company, who has stumbled into the group both literally and in the story, and is greatly augmenting its impact.
The poem has been profound for me, and I would like to share it. I have posted a recording on youtube which is 6 minutes long but is worth experiencing if you have space for this. In our actual production, I will just be reading the beginning and ends of the poem (while the characters are sleeping, waking, rising, and going forth and then when they retire again) and their actions and stories flesh out the rest of the poem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bcqM0LwyJA
WIth love,
Robyn
PS I will post a recording of the performance on youtube and through the Sprung website afterwards.