‘This is really beautiful’:
un-endangering dancing identities in 21st Century performance
Malaika Sarco-Thomas
19 April 2017
presentation at Dance Fields Conference, Roehampton University London
Introduction
How does making dance make dancers?
Today I would like to look at the notion of dancing identities as considered through
creative processes of three choreographers who worked with the third year students of
the Bachelor of Dance Studies course at the University of Malta’s School of
Performing Arts, to develop dances on the theme of 21st Century Identities. The works
toured to theatres in Malta and the UK in November 2016. [poster]
My questions include:
•
•
•
How are dancing identities formed through creative experience, and how does
this impact the development of artists?
How does the ‘conceptual personae’ of a dance—the suggestions, possibilities
and potentialities—impact notions dancers have about their own
potentialities?
What do their approaches reveal about the (post-humanist?) values of these
21st century choreographers?
In Moving Together: Theorizing and Making Contemporary Dance sociologist Rudi
Laermans proposes a framework for understanding post-humanist choreographic
process as ones which recognizes the significance of non-human actors including
light, sound, dancers, audience in giving rise to the dance. The status of these ‘active
forces’ which ‘co-direct both the general course and the spectator’s experience of the
dance work’ are named ‘conceptual personae’ in that they are anonymous actors
which influence the direction the performance takes, in its fleeting event (2015: 221).
The conceptual personae guides its ‘sensuous counterpart’, the dance we experience,
with each choreography giving a different result. The same could be said for an
individual’s values guiding his performed identity. In the following analysis, I
consider how implicit values about contemporary dancing identities might be
understood through the creation of choreography. [show slides of choreographers and
images of each work]
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I look briefly at background, starting points, working processes and outcomes of
several works from the tour. The programme included four pieces: 1565,
choreographed by Avatara Ayuso (Spanish based in London) refers to the year of the
Great Siege of Malta, includes a knight commanding an armada, a violent battle
scene, and finishes with overlapping solos talking about life in Malta. Evil Hug by
Nora Horvath and Mate Meszaros from Hungary features seven dancers walking and
manipulating one another with a casual manner but unexpected timings. Anceps by
Patrick Laera (Maltese and Italian) is a trio depicting the memories of an immigrant to
Malta through three personae. Roberto Olivan’s Takudixxi, an old Maltese word for
‘to take care of’ finishes the show. It begins with five separate duets, each telling a
different story about life in Malta: traffic, boyfriends, getting lost at sea. A group
scene of wild and intricate moving chaos is spiced with a tangle of unexpected lifts
and builds into a tornado around a main character who pushes out, exploding into a
‘lose yourself ‘solo.
Background
In 2014 I was fortunate to join the Dance Studies programme at the University of
Malta’s School of Performing Arts where Professor Jo Butterworth’s vision in
creating a dance studies course that imbricated theory and practice included the study
unit, Professional Practice in Performance, giving third years the experience of
devising work with a professional choreographer and touring. [show rehearsal image]
As artistic director of the 2016 tour I chose the theme ‘21st Century Identities’ to
address themes current to Malta, and an increasingly xenophobic Europe. The idea of
‘a Maltese identity’ has been a popular discussion point for arts and culture in Malta
since my arrival, particularly in light of the vision of Malta’s first National Dance
Company: ZfinMalta Dance Ensemble, with Mavin Khoo as artistic director (Khoo
2014). Malta, a small island south of Sicily [show slide] is a nation was nearly
continually under foreign occupation (most notably the Knights of St John, the
French, and the British) before its independence in 1964. Maltese and English are
official languages, and university students and lecturers are Maltese and international.
As a newcomer from the USA, UK and Brussels, I wanted to open up a dialogue on
21st Century identities with a focus on Malta. Secondly, I wanted to subtly raise a
second question around post-humanist performance, considering to what degree
dancers may undergo a process through which they relate differently to a sense of
place, environment, technical practice, movement, or history. [Laermans slide] If, as
Laermans proposes, ‘the relationship between the choreographer and dancers
represents a specific artistic attention regime that is at once authorial and
authorising’ (2015: 302, emphasis in original), then choreographic processes have
much to offer the development of different modes of attention, including attention to
identity.
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I selected choreographers whom I thought would inspire the dancers, but also for their
background, and willingness to work collaboratively with professionals-in-training.
They come from years working with icons Shobana Jeyasingh, William Forsythe,
Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Wim Vandekeybus. I propose that their different
approaches illustrate attentive ways of ‘un-endangering dancing identities’,
supporting the emergence of a singularity, which sees ‘dancing’ as a diverse, but
thriving 21st Century art.
3. Histories and approaches
Choreographers were different nationalities, the dancers were three Maltese, two
Hungarian, one Spanish, one American, one Italian, one Dutch, and one Danish, and
were guided by my colleague Sara Accettura (Italian) as rehearsal director. In
responding to the theme I encouraged them to consider Maltese music, history and
daily life. Ultimately only Laera chose an existing Maltese piece of music, and a
Brazilian track. Olivan recruited two music students from the School of Performing
Arts, whom he guided in constructing an original score for Takudixxi. Ayuso worked
with a Philip Glass piece, and Meszaros and Horvath composed in silence.
In interview, Ayuso, Olivan, and Meszaros & Horvath commented on the impact of
mentors on their approaches to creation. Ayuso’s discussion of Forsythe and
Jeyasingh focuses on how they value precision and skillfully organize space with
counterpoint, mathematics and musicality. She also cites the importance of how they
work with the dancers using certain movement principles in order to develop and
clean material, which leads to trusting the dancers fully in the process. She
emphasized the importance of taking the first half of the devising period to introduce
her movement principles, in order to develop a shared language the dancers could use
to develop their own movement. [show list] Ayuso’s seven movement principles are
reminiscent of Forsythe’s improvisation technologies—torsions, isolation,
dissociation, non-holistic movement, and extremes—exploring these leads to precise,
unusual shapes and surprising transitions.
Meszaros spoke of the strong focus on partnering in his work with Wim
Vandekeybus, and how this raw physicality and immediacy of action-reaction forges
a particular kind of connection in movement that interests him. In his recent
collaborations with Horvath the two have aimed to pare down contact and
improvisation skills to find a more ‘simple’ or immediate, but unaffected quality of
manipulation that carries through to explorations of walking and running.
Olivan, the most experienced director of the three, acknowledges that his use of
structures as a starting point for constructing complex systems of movement draws on
de Keersmaker’s approach, though the movement he develops brings a much greater
focus to the speed and virtuosity of its execution than a detailed study of musicality
per se. In the short creation period the dancers were fully occupied with problemsolving while moving at speed, and working out the complexity of a two-part phrase
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of ‘stepping’ material: half the dancers executed a long and intricate floor phrase
(created from accumulating material made by each dancer that kept hands and feet
mostly on the floor) while a second group jumped and stepped around them, as if they
were trying to ‘catch a butterfly’ with their feet. As the ‘stepping’ continues, partners
shift places and change partners without slackening the escalating momentum of the
scene.
[show stepping]
2. Governing attention in rehearsal: opening dancers’ sense of identity
Each choreographer modulated attention (to dancing identities) in different ways.
[slide] Laermans suggests that creating ‘choreography in general’ requires wielding
power in a Foucauldian sense: through ‘the art of capturing and modulating, of
governing the public’s sensory attention’ as a ‘genuine mode of performativity’
(2008: 13). This power is also wielded throughout the creation process, establishing
the values that underpin the performance’s realisation. Building this ‘conceptual
personae’ relies on capturing the attention, creative interest and respect of the dancers.
In the studio, I felt everyone’s interest pique when Olivan would raise his eyebrows
and say, ‘wow-wow-we-wow-wow, this is really beautiful’ in response to a moment
shared, or Meszaros would assess a sequence that emerged through its action-reaction
clarity by saying ‘…and I think this is really cool’. Once, during the ‘sea section’,
Ayuso said to the group, ‘I think this is one of the most beautiful images I have
created’. [show clip] Through these simple expressions of excitement the
choreographers shared their own identities with the group, building trust and
understanding for their aesthetic interests.
Ayuso collected responses from the dancers to certain questions, such as ‘what is it to
be Maltese and how do you perceive the Maltese?’ and had dancers develop some of
the topics into monologues that overlap in the last scene to address beaches, churches,
the party scene, Maltese cuisine. One voice is heard above the rest: Keiser-Neilsen’s
discusses immigration, laying into the system that put a €650,000 price tag on a
Maltese passport for foreigners who can afford it. [clip] Ayuso also worked only with
movement developed by the dancers themselves, refusing to ‘give steps’, and instead
made suggestions or coached solo, duet and trio tasks based on the principles.
Olivan’s approach was highly physical and highly personal. He worked to shake the
movers into something primal, out of moving from familiarity, habit or complacence;
he would say:
Try to keep always this spicy, this spicy attitude.
As soon as we arrive, there is one fraction of a second of waiting, and then boom!
I see donk, donk, and I want to see bam-bam. (16 Oct 2016)
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Preparation set the conditions for Olivan’s creation. [slide tasks] He gave tasks that
enabled him to know more about each dancer. In addition to making a ten-second
floor phrase and telling a funny story about an experience in Malta, he asked them
each to name: a song that was special and unique for them in this moment, a list of
their worries concerns these days (both small and existential), and a wish to do
something onstage that they had never done before.
A meme he introduced was the importance of being ‘human’ in movement—moving
without affect. In class he shook people out of their state of sleepiness by initiating
bouncing before dancing: ‘and bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce’ he’d say, or he
would illustrate the difference between being ‘a contemporary dancer’ and ‘a human’
by showing the slight length in the spine and stiffness in the chest that often
accompanies performativity, imploring the dancers to ‘be human’ (Olivan 2016).
Olivan celebrated the dancers’ humanness with his interest in their individual
perspectives, and also showed clips of performances that he found special, to let them
learn about him. He spoke to me in interview about the ‘small details’ which for him
speak most fluently about identity.
Now identity, identity, let’s start by who and how do you think. What do you
eat and why? I don't know, small details. And through these small details,
identity will be discovered. (Olivan 2016)
The dancers responded very warmly to his intense approach, and gave glowing
accounts of the process. [slide of student comments]
The atmosphere of Meszaros and Horvath’s process was a contrast; instead of pushing
for extremes of physicality they worked on neutrality and functionality of touch, not
‘broadcasting’ one’s intentions, and sensing the social network of the group as an
integrated system of singularities. Based on walking and manipulating, the piece
involves eight dancers always on stage, and starts with an improvised walk of coming
in, sitting down, laying down, standing. They instruct: [slide]
M: It’s really about composition, and feeling the group. You have to really think
about the rhythm. And if you see a movement in space you can relate to it with
your own rhythm.
N: Neutral, neutral, neutral. It’s like on the street, really. You can move your
head, breathe, like all the things. You can make eye contact. Neutral, neutral.
Meszaros and Horvath set up a reflexive rehearsal system in which the practicing of
the improvisation elements of the piece would draw the group into a state of listening
and responding easily and immediately with functionality rather than tension. This
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gave the main responsibility for the development of the work to the dancers
themselves.
3. audience response to the works
Responses to the works were largely favourable, though it became clear that the issue
of Maltese identity, or 21st century identities as felt through people living in Malta,
was a complex point for some. At the Malta premiere, anecdotes (told by foreign
dancers) about Malta’s manic roads and immigration policies, but judging from
audience laughter resonated for many. UK audiences appreciated the extreme
physicality of the two group works, the poignancy of the trio Anceps, and glimpses of
Malta.
To summarise, the degree to which 21st Century Identities were revealed or unsettled
through dancing remains, like identities, unfinished. Ayuso expressed appreciation
that 1565 caused debate about Maltese-ness and the role of art as a critical or political
voice (Ayuso 2016). As intended, the project stretched the dancers beyond comfy
patterns of moving, speaking and collaborating. For contemporary dance education,
modes of working which mobilize the singularity of the individual dance artist are
imperative, and can spell the success of a training-based performance project relevant
to the 21st Century. Each of the processes studied here drew on the dancers to create
and perform vocabulary, which was then managed through a conceptual persona, or
shared understanding of principles of the choreography. Performatively, the
choreographers captured dancers’ attention, and managed the possibilities of the
process, by describing ‘something really beautiful’ that showed their own values.
To conclude, making dance makes dancers by choreographic processes that,
sensitively managed, develop skills, creative potential and identity. According to
Laermans, collaboration crucially seeds modes of working which comprise the
contemporaneity of dance:
Each singular collaboration thus indirectly contributes to the potential of various
others. The continual nomadism of artistic possibilities opened up by distinct
dancing bodies, concepts or actions, and ways of collaborating perhaps defines
contemporary dance’s most crucial production force. (2015: 327, italics in
original)
This observation has wider implications for the autonomy and role of performers, yet
also reflects the diversifying ways choreography can unfetter dancing from the
endangered 20th Century task of interpretation, toward movement that is vitally one’s
own, and performance that is both authorial and authorizing.
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*I am reminded of a score from Chrysa Parkinson, teacher at PARTS in Brussels:
‘Author, don't interpret [the task]’ (Parkinson 2006)
References
Foucault, Michele. 2002. ‘The Subject and Power’ in Essential Works 3: Power.
(London: Penguin) pp. 326-48
Laermans, Rudi. 2008. ‘Dance in General or Choreographing the Public, Making
Assemblages’ in Performance Research 13 (1) pp. 7-13
Laermans, Rudi. 2015. Moving Together: Making and Theorizing Contemporary
Dance. (Valiz/Antennae Series)
Olivan, Roberto. 2016. ‘Choreographic project with third years University of Malta’
email 30 Sept.
Parkinson, Chrysa. 2006. ‘Folding the Field, Fielding the Fold’ in Documenting 10
years of contemporary dance education, P.A.R.T.S., edited by Stephen de
Belder and Theo Van Rompay (Brussels)
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