It's been a year since I've started working on a 'cover version' of René Lavand's No se puede hacer mas lento. You can see the earlier post about this here, for a bit of background.
This is a fairly short piece (6mins performed continuously), executed with one hand only, and only 6 cards.
I won't exaggerate: I practice this every day. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes only 10mins, but everyday there is a moment in which I zoom into this piece. It is very much like sitting at a piano to practice a single piece of music each day... the piece changing through the months, the years.
And yet I have not performed it for anyone, except late at night for a bunch of friends, when some dutch courage helped me to perform what is still not 'tight'.
There is something about this year dedicated to learning Lavand's piece that strikes me as both absurd and brilliant. I read the other day about an actor who spent 7 years practicing Hamlet for a particular director, who then died before the piece was ever staged. I don't intend to spend 7 years only 'rehearsing', but I have to say that sometimes that solitary rehearsal is kind of great, regardless of whether the piece will ever 'become public': it is just me, the cards, the movements. There is the pleasure of getting it right, of improvements, but also small surprises, the tiniest of details suddenly acquiring massive significance.
Part of the reason I have yet to present it to an audience, though, is that the piece still lacks any kind of narrative or conceptual frame. I've tried several versions - types of 'patter' let's say - and so far none seem to stick. I think that I am still a bit too haunted by the original, Lavand's version, and I don't quite know how to move away from that, if, indeed, that is what I need or want to do.
In the meantime, everyday I sit at a table and watch a little show performed with one hand and 6 cards. Is it senseless to spend so much time on a performance work that might never be shown?
VG
This is a fairly short piece (6mins performed continuously), executed with one hand only, and only 6 cards.
I won't exaggerate: I practice this every day. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes only 10mins, but everyday there is a moment in which I zoom into this piece. It is very much like sitting at a piano to practice a single piece of music each day... the piece changing through the months, the years.
And yet I have not performed it for anyone, except late at night for a bunch of friends, when some dutch courage helped me to perform what is still not 'tight'.
There is something about this year dedicated to learning Lavand's piece that strikes me as both absurd and brilliant. I read the other day about an actor who spent 7 years practicing Hamlet for a particular director, who then died before the piece was ever staged. I don't intend to spend 7 years only 'rehearsing', but I have to say that sometimes that solitary rehearsal is kind of great, regardless of whether the piece will ever 'become public': it is just me, the cards, the movements. There is the pleasure of getting it right, of improvements, but also small surprises, the tiniest of details suddenly acquiring massive significance.
Part of the reason I have yet to present it to an audience, though, is that the piece still lacks any kind of narrative or conceptual frame. I've tried several versions - types of 'patter' let's say - and so far none seem to stick. I think that I am still a bit too haunted by the original, Lavand's version, and I don't quite know how to move away from that, if, indeed, that is what I need or want to do.
In the meantime, everyday I sit at a table and watch a little show performed with one hand and 6 cards. Is it senseless to spend so much time on a performance work that might never be shown?
VG
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