DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt

Still from “Rocks Remember”, 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

I’m interested in the moving body and movement in nature, and I’m always trying to capture the spirit of motion in my drawings, but of course I love actual moving pictures too. I like to make simple, non-narrative films, often working with dancers. A couple of years ago I suggested to my friend, dancer Kristin Hatleberg that if she would like to do some kind of dance film, I’d be up for it. She mentioned a curious landscape she wanted to explore, Ringing Rocks State Park, in Pennsylvania.

Still from “Ringing Rocks”, 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

Ringing Rocks Park has a large field of boulders that ring like metal bells when struck with a hammer or with another stone. These boulders are called “lithophonic” or “sonorous rocks”. Geologists believe the tones emitted by these stones are the result of “internal elastic stresses”, but the science isn’t settled. It’s a mysterious and enchanting phenomenon.

Still from “Rocks Remember”, 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

So one day Kristin rented a Zipcar and we took a day trip to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. With us were Kristin’s friend Jim Smith, a composer and music producer, and my friend Yuko Takebe, a talented dance filmmaker who’d just gotten a new HD camcorder and was eager to put it to use. I had my camera with me too.

Still from “Ringing Rocks”, 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

We had almost no plan about how to film at this site, aside from the idea that Jim was going to go around and hammer on the rocks and record sounds, and Kristin was going to dance in the environment, and Yuko and I were going to film Kristin and the landscape. None of us had ever been to Ringing Rocks before, so we didn’t know exactly what we’d encounter. Together we would explore and collect images and sounds, and then we would see what we could make of them. It was a fairly egalitarian collaboration, and the whole process would be a journey without a map.

Still from “Rocks Remember”, 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

There was a large clearing covered with big jagged boulders, a forested area, and a small ravine with a waterfall. It was a late autumn day so our daylight hours would be limited, and the angle of the sun would change quickly through the afternoon.

Still from “Ringing Rocks”, 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

Dancing on a jumble of sharp and irregular rocks is nothing like dancing in a studio with open space and a nice smooth hardwood floor. In fact, it’s a bit dangerous. I’m not sure if Kristin imagined doing balletic leaps from stone to stone, but when she actually started moving in the boulder field, she found herself hugging the rocks, rolling over them and in and out of the crevices. It looked a little like contact improvisation with very heavy, very hard dance partners.  Kristin took the same grounded, tactile approach to other elements of the landscape as well.

Still from “Rocks Remember”, 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

Since there was no script and almost no plan, we all just sort of went about doing our own explorations in whatever way felt appropriate in the moment. Jim rang the rocks until he got the birds to join in the symphony. Yuko and I looked for aesthetically pleasing compositions and dynamic camera angles. Kristin climbed and stroked and became one with the earth.

Still from “Ringing Rocks”, 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

We decided that Yuko and I would share all our footage and sound recordings, but each of us would edit our own version of the material. When I started editing, I found it really challenging. It felt like a random collection of shots that just wouldn’t gel. There was no clear beginning, middle, or end, no unifying design, no choreographic continuity. The color and visual quality of the images from the two cameras was way different, and there were lots of technical problems such as sun glare and noisy tourists who were also at the park that day on the sound track. The rapidly changing light meant a shot made at 2:00 would never match with one made at 3:00.

Still from “Rocks Remember”, 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

For my first edit, I decided to use just two parts of our footage, the waterfall scene and the field of boulders. I decided to convert everything to black and white, both to eliminate the color differences between the two cameras and to make Kristin, who was dressed in tones of pink and purple, blend in more with the textures of stone and earth. I pulled out what I thought were the best bits of movement and labeled them according to whether the movement was up or down or rotating or whatever, and then basically assembled those movements into an illusion of continuity. It sort of worked, but it had a monotonous rhythm, and after test-screening it for Kristin and my filmmaker friend David Finkelstein, I ended up making it more fragmented and spare, maybe more about the landscape and less about the dance. For my version of the piece, Jim Smith structured some of the sound recordings from the site into a simple composition.

I think my final version captures something beautiful about experiencing oneself as part of the earth by direct contact with it. Human beings are of the earth just as much as are stones or trees, and we should feel it in our bones and in our skin.

A video piece is something different than the experience by which its source material came to be.  In the end it becomes something in itself, something that is experienced as a moving image, by people who have no knowledge of its making. My struggle to structure this material into a piece helped me to find a new sense of how to assemble moving images, and after editing this piece I found I was finally able to complete several other video pieces I had shot that had lingered unfinished for years.

Still from “Ringing Rocks”, 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

I don’t know too much about how Yuko approached the task of editing. Her basic impulse is more narrative and less formal than mine, and she has a knack for making good use of “flaws” like camera shake and lens flare. Her version is in color,and I feel it gives more of a sense of Kristin as a person interacting with the landscape, where mine seems more like some kind of elemental ritual.

Still from “Rocks Remember”, 2011, video edited by Yuko Takebe

Here’s what Kristin wrote about the experience:

When Fred asked what I’d like to collaborate on, I thought here’s a rare opportunity to distill a moment. What if every element of this lasting capsule, this film, results completely from its environment? I chose Ringing Rocks State Park because of how literally it could yield all the elements. Our agreement was to focus fully on the park itself, and for me the rocks were a solidity into which I could melt away. I set out to evaporate over them, roll like an ocean wave across their challenging formations. What a metaphorical parallel this act was to dealing with life. I used all my strength to simply be, there.

For me our experience at the Ringing Rocks State Park was a meditative experience, and I think that spills over into the intent of each of the resulting films. It was meditation that arose from necessity, for the sake of harmonious survival. While we were in the park, I was not there to recreate or mimic anything. Instead, my focus was to listen to all the textures. I dove into my senses and I tried to absorb every texture of the place until the most dominant ones seeped back out of me. Because I was approaching it through absorption, I was meditating and accepting. Accepting the jagged contours into my flesh as I rolled over them, softening the harshness of the landscape by joining a wave of air and riding its current over the topography. When each element has its autonomy, it is simpler to find harmony.

All I am doing in my actions is revealing what was revealed to me, simply by being there: there, hanging off the top of that rock upside down; there, perched between three trunks of a tree without a limb on which to sit; there, hearing the beautiful water while feeling the cold, smooth stone slide away from under me. The films that resulted therefore do not give me any answers or pose questions to me. They simply reveal contours, light, textures. Watching them, I can momentarily breathe again a cleaner air.

Still from “Ringing Rocks”, 2011, video edited by Fred Hatt

Yuko said this about the experience:

I had never known stone that resonates like a bell until Kristin took me to Ringing Rocks Park. The high-pitched tone, but involving the profound sound as hit by a hammer, brought me to feel time immemorial. Kristin danced as if she were swimming, freely and slowly, between big rough rocks. Her movement looked like just a spirit of the rocks to me. The rock has immanent memories since the earth has existed, and its sound tells us the history of our life. The water flows and wind blows on the surface of the rocks. The beautiful golden strings are spun by a spider and gnats are flying between rocks. That moment fulfilled by stillness and serenity only appeared in an early evening glow. I wanted to capture the eternal flow of time and the spiritual harmony between the perpetuity of nature and a mortal life through Kristin’s dance and my lenses.

So now I have told you my story. My collaborators have offered their beautiful perspectives on this joint exploration of the land in movement and film. There is nothing left but for you to watch the two films, first, “Rocks Remember”, Yuko’s edit, and then “Ringing Rocks”, my version.

Rocks Remember from Yuko Takebe on Vimeo.

Ringing Rocks from Fred Hatt on Vimeo.

Both of these films will be projected outdoors as part of the SB-ADaPT Festival of Dance and Physical Theater in Santa Barbara, California, this summer. I’ll add the dates and more info here when I have it.