uj tánc gondolatok / new dance thoughts

Invitation to Secret Dancers - Rotterdam 2011

2011-04-28T14:29:00.000-07:00

This coming Friday I get to realize another edition of Elaine Summers' "Invitation to Secret Dancers" as introduction to a neighbourhood-dance event in Het Oude Westen (the old West) a very multi-cultural neighbourhood in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The performance happens in collaboration with the Elaine Summers Dance & Film Archives and is a part of the ongoing project "Elaine Summers Dance Scores", where several of her works from the 1960s until today are collected, together with data on first performers, archival photos, footage etc.
Also, we are honoring the call of UNESCO for the yearly International Day of Dance, this year promoting dance in public spaces ...
click here for the Dutch blog with more information about participants, photos, and videos

realisation 2010 on the Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam
What keeps fascinating me is that while the dance may appear 'easy' and is designed to be very accessible, it is actually quite a challenge for anyone involved: the dancers have to be very sensitive to the presence of the passing-by audience who they make contact with and invite to dance. They also must maintain an acute sense of actions around them and have a sense for how they can contribute to it.
And any Secret Dancer coming by may still feel like having to overcome barriers of not being used to dance in public, before letting go and happily joining the dance in their own way, rather than simply exercising a prescribed dance routine. (which might, however, be a possible option)

for a wonderful realisation of "Invitation to Secret Dancers"
by Elaine Summers Dance & Film Co. at CEC Solar 1 in New York, 2005 click here

"Invitation to Secret Dancers" is very clearly an outstretched hand / arm / limb / gesture towards anyone, inviting and enabling them to dance, and potentially encouraging them to find their own dance as they go along. I find that this is an ongoing theme in her work. By originating Kinetic Awareness® Elaine Summers has even developed an entire technique / practice where students are developing just that, under guidance from a teacher - their very own way to move and dance. "Invitation to Secret Dancers" deals with the fifth and final phase of Kinetic Awareness® where after articulation, coordination, speed and tension-levels, the practitioner deals with relating one's own sense of movement to those of others.

Dance Scores
Just like many of the dance scores that Elaine has created throughout her career, I understand this dance as a tool for empowerment, directly in line with other works such as "Illuminated Workingman" or "One and One and One and One". The artistic background is one that practices inclusiveness of all kinds of movement in their own right, from the very start, without giving up either trained or untrained vocabulary, but rather understanding both as being in a continuum, and accepting each for its own potential. Aesthetics become perception again, just like is suggested by the Archaic Greek term 'aisthesis', taking for true, rather than merely a specified design that is accepted as "beautiful" or "desirable".

By interpreting the score for the dance, anyone involved can learn more about the subject of the dance itself. This, too, is very much in line with many of Summers' dance scores - another example could be "Walking Dance for Any Number" where one becomes acutely aware of ways to walk, simply by closely following the instructions.

Doing this dance, I find myself becoming ever more fine-tuned and able to make contact and have possible communication with potential strangers in public space, an issue that I've met with over almost 15 years of producing and performing work in public spaces (see below a first production with "Invitation to Secret Dancers" as part of the series con·sens·us in 2004)
But I also find I become ever more aware and able to formulate possible kinds of choreography that can be included to become a part of "Invitation to Secret Dancers".

And so on we go ... as Elaine likes to say: Merry Dancing!

uitnodiging aan stiekeme dansers / Invitation to Secret Dancers has been realized with Natalie Dupon, coordinator of Neighbourhood Park Het Oude Westen (the Old West, a neighbourhood in Rotterdam) with thanks to Corrie Kreuk, Culture-Scout Menno Rosier / SBAW, Bernadet van Winden / SKVR and Janine Brall / Studio Yoga Maya. The overall event has been made possible by grants from the Rotterdam Arts Council, Stg. Bevordering van Volkskracht, Alliantie West-Kruiskade, Stadsmarinier, and a large number of volunteers - thank you very much!

inside - out

2011-02-17T16:19:00.000-08:00

these past two weeks I've had the luck of seeing several dance performances: the improvisational presentation of Ivo Dimchev as a guest of Baila Louca and Para|Diso by Emio Greco | PC.

having seen and enjoyed much of Conny Janssen's piece 'zout' which uses live-guitar music and some video-projection, having seen her in an interview-show on television, i realised that she is able to move and interact on the same level as Dutch people in general, which allows her to become a mainstream-accepted choreographer in the Netherlands (and certainly in Rotterdam, where her company is one of the main modern dance companies of the city, next to the Scapino Ballet, Rotterdam Dance Works and the Meekers)

nearly finishing my own video of my contribution to Elaine Summers' "SKYDANCE / SKYTIME / SKYWEB improvisation with sun, moon, stars" I realised today that all of us essentially choreograph on the same level, because we make intentional choices to influence events that create the experience of a dance which can be witnessed, experienced, and in some way or other appreciated by present public in a social setting. this is the same for all of us and it happens on a directional level.

i also noticed however how we each can fall short on the fulfilment of what we set out to do.
in the case of the mainstream work, i found that the sensorial experience was not always fulfulling what was promised by the choreography, it hinted at what may have been intended, but i found that the dancers did not always have sufficient kinesthetic understanding of their own physicalities to realise the intended movements, let alone having space for the quality of dreams and their un-directedness, unless one choses to consciously interfere, such as in waking-dreaming or day-dreaming. (i learned very much about this value during my particpation in Ione's 15th Annual Dream Festival, on invitation by Elaine Summers Dance & Film Co.)

to put it short:
they do arrange reality in a certain way that has been accepted, but in my own experience there is more to life that is bypassed by these choreographies.
one could say meta-level and micro level, the meta-level being 'culture' the micro level our universe as it is every day in any detail of our living being etc.
throughout time there are always other people who do feel the necessity to realise a way of directing / meta, that is more in synchronicity and understanding of the micro.

any scientist, any philosopher, but also any artist, any professional at all (peasants, bakers, priests etc.) have areas that they are researching, finding out about, in their own time, exactly about problems arising from such macro-micro mismatches

< the wonders of life & existence

< level of conscious direction, focussing

< wonders of life & existence

in my own work, i came to let go of any 'meta'-level until i had more explored from the micro-. this has lead me to the Kinetic Awareness® work of Elaine Summers, and the work of Mary O'Donnell-Fulkerson, Mary Overlie and, again, many other teachers, where such explorations can happen without demanding that a preset meta-level must be met as a result in order to be acceptable (as does happen in forms of Yoga, or TaiChi, or Bartenieff Fundamentals, or in fact any set of movements that are codified into a 'language', similarly in archaic societies that recognize only one set of specific possible choices in design)

gradually, I was more and more able to re-relate the micro to the macro, and now have forms that have in themselves the conscious understanding of change being embedded in the choreography itself as a vital and decisive component. this is a demand I also make towards my own culture: that the ability of change be inherent and acknowledged as a fundamental part of any large-scale cultural system that wishes to remain alive and developing over longer stretches of time. (and be able more resiliently to deal with catastrophes or minor events of crisis)

the study of Open Form Composition at DANCE UNLIMITED in Arnhem was a great clarifying tool to learn, and it helped me to understand choreographies for dance-pieces as growing entities, that are moving, changing, have their own energetic conditions over time, and can give these excitements to others watching.

so who knows, after all, i might as yet be able to cross the bridge and make more and more people appreciate that what they may think of as a 'lack of choreography' '(too)ephemeral' etc. is not only very much adherent to the ephemerality of dance as in our life, but also can give very many vital components to any kind of culture, therefore being worthy of support.

[ "it's not impossible to - TURN IT IN-SIDE OUT ..." ;-) ]

Hosni Mubarak stepped down after 30 years of Power

2011-02-11T10:59:00.000-08:00

I have been following Egypt with excitement these days, like so many of us. It is wonderful to feel the excitement and energy that is in the air. Democracy Now! and Facebook have been my favorite sources of information.

Movement is movement is movement :-)

Chatting with a friend of mine in Alexandria, I remember the blog I wrote at my very first visit to Egypt http://alexandriaconsensus.blogspot.com This has obviously made me more concerned.

What got me especially were the fact that so many people got to organise themselves and together with each other. It reminded me of the term 'responsible anarchy' coined by Mary O'Donnell-Fulkerson , originally a choreographic practice (to read more from here as an excerpt online you can click here or go to her website directly to download her book 'release')

many more people I find related, you can find their mentions further on this blog: Elaine Summers and her long-term work, many, many more artists, thinkers, originators, etc. etc. etc.

and so we are in movement ....

Elaine Summers: Improvisation with Sun, Moon, Stars - Danspace @ St. Mark's Church, New York City - March 2010"

2010-05-21T17:24:00.000-07:00

From March 15th until April 2nd I once more got to enjoy the privilege of being an invited artist-in-residence at the Elaine Summers Dance & Film Company, made possibly by a generous grant from the Kinetic Awareness® Center and private hosts Harriet Bograd & Kenneth Klein, as well as Rachel Cohen / racoco productions

The occasion was the 3-day show "Improvisation with Sun, Moon, Stars" performed March 18, 19, and 20 at Danspace Project @ St. Mark's Church, as part of the series "Back to New York City" curated by Juliette Mapp.

It was a most fruitful experience and I came back, once again, filled with impressions, learning, wonderful experiences, and above all, inspiration that is gradually unfolding to bring me further than I thought possible.

The Concert:

Summers presented a continuous line of development from completely abstract and "difficult" to a very approachable and friendly ending.

film still from "Absence & Presence" 1968-1987 ©by Elaine Summers

The evening started with "Absence & Presence", a film-dance lasting 8 minutes, no sound, projected onto an old-style screen of the type one could once find in class-rooms.
While I thought I was well used to the ways I could enjoy Summers' work, this one challenged me once more: 12 minutes of shots of body parts moving, in black and white silhouettes, completely silent, so abstracted that -semiotically speaking- the movie is indexical, suggesting relationships and sensation, rather than iconic and presenting easily identifiable images from the world around us.

Once again Summers succeeded in challenging ingrained habits of perception, and goes on for 8 minutes, as it seemed to me without regard for dramaturgical development or climax, these seemed irrelevant for this dance. (Summers regularly creates films which are a dance, in extension of the once-hallmark Judson regard for any movement, including so called-pedestrian every day actions as viable dances and art)

Instead of being contained in conventional forms, the film became an experience for which there is as yet no habit, no ready-made set of keys or standards for interpreting business-as-usual. It took me until the third showing to actually get to enjoy the sensations based on what my mind had learned by then.

(excerpt from the original filmdance)

The next item went one step further: "Two Girls Downtown Iowa", made in 1973 during an artist-in-residency at Iowa University (with thanks to Professor Hans Breder, who pioneered the Intermedia Department of this University) again is a silent film-dance in black & white, no sound, and lasts 11 minutes. But this time we can identify see two women dancing together on a street in downtown Iowa in a single shot and single take. The film was recorded on a high-speed camera: when it is projected with a standard-machine, the result is one of equally distributed slow motion.

This movie not only lets the viewer experience the abandon and rush of dancing, which at times is so close to flying in the air, that old dream of mankind, now evoked by sequences of both dancers floating in the air - but it also blurs the distinction between intentional dancers and passers-by of the street: because the camera doesn't move from its opening-shot, when the women leave the frame or become small specks in the background, suddenly the daily pedestrians become prominent, their motions too, slowed down to be enlarged and tasted.
(notice the similarity of this strategy with the first phase of Summers' revolutionary movement approach Kinetic Awareness® where moving one body part at a time, as slowly and as relaxedly as it will go, creates a heightened sense of one's body in movement and a general sense of well-being, literally allowing enough time for sensations to become more clearly perceptible)

The film-dance demonstrates to me an early understanding of dance as a phenomenon of our everyday lives and makes it possible to sense the variations between letting the body move its ways and doing this with a projected goal like e.g. to cross the street, walking home, sitting down etc.

(excerpt from the original filmdance)

"Windows in the Kitchen" filmed 1976 for the famous Kitchen New Music and Video Center in New York City, opens up one further phase: the small-projection screen is taken away by a dancer who comes jumping in with a huge leap in white workingman's overall (courtesy of Thomas Körtvélyessy / Reàl Dance Company) - the next projection hits the large white wall of the altar-side of St. Mark's Church. The film-dance shows the late Matt Turney, long-time member of the Martha Graham Dance Company and student of Elaine Summers for Kinetic Awareness®, moving along the windows of the kitchen, filmed in color (camerawoman: Paula Court) showing several shots and angles of Turney ever so refinedly balancing and lightly shifting her weight as she moves along the windows.
This time there is live-music by John Gibson on the flute, travelling through the space, which opens up the ears after about half an hour of concetrated silence, ... and live-dance in the church space by Douglas Dunn, himself a most prominent 2nd generation Judson choreographer and dancer from the 1970's onward, dances a duet with the larger-than-life projection of Turney: sometimes funny, sometimes purely poetic and stilled in magic, adding the 3rd dimension of actual space of the church and his direct physical energy.

Seeing all together made me understand once again the crucial importance of timing and dynamic-phrasing of energy in space, which is so essential in performance, but especially in an improvisation. His delicacy of listening to his own flow of movements and character and Turney's recorded, visually projected movements, plus Gibson's live flute, formed an experience of sheer magic and poetry, an entire conversation about the ageing dancer, reproduction of a person who has passed away and one who is still alive, here, stillness, listening, absurdity, serenity, and humour.

The evening progressed to a quartet of four women: Dr. Jill Green, Professor of Somatics at the Dept. of Dance at the University of North Carolina, Dr. Meg Chang, dance-therapist and professor in Adult Education, Gabriella Hiatt, and Kiori Kawai who danced an interpretation of Summers' "Crow's Nest" from 1980, to a live-performance of the original music by Pauline Oliveros, sung by a choir of 12 people who were positioned around the upper balcony of the Church.
Here, the score consists of the full-color movie showing Birchtree Forest, Ocean, Desert, and Desert Flowers, again projected against the full wall of the altar-side of the Church.
The dancers interpret the film by partly improvising, partly performing set choices made to certain moments in the movie.
Again, the dance was intergenerational: two of the performers were in their mid-twenties, one in her mid-forties, one in her mid-fifties. All four dancers are following other full-time professions as well, but for this production they worked as professional dancers. And again all the participating media were blended together: projection, colors, singing, movements.

Rather than using the original installation of silk-stripes arranged along a cube-structure, Summers chose to show the movie in larger-than life-size, which made a special challenge for the dancers to use the upper half of the projection efficiently. There were several moments like Kiori Kawai's beautiful still moments where she blended together with the enlarged flowers, or Meg Chang's walking along the image of the desert and riding the waves projected behind her. Gabriella Hiatt performed beautiful arabesques and extensions and Jill Green used her costume of a floating night-gown as an extra projection-screen.
The sound of the chorus singing mesmerized in its clarity and aural opening up of the entire church as a space to be in acoustically.

(excerpt from the performance of "Skydance" at the 2nd Intermedia Festival, University of Iowa, 1984)

Finally came "Skydance / Skytime / Skyweb" an assembly of elements of the original "SkyDance", rearranged by Elaine Summers for the specific conditions of the Church and performed by a total of 9 dancers, including all the previous ones. Following the diversity of styles and approaches which is so characteristic for the overall work of Elaine Summers, this dance was completely unlike her other work: its style, structure, design, and music all had a 1930's feel to it, almost that of a dance-revue, performed to the very exuberant and varied original music of original SkyDance composer Carman Moore, played live by his ensemble: there were narrative elements, romance, humour, conflicts, and again interaction with this time 6 different video-projections.

Some unforgettable moments:
- Kiori Kawai and Kevin Ho, positioned at the very beginning in silence in the niches on either side of the back wall of the church, while Gabriella Hiatt stands in the middle holding up a small blinking light - against a projection of a blue and orange galaxy in the middle and a sun above Ho and a moon above Kawai: strongly reminiscent of the feature-sequence known of Columbia pictures with its iconic woman holding up a torch...
- a passionate, at times nearly romantic duet by the Sun & Moon characters, interpreted with daring contact-acrobatics by Kawai and Ho, echoed later in a mesmerizing duet by dancers Marion Ramirez and her husband Jeong-wong Kim, and finally in a hilarious and original duet danced by Hiatt and Douglas Dunn, both wearing costumes that suggest 1930's style pilot-outfits, with perfect comedian timing.
- stilled, beautiful solos by Elke Luyten and by Meg Chang, both making full use of their very own unique qualities as dancers and their costumes.
- an unforgettable solo by Jeong-wong Kim in which he dances in and out of the performance space, in perfect sync and partnership with the spiralling galaxies on the floor, at times using shades of movements from traditional Korean dancing, moves out of contact improvisation, and his very own incredibly physical talent which surpasses any single style of movement.

- and finally group moments: Dragons vs. Birds, using single characteristic moves for each; the 'comet' section lead by Kiori Kawai holding up a long veil of white tull and followed by the other dancers joyfully running with wonderful impact and childlike abandon on a circle, then cutting across the diagonal from downstage left to upstage right before dispersing again.

Finally, there is a solo section in which every dancer of the evening comes out wearing shiny, glittering, and diversely colored costumes, freely improvising through the entire space with the abandon of eight year old children who enjoy a moment of play, against a projection of recordings from the very first performances of "SkyDance" during the second Intermedia Festival at Iowa University in 1984, ending with running along in a circle and clapping, applauding the audience before taking a final bow.

This happy, magical atmosphere was continued into an "Invitation to Secret Dancers" another long-time classic by Summers, this time directed by Harriet Bograd (who together with her husband Kevin Klein very generously allowed me to stay at their homely and welcoming apartment and providing a space of rest and joy)
The dance was accompanied to an original score composed again by Carman Moore and performed by his ensemble, this time quoting jazz and big-band music from the 1940s and 1950s. White, large helium filled balloons and umbrellas made extra canvasses for the multiple projection of original footage from the performance of "Flowing Rocks / Still Waters" of Summers from 1987 done at Lincoln Center, New York, in a part of the complex that has since then been rebuilt.

conclusion:

In this concert Elaine Summers arranged a large portion of her palette as a choreographer, film-maker, and intermedia-artist, a sample of the sheer range of diversity that she is capable of creating, arranged in an incrementing order from indexic and abstracted, all the way through to participatory and directly inviting.

While there are certain premises underlying all of the dances, e.g. that there is a great emphasis on the moment of actual interpretation by the individual performers, depending on the specific structures and intentions of the dance, helped by the long-term study of Kinetic Awareness® and related body-mind exploring approaches, or the demand that any costume always be body-friendly, not limiting the range of expression of the dancers, Summers defies a single, identifiable look, or method, or certainly any single style or let alone what these days is called 'branding'.
Rather she irreverently and diligently is producing an enormously diverse variety of possible uses of the human individual bodymind to produce unforgettable moments of art and conversation between elements of a performance, be those dancers, media, or the audience completing the event.

It was a tremendously instructive learning experience for me in many respects: choreographic structures in real time and in relation to the individual interpreters, the use of video-projection in a given space with its specific qualities and asthetic challenges and its various possibilities to interact with the actual performing space and the audience's ingrained habits of watching a dance.

Even though my own activities were very relaxed in comparison to earlier, more stressful residencies, my mind was filled with singular and individual moments of being in relation to a reality around me, with a hard-working group of people realizing a vision and spirit of one pioneer and instrumental artist that has created not just one but continuous moves forward in expanding what dance can be understood as today.

credits -
choreographer and filmmaker: Elaine Summers
realized in collaboration with the dancers: Kiori Kawai, Douglas Dunn, Jeong-wong Kim, Marion Ramirez, Meg Chang, Jill Green, Kevin Ho, Elke Luyten, and Harriet Bograd

music: John Gibson (Windows in the Kitchen) Pauline Oliveros (Crow's Nest) Carman Moore (SkyDance SkyTime SkyWeb - and - Invitation to Secret Dancers)

curator: Juliette Mapp, Judith Taylor-Hussey
production: Danspace Project @ St. Mark's Church, with special thanks to Abigail Ramsay and Abby Harris-Holmes

special acknowledgements:
My residency was made possible through a generous grant by Kinetic Arts & Sciences / Kinetic Awareness® Center, the kind hospitality of Kevin Klein and Harriet Bograd, as well as Rachel Cohen / Racocoproductions, with special thanks to Deborah Goldberg, Lily Cohen, and Jenneth Webster.

Kind support in the Netherlands came from: Bruno Listopad / Stg. Disjointed Arts, gallery Mirta Demare International Art, Pauline de Groot /Stg. Dansstudio Pauline de Groot.

I would like to thank all the dancers for their continued friendship and all the interactions we've had, and for continuing to make me feel part of the company in my own right, their continued support and energy, and those many wonderful moments of being allowed to witness them dance.
Dr. Thomas Houser was a delightful and exemplary presence for me during this trip.

Juliette Mapp, Judy Taylor-Hussey, and the staff at dancspace project realized an incredible production assistance and above all a wonderful PR for this evening: as a result, articles and announcements appeared in TimeOut New York, and reviews in the New York Times, as well as several other newspapers.

Finally I would like to specially thank Elaine Summers for the many years of her generosity, kindness, and continued inspirational learning experiences.

Thank you ~ ...

(note as of July 23rd, 2010: several errata have been reviewed and corrected)

danslab: gender on the dancefloor March 6th & 7th 2010

2010-03-09T07:03:00.001-08:00

a very special meeting initiated at Danslab Den Haag (NL) with choreographer Jack Gallagher. more information here

prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune

2010-02-08T07:31:00.000-08:00

worked on this theme in a workshop by Johnny Schoofs at Dansateliers, Rotterdam, February 5th & 6th. Johnny has a 5 week-period to investigate this subject further.

Johnny gave some very simple basic physical exercises to start with and guided us through character-work. the exercises were wonderfully well-chosen, at the same time simple as powerful.
I realized that what intrigued me about the figure of the Faun is not only his perceived masculine energy and lust, but also the melting of different layers between the spiritual / natural, human, animal.
and I did manage to develop my relationship to the Faun in this much further! :-)

we also looked at the original choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky. I realized how beautifully it works, between utter containment of the forms and shapes, and the sheer abundance of movement energy that happens in all the elements, including the presence of the performers.(also saw the parallels in shapes that he used in "Petrouchka")

>the choreography calls for utterly feline and kinesthetically trained interpreters to perform, not only on the level of articulation but also of acting and emotion to match in the living moment (compare to my notion of 'sensitive energy')

otherwise the shapes are in danger to become overly rigid & the balance with the ongoing currents of energy, sensousness, lust, interaction, animal level, even spiritual, are lost ...
(as a comparison, click here for the interpretation by Rudolf Nurejev, very different qualities, .... )

animals as well as plants, in my opinion, have no energy to waste.
so even in moments of high alertness, they remain quite still, yet ready to move at any time. Nijinsky's choreography has realized this demand beautifully.

the abundance of the music, its pearly and glittering harmonies and sensuous delicacy, but overall the emotions that it triggered in me were very special to me, also during the workshop. the positive experience resonates with me during these days.

Pelleas & Mélisande / One over Zero
the workshop coincided with an improvisation class that I was teaching the same week as a substitute, again for Johnny Schoofs, at dansdrift in Den Haag / the Hague. we were working on energy levels in articulation, into the space.
in advance I decided that if the one French group member would show up, I'd used the first Act from Debussy's "Pelleas & Mélisande" as a continuous music during the entire evening. she did come and so I used this music...

we ended up with working on the endless refinement and change-ability, again the notion of 'sensitive energy', all the 53 trillion cells of a human body (an image used by Deborah Hay) to actively be mobile and presently engag all the time.
again endless refinement, very well-measured and beautiful interpretations by the participants, at times completely independent from the music, but as yet with a wonderfully theatrical effect.

I realize that I really value this sensitivity that Debussy realised in these orchestral pieces, the variety and richness of harmony and orchestration that he could achieve, even while remaining in the Westernized tonal system.
according to the booklet notes of my CD, when writing the opera, Debussy wrote that he had discovered silence as an ultimate means of expression. (this was at the fin du siècle! - later echoed in e.g. the ZaZen adaptation from Japan and Korea in the U.S. and its link to post-modernism)
he asked his colleague not to laugh at him for this.
instead, all through the opera, the element of silence is not only present in Mélisande's character, but also in the ever ongoing music, with its cadences and peaks, as well as the tenderness that is always present in the sounds.

I see parallels with our cellular awareness and advocate to see beyond 'decadence' and rather accept the fleetingness and ephemerality as a substantial quality of our existence.

it comes as an effect of existence over non-existence, one over zero
this brings the efficiency of any natural phenomenon, whether it decides to waste billions of sperm and egg cells or is reflected in the wonderful sensitivity with which cats or elephants can move and act.
i see this understanding at the heart of any of these 'new' approaches of our era, because it enables movement, and fleeting ephemerality where previously stability was demanded / perceived.
and obviously also in the release work, such as done by Mary O'Donnell and its being at the heart of ZaZen meditation and/or the Kinetic Awareness® work of Elaine Summers...

con-sequences...
this fleetingness of the moment, calls for an ever greater response-ability, and I find that Asian cultures have a lot of this internalized, albeit with at times even more rigid cultural results, to not let the natural balance of the cosmos be distorted by what is perceived as an error or mistake.

as for what makes a classic, the balance / equilibrium of forces, is as present a need in our times as ever, even if we find more and more ways to realize and understand these balances, further and further independent from norms that dictate shapes, patterns etc.

and so we are finding more and more possible options to realise within this given, like e.g. at the Open Dans Festival in 2009 which was a powerful exponent of the ongoing Rotterdam Renaissance in progressive Dance culture...

Open Dans 2009 compilation from Janne Eraker on Vimeo.

People seeing nothing - Sonja Augart / Fragmenta

2009-10-07T02:07:00.000-07:00

i very much like the direct & simple metaphor, very well put to dance http://fragmenta.nl

at HMKV / synoptic

2009-08-19T05:33:00.000-07:00

I am one of a group of artists at the project Synoptic: Twilight Zone (weblog) a project initiated by Hungarian art-manager & curator Hajnal Szolga in Dortmund, Germany, August 14th-22nd.

Media-designer & sound artist Bence Samu of the Hungarian duo binaura and I are working on a video-setup which visualizes the spatial patters of my movements. Bence maintains that a human presence is always infinitely more sensitive, I'd say it's a shared thing: the apparatus that is designed for a single function may be at times much more sensitive than what I can perceive at a moment, but it is my presence with the witnesses of the event that gives sense & meaning to evaluate what is happening.

While it is wonderful to be in a project where I function via German, English and at finally again also Hungarian, it is an inspiring environment. All the artists working here have a very quiet but vibrant energy, which I find very stimulating.

I am developing a dance score for the final showing August 22nd. For now I am thinking of several phase where I transform from daily movements (with the audience) over movements from the state of looking from the corner of my eye, into geometric figures and into internal movements. It seems that I am ready to work from a purely kinetically oriented dance (as happened in "Bivak Gloria" in Antwerp 2007) to adding a personal-social level. Also, the question of how to successfully move through the geometric figures is very exciting, without losing myself into stiff figures or imitations of what I once learned in the Rotterdam Dance Academy.

The exhibition in which we work centers on the phenomenon of people trying to communicate with beings from other dimensions, especially the dead, by means of electromagnetic devices. not an easy task for average-enlightened Western-Europeans, it is a scary topic, loss of control threatens, it is much safer to ridicule any such attempts, and forsake the holy aspect in it (and not lessen this word into quotation marks around it)

One of my aims is to lessen the fear of the unknown, which I find to be a key issue here in this process. How do we actually maintain whatever control we have, but are able to open ourselves for new experiences beyond what we already know. How does one manage to overcome indifference?

It terms of development, what I am working on means a move from available tension to sensitive energy. In order to achieve this I will have to satisfy the level of available tension, be able to play with tension more maturely than what I've been able to do so far, even more refined, more under my control, and more inclusive of the option of geometric spatial patterns and hard-edge moves.

Yesterday I saw a British video-documentary about Steve Reich and decided that after using music and visual arts and language as my main frame of reference for methodology, it could be very interesting to devise a frame of reference from kinesthesy & dance (again)

Tariq Ramadan and the city of Rotterdam - a failed atempt at open-ended thinking?...

2009-04-29T13:15:00.000-07:00

Recently there has been a considerable deal of controversy about thinker and writer Tariq Ramadan in the city of Rotterdam in The Netherlands where I have been a long-time resident since 1992. Ramadan was hired by the city-council to be a bridge-builder against the vastly multi-cultural population of this city. He has been accused of discriminatory tendencies against women and homosexuals when speaking internally to Muslim communities.

In January this year Joris Luyendijk conducted an interview with Ramadan for the Dutch tv-company VPRO, which in the Netherlands has a position of bringing very sophisticated and artistic contents (comparable for example to Arte in France and Germany or the flemish-Belgian Canvas)

Being gay myself I felt very concerned, but I also remembered this interview.
So I decided to review it and fortunately it is still available on the internet http://www.vpro.nl/programma/wintergasten/afleveringen/40824144/
I tried to be as alert to hidden character and meanings as possible and let come to me whatever would.

My first conclusion after having reviewed and listened to both speakers as openly as I could is a confirmation of a first thought that I had: with the effective refusal of Tariq Ramadan here in Rotterdam, a first attempt has been failed to more introduce open-ended thinking that could indeed have prepared the discussion for bridging by creating an open zone in which no single view or code is the only and all-powerful formula or rule.

I noticed how Mr. Ramadan was constantly being interrupted by intervieuwer Luyendijk in a fashion that from my experiences in Korea I recognize as nearly rude, even if unintentionally so. Second Mr. Luyendijk clearly seems to remain in the old Eurasian concept of functioning within a single, claimed homogenic, monoculture, which actually has troubles to understand or deal efficiently with the complexities of life in this dimension on this planet, as well as the in-congruities of its own contents, which after all are temporary results of insights and deep wisdoms that can help live and survive well, but in themselves of necessity are finite and will have to be adapted some time in the nearer or farther away future to be able to cope with the vast complexities and not-yet understood phenomena that are perceived as manifested as part of our universe (and which keep on expanding over time...)

(I've argued earlier that one of the tasks of an artist to a certain extent is always to help to some degree the further understanding of these phenomena, by dealing with sensory thinking and communication, be that in any cultural setting, or combination and balance of phyiscal senses)

Mr. Ramadan seemed to be able to maintain his balance (or "keep his face") rather well and focus on what would create a certain consensus, enough to keep on exchanging, and maintaining his stance and causes (also representing himself in the Dutch media). His emphasis on what he said was expressed in what he said was his favorite verse from the Quran, one in which the stars and the desert (and arguably all natural phenomena) are accepted as teaching elements, as well as his learning of silence in the desert, and therefore a better understanding of when is a good moment to speak, seemed very congrous with the more general quest of re-balancing our cultural patterns from our sensory thinking processes, something which for myself are key-features in the project of modernism / post-modernism / the holistic phase after post-modernism. Ramadan further demanded that respect would have to be based on letting the other act despite disagreeing. And that respect (or tolerance for that matter) does not have to mean that one fully accepts (or emphasitally agrees with) or understands why somebody else is doing something very different, nor necessarily agreeing with the decision why, but to maintain the basic right of the other to exist.

To continue this thought by myself, to accept that no matter how repulsive somebody else might be, there is something that connects us and that I, if I manage to, can gain an advantage from dealing with openly, without upholding a single view of how things should be done, is a positive thing. To not cut off dialogue too soon, to remain in connection.

While such a stance places an enormous strain on ethics (just thinking of so many actions by multinational corporations, governments, companies and individuals that maximize personal profit at enormous and tragic long-term general costs) this demand rather fits into the openness of re-balancing cultural values and creates an open space where all of this happens. In the ongoing process there is a chance to consequently draw conclusions which may differ from previously drawn conclusions.

(The tasks of educations would be to offer and explain these previous conclusions to a new generation so that they can continue the myriad of experiments about living and survival strategies.)

When dealing with people who firmly remain in closed, mono-cultural settings and maintain them, it can become very difficult to maintain one's own knowledge or develope it further, as the abilities of the partner are then decisively limited to those particular cultural settings, which can make the tolerance of a very different kind of cultural settings extremely difficult and thus severly limit the possible moves that can be made together, also in the perspective of power, how much a NO can be used to cut down the power / existence / express of somebody else.
(especially when that partner will not allow any digression or move away or beyond the reasch of such cultural settings)

If this is indeed a great misunderstanding, fed by Dutch inability and refusal to face the rest of the world from an insular focus on one's own life being difficult enough and 'the other' being merely interesting as a potential object for personal gain and survival, be that through trade or colonialism - then it was indeed a great move forward, but then I am also ashamed as an European Easterner that I am part of a society where the beginning of opening up more dialogues on a long-term basis is immediatly cut off from a single viewpoint, no matter how sophisticated it may think itself to be. Moreover I feel ashamed in the face of a cosmopolitan such as Mr. Ramadan who if this assumption of mine is correct (and that remains to be seen...) has been brought into a rather un-sophisticated and backwaterish, provincial atmosphere of local Dutch politics and qualities.

My subjective estimate of Mr. Ramadan was that in many ways he may share the anti-gay and traditional gender ideas. But I would have chosen to emphasize what could connect us in a win-win situation longer, his quest for understanding in complexity, his feeding of this ability to complexity by maintaining for himself a very set range of values to retreat into from time to time and to affirm his own existence, only to be able to come out again when in dialogue with a stranger, and being able to be open to learn something substantial or minor from that encounter, which always is there, but up to us to realize, whether this realisation is immediate or takes many decennia of slow accumulation and finally a resulting move. And to be reminded again that none of us has the one-fits-all solution (again we all as a Universy might just be the solution already, that's why it's so hard for a single person, to create and maintain a livalble balance within it)

Addition May 1st: Even then it could have been interesting to give him one or two more years and observing him, to find out what is happening, be very alert ... and perhaps bother to learn Egyptian Arabic, rather than choosing to remain on an intangible hegemonic stance of Dutch as the dominant language to which the others in this country must adapt.

And so we keep moving on and yes it is a struggle between all these differences, intelligences, traditions, patterns. A basic understanding for people who like Mr. Ramadan and myself have moved between different cultures can be that there is something to be gained in everything and that this is a pity to underestimate, and up to personal discipline of again and again trying to understand anew, opening up closed patterns from a deeper trust and allowing alien information to enter, being trained in dealing with it and working with it over a period of time until another temporary conclusion might appear. potentially being a more effective one than its preceding conclusion - trusting that others do the same and do this in directions different from one's own, which is precisely an enrichment, because that way nobody has to find out everything by her or himself exclusively but we all together are working out some really exciting, but also important questions, whether they are conscious or unconscious.

To believe in movement could be to affirm this quest - not caring whether / inhowfar it makes sense against what is already there (The Universe is its own answer, its movement the fuel that brings asking questions)

As my teacher Ciel Werts used to say ,movement is contagious (affirmed by thermodynamics, I'd guess)

It is my hope that whatever movements were created by the activities of Tariq Ramadan, that eventually they should help further the understanding of unconceivable complexity and nurture this maturity and sophisticated discpline further. As he'd leave Rotterdam, it will be to others to continue, with all faults, and errors, hopefully with not too catastrophic consequences.

Again, deeper sensitivity

2009-02-21T16:21:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I could attend and perform at the evening "Atat de Frageda..." [So tender] in memory of extraordinary Romanian producer and key-figure for the development of contemporary art and dance Gabriela Tudor, who I was informed was an instrumental figure to establish many organisations in Romania and abroad and to foster artistic development and creativity, partly also with her husband, choreographer and executive director Cosmin Manolescu, a.o. The Cultural Foundation "Proiect DCM". Manolescu and fellow-choreographers Florin Fieroiou and Andreea Capitanescu also presented works, together with music performances by Harry Tavitian & Jürg Solothurnmann, as well as music-duo AIEVEA.

What struck me about the evening, but especially the presented dances, was a very special blend of crisp rational clarity with deeply embodied sensitivity manifested in the dancers as well as the choreographies. Whether it would be Fieroiou's dreamlike atmosphere, presented with excellent clarity by dancer Carmen Cotofana to a haunting soundscape by Vlaicu Golcea, or the almost quotidian movement/dance poetry of Andreea Capitanescu, who performed her piece herself. Even with Manolescu's more theatrical and pop-culture oriented work, there was this undercurrent of sensitive understanding, which got its moments to appear and be manifested in the moment of performance. His dancers, Madalina Dan, Paul Cimpoeira, Eduard Gabia, and Mircea Chinea showed clarity as well as kinesthetic centeredness and multiplicity that could go many ways, from playing tennis to articulating diverse levels of tension and dramatically aware presentation and interaction with the audience (both Dan and Gabia also choreograph works of their own as well)

I really wish I'd see dance like this more often, also here in my home in the Netherlands, but was also told that this was a very select group of people, due to the relation of the evening being a memorial for Gabriela Tudor and her amazing pioneering work for the arts. I thought at some point that this sensorial centeredness and rational clarity could be something envisioned and prepared by the original members of the Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s. In fact seeing the two solos I was reminded of the film-registration I'd seen of Yvonne Rainer performing the phrase from Trio A, which I find to be very vulnerable and poetic, even if I'd suspect that Rainer herself would strongly disagree with such a reading.

It seems to me like such a positive move to more sensitivity, less hard-edge is a sign of growing maturity, especially against the backdrop of ever more commercialised, non-vulnerable, or just appearing-vulnerable art, which fails to meet the demands ("Use it [well] or loose it") and creates ever more poverty and stress that exacerbate the conditions even more, a waste-land, socially, ecologically, emotionally. (But maybe for a happier society that is finally matured to be more anarchistic on the outside, due to more sophisticated discipline by each of its members on the inside, as hinted at in Ursual K. LeGuinn's "The Disposessed") Then, somewhere in the middle of that, somewhere a beginning of a flower - but without water...

I find it is a rare quality to meet artists who dare to say yes to their very unique kind of sensitivity and work it successfully into performances. This experience has encouraged me to take my own moves into this direction more seriously and create more personally related work. I believe that in order to reach at a successful embodiment of such sensitivity, it is necessary to no just say yes to being vulnerable, less hard-edge and 'representative' but also strength and work to give the specific situation and conditions what is needed to bring the moment and energy across for witnessing audiences.

New Killer Star

2009-02-10T10:19:00.000-08:00

a song by David Bowie from 2003, for the vibes of a New New-Deal ...

See the great white scar
Over Battery Park
Then a flare glides over
But I won't look at that scar

Oh, my nuclear baby (One who spotted a star)
Oh, my idiot trance
All my idiot questions (Like the stars in your eyes)
Let's face the music and dance

Don't ever say I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready
I never said I'm better, I'm better, I'm better
Don't ever say I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready
I never said I'm better, I'm better, I'm better, I'm better than you

All the corners of the buildings
Who but we remember these?
The sidewalks and trees
I'm thinking now

I got a better way - I discovered a star
I got a better way - Ready, set, go
I got a better way - A new killer star
I got a better way - Ready, set, go

I got a better way - The stars in your eyes
I got a better way - Ready, set, go
I got a better way - I discovered a star
I got a better way - Ready, set, go

See my life in a comic
Like the way they did the Bible
With the bubbles and action
The little details in colour

First a horseback bomber (Who discovered a star)
Just a small thin chance
Like seeing Jesus on Dateline (Like the stars in your eyes)
Let's face the music and dance

You'll never say I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready
I never said I'm better, I'm better, I'm better
Don't ever say I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready
I never said I'm better, I'm better, I'm better, I'm better than you

All the corners of the buildings
Who but we remember these?
The sidewalks and trees
I'm thinking now

The Story of Stuff

2009-02-08T12:45:00.000-08:00

A very actual example for problems that come up when a thought-system is incomplete but has very real consequences for the real world:
The Story of Stuff 20 minute video performed by Annie Leonard.

There are several versions with subtitles in different languages available here:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. >>> SENT BY JULI GABOR working on her new kinds of dance in Denmark...

What it has to do with (new) dance?
i think it's quite simple:
dance too has its (thought) patterns and ideologies that are given from the older generation to the younger generation. And here, too, those thought patterns can create very real problems when they get put to practice, but don't really match too well with the actual situation: for example, the number of professional dancers in classical ballet and its modern derivates, who continue to work with serious injuries and a high level of pain, even when they are still in their education, is staggeringly high according to much research. So much for one kind of thinking ruining natural resources (kinesthetically driven imagination being one of them...)
Q.E.D. ...

another is the expectation-pattern of the mainstream that the energies of life would have to be canned into specifiable and recognizable dance and dramaturgy / drama / scenography patterns, presumably with very finitely rehearsed, often pre-fab derived dance vocabulary.
a lot of life-energy is put into these mechanisms - what's left for the moment of performance? how lively is such a piece in performance? how much individuality or orginality can be revealed, at the risk of being non-understandable?

how come that dance forms where individualism is not seen as important except for a few stars (e.g. in showdance) fare so well economically by comparison? (not necessarily when it comes to the wages of the dancers who participate in these circles, again unless they get to be a shining individual)?

and what about the laboratories where alternative kinds of dance are being developed and promoted? how much can they work towards a different future, how much are they bound by current mind-patterns and needs that are often those very left-overs from the past?...

* addition Feb. 10th:
all this said, I believe all the in-between choreographers who partly conform to standardized expectations, but manage to bring in their own liveliness, can be of extraordinary value in this situation. how much effect does their input have and what will be short-term and long-term effects. how long will it be sustainable for them and at what price?

collaborativeness, again, seems to be the winning strategy over merely just separation and seclusion.

per aspera ,,, ad astra :-)

2009-01-20T19:14:00.000-08:00

long talk with Elaine Summers, for her show "Making Rainbows" at Anthology Film Archives, New York, March 28th starting 7pm

I realised that through my work as a human being, but also as a profesional in my field, I want to support those directions that help use our resources better, and I especially focus on the human bodymind, through Kinetic Awareness® and Open Form Composition.

With both I strive to express the delicacy of the human soul / spirit / mind at its most advanced and most refined, intelligent, lucky, intuitive.
To this means I improvise, as to catch the most ephemeral nuances and details, and let them live in the performance as much as possible. Open Form Composition helps me to approach this state by determining how much should be set to create a greater security in which this delicacy can be invited to happen and manifest itself in our present.

Kinetic Awareness® teaches me to re-search this delicacy in the million details of my body-mind sensations that happen when I move. By listening on and on, with hopefully ever more insight and understanding, and by moving from this listening with greater and greater sophistication, I hope to be able to become an embodiment of such delicacy and details, as well as energetic power, be it in the presence of it or openness for it.

This ability of using one's resources at the utmost, with great care, in a way that makes sense, given the current demands of our state as well, I believe we can get ready to approach to integrate the cosmic state of our universe better and better, through the most minute of details we can be capable of handling, noticing, sensing, dealing with, moving from and with....

Make it to the stars by noticing that one dimensional fold that will get us there in an easier way, being able to deal with being in space and left to our own resources more independent of the ecosystem of the planet on which we have developed.

The ethical side of it, as Mary O'Donnell-Fulkerson expresses in her coinage "ETHICAL REFORMATION" for this time, is just as important to me: to more and more incorporate the multidirectional vastness of the Universe into our own dimensions of living here, together, on this planet.

In that sense I believe that God or GOOD is the accumulation of what we learn from evolution that will get us further along that path of surviving in our existence well. (with ever the more abilities to realize our bodymind and its working ever more detailedly and fully)
And I believe that as we evolve also culturally, this is a changing understanding, actually a project-in-progress, of ever ongoing discovery, rather than a fixed entity or merely a projection as used by the less-mature self.

LOVE is another such project, we discover and refine it over the centuries, try out new possibilities and gather experience-data: does it work? does something else work better? in which circumstance? for which character? what about our biological heritage, how much does it count? when does it work well, when would we like to try an alternative? and how does that work out, short-term and long-term? etc. and so on and so on....

screentouch - ... touch

2008-12-23T11:14:00.000-08:00

"dear members of DanceHotel!

here are two themes that interest me particularly:

1) the first is to develop a dance without knowing where it will lead, but based on what deeply fascinates and interests in the moment. the excitement should be sensory, rather than conceptual.

when I read about how Merce Cunningham developed his dances by following an inspiration, this finding out feels very alive and direct in the above senses.

2) the second interest i have is dance on video creating an experience very close to physical touch, especially as podcasts or IP-TV / digital television. how can we make dances that bring the kinesthetic experience as a physical one for the viewer - "screen touch" instead of touch screen ;-)

>> both ideas have something to do with immediacy, no layers or coating around the subject matter, but very direct experience, as otherwise in contact improvisation, for example. they also have to do with being and living now - not in some mental bubble from the past, removed from experience -- so.... :-) "
(posted on Facebook / DanceHotel, Dec. 23rd 2008)

a video i found while looking at a video by Asuka Yamaguchi

Senaka, by AsaChang & JunRae (Japan)
this video looks very interesting for me as for the second proposal, screen-touch
how does it give a sense of movement, even there are all of these many cuts, in a Cubist(?) kind of way.
I like the somewhat private sense of gestures, brought out to video - while she follows the music to great detail in its rhythm and phrasing. something similar, though even more minimal and less rhythmical was my interest for my part in bivak gloria, but it became the usual larger-scale dance...

I find noteworthy that because she is following the music so much with every beat, it becomes kind of easy to maintain a very close track of the timing of her movements, even though the camera view jumps from perspective to perspective all the time.

often it is the rupture in the exact organic timing of the movements which have had me definitely decide againts cuts in a video-recording of dance - it always feels rather jolted when the change of image artificially interrupts the flow of body-movement...
here it is somewhat different, even though the movement is very subjected to music, and the video does follow that, even though it changes perspectives all the time, and all looks very set in advance ...

the classical

2008-10-12T05:37:00.000-07:00

so clear, so well-balanced that it can be a learning example, creating a class of its own, a league of its own. The Well-Tempered Piano, any masterpiece...

the result of a long process, often, though not necessarily often of a long creational process if regarded from the actual making itself. (?)

perhaps that in the pre-modern times, the mere making of anything (new) was special enough, a celebration, an object. it made a difference in the usual wilderness. no change even today :-) except that the "wilderness" includes a lot of human creation, or so may seem. what will make the difference and to whom?

today I reviewed the video-compilation of Elaine Summers' Hidden Forest, performed Aug. 23rd 2007 at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors in new York City.

it was a very new experience for me: so new that the first time I had this feeling of emptiness, not knowing what I was looking at - what was this, why was this interesting for me. even though I've appreciated and trusted Elaine over the years more than most, I couldn't follow her just yet.
especially since I had performed in the piece myself! ;-)

today it was a little different, a week later: I could see better what was happening in the near darkness, my brain obviously had done its homework. today I could enjoy watching and felt this deep connection growing to it, similar like what I've experience earlier when I started to listen to Laurie Anderson's music: growing affection, from a deeper, more mature place...

so if there is a new classical among us, a true classical of this time, where is s/he and who is it? and would I / we recognize her/him/them if we met, or their work? ...

about the wilderness:
despite all suggestions from the previous successes, and the atmosphere we try to create, of safety, love & happiness, our existence remains at its bottom as precarious as ever.
despite all ads & music & culture, and even though we do our best to shut out those that didn't make it as well, and try to escape being contaminated by their 'bad luck' their example lets us realize each time again that any luck is temporary, to be used when it happens. and that waste remains a loss, carelessness or indifference create debts in the long run. a ruined harvest still means famine to come.

if we dcn't act accordingly it happens once again...
if we force stronger and more violently, so will be the consequences

Open Form Composition - the aftermath

2008-09-25T19:09:00.000-07:00

in the continuum created by the continued use & understanding of Open Form Composition any thoroughly 'set' composition in the older sense not only becomes questionable, but also a much more difficult thing to achieve - because of all the Open Form Solutions which I believe often can produce very similar results much more easily and with much more liveliness.

if this liveliness & intelligence in Open Form Composition is to be maintained, also the richness & depths of living, set compositions can get a totally new level of depth and sophistication. and I very much look forward to more & more achievements of such sophistication! :-) ...

lightness - progress (modernism & further...)

2008-08-11T16:27:00.000-07:00

continuing an earlier thought from
>> les enfants du paradis <<

as we understand the world we inherit from our parents better, more fully & deeply, and become more skilled to deal with its phenomena, we are more & more potentially able to make our cultural patterns lighter as well, more transparent, more complex, permeable, to fit more situations that become apparent to us as important to be able to deal with successfully, in our sense.

every time our parent's generation managed to fulfill a certain movement more completely, a dream, an urge, we as the next generation are freed to sense more completely what the new consequences & possibilities are.

it makes the ongoing cultural patterns less heavy and absolute, seemingly less formal.
on the surface this might seem like decay, or a step back towards "non-form", anarchy, being uncontrollable animals.

in fact it is on the contrary:
we can incorporate more of our animal-condition, while at the same time we could have more options for what to do.

and it challenges us inhowfar we still wish to reach sometimes the rigour, the remoteness, hinted at by earlier states of know-how. (of course over time the structures have become so refined that they simply disappear and get absorbed - maybe like in the Chinese language, the now monosyllabic words have once been many-syllabic...)

if continued long enough, this development can lead us into a further understanding of the empty outer space around us, not only physically and mentally, but also spiritually.

and maybe we can realise more how many values we are currently about to loose so much due to careless neglect, because we are not yet able to efficiently deal with the paradisical abundance that we've inherited, or the multitudinal construct of paradise / nature and our culture(s) growing within it/them. partly because from the old, more simple perceptions and patterns into consciousness, this loss is not necessarily realised or understood as such, because of being as yet too involved with one's local conditions and fails to think and act beyond them (global-local.. universal ...)

in dance this development happens the same, as it does in music:
from very simple structures in contrast to the complex non-created environment
to gradually accepting more & more variations as valid and interesting options.

as a result: in the case of true mastery - greater & greater ranges of possible rigour and freedom. wider & wider scales of recognizing and shaping ongoing patterns, structures, processes over space and time.

more & more response-ability ...

fin du siècle

2008-07-18T12:10:00.000-07:00

another after-echo of the fin du siècle, this time of the 20th century (with echoes of the 19th and before that still resonating in between and underneath) : neo-this, neo-that, all styles mixing & dissolving, added the deeper understanding from post-modernism beyond any single style.

it's getting a bit tiring, if content was seemingly given up a bit during the first half of the 20th century and totalitarian form gradually during the second half. there is always some form, even if it's retro... always some kind of content, even if it is a bit fascist / trying to save old neuroses. what else is there?

I am interested in a neo-modernism, as prepared in a.o. the works of Trisha Brown, but with the added possibilities as suggested by a.o. Elaine Summers and Mary O'Donnell-Fulkerson: a human bodymind moving, acting, being - - from this organically balanced base to optional geometries and referential meanings (i.e. two or more streams of information resonating / merging together...) balanced enough to approach light / energy / warmth as well as void / minimum / inexistence, maybe until the two opposites are shown how they are interlinked and just two aspects of the same, deeper whatever ...

(graffiti, Antwerp, Belgium 2007)

saturation - contrast

2008-06-29T02:50:00.001-07:00

working in "Performing Portraits" by Johnny Schoofs (Dansateliers Rotterdam, NL) : expecting the outermost, extreme, to get a bolt of energy, a jolt of movement, discomfort, failure, on the edge, katharsis - to feel life itself (again) in its unbridled energy, our relationship to cosmic forces.
affirmation of the comfort-zone first, then to be brought beyond that by whatever means the artist can make effective

dare to live, don't be a Borg, don't let yourself be put off by somebody else's strength or pleasure. some can enjoy just that. others are too much in a twist themselves and need outside help towards recuperation.

lots of different reactions.

but it's finally becoming clear that any single form won't save anyone, it's a momentary thing to know how to do. this generation seems to know this now, the conclusion from the postmodern lesson. Amen ;-)

2008-05-23T23:06:00.000-07:00

more moves! :-)

2008-05-19T13:43:00.000-07:00

to counteract too much intellectualism: Fantastic Plastic Machine (Japan) "Take me to the disco" (1999) enjoy! :-)

understanding the (post) modern revolution in dance

2008-04-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

i realize that contemporary dance is about to find the invidual bodymind of the dancer as the central instrument, instead of any specific culturally / traditionally (pre-)formatted vocabulary of allowed actions for communication.

such a human-frame is enough, like the human bodymind is enough as a frame for dancing, no need to also add a specific vocabulary to it - depending on the many interactions of such a human bodymind, vocabularies are formed by themselves.

this understanding goes back to a state before such formations and makes it possible to start to understand the formation of energy in time and space, filtered and formed through the human body (or anything representing such an experience)

consequently it also allows the mixing and deeper understanding of traditionally formed styles and languages, but can also synthesize & create new forms that will remain over the course of time as effectively expressing concerns beyond a single choreographer.

this is a potential for global application as cultures meet and exchange with each other ever more constantly, deeper and more far reaching consequences and at higher frequency than before. this development "forward" I see as a natural consquence of ever greater accumulations of technology, and again its ever further reaching implications and conseqences, which necessitate an ever more aware and well-balanced action from those who use / direct it.

examples

Elaine Summers' choreographic work and her movement-technique Kinetic Awareness® is a systematic method fully realizing the formation and use of such an awareness and understanding of human movement, combining the freshness of authentic movement with the systematic understanding one can derive from Laban's human movement analysis. in the work of Mary Fulkerson O'Donnell from visually derived-imagery and embedding dance into social behaviour I find a very good complement for this system. (these are of course not the only ones, but I've found them particularly useful for developing a practice of dance that is not solely based on defined vocabulary and methods, but has this change and progression over the course of the years included as a given in its understanding.)

i try to form my own choreographic work drawing from these understandings, trying to find a Eurasian practice of these in-American-made insights.

working with Pauline de Groot gives me another example of how such an understanding could be put to practice, with her piece "TOUCH air / raak lucht" that we work on together with Jaap Flier, Aharona Israel, and Ailed Izurieta.

and then

and then I get visions of beginning again, amid the ruins and the devastation left over from the culture of my parents' generation...

form & function

2008-01-17T22:59:00.000-08:00

if we don't understand the function of the form that we're dealing with, or rather if we just use something superficially but not in the way it is designed to work, we risk abusing and therefore losing it.

it has happened with love & marriage, which too often have been turned into social institutions that hardly ever have anything left to do with the moment of meeting and wanting to get together and perhaps procreate.

it is happening with motivation & trust & social understanding, which are consumed by money. (right now it seems like we are all very willing to sacrifice the original for the abstract substitute for it - what does the world cost? and on whose terms???)

in the case of dance (and other arts & communications) it happens by repeating the traditionally inherited forms without acknowledging the consequences of what they were made from and for.

in daily life such an example is "Have a nice day." which from the original good wish has become something quite different in Anglo-Saxon mainstream use.

in dance this source is kinesthesis, the sense of movement, whether the experience of ourselves moving or that of someone or something else in our range of perception moving.

unless a generation re-contacts this source and consequently re-evaluates their inherite traditions from their own experience of it, the only results be epigones and imitations, rather than fundamentally new creations of experience.

( Bivak Gloria ) - fin

2007-11-25T07:44:00.000-08:00

the project ends today in Antwerp. we've visited the Rubens House: a financial empire around the recognised genius of a single man... building a space ship for longer travels is one thing, but I get the impression that we are already removed from our origins by one layer, already sort of in outer space today ( with a few more reminiscenses from the past, e.g. the neo-cons, pollution, exploitation, Western Hegemonial thinking)

bivak gloria - final (before performance)

2007-11-22T09:26:00.000-08:00

I'm getting ready to perform at the finissage. together with Dwight Marica and Robert Rosenau. repeating what we've done these past weeks. to realise one out of many possible threads of movement with the installation, with the added presence of the visitors of the finissage.

many trails of energy to ride on / follow along and with, including my own. Robert Rosenau mentioned today a Zen-kind of state where there is absolute quiet and openness inside, to be ready for whatever comes, before thinking it over. in a way I hope to do the same. to be ready for a kind of energy that will take me anywhere, through many layers and threads and possibilities.

I understand the installation as condensed energy. and with the video's there is an extra layer of movement involved, represented in moving colors and light. so I hope that the long periods of working on the ground will pay off in a more readily available physical preparedness, ready to be in the moment, move!

Look at me now and here I am
And with it all it is not preparation
They never make it breathless without breath.
And once in a little while they wait.
Without its leaving.
Let it be that it is said, let me alone.
You alone have a way to think and swim
And voices have no other.
It is in their refrain that they sing me,
It just can happen so.
Getrude Stein from Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded

work

2007-11-22T09:16:00.001-08:00

today and yesterday I've spent long periods of time on the floor, doing Kinetic Awareness / ball work / available tension / sensitive energy work. there is a lot to repair and heal, especially my right elbow and knee. the fatigue translates itself into a tightened ribcage, contracted from a certain thoracic vertebrae in my spine (I think T6, but I'm not entirely sure)

while I was working on the ground, there were many workmen coming and going today, as they re-modeled Michele Matyn's sand-mountain. to all of this the radio was going on all the time, playing 80's and 90's hits + advertising. a hard time to concentrate, to find that space where there is no sound interrupting anything.

but I could work on what I get paid for in this project, to do my work as a dancer, just the same way that the working men worked to shovel and carry around the sand. we both followed our own necessities, resulting from our task. so that I could modify my own internalized bourgeois judgement of doing some luxury-work, something for affluent elites only. I've worked on this earlier in con.sens.us but here it was closer, because we were all limited to one space for a longer period of time, so the interactions were less momentary.

it helped me to feel less 'crazy' more trusting that what I do makes sense and that I am aware of it.

oil painting - body awareness practices

2007-11-14T12:42:00.000-08:00

Ghent Altarpiece
saw it today... wonderful colors (Mary in clear Blue God-Father-Christ in shining Red, John the Baptist in full Green, not to mention the many shades of green of the plants). there are X-arrangements in many ways, a.o. the four streams of people towards the altar of the lamb, held together by a circle of angels surrounding it. a reality, as complex as reality, beautiful. I felt re-rooted in my European heritage.

this painting was one of the first where oil was used as a liquidizer for the paint-particles, instead of egg / tempera. this new approach fully allowed painting in several layers above each other, to achieve a much more naturalistic illusion of the represented objects and people. also, it is speculated that painters Jan van Eyck and Hubert van Eyck used magnifying glasses to achieve the minuscule details.

a sensoriness so lively and largely unhindered by intellectual obstacles. brought into arrangements, without compromising the sensory experience. (see again "The Tower of Babel" in this blog)

the painting suggests endlessness, I could fly right into it...

in the church itself there are two copies of Adam and Eve made in the 19th century. the difference of doing something a second time, making it secondary. I didn't even notice that they were copies, I thought that for some reason the originals had been placed off the altarpiece itself. I wasn't as impressed as I'd expect I'd be. later I realized that not only was the way of painting them cruder, but also the copy Adam & Eve were wearing dark animal furskins.... to cover their nakedness.....

* * *

in my own experience I find that through using release-based techniques (including Kinetic Awareness) I gain a very similar ability of working more refined and in layers, comparable to the use of oil-painting. my body is explored more in minuscule ways, I become more sensitive to the energy of moving / living / being.

the increasing awareness of my body creates links in my consciousness, where before had been gaps in my understanding, allowing me a more complete and con-sequent course of action.

and, I find that the release-based body work creates an open-ended attitude, linked towards infinity...

weaving

2007-11-14T01:48:00.000-08:00

satori : we are creating weavings of energy through our actions / movements in space and time (if the first dimension is direction, the second plane, the third space, the fourth time, could the fifth be results of behaviour / interaction of energy formations????)

letting all pre-conceptions go (being balanced enough to let them go, not needing them necessarily, because of satisfactory fulfillment OR risk taking...)
like stated by Vanita & Joe Monk express (in) the moment ...

creating real-time, efficient patterns of and in the present, through improvising with the structure, the situation, Hessenhuis, the installation(s) moods, colours, the presence of the visitors etc.

videos from the first and second day with dance at Bivak Gloria

2007-11-07T11:20:00.001-08:00

10 excerpts from the first and second day
to document where we started from film/dancewise

click on the image or see YouTube channel thomasrealdance

depuis l'modernisme

2007-11-02T06:27:00.000-07:00

het naamloze zachte, dat de mens tot mens maakt.
Christa Wolf, Kassandra

coming to full circle at the end of week #2. all the work that we've done and did. again...

getting back to Gertrude Stein

2007-11-01T14:34:00.001-07:00

I read Stein with great interest during my early twenties and it has been a major source of inspiration for me ever since. even though I've gotten to realize many alternatives since then, I am still re-discovering many of her ideas and statements as very valid for what I am interested in in my work. As I continue working with Robert and Dwight, these notions are coming back into my attention.

... I had in hundreds of ways related words, then sentences then paragraphs to the thing at which I was looking and I had also come to have happening at the same time looking and listening and talking without any bother about resemblances and remembering.

[...]

I said in the beginning of saying this thing that if it were possible that a movement were lively enough it would exist so completely that it would not be necessary to see it moving against anything to know that it is moving.

[...]

As I say the American thing is the vitality of movement, so that there need be nothing against which the movement shows as movement. And if this vitality is lively enough is there in that clarity any confusion is there in that clarity any repetition. I myself do not think so.

No matter how complicated anything is, if it is not mixed up with remembering there is no confusion, but and that is the trouble with a great many so called intelligent people they mix up remembering with talking and listening, and as a result they have theories about anything but as remembering is repetition and confusion, and being existing that is listening and talking is action and not repetition intelligent people although they talk as if they knew something are really confusing, because they are so to speak keeping two times going on at once, the repetition time of remembering and the actual time of talking but, and as they are rarely talking and listening, that is the talking being listening and the listening being talking, although they are clearly saying something they are not clearly creating something, because they are because they always are remembering, they are not at the same time talking and listening.

quotes from Portraits and Repetition written in 1934, published in Lectures in America, Random House, New York 1935

with these views, I find Stein voiced what were concerns of the 20th century: get back to the medium itself, find out what it can do, rather than maintaining the conventions of the 19th century or in fact the conventionality of Euro-Asian cultures up to that time.

as I am working with two visual artists, one mainly in sculpture - one mainly in media, I too get back to what I believe is the essence of what my medium is about - kinesthesy and its shared experience with others.

bivak gloria: week #2

2007-10-30T06:24:00.000-07:00

is there a resemblance of color in movement?
black-white movement? coloured movement?

Alan Charlton, untitled MuHKA Antwerp. Belgium

I'm ready to explore more about this actual space, what is it that I can do HERE and with THIS installation. what kind of movements fit here, do I want to have here? what about the recurring elements?

musically I am experiencing a trip into the past, Béla Bartók's The Wooden Prince, Bear Dance, but also this morning Guillaume Dufay, Ecclesiae Militantis, a pioneer work of the Ars Nova at the end of the Middle Ages. I've tried to work with this piece of music earlier, at the EDDC in Arnhem, back in 2001. (see also the painting by Hieronymus Bosch earlier in this blog)

utopia

2007-10-27T02:31:00.000-07:00

how can we realize a society that succeeds in achieving reliable collaboration and co-production without the chains of feudalism, exploitation, the right of the strongest, disaster capitalism etc.?
the alternative to the 'Borg' of StarTrek is the community family - both minimise the ecological needs / footprint of the individual and ensure skillful and efficient co-operation, however with very different options, for example how to choose alternatives, how to develope further, experimenting with radically different solutions.

not having to be slaves to either nature or each other or our individual moment-to-moment frustrations. but understand and adapt to the needs and potential of our given situation here and now and find the best possible solution for all involved.

such a lifestyle requires open-ended thinking that includes non-finished or seemingly non-finished, not yet conscious, not yet communicable patterns as well, next to the ones that are clear, established and have proved their usefulness.

it seems to me like we are on a way towards the possibility of an ever more refined culture that needs ever less intrusion into our present state, because of having more possible solutions present as options for how to deal with moment-to-moment challenges. that way our culturre doesn't have to remain overpowering the very areas it tries to incorporate / include / understand (NOT only after assimilation, but by gradual adaptation and decision-influenced osmosis)

our bodies are excellent examples in themselves. they operate with reliable structures, also on a cellular level (e.g. enzymes) but always with infinite variations that are embodied in an in-itself open-ended system.

live-dance /performance is an excellent example for this in the arts. it is with this in mind that I take very careful considerations before I agree to set anything, and certainly not in terms of timing or sequence, unless dictated by adapting to given circumstances that I cannot change at all. even then I always prefer what Mary Fulkerson-O'Donnell calls the breathing form. to give maximum space and possibility for the potential of the inspiration / best solution of the moment to manifest itself as completely as possible, to happen in its optimal way, beyond what I can understand or control completely, in agreement with conditions in levels beyond myself and my range of options, including 'mistakes'

through repeated exploration and trials based on interest, patterns will emerge through variation-rich repetitions. like several visual patterns superimposed, the intersections create more solid forms, structures, sequences, codes, libretti etc.
even then, there is always a realm that is not yet present, that is still in the process of becoming. like never having stopped to process food into vital nutritients for our well-functioning. and I want congruent structures that make sure optimized 'organic' co-functioning of all related agents / elements / structures / energy-waves, whatever the goal is.

this esthetic is dictated by my awareness of the ever pressing need in my time and society / planet / space dimension for more efficient, less polluting, less aggressive / frustrating functioning / solutions.

and so I say yes to Improvisation, Yes to Open Form Composition.

additional note / November 7th 2007
I experience Open Composition as a base for work, not necessarily an end-all. sometimes it is very good and very exciting to try to repeatedly solve a problem with a very closed set of parameters, even one that comes very near traditional Composition.

if Open Form Composition is acknowledged as a greater container within which such forms of composition can emerge, and the potential for openness is better acknowledged and trained for, decisions about which parameters to close or 'set' could become better thought through, less subjectively haphazard or another re-run of yet another tradition.

generally I like it better if a system / composition can grow through repeated trial and error with very little set at the beginning. leaving a lot of (mental) space for elements that are important for a composition to become manifest in their very own and authentic ways, before making greater decisions about what to combine how and when.

I believe this approach can bring forth more intelligent and effective as well as efficient solutions and wonderful moments of art and performance...

bivak gloria ii

2007-10-24T06:54:00.000-07:00

fulfillment in paradise...

i reach a point of disillusionment, being thrown back upon myself

after all these ideologies and promises of a better world, IF ....

more plans for Bivak Gloria

2007-09-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

after my exuberant solo at 60x60 it's time for me to re-evaluate minimal, very body-oriented dance. anatomical exactness, joint by joint, of which we have several hundred (more than a dozen in just our feet and hands alone). organ-states, muscle states. my functioning, continuously self-massaging, ongoing body.

how looking, hearing, action influences that.

and to really go for play, the value of play.
with Dwight, Robert, people who come and visit...

sensory awareness - kinesthetic awareness bypassing the clutter around it

2007-09-21T05:03:00.000-07:00

soon, in mid-October, I will work with visual artists Dwight Marica and Robert Rosenau
at the Hessenhuis in Antwerp.

Dwight wants us to work from a state of calm and some leisure, far-off from 'achievements' but real work.
i am very fond of this aesthetic strategy although I have to admit that myself i don't always find a way to realize it. but i find it justified for humans to work like this, knowing how to evade the animal-trap of constant need and hunting/gathering...

in August of this year I worked in New York City where I was a part of Elaine Summers' Hidden Forest . most of what i had prepared meticulously was swept away and brought down to a single basic instruction: move without thinking about it first, directly from the body-state. i managed to get this done on the day of the general rehearsal, where I was sick from the flu and so I kept away from everyone as much as possible, but also had had plenty of resting time during the day.

since i came back i notice that i have more moments where i can actually let sensorial experience happen while being open to its effects on me. i can listen better, sometimes.

and i feel a new intensity in my dancing again, where what is important is becoming much more clear in my sensory perception.
to focus on this happening itself and doing itself, developing itself, in its own tempo, its own way, is what interests me, has always interested me.
i want less 'filling-in' or 'transitory' movements, just the core as much as it is or is not, and that's it. to let whatever it is that moves me, move me ;-)

hopefully i'll be able to realise this more closely at Bivak Gloria in Antwerp...

2007-07-08T15:17:00.000-07:00

[seeing a solo performed by Jonathan, three phrases, by Russel Dumas and Pauline de Groot, closing evening of Studio De Koe, Amsterdam July 7th 2007]

hier is een stijl die ook Nederlandse traditie heeft gecreëerd. iets dat mijns wetens (nog) niet aan Nederlandse academies wordt onderwezen (nog wel op de SNDO?)

here's a style of movement, a tradition that could be revered and taught by current dance academies, also in the Netherlands. but to my knowledge, (so far) there is none which does (with exception of the School of New Dance Development in Amsterdam?) (I already saw no one from the school there, except for Ria Higler who did a very straightforward dance, wonderfully in the masterful tradition that Pauline de Groot helped to create in Amsterdam)

une style tellement raffinée, organiquement decidée
clarité au détail.

oui, c'est toujours seulement une style entre autres, avec les mêmes problèmes entre la forme et le content,
mais une style qui je prefère au base une profondesse plus près de la existence humaine.

early oil-painting & release

2007-07-08T15:16:00.000-07:00

[seeing "The Tower of Babel" by Pieter Brueghel the Elder]
oil-painting / fine-ness
release / energy in movement

- organic multi-layered
- the how disappears in favour of what
makes it shine through
- into the world, endlessness...
within the work itself

START

2007-07-08T15:02:00.000-07:00

clarifiér mes pensées sur une dévelopement sur (une) danse noveau.
encore pour une période limitée.
voilà :-)