‘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] 1 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. 2 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 3 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) 4 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 5 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. 6 *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) 7