Image: Self-Portrait (Inn of the Drawn Horse), Leonora Carrington.
The Rocking Show is an ongoing collaboration between Hannah Buckley and Gillie Kleiman. The starting point is the physical action of rocking, but this action is both a proxy and method for considering their common experience of profound grief. As their individual grieving - they each lost their mothers in their 30s - has been both subsumed and amplified by a grieving planet they continued to rock as a way to cope, to begin to understand, because it feels good and because it is possible to do it in a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen.
The action of rocking is associated with the therapeutic - it can be a way to alleviate both physical and psychical pain. It has connections with and to the maternal and to labouring, both in terms of work and in terms of giving birth, as well as to spiritual practices in many traditions. Rocking activates kinaesthetic empathy; watching someone rock can make you feel like you’re rocking.
The Rocking Show is a way to share what is a deeply useful and healing practice. It brings together spiritual, intellectual and cultural notions of rocking, the physical act of rocking and the act of choreography.
To date Hannah and Gillie have produced a four-part radio series for the Star and Shadow Radio. It was part choreography, part research document, part engagement strategy, part continuation of a close friendship. You can listen to each episode by clicking on the links below.
The Rocking Show - Episode 1
The Rocking Show - Episode 2
The Rocking Show - Episode 3
The Rocking Show - Episode 4
Responses from listeners to The Rocking Show on Star and Shadow Radio
‘I spent some time doing the practice last week and was really moved by it. I lost my dad last year and have struggled to move/dance since. It seems like the perfect way to gently open me up and get things moving again'
‘…rocking has something inherently and instantly therapeutic about it. I feel restored in some way now that I've rocked out. I'm in my bedroom and was rocking in my dressing gown too, like Gillie suggested! As she was mentioning it my eyes fell on my dressing gown so I took it as a sign, threw it on and rocked away inside my soft cocoon. Happy lower back'
‘Just really enjoyed listening to the rocking show. Movement translates so well to radio or maybe just description does - I often love it when I hear people describing things they can see on the radio but rarely do I hear people describe movement’