Day FOURTEEN - the end of the beginning

Wow! This was the last day of my residency and these weeks felt like they went by faster than the weather does on this island. And look at the picture! After a night of rain the hill presented herself to us as new. Imagine a boy with a brand new TOI, and you get a picture of how I felt inside.
Bas van Peijpe came to watch my first runthrough, to give some feedback cause until now, nobody but my lieftallige assistant knows what I'm doing in the sand.
Afterwards his first word was 'wow' so I guested that was a good sign. We talked it over and basically; the performance is ready. It's just going to be guessing how my audience will behave in terms of... how they want to move in the space, what are their urges and expectations. This is something you can not control that much so it's going to be exciting next week. Usually the audiences behaviour has a big influence on me and my work, because I want to move each other.

We also got a lot of details done today.. you won't directly think about it when you experience a performance (however minimalistic), but hiding flashy roadsigns, making businesscards from sandpaper (...), digging out dead foxes, and protecting a sand hill can be time consuming business. So again I want to thank Maité Guërin for her unconditional efforts (and I will)!

Okay, I need to keep it short cause tomorrow we have to carry out 100 stones again and for some reason, writing this blog always happens between 1.00 and 3.00 o' clock. That's why this is the last post; I want to put all my energy in the right direction now. To play four times a day that's not going to sit in your kouwe kleren. Still I promised a very short movie from all the 'pic's of the day' from the hill (the first picture of every post), to see the changes in the sand and weather. 

But that's for next week. 

For now I wish all the artists 

a big TOI TOI TOI 

and to everyone: lots of s/fun!

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Day THIRTEEN

RAIN. As I write. And that's fantastic news! It means that by tomorrow all the human terror tracks will possibly be erased. A nice clean and smooth sand hill to work on.. important, cause this early morning people and dogs again walked over the hill. Well, as from now we are armed with red/white coloured rope to put around it.. hell yeah!
Today I made some strong choices. The basics are standing now and I'm starting to feel this could become a very special 'FREEZE!' edition. Different things happen on this seemingly silent and peaceful location. For example, we smelled something funny close to our backstage. Now we discovered that something buried a fox, right next to our lunch spot! I still can't imagine what it was that put it in the ground, especially here on this island.. ideas anyone?

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Day TWELVE

Losing the key to the backstage when you have only four days until the premiere,
is not the thing to do. But I did. Searching for two hours in the sand, knowing that it's not going to give me the key back is not the thing to do, but I did. I can go on like this, and I will.

Again volunteers made the day. We were making a train of humans so that we could carry 100 stones up the hill. I can't imagine doing that ourselves, and we didn't. I wanted to sing like inmates do in films when they work on the (rail)road, cause that's what it felt like, I guess. But I didn't remember any prisoner songs from movies, so I couldn't.

While balancing all the stones I could balance in half an hour time I expected that more stones would fall.. but they didn't! And that is not good, not good at all. Because I want to be able to go on balancing for centuries on that sand hill (when wind would blow them over constantly), but now I was almost done and was able to shout "tadaaaaa!", which I could.. but I didn't, because I was not a happy camper.

And of course; when you least expect it at the end of the day, you find the key back. On the only place we didn't look consciously. What was that sentence again about 99% transpiration and 1% inspiration? I am really waiting for that 1%. I know I should force myself to get inspired by now, but maybe I have to sweat even a little more, (until the key just presents itself) so I don't.

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Day ELEVEN

I went crazy today. After noticing that someone else went crazy before me; a sign with "please don't disturb or enter this sand hill" was gone missing. Big footsteps replaced the sign and made their way towards the top, destroying the beautiful feminine shape of the mountain. On top, one foot stepped on a big mirror, which broke possibly at the same time. the footsteps changed into tracks of rolling stones and down the hill: stones that stopped rolling (imagine bringing up the stones every time, it's a good workout I tell you). The footsteps continued their way across the hill replacing natural shaped smoothness for human terror.

We tried to erase the tracks with brumes and stuff, impossible. It only got worse. So I decided to do the same as my more than unwelcome guest, but more extreme. Click on first picture to see what I mean (in the back at the right). Tomorrow I think we will walk together with four volunteers all over the place, to destroy all signs of beauty. The hill must become one 'thing' again. And this is the only way to do it cause I can't stop people and dogs all the time from doing what they are doing. It would be a waste of energy. Anyway I need my energy to try to 'control' the stones, cause they still have more to say then I do at this point, and at some point, that needs to be balanced as well.

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Day TEN

Today I made the sculptures as high as myself. It looks stunning when you look from down there, it seems as if they can fall any second, tumbling down the hill threatening your toes. The biggest problem I'm having now is timing. It takes much longer (about 7m) to make a sculpture my size with approximately 12 stones. That means I can only make three of those within the time limit of my audience (30m). Since I want it to become a ritualistic performance (see yesterday's post) there are some hard choices to make: Do I want it to become more beautiful with high sculptures, or do I want it more to be like a ritual when working with smaller statues (then I can build them faster making more of them)? And I have to remember: there is also the weather factor. Sometimes there is almost no wind and sometimes I have to work hard to even keep my own balance up there.

Some more stones fell from the hill making a nice track in the sand, but some of them stopped in the middle of the sand hill! If I would walk up there to take them back, I would leave marks that won't be straitened out by the wind in a few days. So I made a lasso rope to catch the stones, giving them a fast pull so they would continue making their track. Still there were two stones that I had to catch and pull from up there, leaving a rather strong track (click on 1st picture).

Maite Guerin arrived by boot today! She will help me on location for production but also with giving feedback. And boy I need her! Time flies when you're being obsessed by something and talking to myself is not really inspiring. 
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Questions will be answered tomorrow!

Day NINE

Forgot to make the daily picture. So I went back to the location to make this photo above. What a relieve, fulfilling my own expectations. Nobody cares if I would cheat, nobody would notice if I make two pictures tomorrow, or use an old one. Was it not that I really want this performance to be a ritualistic one, I might not take the extra effort.
Why must it be a ritual? It's theatre isn't it? Fake is totally okay, as long as we bite it... right?

People sometimes speak about thin lines: "there is a thin line between loving and hating my parents." For me there is a thin line between actions that (during a performance) feel realistic and necessary, and actions that feel theatrical and unnecessary. And if I imagine this line then it doesn't get thinner. Instead, it moves more towards the realistic side. Meaning that the unnecessary side gains more space, meaning that more and more things that I could do during a performance feel unnecessary, and therefor it seems harder and harder to find the things that really matter (to me).
To get to do the things I really want to do, I have to say no to 99% of the ideas that pop up in my head. So I kept balancing stones today. Apparently I was so busy with it.. I even forgot to make my daily picture. First I thought: hell no godverdomme nou moet ik terugfietsen. Now I'm thinking: well, at least it gave content to write my daily blog.

Unusual things today:
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I heard the sound of broken glass being collected, a very familiar sound. Then I saw a man on top of the hill picking up the pieces of a mirror that mystically broke. The man disappeared, leaving the trash in the sand. He didn't wave back.
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First time that a stone roll from the sand hill; it gave a beautiful pattern in the sand. To think that I am trying to protect the terrific organic feminine shapes of 'my' mountain.. insane.

 

Day EIGHT

Right now I feel like coming back from a day of working on the road (and I'm not making fun of road workers here, once I was one myself). As these stones are actually used to build walls and streets, I'm not surprising myself with these thoughts. 

Anyway, I did what I wrote at day seven; focus on one element. Stones. Back to the basics. It was frustrating and educational. Very good signs. The wind was even stronger than yesterday so it was a perfect try out. I really feel like doing this every day for a few hours, just to get used to the heavy duty, and also because then the performance would feel more natural, for me as well as for the audience.

I want to do my training in all possible weather conditions. This way there won't be too many (un)pleasant surprises, and I keep the doors open for any creative thought. Because for me, the good ideas only come when the basics are there. Then it's possible to get out of the box. Why would you want to think outside the box, when you don't even have a box?

So, no extra pictures, no funny video's today. Not even a picture showing how I turn my shoe upside down to let the Sahara dessert out? No. I need experience at this location. I need the boring. Not the clouds to open up dramatically. Not today at least.