Tuesday - day 7

Rosalind did a gentle and insightful warm-up and we then had a half hour crash course in breakdancing from Nico. A key part of Rough Mix is about sharing skills so, as I felt fairly safe in assuming sure that none of us apart from Nico had ever done any breakdancing, I asked him to give us an introduction. He spoke fascinatingly about the social and political background to its emergence in the 70s and then led us through the basic principals, including the strong element of role-playing and competition within it. It was a great workout and, while I don't imagine my skills will be much in demand with Dance Bases's regular B-boys and girls, I enjoyed it and judging from the number of times I noticed others trying out sly little breaks during the day, so did everyone else.

Dave, Ewan, Clare Ronan and Debbie worked on Dave's piece in Studio 3 until they couldn't hear properly any more and decided it was time for a break - Dave seemed really happy with the progress it's made. The rest of us worked with Tristan and Charles exploring a close off the Cowgate, under the library and George IV Bridge. Marisa and I videoed reactions as the actors came into the close one by one with the instruction to react to how the location made them feel. Over lunch Tristan and Charles watched the tapes and then worked with Dave and Clare in the afternoon.

I worked on Ronan's text in the afternoon - like Walden, this is incredibly rich text and we spent a lot of time trying out different possibilities. Its style is simultaneously both realistic and stylized and finding a way not to swamp the evocative language is tricky - the text has the rhythm and sound of raw Glaswegian but a vocabulary that is entirely unique, both familiar and strange. We didn't really crack it, but opened up some avenues.