Again, deeper sensitivity

Last weekend I could attend and perform at the evening "Atat de Frageda..." [So tender] in memory of extraordinary Romanian producer and key-figure for the development of contemporary art and dance Gabriela Tudor, who I was informed was an instrumental figure to establish many organisations in Romania and abroad and to foster artistic development and creativity, partly also with her husband, choreographer and executive director Cosmin Manolescu, a.o. The Cultural Foundation "Proiect DCM". Manolescu and fellow-choreographers Florin Fieroiou and Andreea Capitanescu also presented works, together with music performances by Harry Tavitian & Jürg Solothurnmann, as well as music-duo AIEVEA.

What struck me about the evening, but especially the presented dances, was a very special blend of crisp rational clarity with deeply embodied sensitivity manifested in the dancers as well as the choreographies. Whether it would be Fieroiou's dreamlike atmosphere, presented with excellent clarity by dancer Carmen Cotofana to a haunting soundscape by Vlaicu Golcea, or the almost quotidian movement/dance poetry of Andreea Capitanescu, who performed her piece herself. Even with Manolescu's more theatrical and pop-culture oriented work, there was this undercurrent of sensitive understanding, which got its moments to appear and be manifested in the moment of performance. His dancers, Madalina Dan, Paul Cimpoeira, Eduard Gabia, and Mircea Chinea showed clarity as well as kinesthetic centeredness and multiplicity that could go many ways, from playing tennis to articulating diverse levels of tension and dramatically aware presentation and interaction with the audience (both Dan and Gabia also choreograph works of their own as well)

I really wish I'd see dance like this more often, also here in my home in the Netherlands, but was also told that this was a very select group of people, due to the relation of the evening being a memorial for Gabriela Tudor and her amazing pioneering work for the arts. I thought at some point that this sensorial centeredness and rational clarity could be something envisioned and prepared by the original members of the Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s. In fact seeing the two solos I was reminded of the film-registration I'd seen of Yvonne Rainer performing the phrase from Trio A, which I find to be very vulnerable and poetic, even if I'd suspect that Rainer herself would strongly disagree with such a reading.

It seems to me like such a positive move to more sensitivity, less hard-edge is a sign of growing maturity, especially against the backdrop of ever more commercialised, non-vulnerable, or just appearing-vulnerable art, which fails to meet the demands ("Use it [well] or loose it") and creates ever more poverty and stress that exacerbate the conditions even more, a waste-land, socially, ecologically, emotionally. (But maybe for a happier society that is finally matured to be more anarchistic on the outside, due to more sophisticated discipline by each of its members on the inside, as hinted at in Ursual K. LeGuinn's "The Disposessed") Then, somewhere in the middle of that, somewhere a beginning of a flower - but without water...

I find it is a rare quality to meet artists who dare to say yes to their very unique kind of sensitivity and work it successfully into performances. This experience has encouraged me to take my own moves into this direction more seriously and create more personally related work. I believe that in order to reach at a successful embodiment of such sensitivity, it is necessary to no just say yes to being vulnerable, less hard-edge and 'representative' but also strength and work to give the specific situation and conditions what is needed to bring the moment and energy across for witnessing audiences.

New Killer Star

a song by David Bowie from 2003, for the vibes of a New New-Deal ...

See the great white scar
Over Battery Park
Then a flare glides over
But I won't look at that scar

Oh, my nuclear baby (One who spotted a star)
Oh, my idiot trance
All my idiot questions (Like the stars in your eyes)
Let's face the music and dance

Don't ever say I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready
I never said I'm better, I'm better, I'm better
Don't ever say I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready
I never said I'm better, I'm better, I'm better, I'm better than you

All the corners of the buildings
Who but we remember these?
The sidewalks and trees
I'm thinking now

I got a better way - I discovered a star
I got a better way - Ready, set, go
I got a better way - A new killer star
I got a better way - Ready, set, go

I got a better way - The stars in your eyes
I got a better way - Ready, set, go
I got a better way - I discovered a star
I got a better way - Ready, set, go

See my life in a comic
Like the way they did the Bible
With the bubbles and action
The little details in colour

First a horseback bomber (Who discovered a star)
Just a small thin chance
Like seeing Jesus on Dateline (Like the stars in your eyes)
Let's face the music and dance

You'll never say I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready
I never said I'm better, I'm better, I'm better
Don't ever say I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready
I never said I'm better, I'm better, I'm better, I'm better than you

All the corners of the buildings
Who but we remember these?
The sidewalks and trees
I'm thinking now

I got a better way - I discovered a star
I got a better way - Ready, set, go
I got a better way - A new killer star
I got a better way - Ready, set, go

I got a better way - The stars in your eyes
I got a better way - Ready, set, go
I got a better way - I discovered a star
I got a better way - Ready, set, go

The Story of Stuff

A very actual example for problems that come up when a thought-system is incomplete but has very real consequences for the real world:
The Story of Stuff 20 minute video performed by Annie Leonard.

There are several versions with subtitles in different languages available here:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. >>> SENT BY JULI GABOR working on her new kinds of dance in Denmark...

What it has to do with (new) dance?
i think it's quite simple:
dance too has its (thought) patterns and ideologies that are given from the older generation to the younger generation. And here, too, those thought patterns can create very real problems when they get put to practice, but don't really match too well with the actual situation: for example, the number of professional dancers in classical ballet and its modern derivates, who continue to work with serious injuries and a high level of pain, even when they are still in their education, is staggeringly high according to much research. So much for one kind of thinking ruining natural resources (kinesthetically driven imagination being one of them...)
Q.E.D. ...

another is the expectation-pattern of the mainstream that the energies of life would have to be canned into specifiable and recognizable dance and dramaturgy / drama / scenography patterns, presumably with very finitely rehearsed, often pre-fab derived dance vocabulary.
a lot of life-energy is put into these mechanisms - what's left for the moment of performance? how lively is such a piece in performance? how much individuality or orginality can be revealed, at the risk of being non-understandable?

how come that dance forms where individualism is not seen as important except for a few stars (e.g. in showdance) fare so well economically by comparison? (not necessarily when it comes to the wages of the dancers who participate in these circles, again unless they get to be a shining individual)?

and what about the laboratories where alternative kinds of dance are being developed and promoted? how much can they work towards a different future, how much are they bound by current mind-patterns and needs that are often those very left-overs from the past?...

* addition Feb. 10th:
all this said, I believe all the in-between choreographers who partly conform to standardized expectations, but manage to bring in their own liveliness, can be of extraordinary value in this situation. how much effect does their input have and what will be short-term and long-term effects. how long will it be sustainable for them and at what price?

collaborativeness, again, seems to be the winning strategy over merely just separation and seclusion.

per aspera ,,, ad astra :-)

long talk with Elaine Summers, for her show "Making Rainbows" at Anthology Film Archives, New York, March 28th starting 7pm

I realised that through my work as a human being, but also as a profesional in my field, I want to support those directions that help use our resources better, and I especially focus on the human bodymind, through Kinetic Awareness® and Open Form Composition.

With both I strive to express the delicacy of the human soul / spirit / mind at its most advanced and most refined, intelligent, lucky, intuitive.
To this means I improvise, as to catch the most ephemeral nuances and details, and let them live in the performance as much as possible. Open Form Composition helps me to approach this state by determining how much should be set to create a greater security in which this delicacy can be invited to happen and manifest itself in our present.

Kinetic Awareness® teaches me to re-search this delicacy in the million details of my body-mind sensations that happen when I move. By listening on and on, with hopefully ever more insight and understanding, and by moving from this listening with greater and greater sophistication, I hope to be able to become an embodiment of such delicacy and details, as well as energetic power, be it in the presence of it or openness for it.

This ability of using one's resources at the utmost, with great care, in a way that makes sense, given the current demands of our state as well, I believe we can get ready to approach to integrate the cosmic state of our universe better and better, through the most minute of details we can be capable of handling, noticing, sensing, dealing with, moving from and with....

Make it to the stars by noticing that one dimensional fold that will get us there in an easier way, being able to deal with being in space and left to our own resources more independent of the ecosystem of the planet on which we have developed.

The ethical side of it, as Mary O'Donnell-Fulkerson expresses in her coinage "ETHICAL REFORMATION" for this time, is just as important to me: to more and more incorporate the multidirectional vastness of the Universe into our own dimensions of living here, together, on this planet.

In that sense I believe that God or GOOD is the accumulation of what we learn from evolution that will get us further along that path of surviving in our existence well. (with ever the more abilities to realize our bodymind and its working ever more detailedly and fully)
And I believe that as we evolve also culturally, this is a changing understanding, actually a project-in-progress, of ever ongoing discovery, rather than a fixed entity or merely a projection as used by the less-mature self.

LOVE is another such project, we discover and refine it over the centuries, try out new possibilities and gather experience-data: does it work? does something else work better? in which circumstance? for which character? what about our biological heritage, how much does it count? when does it work well, when would we like to try an alternative? and how does that work out, short-term and long-term? etc. and so on and so on....

screentouch - ... touch

"dear members of DanceHotel!

here are two themes that interest me particularly:

1) the first is to develop a dance without knowing where it will lead, but based on what deeply fascinates and interests in the moment. the excitement should be sensory, rather than conceptual.

when I read about how Merce Cunningham developed his dances by following an inspiration, this finding out feels very alive and direct in the above senses.

2) the second interest i have is dance on video creating an experience very close to physical touch, especially as podcasts or IP-TV / digital television. how can we make dances that bring the kinesthetic experience as a physical one for the viewer - "screen touch" instead of touch screen ;-)

>> both ideas have something to do with immediacy, no layers or coating around the subject matter, but very direct experience, as otherwise in contact improvisation, for example. they also have to do with being and living now - not in some mental bubble from the past, removed from experience -- so.... :-) "
(posted on Facebook / DanceHotel, Dec. 23rd 2008)

a video i found while looking at a video by Asuka Yamaguchi


Senaka, by AsaChang & JunRae (Japan)
this video looks very interesting for me as for the second proposal, screen-touch
how does it give a sense of movement, even there are all of these many cuts, in a Cubist(?) kind of way.
I like the somewhat private sense of gestures, brought out to video - while she follows the music to great detail in its rhythm and phrasing. something similar, though even more minimal and less rhythmical was my interest for my part in bivak gloria, but it became the usual larger-scale dance...

I find noteworthy that because she is following the music so much with every beat, it becomes kind of easy to maintain a very close track of the timing of her movements, even though the camera view jumps from perspective to perspective all the time.

often it is the rupture in the exact organic timing of the movements which have had me definitely decide againts cuts in a video-recording of dance - it always feels rather jolted when the change of image artificially interrupts the flow of body-movement...
here it is somewhat different, even though the movement is very subjected to music, and the video does follow that, even though it changes perspectives all the time, and all looks very set in advance ...

the classical

so clear, so well-balanced that it can be a learning example, creating a class of its own, a league of its own. The Well-Tempered Piano, any masterpiece...

the result of a long process, often, though not necessarily often of a long creational process if regarded from the actual making itself. (?)

perhaps that in the pre-modern times, the mere making of anything (new) was special enough, a celebration, an object. it made a difference in the usual wilderness. no change even today :-) except that the "wilderness" includes a lot of human creation, or so may seem. what will make the difference and to whom?


today I reviewed the video-compilation of Elaine Summers' Hidden Forest, performed Aug. 23rd 2007 at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors in new York City.

it was a very new experience for me: so new that the first time I had this feeling of emptiness, not knowing what I was looking at - what was this, why was this interesting for me. even though I've appreciated and trusted Elaine over the years more than most, I couldn't follow her just yet.
especially since I had performed in the piece myself! ;-)

today it was a little different, a week later: I could see better what was happening in the near darkness, my brain obviously had done its homework. today I could enjoy watching and felt this deep connection growing to it, similar like what I've experience earlier when I started to listen to Laurie Anderson's music: growing affection, from a deeper, more mature place...

so if there is a new classical among us, a true classical of this time, where is s/he and who is it? and would I / we recognize her/him/them if we met, or their work? ...


about the wilderness:
despite all suggestions from the previous successes, and the atmosphere we try to create, of safety, love & happiness, our existence remains at its bottom as precarious as ever.
despite all ads & music & culture, and even though we do our best to shut out those that didn't make it as well, and try to escape being contaminated by their 'bad luck' their example lets us realize each time again that any luck is temporary, to be used when it happens. and that waste remains a loss, carelessness or indifference create debts in the long run. a ruined harvest still means famine to come.

if we dcn't act accordingly it happens once again...
if we force stronger and more violently, so will be the consequences

Open Form Composition - the aftermath

in the continuum created by the continued use & understanding of Open Form Composition any thoroughly 'set' composition in the older sense not only becomes questionable, but also a much more difficult thing to achieve - because of all the Open Form Solutions which I believe often can produce very similar results much more easily and with much more liveliness.

if this liveliness & intelligence in Open Form Composition is to be maintained, also the richness & depths of living, set compositions can get a totally new level of depth and sophistication. and I very much look forward to more & more achievements of such sophistication! :-) ...