The Path of the Spiral
“Imagine your spine as a lighthouse,” says Bibiana Krausková, a performer of movement and expressive arts from Bristol. How can one deepen a relationship with their own body? How can spirals be found in all of their forms? These questions were the topic of the workshop The Body as a Living Instrument: Stories of Spiral.
Participants were first asked to explore their own natural physical spiral, the spine, through spontaneous movement. During this exercise, Krauskováfocused on the importance of the spine for human life: it keeps a person upright and supports them, and it protects the spinal cord. Metaphorically, it is not only the centre of physical existence, but also of spiritual life.
The same activity continued, this time in pairs. The spiral stepped out of its physiological shell and occupied the space between the two participants. When a person looked at the room as a whole, it felt as if all the bodies had softened and, under the rule of one shared spine, melted into the space. Everyone remained individual, unique, yet connected into one rotating mass.
After the work with movement, another part of the workshop followed, focused on drawing. Each participant was asked to draw their personal spiral, resulting in several drawings across two long rolls of paper, originally rolled up into a spiral themselves. The spiral abandoned its connection to the human body and moved onto a thin surface. Another task followed: to create a story. The spiral was transformed into a narrative, into a literary character. From the texts, three words were selected and placed onto the two rolls of paper, and a script for the final part of the workshop was thus formed.
The final embodiment of the spiral took place during the closing phase of the workshop. The participants split into two halves: one became the directors, the other the spirals themselves. The first group read selected words from the paper in various forms, at different intervals, carrying undertones from across the full spectrum of emotions. In response, the group of spirals twisted and bent under the direction of the directors; the spiral revealed itself in all its forms, its curves composed of words, bodies, sounds, and images.
Author: Lukáš Hladík
Photo: Linda Dobrovolná