Art is that which provides no comfort, gain, or reward to its creator.
European English
Due to whatever reasons (that I do not wish to go into), English is the dominant language of communication within the arts in Europe. Maybe this is only true for dance and performance. I have more exposure to that world than the worlds of painting, sculpture, etc. (I do not want to say visual art as dance, too, is a visual art).
The English used in the dance art world is slowly evolving to become another dialect. It is neither the bastard English of the United States or the proper Queen’s English of the United Kingdom. It is becoming its own thing developed by the collective use of non-native speakers and ex-pats.
I became aware, or perhaps more aware, of European English after seeing a performance at HAU 3 in Berlin this past May. The piece was Pulling Strings by Eva Meyer-Keller. It is quite an intricate piece, a feat of organization. Quotidian objects are raised, lowered, and activated, sometimes to comical effects. My favorite moment was the spinning push-broom. But I digress.
What caught my mind(eye) was the title – Pulling Strings. Yes, that is literally what she and her collaborator did. They pulled strings to activate the objects. But the phrase pulling strings has a nefarious, manipulative aspect to it. The phrase conjures up back room political machinations. I did not see how the piece connected to such an idea. The description on her website gave no indication that the piece was related to the manipulative meaning of the phrase. As far as I could tell, Keller was not dealing with that meaning of the phrase, just the literal one.
The use of the phrase pulling strings, in a way, has become pure meaning, a literal phrase. Does this mean, then, that people who do know that meaning or use of the phrase are saddled with extra context, context or meaning that has nothing to do with the piece?
Another student, who is French, in the SODA program did a piece in which she used several phrases with the word white and several kinds of animals – white rabbit, white horse. I can’t think of other ones at the moment. She was unaware of the white rabbit of Alice in Wonderland or in the Jefferson Airplane song(also the same rabbit), White Rabbit. Whenever I hear the phrase white horse I think of that great song by Laid Back, White Horse. They’re Danish, by the way.
My larger question is when a language is used by a non-native speaker how aware of the idioms and cultural context of that language should s/he be? Can the artist ignore all that and use the language as a context-free tool for expression? I would think that in a scene that is obsessed with context and dramaturgy, artists would have a greater concern for the use of language.
Or has all context been removed from English in continental Europe?
Presence vs. Awareness
Presence.
What is it?
There are many workshops that deal with presence. Practicing it, creating different kinds of presence.
But there is only one kind of presence – either you are in the room or you are not. It’s digital,a binary. Either the food is in your belly or it is not. Either the whisky is in your glass or it is not. Either you’re pregnant or you’re not.
If we are to look at the etymology of the word (and a little part of me dies when I do this), we see that presence comes from Latin praesentia – “a being before”. The origins of the word have nothing to do with awareness. Before…in front of…location…place…space…either you are before someone or not.
Does this mean that practicing presence is an exercise in punctuality? You are either in the studio or not. Punctuality is something that many dancers could practice. Oh, the irony…we of time based art have a hard time showing up at the correct time.
What people really mean when they say presence is awareness. When people say that someone is not very present, they mean that someone’s awareness is on something other than what they themselves are focused on. Differing awarenesses.
Seeing dancers who are not very “present” on stage… well, that’s impossible. If they weren’t present, you couldn’t see them. They appear “not present” because their awareness is elsewhere. Frequently inexperienced dancers seem “not present”. Their awareness is probably taken up by nervousness, or anticipation of messing up the choreography. Their awareness is of the moment they are in, but their awareness of that moment is of a different variable than what the viewer is aware of. The nervous dancer is aware of his or her panic about the upcoming moments, getting that lift right, or freaked out in an open improvisation because s/he is “stuck” center stage in a ball facing the floor. It seemed like a brilliant choice 2 minutes ago…what do I do now?
The “unpresent” dancers, though, have not disappeared. They are just focused on something else than the viewer is.
Injuries can also come from lack of “presence”. This, though, is a result of a difference in awareness. Imagine a contact jam. Person X is very present in (or aware of) his sensations – the weight on his torso, the sweat of his partner, the exertion of his muscles etc. He is so caught up in his sensory perceptions, that his awareness doesn’t see the heel headed towards his face.
BAM!
Heel meets face. Ouch. If he really weren’t present, then he would have not been hit. If his awareness were outwards, he might have been able to avoid the incoming heel. His awareness could have changed his presence to another location and avoided the calcaneal(is that a word?) collision.
presence, awareness, presence, awareness…
By conflating the two terms, and I would say that people favor presence, giving it greater value, we are favoring the mind over the body.
Maybe this is a Cartesian remnant, a vestigial thought held over from the Enlightenment – I think therefore I am – favoring the mind over the body.
Dramaturgs
Do chefs use dramaturgs?
Do sculptors dramaturgs?
Do conductors use dramaturgs?
Do pastry chefs use dramaturgs?
Do painters use dramaturgs?
Do fashion designers use dramaturgs?
Do baristas use dramaturgs?
Do composers use dramaturgs?
Do oenologists use dramaturgs?
Do perfumers use dramaturgs?
Do bartenders use dramaturgs?
Did Miles Davis use dramaturgs?
Did Michelangelo use dramaturgs?
Did Agnes Miller use dramaturgs?
Did Beethoven use dramaturgs?
Choreo vs. Impro
Choreography is knowing the other’s response to your actions.
Improvisation is not knowing the other’s response to your actions
TanzNacht Berlin 2012
TanzNacht Berlin 2012
Insignificant Others
(Learning To Look Sideways)
An Kaler
What I read in the program: Together separately. Separately together. How can one perceive and analyse a collectively experienced, present moment? Three performers share a moment on stage. They go through a series of positions that let them become the bearers of ambiguous, almost static yet variable images. Connections develop between them which cause the moment to gently but clearly shift and their relationships to constantly charge and discharge. Through a series of interrupted yet connected sequences and situations a space is created in which performer and spectator share the potentiality of what comes next.
What I saw: a generic contemporary dance. They started standing in silence. They shifted slowly as the computer generated music with cracks, whistles and pops grew louder and louder.
Another reason I say generic is the type of movement. Though quite articulate and adept at it, the dancers didn’t offer much in terms of kinespheric originality as they stayed with the elbow initiated limp wrist movement that is quite fashionable.
Spatially, the dancers tended to be upstage and face away from the audience. Quite a lot of time was spent far stage left in the unlit section of the performance space. Was this a somatic spatial response to the audience or intentionally done to contrast the two moments when the three dancers were center stage?
One thing I like to watch when I watch ice-skating is when the skaters fall. Not out of a desire for schadenfreude, but I like to see how they react to an unscripted moment. I am guessing that Insignificant Othersis improvised or scored with landmarks and therefore mostly unscripted. A moment that I perceived as very unscripted was when one of the dancers, mid thrash, bonked against one of the lighting supports. Two other very unscripted moments involved two dancers almost colliding. Did these near collisions happen because the dancers were so involved in their own processes that they became unaware of the others on stage? Maybe this is the insignificant others bit. Ahh…and the (learning to look sideways) is that they aren’t directly relating to each other, but mostly responding to each other’s movement as opposed to other Viewpoints. But then they do take similar shapes when standing in front of the hanging rectangles.
Compositionally this piece was coherent. The movement ebbed and flowed. The music got louder, quieter, and came in occasional bursts. The lighting shifted and repeated. There were three dancers and three rectangles. So in that sense the piece held together.
But what didn’t work for me was the use of space by the dancers. I didn’t see a compositional choice (except in the two times of stillness center stage) but nerves and adrenaline causing the dancers to shrink back and away from the audience. Also, the piece was too long. Maybe I am too American and my sitzfleisch is not so developed. But I think it is more that I am a dancer. After seeing people flailing about articulately for 20 minutes, my mirror neurons are full and I want to get up and join in.
Some notes –
“How can one perceive and analyse a collectively experienced, present moment?” – Is this a rhetorical question? How about Viewpoints, Laban, amount of sweat, sound, sight, video, photography, Ensemble Thinking, touch, pressure und so weiter?
“…which performer and spectator share the potentiality of what comes next.” – a fancy way of saying the piece is improvised
“They go through a series of positions that let them become the bearers of ambiguous, almost static yet variable images. Connections develop between them which cause the moment to gently but clearly shift and their relationships to constantly charge and discharge.” – Another reason I say that this piece is “of the genus”. Can’t this be said about almost any piece? Especially the ambiguous part?
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Propositon(s)
Laurent Chétouane
What I read in the program: The French director Laurent Chétouane has developed a unique language for dance. The six choreographies, developed over the course of the last few years, speak for themselves. Each new encounter with a dancer challenged and enriched the vocabulary of the work. For the TANZNACHT BERLIN 2012, five of the seven dancers who worked with Chétouane during this period lend their bodies to this language and give insights into their understanding and interpretation of the collaborative works, the shared ideas and the time they spent during rehearsals.
What I saw: Six dancers, not five. One Idea of line or semi circle giving focus to a solo. I remember one multilevel tableau instead of a line giving focus. Mostly the solos began and the ensemble would recognize that and create a Hot Spot for the solo. (Some might recognize the Ensemble Thinking vocabulary I am using.) Every dancer in the group had a solo before dancers went for another solo. The two dancers in purple had the most solos and the male dancer with long hair in green had, sadly, the fewest. Maybe he’s the new guy.
Also saw an odd mandibular action, mostly with the two dancers in purple. Everyone had their mouths open, and some occasionally moved their mandibles. Several times the soloists would break out in a funny grin, causing a tittering in the audience. These smiles were reminiscent of smiles I have seen during group faculty improvisations at festivals when everyone knows it’s headed downhill. Maybe this use of smiles was a distillation of that phenomenon and commentary on improvisations headed south.
What kept this piece from being generic was that it stuck with the same score for the entire time and kept running through the permutations of soloist and ensemble. Group improvisations frequently churn through so many scores, ideas, and movement themes (I have been in many of those!) and it was nice to see one that stuck to its guns, or gun, as the case maybe. But if they were going to stick with one score, they could have been a bit more adventurous in their investigation of it and expression with it.
This piece, too, was coherent – people running through the permutations of a score. No rabbits popping out of hats, or balloons appearing from pockets or other such non-sequitur surprises. Though, the mandible jiggle, like the three rectangles in Kaler’s piece, why?
A note – the last soloist before they repeated at one point had her left leg out to the side and rotated it to an arabesque as she rotated right. A beautiful moment!
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My issue with both pieces, was not so much the performances themselves, but how they were framed. The descriptions could fit most any piece out there. Kaler’s was “ambiguous”, dealing with the “present moment” and “what comes next”. Chétoune’s was about collaboration, sharing ideas, and time spent rehearsing.
If the framing doesn’t elucidate how these pieces are more than just iterations of our current genre of dance, then the pieces do not become anything more than an aesthetic experience. Either you like it or you don’t. Maybe that is what the creators are after – contemporary dance as entertainment.
Somatic – Compositional
Now – Future
Need – Want
Have to React – Want to React
Body – Space
Kinesphere – Spatial
Sensing Self –Sensing Space
Reaction to Self – Reaction to Other
For Self – For Other
Solo – Group
Self – Other
I – We
Compensating – Creating
Reacting to Change – Creating Change
Following – Leading
Habitual – Non-habitual
Unconscious – Conscious
Automatic – Forced
Exothermic – Endothermic
Anatomical – Cerebral
Poetic – Formulaic
Inner – Outer
Process – Product
Observational – Generative
Subject – Object
Instinctual – Cognitive
Fast – Slow
Evolving – Abrupt
a list of binaries generated during my third semester of my MA SODA at the HZT in Berlin
Reinventing the wheel
The good thing about reinventing the wheel is that you might invent a better one.
a similar thought here
Subject vs. Object
Contact Improvisation has become a dance of the subject, not the object.
discuss
There is no theory.
There is no theory.
There is only practice.
What you do is your practice.
Whether you are sitting at a table or lying on the floor or doing push-ups or aligning your heels with your sitz bones or quoting dead lovers of knowledge, you are engaged in a practice. If you are repeating it, you are rehearsing it. If you are rehearsing it, it is your practice. If you are sitting around a table discussing the possibilities of choreography, you are practicing sitting around a table discussing possibilities. Why are you not stretching or sharing weight while discussing the possibilities of choreography?
It has been scientifically proven that those who sit more live shorter lives.
Do you want your practice to lead to a shorter life span?
one article
another article
a third article
This leads me to another point. Philosophy. Philo coming from the Latin for love and sophy from sophia mean knowledge or wisdom. Therefore, someone who loves knowledge is a philosopher. Anyone who is involved in a practice is therefore a philosopher. The more rigorous the practice the more rigorous the philosophy. Therefore anyone who has an interest, whether it’s comic books, ballet, baseball, anatomy, is a philosopher. He or she loves knowledge of a sort. It might not be knowledge that someone else finds particularly useful or valid, but it is still knowledge. Whether Green Lantern could survive an attack by the Silver Surfer is just as philosophical a discussion as an aesthetic and textual examination of King Lear.
A chef is a philosopher.
A soccer coach is a philosopher.
A hair dresser is a philosopher.
A rancher is a philosopher.
An eye doctor is a philosopher.
A second grade teacher is a philosopher.
A Shiatsu practitioner is a philosopher.
A forest ranger is a philosopher.
A stat quoting baseball fan is a philosopher.
A contact improviser is a philosopher.