CCChat-Magazine_Issue-25-The-Further-Learning-Issue

M: How did you come up with the
choreography?
E: Before I started choreographing, I
did a lot of research. I went to two of
your Conferences on Coercive Control.
I went to the one in Bristol, at the
University and the one in London, at
Goldsmiths.
Just listening to all the experts speak,
there were a lot of metaphors that
people used, that victims and survivors
use when talking about their
experiences like the frog in the water,
invisible chains, coiled spring,
eggshells- there were so many of these
very evocative metaphors and I
thought how can I translate the feeling
of that into movement? That was one
place where I started, and also the fact
that coercive control is a pattern of
behaviour. I thought I would make a
pattern of movement that would run
through the whole piece like a golden
thread and bring in elements of
coercive control tactics, to change that
pattern, to disrupt it, manipulate it
and distort it. It started off as
something very simple, the first
section is about gaslighting and
manipulation so it starts up very free
and open and takes up a lot of space
and then becomes smaller and tighter
and more confused and some parts of
my body constrict, to bring in that
limiting space for action that Professor
Liz Kelly talks about .
"There were so many of these very evocative metaphors and I
thought how can I translate the feeling of that into movement?"
Evan Stark was great in the London
one. At the one in Bristol, Dr Emma
Katz, who was speaking, mentioned
that she had a module on domestic
abuse at Liverpool Hope University. I
attended some of her lectures which
were really wonderful. She’s a great
speaker. I learned a lot from her and I
then went to one of Laura Richards’
Preventing Murder in Slow Motion
training sessions which was excellent
and she actually talks about OJ
Simpson in that session as well.
In the next section, there’s a focus on
rules and regulation and the
hypervigilance and the walking on
eggshells so the movement becomes
very slow and precise and the music is
pumping techno, fast dance music but
my movement is really slow, trying to
stay invisible and not be noticed, so
the walking on eggshells bit, doing that
kind of movement and living like that
is exhausting, so although it’s very
slow it’s very tense.
Making The Invisible Visible