lightness - progress (modernism & further...)

continuing an earlier thought from
>> les enfants du paradis <<

as we understand the world we inherit from our parents better, more fully & deeply, and become more skilled to deal with its phenomena, we are more & more potentially able to make our cultural patterns lighter as well, more transparent, more complex, permeable, to fit more situations that become apparent to us as important to be able to deal with successfully, in our sense.

every time our parent's generation managed to fulfill a certain movement more completely, a dream, an urge, we as the next generation are freed to sense more completely what the new consequences & possibilities are.

it makes the ongoing cultural patterns less heavy and absolute, seemingly less formal.
on the surface this might seem like decay, or a step back towards "non-form", anarchy, being uncontrollable animals.


in fact it is on the contrary:
we can incorporate more of our animal-condition, while at the same time we could have more options for what to do.

and it challenges us inhowfar we still wish to reach sometimes the rigour, the remoteness, hinted at by earlier states of know-how. (of course over time the structures have become so refined that they simply disappear and get absorbed - maybe like in the Chinese language, the now monosyllabic words have once been many-syllabic...)



if continued long enough, this development can lead us into a further understanding of the empty outer space around us, not only physically and mentally, but also spiritually.

and maybe we can realise more how many values we are currently about to loose so much due to careless neglect, because we are not yet able to efficiently deal with the paradisical abundance that we've inherited, or the multitudinal construct of paradise / nature and our culture(s) growing within it/them. partly because from the old, more simple perceptions and patterns into consciousness, this loss is not necessarily realised or understood as such, because of being as yet too involved with one's local conditions and fails to think and act beyond them (global-local.. universal ...)

in dance this development happens the same, as it does in music:
from very simple structures in contrast to the complex non-created environment
to gradually accepting more & more variations as valid and interesting options.

as a result: in the case of true mastery - greater & greater ranges of possible rigour and freedom. wider & wider scales of recognizing and shaping ongoing patterns, structures, processes over space and time.

more & more response-ability ...

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.