US·American(a)s - art and activism

And so now we do know what a master-piece is and we also know why there are so few of them. Everything is against them. Everything that makes life go on makes identity and everything that makes identity is of necessity a necessity. And the pleasures of life as well as the necessities help the necessity of identity. 

[...]

But what can a master-piece be about mostly it is about identity and all it does and in being so it must not have any. [...] Moments are not important because of course master-pieces have no more time than they have identity although time like identity is what they concern themselves about of course that is what they do concern themselves about. 

(Gertrude Stein, What are Master-pieces, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, England, UK, 1936, published 1940, Conference Press, Los Angeles, USA)

Being able to imagine and realize outside the constraints of what Stein aptly calls necessities binding us, but with and within the necessities that make us exist, remains a task for anyone involved in the necessities of daily life, including politics and political decisions and processes. 

Far from being a process to be watched with the (petit)bourgeois suspicion against the medicine-person and the shaman and their expertise and resulting power inbalance, later made into a kind of caste of specialists called nobility, any invention, any progress is the result of countless experimentations and trials and errors. 

However it also remains a fact that depending on the personal situation, dealing with life's various specific necessities depends not only on personal ability and learning, but also on the means that are available. And so the anger and frustration from not having such means is of concern for anyone who wants invention and progress to happen sustainably on an ever changing planet (partly because of such innovations)

In his book "Frederick" (1968) Leo Lionni demonstrates very clearly how the mice collecting food for the winter days would look at Frederic who collected colours, impressions, created words, poems, which he later shared when the food was up and virtual was used to help with the visceral. There is an echo from times of extreme pressure, incl. raves in cities in Ukraine being bombed, to counteract the violence :  

During the early days of the [HIV/AIDS] epidemic, humor, sexuality, and even music seemed questionable, in the face of so much horror. They very quickly became essential. 

(Paul Rudnick, US-American playwright, incl. for The Addams Family, author of Jeffrey a comedy about HIV/AIDs from 1993)

 It is possible to see the understandings of intelligence, ability to "read between lines" = work with context in the moment and of intermedia, incl. as it was used by Elaine Summers (1925-2014) in the same space that can come to exist between necessities that would otherwise drag away from what could be happening in such open, less-defined timespaces.

And while innovation absolutely needs very concrete work with very concrete necessities for the trial and error of concrete development and progress, this potential, as in play, the experimental, even when done with·in very refined parameters, remains the kind of movement we could also call akin to our understanding of movement and dance.

USAmerican(a)s

USAmerican(a)s is a series of vignettes set to pieces of popular music, which are treated as found objects (as:is) (objets trouvés) together with elements from pop-culture of various kinds.

all of the pieces came from my interactions with friends in the US of A on Turtle Island, especially since the illegal and unconstitutional occupation by the Trump-regime 2024/2025 and have been formed from a lifelong active engagement with and influence by US-American culture in many of its varieties, fascinations, promises, etc. (dance, music, visual arts, literature, media, and the list goes on ... ) 

all of the latter gave me an amount of space that allowed me to escape, blossom and grow. in reverse,  sometimes it made me unfit for expectations at home, both artistic and personal, creating a kind of in-between state. one more diaspora, an adopted one, over the years. my formation as an artist was very strongly influenced by all that came from the USAmerican late/post-modern innovations, which was at times also a conscious choice. 

can we go from 'empire' towards more 'human' in a time when our existence as a species on this planet keeps eroding and being destroyed? (by that mysterious "us" or at the very least, by very powerful oligarchs)

That softness without a name, that makes man humane. 
(from Christa Wolf, Kassandra, East Berlin 1983)  


what do I have to tell them, these colleagues and friends who I have kept in touch with, sometimes for decades and who are now in a country that is ever faster becoming a totalitarian nightmare, more like that other very large country East of where I happen to live and work?

Why did you let them get to be so powerful.
 (from Christa Wolf, Kassandra, East Berlin 1983)  



the pieces presented on November 15th at Weggeef Podium Rotterdam will premiere first results from the entire series, potentially this could become a larger, maybe even an evening filling piece. 

in line with earlier works such as popERA (2000) available tension: brown (2006)  medvetánc / Savage (2015-2018) Raven/Kassandra (2021) or (dis)embodiment and dance (2022) this new series explores all these themes as a loose, open-ended sequence of dances, songs, visuals, ideas, moments. they also explore presence, acting and dramaturgy as tools for choreography.

_______________

this series is part of a larger cycle, "zene", the Hungarian word for music, where I re-examine and partly also question my own use of music in my work. readers of this blog will know that I love to perform and create without pre-set/recorded pieces of music, so that I am not having that particular interference in my own timing. 

at the same time, it's become a long-standing practice that I work with specific pieces that I feel a very strong connection with, that inspire me, move me emotionally - they are an easy handle that can function outside of my own means or condition, in fact stimulate me, get me carried away, into movement ... 

and so a lot of my work can be called musical theater, because it's that piece of music which I translate into presence and movement, narrative, meaning, all coming together. 

eventually, what happens when I may no longer need such handles, because the movement and choreography will in themselves be powerful enough? will I myself as a performer and a person be powerful enough? -- and not just in the way Noa Eshkol began during the second half of the previous century, with her particular and very specific and inspiring solutions, but with a lot more possible options. (see an example below)

as i wrote many times on this blog, the very practice of Kinetic Awareness by Elaine Summers enables me to listen closely to my own physicality and move and work with it, the same delicacy that a sculptor needs when working with a very specific piece of stone to get a very specific result. 

presence and ... 
on a formal level, I am interested in driving the approach of performance art and dance and (inter)media with·in it even further, make the compositional and dramaturgical structures even stronger, to enable the conversation unfolding in the moment, and at the same time strengthen the core of the composition, what I definitely would like to get to say, dance, do. 

acting, emotions, personal interaction have become more important than ever this time and I have definitely become more conscious of them. even though this series evolved as a part of my conscious dealing with music as a very central aspect of my work, even when I deliberately dance without a set musical piece, how all of these areas interact with each other in the moment of my presence shaping and expressing by doing, has become even more concrete and conscious.

- note from Friday October 23rd, 2026 :
because of culturally-rooted and governmentally encouraged general Covid-carelessness in the Netherlands, I have decided to perform masking (FFP3) just as I mask up everywhere else when I am not at home. Frances Becker has made me very very aware of the problems of expression and vulnerability that arise from such a choice and I will have to make careful decisions about how I negotiate these boundaries without compromising my health or the impact of the performance. how much am I ready to slap people in the face who likely have never thought twice about what they are doing. how much will this block the work itself which lives from personal communication? 

 

art and politics
for a very long time, these two areas influenced each other greatly and deeply, but it has taken a very long time to arrive at a better and more mutually empowering balance between the two, so that one would not hinder another, but be merely another area, each feeding and empowering and enriching the other.

here, I give thanks to many conversations over time, not in the least with Jean-Ulrick Désert and his insistence on multiple layers of meaning, multiple agendas, which may contradict each other, what he calls "conspicuous invisibility", what is not mentioned, seen, noticed, diverted from.  

while developing this series, a lot of personal moments contributed to the formation of each work, be that a video or a direct live-performance, or some connected variations of both, visceral and virtual encouraging and strengthening each other. 

X

depending on where I perform a concert of these works, I am aware that I can create crossings and bridges between US-American and European audiences and communities, each not always knowing a lot about each other beyond the more easily available narratives or stereotypes. 

using a lot of East-German art may be of the time here, since the kind I use was created as a resistance to totalitarianism and dictatorship, no matter what was touted as "liberating" (for who?) and, as dissident artist Wolf Biermann formulated it "the Endlösung (final solution) of the social question". 

coming from a dissident family of political refugees over three generations, these stories have given me a multiplicity of perspectives and examples over the decennia, and a healthy dose of not trusting a single narrative without very thorough reasoning, and even then remaining open to questioning it, not omitting details, trying to ever more take them into account, willing to adjust and learn, progress. 

What do I call alive. Not shying away from the hardest thing, changing the image of oneself. 
(Christa Wolf, Kassandra, East Berlin 1983)  

 

special thanks to Suzan Lemont, Frances Becker and all at Kinetic Awareness Center, Rachel Cohen, Jean-Ulrick Désert, Deborah Black, Yoshiko Chuma, Laura Shapiro, USSC #unitethestruggles the Radical Faeries, all friends and colleagues in the US of A

You, don't let yourself get hardened
In these hard [and trying] times.
The all-too hard they break,
The all-too sharply pointed pierce and break off right away
And break off right away

(Wolf Biermann, Ermutigung (encouragement) East Berlin, 1968)

Do not wait for better times
Do not wait with your courage
Like a fool who day by day
Waits along the rivers shore
'till the waters have flown off
Which yet flow forever!

(Wolf Biermann, Warte nicht auf beß're Zeiten (Do not wait for better times) East Berlin, 1973) > listen

after 2 contact-jams : organic, sustainable choreography

where does my special enjoyment of "amateur"-fluid, minimally pre-designed dance that is created in the moment based on minimal agreements and rules come from? 

i have participated in two jams based on contactimprovisation, one by Roffa CI and the other yesterday at Contact Zone, both in Rotterdam, the Netherlands

the dance is in the moment, it works, it fully uses all-ready existing structures, patterns, personalities, energies, conditions and lets them interact beyond what they would each do on their own. there are clear objectives that can safely allow individual variation with each iteration, ideally these variations and their conscious performance are the point.

such an example was Asymmetry of the Embrace by Snježana Premuš at the Allee plaza in Budapest, May 4, 2025 during the symposium Contemporary Somatics - Bodies Today 

if I had to use a metaphor, these kinds of dances create groups of flowers, at times mushrooms, that grow in the wild. they grow directly, of their own accord, there is no further extra intervention necessary. everything that happens happens as it needs to and is therefore congruent, which is a prerequisite for survival, since there is also no extra support and no guarantee. ** except, maybe, the kind of state that is created together, which does have its effects, compare with antibiotics, created by groups of bacteria to keep others out and weak ... 

on the other hand, professional dance as it is practiced more traditionally, would then be the equivalent of growing flowers that are cut for export. part of me rejects this practice both in dance and in daily life altogether as unsustainable and harmful. 

then, there are hybrids that do point to a way forward, such as Dobra Voda, also performed at this symposium, at the MÚ theater in Budapest, by Zrinca Šimićić with Bernadett Jobbágy. there was a pre-defined installation of objects and a pre-defined sequence of tasks, partly specified movements, imagery etc. this sequence was repeated a number of times, if I remember well it was open how many. each time the iterations became variations in the moment, giving full openness to how exactly the performer would literally go through the motions. 

knowing what to pre-determine so that the piece can be itself, i.e. successful in performance, on what terms, by which parameters = why, trying this out, finding out what works sustainably, by means of rehearsal, adapted to the situation and the space of the performance and the audience each time, remains a basic task of choreography. it is possible to re-visit existing traditions, practices etc. but these must not be used mindlessly or without questioning, which risks abuse and their own destruction.  

so-called somatic practices which acknowledge the fullness of human experience, individual variations, bodymind connections, without pre-standardizing them for everyone, work with, not against the human senses of the practicing individual, create a kind of ecology that is conducive to such organic, efficient choreography. 

of course at some point a practice becomes too often repeated without enough substance to full-fill the structure, hollowed out over time, no longer enough, just as change, development and evolution are inevitable. then it is important to ask for what was the aim, what were the means pointing at, are there others available or do they need to be developed? is the aim still what we want? (love, peace, happiness, safety, freedom ... and dance)

Laban & Co. ?

having inherited a new set of books, all reflecting areas of dance and dance history and dance theory, I keep coming back to the enormous heritage created by and on the instigation of Rudolf von Lábán. 

i also keep thinking as I survey even just briefly through books such as Lábán's "The Art of Movement" and the extensive postulations, all backed by notation, models etc., is how much of this heritage could have been helpful for the next generations of dancers, also in the "postmodernists" in the US of A - Anna Halprin on the West Coast, the echos that became Judson Dance Theater on the East coast, with Elaine Summers creating her very own lineage as a pendant to Halprin, let alone post-War European dance artists. this entire heritage seems near lost today, submerged into immediate, sensorial spectacle, echoing forms of forms of forms created before. (continued with artificial intelligence modells) 

following through on the ever more detailed and intricate, sensorial understanding of movement and dance that have emerged, from Francois Delsarte and Genevieve Stebbins, all the way to Charlotte Selver and Elaine Summers (Sensory/Kinetic Awareness) how can we make use of this inheritance? 

it is understandable that a first generation just coming off European-formulated "Classical ballet" and its becomings wished to remain open, all too often going into Indian and Chinese-based bodymind systems and -traditions instead, from Yoga to Tai Chi and Chigong. but there is more, and more to keep developing, whether "serial" choreography echoing "serial" composition in 20th century "classical"-derived European/American music or their further developments into aleatoric, chance-based, improvisatory strategies. 

in a certain sense, one could say that European-derived choreography became ever more organic-understanding, the rather superficially pre-set mindset releasing into every more sensorial-present states. with Mary O'Donnell-Fulkerson's attempt at syncretizing both extremes into a single perspective (Open Form Composition) a wholesome understanding has emerged that allows this development to come to full-circle and start moving.

zen-e? : the beach, in line, three

this week I got to try the first two scores with non-professional dancers age group 55+ in Rotterdam. working with and controlling flow, from open and free to condensed and in full and close control, seems to be a choreographic concern of creating tension/movement in space with a group of dancers/movers as well as physically with a single body. 

i keep perceiving music in such terms, as abstracted physical human-body (character) movement, with·in the kinds of musical languages (e.g. https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/work-50.php )

 

mode de valeurs et d'intensité - lifeforms / dance forms

first beginning with lifeforms/danceforms again, after a very long time, by now only possible on old MacBookPro mid 2009 (El Capitan) not on the others. 

too many parameters in dance? because of the addition of not only body-parts but also space/place AND intensity / tension level - or so it seems. 

it may be possible to match width in shape / extension with visibility (e.g. 12,5 degrees to 30 to 45 etc. different from the previous = small or large) weight, effort = or play with reversing them within. 

directions, sudden or sustained changes, jumps, sidders/shivers, ripples, hard and softening, release etc.

tone height = space height / level is the simplest and easiest => adapt into 3D and movement 

** I can physically sense the effect that Thecla Schiphorst described when explaining why she intentionally did not have ready/snap shapes available, it is indeed working, even a simple port des bras forces me to evaluate how I move my shoulders, arm joints, where do I rotate of flex. 

Nevertheless for choreographing a sketch of movements as notation this is eventually too cumbersome, short cuts would be necessary, like the ones I've suggested and had an idea of using the keyboard for, a 45 degree scale, low middle high, arms options of straight (default) or rounded (extra modification) 

US(Americanas) - fe(r)m(m)(é)e

 "I write for myself and strangers." (Gertrude Stein) 

This quote by one of the cultural heroes of my adolescence who was marginalized for the longest time until after WWI she suddenly wasn't, speaks volumes about any creator's dilemmas. 

Having worked on the choreography of the dance I published yesterday was slow and irregular enough. There is still almost too much that this dance still needs to grow, especially in performance and with me if I am to be the performer. (and it seems like the singer-songwriter model remains my best possible option for the time being) 

Unlike Emily Dickinson, another writer who had been a heroine of my adolescence, I have realized that I am not satisfied to just let the work accumulate in my drawers until perhaps someone else discovers them and even has the guts to publish them the way they were meant to be. 

There is the counter-example of Julius Eastman who was kicked out of his New York City apartment and lost almost his entire archives. No matter how present-day people (culture vultures!) try to revisit or revive and hype his work. (and themselves in the course of it) his potential remains vastly under-understood. 

Perhaps not a bad thing to think about on a day of International Strike by people identifying as women, since all of the above artists were more or less openly queer, gay, non-heterosexual. (So was apparently Hilma Af Klint) 

Concretely, if I should die all of a suddent, there is no one at present who will take over or even have the means to continue. The potential of what I have to offer is here and now, and always has been. It is not somebody else's job to do it for me, at best others can work in partially similar or supportive directions. But not the way I can, and not with the particular understanding that I have. This is obviously the same for all of my contemporaries as well, who equally do and understand their own work. 

Either way, here, for better or worse is the dance as far as I could perform it yesterday.  If the controls don't work, you can also watch it directly on Vimeo here. 

 

PS: by comparison, the video-recording of working with the étude mode de valeurs et d'intensités by Olivier Messiaen has no such problems of emotions, re/presentation, re-enactment, actions, etc. (= a different embodiment) Consequently, my presence comes over as much more 'true' and 'authentic, even tough dance-technically, again, a whole lot needs to be done.