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.
I.E.P.
Something I wrote on the subway today about improvised performance, especially in relation to my project as part of my third semester studies at SODA –
Improvised Ensemble Performance intentionally has such a limited palette in relation to props, music, set etc. as each of those elements and the unnamed ones are all ways that we can distract ourselves from our existence. Think of cell phones, portable music and video sources on planes, trains and automobiles. We use those forms to pull us away from ourselves, intentionally or not. But consciously using the limited (yet infinite!) palette of shape, space and time, we are drawing our own attention to the barest form of our existence. We will not distract you, the audience, from your experience with sound, set, drama, overt story, magic, the space of appearance etc. We invite you, maybe challenge you, to experience what is happening before you.
A Quote
Dance [is] a practice that remobilizes language – Biba Bell, May 5, 2012
organistic or artistic
Is a performance an artistic event or an organization event? Both, but…and there is always a but…after the initial creation of the artistic event all that is left is the organizational event. Following this line of thought, could we then say that famous touring artists are not necessarily successful artists, but products of successful organizers?
The artistic feats of Cafe Müller, Glacial Decoy or Content with Content (to put myself in lofty company) happened but once, the initial birthing of them. But every other iteration of them is an organizational feat, not an artistic feat.
After taking a workshop here in Berlin about funding bodies and grant, and hearing about another workshop about international touring and funding, I began to wonder about organizing and creating. Creating something is definitely more fun than organizing something that is already. And as we all have a finite amount of time on this earth we can only do so much. Is it an either or situation? Do I have to pick one or the other? Or can I do both? It as of now has to be me doing both as no one is organizing for me. Haven’t sparked the interest of an agent or a funder to do that part for me. And I do not have the natural tendency to organize.
The creating of a piece has to come first, no? Not necessarily. One can apply to make a piece and then the funds to make it. But then should one wait to make a piece until the funds are there? I say no.
Often after I make a piece and perform it a few times, I lose interest in revisiting that idea or experience again. That road has been traveled and I do not want to travel down that path again. This lack of interest in repetition prevents me from creating situations(applying to festivals, etc.) to show my work multiple times. I would rather spend the time, money, energy investigating something new, making something new. At least when I make it I know that I will have some measure of success. By making something I do not necessarily mean a whole production with lights camera action and audience. But thinking and encorporealizing it for myself. Exploring those neural pathways.
Maybe then, moving to Marfa and building a studio will be a viable option for me.
Make, make, make. Let the organizers sort them out!
(or maybe this is all just rationalization for someone who can’t organize!)
Spirals
Below is the piece I made during the Erasmus intensive on Composition at my university this past fall, October 2011.
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/33711374 w=500&h=281]