Thoughts on day 1: 4th October 2011
To begin. This is harder, this time, than before. There has been a critical mass of thinking since last Spring's lab which I am still in the process of trying to unpack and organize beyond a collection of bullet points and quick drafts in my notebook(s)... some theories define 'reflection' as separating subject from object (or in fact 'objectifying' the subject -- see Merleau Ponty's discussion in Phenomenology of Perception 'The Body as Expression and Speech' - a regretable simile I might add, all I can see is methodological inconsistencies even in the writings of the 'great ones'...), I am trying at best to keep the reflection close to the body, reflecting back on the body, letting the body emerge in the gaps of the language...(I did not use to like Cixous' writing, too milky... but she may have a point after all), letting the words be bodied, not just 'of the body',,,getting lost again....trust me I am really clear in my head and in practice, but the writing keeps evading me, or perhaps given that I am so so so so tired, I keep evading the writing....
I tell the group that there is a challenge, on the one hand as one of the contributing artists, these sessions are a way of exposing 'my method of practice' but, as I am also project mentor, I have to open questions beyond that which pertains to 'me', or my opinions, of course at times it may be difficult to distinguish...I will try an identify those issues that belong to the agenda of the ten weeks ot the Lab, which pertains to the 're-search', the questions that may trigger the 'new' or the 'anew'... But I warn them, these sessions may be more about setting questions, going through a series of experiences in order to have concrete evidence from which to build upon and into a process, there may not be alot of 'making' choreography as such...we will (however, we may not choose to call it that..)...just not yet...
So...back to focus. Ah yes, the specificity of our discipline...still working on that one...I recount an anecdote: at the Choreographer's Association Conference held at Megaro Moussiki in May 2010, I had the dubious fame of daring to challenge one of the invited 'experts' on the podium from my non-expert place on the floor. To make a long story short, this person was arguing that choreography was everything and nothing, that he sees it as 'playing' (not 'play'/ ludus, a complex thing, see Brian Sutton's The Dialectics of Play). At some point I could not deal with the ego trip anymore, so I decided to stop him in midflow by loudly saying 'NO! I am sorry I can't continue to be bombarded with these un-considered statements which you are asking me to uncritically agree with, not in the 21 st century ' or something to that effect. Turning around to my fellow audience members, most of them artists, I challenged them with the following question: would you put yourself under the knife of a surgeon who tells you he only 'plays' at surgery to see what happens? Follow that question to its fullest implication and perhaps you will begin to understand what I mean by the specificity of our discipline. Don't tell me 'but dance cannot compare itself to surgery'...to which I will ask, why not? As I mentioned in the posting, unless we begin to argue for the surgical necessity of dance in this society it will be tagged banal and easily eradicated in times of 'serious' concerns....just look at what is happening in England...even Sweden, the past paradise of dance, is beginning to feel the threat...
So how to begin to draw out this specificity?
I begin by identifying my context, not surprisingly my work is situated within decades that have embraced the 'corporal turn', that has brought about an emphasis on 'the body' -- not only in dance but across most disciplines...
Back to body, did we ever leave it?
A body is never without a context, it is in a context and it sets a context (what Tschumi would speak of in Architecture and Disjunction, as the dialectic relationship figure-ground, which foregrounds which?). The body enters a space, the space is never empty, the body is space and has space, from this moment the body is never alone, being relative and relational, a primary relationship established, to an immediate world (even in the seemingly neutral studio space) and to a world that exists in a temporal arch ...
Simply put, what happens if a choreographic process starts with the affirmation (not just thought, lets make it more forceable) 'I am here'/ειμαι εδω, a relationship between two words which is elemental yet complex as it begs further questioning: who is the I (how is it constituted, physically, emotionally, individually and collectively, and all these dimensions intertwinned in this complex unit of 'one') and how far does this 'I' extend in time and space to define a 'here', and from that act of extension, where is/how can there be an origin to the process?
I keep it close, immediate, using the studio as a phenomenological bracketing (for more on this later- you may want to hear a lecture I did for the MFA in Jacksonville University earlier this summer, CLICK HERE), to put the world on hold in order to dig the easily forgotten micro-scale...
A first simple task, a map of the world...we enter and walk, focussing on breathing, seeing, looking, bringing our focus to bear only upon the space of the studio. Perceiving is also perceiving myself, and also perceiving myself perceiving, a realization of the feedback necessary to understand the genesis of any choreographic process, a way to concretise 'intuition'. In this feedback I am not a 'represented' body, I am present-ed. My actions dont 'speak', my actions betray a subject 'living' a space/world. I am not thinking about what I want to say, I am focussed on what I do/must do within this changing environment. This doing sets a whole series of intentions within this space, intentions that support changing relations within the space and this chain between intention/relationship becomes a kind of 'knowing'
We explore the fluidity of the notion of intentionality, (a companion to the notion of extension previously alluded to) . Lets consider first physical intention, the clarity of the physical act. If I change my location, the physical act - intention remains the same, but the end results is a new relationship. For example, the physical act is 'look up', I clarify how I look up, but when I look up standing 'here', I saw the lamps in the ceiling, but when I looked up 'over there', the same exact action led me to see the window frame. Same intention, two different possible results, which do I focus on, just moving the head or moving the head-window, or moving the head-lamp? Looking up never felt so complicated! Is intention in the doing? or is intention in the aim of the doing? Likewise, the relationship can remain the same: whatever happens I must see lamp, but in order to fulfill that intention I must act in a different way (this is perhaps what happens/should happen in a rule based improvisation), at other times all is up for grabs, a constant shift from relationship to intention -- as in an open/unstructured improvisation (perhaps we now can understand why it is difficult to remember a non-structuresd improv)..
These simple tasks already suggest a multiplicity of what may be available as 'material', but first we needed to consider how we set up each task beyond a thematic, what this setting proposed in the manner in which it set up a field of possibilities, what it addressed, what it excluded, what it then led to as an outcome...process as an issue of choice and change. Significantly material does not come from the representation of an idea, or following a thematic line, or a 'source', but from a consideration of what a body-world relationship offers as a choreographic principle (in Spanish principle and beginning share a word, principio...which is linked to principal..ahh poetry)... please tell me that you have noticed that I have purposedly not said body-movement relationship, the choice of words has methodological significance. Body-movement leads to 'articulation', which leads to phrases and languages, and remember I am setting up ways towards an argument that dance is not a language...methodological consistency....
Questions accummulate very quickly. The group wants to talk: about repetition, memory, restagings and reconstructions. Great, a simple 'perception' exercise has concretely set up connections to larger issues of dance making....which we are discussing with 'evidence' from the work-ings....elaborating complexity from simplicity... process, my process, me in process...dance as subject formation...first proof.
I need a break, I have been writing for three hours...and there is still day two to think about...
