RED BOOK AND SHOES - Work Space Brussels

• 
  red book and shoes by nicky miller
• 
  red book and shoes by nicky miller
• 
  red book and shoes by nicky miller

RED BOOK AND SHOES

NICKY MILLER

Outline

Red Shoes and Book project is based on 27 stories written by Gertrude Stein in "To do : a book of alphabets and names".
The project is including a performance work based on acoustic level speaking and reading the text.
directed by : Nicky Miller and performed by : Tracee Westmoreland, Daniel Blanga Gubbay and Nicky Miller. But also an independant production of short films .
This year 2011 Red Shoes and Book will be in residency at WSB at Khaiiteather studio's and at les Bains Connectives , and also Nadine in Brussels.

The project itself :
The project Red shoes and book is based on texts written by the american author and curator Gertrude Stein.
Gertrude Stein is an emblematic figure of feminism and as well of modern art, but her texts are less known than the character herself. Here I will focus on the feminist writer and her toughts about prose and grammar.
I always tought as a performer and visual artist that every work should be composed and written or even improvised like litterature. When I was a dancer I was wondering and having the same problematics of writing and composition into the choreography.
And the nature itself of the word choreography is « writing ».
As a videast I realize that my approach was the same to make images during the editing or framing the image itself. A composition is a tool for writing whatever the language or the used form. Gertrude Stein had a precise method using : nouns, adverbs, verbs and prepositions that I don’t understand completely now but into which I could be very sensitive. And her main practice was to use unconsciousness writings to create images and stories trough the sound of the words.

a/ an interpretation trough the reading and the lecture
- The book “To do” is composed of 27 letters of the alphabet, and each letter is referring to 4 names whose having each of them a story or a writing dealing with grammar games and poetry structures.
The reading and lecture of the text is a form I chose to experiment because of the relation it could create with the audience and also because it is a form with a support: a book (visible).
The performer has to follow another way to act trough the reading: being present with a paper or a book , the gaze focusing on it , the voice here is appearing as another instrument to play, because there is a score written to follow.
The audience is then receiving the lecture with another mode as usual : being sollicited to listen to and to understand the meaning or the sound of the words.
- Reading and saying are two ways to

b/ Experimenting images trough the text :
From these 27 texts and stories, I would realize 27 short films corresponding to each names, following the composition and structure of the book “To do”.
Images and film have a common point with the text in the sense were the audience could read and give his own interpretation to an image as well as a book.
Here I want to focus on the images as a vector to compose and to edit a book.
The films will be an interpretation of course of my own imagination trough the Gertrude Stein book.
But the main tool would be to use the grammatic forms of composing texts of Gertrude Stein : repetition, displacement of nouns and names as an adjective, the rhythm of the words and the ponctuation.
The films are not a representation of the text as well the performance of the reading.
It is a new composition coming out and inspired from the book.
We could also say that Gertrude Stein is using images trough her precise game with grammar and prose, by accumulating places of nouns and verbs, adjectives, names.

c/ a musical composition
The approach for performing the reading or the lecture of the text is to use this one as a score.
Words as a sound, sentences and ponctuation as a game for improving the reading to the audience. It is not exactly to work on the voice as possibilities, but more on the sound of the text and its resonance when it is said.
The structure of the book is also one score: dividing the text with 27 letters of the alphabet.
The book becomes for the performer a musical notice with indication to follow but also is becoming a soundtrack to listen to for the audience.

Credits

• concept/direction : Nicky Miller
• performance : Juriji Der Klee, Tracee Westmoreland, Nicky Miller, Rodolphe Coster
• music : Rodolphe Coster
• supported by : workspacebrussels, Les Bains Connective, Nadine , Local Red de las residencias (Colombia, Bogotà)
   

DATES

Date21/03/2011 - 9/04/2011 / Kaaistudio's

Other productions

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