Barbette's Skeleton: Introduction (Patreon)

The weather is getting cooler, I want to stuff myself with bottomless bags of BBQ chips while wrapped in a blanket with my electric heating pad trapped against me, and the (somewhat misleading) title of this post felt appropriate given that every time I walk to the Jean Coutu I have to physically restrain myself from buying those giant bags of foil-wrapped pseudo-chocolates that look like little grinning jack-o'-lanterns.

I wanted to share some shreds of solid substance from the flurry of ephemeral work that's been going on over the past 6 weeks!

I've really enjoyed writing and sharing the more blog-style posts lately, but I also want to update you on what's happening with Barbette! Because after struggling through what feels like an endless grey fog, some murky shapes are starting to loom through the gloom.

I have much, MUCH to share about what's happening with LE NUMÉRO BARBETTE and have been writing my little fingers off trying to pour all the words out of my brain and onto the keyboard.

The next FOUR posts are all instalments of a series I'm calling "BARBETTE'S SKELETON" – because spooky season is coming and any references to that make me happy, but also because this is the world William and I keep coming back to when we talk about what we've been able to create so far: we've completed the "skeleton" of the act!

Instalments 1 and 2 deal with the background thinking around gender, performativity, and the history of Barbette as source material that underpins the narrative structure I've settled on for helping me create the choreography.

Instalment 3 shares several of the evolutions of the act narrative (from earliest to most up-to-date!).

Instalment 4 starts to look at the conversations I've been having with my costume designer, Michael Slack.

There's offshoots from these conversations about autism and circus, injuries, and Cirque de Demain too that are drafted and waiting for launch after the above instalments are shared!

There's so much further to go, but good god it's easier to hang meat on bones than on nothing at all (not to be morbid ... or ... hungry ... or ... whichever association that sentence stirs in you), y'know?

In the meantime, here is a summary of Things That Have Been Happening™️!

Work with William:

• Taking technical sequence ideas I've dreamed up on paper to our studio sessions and trying to execute them in the air
  
• Drawing on research I did by myself earlier this summer to create transitions and connecting in-air sequences with floorwork
  
• Sweating and swearing through the process of building a kind of stamina I don't have (YET!): taking all the hardest technical things I've worked towards this year and attempting to string them together, one after the other.
  
  (I basically sound like a small, foul-mouthed train engine character who was cut from Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends for swearing too much, huffing and puffing away in the air while trying to remind which way to turn/flip/fall/rotate/etc.)

Work with Victor:

• We've been doing 2 lessons a week in the midst of the 2 or 3 creation sessions with William, in order to keep pushing towards cementing the technique I've started to get, and keep working towards more advanced movements
  
• These lessons have not been less-fraught with complicated gender-feels, and I've vascillated wildly back and forth between "this is fine" to "why am I doing this" since my last post on the subject, but ... ultimately ... I'm getting where I need to go, and I just have a good cry at the end of the day if I need to 🙃

Work with Edgar Zendejas:

• The conseil artistique that William recommended I work with for floor sequences. Edgar and I did a couple sessions together last week to build up some choreography that helps connect the three central technical sequences in the act. A lot of it will probably continue to change, but having something to build from rather than trying to imagine movement from ... nothing ... is infinitely preferable in my books

In addition to this, lots of non-studio work has been going on, too!

• Meeting a second conseil artistique that William strongly encouraged me to bring into the project, this time for character work and acting elements of the piece. Her name is Marie-Josée Gauthier. I had a ZOOM meeting with her on Thursday evening to tell her about the project, and we'll have our first session together on Tuesday.
  
• I've had some formal meetings with my costume designer, Michael Slack. He's going to have costume drawings for me by November 1st (which I will share with you!)

Taken altogether:

Now that I've had several more creation sessions in studio with William and (HOLD FOR FANFARE) we actually limped through THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF THE ACT FROM START TO FINISH.

THAT'S RIGHT.

SOMETHING EXISTS.

Stay tuned for the next post in a few days!
I'll be rolling out an instalment every two or three days so that it doesn't make your inbox completely overflow.

Stay strange & wonderful until then,

XO Ess