fin du siècle

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

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 ;-)

more moves! :-)

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

understanding the (post) modern revolution in dance

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

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

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)