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CONTEXT

This portfolio is submitted in partial fulfilment of my Annual Progress Review at the end of first year of PhD research at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. It’s a presentation of work in progress and experiments, produced under lockdown conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic (May 2020). My doctoral research seeks to answer the following question: How can a somatic practice draw on embodied forms such as Butoh dance to encourage a direct realisation of ecological selfhood? My practical research uses dance, music and multimedia to communicate shifts in my basic sense of self achieved through immersion in embodied-imaginary states and conditions. This portfolio offers some examples of this, ranging from documentation of live performances for an audience to somatic scores and prompts for you to try yourself, as well as video experiments. As you experience the work, please try to be mindful of your own being, your body, and the mystery of who is looking out through your eyes, operating your fingers, and listening. How is your breathing? I’ll remind you from time to time to check in with yourself. My supporting writing on the context of the project can be found below Click on my limbs to explore.

Let them become dark pools that expand to take up the space of your cheeks and forehead. EndFragment

(Please read them several times to check)

Become aware of new eyes opening on the nape of your neck. EndFragmentEndFragment

Please settle back into yourself….    Sink your awareness deep inside your body.

Some people do not hear a voice. EndFragment EndFragment

NOW eyes open inside your chest cavity: loking inside, illuminating your internal organs. See through these eyes. EndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragment

Feel that you are inside your eyes. EndFragment

If you do hear a voice, is it yours?  

These eyes see the space behind your body, like sonar. EndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragment

Become aware of your breathing.

Can you keep all these eyes at once? EndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragment

Who is it that looks out through them? EndFragment

Where is it located?

Is it in your head? EndFragment

Please close your eyes and listen.( EndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragment

Now two more eyes open on the soles of your feet.  EndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragment

<  RETURN

Do you hear an internal voice when you read these words?EndFragment    

The dark pools of your normal eyes. The sonar at the nape of your neck. The earth eyes on the soles of your feet. The internal eyes in your chest. EndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragment

(Where is your head?) EndFragment

(Does it feel nestled within the bones of your skull?) EndFragmentEndFragment

These eyes see straight through the floor, and down into the centre of Earth. EndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragment

Soften your eyes.

(How is your breathing?) EndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragmentEndFragment

Let’s try an experiment. EndFragment

(Do not worry if this is you). EndFragment EndFragment

For some people a voice may seem to hover in the space in front of the forehead, where the eyes meet the world.  It may even seem to sit nowhere in space. EndFragment EndFragment EndFragment

TEXT SPOKEN BY MICHAEL DURING THE PERFORMANCE  SECTION 1   A painful swelling of the face and throat A yellow of the skin or the eyes Headaches, drowsiness, hair loss, chills and sweating Strange visions Plastic of the heart and the hands A reduced sense of touch   Keep this leaflet Over 4000 different drugs running every day down drains and plugholes Through sewers and cisterns Out into the ocean Where they whisper to the fishes and shrimp   Keep this leaflet The following side effects have been observed:   An unusual production of breast milk in men and women Dissociation and feelings of unreality Isolation from family and friends Plastic of the gums and brain Memory loss Difficulty sleeping Difficulty waking up An obscure feeling of loss or panic   But this medication has been developed with you in mind It will soothe your yearning It will dull your love It will make things copeable   Imagine the jaws of a seagull closing on a shrimp   The moon is leaving us at a rate of 1cm every year   Plastic of the guts and feet A reduced sense of touch Nightmares, boredom, ennui A reduced sense of touch   Ghosts along the spine A reduced sense of touch   These pills may make you feel worse before you feel better   These pills may make you worse before you feel     SECTION 2   Please Soft Please Soft Please soften your eyes: I’m searching for the moon in my blood   We’ve been moonless and tideless And trembling and tideless   We’re missing each other. We’re walking right through each other.   Focus on the hurt place In the chest. Lunary   I have a question: Will you be the moon in my blood?   Soften your eyes. Please soften your eyes. Will you be the moon in my blood?

This is a live performance for three artists: Paul Michael Henry (choreography, dance, music, concept); Jer Reid (music, dramaturgy) and Jamie Wardrop (visual design and live video art). It was conceived in collaboration with marine biologist Dr. Alex Ford (University of Portsmouth). The text below indicates what the audience experience on entering the performance space, as well as reproducing the programme notes they are given which explain the context of the piece. Full video of a performance in Frankfurt in February 2020 can be seen further down (full screen option available). Below the video I have also included the live text spoken during the performance as it may not be clear on the recording.

AUDIENCE ENTRANCE  On entering the space one by one, the audience members are presented with a small installation on a plinth containing shrimp from the experiment on which this piece is based, placed in vials, next to vials of antidepressants cut into a half-moon shape. They are supplied with magnifying glasses to examine the specimens before taking their seat. AUDIENCE PROGRAMME TEXT  This performance began with an experiment in marine biology. Professor Alex Ford of the University of Portsmouth measured the effects of antidepressants in coastal sea water on the behaviour of Shrimp.   Shrimp have evolved to stay in the shadows, where it’s safe. As the levels of antidepressants in the ocean rise, the shrimp show a tendency to swim upwards into the light, where they are often eaten by seagulls.   This effect is measurable because of the many millions of humans who take these medications. You might think of the experiment as a measure of secret human sadness.   Even today mental illness is personalised - an individual problem with no bearing on society and whether the structures of late capitalism are working or producing happy humans. Not to speak of other species. Not to speak of the Earth.   We are given pills and asked to go back to work. This economy is designed to grow perpetually.   If these things make sense, why are so many millions burying their despair beneath the ocean waves?  Even the shrimp have noticed.

Landing Page This film was shot at the Devil’s Pulpit near Carbeth, Scotland. The location is reached by descent from a forest glade down a series of stone steps and a steep path, supported by ropes strung between the trees. Climbing down feels like a transition to an underworld, or perhaps to one’s own hidden psyche physicalised in the river and the rock outcrops carpeted with moss. The water is dark, brown, and fast flowing. I decided to use costume and makeup to formalise and encourage the shift from daily consciousness to something other. The use of the ‘crab’ position is something I also do in Laughter at Being Crushed. For me it is a shortcut to an alternative plane of reality. My vision is inverted and my limbs must work backwards, foregrounding the difficulties of travelling. Features of the surroundings engage and penetrate the attention with a fresh urgency, and I feel myself become porous and open-vulnerable. Watching the video now, I see myself as still half human but overtly embedded in the matrix around me with the clouds below and a rivery sky. Ghostly depths announce themselves, intimated by the processed birdsong on the soundtrack. This inversion of self also recurs in HYPERSEA and seems to me one very effective surrealist method of collaging either directly by reorienting the body, or in post production, in order to  overflow the daily sense of self. Butoh dance is filled with such inverted images, such as feeling eyes on the back of the neck, as in WHO ARE YOU? Home Page I have tried with this portfolio site to achieve an isomorphism between form and theme: rather than the ubiquitous grid layout of rectangular frames found on most websites, I designed something that wanders and interlinks, opening outwards and returning. This comes at the expense of some clarity in navigation but even this I feel is appropriate as for me the exploration of ecological selfhood is meandering, unmooring and diffuse. It operates in spirals and outbursts rather than linear progression. The twin themes on the the homepage are unity and dispersal, and I made use of three generalised myths to express this. The tree in the background forms an axis mundi, linking earth and sky and giving expression to the liminality of human existence, as well as constancy and a unity of experience. We live suspended between earth and sky, watched over by the stars. Secondly, I read years ago of an ancient Babylonian myth concerning Tiamat, a sea goddess and symbol of primordial chaos whose body was dismembered; the heavens and earth were created from her separated limbs. This accords with my own experiences of my being as a microcosm reflecting the macrocosm of the cosmos (a notion incorporated in many faiths and in the magickal aphorism As Above, So Below). The dismemberment of my body parts on the homepage is intended as an articulation of this myth as recapitulated by every being. Thirdly, one version of the Greek mythic story of the princess Ariadne has it that she feel in love with Theseus, giving him a ball of thread with which to find his way out of the labyrinth which he entered in order to kill the minotaur. I have extended this notion to show a ball of thread at the centre of the screen representing my atomised, isolated selfhood. Ariadne guides me out of this conceptual labyrinth, but ecologically and in many directions. The self she leads me towards is plural, diffuse and interconnected. Who are you? These pages are obviously prompts for the reader / listener, intended as a guide towards a shifting sense of self. They are a reimagining of exercises from Butoh (the eyes appearing all over the body, which sensitises the skin and encourages somatic and kinaesthetic perception), and from Nagatomo’s re-reading of phenomenology (the audio exercises guiding towards an experience of the subject-body which is felt to emanate beyond the borders of the skin). I included audio both with and without supporting sound design, allowing the listener the option of drifting on a sound bed, or simply listening to the instructions without distraction to focus on their own bodily perceptions. SHRIMP DANCE This 50 minute performance gestated for around seven years before finally being premiered in Glasgow in 2019. I am dissatisfied with its presentation here due to the video being essentially static documentation from the back of a theatre; as such much of the atmosphere is missing, and moments when I enter into the audience are out of shot. This being said, I include it because SHRIMP DANCE is something of a summation of my performance practice up until 2020.  The work of the performance from one angle is to take the tiny shrimp with which Dr. Ford conducted his experiment (he sent them to me through the post), and over the course of 50 minutes make them important. The theme of microcosm-macrocosm is again present, as is the attempt to critique neoliberal ‘self-responsibilised’ selfhood by making links between the communal conditions of human society and the mental health of individuals within it. For me, the miracle of Dr. Ford’s experiment is that it gives verifiable rebuttal to Cartesian dualism (sort of): how humans feel inside is changing the behaviour of sea life hundreds of miles away. This phenomenon is deep enough that I found the need to throw all the artistic tools at my disposal at it: dance at the core of the performance, but also music, text and video art. If the piece survives as part of my final PhD portfolio I aim to stage a performance specifically for video with multiple camera angles, or perhaps arrange a performance for assessment.  LAUGHTER AT BEING CRUSHED As explained within the performance notes on this page, Laughter is to some extent a trauma piece. I used the spiritual conceit that suffering and trauma are brutal openings of the small self, exposing its vulnerability and unsurvivability so thoroughly that in the end one is forced to break open and accept a new self, maskless, incapable of hiding behind a persona. I hoped that if I could make myself so naked, I would be able to meet others in the audience in a particularly honest and truthful way. CORONA BODIES These writings emerged during the last few months of lockdown in Glasgow. I live alone in a tenement flat, and have experienced a cascade of emotional states involving isolation and disconnection, but underneath this new opportunities to connect. I’ve heard trees answering me when I speak to them, and the electrical hum of other humans passing me even though we keep our distance from each other. I’ve found for myself that this must be intentional and ritualised, sometimes in the form of internal mantras as in Heart Walking. It is a slow undoing of the atomised self achieved in unlikely conditions: though more isolated than ever, I am trying to find evidence, instead, of interdependence and coexistence. 

COMMENTARY

Chopka

Heart Walking

Viral Apostrophe

The 2 Metre Body

The 2 metre Body Begin indoors In my case that’s a third floor tenement flat Living room of 1.9 x 4.6 metres (2.9 metres high) This means my corona body always overflows my flat On at least 2 sides and sometimes 3 I am invading my neighbours If I stand against the wall of the living room I can spare one of them But there’s nothing I can do about the one below Short of sleeping on the ceiling Think of a mirror self below the floor Feet on the ceiling and head extending into the furniture Perhaps I sometimes have my teeth in his breakfast This radial self My virus body Delimits one way in which I am dangerous Or vulnerable A wet mist that precedes my skin Visualise it maybe as a haze A trembling of the air I leave traces for several days Depending on surface material Go outside now (Leave a slug’s trail on the stairs and across the close) Use gloves for the communal door The pavements didn’t envision this outcome Remember radiality Don’t fixate on your front body There are also the sides and behind and above You are blending Be alive to ghosts Everyone on the street shimmers outside themselves Do not encourage paranoia Find a graceful way to interpenetrate these strange bodies Shy smiles or eyes straight ahead The ones with masks and gloves, the ones who seem unperturbed Play with it The corona body is just one of your entries into this world Hidden till illuminated by the dark light of pandemic

Viral Apostrophe I ask Corona how it’s doing I ask what it needs How is to be so round And small and everywhere Do you feel like a squatter? Or misunderstood An honest attempt at flourishing Ostracised and hunted Colour blind coloniser Invisible Liebensraum Equal opportunity friend maker But why the old and immuno-compromised? Have you heard about the Vitamin D thing? (Are you sure you’re not a little bit racist?) Corona how is it to be famous How long did you plan this Do you get lonely too?

Heart Walking Begin indoors Sit comfortably with the spine straight Sink into your heart The actual organ within your chest cavity Electromagnetic blood being Image the other hearts around you Neighbours through the walls Insects below the floorboards Tune into these with your heart radio An invisible nerve extending from your heart to every other heart Now go walking Your attention is biased towards your heart Walk as though led by it (You might find yourself turning left more than normal) On encountering another being Silently say to them “Because we depend on each other, I’m keeping my distance” If you’re feeling brave go one further: “Because I love you, I’m keeping my distance To protect you” Say these things with the lips of your heart Results are swift

Chopka Find a tree  Throw your arms around it like a lover As you breathe out feel that your are offering your lover carbon dioxide As you breathe in feel that your lover is offering you oxygen Keep going for several minutes Caress the tree and feel its skin Talk to it out loud Don’t actually fuck it without consent

LAUGHTER AT BEING CRUSHED

This solo performance began when I wrote to author Coleman Barks in 2014 to ask permission for use of his translations of the poetry of Persian Sufi Rumi. He replied warmly to the effect that I was welcome to use his work in ‘whatever a Butoh performance is’… The particular poem in question is the address of a single chickpea to the chef who is boiling it. The chickpea pleads why are you doing this to me?  The key line for me is in the chef’s reply: You think I’m torturing you; I’m giving you flavour. The annihilation of a small self through the traumas and trials of life can be perceived, with grace, as an opening. Crushed to a pulp, there is no choice but to be open to what is beyond the self, to mingle and merge with it. Whether this is bad news depends on perspective and the self who is adopting it. The performance structure is conceived as a series of trials, woundings and defeats, escapings from the skin until finally what is underneath is liberated (some sort of regained innocence and ability to have wide eyes of a child). I read of Rumi that he was so lost in the ecstasy of the Beloved he would sometimes bow down at the feet of dogs and children, seeing them as they truly were. The only thing more ridiculous I could think of was to do it now, in the 21st century, after all that we’ve seen. The last movement of the performance sees me circulating in the audience, bowing down to each being in turn and gazing in their eyes. If it goes well this is beautiful and people cry, but it wouldn’t work without the trials beforehand. I believe (and have been told) that I’ve managed to escape pomposity with this gesture. The hardest instance was when my mother was in the audience and I bowed down to her. I’ve toured this piece in Scotland, England and the United States. The excerpts below are from a performance in Chicago in 2017.

Please close your eyes and listen.

2. Where do you stop?   (with music)

1. Eyes and Tongue

(5 minutes)

3. Where do you stop?   (without music)

(5 minutes 30 seconds)

(7 minutes)