Muovo

Our story

The Restore Project is a vehicle to share my creative and artistic practice through writing, research and the creation and performance of devised and live/instant choreography in dance and performance works.

I originally created the Restore Project for a trio dance and physical theatre piece called Soul of the Beast in 2011.

This work was developed around themes of mythical creatures specifically the mermaid, poetic imagery and text from the work of Pablo Neruda, devised action and text by the performers, the pre-vertebrate patterns of Body Mind Centering, choreography and improvised movement.

Original sound scores and music were created by NZ composer Nic McGowan and sound tracks including those by NZ composer Rhian Sheehan. Direction was by Juliet Shelley, with project mentoring by Claire O'Neil and Jo Randerson.

https://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=4262

The piece was created and performed as a trio piece for three women and was subsequently adapted as a solo piece for performance at the Teatro della Limonaia, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy. Performances of both versions took place in Wellington and Christchuch, in Sesto Fiorentino, Italy and in London at the Siobhan Davies Dance Studios.

Sources of inspiration and inspired action for the making of the Soul of the Beast and the Restore Project

‘And so, I would ask that our relationship goes further by laying ourselves forever at its peace..’

‘Give the earth back to itself. Give men’s bodies back to themselves. Give women’s bodies back to themselves.’

'A woman moves alone through a natural landscape. As she moves she communes with her environment through touch, through her presence, through who she is, how she is and what she does. She is completely at one with nature. Her actions describe and prescribe, they teach by example how to live and exist in accordance with the laws of nature and all of life on earth. This woman is luminous, radiant. She is an embodiment of a living connection between humanity, the earth and the whole of nature. In her actions, her energy and her relationship with her environment, she personifies the wholeness and sacredness between humanity, nature and the earth.'

Writings on the relationship between dream imagery, metaphor, psyche and the physical body:

'How is it that I can dream of falling from a great height and landing on my butt, and then I wake up and feel as if my ass has been kicked by a horse and feel like my butt is bruised all day?'

Mind and Body:
‘The body is a symbol of the mind.. Deeply and genuinely felt emotion, and any genuinely felt thought, is expressed through our whole organism.. The universal symbol is rooted in the properties of the body, our senses, and our mind, which is common to all people, and not restricted to individual or specific groups…Indeed, the language of the universal symbol is the one common tongue developed by the human race, a language which it forgot before it succeeded in developing a universal conventional language.’
Erich Fromm: ‘The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Language of Dreams, Myths and Fairy tales.’

Metaphor:

‘Metaphor is the language of the Virgin. Virgin, as we are using the word, is an image of the soul, the eternal part of us that takes up residence in the body for a few years and connects to the world through the orifices of the body. Soul is from a different reality than body. It is eternal. It hears with eternal ears, sees with eternal eyes, smells with eternal nose – its Presence resonates with that other dimension. It has no language but the language of the transitory body. Therefore, it speaks in imagery – the only way it can communicate eternal truths to beings who are both eternal and temporal. It can speak through music, paint, clay, marble, arches and domes, arabesques and leaps, gardens and other creative forms. Right now we are attempting to understand the power of metaphorical language – a language that our culture dismisses at its peril.’
Marion Woodman: Jungian analyst and author of:
‘Dancing in the Flames’ and
‘The Dark Goddess and the New Mythology’

The Nature of Psyche:

‘Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact with one another and ultimately rest on irrepresentable, transcendental factors, it is not only probable, but fairly probable even, that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing…’
Carl Gustav Jung ‘On the Nature of the Psyche

Space-time and synchronicity:

‘Thus space-time and energy are complementary descriptors of events, and in a similar manner synchronicity and causality are complementary to each other. They deal, just as energy and space-time do, with events. These events are marked by their psychic component as well as their physical component. Here is the crux of the matter: our Western consciousness has taken as meaningful only those events that are labeled causal. By losing track of or dismissing this other dimension of meaningfulness, we actually become unconscious of much of the universe.’ Fred Alan Wolf: The Dreaming Universe

‘The reason that the notion of synchronicity has been so difficult for us to grasp is that it is linked to the feminine principle. …causality corresponds to what we would call memory – the linking up of events that are not occurring now, with events that are. This process necessarily takes us out of the here and now and into our heads – our intellect so to speak. Unlike causality, synchronicity is affective rather than intellectual. It is a a realization of a deep connection that can immediately be broken by logical dictate… to the extent that we can say causality becomes death-like as a result of analysis, synchronicity becomes alive as as a result of experience – coming to our senses.’ Fred Alan Wolf: The Dreaming Universe

Consciousness and Reality

‘The experimenter cannot detach herself from her experiment; the thinker cannot separate himself from his thoughts. The observer is as much a participant in an event as the observed… the particular way in which we choose to observe quantum reality partly determines what we shall see…. If consciousness operates in a quantum-mechanical way, then every shift in consciousness has the potential for creating a new reality. In any situation, the level of consciousness of the participants is of immense importance… who we are and what we are observing, consciously and unconsciously, influence what is happening in our body.’

Marion Woodman ‘Dancing in the Flames and
‘The Dark Goddess and the New Mythology’
https://youtu.be/2weBQFC95-I
https://youtu.be/XRDDHR6XQsU