16G. Performance Score: Disparate Dialogue

• Two people who were partners in the previous exercise (Angels), go out and sit in chairs facing each other.

• Have an Angels-type conversation without a director advising you. You're on your own.

• Listen to your partner. Believe what they say. Respond directly to their content, but from an illogical and emotionally mercurial state of mind. You may interrupt or wait until your partner concludes.

• Remember to listen to the timing, tone and cadence of the language.

Disparate Dialogue explodes the usual confines of conversation. Rather than falling out of themselves and merging into content, this form draws each performer toward his or her own imagination. Each dialogue, while intentionally connected, meanders through fields of information.

The chord toning earlier in the day comes into play. Performers hear one voice follow another. Each turn is a galaxy of sound. Strung together, the sounds are a large chord, with pitches and rhythms. Shapes of sound define spaces of feeling.

Day Seventeen

Practice

17A. Eyes Closed

17B. Jog Patterns

17C. Space/Shape/Time

17D. Expressive Walk

17E. Mirror Language

17F. Text-Maker and Colorer

17G. Perfoiinance Score: Collaborative Monologue

"Practice makes perfect." When we say this, we mean that when we practice a skill, piano playing, for instance, we become more skilled. We get better and better as we aim for perfection. We might, also, say, "Practice makes imperfect." For instance, by habitually not listening, we practice ignorance. Yet, in terms of ignorance, that ignorant practice is ignorant perfect. Perfectly ignorant.

If we practice just to practice with no goal in mind, practice, itself, is what ice get better at. Perfect practice. Practice includes both perfection and imperfection, with wide degrees of variation in between and totally new occurrences.

Eyes Closed and Jog Patterns are explorations into the corners of inner and outer attention. They offer infinite rewards. We return to them over and over again, each time picking up where we left off, not with specific images, but with further feelings of ease and safety.

17A. Eyes Closed

• Repeat exercise 5A.

Students are in the fourth week of the framing. They're catching on to their tricky mind and its busy-ness. They see how it endlessly fluffs itself, pulling up pictures and stories from the past and musing on the future. They're beginning to disentangle from these pictures and stories, and identify less with their ownership. They're more willing to play with whatever comes up, and this willingness propels them into both gross and subtle moments.

Their awareness has increased. They notice many details. Curiosity surpasses fear of the unknown. Sensations and feelings connect. Students are in the present. They inhibit themselves less with judgments about their work. Personal identification with changing phenomena is irrelevant. With each new freedom, the body/mind continually rebirths in Eyes Closed. Complete experiences cascade upon the consciousness of the mover, endlessly forming and reforming.