inspiration, echoes, copy-cats ...

last week Friday I realized that two of the 6 presented 1-min. extracts from the Anniversary performances at tic tac art center in Brussels echoed two dances of mine, remarkably close, and during the same evening that Wendy Perron performed a touching and beautifully crafted personal solo there. 

here are the links to recordings of the dances, followed by the dances that I recognized in them:

https://www.instagram.com/p/C-xQUlWMRQx/?img_index=7
Corbul/Raven (2009)

https://www.instagram.com/p/C-xQUlWMRQx/?img_index=5
Sokrates (2001/2014)

the latter obviously is connected via the costume. this costume is one that I "borrowed" from Elaine Summers and her use of it in her pieces like theater piece for chairs and ladders (1965) and walking dance for any # (1969) incl. a concert at St. Mark's Church in New York city. it became a kind of trademark for my own "white" series of dances that I began around 1997, which were out in the open, quite friendly-connective, and community-oriented, incl. Kruisingen (crossings) Heemraadsplein (2009) and its continuation into Delfshaven Dans!

more thoughts
copying can definitely be a form of flattery, especially when the copyist re-creates something instead of re-using a ready-made for personal gain and career, without having to invest more deeply in the source, let alone not naming the sources, no matter how seemingly obscure or 'unimportant'. the echo of the Raven solo at tic tac art center beautifully re-creates the costume (all black) the flurry moves forward and backward, the silence, and the expressive hands.  

during my own career i have used liberally from Elaine Summers and Trisha Brown, as inspiration, strategies, vocabularies etc., as well as from many others, for various reasons. more than one piece of music, fine-arts etc. has found its way into my own works. 

if indeed both choreographers echoed works of mine, then I am happy to see that neither of them has my body-type.

professional ecology
acknowledging one's sources openly would make our ecosystem in dance more complex, a bit less "simple" but like other credits they could help funnel means, energy-attention, awareness to dancers who may not have the same means or inclination of dissemination, but do have enough to create their work, on their terms, and meaningful enough to be copied from or echoed. 

in an environment structured from a false and untenable interpretation of "survival of the fittest" and feudal-neoliberal (pseudo)Darwinian competition for (artificially low-kept = ) scarce means, such a strategy takes away from the "new", "lonely genius", etc. but it does make for stronger inter-connectivity as an eco-system over time.

fortunately there is by a now a greater conversation about culturally formed privileges, who gets to do what when and why, intersectionality, etc. etc. etc. one may say this is public honoring of lineages could be a further extension of such net-working, open-source. each one of us has a different (personal, professional) situation, and so will make different choices. 

 

money, flow-control, durability, sustainability

living in a large apartment with high ceilings is wonderful for a spacious home and can be a challenge in colder winters and chilly spring and autumn times, especially for a dancer. these days i learned that the city of Rotterdam annually produces ca. 6000 kg of sheep-wool from grazing (instead of lawn mowers) (methane vs. other emissions?) and that this wool for now is either burned or shipped off to China, when it could be used locally, e.g. for isolation of roofs and houses. 

artist and researcher Christine Meindertsma was a driving force in a specific project in 2020 how this situation could be improved. her project-counterpart at the Rotterdam municipality,  Carolien van Eykelen, stated that as of now the project is finished, it is time for someone with an enterprise (= willing to invest money) to make something out of it. (scroll down to the video on the page, it is very beautifully done, duration 10min.) 

while I could find at least one Dutch company offering wollen blankets in the Netherlands, I could not (yet) find out how and where the wool is farmed or processed further into their textiles. the other products that are available locally include products from Sweden, where the sheep wool partly comes from New Zealand, ... or another company, farmed and processed locally in Norway. all three options seem preferable to yet more oil-based synthetic plastic fibres and more microplastic ... finally, I found out that there is a Rotterdam-based company offering ecological thermal isolation. if I buy the booklet at nearly 20 euros, honoring the pioneering work and time that the CEO has done ...

for isolating my apartment as a tenant, I would think of removable pieces that I can attach to the walls, lay down on the ground floor underneath the carpet, or at the very least, install as an isolating curtain at strategically useful places in the apartment for better thermal isolation overall. so far I believe that I definitely have no need for a very high quality of wool. until there is a more mainstream-friendly solution, once again it seems that money, and/or lack of (access to) it produce a bottle-neck situation, that only a sufficient amount of money will be able to change. (of course there are always the second-hand stores ... )

overall this research has got me thinking about cash flow, basic income, and who gets to control this flow of income & ability to buy/exchange goods, and the power given with such ability (let alone the case of reparations for Transatlantic Slavery, colonizations worldwide etc.) 

according to earlier statements that I remember via XR Rotterdam, the city alone emits ca. 20% of all greenhouse gases in the Netherlands. the overall development for the entire country seems more a bit more positive (source) 2022 also saw more independent(?) research done in this direction, alas two new coal power plants, built in 2015 and 2016 made the target of reduction of 50% greehouse gases by next year (2025) impossible, which had been a target before ...

whoever profits from fossil-fuels for heating this city, likely has a vested interest in not allowing local wool to be used for isolating people's homes on a larger scale, allowing better saving on ever rising (fossil-fueled) energy prices, for a population that gets to deal with ever rising economic inequality. ( = at times directly related to causes for reparations ... **)  any connections of such companies with local politicians, past and present, would also be useful to know. 

** before painting too bleak a picture, the city did hand out a one-time support of 500 and 800 euro to people indicating a need, to help save on the worst of spikes, as did the Dutch government for 2021-2022 to help soften the increase) 

as a dancer, I work in this urban environment and its consequences, from the soot I keep finding in collectible rainwater from refineries and cruise-ships *** to making a living for producing autonomous dance work on a minimal, but still effective scale of means.

*** as can be seen here, such soot also can easily come from as far as RWE in West Germany documented by Last Gasp / 2-min. info video   

while I still claim the right and the social means to keep producing such work, without having to defend (again) whether what I do is "useful" and by which standards (usually against "conservatives" or the latest populist merchants of doubt such as in 2011 ... ) this does not mean that I am not interested in better overall living conditions, which may also help produce more autonomous "unnecessary" dance work ...

decolonization, reparations, Kinetic Awareness®, the legacy of Elaine Summers, and the danger of the simple/single story

in times of acute crisis, a painkiller may be the only means to get at least a semblance of rest, even if the problem causing the pain is still as violent as ever. but at least for a moment, there is time and space to think more clearly again, not be consumed by the pain. the longer and more costly road is healing, finding the root cause, working on understanding and what works to help it get better, where and when needed. 

in the regions of the world influenced by European cultural zones, the 20th century brought us many more simple and single stories, good and bad, black and white, evil and noble, a direct consequence from the previous centuries. it takes time, and means to grow out of them, find the necessary details. as Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pointed out not so long ago, there are very real-world dangers in the differences with the nuances of real word details. 

trans BIPOC writer Kai Cheng Thom equally writes about transformative justice, which looks at entire affected communities working together, even when just one or a few individuals have been affected by wrongdoing.

reparations could then mean re-balancing, healing. this is very different from a winner making a looser pay up, because they finally lost. (though to some extent, that, too can be a part, if not only to stop an aggressor) currently, realizing that our existence on this planet as a species is getting lost for good and with all consequences. doing what is still possible to minimize the inevitable losses. and realizing that no single one of us can do it alone, we must make concert-ed efforts for a longer time. 

on this blog and elsewhere i have written a lot about Elaine Summers, Kinetic Awareness® and the nuance they enable. of course I am personally biased, since they worked so well for me. at the same time, this is what I  have worked on just about all my life and what I can offer, for when and where it may work well beyond my own limitations, not more and not less. 

fortunately I am not alone with this, on www.kineticawarenesscenter.org and www.elainesummersdance.com and www.skytime.org/skyworksnew.html there are many more for starters, as there are related people from all walks of life. as Dr. Jill Green stated in a paper on dance and discipline, the image is that of a tree, made up of many roots and many branches. there are many trees, many mycelia, and so on, all over this planet, at least still for now.