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 already 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.

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, why, trying this out, finding out what works sustainably, by means of rehearsal, remains a basic task of choregraphy. 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. 

those 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 hollowed out, 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. 

EDGE (2000/2001)

revisiting this piece from 2000-2001 is a very good reminder. 

I had just turned 29, finally gotten to EDDC which had been a bridge too far back in 1992. the guest study was made financially possible because of a temporary government assistance program for artists living in the Netherlands. that kind of support and recognition meant the world for me, helped in the struggles with family who did what they could to be supportive but were still very much struggling to accept it all. 

being on edge, moving on edge, out of the safe but rather immobile comfort zone, into the present and danger, was very tantalizing for someone with the generational trauma of parents and grandparents (Hungarian refugees during and after both world wars) but it was also a Hic Rhodos Hic Salta opportunity, in the here and now, as imperfect, overcomplex and as under-rehearsed as it was.

the struggle I had with personal expression as very real, the blockage in my rib-cage ( "don't speak, don't feel yourself in the presence of others" ) was still very, very much active.

Meg Chang was right in her observation of me when she watched a rehearsal of In Circles back in New York in 1997, even the wide open loft space was still too small for my immense energy and drive, uncontainable. I recognize this drive in everything, and it could also wear out, destroy in the longer term, cut down. ( Ursula K. LeGuin, about "the creator spirit", in The Dispossessed)

here, the piece was epic, the ambitions could have filled an entire evening's performance, but had to be fit into a student performance evening at an institution, with very helpful and supportive colleagues who nonetheless were much younger than me and partly at different stages in their own art production. remember marvelling at how accomplished they all were and how relatively late to the party I felt myself to be. the musical environment, from personal artistic favorites, creating an open-form composition that I would move through, tested the very limited technical possibilities and working with and around it.

I can feel sympathy and solidarity for my younger self, a great deal. the drive has been given space to realize itself ever better, what I had been striving for for decades in part has finally been accomplished. a bit more relaxation, and finding some much needed further realization by being able to finally relax a bit, allow for time to happen, finding trust in the self, which has become more able to exist and express itself and communicate with others more effectively.

and I still keep going towards the edge of what is alive in the moment, as much as I can, as far as possible, but much more successfully and with more ecology in my practice to back up the work. in that sense I am finally catching up with some of my colleagues from back then. quoting an artist-friend, live and learn.

(no, I am not naked, I am wearing a silver-pailleted tanga that I bought in a sex-shop nearby)

as for the result in this VHS-copy of the VHS recording, the moments of helplessness, shortcomings, are just as much a part, the inability as much as the ability and the powerhouse that got much needed affirmation in the right kind of environment, comparable to what I understood Elaine Summers felt when she met and worked with the people who, together with her, later would be referred to as Judson Dance Theater.

i keep wondering these days if I should re-stage this work again, but so much has changed internally. this change would create a distance to the raw need at the time. the shape would be more as I wanted back then. how would I "re-visit" and restage the internal drive from back then? 

PS: this was part B that was not realized during the evening, it took a few years and it was recorded in 2005. The original intention had been to close the piecde with this solo, with the large projection of my handpalm and a rose towards the end. Alas, when the people clapped prematurely I stopped the performance instead of continuing. 

music, a plan for 2026

what does my body want to express without the holding form/lens of a specific piece of music? I have asked this question before. having become better and better over the years with form-u-lat-ing my dance to music, even creating more traditionally "set" choreographies, it may be time to focus on this question even more clearly and with more time and attention. how I am able to express myself personally, communicate (drama? theater?) may be an important component to explore and/or to avoid trappings of ( = becoming the same as music) at the same time. 

2026 here we come

#wintersolstice #stillness 
#reflections #decisions

 

dance, art, human beings, nature as commodity ... (entertainment, distraction, commercial interruption, nothing serious)

 a recent discussion with a lover prompted me to reflect more on my reservations about treating dance, art, human beings as entertainment, nothing serious, palatable, consumable. 

entertainment helps to distract, distance, disperse before closer contact and engagement could happen.

looking around the planet and what the consequences are to this very day, I do believe we must once again re-consider at what price, how far we are willing to go.

a very extreme example, but with the Epstein files in the US of A not so strange at all, most likely not recent or local either.

there is a lot more that can be said.
it is one thing to kill to eat, even to make it delicious and extra nutritious. one cell eating another etc. but the waste and scale make a difference. 

i believe those who will survive the current apocalypse may simply not get the resources to waste very much, on the contrary. (much like European Protestants during the small ice age)

sky stories, "empty sky", sky space - open

these days I have been working intensively on collecting sky-stories and traditions from several more regions and belief systems, very aware how sketchy and singular any such single collection will be. 

stepping out on the balcony I took a moment to allow in the sense of the open late-evening summer sky, the (cirrus?)clouds very light, moving a little faster, while it's getting dark. 

after so many days connected and connecting to the laptop or the phone for communications it was good to have a moment with nothing else happening but clouds moving above me and a wide open sky. 

(I finally understood why on this planet most of us see the sky as blue, plants as green) (link to the video)

the traditional names for sky in Chinese and Japanese both have notions of "space, void" in the characters, and "tall" and "large" 天 空 (link to the entire word) it felt good to have a moment of relative void, especially after so many languages, drawings, assumption-opinions, cultural formations. cultural patterns form so much of what we perceive, even when we attempt to not perceive anything in particular. 

i also learned that there may be a connection between the English word sky and the German word scheu for reticient, withholding, cloaking, eschewing. an interesting relation to the experience of vast void open, space where movement and a sense of freedom, as in flying can happen. 

19 June 2025

there is no need to do everything for everyone else, the right kinds of instigation can be enough for more people to notice more easily, pointers, indices, even if these days an endlessly ongoing stream may seem possible (it isn't there are some very finite resources) if this project helps more of us realize, it will be working. 

the imperfections and shortcomings can inspire how to do better. (alas there remains the power-imbalance of knowledge & understanding versus might-makes-right)  

this working with awareness, may be Elaine Summers' most powerful legacy for us all, the most inclusive and connective, echoing what Dr. Rebecca Loukes has written recently about her Kinetic Awareness practice, the empty space in which something can happen. 

if during your 24 hours of skytime you are noticing the sky, looking at a sky-photo or video, a webcam showing the sky, talk about the sky, notice a weather-report slightly differently, ... then it's skytime 

"the sky is ours all together
consider the wonders of it all!" 

Elaine Summers, 1995

     

www.skytime.org  

skytime NOW

it took me until this afternoon, after yet another nap, to finally realize physically that the 24-hour edition of Skytime by Elaine Summers for her Centennial will begin Sunday next week (!)  

only now can I feel with my body how long it will be until then, how many more days until the moment has come and the sun rises over the Chatham islands of Aotearoa, New Zealand at 8.06h local time which will be 21.21h local time here. 

perhaps this is why my body is preparing so clearly for a marathon, as has been planned.

time to cut corners and face what is still manageable and realistic. 

and get ready for the big day ...  

#skytime #ElaineSummers #ElaineSummersCentennial #SkytimeAYearAndADay 

for Jessica Denson and NowMarch in the US of A

the conceptual artist is the last resort: there is no way, at present to fully realize the idea, the concept - but the idea itself, is already art, and there can be ways to share it, hint at it, no matter how minuscule. in the worst case the effect is also so minuscule that it will be bypassed by people's expectations. but still, even then, the difference has been made. 

today I reviewed "popERA" from 2000 which furthered my opening to theater and performance art and political and social change. the tactic of the vignettes put to pieces of music, often using minimal means at times, resonates with the protests by Jessica Denson and the #NowMarch #14Now today and until January 6th https://nowmarch.org 

* Ms Denson by her looks and character and by her work and achievements would be a perfect dancer for "Jezebel" based on the song by Brian Eno and David Byrne : On a suggested catwalk, various kinds of extremely beautiful young, feminizable-looking people (by more 'traditional' beauty standards) keep walking up and down, coming close to the public, posing, then walking back, like in a fashion show, all wearing variations of clothing that has prints of what is also projected on the walls all over, visual renditions of two works Miklós Váci's, namely the sentence "but can't you see how much I love you" in Braille, ... 

in the same way, Ms Denson is pleading with her fellow-country people, protesting against the illegal installation of the Trump (or as Timothy Snyder quipped in best Queen-Fashion, the Mump[s]) regime, despite the 14th Amendment to the US constitution, section 3 which states clearly that no one shall be admitted to office who, having sworn and oath to the constitution then engaged in insurrection against it. 

of course Black people in the same US of A can claim from the beginning that when did White Americans and their Latin/Hispanic, Indian- and other adjacent populations ever get their legal rights, and then the First Nations on Turtle Island and the treaties made with them. However all of the above will bode even worse, also for these people-groups, because the regime of Trump will not only destabilize the US of A and all in its grip, but also tip the balance in favor of the facist heirs of feudal EurAsia, with no other power left to balance Hitler, Stalin, Putin, Xi, Modi, Kim, etc. #catastrophictippingpoint

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.

worldwide Gay and Queer alternative theater by the 1970s ... where are they now?

yesterday I had the deep pleasure of attending the performance of Flamencoqueer (instagram) from Barcelona at gallery Joey Ramone in Rotterdam for their finissage with visual artist Anna Moreno (instagram). it was a wonderful and very powerful experience, the second performance even partly became an intermedia-event, where the live performance of the dancer & musician on the installation directly interacted with the dance on film/video that kept being projected. 

Anna told me later that in the 1970s Barcelona had known an entire scene of Gay and queer flamenco dancers, but that with ever more touristification they eventually vanished for straight(ened out?) "traditional" interpretations.

this morning I realized that this era had indeed seen quite a bit of Gay and Queer "Dionysian" theater and dance worldwide, from the Cockettes in San Francisco, to Dzi Croquettes in Rio de Janeiro to Lindsay Kemp in London (his students David Bowie/Ziggy Startdust and Kate Bush made commercially successful crossovers into pop-music ... ) let alone the Radical Faeries in the US. there was Studio 54 and Disco Music. all gone. 

only Butoh in Japan seems to have survived, the Radical Faeries went underground, too many died during the AIDS epidemic but had no followers. the ballroom scene in Harlem and the greater US of A on Turtle Island, largely remained underground until the 1990s.

these days there are remnants and re-vivals, even commercially exploited re-discoveries (e.g. of Julius Eastman, James Baldwin) but times have changed and become if anything more mercilessly commercial, often superficial, making a living has become a lot more cut-throat, even for those of us in the Global North of the European colonizing countries.

Art, hope, dance, mo(ve)ment ...

How conversations can go:

Just this afternoon my colleague Elie Nassar and I talked about unravelling societies and breaking down of systems meant for survival. How to survive what feels like a new 'Ancien Regime': an environmentally, financially, and otherwise untenable group of people whose continued actions are ruining everything on a planetary scale, destroying our very species, for a culture of goals that are literally insane, even if presently they may seem the pinnacle of Power. (so were once National/Socialists, Kings, Religious quests etc.)

And then to enjoy these 30 minutes of "Art resisting/despite War" by ARTE, featuring my colleague Tebby WT RAMASIKE working with fellow-South African visual artist Bruce Clarke, on a site of terror in #Kaunas #EuropeanCulturalCapital2022 (around 13min11 into the video)

https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/105616-007-A/twist/

Reminded that #GeorgeMaciunas who originated the rather spritely-adverse-humorous #Fluxus came from Kaunas. The 1/3 Jewish population of Lithuania that has literally been exterminated during Nazi-Occupation, save for those who like Clarke's or #WilliamKentridge 's grandparents could escape.

The presented works of Aiste Ramunaite can remind anyone of #CoBrA in Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium after WWII : spontaneity, organic forms, colorist, elements from substrate (folk) art that survived Christianization, even linear Rationality, in a strikingly similar language.

Not mentioned here, Lithuania is a key #EU country working more closely with and towards officially recognizing #Taiwan. By doing this, it is now on a global axis point between two "opening" countries on the planet, (#Ukraine is the other) each threatened in its existence by an Imperialist Old Power at its borders, also two of the BRICS, unfortunately, several of whom are currently governed disastrously by Populist Presidents.

//

Art can do a lot, and it was good to be reminded of art that was created in Lithuania during Soviet Occupation. Personal, momentary, small-scale, furtive, unofficial, open-ended, immersive, direct. Dance, coming from our experience of our moving bodymindbeings, originally a tangible art-form, can lead us back there, again & again. (which explains why it is so heavily regulated, censored, kept in formula, guarded jealously)

Quoting East-German writer Christa Wolf in Kassandra from 1983 : "It is the other, which they squeeze between their sharp distinctions, the Third, which in their opinion does not even exist, the smiling living, which is able to ever again bring itself forth from itself, the undivided, spirit in living, living in spirit."

And so, the work goes on.

a response to a paper by Simona Noja-Nebyla via Academia.edu

(contribution to discussion of the paper "Approaching Ballet Education Core in the 21st Century)


Dear Simona Noja-Nebyla,

Thank you very much for your generous invitation. As there are only 11 hours left for me to comment and just before I was about to go to sleep, my contributions will have to remain superficial, given with the aim to honor the invitation.

Indeed why and which aspects to preserve, maintain, keep developing? Several approaches from the same cultural zone have emerged, enriched the options.

I would invite us to treat whatever anyone of us prefer to think of as ballet as a set of related dance languages. These have evolved over time, like any other language, including English, changed considerably, reflecting social developments, sometimes galvanizing them.

The roots of what is considered ballet I would trace as much longer reaching historically than a mere 360 years, which in human terms is, more or less, one empire. As recent empires that have emanated from the European subcontinent are dissolving into something else (decolonization etc.) so comes the question of what will be maintained, by who, and for what purpose.

One comparable development may be that of Latin into the Romance languages, based on the popular, "vulgar", not the elite "classical" variance.

Today, many use the vocabulary, but often with very different substrates, underlying concepts. Just think of the epochal difference between Merce Cunningham's adaptation of what he learned as ballet-vocabulary into his own way of dancing, via the variation created by Martha Graham in the US of A, again very different from the aims of Alvin Ailey and Janet Collins. And we haven't even begun to look into related contemporary dance languages.

Status, power, imperial more than not, may very much be one of the drives, being recognized as Kings and Queens, top of the heap, having made it socio-economically, speaking the language of the Dominators. Decolonization on the one hand, Afro-/American/European/Asian dancers claiming to be just as proficient and recognized in this language as a current process on the other.

All that said, I deeply believe that every language, every dialect has their innate wisdom and usefulness, and so it is good if enough people dedicate their lives to studying a very specific language, others in sharing insights from this knowledge with others.

The many dance technical aspects of what has been derived from Classical European-formed ballet, has fortunately been challenged to the core, with what is now often referred to as Somatic Dance Techniques as an invaluable gift from the late 20th century.

Perhaps the mere kinds of mono-linear figures and forms & sequences could be interesting, comparably to the chromatic 12-tone system that has been formulated from the European cultural zone. (again in response to and dialogue with Persian, Indian, Chinese, Afro-American, and other musical developments)

For a contemporary society that has finally understood and internalized the necessity of organic connectedness, mycelial, dynamic, ever growing, creating single lines in time/space, as happens in ballet-related languages, can be a welcome option for expression.

Of the current human languages, as we enter what is currently felt to be decolonization, two, English and Spanish, followed on a further place by French stem very directly from the hybridization of Latin with various Gallo-Germanic tribes-languages and dialects.

Perhaps that is a more interesting note to end on.
I hope this was useful to read.

Best of luck!
Thomas Körtvélyessy,
Rotterdam, the Netherlands
April 23, 2022

lessons from "Raven Kassandra"

in many ways, revisiting and further developing "Raven" after its inception at Elaine Summers Dance & Film Co. / Kinetic Awareness® Center, 2005 and its first climax in 2009 at the National Dance Center in Bucharest, Romania, helped me complement & understand a lot, deeper, better.
it does make sense, the acronym BUILD (Better Understanding Involves Learning and Doing ) ...

revisiting the black series
the central equation of the piece is 1 over 0 = existence over non-existence, creating movement / process > presence vs. poetry (shaped expression)

this formula is also the base for the entire black series, of which this dance is a part. the black color could be inspired by the black clothing code of 20th century Existentialists, 1980s New Wavers. but even more importantly black as the radical absence of light, hinting at nothingness. (in 2013 I finally explored black as in Blackness, within the same series) 

none of these choices were very conscious: inspired by Meret Oppenheim, I always took the freedom to realize the pieces as they came to mind, including those that would form the austere, daunting, black series, the dark forces of nature. this existential series is always theatrical, fully absorbing, at times hermetic, cutting, austere, dramatic, but also present in the here and now of the performing moment. (like just about all of my work) 

 

no more "cold-starts" into a project
I realized while preparing for the performance that having continuously done cold-starts with the project-choreographies has been as harmful in the long term as it would be with the dancing body. 

spoken text (voice) vs. movement (text)
delving into the text "Kassandra" by Christa Wolf, exploring it in translation, from German to English, from meaning into presence, movement, props, persona's, became a main feature of the resulting performance.

elements that help to create communication in the moment
each part of the text that I decided on during the rehearsals got its costume (from just about every performance of works from the black series) 

one part already had specific lighting, the scene where Kassandra dreams of the God Apollon, giving her the gift of prophecy, but then wanting to have sex with her as a reward ...

during the performance
the drama, talking, (Tanz-)theater became very prominent, lots of spoken words, bringing me on edge as a performer, because as an actor I have little training when it comes to using my vocal chords for speaking in public. 

fortunately the speaking did not completely push back all other movements, I could dive (back) into  a continuum where movement would happen "naturally" on its own flow, at times going together with the speaking, at other times more autonomous. 

a sober cover for underlying mystery
I was surprised at my overall sobriety before, during and after the performance. I felt very matter of fact, despite the rather dramatic and existential topic and content.

the outbreaks of movement were - except towards the end- mainly "uncontrolled", uncensored, the most simple, unrestrained stream of movement. not unlike the prophetess getting overwhelmed by that piping, shrieking, ghastly little voice, hanging over her and wailing, screaming ... 

a better balance between the two extremes, ideally shaping in the moment would be good.

the outstretched arms to the side had been a very clear moment that I knew would be a corner-stone of this performance, and I am glad that I found a way into enacting them. it is very nice to have gotten a better understanding of the degree of form-alisation of action into poetry, specific words, nouns, compounds that are created to be holding specific moments of meaning. 

towards the end I did quite consciously re-enact rather specific movements from the very beginning of the Raven in 2005 : a quick contretemps of the hands and arms, triggering a vertical lunge/fall/precipice of the entire body downward. if I kept working more on this piece, listen to the dance more, would more pre-set movements emerge that would help re-enact the dance as itself? 

I was also surprised how much my voice became an exact reproduction of how I spoke the final words during the recorded performance in Bucharest.

resisting women, female resistance and silencing

countering innovation, (post)modernism

there was no music at any time in this piece, except an audio-recording of activist and co-founder of Code Pink, Medea Benjamin, as she publicly denounced, ridiculed and exposed the ... shortcomings(?) of a right-wing ThinkTank defending the unilateral annihilation of the Iran Nuclear Deal by then-US president Donald Trump. I am not an uncritical admirer of her political views, but I loved how she just got up in the middle of a "serious" military meeting and started to deflate and debunk it, speaking a plain language, speaking her truth to power.

one direction that would interest me further is to explore is my long involvement with resisting, dissenting women (artists) who as often as not were downplayed and marginalised by their contemporaries: Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Meret Oppenheim, Gertrude Stein, ... and/or in dance more recently Anna Halprin, Elaine Summers, Mary O'Donnell-Fulkerson, Mary Overlie, to name just a few. (update: later this year, bell hooks passed away, again an important voice who spoke out, against comfortable notions of any kind, an early advocate of James Baldwin as a Black Gay writer and thinker who just like her, prepared us for intersectionality)

these women clearly said no to then-dominant narratives that were kept over their chosen profession, they refused to give in and were in turn often bypassed, ridiculed, ignored, simply not mentioned more widely, despite their innovative achievements and hard work. 

somewhat the paths that they forged, are now more accepted and understood, even taken for granted, even if they themselves are often as not still glossed over, "forgotten", not mentioned in favour of (male) (White) and/or more recent colleagues. but their potential is still a challenge for most of us, today.

obviously there is a very patriarchal context: in a society where people who are categorised as women get blacked out by custom and design, they can be more prone to dissent and alternatives to the mainstream. (Gay men and non-genderconforming people alongside with them) but we must not forget that patriarchy is in no way more 'natural' or Goddess-given than sexual differences.

a living talking dancing book?
if I do it often enough, I could indeed become a living interpreter of the book "Kassandra", a medium interpreter, quoting each time what is the most fitting for the moment. my physicality and personality can co-create a very full, but not unbiased continuation, ... or bring my audience to read the book? (the English translation, is it good enough??)

thanks to close:
before the final rehearsal period, I had been in Berlin to present a work by Elaine Summers at POOL Shine New York Traces. (link here) that weekend, on Sunday morning, I had a long and important conversation with Yoshiko Chuma when we took a walk in a nearby park. the artistic directors of the festival, Wibke Janssen and Sara Möller also contributed directly to the inspiration of this performance. thank you!

it was also very inspiring to have Julia Hoza who came as part of her last year at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna, Austria (MUK) come to follow the rehearsal process as an understudy. we talked a lot, also about both being diasporic, 2nd generation, having roots from pretty much the same region between Romania, Ukraine, and Hungary, hers Romanian, mine Hungarian and German.

with all of the above, the piece came back to itself.
thanks to Anthony Hüseyin for curating the evening, all at Ubik/Worm who made it possible, the fellow performance artists, Cuartito Azul for the safe and workable rehearsal space, A. Enser and all supporters.

videos & webpage:
https://realdancecompany.org/raven-kassandra.html

pain and trauma: Butoh, Kinetic Awareness® and political dance

today I finally got to work on my own spine again and noticed how a kind of 'cake' had formed around it, made of residual / habitual tension: it eased but at some level also constricted functioning. 

practicing Kinetic Awareness® and the ball-work I was able to finally address my spine without expectations, listen openly, not demand it to feel in a certain way or to move, if at all, at a certain speed, or ability/agility. instead I could leave it be, give it space, listen to it, gently allow myself to open up when I noticed I was moving at a speed (still slow, but noticeable and continuous, and mentally at a quite fast pace)

once again I realize how with Butoh, any potential restrictions are potentially undone, opened up, should not have to be confined in any way. this liberating potential, openness to being in connection with the environment & people remains an important challenge against norms & habits.

WITH YOU - dancing for peace in Myanmar - collaboration lead by kiori kawai on Vimeo.

as in more recent projects, I could also feel how relatively unharmed my spine, my central nervous system had been for the last 30 years of adulthood = no trauma, no hits (ok, one fall, of my own accord, in 2007)

* original song with footage from Myanmar https://youtu.be/zYqCSWMvD8Q


confronted with ongoing trauma and violence, from beatings to pushbacks, state terror, torture, sometimes over generations, what can be an honest and still emphatic response? (how) can I express solidarity, that I am moved by this suffering, without creating a shortcoming or travesty?

is it okay to work with my own traumatic experiences, apply them to a role, to give my hint towards what more there may be, but not pretending it was I who was made to suffer violation? or is it even a duty, since I happen to free enough of such trauma that I even can begin to speak of it, exactly because I am no longer in the middle of it being (re-)inflicted? 

dancing snowflakes ...

as the first snow of the year 2021 is falling in Rotterdam right now, I am reminded again of the hundreds of refugees who are still left to die away from freezing as I am writing this post, in ever new waves of people, year in year out, now in makeshift camps in Camp #Lipa in Bosnia-Hercegovina, or on #sosmoria, all literally left in the cold by our murderous longterm impotence indifference including #EU and also very notably the recent #Dutch governments.

* the Dutch cabinet resigned officially yesterday, after they no longer could hide that under their responsibility ca. 20.000 families had been systematically racially and ethnically profiled and aggressively financially ruined by bureaucrats of the neoliberalized Dutch "welfare" system. if it hadn't been for internal officers like Sandra Palmen, let alone lawyer Eva González Pérez, and continued attempts to work against being silenced, finally taken up widely by more mainstream White-oriented media, all too often casually 'forgetting' to name the ethnic profiling part, they still may be left alone today. also notable: no matter how much they already had suffered from the "missteps" of this "affair", they can apparently receive no compensations, before May ...

 

as much as I can accept the subjectively innocent magic of The Nutcracker ballet in its countless variations, deemed the "right" tradition, justified, high-culture, and especially the much better preserved music by Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, with its Romantic and unmistakeably Gay vibes from my childhood, it gets an especially multiple dimension today, ... after all, when this ballet was performed, millions of people, all over then the Russian Czar's Empire were equally and literally left out in the cold, ignored by those who got to watch and enjoy the ballet, in the relatively heated and comfortable theatre.... #lecharmediscretdelanostalgie  (link)

today one could re-imagine this part with all of the above dimensions, including #WhiteFragility the #snowflake trope , geometric mass-dancing of the (*all white) (female) corps de ballet, all silently echoing the coldheartedness of haves versus have-nots, who as the latter are made out-of-sight-out-of-mind, at least for a moment. and still find a way to evoke what magic had been conjured by the original dance, since it, too, was and continuesto be a given.

it could become a very interesting choreographic challenge to rise to. 

instead, I begin with this already very different variation by Maurice Béjart, the Marseille-born choreographer, who went on to feed Belgian, Northern French, and Swiss cultures with his highly sophisticated and crafted emotion-evoking intelligently entertaining arts and spectacles, based on aristocratic variations of what had once been peasant dance moves. notice the various cultural tweaks around race, gender & class in this part, as he revisits his own childhood ...

As visual artist Jean-Ulrick Désert said recently, it is all happening at the same time, valid and effective simultaneously, ... and it all works, together ...

* PS from June 4th, 2022

#WarUkraine
#artistresistance
#UseofRussianBallet