COLLOQUY SERIES 

First Series

A ver­bal weave inspired by the 16th cen­tu­ry social dance, La Bran­le de la Haye, as schema­tized by Thoinot Arbeau in his book Orché­so­gra­phie pub­lished in 1588.

8 par­tic­i­pants.
Each par­tic­i­pant receives a let­ter from A to H to iden­ti­fy their posi­tion.
The par­tic­i­pants sit in a cir­cle in alpha­bet­i­cal order, so that B is posi­tioned on the left-hand side of A, and H on the right-hand side of A. 

Each par­tic­i­pant receives a card, picked at ran­dom, con­tain­ing a sin­gle word, typ­i­cal­ly an adverb*, which is the participant’s indi­vid­ual word, to be spo­ken out loud each time their let­ter appears in the sequence.
The vocal­iza­tions move clock­wise, to the left, begin­ning with the let­ter A.
In 32 con­sec­u­tive laps around the cir­cle, with each lap made up of 8 vocal­iza­tions, the par­tic­i­pants car­ry out the weave pat­tern.
The weave pat­tern evolves as the first posi­tion (A) changes places in the order of the vocal sequence with the next posi­tion on the left (B). With each new lap, A con­tin­ues to change places in the sequence with the posi­tion imme­di­ate­ly on its left, until A has changed with all oth­er posi­tions in the sequence. When A is half-way through its tra­jec­to­ry, hav­ing com­plet­ed 3 changes, and about to change with the fifth posi­tion (E), B begins the same tra­jec­to­ry, chang­ing places with the posi­tion imme­di­ate­ly on its left. When B has com­plet­ed 3 changes, then C begins the same, and so on. The pat­tern con­tin­ues until all the posi­tions from A to H have com­plet­ed the full tra­jec­to­ry of sub­sti­tu­tions in the cir­cle, at which point the pat­tern is exhaust­ed and begins to repeat at lap 32. 

Sec­ond Series 

Sim­pli­fied pat­tern with ampli­fi­ca­tion of con­struc­tive possibilities

Each par­tic­i­pant receives a sec­ond card that cor­re­sponds specif­i­cal­ly to their first card con­tain­ing their indi­vid­ual pri­ma­ry word. This new card con­tains 8 com­bi­na­tions of sec­ondary words or word groups to com­bine with the pri­ma­ry word to form phras­es. The par­tic­i­pant whose turn it is pro­nounces first their pri­ma­ry word fol­lowed by one of the 8 com­bi­na­tions. The com­bi­na­tions can be cho­sen spon­ta­neous­ly and delib­er­ate­ly from the list, in no par­tic­u­lar order, as long as each one of the 8 com­bi­na­tions is used at least once in 16 laps. 

Par­tic­i­pants com­plete 16 laps around the cir­cle, begin­ning with posi­tion A. The first 8 laps fol­low a sim­ple clock­wise pat­tern, mov­ing in a left­ward con­sec­u­tive sequence, end­ing each lap with posi­tion H. For the last 8 laps, the sequence is reversed, so that it fol­lows a counter-clock­wise pat­tern, mov­ing in a right­ward con­sec­u­tive sequence, begin­ning with posi­tion A and end­ing with posi­tion B. 

Third Series

Basic pat­tern with a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of vari­ables and interruptions

Par­tic­i­pants com­plete 16 laps around the cir­cle, always in the same clock­wise direc­tion, mov­ing in a left­ward con­sec­u­tive pat­tern, begin­ning with A and end­ing with H. The par­tic­i­pant whose turn it is can choose any com­bi­na­tion of any of the words they pos­sess, in what­ev­er order, with no restric­tions, as long as the words spo­ken are con­tained in the participant’s giv­en cards. It is no longer required to pro­nounce the pri­ma­ry word first, or at all. Any com­bi­na­tion of the words belong­ing to each par­tic­i­pant is valid.
In addi­tion, each par­tic­i­pant is giv­en a third card. This third card con­tains an inter­jec­tion that the par­tic­i­pant must call out every time the accom­pa­ny­ing trig­ger word is spo­ken in the cir­cle. Each inter­jec­tion is con­nect­ed to its spe­cif­ic trig­ger word, which is one of the orig­i­nal 8 pri­ma­ry words (although a participant’s trig­ger word can­not coin­cide with their orig­i­nal pri­ma­ry word).
When any of the par­tic­i­pants hear their trig­ger word, as indi­cat­ed on their inter­jec­tion card, spo­ken at any time, in any com­bi­na­tion, in the cir­cle, the par­tic­i­pant inter­rupts the sequen­tial cir­cu­la­tion of spo­ken words with their inter­jec­tion. Each inter­jec­tion momen­tar­i­ly over­rides the order, which then imme­di­ate­ly resumes. The under­ly­ing pat­tern of sequen­tial word com­bi­na­tions repeat­ed­ly bro­ken by inter­jec­tions con­tin­ues until the 16 laps have been completed. 

END 

 

*The words used in the Col­lo­quy Series are typ­i­cal­ly adverbs, most often tem­po­ral adverbs, but not exclu­sive­ly; they can always be replaced with oth­er words, and oth­er accom­pa­ny­ing word com­bi­na­tions, from one ver­sion of the work to anoth­er. The lan­guage com­po­nent of the work is nev­er fixed and can always evolve from one con­text to anoth­er. In the same way, the work is not trans­lat­ed into oth­er lan­guages but instead recre­at­ed in dif­fer­ent lan­guages, work­shopped with local par­tic­i­pants to make each ver­sion a unique man­i­fes­ta­tion of the work.