The five chapters

Stickworks

Aligning movement and position. A sequence of situations, counted as twelve, serves as a layout for exploring various linearities —

horizontal, vertical, muscular, mental, etc. — without losing the sense of an ultimate indivisibility.

Framed in colors (relating to the elements in Chapter 5, Fireworks), three base-forms make up the full sequence (3 x 4). In the first, body and stick together approximate the letter A (positions 1, 4, 7, 10), referring to a sense of larger Awareness, expansive, embracing, physically anchored in a wide base, being on the outer edges of one's feet, stick held with a broad grip, hands pulling outward, chest open, eyes wide, easing breath, finding steadiness, maintaining (the stick's) horizontal alignment.

With the letter I (2, 5, 8, 11) a more vertical Intensity is implied, the body narrowing its alignment, heels coming together, toes angled out slightly, a leaner tension felt in the eyes, arms pushing down on the stick, torso musculature contracting.

The H (3, 6, 9, 12) points to Hereness, an openness for what's precisely there, feet and hands about shoulder width, knees bent, weight slightly forward, stick held loosely, still alert: a middle tension between the A and the I, breath and body lighter, an all-directional readiness, sensing the angles (of body/stick), incorporating their lines.

Frameworks

Clarifying, re-defining. The second chapter looks into the dynamics of pressure: getting a feel for how resistance per se may be helpful in articulating a lane within a larger pattern or within a particular flow-line; then integrating such a lane or line into the still larger movement and balances of the body.

Taking such an approach (a hand or a racquet pressing against another hand, a second racquet, some playground equipment) may be helpful to delineate or further define, for instance, a range of actual strokes. The film shows a twelvefold set, three possibilities each of a serving motion (sliced, flat, kick), a volley (forehand, backhand, close to torso), backhand (sliced, flat, topspin), and forehand (cut or sliced, flat, topspin).

Likewise, giving attention to the line of action when cutting a tomato, turning over in sleep, raking leaves, opening mail.

Footworks

Leaning, moving, stopping, starting. With the traces of the twelve forms from Stickworks, turned into steps then speeded-up, some possibilities are spelled out as ground for investigating a variety of timings and rhythms, some planned, some less so; practiced in place, transferred to the road; different counts, a threefold, a fivefold, applied to a sequence of steps, going left and right, testing for ease, asymmetrical shakiness, etc. Then, after a breath: inviting invention, playfulness.

Networks

Ball meeting strings. Taking off from a concrete setting, this more theoretical chapter looks into the idea that at any given moment, in any given situation, our actions will express themselves completely, bearing witness to the whole of our being (our physical disposition, cognitive resources, emotions, memory, imagination, etc.). At the same time, this completeness may never be fully accounted for or made accessible, given the limits of language, concepts and our constant inclination to objectify, hence dualize.

Nevertheless, the vertical and horizontal strings of a racquet, seen as a vibrant, vibrating grid, is used here to illustrate or help consider this wholeness in terms of “two sets of interweaving economies,” the horizontal accounting for the more individual, even idiosyncratic, the vertical pointing towards the larger rubrics of the bio-physical, the social, the cultural, etc.

Fireworks

Forming form, spacing space. A fairly elaborate movement (the motion of a serve in tennis, the sense of its rhythm and upward/forward thrust) is played through in terms of what tradition

calls the five elements — Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Space — suggesting a correlation with the athletic components of strength, flexibility, speed, endurance, co-ordination.

Taking up again this feeling of the elements, one may accentuate their respective qualities, here in sequences of nine steps (three steps per breath): in turn, the firmness of Earth, the fluency of

Water, the heating-up of Fire, the continuity of Air, the dynamics and equilibrium of Space — the nine steps thus taking the entire body-complex through each of these five modes.

Then, possibly, the interplay: firming up of fluidity, heating up of continuity, etc.