Collective Love Manual
July 2023

Collective Love Manual
The Middle Floor, Leeds, UK
July 2023
Concept & Choreography: Delicia Sefiha
Perfromance: Ilektra Arsenidou, Sarah Gottlieb, Delicia Sefiha
Production: Callum Holt

AXIOM 1
Is this real or a lovely dream?
Pinching myself.
Playful - Falling - Rhythms Response & Reaction.Connection.
Self love - loving your self. Selfishly love yourself to selflessly love others.
Build a foundation of self love. Not as part of a commercialised and cultural movement where #selfcare equals self love, but to go deep to your roots and adore the very foundation you’re built from.
Pain. Excitement. Joy. Love is full of different emotions.
Following your heart can lead to happiness.
Young love. Flirtatious and chaotic, wild and unspecified.
You are finding yourself through others and it is exciting, confusing and scary.
Self centred. Fleeting. Intense.Play into the dying of the light.
Love can not be between just two people.
I feel the butterflies flatter around my body, shifting from one space to another. A pulse that reminds me of my connection to you when you are here. When you are not here.
The way in which you experience love is fundamentally you, not the lover, the circumstance, nor any other externality. Credit yourself for how you love.
AXIOM 2
Stop withholding. Breath and let go. Surrender. Can I let go gently?
To fall is not violent. Pain is only felt on the landing. Bracing for impact prolongs tension.
Surrender gently and enjoy the fall.
It's easy once you let go and let it take over.
Comfy, cosy, snug as a bug in my rug.Safe enough to love myself, be myself.
Too snug – so wrapped up in myself I am smothered by it.My comfort is a prison I use to lock myself away.
Safe but alone. I am untouchable.
Being blind to your emotions can cause pain.
Overthinking. Mind overload. Unwanted pain.Quite spaces. Criminal solitude.Desire for companionship. Fear of being alone. Disconnected from your own body. Desperate to discover yourself, to find meaning.
My conscience dominates my mind like a shadow following me on a bright shiny day. Always there. Infiltrating. Influencing my thoughts. Dominating my feelings. Interrupting my desires. Questioning my actions. Sometimes I wish it would just leave me alone.
Slope off into the sunset. Shadow free.
Isolation can be a chance to love yourself, alone.
AXIOM 3
Repeat. Renew. Move into change.
Things are moving quick. Every day is the same. It wares us down. One is giving up.
Why should I do it your way? It only takes us so far.
I’m worried about doing it the same and you fear leaving me behind.
Except this isn’t a race.
Progress is not linear and we will never reach our maximum.
Let me be and you do you.
We will be inspired but we will not copy or imitate.
Sisters in synchronicity.Silent glances that speak volumes.There is strength in our unity, power.
Together we are unstoppable.
Honeymoon stage. Intense love, synchronicity, desire, pain, stress, fun.
Exhilarating and exhausting.
The new and the unknown are easy to love, because you don’t know them and they don’t know you.
Connecting to yourself is the only way to love with certainty.
You exhaust me yet my heart beats faster than ever in your presence.
You tire me yet my blood flows at speed through my arteries.
You stress me yet my mind rarely switches off from thinking of you.
AXIOM 4
Stillness prevails.
Rope knickers. Pelvis communicate like tin and string phones.
They speak serious thoughts but the medium betrays the severity of the message.
How did the female reproductive system say goodbye? It wove-ery.
All joviality aside, undeniable beauty resonates when womb bearers bear their wombs bare.
Consciously bound, I choose to be myself to this imperfect person.
​Can they hold me when I fall? Can I hold them? What happens when the string snaps?
An umbilical connection. Tied not by choice.But we carry each other. We long to return to each other.
We’re too caught up in it, adding problems over time, carrying the weight of each other.
Tired love. Never fully close. Unable to get away.
Not equally balanced. One of us is giving more. One trying to break free.
Submitted to our circumstances.
Tangled. Bound. Being caught up is someone else’s drama.
Being down due to being attached to someone. Getting weighted down.
Trying to support too much. Intertwined in tension.
Severance is rarely as complex as it seems.
Like an umbilical cord we remain connected, inter connected, intertwined and forever reliant on one another. You support me. I support you.
Sometimes we try to set free, but the pull of your love is strong.
A connection more intimate than lovers, more joyful than family.
AXIOM 5
Kindred spirits. Friends.
Swish swish switch. fine I’ll do it your way bitch.
There comes the beat and so our eyes meat. We hold the heart but we pull apart.
Creating space and grooving without grace.Let’s pick up the pace.
Swish bitch together again,more joy, let happy happen happy happening all over the floor.
I’ll leave it there even if there’s more.
Set free – Seek for yourself – Release Head & Heart.
Identical robots. Moments of madness. Tension. Out of sync. Toxic cycles.
I hate my life. My every day existence. Stuck on the tread mill. Part of the rat race.
I want out. But the resistance is strong.
It pulls me back every time I reach out, stretch out, try to break the mold. But I end up dizzy. Spinning. Reliving. I get close. So close. To freedom. To the ecstasy of liberation. And then...
Finding yourself a community that loves you and makes you happy. Coming out. Make it funny. Release it. See it. Dance like no one is watching. Love your weird. And let your weird be loud.
Mundanity is the enemy of passion.
Mundanity is not a choice but a resignation.
Passion can always be a choice.
Finally, someone as weird as me, that lets me be MYSELF.
AXIOM 6
Trust is easily breakable. Take it slow, communication is key.
Considering your needs alongside my own. Even when we both do it doesn’t always work.
When does it end? I’m so tired.
We’re fragile. Without sight; what else can we use?
What happens if we are all in the dark?
Being blind – Guided.Being connected – Mixed signals.Trust – Trust falling.Getting lost in it – Try working with each other.Protect yourself – Not worth rebuilding.
Constant negotiation and compromise – so delicate yet important.
We fail together but that’s how we make room for growth.
Breath, try again, lean on each other. Take the lead. Be hard. Be soft.Be what the other one needs.
Make them aware of what you need. There’s no shame in needing space to breath.
Don’t rush. Enjoy the time you spend together trying.
There’s nowhere near as much fun in finishing. So you have finished? What’s next?
We used to be so connected. When you moved, I moved. When I moved, you moved.
Love can be blind.Expect mixed signals.
We don’t always choose the same path. Trust each other to find the right direction.
Take a break to find yourself. Sometimes letting go of past issues can help you see again.
AXIOM 7
Love is found in all phases if you allow yourself to see it.
Together we are strong.A coven – our rituals and rites conjure what we need.
Unity. Connection. Community. Joy.
We breathe together. Through each others’ rhythms and pulses.
The bond of the triangle. Always seemingly simple from the outside but complex in its existence.
A beautiful harmony of bodies aligned. We are our soul mates.
Celebrating each of our individuality and revelling in each other.
Observing not interrupting. Disrupting not seeing.
How wonderful to be seen and interrupted.
To wander my own road but follow someone else’s route for a while.
It's unfamiliar but safe.It suits some more than others, to walk with someone else, but none of us can make it the whole way without sharing our road,and when we do, we are changed, disrupted.
I'll invite you to walk my road. You'll help me find my way back.
Love is a connection between yourself and others. Are we all the same?
Behind closed doors people may be different.
Jealousy, evil eye, cheating, finding out, messing with the head, going back.
Find balance. Find each other. Embody. Embrace.
Love does not compete against other love and is not diminished by previous conditions.
Love is the stepping stone that love stands upon.
AXIOM 8
Your journey to self discovery is meandering and dangerous.
Take it slow and you may end up building something new.
Juggling and navigating the chaos and debris left by others and brought by myself.
Walking a tight rope of my own making, completing tasks I set myself – an impossible standard.
Why do I make it so hard to love myself?
No solution is universal, you will try, fail, succeed, try, succeed in a new way and on forever.
You cannot and will not do everything, and you will change love and love will change you.
But joy is the centre, the beginning and the end. Don’t lose it.
Taking steps no matter how big or small is always and achievement.
Untangling emotions, setting foundations. Bumps along the way.
Spending more time on things, making a fine line.
Making messy lines makes the journey harder. It can still be fun if you enjoy puzzles.
Things. Things happened while I wasn’t watching.
But they happened and I am okay. They are fine without me.
A thing finished all the way from start to end, and I sit here no different except with an abundance of tranquility.
I have to sit and experience the things and it isn’t that great. To be without impact on things.
As I unravel my heart I realise I must tread carefully for fear of how it will be received.
How my truth will land at your feet. And how you will pick it up and handle it.
It’s a balancing act. A precarious task.
AXIOM 9
We should all have gold bras, what a glorious thought. And shiny pants.
Why can’t I show people my pants in public.
Why should only people I sleep with get to experience the joy of how great my tits look in my pretty bras or how hot I look watching TV in just knickers.
The world is so missing out.
#Normalisenudity - More flesh is not more sexy. Let me show off ma butt.
This is what you want. Isn’t it? My body. To see my body, my breasts, my arse, my vulva. That’s what you paid for. So here it is. For you. Not for me. Just. For. You.
Giving your body to anyone. Feeling the sexual chemistry, seduction and desperation.
Desiring acceptance.
Embracing who you are and feeling empowered. Being proud of who you are.
Being able to love yourself no matter what the others think.
The lens is yours. Love what/who you love, love yourself, love every way you express love with pride, kindness and an awareness that it’s your birthright. Look at me, here I am – this is me.
With Lizzo-like confidence, I invite you to look all at me.
I love me enough for the both of us no matter what you think.
Go ahead and look, because I am glittering.
It’s all indifferent.
Strength, vulnerability.
Strong and sexy.
Just be funny.
Does anyone really know what’s going on anyway?