Either it is lack of sleep, or I am on the precipice of whatever has waylaid many of the cast for the last weeks. Feeling ugh. MY head buried in dry cotton wool, clogging my mouth and dry sand rubbing my eyes raw. We finished around 18h today and I biked home, up the hills, got lost, got lost again, found home, planning on bed very soon.
Yesterday Dasniya, Gala and I had a four hour workshop in the afternoon and early evening of Shibari. Many of the dancers, singers, techies, and others find what we are doing fascinating and also unsettling. It seemed like a good idea to show what we do, talk about it a little, and play with some basic ideas and rope techniques, to make an proper introduction.
A group of around ten, including Parsifal (Andrew Richards), Amfortas (Thomas Johannes Mayer), Désirée our organiser, and several others arrived, perhaps a little nervous, excited also. Our first task, as we were coiling all the ropes was for the to learn how to do this. Perhaps for us it is common and we do this handling of rope in a natural way that appears simple, but teaching even the basic knot, or connecting two ropes shows how alien this can be.
Rope, once become familiar comes alive, it flows and glides through fingers, dresses bodies and limbs, entangles without itself becoming tangled. For most who have never handled rope, it evades the fingers, slips from limbs, twists and coils upon itself, knotting and snaring. Instead of being sublime, induces fear.
Dasniya and I talked a couple of times prior about what we might do in the four hours, and of course had enough for a week. We spent most of the second half on one of my favourite rope plays, half of use with one limb tied – a wrist, ankle, around the waist – the other end of the rope secured through the ring, all of us together in an inwards facing circle, the other half each with one person, rotating counter-clockwise every five minutes or so. The exersise being the restriction of the rope and the play of touch.
With fingers, hands, whole body, rope, sounds, sensations, for those on the outside the new bodies every few minutes gives a dramatic experience of how different one person can be from another, for those on the inside, the same, but in receiving. It can be a very emotional, physical experience and for me in such a short time gives a sense of what Shibari is; an opening into another world.
Of course, seeing us all hanging every day, this was the one thing many wanted to try. So it seems we’ll be doing another workshop after we open for just that.
And today, an afternoon of Act II with the orchestra. It’s almost come together, still some technical stuff to sort out before I will feel comfortable … all the suspension lines now are on winches, and rising a few meters above the whiteness of the stage while bound and slightly out of myself in a side suspension is an utter delight.
Tomorrow is the first dress, hair makeup, nakedness. I shall go to bed now, Dr Who, peanut butter on toast, cups of tea …
