We arrive at Bains around 11am. It’s a half hour easy walk from St Gilles Vorplein to beside the park in a part of town I was last in for process/unprocess. No macrobiotic lunches this time, but an entire industrial kitchen, plenty of coffee, and a stroll to buy our standard cuisine of shibari: broccoli.
Silvano was there to meet us, and by late afternoon had supplied us with our studio for the next two weeks, pillows, blankets, and a large bolt, which sometime tomorrow shall be drilled through the ceiling beam for us to hang from. It seems we leave a trail of drill holes and bolts wherever we arrive.
Once we’d settled – Dasniya cleaning the floor while I procured said broccoli and sundry lunch ingredients – we ate a baguette. And then made yoga. The last two nights we’ve been doing this, so for me at least there’s a bit of energy and fatigue from all the asanas. Yoga today was not so heavy; just enough to remind us we have told each other how we’d like to be exhausted quite often the coming days.
How to start a rehearsal? Last night we talked about our notes. I spent a couple of hours going through all my rope folders – everything from Japanese traditional Shibari to Forsythe’s Suspense to knot theory to BDSM rope work … – and old writings here on the topic, coming up with some pages of ideas that we have talked back and forth since early last year. Dasniya had a similar wad of pages in her notebook, some which overlapped my notes, others not.
Being practical, what we’d do each day for a warmup, how long we might rehearse, and so on gives something of a framework for the less tangible elucidation of ideas. Today then, we started apart. Me working on Japanese Kyudo / tea ceremony footwork and walking (something of a formal sock-slide), a pathetic, unshibari suspension failure which might get taken somewhere in the coming days. Dasniya with feet. A single rope and some things that we talked about for much of the rest of the day, over dinner (broccoli), and which after dinner I tried something of a repeat with, with my hands.
Quite an opaque description. We have far more than we can possibly get through in two weeks, and have talked through much of what we did today with a depth that would suffice for a day’s work even without the rehearsal. Tomorrow more of the same and something completely different.
Michael has sent some thoughts on music, including a trio for bassoon, flute, and harp.
