MICHELLE HEAVEN

30 July 2020

She: Gisbon, country Victoria
I: City house, Western suburbs, Melbourne

She places
Hands on golden thigh edge
Turns her head
hark!
the sound of a small shift,
one made when the skull lilts across the shelf of atlas/axis,
a slide more than a clunk.
Resplendent
SHE waits to know the knowing
Tinkling on the inner landscape
Of body,
She waits and wait-listens,
Passes through internal horizons,
Or a l o n g them:
The top of bone matter
An EMINENCE
The small shelves
RAMI
Bone origins of vectors;
Bridges that utter to us – reach!
Beginning in the marrow, we hit shape and flesh-bone, arrive at shelves, edges, thresholds: what is here what is here?

We extend to flesh: we reach into the matter of the world, we stride, we leap, we fly off cliff-faces.
We are happy, we are pert, we are heartbroken.
We have been un-held and we did not know:
until now.

The navigation has begun thus,
Harking HARKING!
Through the sky and body goes the golden woman bird,
Gathering intuitive skirts of being and thinking that is not being and thinking in the way it is (commonly) thought of.
This is an undoing of the most cosmic kind.

Toes are small holders of earth, they curl in, branches bred in fascial webs reach toward the brain.
Then
SPARKS!!
the desire to pick/up/skeleton/bone/guts
What is touching this dance? 
What – now – holds it?
If anything.
An energy?
She senses into the space: oh, unofficial sky! oh quantum information!

Periwinkle pick pick picking to a score of insistent violins and women’s voices skirting singing plucking notes from sky with tender fingers, as though singing from the high white plains of Lapland: reindeer, Inuit. Interfolding language of human become animal that, upon its emergence, becomes the cacophony,
and,
just the thing she needs.

. . .And at the same time trying to be aware of not being here except for now
Which is quite tricky yet delicate delicate in not getting too forward of being backward
Mmm - much better to know that unknowing is the not of the now and that all you should only try and forget to simply be . . not . . . here 

If you got ahead of yourself it wouldn’t be all bad because then there would be two of you and you could always stand behind them if needed, which would in fact make 3. And you’d never be lonely
but if you want to be alone
You have to be still.

The turn continues, I am yet to move, I am already in motion:
Ba b aba b aba aba aba aba: the red flags
Flags!
We must be careful who we relate to.
Pushing on my system,
It is.
The quiet undertow of beginning.


I am yet to begin, I have begun:
Pre-acceleration.
There was another man, one with a stutter, but when he fell into the quantum space, body space, wide-brain, the expanded field, he spoke without puncture.
In the space of what is, of potential: his legs, too, were golden!

I am aware of the potential for the synapses to break
to fall apart and cause rupture
and here in this new-now-plateau
the Inuit cannot sing.
But, integrate the space, forage for the tear in time and body tissue and bone even: you can work here.
In repair, moving to repair, to understand to ask – What if?
If – then – If?



(Continued in order in full text)

MICHELLE is an independent choreographer and dance performer. Michelle has worked nationally and internationally with many prominent Australian artists. Her performance career spans working with artists/directors/companies such as Gideon Obarzanek, Lucy Guerin, Helen Herbertson, Leigh Warren, Michael Kantor, Phillip Adams, Sandra Parker, Sue Healey, Tracie Mitchell, Polyglot, Weave Movement Theatre and Ben Cobham. Michelle is a recipient of The Australian Post Graduate Award (Industry) Scholarship and several Victorian Green Room Awards, she has also been nominated for Helpmann and Australian Dance Awards. Her work has been presented at Melbourne Festival, Beijing Dance Festival, Dance Massive and Castlemaine State Festival. She is a 2018 Green Room and Australian Dance Award nominee for her work ‘In Plan’ presented at the 2017 Melbourne Festival. In addition to her own movement practice and study, Michelle enjoys collaborating with other artists. She is currently in development with Phillip Adams and Walter Dunderville (New York), and Caroline Meaden.

Of deep listening and bone matter
Building bridges with tiny bones
Listening out, listening in,
On a wire, one wire
Spine
Spiralling, spinning
Transparent
Where links the weight and density of the heart?

Excerpt - non-chronological:

'Oh! Unofficial sky!'

by Whalerider Paea

RESPONSE:
Michelle
#1

AND

AND

AND (a disjointed continuing)

3-D model: 'Listening In, Out' - Michelle Heaven #2.

RESPONSE:
#3 Michelle

and

Wallpaper image:
drawings on paper,
Michelle #4

Prelude:

Philip Glass (composer),
'A Gentleman's Honor', 1983