Our seventh session with Raf was followed by a viewing of the film “Breath Made Visible” about the post-modern dancer Anna Halprin.
Raf started by updating us on the progress of his work, expounding his ideas. It can’t be easy to transmit your creative ideas so that your audience grasps your vision, but our Group is slowly learning. Raf talked about preservation and pickling, regeneration and rebirth. . .anemoia (nostalgia for a time you’ve never known) . . . foreverism (an anti-nostalgic discourse that promises growth without change and life without loss) . . .liminal spaces. . .
(See the description of his installation here)
Our movement is to be part of Raf’s installation in Room One of the FPG. He is also working on a piece to be installed in the second Gallery room.
Room One will feature giant ceramic half-eggs that will be moved around on castors, with ceramic plaques on the walls and a huge installation in the middle of the room. At the Opening, Members of our Group will slowly move around this central piece, following Raf’s score. They will be dressed in denim with accessories commissioned by Raf especially for the exhibition: helmets, vests and sleeves that end in gloves

After taking us through his work-in-progress, Raf set out three chairs to represent his installation then began to direct us to move around the chairs, following the same path. Every now and then we were to pause, holding a pose for a short while before moving on. Raf then worked on the poses, encouraging us to adopt poses copied from works of art. He handed out pictures for us to copy. It was fairly easy to adopt the pose of a lady holding a ferret or a figure holding his arm up to offer a blessing but the biggest challenge was posing as the Spice Girls. And five Members rose to the challenge. After a morning of much hilarity and fun, we paused for lunch.

Raf cannot take us further until he has his installation in place so in the afternoon, we trekked over to the Beecroft Art Gallery Lecture Theatre to watch the film. Anna Halprin, was born in 1920 and the film showed her on stage aged 86 years old presenting her life story. The sheer exuberance and energy that she projected as she pranced around the stage was infectious and I could feel the joy that dancing gave her.

The Gallery is shut on Mondays, but after the film , we were allowed to wander around and look at the current displays. I was thrilled to find the display of Alan Sorrell’s pictures of Egypt which he had painted at the time of the building of the Aswan Dam. After being on display in the Gallery in the 1960s, when I first saw them, these paintings had languished in storage, hidden from sight. Then on the top Floor, the elaborate costumes belonging to a number of Drag Queens took my breath away. They were gorgeous!
The wealth of powerful, inspiring ideas generated during our day almost overwhelmed me – too much to take in. On returning home it took me all evening to rest and recover my mojo.

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