Rehearsals
Over several weeks we have been working on creating our final piece and it has come together, in many different ways then we expected.
Our performance now included multimedia, props, music, betting slips and speech. It was now a ‘representation’ of the Grandstand and it was built on the theme of loss and the ‘nothing’ that the Grandstand had become.
Our performance/instillation:
We will let the audience enter to a room that is covered in newspaper; this is to demonstrate that we are preserving the Grandstand, sheltering it for its move with us, its journey. As Will Dorner states, ‘I got to see a place which seemed to me empty and uncared for’ ((Pinchbeck,M. (2005). Nottdance. Dance4.)), and this is what we were providing for the space a caring cover.
As the performance continues, a poem will start to be recited from the wall of the Grandstand, the poem The horse that I am riding by Ric S.Bastasa. The audience will notice five people merged in to the wall, in suits of newspaper. We are ‘inhabitants’ of the space previously ‘strangers.’ This is to show symbolism of the grandstand itself in plane sight but never noticed, due to it ‘none’ purpose.
“the horse gets nothing.” ((Bastasa, R . (2010). The Horse That I Am Riding. Available: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-horse-that-i-am-riding/. Last accessed 5th May 2013.))
This final sentence of the poem uttered in unison. This is to demonstrate a realisation that in fact, what has the Grandstand gained from all of its years of service? ‘Nothing.’ This shows the ‘loss’ and now we will show our audience our symbolic ‘journey’ of how the Grandstand has been left as a result.
William Tell, Overture sounds; we break away from the wall leaving the instillation, reenacting a day at the Grandstand. “2:1 Midnight Dance”, shouting odds, walking around the audience dropping betting slip, people’s dream, hopes and money, all ‘loss.’ To then finally asking them to, “place your bets here!” We then queue up against the wall as if waiting to place our bets watching, Eadweard Muybridge, Horse in motion, that has been on an endless loop for the whole performance. Our feet start tapping, we are being the horse. Impatient, strong and then winning. We create a screen made out of Racing Posts showing the betting, the walls it has created around us, the Grandstand and the emptiness that will soon follow.
The music ends, the race is over. But who is the winner? The floor is swept away, revealing a house outline, has it been killed? The idea came from the plans for the Grandstand to become a mortuary, so this is how we symbolised it. It is also there to display that horses are shot if they incur an injury during racing as they are ‘useless’ and will never be able to race again. This shows a relation to the Grandstand and its ‘uselessness,’
Then finally, the winner of the Lincoln Handicap 2013, Leviate is revealed. A plate of mincemeat, purposely done to show today’s food scandals with horsemeat mixed In with ‘Tesco’s’ beef mince. We applaud, and continue to clean, packing away the caring newspaper and hopeless betting slips, to leave the Grandstand ‘bare,’ with ‘nothing.’ It has not escaped its ‘loss,’ as it was always there.
Works Cited