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SCORES NO0 The skin of movement
Ivana Mller
intothe
night
6
SCORES N 0 Autumn2010
IvanaMller,
intothenight, 2007
originallycommissioned byLISAfortheoccasionof thefestival LISALive(s)inTheatreKikker, Utrecht, TheNetherlands (2007).
alsopresented atTanzquartierWienas apartof Onpossibleandotherencounters, 15th/16thOctober2009, and stagedon
http://www.ivanamuller.com/works/into-the-night/
1.Incontrast todancing as aphysical practice, choreography developed as anotati-
onin theupper Italianand Frenchcourt culture of the Renaissance. It developed
as aform of writing. The birthof choreography resulted from amoment of
crisis, amoment of loss, of disappearance, of deathboth of the dance and its
dancer. EveninDomenico diPiacenzas early treatise onthe art of dance (1452),
standstill(posa) which structured the dance was associated with the shock that
would befallthe dancrif they looked at the head of the medusa. In his Orch-
sographie (1589)Thoinot Arbeau determined choreography as apossibility of
learning the dance evenafter the deathof the dancing master. Choreography
attempted todeal withand banishthe nalabsence.
4.
The gure in whicht his angst-riddeninstabil ity both appears and is banished
is the pose. The pose is the dancers mimicry of the social order, i.e. of their
gures, geometric patterns orbody attitudes that have already beenseenand are
thus part of culturalmemory. Mimicry, as WalterBenjamin stated inadiffer ent
context, is at the same time the dancers shock at the fact that they can donothing
otherthan adapt tothe petried, and at the same time it is theirself-analysis as an
emancipatory act. If this act is completed it simultaneously implies the suspensi-
onof dance as aphysical practice.
5.
Ultimately what results from this is the tense relationshipbetween choreography
as an abstract notationre corded ina relational code onthe one hand and the
dancing body onthe other. There is nothing corporeal in choreography. It is
asubstrata of asocial order, whichit simultaneously produces and represents.
Thus it is just relati on: relation of the signs to anotherand to the body, which
they nevertheless have toexclude. Choreography is aninhuman machine that
guides and produces the body without everbeing able to assimilate it.
2.
Choreography con-
nects. Through the
substitutionof the
scoreasatraceforan
initially absentphysi-
calpracticeof dan-
cing,peoplearelated
to oneanotherand
connected. Through
t hi s m om en t o f
non-physicalchoreo-
g r ap h yp r o d uces a
communityinthere-
lationship of bodies
toone another.
3.
As the fear of loss
is at the centre of
choreography, it
must regard this
community-forming
moment based on
the dancers experi-
ence of instability,
of falling, crashing
and dancing out of
step. Choreography
deals with instabili-
ty and transforms it
intopotential order.
Gerald
Siegmund
FIVE THESES
ON THE
FUNCTION
F HOREOGRAPHY
13
Boris C harmatz/ JanezJana/ Gerald Sieg mundWhat if wemadeit all up?
Boris Charmatz/ JanezJana / Gerald Siegmund
What if wemadeitall up?
W H A T
IF WE
M A D E
IT ALL
UP ?
/ Talk-Transcription/
*
HE IS NOT HERE, HE WILLNOT TELL US HOW TO DO IT
W HE N T HE C HO RE OG RA PH ER I S A BS EN T,
THE CHOREOGRAPHY STARTS TO WORK.
*
MONUMENT G2 byJanezJanaand 50 ANSDE DANSEbyBoris C harmatzwerepresented
onDecember 3rd 2009 atTanzquarti erWien. Thearti sts talk withGerald Siegmundfollo wed the
performances onDecember4th.
Let s tryto approachchoreography bythinking about
immediacy, aphenomenon thatseems tobe anopponent of
intentionalcreations, thatcannot berehearsed and therefor
usuallyevades choreographicprocesses. Everyattempt to
stage immediacyis condemned toFAILURE. If Ithink
aboutsee thedancing plasticbag inthe flm
AmericanBeauty (directed bySam Mendes)thatis moved
inand bythew ind, probablythemostfamous plasticbag in
this moment, apart of theculturalmemory of severalmillions
of people. (Maybethe plasticbag was notreally moved bythe
wind but bysomeventilators that wereplaced outsideof the
scope of thecamera.) Itdances afascinating choreographythat
doesnthaveanyauthor. Orcantwetalk about achoreography
inthis case fortheveryreasonthattheauthoris lacking and
thatthe movements of theplastic bag wereneitherrehearsed,
nordo theyderive from awriting process? Does immediacy
havesomething todo withbeing moved instead of moving?
23/a
SCORES N 0 Autumn 2010
23/b
MartinaRuhsam Choreograhy. Immediacy. Failure
23/c
SCORES N 0 Autumn 2010
MartinaRuhsam
Choreograhy. Immediacy. Failure
Stillunknown? byJeroenP eters / MartinaRuhsam / VladoRepnik wascommissioned byand premiered atTanzquartierWien onDecember2th 2009.
23/d
MartinaRuhsam Choreograhy. Immediacy. Failure
COOPERATIVA PERFOR-
MATIVAWAS CONCEIVED
AS A COLLECTIVE THAT
BROUGHTTOGETHERTHE
ROMANIAN ARTISTS MA-
RIA BARONCEA, FLORIN
FLUERAS,EDUARD GABIA,
ALEXANDRA PIRICI AND
IULIANA STOIANESCU. ST-
ARTINGFROM THE BASIC
IDEA O F O PEN SO URCE,
THEYINVESTIGATED THE
(POWER) RELATIONSHIP
OFARTINSTITUTIONSAND
ARTISTS, CLAIMS TO OW-
NERSHIPAND COPYRIGHT
INTERESTSINONESOWN
WORK, THE NECESSITY
O F GUIDA NCE A ND DI-
RECT IO NIN A GROUP A S
WELL AS THE PRODUCT-
O RI EN TE D F OR MS O F
COLLABORATION, WHICH
ARE BASED ON AGREE-
MENT,NEGOTIATIONAND
COMPROMISES. THE EM-PHASISOF THEIRPROJECT
WASTHE PROCESSITSELF,
WHICH ON A LARGELY
GRASSROOTS DEMOCRA-
TIC BASIS CREATES HE-
TEROTOPIAS DIFFEREN-
CESANDCOMMONALITIES
INONESOWNASWELLAS
OTHERS ARTISTIC CREA-
TION, CONNECTED WITH
THE ATTEMPT NOT TO
JUDGE THEM BUT PRE-
CISELY T O HIGHLIGHT
THEIRDIVERSITY.
During aone-week encounterwitha groupof artists
working inVienna(Magdalena Chowaniec, Adriana
Cubides, FanniFutterknecht, ClaireGranier, Radek
Heweltand Thomas Kasebacher), thediscursive
strategies developed byCooperativaPerformativa
werechallenged and tested. The results of this open
working process werepresented onDecember16that
TanzquartierWien.
IOND
UMITRESCU
COOPERATIONBEYONDCONSENSUS
FLORINFLUERAS
COOPERATIVAPERFORMATIVAVS.THESECRETDANCESECT
26
SCORES N 0 Autumn2010
Sandra Noeth
M BILE OF ID A
Sandra
Noeth
DRAM
ATURGY
BILE
OF
IDEAS
Marcus Steinweg
15 Definitions
73/b
Marcus Steinweg 15 Defnitions
73/c
SCORES N 0 Autumn2010
73/d
Marcus Steinweg 15 Defnitions
Anarchiv #1: Im notaZombieby deufert+plischke, JeroenPeeters and Marcus Steinweg has beenpresented onDecember6 that
TanzquartierWienin theframework of TheSkinof Movement .
UdoRauer
12/a
SCORES N 0 Autumn 2010
100
50
50
100
3
C1,C2,E, F1Got/odorattouchDsir
B1, F25sensenvol
B2, F25sensdbutde retrait
D4,E,F4got/odorattouchretraitprogressif
35
SLOWNESS, ACRITICALMODEAConversationwithMyriam Gourfnk
c o re_No__ . i ndd 1 . . 1 :
INTRO
A: Hello.This is ascripted
INTRODUCTION. Nowyou will
alltakepart inareading of several
conversations. Eachconversationis
for2, 3 ormorepeople. Whenyour
arehanded apaperwithscript read it
outloud.
TheFACILITATOR (withyellow
headband)willdistributethe scripts
and microphones. If you haveany
questions ask thefacilitator. Havefun!
Thefacilitatorhandsout thescriptsand
mikesto3 random audiencemembersandsits
downinthe audience. Thestage is lit during
thereading, dark during thebreaks.
SCRIPT tryout
A: Hello? 1, 2, 1, 2, hello?
B: 1, 2 canyou hearme?
C: Yes, fne! Let s start?
whois A?
B: Ok, Iam B
C: C
B: Whois A?
A: Ithink it s me. AB C
B: B CA
C: End of script1.
B: Thatwas short!
A: Thatwas justa tryout,
Ithink.
Tocheck if everything works.
B: Isee. Yes, itworks fne.
C: Yes. Formetoo.
B: So. And nowwhat?
A: Idont know.
Ithink it s over?
Butthe nextconversationwillst art
then.
C: Butareweg oing toread ALL the
texts?
A: Really?
B: NoIdont think so.
Let s see!
Break &Music: Stuck InTheMiddle
WithYou StealersWheel
SCRIPT 1 3 people
B: Hello
A: Hi, Howareyou?
B: Thanks fne. Say, haveyou seen
this newsciencefctionTVs eries
shit forgotthename. Butthebasic
ideais great. You canbehired ina
company and haveyourmemory
and personalityerased and thenyou
arere-programmedto dowhatever
kind of job. Likeyou mightbejust
anyone secretagent, brainsurgeon,
artist. You could evenbeableto speak
Estonian butjustforaweekend or
so. Projectbased
A: Aha.
C: Ithink Iveheard aboutit. The
actors aredoing agreatjob every
episodetotallynew roletoplay. It s
fantastic.
B: AAnowIremember Its called
DOLL s HOUSEthat s theplace
wheretheywork. Itlooks likea
Pi-la-tes centre. Whenthedolls are
at home theyareinthis neutral
or blank stateand weardancers
clothes.
Pause.
B: Did Ifallasleep?
A: For awhile.
B: CanIgonow?
A: If you like.
This is thefrst thing theysaywhen
theyhavejust beenreprogrammed.
Whatwould anaturaldialoguelook
like?
B: Doyou feelfree?
A: Im trying todomy best.
C: So, canyou tellme whatexactly is
going onhere?
B: Yes, tryto imaginethis: asmall
theatreor studio. Thereareblack
curtains onthewalls. And ablack
danceooris ont heoor. You re
watching theoor. Behind thecurtains
thereis awindow, and behind the
windowthereis snow. Nowyou are
listening tothesnow. YOU ARE
FALLING ASLEEP. Nowyou look
upand you are againinatheatre or
studio. You suddenlyrememberthat
you arehereto watchapresentation of
work. It seems thattheperformanceis
alreadygoing on. Butyou arenotsure.
Somebodyis reading ascript. Outside
its snowing. Maybe
C: Areyou trying tore-programm me?
Hahaha.
A: Itlooks tome likethe
choreographeris trying tomanipulate
the peopleintosomething. And itisnt
sureif itworks.
B: Or As if theaudiencehavenothing
tothink aboutsoshe writes the
thoughts FOR them...
Boat,
ive been thinking eversince this boat thing
came up
how could aboat everbe inthe water?
How close could iget tothe water
maybe proximity is not the point
maybe form is just the point
this is anapple
this is not anapple
this is acircle,
this is acircle whichneeds you
without you there is nocircle
back as fnd toothless
brave, round warrioras ihigher than
always became lowly
untildays, as days were going forwards
and time, as throughthe middle of inside where
as tunnels not trains as trains not nowhere near
pictures
but birds throughthe brains of the onlooker goboats like anunbelievable inundationof water
carrying stillpossible fsh
swimming into theirtwo eyed noonsleeping
beings were.
here is the membrane icanfeel it.
... its right inthe middle of yourbreathbefore it
became yourbreath
and afterit became yourbreathi ts not your
breathanymore;
maybe confusionis the only way to understand;
---------------------------
56
SCORES Autumn2010
c o re_N o__ . i ndd 1 . . 1 :
core_No_0_0 .indd 51 01.09.10 0: 3
People oftenmiss live energy
whenwatchi ng dance onscreen...
Idont evenknow if what Idocan
becalled dance. Part of me has started
tocallit physicalbehaviourinstead.
ASwedish dance lmmakersaid that to her
what oftenis a problem is that the dramaturgical
reasonfor suddenly starting todance is lacking.
Quite usualis that you see arandom abstract
dance placed inaneveryday like surrounding.
But have you experienced successful
transmission of live energy, is it possible?
Yeahit s already betterwhen you
come close withthe camera...
...but theaim of a game is very clear...
Well, many think that s anissue, but nobody complains about recorded
music. Musicians and actors take it forgranted that their working lives
will be divided between live and not live situations and that the two
situations require different things from them as performers, have different
virtues and give different satisfactions toaudiences. The weird th ing
about dance is that live versus not live is stillani ssue. What does not
live dancing consist of exactly? It gets interesting very fast, because it
quickly evolves intothe philosophical question: what is dance exactly?
What works ina theatre is oftendifferent from what works
ina lm. Time, space, energy, presence, dynamics nothing
translates directly from one medium tothe other. You cant
make a good lm simply by lmi ng good t heatre.
The strange thing with dance is that it is only now trying to
achieve what dramaachieved ahundred years ago. It is atheatricalform,
populated by theatricalpeople, gingerly tryin g towork out how tomake
the transition from stage toscreen. You cant simply lm a good dance
inorder tomake a good lm. Dramalearned this hundred years ago.
Nowadays everyone simply takes it forgranted that what is required in a
lm dramais quite different from what s required inat heatricaldrama.
Everyone must be clearabout: Whose language are we speaking
here? Whois going toget toexpress themselves? Whowillcontrol the
visionof the lm? Will the camerabe used passively to REPRODUCE
the dance? Orwill it be used actively toCREATE the dance? Will
the rhythm and structure of the work be supplied by the dancer
intheirperformance, orby the lm-makerinthe editing?
Inthi s respect, being involved withdance lm now is rather
like working inHollyw ood in1910. It s that time whenthe form is
still upfor grabs, whenthe language is stillbeing invented. It s an
exciting place tobe, because there are norules yet, noformulas.
Howabout the World Cupnal? Iguess one
could treat the dance like afootballmatch.
But afootballmatch isnt ABOUT anything outside itself...
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SCORES NO0
The skin of movement
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As a translation from one medium into another, scores mark a gure of our interest in te cor-respondences and interferences between discursi-
ve and perfor mative practice, respectively for the
irritation potential of their incompatibility. Scores
open up a performative space within the discur-
sive and vice versa. Thus with its own periodical
SCORES te Tanzquartier Wien is dedicatingitself to the current artistic and political status of
scores tat read and continue to write coreograp-hed hi/stories by the breaks in their notation and
beyond.
As a venue of the practical and theoreti-cal examination of contemporary dance and per-
formance, the Tanzquartier Wien is constantly in
searc of new formats of publising and of ex -tending tese negotiations furter. A searc tatalso follows from our conviction that the develop-
ments of dance and performance do not just par-
ticipate in the cultural and political developments
but also use coreograpic means to accompanthem subversively, to scrutinise and apostrophise
them.
Tus during te 2009/10 season, and ina more intensive wa from 2 to 6 December 2009(in a series entitled The skin of movement), the Tanz-quartier Wien analsed te tinking and doing ofte coreograpic. It concerned coreograp indance and performance, in sound, lm, video andteor, in te social and te political. Alongsideguest performances and work sketces, duringour December intensication tere were arti-stic-teoretical dialogues, lecture performances,research workshops, installative and participative
formats on te programme. Wit SCORES wewould like to continue, implement and translate
this new format of an artistic-theoretical parcours
but also other focal points of our ar tistic research
in another medium. Artists and theoreticians here
put forward teir coreograpic practice or teir
reections on coreograp in various positionsand conceptual gestures. Te TQW intensica-tion , which takes place twice a year, is intended
to provide the basic material for the publication
but, independent of the respective parcours, other
texts that arise from or inspire our main emphases
will also be published. SCORESis conceived of asa distinct medium, which inspired by the artistic
tougt practised in te ouse takes it furterartistically and theoretically and facilitates sustaina-
ble discourses as well as inviting dialogue. In linewit te frequent meaning-association oscillationsof a score , this periodical, with its not really
strictly academic notations , instructions ,
play-results etc. by ar tists and theoreticians, att-
empts to set te tinking about te coreograpicin motion and keep it going.
Walter Heun / Krassimira Kruschkova / Sandra Noeth / Martin Obermayr
SCORES NO0
Editorial
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Let s imagine te skin of coreograpic movement, even witout organs and nevertel-ess sensual: as a trace of te bod, as a tremblingdividing line between inside and outside of spaceand bod and writing and as its interpenetrati-on, as a vibrating membrane, as a men betweenguration and deguration in te nowere of te
ver rst step: penetrable for various surfaces, dis-ciplines, arts and media. Imagine ow te skin ofmovement is folded, unfolded and stroked b gazeand breat. Also including te danger of strikingtroug stroking and tus peraps awakeningother movements that, in vain and yet always dif-
ferently, we want to record with a camera eye or
footnotes.
As if coreo-grap were a temporar and tem-pered space de/scription, a turning of space into
time and time into space: as if it had skinned thespace troug movement b slipping off time.
Krassimira Kruschkova, for the editors
The skin of movement
Were is movement? Were does it begin, we-re does it end, oscillating as it does between mo -ment and momentum, instant and impulse, pulse
and the blink of an eye? How can one think of
te momentum before and te moment after? Is ittoda coreograpicall rater to be conceivedbeyond a foreseeable reason, beyond a movens?
Inasmuc as it onl most precisel coreogra -phically controlled loses control of itself ? And
is it conceivable witout a moving bod? Weredoes te dancing bod stop?
All tese questions about te coreogra-pic, about its vibration between notation and -guration, andwriting and footsteps, position anddisposition, scene and screen, skin and skill, still
and motion.
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SCORES NO0
The skin of movement
PAGINA 6 9
Ivana MllerINTO THE NIGHT
PAGINA 10 11
Gerald SiegmundFIVE THESIS ON THE FUNCTION OF
CHOREOGRAPHY
PAGINA 12 21
Boris Charmatz / Janez Jana / Gerald SiegmundWHAT IF WE MADE IT ALL UP?
PAGINA 22 25
Martina RuhsamSTILL UNKNOWN
PAGINA 26 31
Ion DumitrescuCOOPERATION BEYOND CONSENSUS
&Florin Flueras
COOPERATIVA PERFORMATIVA VS.THE SECRET DANCE SECT
PAGINA 32 35
Myriam Gournk / Paule Gioffredi / Sarah Troche
SLOWNESS, A CRITICAL MODE
PAGINA 36 47
Sandra NoethDRAMATURGY. MOBILE OF IDEAS
PAGINA 48 53
Daniel Aschwanden / Peter StamerTHE PATH OF MONEY
PAGINA 54 63
Julyen HamiltonOF PLANES BOATS AND FISH
PAGINA 64 67
Andreas SpieglDANCE AS BODY POLITICS.
PAUL WENNINGERS 47 items. Ingeborg & Armin
PAGINA 68 71
David Hinton / Dominik Grnbhel / Charlotta RuthWE DO IT BY HEART
PAGINA 72 77
Marcus Steinweg
15 DEFINITIONS
PAGINA 78 87
Krt JuurakSCRIPTED SMALLTALK:
A PERFORMANCE
PAGINA 93
IMPRINT
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Ivana Mller
into
thenight
10
SCORES NO0 Autumn 201011
IVANA MLLER into the night
Ivana Mller,
into the night,2007
originall commissioned b LISAfor the occasion of the festival LISA Live(s)in Teatre Kikker, Utrect, Te Neterlands ( 2007),also presented at Tanzquartier Wien as a part of On possible and other encounters, 15t/16t October 2009, and staged on
ttp://www.ivanamuller.com/works/into-te-nigt/
hello, (slight coughing)hello
I am ere,sitting in te darkness,here,
on te oter side of te big black room,
in a ver big group of people,togeter wit ou,
anticipating te event tat is going to appenin just a couple of moments
And altoug we are man, tis moment feelsstrangel intimate.
It makes me want to wisper.So, it comes and tat I ave tis microponebecause it allows me to speak very quietly, and
you can still hear me,
even toug ou are mabe on te oter side ofthe room.
It is funn, and it must be because of tedarkness, but it seems that in this moment,
altoug we don t even know eac oter, we aredoing someting togeter.
and in fact we are doing someting togeter,we are getting read to spectate.
I love tis moment:tis moment belongs so muc to te experienceof theatre:
tis blackout before it all begins.
tere is someting sligtl romantic and verpowerful about te anticipation of a beginning.
Because now everting is still possible.
It is almost like getting dressed for a rstdate
I often go to teatre but it appens verrarely, maybe only once a year or even less
tan tat, tat I see a reall good sow a
sow tat I remember for a ver long time.
And even toug it occurs so rarel, ever timeI sit in te darkness before te sow begins Iknow that potentially it can be this show.
Actuall, tat is w I don t reall like sowstat start in te ligt ,in wic performers are on stage alread wente audience is coming in. Off course,sometimes te coice to start wit te ligt is conceptually correct and there is a rational
or dramaturgical reason for it, wic I canaccept off course.
But I reall muc more prefer a sow tatstarts in darkness.
Like this one.
It is as if tis dark moment provides anecessary space and time to switch
concentration and attention from one kind of
here and now to another kind of here and now.
Te rst kind of ere and now belongs to tetime before te darkness, te one of gettinginto te teatre, buing a ticket, coosing aseat, saing ello to all te people we know,reading te evening program, or pretending toread it so that we don t need to say hello to
somebody we don t want to talk to.
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Te second kind of ere and now belongs to tetime after the darkness, and the time after the
silence to te time wen te rst ligtsappear on stage and we start to get into te
show or if you prefer into the shown ,into te ligt, into te visible, into wat is tereto be seen.
And in between, t here is this moment of
darkness,
and what ever we do and where ever we are
seated,
te ligts slowl go down, and evertingbecomes quiet
and we a re for a short wh ile invisible
and we are for a short while in the dark,
and we for a short while don t know what is
going to come next,and we are for a sort wile strangel close toone another,
I mean, even psicall close So close tat wecould almost touch each other.
And we could, now, if we wanted, touch our
neigbor, ever sligtl, so tat it seems likewe did it unintentiona lly.
I would like now to sare wit ou m affectionfor this moment of theatre,
stretcing it a bit longer,sitting ere wit all of ou,my fellow spectators,
in tis big dark room.
taking wat tis moment as to offer:
a cance to get lost,a chance to not know,a chance to close our tired eyes just for amoment,a cance to smell te perfume of our neigbor,a cance to spot all te securit exit signs,a chance to think weather or not we switchedoff our mobile phone,
a cance to forget wat is tere to beforgotten,a cance to nd a comfortable position in ourseat,a cance to coug for te last time,a cance to imagine te performer tat willsoon appear on stage,a chance to just sit here and be,a chance to feel the excitement in the stomach,a cance to be togeter in tis big dark roomso lets sit ere for a little longer.and lets listen to eac oter s breating,lets enjoy the darkness,and lets not say another word.
13
IVANA MLLER into the night12
SCORES NO0 Autumn 2010
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1.In contrast to dancing as a psical practice, coreograp developed as a notati-on in te upper Italian and Frenc court culture of te Renaissance. It developedas a form of writing. Te birt of coreograp resulted from a moment ofcrisis, a moment of loss, of disappearance, of death both of the dance and its
dancer. Even in Domenico di Piacenzas earl treatise on te art of dance (1452),standstill (posa) which structured the dance was associated with the shock that
would befall te dancr if te looked at te ead of te medusa. In is Orc-sograpie (1589) Toinot Arbeau determined coreograp as a possibilit oflearning te dance even after te deat of te dancing master. Coreograp
attempted to deal wit and banis te nal absence.
4.Te gure in wic tis angst-ridden instabilit bot appears and is banisedis the pose. The pose is the dancers mimicry of the social order, i.e. of their
gures, geometric patterns or bod attitudes tat ave alread been seen and arethus part of cultural memory. Mimicry, as Walter Benjamin stated in a different
context, is at te same time te dancers sock at te fact tat te can do noting
oter tan adapt to te petried, and at te same time it is teir self-analsis as anemancipator act. If tis act is completed it simultaneousl implies te suspensi-on of dance as a physical practice.
5.Ultimatel wat results from tis is te tense relationsip between coreograpas an abstract notation recorded in a relational code on the one hand and the
dancing bod on te oter. Tere is noting corporeal in coreograp. It isa substrata of a social order, which it simultaneously produces and represents.
Tus it is just relation: relation of te signs to anoter and to te bod, wicte neverteless ave to exclude. Coreograp is an inuman macine tat
guides and produces te bod witout ever being able to assimilate it.
2.Coreograp con-nects. Troug tesubstitution of the
score as a trace for
an initially absent
physical practice of
dancing, people arerelated to one ano-
ther and connected.
Troug tis mo-ment of non-phy-
sical coreograpproduces a commu-
nity in the relation-
ship of bodies to one
another.
3.
As the fear of loss
is at the centre of
coreograp, it
must regard tiscommunit-formingmoment based on
the dancers experi-
ence of instability,
of falling, crasingand dancing out ofstep. Coreograpdeals with instabili-
ty and transforms it
into potential order.
From absence, instability, the pose asmemory to the abstract, machine-like structure that
holds and drives the body in motion, all these features
of coreograp are present in te two works b Bo-ris Carmatz, 50 years of dance, and by Janez Jana,
Monument G 2.Te are coreograpic works parexcellence. In almost all is works so far BorisCarmatz as stretced is dancing bodies intocorset-like apparatuses that limit their freedom of
movement in specic was. If in is installationhtre-lvision the body of the only spectator/ac-tor is treated in a visual-auditory apparatus with
sounds and images, in rgicranes and cable win-ces pull te packed, mummied bodies across testage like sacks. For 50 years of danceall the photo-graps from David Vaugans bookMerce Cunning-ham, Fifty Yearsserve as is coreograpic model.In is project series What to afrm? What to perform?
with the aid of contemporary witnesses, texts,
interviews, reviews, rehearsal notes, physical and
acoustic recollections, Janez Jana goes in searcof Slovenian theatre performances whose radical
gestures made tem into a mt at te time tewere created and on the other hand also prevented
tem from being imitated. Tese traces, owever,do not result in an original tat one migt be ableto reproduce. All tat remains is an opening of tepresent-da bod to someting tat is not itself.
What these works concern is the con-
frontation of te coreograper and te teatremaker with the unavailable, the radical Other that
can never be reduced to the individual body and its
experiences, because te coreograpic as alwasbeen more than the individual, namely social rela-
tion. In tis confrontation of te bod of te per-former with what is unavailable to it, the bodies are
not only one-sidedly captured and limited in their
supposedly free development. Above and beyond
this they are only empowered to act, to move, to
portra temselves troug te friction wit teunavailable structure. Against te background ofthese considerations, for some time now the boom
in reconstructions which no dance festival seems
to be witout as been increasing its prole. Toreconstruct means exposing oneself to sometingone can never own, someting tat can never to -tall become I . It represents a contact wit teOther that escapes, but with its demand sets me
in motion. In te reconstruction, as te sociolo-gist Dirk Baecker put it, for a coming societ Imust confront m lack of knowledge in order toput tis lack of knowledge to te test in practice.Put positivel, tis means placing oneself into teabsence of loss as a s tate of relational creativity
and potentialit. It means gaining ones own stancein resistance to te coreograpic macine of te
material and its structure, a standing against inorder in our age of computer-generated antinggoes to be able to stand at all posa, standstill,coreograp. In tis sense te sentence from
Monument G 2is actuall a good description for teprocess of coreograp: Someone came out ofthe monument and followed me. A work that is
te cultural eritage actuall a pose tat as afunction of recollection is transferred into a pro-
cessuality and a physicality in order to follow us,
i.e. in order to do someting wit us as present-daspectators and actors.
15
Gerald SiegmundFIVE THESES ON THE FUNCTION OF CHOREOGRAPHY
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Gerald
Siegmund
FIVE THESES
ON T E
FUNCT ON
OF C OREOGRAPHY
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Boris Carmatz / Janez Jana / Gerald Siegmund What if w e made it all up?
Boris Carmatz / Janez Jana / Gerald Siegmund
What if we made it all up?
W H A T
IF WE
M A D E
IT ALL
UP ?
/ Talk-Transcription /
*
HE IS NOT HERE, HE WILL NOT TELL US HOW TO DO IT.
WhEN ThE ChOREOGRAPhER IS ABSENT,
ThE ChOREOGRAPhy STARTS TO WORK.
*
MONUMENT G2by Janez Jana and 50 ANS DE DANSEby Boris Carmatz were presented
on December 3rd 2009 at Tanzquartier Wien. Te artists talk wit Gerald Siegmund followed te
performances on December 4t.
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Gerald Siegmund / Boris Carmatz / Janez Jana /
What if we made it all up?
Gerald Siegmund Boris, in te piece 50 years of danceyou worked withall te images in David Vaugans bookMerce Cunningham, Fifty Years. youused te potograps as a coreograpic structure to organise te piece. Teimages contain a certain kind of information, but leave out oters. how did ouconfront ourself wit tose images in te process of creating te piece?
Gerald Siegmund Te information in te pictures ou were tring to re-translate into a sequence of movement, owever, is not alwas tat clear. If te imagedepicts some kind of posture or gure, tere is still no wa ou can tell ow tedancers in te picture came to do tis precisel, wic amount of energ was used,
wic parts of te bod were activated to produce tis. So I assume ou ad to makecoices and take decisions on ow to produce te movement b reading pictures.
Gerald Siegmund In our piece tere are at least two different tpes of arcivestat ou worked wit. First, te pictures temselves function as an arcive tat alsoprovide ou wit te coreograpic structure of te piece because ou followed teirorder cronologicall. Second, in te version of te piece tat ou sow ere at te
Tanzquartier in Vienna tere is te psical arcive of tese seven wonderful dancersfrom Merce Cunningams Compan tat ou worked wit. Since te ave been trainedin Cunningam tecnique and ave temselves danced in some of te pieces sown inte book te ave an intimate psical knowledge of ow to inscribe te information.
Gerald Siegmund Do ou tink tis is because of te culturalcontext? It implies tat just because ou re born in a certain culture, ou
were exposed to certain pieces of art and certai n traditions th at even
toug ou re not a dancer ou would nd te dancer in ourself?
Boris Carmatz In m work up until now I alwas tougt tat we souldgt images. As dancers we alwas used to work in front of mirrors and now... wealwas work in front of cameras! Everbod is alwas confronted wit advertisementand pictures of the body. Therefore one could be mislead to think that the dancer is
organizing movement onl because e or se sapes is own bod to produce an idealimage. I, on te oter and, alwas tougt we sould go back to action, back to doingtings and pus te pictures aside. As dancers we sould resist te picture-effect.
But one da I remember I was wit Laurence Louppe, one of te most importantFrenc critics and dance scolars. Se was looking at pictures from te sixties andsaid: O tere is so muc in tem . Up until ten I ad tougt te are onl traces,te are not te real ting te movement, te performance. But se insisted tat Itake a closer look. Of course rst ou ma tink te onl capture one second. yousee a jump, so it s a jump. But in fact there is so much more to be seen: the costumes
and te ligt used, te atmospere, te air cut. Even if it is onl a jump, ou canpredict ow te came to tis jump. From tat one exercise or one sape of te armyou could already reconstruct a whole philosophy, even metaphysics of the body.
I received David Vaugans book as a Cristmas present from m fater. Tat s ow itall started. Tere is of course a close relationsip between Modern Dance and developmentof lm and potograp wic is reall part of our istor as dancers. Modern Dance
was accompanied wit a lot of pictures. Merce Cunningams work is alwas related tovideo and media. So I was looking at tis book and, i n a wa, I was not too app toave it. But after a wile I tougt, tat in a strange wa te book reconstructs a processtat is not so far from Merce Cunningams process of developing a piece. In fact, it s
written on te back page of te Englis version: Tese pictures re-enac t a dance fullof energ, full of liveliness. Tat tere was dance in it became reall clear to me wen I
was ipping te pages. Te connection bet ween te rst page and te second page was
just as absurd as te coreograpies of Merce imself!!! So I tougt we could workwit te book b considering te pictures alread as a dance. T is is ow it started.
First I started to work wit people wo didn t know anting about MerceCunningam, or Jon Cage, or American Dance. Te main ting was to work in te absenceof a coreograper. Mabe tat s wat coreograp is: wen abstract tings are inscribed inte bod. Of course it s ver useful wen te coreograper is present to sow ou, to toucand to take care tat ou do te rigt movement. A lot of teacing and learning coreograpis done b oral transmission. Te rst pleasure wit 50 Years of Dancewas He is not here,e will not tell us ow to do it . So we just started to reincorporate te pictures, tring tobe ourselves in te picture wic, unfortunatel, is a ting tat never works. you are nevera picture and ou are never full doing wat ou like, because ou are facing a monster.
Boris Carmatz In fact, wen te dancers of te ft ears of dance look atte picture for some time, te know were te pose comes from. you ma onl see ONEpicture, but for te dancers it s a 30 minute piece. If ou consider an of te pictures in tebook regardless of wat ou know about Merce Cunningam ou could guess tat e
was educated in western societies or educated on te ground wit crossed legs all te ti me.In fact tere is muc more to be read in a picture. Tere is alwas a lot of information to begatered from our posture, from te wa ou old ourself, you can guess ow te oterperson will talk, ou can guess wat kind of voice e or se as. you could sa it s onlguessing. But even before ou move tere is alread a lot of movement tat is inscribed.
Boris Carmatz We argued a lot, because all te dancers spent time witMerce Cunningam in different periods of is work. Since Cunningam was active inte 1950ies, 1960ies, 1970ies, 1980ies, 1990ies and te 2000s, te mabe weren t facingexactl te same person. I am actuall convinced tat even if ou don t know antingabout Merce Cunningam, ou are able to grasp tings from just looking at te pictures.I made tis experience during a project wit Le Quatuor Albrect Knust were we
worked on The afternoon of a faun. Tere is a poem of Mallarm, te music of Debussand te score and te dance of Vaslav Nijinsk. Te four coreograpers and scolarsof le Quatuor asked all te dancers wat te know about The afternoon of a faun. All thedancers involved in tis project, st of all mself, said: I don t know anting about
Nijinsk . And after a wile I reall start wistling te music! It s te same wit tesepictures or wit, sa, an arabesque. Even if ou don t know ow to name an arabesqueand ou see it, it is still possible to reconstruct it. you can nd in ourself a kind ofarcaeolog of tings ou tougt ou would never know, but ou actuall do know.
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Gerald Siegmund you were spelling out all tese psical implicationsin te pictures and took tem as a basis for working on te transitions betweenpictures which, of course, can never be in the pictures themselves?
Gerald Siegmund But our decisions are alwas alread based on a mixtureof several experiences, cultural knowledge, specicall in te tecnique avingdone te pieces, our imagination and wat is actuall tere in te pictures. Teinteresting ting is tat in te end ou can never reall decide wic is wic.
Gerald Siegmund Let me now address Janez Jana before we come back to certainissues ou ve raised. you mentioned our work wit Le Quat uor Albrect Knust and owyou tried to approach Nijinsky piece L Aprs-midi d un faune, a piece that was actually shownere in Vienna in te ear 2000. Boris ou described tat ou worked wit different sourcematerial: poems b Mallarm, im clips of te Ballets Russes, Debusss music, te notationscore. Tis discursive approac. is similar to wat Janez Jana is doing in Monument G 2, apiece we saw yesterday. Janez Janas reconstruction of a famous Slovenian theatre piece from
1972,Monument G, is based on eterogeneous source material. Reviews, interviews, memoriesof te performers: te never, owever, add up to a complete picture of te originalperformance. Why did you approach your task with this very open perspective, Janez?
Boris Carmatz It s also empat between te bodies. In te pictures I was struckb te gaze te dancers ave. I was struck b te fact tat te alwas do big legs, big arms,but tere are not so man in-between-gestures. Te jump, or te go on te ground, or tegrasp eac oters. If ou compare te gaze wit pictures from Xavier Le Ros pieces forinstance, or anbod elses from te 1990is, tere is for sure a difference in ow te dancerslook at te space. It s incomparable. In te pictures ou see ow te dancers enter space.
Boris Carmatz Wen I started tis project everbod warned me tat it will notproduce dance. Tat was te main fear. But I tougt, if tere is a jump, ou ave to prepareit, ou ave to jump, to go down. So te process basicall was about learning te pictures.
Ten ou ave organise tis knowledge wit 12 people we are onl 7 tonigt in spaceand time asking can ou do te one in te left, te one in te middle? We just tried to goabout it tis wa. Ver simple. Ten, of course, questions came up: how do we enter? how
many steps do we have to make? what is a step? ... The idea was basically that everybodyasked temselves a ver quick and pragmatic question. I like to work reall quickl in order toavoid spending too muc time tinking Wo could be Merce in te rst picture? InsteadI simpl sa: Could ou be Merce, is tis oka? Wo is next? Te coreograp tencomes b itself. We learned te pictures, ow man steps do I need, ow ig do I aveto be, sould I pus te ground, ow do I do it. And on tat basis ou start to invent. Weobserve and we make instant choices. We just make them. Because there is always a pre-
movement to movement I could re-create te coreograp, It s alread dance in a wa.
Boris Carmatz It was ver strange ere in Vienna to direct a process,in wic te dancers know muc more about wat we are doing tan mself.Mabe tat was m look into te Medusa! Usuall te coreograper works onis own movement tat e knows better tan te dancers e is working wit.In tis case it was te opposite. Obviousl. But it was reall cool to tr it.
Janez Jana This has to do a lot with how you can re-enact or reconstruct
a teatre piece or a performance at all. I prefer to use te term to reconstruct a performance wic is gone, because for me reconstruction as a ver strongarcaeological dimension. your are not onl digging up fragments of te bodies onstage, but also wat kind of cultural signicance te piece ad at its time and watkind of consequences it produced. Tis was ver muc explored in te rst piece Ireconstructed,Pupilja papa pupilo pa pupilcki, 3 ears ago. In te case ofMonument G 2tere is ver little documentation. Tere is a ver sort recording, 4 min. from onereearsal, and ver bad potograps. Te sow as never been lmed. Or mabe it was,but there is no document. And even these pictures we have are of a very bad quality.
Boris ou, are actuall talking about a ver good potograper taking pictures.you are also talking about a selection of pictures. Mabe tere are oter potos, wicwould reveal a completel different Merce Cunningam. But ou decided to workwit book tat our fater gave ou as a present. So in a wa our fater gave ou acertain picture of Merce Cunningam. But tepictures fromMonument Gthat we haveon stage are blurr and generall of a ver bad qualit. Te performer wo is in a watring to get wat te piece was like, is actuall not convinced b te potos. So wat
se was doing in one particular scene, wen se was performing in front of a picture,se is actuall tring to understand te poto. Not wat appened before and afterte poto was taken, but te poto itself. It is so unclear tat it needs interpretationor a re-elaboration. A retouc, speaking in strictl potograpic terms. Potos ofCunningam are so good tat te cannot be retouced. Tis RE- is impossible.
Given te difcult status of te source material I began to wonder wat te istoricalevidence of that piece could be, with which we could work? That s how the idea came up
to ask te director of te original piece to work wit te original cast: te performer andte musician, wo performed te piece in 1972. On top of tat tere was te idea to ave aparallel sow wit two performers, wo were born after te premiere in 1972 and wo avenoting to do wit te working processes and aestetics of te earl 1970ies. At tis pointI can continue Boris argument: wen te coreograper is absent, te coreograp startsto work. In our piece it was interesting to see ow it was impossible for te actress wooriginall performed te piece to do te reconstruction. Tecnicall speaking te workingprocess was suc tat Duan Jovanovic, wo is now 70 ears old and one of te most famousteatre directors in former yugoslavia and Slovenia, was working togeter wit Jozica Avbelj,te actress, for two weeks in order to remember teir work from 1972. Surprisingl tecame up wit 18 minutes of remembered sequences. But te original performance was 45minutes long. Tis was our arcive. So out of te 4 minutes of lmed reearsal and out of
teir memor te re-constructed 18 minutes. But wen we came to see te reearsal, tese18 minutes te came up wit alread looked so far awa from wat we imagined te original
Monument Gto be wile seeing te 4 minute lm. It was interesting to see tat te originalperformance ad been condensed into 18 minutes. you suddenl nd ourself wit material
wic doesn t belong to tat time anmore. It is s re-invention of te present. After tatte work wit Teja Reba, te oung dancer doubli ng te act ress, and Jozica Avbelj becameequal. Because we could no longer sustain te idea tat tere was one reliable arcive,
Jozica Avbelj, and somebod, Teja Reba, wo studies te arcive. Te original was lost insuch a dimension that both of them had to reinvent or even better to invent the piece.
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Gerald Siegmund how did te performers work togeter?Did te original actress tried to remember te performance and ow did teounger actress work? Did se just work from te source material?
Gerald Siegmund It comes across ver clearl tat at one pointte roles are reversed. Te original is no longer te source but te originalactress is actuall coping te cop, coping te analticall transformed worktat se once did. Te result is a complete loos of wat is te original andwats te interpretation of tat origina l. It turns around completel.
Gerald Siegmund Tere is also a fascinati ng performance going on inthe audiences head between the actress and the dancer, because they re never
doing te same ting. One sees two images or two movements at te same timetring to gure out ow te are related. But as a consequence after a wile I waswondering wat did te actuall do in 1972? Wo can I trust if t is translation andanalsing process goes on? As ou rigtl said: Wat if we made it all up?
Janez Jana Teja Reba learned wat te original cast could propose. Te interesti ngting is tat tere are two bodies on stage. One bod, Jozica Avbelj, is coming fromteatre, and te oter bod, Teja Reba, is coming from a dance background. Monument Gfrom 1972 was clearl conceived of as an experimental teatre sow, altoug toda
we would consider it to be a dance piece. At that time there was one dance critic in
Slovenia who was actually in doubt whether Monument Gwas a dance performanceor not. Wen se was doing an overview at te end of te season, se said es it
was a dance performance. So in a wayMonument Gbecame a dance performance.Teja as dance background. Apart from tat I casted er because I wanted to ave
an analtical coreograpic and dance approac to te material wic was accessible. Soon stage ou ave two different bodies wic operate in completel different was. Firstse was learning wat se could get from tese 18 minutes. Ten we were imagining terest of te piece b analsing procedures, patterns, and materials available. And tat was
placed next to Jozica. And for some detai ls in te performance I can sa tat te orig inalactress was actuall learning from te ounger wic, of course, was not planned at all.
Wen we started to work, I was tinki ng tat Duan and Jozica will remember te fullsow and tat tis would be our point of reference. But ten te tings te rememberedamounted to less tan alf of te original sow so tat we ad to reinvent. Or invent.
Janez Jana Referring to an origina l tat is lost is actuall one of te main aspects of tedramaturgical procedure. Wen we were working wit Teja for example te work was a littlebit like sooting witout a target. Because te original is lost, ou soot and wait tat mabete target will appear b itself producing a result tat migt be a little bit catastropic, too.
Janez Jana yes, tat s a paradox, because, in fact, we ad to make it up. A documentis never a proof. Or to quote Pet Sop Bos ou don t need a DNA to get t e proof. In
Monument G 2 it was interesting to create a certain curiosit. you create someting, wicis not sowing ow it was, but wic is creating curiosit about ow it was. It is denitelsometing tat is appening in te ere and now referring to someting in te past,but you don t know for sure. And that s why you can say maybe we made it all up.
Gerald Siegmund Picking up te idea presented in m introduction of wat te moment we are so fascinated b reconstructions of istorical performances; I
would like to ask bot of ou, Janez and Boris, w do an arcaeological work?
Gerald Siegmund It is te individual bod tat connects wit tose images.Tere are tree or four different generations of Cunningam dancers performingtis sow. Tis alread implies a kind of dissemination of wo or wat Cunningamis, because I can imagine tere are arguments about ow ou performed a certainmovement in te fties and ow ou used to do it in te eigties. Tere seems tobe a certain kind of eterogeneit witin te group, wic takes te monumentalitof te monument Cunningam awa b anding im over to a process in time.
Janez Jana B just doing someting wic as alread been done, te piece becamesometing else. Seeing Boris piece made me realize tat tis is not a Cunningam-sow.Cunningam is turned into someting else. And Monument G 2is not a Duan Jovanovic-sow, altoug e is one of te directors. We signed tat work togeter. In Monument G 2
we work ver explicitl wit te idea of doubling. Doubling is one of te ke elements inperformance. In te teatre ou alwas double someting. Tis is also ver clear in ourpiece, Boris. you double an image and ou double a coreograpic procedure. And doublingon stage is underlined inMonument G 2: tere are two sows going on at te same time wittwo casts, and two directors. Interestingl enoug wen we originall did tis performanceI kept te original titleMonument Gand onl afterwards canged te title to Monument G 2.
Boris Carmatz During reearsals we discussed a lot weter wat we are doingis Cunningam or not. I still ave no answer to tat. Of course ou can argue tat it is not
Cunningam, but some people saw it and teir reaction was O tat s te Cunningam Idreamed of. Te recalled te real Cunningam on stage. We are looking for someting
witout exactl knowing wat it is. I enjo te piece, because I m nding te memor ofme viewing real Merce Cunningam-pieces again. Or am I simpl enjoing it because it ism work? I don t know. Is it still dance? Is it old stuff, is it brand new stuff? Do ou seete istor of te ft ears of Cunningam, or do ou see te istor of eac performer?Mabe tis is te most important feature of te performance. you can see ow te dancersconnect to te images and te movements te ave to do. Tis is certainl true of teseven dancers tonigt wo were all members of te Cunnginam Dance compan at onepoint of teir career. But it is also true if ou see a dancer from Cap Verde doing tis. Ina wa ou are facing individual istories of te dancers, not onl te istor of books.
Foofwa d Imobilit For me, te fact tat Merce is dead is actuall freeing. I amsafe from te fact tat mabe in two das Merce would see tis piece. you know JonCage for instance ad all tese musicians and composers around wen e worked. ButMerce didn t ave an coreograper friends reall around im like tat. So e was ver,
ver critical. he liked a few ti ngs, but ver few tings . Merce even said tat wen JonCage died, e imself felt freer. For tose wo are left beind tere is alwas an elementof liberation involved in the fact that somebody has died. We were liberated from Merce
wile remembering im. Some people migt sa tis kind of freedom is bad, because tendsto lose te integrit of an original. 50 years of danceis denitel a mix, a brid. It is a littlebit of Boris, and a little bit of Merce. In te future, it migt even become more Boris
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Boris Carmatz It s funn, because I actual l ad te opposite feeling wene died. If e was still alive and e was doing is next project and te compan was goingon and we could do someting on te side, like some kind of outsiders, ten we would bereall free. If ou want to get te real Cunningam just go to see one of is performances,because te compan is still going on. But wen e died and e died in te middle of teprocess for te project tere would be no new work b im. Suddenl tere is a dangertat m little project could be seen as tis could-be-te-next Cunningam. I felt freer witim still being around. Because of is deat I even tougt about stopping tis process.I did not want te piece to be conceived of as an omage. So in tis case te absence ofte coreograper is not about im being next door, or in te next room, or in anoterstate, somewhere else in America, but he s not there at all. He died. What can we do then?
But ten I also tougt tat it would be terrible if ou stopped working on sometingjust because e died. I just did not want to be trapped in te big event of is deat.
Foofwa d Imobilit I wanted to sa someting about tese different generationsof Merce Cunningam dancers. We alwas tink because Merce coreograped tepieces, everting is well ordered and xed. On te contrar. Tere is a lot of exibilit
witin te rigour and clarit. Tere are different interpretations dependi ng on tedancers personalit. In a wa we all ave a different kind of relationsip to Merce andto is coreograp, because e allowed everbod to do so. he said someting like everybody walks, but everybody walks differently . Basically he wanted that to be
te extension of is tecnique. you do certain steps, but e allows everbod to dothem as they do and not how he does them. So he never said do it like me . Which
is ver dif ferent from oter coreograpers, wo would sa just imitate me .
Valda Settereld I tink Merce was never interested in freezing someting i ntime. Ever. As e aged, e was ver clear about tat. So I tink tis is wonderful and I mnot measuring ow muc Merce, ow muc Boris, ow muc us tere is in tis piece. Itink tat it s wonderful tis wa, tat it is absolutel alive, and tat it springs from a sortof genesis of wat Merce evokes in all of us. he migt be terribl amused and trilled even
wit wat is going on, because it is extending is ideas even furt er. Tat s m feeling.
Gus Solomons I tink of tis piece as being not about Cunningam, butabout a book. Wic is not all of Cunningams work and not all te coreograp inte book is Merce Cunningams. Tere are a lot of drawings, tat were portraed bte various designers of Cunningams work. So I don t tink of te piece in terms of
nostalgia, but in terms of recreating in our wa te book b David Vaugan about 50 earsof Cunningams dances. So Merce Cunningam came tat wa down in te dances.
Walter heun having seen bot of our works I would like to put it intoa context of a project b Olga de Soto, Histoire(s), where she kind of re-enacted Le jeunehomme et la mort b Roland Petit wic just staed on in te memories of te spectators,
wo ave been tere. So it existed onl in te memories of te spectators of te originalsow tat ave been presented in interviews. Since ou ve been talking about te arcive,I would like to add tat te arcive of all tese coreograpies is of course te dancersbod, but in te end it is us as spectators wo are arciving te piece in our memories.So you can feel very relaxed, because at the end maybe the responsibility lies with us.
Foofwa d Imobilit you know, tere is youtube and now we know tat ever time ouwatc someting tere is a cop. I love te fact tat in a wa everbod is illegal. hopefu lltis will stop te monopol and tat anting can be copied, because tat s ow we do art.
helmut Ploebst I m reall app tat te term arcaeolog came up, because Itink arcaeolog is an absolutel great form of science, wic is in constant development.
As arcaeolog is alwas to be done in te present and makes visible wat is to be seenand to be understood out of an arcive. Out of traces, being interpreted, being seen inte present. So heinric Scliemann for example would ave a totall different readingof Greek culture tan we do now 120 ears later after is deat. Our understanding ofarcaeolog is quite different to te idea of it in 19t centur. So we can sa tat tere isan arcaeolog of arcaeolog involved wen we talk in terms of live performance. Tisincludes also te denition of wat is an arcive. Arcives are alwas read differentldepending on te cultural context and te context in wic reading actuall appens.Gus Solomons was pointing out tat te piece was about te book and e s absolutelcorrect , because te autor wanted to arcive information about te coreograpers
work. Ten Boris Carmatz is rigt to sa tis is al l totall about Cunningam, becausee s following te traces of te arcivist, so to sa arcaeologizing wat is to be pickedout of te book and te knowledge of te dancers, and te memories to be connected etcetc. So it s a little bit more complex, with a few more opportunities to think about and
build kinetic models out of wat as appened tere. So tere is a lot of coreograpin te process as we witnessed ere we can involve in our tinking. And I tink it s
the same with construction and reconstruction, because any reconstruction is, of course,an arcaeological construction. Working on a work is about creating presence. And tisgives us te rigt to tink about wat we are wen witnessing or creating tose worksupon tose traces, in a certain laer of reading nall even leaving te traces beind.
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................................................................................................................................................... 50 ans de danse
In Merce Cunningham, un demi-sicle de danse*, all Cunningham is included: pictures from every
piece, and Merce is portrayed from the age of ve... when I read this book, it came to my mind that the
collection of the pictures was not only about nearly all the projects that he did until now, but formed
a choreography in itself cl ose to Cunninghams processes to create dance: dance happens in between
the postures, between two positions, and I guess we could invent a piece from this score of pictures,
performed from beginning to end. On the one hand it would be a purely fake Cunninghampiece, but
on the other hand, I think if we succeed that it could become a real on e, a real Cunningham piece, a
Meta-Cunningham event with a glimpse of his entire life and work...
Boris Charmatz
(*) David Vaugan, Ed. Plume (Frenc version), 1997 (out of print).
Merce Cunningam, Fift years Ed. Aperture (original edition).
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Let s tr to approac coreograp b tinking aboutimmediacy, a phenomenon that seems to be an opponent of
intentional creations, that cannot be rehearsed and therefor
usuall evades coreograpic processes. Ever attempt tostage immediac is condemned to FAILURE. If I tinkabout IMMEDIACy I see te dancing plastic bag in te lm American Beauty (directed by Sam Mendes) that is moved
in and b te wind, probabl te most famous plastic bag inthis moment, a part of the cultural memory of several millions
of people. (Mabe te plastic bag was not reall moved b tewind but by some ventilators that were place d outside of the
scope of te camera.) It dances a fascinating coreograp tat
doesn t ave an autor. Or can t we talk about a coreograpin tis case for te ver reason tat te autor is lacking andtat te movements of te plastic bag were neiter reearsed,nor do te derive from a writing process? Does immediacave someting to do wit being moved instead of moving?
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Still unknown? b Jeroen Peters / Martina Rusam / Vlado Repnik wascommissioned b and premiered at Tanzquartier Wien on December 2t 2009.
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Te most popular and nancial l best supportedcoreograp of IMMEDIACy are te news. In te ver eartof te media-empire, in te core of it s marketing macinertat lives from selling te immediate (illusion) tat wat
we see is wat as just appened or wat is just appening,immediac is cooked over and over again. In our livingrooms or beind our lap tops sitting in te train from Zricto Munic we can become part of wat is just appeningin Dubai immediate accomplices of distant occurences ChOREOGRAPhED b te media. Relevanc is measuredas closeness to te present time, newness regarded to bemore important than context also in new communication
tecnologies like Twitter (notabl, tere is a lack of arciveson Twitter). In te time of public spectacles distributed bte media a person failing can easil become te raw-materialfor te consumerists unger for entertainment and can soonnd im/erself te protagonist of a certain pornograp ofFAILURE. A joke is as good as a faux pas for te impatientgaze zapping for sensations. Wat could a politicization of teimmediate be? Te observation of te intricate entanglementof immediac and mediac? Keeping an ee on te permanent
paradoxical relationship of the two? What happens if whatseems spontaneous is organized, put into a certain frame,if wat is exposed to te gazes of a crowd of spectators andtereb is domesticated and timed is a coreograp?
Wat is lost if we tink about te immed iate as sometingcoreograped? Failing is insofar related to immediac as afailure usuall causes te intrusion of te representational regimeb immediate reactions. Coreograp is usuall tere to avoidfailure, et it is interesting if it risks te latter, but if one triesto coreograp a FAILURE one is representing a metaporof failure wic as noting to do wit immediac. Wat is arepresentation of failure and what is a failure of representation?
(When do we represent failure and when does representation fail?)
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Does it impl a certain loss of control? Coreograping asn act of formalising and framing, as a specic kind of writing rtainly cannot write the immediate. But the immediate inscribes
elf in everyChOREOGRAPhy at least in every performancewic te coreograp becomes visible for oters as terplus of planned actions and movements. The temperature of the
om, the smell of the performer next to oneself, the woman in the
st row of te audience tat doesn t stop awning, te tecniciano forgot to react on is cue, te tat circles i n front of one sce, te memor on an argument before te performance tatddenly appears without invitation, the sounds that are hearable
om te space above, te permanent wispering of two audience-embers all of tis is not coreograped but noneteless a moreless visible and a more or less crucial element of a performance
at unfolds in front or besides te viewers or people witnessing.MMEDIACycannot be planned and still occurs, untamed andften unexpected. A certain degree of immediac is inerent inver performance even signicant for it compared to lm
digital art because te bod in it s complexit and appearanceways reveals more than what it knows and what it learned.
At te same time a bod full of istor doing someting isst as little immediate as te ees watcing it. As te utopianpponent of coreograp immediac is te imagined terminusf te plannable. Te bod is not disguised b an cultural laer
coreograpic intention: Te imagination of a surface ofmeting tat isjustnow here. The utopia is exactly the just.
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COOPERATIVA PERFOR-MATIVA WAS CONCEIVED
AS A COLLECTIVE ThATBROUGhT TOGEThER ThEROMANIAN ARTISTS MA-RIA BARONCEA, FLORINFLUERAS, EDUARD GABIA,
ALEXANDRA PIRICI ANDIULIANA STOIANESCU. ST-
ARTING FROM ThE BASICIDEA OF OPEN SOURCE,
ThEy INVESTIGATED ThE(POWER) RELATIONShIPOF ART INSTITUTIONS AND
ARTISTS, CLAIMS TO OW-NERShIP AND COPyRIGhT
INTERESTS IN ONES OWNWORK, ThE NECESSITyOF GUIDANCE AND DI-RECTION IN A GROUP AS
WELL AS ThE PRODUCT-ORIENTED FORMS OFCOLLABORATION, WhICh
ARE BASED ON AGREE-MENT, NEGOTIATION ANDCOMPROMISES. ThE EM-PhASIS OF ThEIR PROJECT
WAS ThE PROCESS ITSELF,WhICh ON A LARGELyGRASSROOTS DEMOCRA-
TIC BASIS CREATES hE-TEROTOPIAS DIFFEREN-CES AND COMMONALITIESIN ONES OWN AS WELL ASOThERS ARTISTIC CREA-
TION, CONNECTED WIThThE ATTEMPT NOT TOJUDGE ThEM BUT PRE-CISELy TO hIGhLIGhT
ThEIR DIVERSITy.
During a one-week encounter wit a group of artists
working in Vienna (Magdalena Cowaniec, Adriana
Cubides, Fanni Futterknect, Claire Granier, Radek
Hewelt and Thomas Kasebacher), the discursive
strategies developed b Cooperativa Performativa
were callenged and tested. Te results of tis open
working process were presented on December 16t at
Tanzquartier Wien.
IONDUMITRESCU
CO
OPERATIONBEYONDCONSENSUS
FLORINFLUERAS
COOPERATIVA
PERFORMATIVAVS.THE
SECRETDANCESECT
Ion Dumitrescu
Cooperation
beyond
consensus
Nt since the sixties the awareness of the status quo asan immense fabricated empire of capital and spectacle has been so
acute (in addition, today the sixties euphoria and its outcome are
also up for debate). he alternative ideologies that have already
been tried seem at the periphery of the brutal mainstream, and yet
n the virtual world a new type of socialism appears that becomes
almost concrete and functional in a very radical way. Of course
t is seductive to analyze it and to consider social media a model
or new and differently structured institutions and organizations,
bureaucratic practices, concept of authorship in the art market
and communal utopia. his logic, displayed in the social media
through twitter, facebook and other platforms that have leveled
the information input, has inspired many of the new forms of
collaboration that are being tested today in the contemporary art
eld and particularly i n the performance eld as the collectives and
art groups that have sprung in the recent years try to reform and
rethink cooperation and collaboration, the dance world beyond
the dance company where, like in the social media, no one owns
he platform, the structure.
here have been more projects that put the collective
dea into practice (work), each with different strategies and goals 1
Examples of collective projects: everybodys toolbox site, the project
six months 1 location Montpellier, LISA association, Practicable in Berlin. There is
a ready a map on www.corpuswe .net w t more o t ese nt atves. It woud e nterest ng
to investigate all t hese collective proposals and their outcome for a general view.
he interest for a cooperative activity beyond
hierarchy, a type of collaboration without territorialization and
ownership is understandable and challenges the continuous
privatization of public space, art, natural resources 2
e.g. the privatization of water supply of Bolivias city Cochabamba by BechtelCorporation and the riots and law suites that followed. http://www.alternet.org/story/14525
nd nally, with the introduction of genetically
modied seeds, life3
Genetically modied seeds owned by Monsanto Corporation are
pushed now in Europe after contaminating almost all of the crops in the U.S. See
ood Inc. documentary or http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm
ooperativa Peformativa, informed in part by the open-
ource system in the virtual world, has managed to propose for
a period of time a viable type of working in the same space and
mostly in the same time beyond agreements, author negotiations
or common purpose. Everything seemed possible internally, any
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Florin Flueras Cooperativa Performativa vs. the secret dance sect/Ion Dumitrescu Cooperation beyond consensus
Florin Flueras
CooperativaPerformativavs. the secretdance sect
Cooperativa Performativawas a framefor ve persons wic allows temto collaborate so that each one could
develop his own project. A very
practical working protocol (notingutopian) less space, one studio for
developing ve pieces, less mone,with the money fo r one project we did
ve, multitasking we were involvedin ve projects simultaneousl. Onemotivation was that each of us should
develop in his direction instead of
correcting/compromising our desiresin order to nd a common sense.It was a frame designed especiallto make disagreement possible,to avoid endless negotiations forarriving inevitabl to te lowestcommon denominator. We had a quite
unpredictable process, inventing teworking metod s on te wa. As aresult we developed ve performancesthat were not very similar, in my
opinion. I don t know if tere issometing in common in our worksin te end. According to somefeedbacks, three of us have visibly a
common interest in nding a direct,open and relaxed wa of approacingthe audience and in the dissolution
of convention a specic ideologor mentality about theatre and
performance. The problems associated
with our p rocess appear ed just when
we abandoned our concept that eac h
of us sould develop is own tingin te meetings and we tried to dosometing togeter as a group, to ndan agreement and common decisions.
An interview in w ic I analsedour process, pointing to somecorrespondences in society and
politics, provoked a scandal.
Aggressive attit udes and somehysterical reactions appeared
witin t e communit. In ana lticalpscolog tis overreactions areclear signs tat idden complexes andproblematic points are touched.
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I wrote noting tat was new, notingthat we hadn t discussed before, so
the scandal must have to do with the
public image, te social appearanceand all what is associated with them
social status, power and inuence inte communit. It is ver interestingto observe how the proposal
of callenging te ierarcies,inuence, propert, dominance inartistic context was extended to our
personal life and now seems to be
extended to the dance community.
Stere Popescu, a Romaniancoreograper wo was active inte 60s, followed ver closel teCooperativa Performativa activit,especially the present scandal between
us, extended to the dance community
too. he s known for is life-long
research on scandal and is a convincedanarchist. Anyway, at some point we
gured out tat e uses twitter inorder to reect on our process andespeciall on our scandal, to give ussome messages, advices and evensome instructions. We all follow
im on twitter because e s a livinglegend of Romanian dance istor.
There are so me rumour s that he felt
in love wit a Cooperativa member.And some say tha t his observat ions
are irrelevant because he was too
subjective or he just followed a
idden agenda. I tink tat tisis a mean strateg to dismiss isdisturbing criticism, is observationsand insigts. Te fact tat e felt inlove didn t cange te fact tat isobservations were true, insigtful orprovocative. I see is twitter streamas an interesting and of course
subjective documentation of ourprocess. It is interesting to note oweach tweet functions independently
but makes sense togeter wit teothers. Twitter was also one of
te inuences for te Cooperativaconcept as a model for a decentralized,
anarcic, saring and network-based culture, so I tink it ma beinteresting to see is twitter stream.But before it would be useful to
mention that he sometimes uses
is own crptic terminolog like: ianegic complex named
type of intersection between practices and ideas was accepted.
Tis proved to be sustainable as long as te ve projects(united under one co-notated na me: cooperativa in a country
tat ad man ofcial ones) were independent, meaning tat nocommon decision had to be taken.
As a cooperative, as a new entity, they produced a new
bod and tat bod needed to be legitimized someow in teart world, te art apparatus. So te new fragmented bod ad toperform ere, in te bureaucrac eld, in between te structuringelements, offstage. Wat does tis bod produce, ow is it to
survive, to be self-investigator and functional?
What happened was that as soon as this frame, this
new bod was due to be presented/legitimized as a single unit,frictions and power issues appeared in lack of a shared concept to
back up the debate.
Cooperativa failed to investigate te conceptual and
social potential in tis regard, te bod was conceptuall notmature, and it seemed that the individuals were not able to step
beond consensus witout damaging te personal relations.Te rst aim was simple: making ve performances
(solos) in te same space and time, appling for mone as a singleentit and splitting afterwards. Tis as been acieved.
But for me the sixth performance was the project itself,
te cooperative tinking, te awareness of mutual contamination,the disbelief in consensus as a necessary value in cooperation,
conceptual distance from you r own already contaminated
identity and in the end the potential dissolution of power at a
micro-scale, the artists in the rhizome. So the way to approach a
common decision was crucial. But this was not clearly articulated,
and as it happened, if someone made more proposals and tried
to give a direction te oters would onl react in order to denetemselves, to negate, often witout putting someting in place.
So, for te exterior , I saw t is sixt performance onlonce, in Tanzquartier in December 2009, wen te presentedte Cooperativa Performativa (not te solos) in a lecture-
performance context and tis total disagreement was visible in aperformative way, a tensioned co-existence in the representational
space.
after a romanian teacher and
coreograper known forher excessive protectiveness,
territorialization, aggressive rejectionof new tendencies and also for
er beaviour of not saluting anddisplaing strange grimaces to erartistic enemies (te avant-garde). sect e afrms tat a part ofour dance community functions
on the basis of an unquestioned
common core of attitudes, believes,
values and beha viours, i n order
to reinforce some practices and
to protect artistic territories.
dated Stere uses quite often
words like old-school a nd out-
dated. He believes that we are in an
accelerating period of cange. Tetings are getting quicker out-dated
and this enhance the tendency ofpeople to be stuck in t he old
patterns of doing and judging tingsand also the tendency to identify
themselves with the old responses,
to protect tem aggressivel and toforce them upon new situations.
sedative art he calls like that
a large part of art practice tat ispolitically unaware and therefore is
perfectl integrated and assimilatedwith a consu merist-capita list-
neoliberal frame, functioning likesophisticated entertainment for
the system. He opposes this term
to radical or terrorist art .
Follow Steres twitter stream about
COOPERATIVA on p. 30+31
Extreme collaboration
Tis would be te sntagm tat I would use to describewat appened during te past ears at CNDB 4
4
Bucharest context: Less exposure to the art market, the international circuit and
tus a lower pressure onto te artists, less competition te CNDB (www.cndb.ro) is almost te
onl institution tat nances contemporar performance. In a wa tis means more freedom
to researc exterior of te product but also one can easil become satised wit is art
at home, project after project with almost t he same echo, same feedbacks all the time.
wit a few of te dancers/coreograpers from teBucharest community that at some point led to the project
Cooperativa Performativa. Saring alread te space and timefor a few ears, working togeter in different congurations,researcing in various groups were ou could alwas identifsome constant coreograpers or dancers, saring also personallife, being friends, lovers and ten, at some point, declaring it a
project, for me it seemed reall interesting.Because a closed environment, like CNDB (was in
a way), is likely to become a safe environment. After years of
vicinit and artistic complicit tings became self-evident fortose inside te bubble, no detailed arguments are neededanymore, naturally soft leaders of opinion appear, it becomes a
self-referential context. Noting or nobod is reall callengingthe status quo anymore, esthetically or politically. This would be
te dangers of a small communit and initiating Cooperativa Itougt it was a wa to reect on tat.
To my dismay, at the end of the project the inner
dnamics of te group became reall weird and a lot of aggressivebeavior prompted out (also outside te Cooperativa). TeCooperativa as a collective performance as not managed(and this opens up a new debate) to yield an emancipated,
conceptually-based practice, and its members, after the
production of te solos, seem more tan ever on a trip to deneterritories. Te Cooperativa reaced te rst and concrete goal,to produce work in certain conditions, but produced ruptures
at a personal level. In m own view, te communal concept was
sared onl at a supercial level.
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Stere s twitter stream about
COOPERATIVA:http://twitter.com /sterepopescu products and information sould be guarded, kept secret,and used as a means to separate for competitive advantage#dated
don t be ashamed to use your own ideas and call you an artist
social status, power, dominance, ierarc, inuence, controlare just some words, they don t operate in art territory
@iulianawww you are a threat for the conventional values, so
continue please and take te aggression as a compliment
morality and social norms are to protect the property, to
territorialize, not to sustain te real relations or feelings
training for a cultural terrorist notice te idden ierarc,inuence and dominance in our group, speak about it and run ...
the power has the monopole of truth if another truth enters the
stage is received as aggression and te scandal begins, I am app ...
propose a new direction in art with the hidden motivation to
upset our friends ... allow te ianegic complex to appear
wat do ou protect? our identit? our image? our socialstatus? your commodity? all this will disappear, soon
te #sect rejects te cange because everting is ok, provokea scandal to allow te good atmospere to disappear
identif ourself wit our group and ten ou will just knowwat is good/bad, correct/incorrect, moral/immoral ...
te sect kills te public debates and keep tings private to can controltem secretl in te small talk and gossip activities of communit
reject agreement-based collaborations as #datedand unealt propagation of common sense andprejudices, allow disagreement, be app
distractions, parties, drugs are so 90s ... awareness, performativeactivism and cultural terrorism are the new fun ...
#dated = your attitudes and values are not questioned
and updated, they come from the past and are
inadequate and irrelevant to the present
talent, creativity, self-expression, aesthetic, composition and fantasy
are easy to remove obstacles for a postspectacle terrorist artist
avoiding normalization is a constant struggle ... and if ouare close to succeed the reward is excommunication
nd an open and relax wa of approacing ouraudience, pretend that you are better than them ...
@mariabaroncea amplif te conict between ourself andour social appearance ... but take care m darling
kill the artist inside of you and feel free to look outside, via @brynjar
we do everting to protect our wa of life,our commodity, that s why we are so
happy
to be in armonie wit someting profoundl wrong is sick, bea terrorist to our own identit do someting regrettable ...
sedative art is so boring and overestimated but elps tepeople to be more attuned to the corporate neoslavery
kill te private, go public, tere is noting to ide or protect,
everting is acceptable, sare our life, te postuman is near ...
radical political art, cultural terrorism, performative activism
are making contemporar dance to look so 90s #dated
@orinuerasyou pretend to do "a brave search of the ultimaterealit", ceck te dominance-inuence relations in our group
extend open source and deterritorialization into
your life and relations, but don t cry after
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SLOWNESS,A CRITICAL MODE
A Conversation wit Mriam Gournk
Corbeau (2007) as been presented at Tanzquartier Wien on 11 / 12 November 2009 andaccompanied b a lecture demonstration b Mriam Gournk and Kasper T. Toeplitz as well as a
screening of te lm documentation Les temps tiraills (IRCAM, Paris).
The text is a collection of excerpts from a discussion with Myriam Gournk, Paule GioffrediandSarah Troche, wic was publised in Geste, edition autumn 2009, Dossier: Ralentir.
Taire(1999),Marine(2001), Contraindre (2004), Corbeau (2007),Les Temps tiraills(2008): eac of Mriam Gournks coreograpiestakes te previous one furter in its innitel detailed exploration ofte extreme slowness of bod movements. Seeing one of er worksmeans diving into a time-space relationsip: as if eac of tem iscentred on itself in its very own bubble, the dancers stretch out
teir gestures and poses, apparentl at te same time olding temback inside and moving in an asmptomatic wa towards te limitsof movement and complete immobilit. Te bodies no longer seemto have a centre and seem to develop at innumerable points in the
elbows, at te end of te rigt foot or in te ips disembodiedbody parts that follow their course into the extreme and from which
an ornament of constantl moving lines tat are inexaustiblefor te gaze seems to emerge, in wic te position of te bodiesis again recongured at eac moment. It is not about sowing agure, te spectacular or a masterwork, but about te circulatingof movements in a time tat is lingering in an in-between, in wicthe body constantly revives itself from within without a leap or
impact. An immense continuum that undoubtedly started beforete audience came in and could go on endlessl.
Since your rst works, more than ten years ago, up to the current choreographies
you have concerned yourself untiringly with the extreme slowing down of movement.
Is slowness the starting point of your pieces?
If one reads the notations it is noticeable that the body has been divided into
all its parameters, almost dissected . The notations reect a kind of complete
dominance of the body by the score, from the details of the position of the ngers and
the outer side of the foot to the movements of the eyes, the mouth, the breathing etc.
So there is also the impression that the body space grows into slowness and that this
slowness of movements is to some extent based on the multiplication of perceptioncentres. Is it necessary to subdivide the body in order to achieve a genuine continuum
of slowness and duration?
An overlayered view of various relations to time also emerges out of this: there is
the envisaged time, which is recorded in the notation in the for m of sequencings
and which maintains a structure, but there is also the time experienced by the dancer,
which is completely different and which adds the quality of its experience to the
envisaged time and thereby more or less exceeds it. Finally there is still the time that
the audience perceives and that is independent both of the time on the clock as well as
of that experienced by the dancers. The works play with these three chronologies.
No, m starting point is not slowness but rst of all it concerns te exploration of breat.yoga above all brougt me to slowness in tat I was attempting to sift te breat to all tezones of te bod and so to perceive ever more precise, ever ner parts of te bod. Ourdecision is not to start from a slow tempo and ten carr out corresponding movements, it israter te reverse: te slowness creates itself troug te work of te bod and troug teawareness of tin movements. Te furter one goes into tis micro-perception, te sifting ofthe breath and the work of the support points, the slower one becomes . . .
I work wit man parameters tat concern te space, te bod in itsmovements, its breating and even its tougt patterns. In te compositionprocess I use te most diverse approaces tat relate to internal and externalspaces and tat bring me to tis psical continuit apart from te approacto time itself. Tis means tat onl b rening te internal and external spaceand subdividing it to te millimetre do I drive te dancers to slowness.
In m teacing work, wen I explain to te dancers wat is to be done in te individualexercises, I often attempt to get tem to concentrate on axes, on te support points, on aparticular segment tat leads from te tip of te coccx to te end of te leg, so tat teinitiall feel te coccx and te sacrum and ten to te lumbar region in order to divide tesesegments even smaller, into innit, to te extent tat te feel ever millimetre of teirsupporting points, ever millimetre of teir skin. Te slowness develops out of tis breakingdown into small parts. This is why the space in the notation is also detailed so precisely.
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Could one, above all in relation to Corbeau, speak of a kind of counter-rotating
virtuosity . As far as the technical aspect is concerned it is very much a question of
virtuosity understood as exploration and exceeding of a
top related