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The Process
A summary glance at the titles of Jude Walton's works will suggest to the reader her primary concern: Between the Dog and the Wolf, Passion Lies Between the Black and White, No Hope No Reason, Crack Dance/Text/Film, Remembering is Forgetting, and Seam. What do I gather from these hints? That Walton's art is the pursuit of the 'neither nor, but in between', that expanse of theoretical and experiential ground that spans or joins the various binaries used to organise us, and the world, into coherency.
In this attempt to elucidate some aspects of Jude Walton's artistic process, I will begin with her ' lack of will'. In her paper, Divine Women, Luce Irigaray writes, 'Can we forgo will without dying? ... It is vitally, not morally, necessary to want something. It is the condition of our becoming' .1 For many years Walton has practiced dance. She is a proponent of a dance practice called ' release' or ' image' work. To use Irigaray's terms, this practice is a form of dying. It begins with the dancer lying in stillness and involves a rich investigation of gravity. The dancing that emerges resembles those moments when the body rises from , or sinks down into rest. The basic tenet of this practice is that it is necessary to forgo will in order to 'be' and in order to allow creation.
The other determining influence upon the new dance work, of which 'release' and ' image'... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline