What is Soft Ice really about?

Soft Ice is becoming a beautiful piece, and sometimes I worry that you would think it’s just about beauty. But it’s not. It’s about freedom, for me. Fixed form melting into fluid movement.

If you have ever felt how your body relates to the ground when you’re skiing, skating or snowboarding, you know about the speed and flow that comes from gliding over ice and snow.

I’ve spent many many years practicing my tap technique to try to minimize my contact with the floor, and to have the most immediate weight change possible. But tap dance also has a lot of sliding and scraping vocabulary. And it so happens that the sound of metal gliding over wood sounds a bit like snow and ice. I love these sounds and textures. And then it turns out that there are endless possibilities in both sound and movement when you stay in touch with the floor. And there’s a whole set of new techniques to be learned.

Skiing over the snow in the mountains also makes for many different types of sounds and movements. This time, at the cabin, temperatures varied from -8 to -20, and there was old snow, new snow and a frozen lake. The most exciting sound is when you move over the ice and it makes a big, cracking sound when sinks a little bit. Then there’s the hard sound of the icy snow, and the very soft, even sound of the powder snow.

There’s a inherent groove and rhythm to all of these snowy activities. Cross country skiing has an even pulse, or can have a sort of shuffle rhythm when you use faster techniques. Down hill skiing has breaking curves that sound smooth or rough depending on the snow and the speed. Skating has sharp sounds combined with silent gliding, in rhythms that depend on the figure that you’re making. And all of these produce cursive patterns and luscious lines.

When I tap dance, it’s mostly for the music of it. I want to be able to play grooves and rhythms however I want, right there and then. I need to listen deeply to what’s happening, and my body does whatever it needs to do in service of the sound. So much, that it sometimes traps my body.

Some years ago, I was back in New York and took a class with Oliver Steele. He is the absolute master of luscious, 3 dimensional movement, with several axis points around which different bodyparts are swirling. I hadn’t been training with him for years, so I felt like someone had put me in the laundry machine. But for the first time I also perceived all of the movements as sound. Meaning, from orienting myself around the sound I was making on the floor, I now heard the sounds of the movements in the air.

In Soft Ice this sensation is now spreading out to the whole room. Not only down where the feet are, but through the whole body, through space. Socks make it possible to slide even longer. And I still hear the rhythms. To me, this is playtime! This is unlimited. This is some kind of liberation. Similar to how it feels to snowboard down a fresh hill with powder snow.

Dot and Line become cursive writing. Perpendicular balance becomes diagonal fall. Hard melts to soft.

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Et innlegg delt av Janne Eraker (@janneeraker)