Untellable’s Artist in Residence 2024: Keely Whitelaw

Untellable Movement Theatre’s Residency Program provides space, mentorship, and artist fees to movement artists.

Artist Residency 2024 Keely Whitelaw

Keely is an aerialist who took a back route into artistic movement through a life of sport. To make sense of the untellable meaning she finds above the ground, she is engaged in doctoral research of kinesthetic consciousness to find pockets of expression in technically restrained movement.

During the residency, Keely worked to translate her aerial and climbing sensibilities to more horizontal and site-specific planes. She also worked with various film techniques hoping to come closer to touching what it is to move with this raucous coast.

Keely Whitelaw:

Residency Reflections

Grounding

One of the underlying goals of this residency was to make myself more comfortable on the ground, without an apparatus to hide on top of. What is it to bring my sedimented movement patterns to the ground, to find new edges of possibility and expression in them when their anchorage points were flipped? Teasing this apart gave me some workable prompts for movement, but also made me aware of my need for better musical understanding. I wanted to develop a better understanding of overarching musical structures, so that the music could become a different sort of apparatus to move with rather than something I was reacting to at each moment. I wanted to learn how to predict when sections are ending, and shift the quality of movement with that, rather than just looking for individual moments to accent. This is a quality I really admire in Hilary, which is why I chose to work so closely with her on this. We did a lot of what I’m sure is very basic dance work, which focussed more on rhythm of moving rather than particular choreographed steps, working with entire songs to really get a feel for the structuring movement of the tune. I tend to get wrapped up in details but also let songs run into one another, so I lose track of when I am. In my aerial training, I am always attending to the micro rhythms and coordinations that allow tricks to happen, and making sure that each movement is allowing me to remain safe and supported. It’s easy to focus on these technicalities and forget to bring attention to the underlying rhythms and flows of movement and movement with music, but this ultimately makes it difficult to suss out what it means to move more authentically in the air.

Embracing Vulnerability

I was lucky to have an opportunity in the middle of this residency to perform for the Untellable Mayflies Commissariat House Series, where Greg Bruce and I presented Ostinato (which is semi-improvised aerial hoop and solo saxophone with electronics). Watching the footage from our previous performance, all I could see was how much our sections didn’t line up. Sure, there was a relation between the movement and music in the ornamentation and rhythms of individual movements, but I would shift into a new sequence with no relation to his musical sections. This became the focus of our work together this summer, and the work I did with Hilary was integral in how I communicated my needs with Greg and learned new methods to listen and count with the small degree of attention left over from actually doing the aerial of it all.

I also really wanted it to feel like a more cohesive set, so that not only was each piece more musical on my part, but that there was a more tangible flow between pieces and that I remained connected to the music even when I wasn’t on the apparatus. I made myself do the *very scary thing* of walking a lap around my rig before coming into contact with the hoop. I would have felt much too exposed to do this ground introduction were it not for the work I had been doing in Lynn’s studio. I wouldn’t call it dance, but it was certainly intentional movement that served to delineate the space I was about to try to fill. This is what I take Untellable’s movement theater to mean. I’ve always struggled with the language of storytelling and expression, because it always seems to entail a particular narrative, as if that movement was a translation of something that could just as easily be put in words. But of course, I do what I do because it can’t be put into words. So this walking introduction gave me the opportunity to set the stage: introduce the space, my relation to Greg and his music, to my apparatus and the apparatus that holds it up (lest that tall rig becomes an elephant in the room).

But likely the most touching moment of the whole performance came at the very end of the second duet after a fast spinning section. I lay down on the ground and allowed my breath to return to a more natural state. This is not something that can be controlled by will alone, anyone that has run a mere 20 meters to catch up with someone knows this. It needs time. But as a performing mover, there is a pressure to appear perfectly in control at all times, which of course masks the essential physicality of this form of expression. So this became a moment to allow the humanness to override the performativity. Only once my breath stabilized did I allow myself to move any other part of my body. And even then, only my hand. Was it a dance? Or was it just wiggling out the stiffness after such a strenuous one armed section? Are these different? This was the moment that every single experienced mover in the audience commented on, so it was certainly something.

Recognizing a Shift

It was Lynn’s comment that made me realize that all the work on repertoire and timing wasn’t the only shift. Sure, I had new ways to think about working with the music, setting the stage, letting more of my whole self appear on stage. But these were all skills. She commented on my quality of movement throughout all of it, which can only arise from skills in motion. To paraphrase: instead of moving from my extremities, I was moving from my center, which made it appear much more raw and primal. This shift was not made apparent because I better aligned my sections with the music, or because my technique was more refined, or because I allowed myself to simply walk and breathe. It came from all of the work of moving simply with music, of paying attention to where movement came from, how I shifted my weight and from trusting that shifting center so that my extremities could follow more supply. This was possible because I chose to use material that was relatively simple, to leave out the intricate sequences I usually perform in lieu of movements that highlighted the curvatures made possible by the spin itself. Which, isn’t so different from setting the state by walking, by allowing my breath to be the focal point, insofar as the performance was mostly creating spins and letting myself be carried along by them. Which was exactly how Hilary and I talked about choreographing ground sequences, to decide where to move next by exaggerating weight shifts and letting myself be dragged along by them. And, is exactly the feeling I’ve said is most dear to me in aerial for many moons! Yet, I was only able to allow it to shine through as the central theme with this dedicated time in the studio, moving for the sake of moving.

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