Thursday, October 29, 2015

kinesthetic-formed dance

reform (theater-) dance from our kinesthetic sense, above all others
 train ourselves to let the movement be shaped,
not by movement language that we've learned,
but from our kinesthesy in relation to how we perceive and relate with the world within and around us

-> how are sound, visuals, even acting re-formed by such a sensation / experience?

I keep saying that Kinetic Awareness® is an exceptionally good technique for re-discovering the fundamentals of the self, understanding the root of one's own bodymindbeing, before any demands or judgements - then develop whatever potential there is and is desired.
Other than more μετά-oriented approaches, such as Ideokinesis, or BodyMindCentering, or even Feldenkrais, Kinetic Awareness® minimizes any instrumental meta-structures (imagery, instructions, narratives, pre-set movement-sequences etc.) and gives maximum space for experience and self-guided exploration. Props are employed by the student upon their own chosing. While it leaves such meta-structures behind, it is at the same time very systematic, because it helps to discover and follow the system of the practitioner's individual bodymind. so rather than anyone or anything external, the individual practitioner, the individual bodymindbeing, is the system (!) 


-> does dance truly come from the most basic experience of movement as being alive / on our frequency? can we enjoy music because we have a sense and experience of movement to draw from?

same for any other related art-form that involves sight, sound, smell, etc etc.
(and ideally beyond confinements of any single cultural zone)

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

getting ready for re-performing 'Sokrates' : the dance/r is present & 24-uur cultuur

While reviewing the videos for the presentations at Mirta Demare International Visual Art​, titled the dance/r is present | de dans/er is aanwezig, Aug 29th - Sept4th, I came to think of Gertrude Stein​'s Tender Buttons, written in 1914. This work had fascinated me since my 20s, not in the least because I understood that they were a turning point in Stein's writing and a historical moment, comparable to Arnold Schönberg's 6 Little Pieces for Piano, op. 19 (1913) which preceded his 12-tone composition works. Stein wrote portraits of objects, food, and concluded with a very long piece called 'Rooms'. The dance Sokrates, in a way, makes similar portraits in dance, out of the moment, as fully as possible, in an ongoing stream-of consciousness, or, as Stein put it, in a continuous present. Just like the recognizable ways in which Stein dealt with words, my partner correctly remarked that as the days wore, on he could notice that I had recognizable patterns in my movements, how I dealt with the information of the various moments.


When I went for a short walk to Heemraadsplein yesterday, for a moment I sat and enjoyed watching the passers-by who crossed the plaza, which had been my initial inspiration for Kruisingen-Heemraadsplein (Dutch meaning 'crossings') After having seen and evaluated myself from the Venice-videos, my perception felt more sensitive than what I believe I could process back then. I wonder how much I will be able to reflect this deeper sensitivity in the coming performances August 29th and 30th, as well as September 12th, at 24 uur cultuur, the Rotterdam 24-hour cultural festival where local art institutions manifest themselves. 

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

blood on my hands and other thoughts about communication and marginalization

Today I sent in my application for a Research Week at Random Collision in Groningen September 12-20, 2015, which I understood to be about individual (in)visibility in relation to social/ly dominant/ groups, especially if the individual enacts desires or states that are deemed alien by such (a) group(s).

It made me re-visit Pelléas material / b.a.n.q. and re-live my continued ambivalence about this work from 2013. There are many complications, exactly because of the interplay of various levels of privilege and (un)acknowledgement.

I did realize that my very position a bit closer to the margins of White Male Class Privilege (White, but not 'Western', cis-male passing, but not heterosexual and when possible not gender-conforming, part Gentry/nobility, part 'middle class', but neither fully) and the experience of being a foreigner, either by ethnicity or class, through at least three generations, has played out in the development of my professional career in the Netherlands. The un-alignedness with the social surroundings continued and still can produce some very awkward situations.

The latest article "White Fragility, Silence, and Supremacy: Why All White Hands Are Bloody"
by choreographer Malik Nashad Sharpe confirmed my decision to perform in the near future with (fake-) blood on the palms of my hands, when I perform my own work. While I am not U.S.-American, I do find it important to raise very similar questions for the situation in Europe, e.g. how to this very day thousands of people get killed at the Schengen-borders, the livelihoods of many millions destroyed by many hundreds of years of various kinds of colonialism and exploitation which among others, benefits European elites.
(It is an entirely different chapter how much of 'trickle-down' has happened as a consequence for the general population, then and now, and how much the same kind of Colonialism was inflicted on the various Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, and other nations on the European subcontinent, under the banner of first the Roman Empire and then "Christianization", before more and more of them became the new Romans, and continued to do the same in return to others ...) 

Of course part of the desired outcome will depend on the awareness of the witnessing spectator / audience. I do not intend to always let people know why I need to do this, unless they ask, and even then, I would not always feel like having to explain. I know for myself that this is something that I very much need to do. Not having a large-scale company to think of can make such a decision a little bit easier to realize. An advantage of living and working a bit closer to the edges of White Male Class privilege which will hopefully contribute to further undo the very same privilege, in my private life and in my work as a choreographer, who signed on to be responsible for creating kinesthetic experiences, also referred to as dance.