fearful place


Tape and movement sequences



This clip includes facilitator Sam Adams trialling the use of masking tape at the April 2012 intensive followed by its use in an early session with the youth participants. The clip evidences a development of movement motifs expressing individuals’ fearful places through into performance. Of note is the clear expression of a place of fear by Andrew (in red originally), his art room at school. The abstracted movement is evocative. Despite interesting performance work, the two girls in the clip were unable to think of a specific fear of place and were generically conceptualising rather than using a particular idea. (Mackey and VVB discuss aspects of this work in Reflecting on fear of place below.)



A repetition of movement is apparent here, one of the suggestions for using performance practices to ‘disrupt’ a fear of place mentioned in the Original ideas for fearful place (pdf).

Film of a further participant in an earlier exercise (writing on the wall) is deceptive. She writes of being frightened of being on her own. In a non-recorded conversation earlier, however, she had spoken of her old school as her main place of fear where she had been bullied and had subsequently left as a result. She chose not to write this. Ironically, this long term and committed member of the youth group did not attend for the half term following this project as Half Moon temporarily relocated – to the school she had left: a salutary and wry follow up to exploring places of fear.