Initially, I collected images of chalk explosions, of real explosions, of bruised skin, of flowers. The way I wanted to work was to create something aesthetically stunning, and to work primarily from imagery as opposed to concepts. 

 

I’d been looking a lot at colour and what colours mean to me. The colours I wanted to use were: White, red, and pastel colours. White is skin, innocence, beauty and purity. Red is blood. Pastel is a fresh bruise.

 

I liked to think of the whole image I was creating – not just me on the rope but the image of the whole stage, a bit like skin. The place beauty and pain meet.

 

A crushed flower. A bruise, the reaction to and memory of impact.  

 

The chalk would play a big part in creating the atmosphere on stage, I thought. I wanted to use pale light, a lot of white chalk, and explosions of colour which I would react to, interact with and be effected by. These images of explosions make me think of power, of dynamism, of expression and of inevitable ruin. And this again evocative of the human body, of pain, of impact and reaction.  Me covered in chalk by the end, the aftermath of an explosion.

 

The piece was going to be about the body and its physical reactions. About pain and skin and impact and ruin. Perhaps loss of innocence. But my main aim was a visual one. I had a vision of piece and it was aesthetic. Using chalk, light, costume, colour I would create this.