humanity

This text was written the 22 October 2008.

One more thing about “humanity”: I realized that long time ago human being had become extra terrestrial. Since we had lost any connection with a sense of univocal “experience” of the world, since our senses are out of orientations and we became tourists in this planet, we had already fallen away from here. As I told Igor: Icarus flew away and fell to earth without dying: he is reborn in another words. But he did not fall down; he fell up and away from planet earth into another one. Deleuze will say that the only way out from our humanity (to become total extraterrestrial) is to continue the movement of non-humanization into singularization. Every one needs to learn how to leave into its own extraterrestrial world without loosing connection with the other planets!! We are not touching this world, but our own re-creation of senses that relate us to it.

What was to fall three weeks ago.

Three weeks ago before premiere I needed to write down what was the method to compose the piece. I want to clarify that I dont want to say in a definitive way what it is. It is more of a disclosure of one of that paths that as a maker you follow in order to read your creation. A path that serves you to have a provisional frame of it. I know the piece became much “more and less” than the following explanation, but still I need to post this text. I need to do it  as an act of “exorcism” and “purification” from what the unknown chaos of creation was.

Here it goes.

6/10/08

What fall are we talking about? Are you really stumbling on stage? Are you dancing release technique letting rise and fall of gravity operate along your body while using as minimum of effort as possible? Are you existentially falling in a primal state of being?  Yes, a little bit of all that, but in fact, something else. We are falling into different ways to deal with the task of transmission and communication on stage. We are following the process in which attention focus to identify what we call “humanity” of a human entity.  I like the way in which Jessica said it: firstly you perceive the person in movement, secondly you meet him/her face to face in a communication full of pretensions and over reactions and finally the theatrical game falls down and you catch glimpses of what the nature of that person could be.  In About Falling there is a developmental passage from abstract movement of the body to theatrical movements of signs into the movement of personal presence on stage.

Diego’s Notebooks

About Falling meets Anri Sala.

Hey Igor.

 I found an interesting video work by Anri Sala “Now I see”.

I will explain what are the points of interest and connect them with some ideas I have in mind for “About Falling”.

Please check the video in the link below.

http://www.ubu.com/film/sala_see.html

 One point is the use of light, clearly dived in two zones of light and no light and a threshold.  At the threshold is where the protagonist, a puppet balloon, remains for a while suspending the time of the whole scene.  The puppet stand right at the border where the action happens: the band playing rock and roll; and right at the border where the gaze of the audience encounters it clearly “cut off “ and in “front of” the action of the band happening behind it.

 Here I connect with About Falling in relation to the action of being launched towards the audience. Performer meets their gaze falling in state of suspension. The body stops continuous movement, but don’t drop in total inertia. It maintains a state of physical gravity suspension. When suspension is impossible to hold, the performer moves back towards the action of continuous movement.  Moreover, when something comes to the front and it is exposed, it becomes even stranger than what it was before at a larger distance in the back.

 Another point is the two types of bodies: flesh (the rock band) and air (the balloon puppet). The physical fleshy body of the members of the band cant stop moving. They are bound to not ever stop. The only possibility to stop moving and to arrive to a  (semi) fixed position in space is to become a thinner body of air. 

 It is extremely interesting the paradox of a heavy body than cant stop moving and a light body than instead can not move anymore.

 Yesterday, before finding the video, I thought that at the moment Lucía remains alone dancing the “soaring moment”, she cant almost move in opposition to the excess of movement at the beginning of the performance. I like the idea that the performance offers and experience of movement (with three performers moving continuously) and an experience of body (when one performer almost don’t move).  When continuous movement becomes stasis inside of a body, the body has not carnality anymore, but it is almost transparent, with no content, ready to float.

 Well, that is all by the moment.

Some more things could be said about the video in relation to things we had been talking about: like the metaphor of performers being a music band, the flickering aspect of movement, things falling down and up like the singer and the balloon, etc.; but I thing this is not the space to develop those ideas.

into invisibility

Once you find yourself in the midair, almost nothing can prevent you from violent collision with what is below. As you fall you are fallen.  You are dead. By knowing that you are dead, you are, while falling toward death, already beyond it. In a same moment of the fall you are living, dying and surviving. You are dancing promise of the future to come and pure history without presence. You are meaningless and full of meaning. In you consciousness you are rescued. In your body you are gone. And you still did not even touch the ground of the present moment. Thats the real meaning of the miracle.

 

Fall is always fall into (in)visibility.

gaze is the mirror

What truly folds the movement and with a movement the whole space is the process of imaginary mirroring Whenever the glance of anybody on and off stage is caught by the other (either directly on indirectly) the mirroring is starting. The one that is looking see his own movement, action, behaviour in the movement, action, behaviour of the other toward whom he is directing his gaze. What he see is mirror image of himself. The one that is looked at, by realizing that it has been observed, encounters its own mirror image- 
“it is caught in the act”. The mirror of “what is seen” (in the first case), and the mirror of “being seen” (in the second case) are not identical. If the mirror is other body seen in movement (in a case of looking at) this mirror image inspire further movement and it is kaleidoscopic in nature. If the mirror is awarenes about somebody’s else gaze (in a case of being looked at) this mirror image inspire contemplation, stasis and a minimal movement – gesture and pose. It seems logical that under this conditions, first mirror of “looking at” (which i would call field of gaze) is generating outward activity, facilitate communication and exchange while second mirror of “being looked at” (which i would call field of objectification) is generating internal activity, minimal disclosure and stasis. The overall structure of the piece should be, in this term, an orderly game of mirroring whose different possibilities and moments are folding space upon itself. When the multiplications of mirroring on and off stage reach its maximal proliferation of foldings, movement finally stops, encounter finally get fully realized and a new situation starts – starting from a square piece of paper, through a process of mirroring/folding, origami of a bird appears. Combinatorics of possible relations between two mirroring positions – field of gaze and field of objectificaton, generate the third field of (in)visibility.

 

organization of space

Although formally cut up in two by sharp distinction between light and dark, space in terms of movement consist of three fields. The light and dark area meet at the line of horizon, place of optimal visibility where bodies finally emerge from darkness and expose themselves to the gaze. If light and darkness are first and third field of movement, line of horizon constitute the second field of movement, in between place, the only place where three singularities appear in the same time and can be observed in their relation to each other. Second field of movement is also place of language. From the perspective of this intermediary space, first field of movement (front-light) is the field of individual exposure, space of carrying on toward the audience, while the third field of movement (back-darkness) is the space of disappearance where individualities are melted into the invisible machine of movement. Three fields of movement are corresponding to the three register of movement. In fact, fields of movement are spatial representation of the registers. 

Norberto, 3rd register of movement – body space (incarnation)

Third register is the register where movement follow projection (or should we say introjection) of conscioussnes/perceptual attention/the gaze into the body itself. In this sense movement becomes the internal sensation, something connected directly to the materiality of the body and is characterized by certain absentmindedness. This type of movement can be characterized by the notions of warmth and animality.

Felix, 2nd register of movement – personal space (language)

Second register is the register where movement follow projection of conscioussnes/perceptual attention/the gaze toward the edges of our personal space. Our personal space  is the invisible spatial bubble aprox. one meter in diameter. This bubble is a kind of negative space which surround our body and define our identity/ego. Second register type of movement by its direction and force is touching limits of our personals space through an act of self expression which is attempt toward communication. This is the place where the signs of language are constructed, place from which we speak (name, imitate, give form). When moving in the second register, person is doing actions (as opposed to dancing) and these actions tend to become meaningful. They speak. This type of movement could be signified by the notion of the letter. Each movement become the letter. 

 

Diego, 1st register of movement – indefinite space (abstraction)

First register is the register where movement follow the projection of consciousness/perceptual attention/the gaze toward an “indefinite” external space. In this sense first register type of movement by its direction and force is touching limits of the physical space in which our body exist here and now. “Indefinite” external space become at its immediate limits transformed into concrete physical space, creating for performers and the audience “sense of place”. When moving in the first register, person is dancing “sense of place” in an expansive, concrete (this wall, this ceiling, this floor, etc.) yet abstract almost geometrical manner. What the person is touching is out there and its never fully reached, thats why the body project itself beyond its limits – as if it is trying to get hold of something but its never fully reaching its objective. We could also say that this type of movement “operate on distance” and in this sense is close to the notion of electric current. It is cold in its intensity.

fall(d)ing in tanzfabrik (4th day)

to the space and forward, together

people

everything and nothing

In theatre everything is possible and nothing is possible. Both facts are existing inside the same time frame – endless potentiality of the real  and utter impossibility of the moment in being anything else but what it is – here and now. Universal is always singular, singular is always universal.To levitate in between these two states of: presence of potentiality / absence of singularity (movement out) and presence of singularity / absence of potentiality (movement in) for a performer means to exist in the same time/space with the spectator. Instead of creating split between potentiality and singularity  by locating them  – on and off stage, we should unite spectator with performer through a constant oscillation of our expressive power between the two possible states.

against illustration (second proposal for the list)

Just an attempt to clarify the relation between different elements of the performance. Layering (rather than fitting) of expressive mediums and sign systems (embodiment, movement, stage, sound, light, costumes, text, image) should secure that each layer maintain equality and independence while all of them are positioned and timed in a such a way that they fully resonate with one another. The paradigmatic principle of resonance between layers (affecting/sensing) should supplement conventional principle of fitting (writing/reading). Furthermore it is important to understand that all the abstract material that we are generating in the blog is transferable to the performance only to the extent to which it could be translated into one (or more) layers of expressive mediums/sign systems. For a moment, as mentioned at the beginning, i can see 8 independent layers available to be used as containers for the ideas: embodiment, movement, stage, sound, light, costumes, text, image. Any idea need to be recognized and translated into the context of one or more layers so that it can be incarnated into the performance. 

Explaining actions.

I will explain the actions that are important to deal with in order to work out the material of the piece.

First a quick sketch of the ideas and the connection among themselves, and then a longer explanation.

Then we have:

Move “in”(which is connected with hide) and “out”(which is connected with reach).

The message to comunicate is that we are paying attention towards the activity of ourselves.  We are self counscious of what is going on in our existence, and luckily, to the event created with the audience in front of us. We pay attention critically(and this type of attention gives an “electric” quality to our actions) and we pay attention sensiorally (and this gives a “warmth” quality to our actions. The electric quality is connected with reaching out. The warmth quality is connected with hiding in.

Reach out: this gesture present ourselves to the audience, and at the same time, in less degree, hides us from them. It is to bring attention to the real space of the theater. The action performs our will to connect. It is a posture that has suspension. I like the idea of suspension as a metaphore for delaying audience’s expectation. Suspension is also a reference to the imagery of floating or soaring.

Reach in: it is a gesture closer to hide us from the audience, and the real space that we are sharing with them. It is more intimate. I see it as a break from the direct communication. It is a moment to sense ourselves, to be affected by what we are doing on stage. It is a different way to touch with our skin, with our attention, with our hands and feets the space of theater. A moment to feel versus a moment to think critically. The gesture takes the danger to get totally isolated from the event we are sharing with the audience. It proposes to feel (a bit) different: to be more intuitive.

View point: we can call it perspective. The spatial perspective, the spot in the space of the theater where we choose to stand and perform our movements of reach out and in.  It is also the attitude towards the subject matter of the piece. The point of view of Norberto, Felix and me about, for instance, the issues written here. Point of view is the position that we take when problematizing this issues. Luckily if we think about these issues as problematizations, I could escape from the images I already have as results, and I will be more open for unimaginable solutions.  It is related with the becoming singular of the specific. Even when we perform one message, we do it in three singular ways. This means  that when one performer comes to replace and continue the action that the other was just doing, he does it similar to the other but allowing his own style to emerge. Lastly, it is detachment. If we seriously become messengers of a message, we need to empty our ego. In this sense the “activity” itslef happening in our body is transmited, but not just the intention to comunicate that activity. Comunication needs to emerge, because it is already happening in the activity of our body (in our individual-singular existence). Our truly existence on stage is to dissapear and become communication. Outside the theater our existence is something else….more egoistic.

I hope this last explanation helps to understand my last entry about “Origami as a view point that become us (worthy existence).(What a title!).

origami as a view point that become us (worthy) existence.

Today I was thinking in another factor related to the dance movement of About Falling. Specifically the importance of the spatial position taken for us, the performers, in order to reach and hide (In order to comunicate and disappear). And not just the spatial position, but the whole performer’s body posture.  Moreover, than the physical position of the performer helps to travel through his body a message that it does not have any personal content appart from the posture suffering its very communication. If you think about, we become transparent containers of a message. We are like antennas. I had to think about the concept of Viewpoint mentioned by Gilles Deleuze in “Proust and Signs”; which is related as well with the metaphore of origami. “In the example of the madeleine, Proust invokes the little pieces of Japanese paper that, under water, swell and unfold, explicate: “In the same way now all the flowers of our garden and those of M. Swann, and the water lilies of the Vivonne, and the good souls of the village and their little houses and the church and all Combray and its environs, all that which assumes shape and solidity, has emerged, town and gardens, from my cup of tea”(I,47). But this is only approximately true. The true container is not the cup, but the sensous quality of the flavor. And the content is not a chain associated with this flavor, the chain of things and people who were known in Combray, but Combray as essence, Combray as pure Viewpoint, superior to all that has been experience from this viewpoint itself, appearing finally for itself and its splendor, in a relation of severence with the asociative chain that merely came half the way toward it. The content is so completely lost, having never been possessed, that its reconquest is a creation. And it is precisely because Essence as individuating viewpoint surmounts the entire chain of individual association with which it breaks that it has the power not simply to remind us, however intensely , of the self that has experienced the entire chain, but to make the self relive, by re-individuating it, a pure existence that it has never experienced. Every “explication” of something, in this sense, is the resurrection of a self.  Then, to choose the right angle to be in the space, and in our physical posture (being this one the form, the tension, the travelling of small movement through the body parts, etc) is what assures an effective communication. In which we dissapear (hide) in the very explication of something to the other. And because we become the process of that “explication”  and anything else, is that we re awake our existence on stage. You can call it: our reason to be here and now. Humble enough to first dissapear (be there and then)  in direct communication that closes up again and gives back our own individuality. Then we are singularities that become (more) specific through the function we need to accomplish on stage: communicate.  Another way of seeing it. The space should swallow us, and through that dissapearance the angles of our body (of our existence on stage) re-appear with an authentic labour, the labour of being communicating. 

reach and hide: the becoming singular of the specific.

I was thinking when writing “graphically” the movements and actions of the piece, in the idea of becoming messengers of a message for the audience. In another words, that the movement “back and forth in and out” is the movement of a communication that travels through the passages of the body of the performer itself and reaches the body of the audience. First motivation was the short reading about Michel Serres and his inspiration in the figure of “Hermes” (in his earlier works) and “Angels” (in more recent work) as messengers who translates back and forth between domains. But I wanted to get more theoretical support for the idea of running towards front stage, doing the action to reach connecting with the audience and at the same time hide ourselves from them, to soon run away from them until another performer repeats the same gesture in a similar fashion.  Today I was reading the “Introduction to Fear” by Brian Massumi and got impressed by his description of singularization and fabulization. “Singularization is shared departure: members of a constituted collectivity taking leave of it and one another, at least as they are. Fabulation is the attraction of deviant singularities into a new constellation, the crystallization of a new collectivity. But it is collectivity that no sooner comes together than launches a new departure. Identity defines the individual. Becoming trips the individual (Deleuze and Guattari); it is the setting in motion of a collectivity that cannot step with falling away from itself, cannot move in unison without dividing.”  The quote affirms the idea of being launched from behind the courtains towards the audience, arriving to a position of communication where openness and closeness is exchanged, and leaving it again (launching again).  In another word: the idea of being constantly departing, arriving and departing from one position to other. What we are communicating is the constant movement activity running along our body that actualizes us and make us singular. This is the self-observation that we were discussing yesterday. This is very important for me, because it answers the question of what is the content of the movement!  Which means that we don’t need to borrow forms from the cultural field (As I hate artists that do so). The content is the performer’s actualization of the multiple activities running through the self. Specifically, the way that Norberto, Felix and me become singular through the practice of moving and communicating attention towards the audience. I affirm as well that the gesture of reaching with the arms the audience should look like hiding from them as well. In this sense the very gesture of exposure and connection: hides us. The very gesture of communion depends in the fact that we are individualizing us (Becoming singular). Because we are hiding, audience expectation keeps in motion asking what is going on, and not fixing meaning. “Fabulation” is the replacement of the position taken for one performer to another one. The multiple variation of the gesture of communication. But we all multiply one collective gesture. As a collective, a group of performers, we work out one communication in multiple forms. We don’t just variate our own individual gesture, but one and the same of the collective. Going one performer at the time. It is a race of post (I don’t know if you say it like that in English, in Spanish is “Carrera de postas”).

Closing up. The very gesture of reaching and hiding simultaneously is the one to investigate profoundly in order to understand its strategy and apply it to the rest of About Falling. As well the idea of replacement of one performer to the other, in such a way that singularity creates a type of collectivity that is always in movement. 

 

Love

We do not have to love everybody, we should love those who, at every particular moment in life, happen to be with us… we should love them OR leave them and go somewhere else where love is possible. So if we choose to end up in theatre with a bunch of “strangers” looking at us, than we have to take consequences of our choice. We are not with these people to fulfill our exhibitionism or their voyeurism  but to be together. Thats love. It does not matter that in an hour or two we will part and probably never meet again. WHAT MATTER IS PRESENT MOMENT in which we willingly coexist with each other. Otherwise we should go away, be somewhere else. It is like going to the party. The only real reason for a party is moment of love for those with whom we are at the party. Not for few “we like” or know or consider our friends, as long as this imply that there are others around, those who are not our friends. Or we should have party only with our friends. Party IS the moment of love between those who are participating in it. There are no strangers in a party. As much as there are no strangers in theatre. Otherwise there is no party and no theatre. This is not a matter of some idealistic humanism but a vital respect for a coexistence between concrete individuals in a concrete time/space of the moment. This also does not mean that personal and specific love is somehow denied for a sake of the vague generality. Meaning of the personal relationship, marriage, call it as you wish is just in a decision, choice to be with one (or more) person for a long time – to share life as a moment of togetherness. But this does not exclude love which last few seconds, few minutes or few hours. In a party. In a theatre. In a bus. On a street. EVERYBODY exist only as those few who are surrounding us NOW. They are, from moment to moment, our only experience of humanity. To love them is to love EVERYBODY. In that sense, in some circumstances you can love only one person and still love all the rest. As long as you are at that moment with that person. Immediacy of an encounter is what make love real and universal in a same time.

not an universal love

I think when I am notating the choreography on paper that I am constantly asking what the audience would see. What are they interpreting apart from the critical and metaphysical knowledge that is undercurrent in the piece. Although I don’t agree we have to love everyone, or to surround totally towards an outside observer, but just to try to make our private interest something interesting for more than ourselves. How many more? It does not matter. Otherwise we fall into universality: trying to find the ultimate way of massive communication.  For me it is important to stay faithful to my own intuition, to my own singularity as a human being. I am not molecules. Guattari and Deleuze are. They offered their imagination trough that vocabulary. I am Diego, I born in Liniers in a neighbourhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I dance and like to read philosophy, I have melancholic tendencies and ambitions to understand the total order of things, etc, etc. From this particular point of view I open myself in theater to people, and happily I ask people to be open to themselves and myself in the same manner. About Falling has another meaning for me: falling back to earth, to facts, to feel in the flash what one was and is. This is what I mean with “coming back” to place of origin. Being humble enough to remember earhtly facts that constitute me: man, 32 years old, Argentinean, sad, gay, a bit crazy, so on so forth. And from there explode identity into molecules. From there offer an opening in theater. The singularity I perceive in a person (not her molecules, but the wrinkles in her hand) is the basic “enigma” that philosophy or universality I hope will never take away from me. Affirming closeness, the need to not love everyone, to not be 100 percent generous as Buddha or Jesus is to come back to earth and say: from this point of singularity, privacy, memory, I can open up and diversify, and see who wants to connect with me or not.

Well, I am not gonna come back and read what I wrote. I trust my intuition. I hope this helps to understand me and what I say yesterday. And as well understand the position I would offer for About falling to take.

All my love for you, some others but not everyone.

Diego.

 

strange position

It is not our responsibility to give a critique of the society, also not to preach (meta)physical truths to the “common people”, also not to offer them complete, aesthetically satisfactory image of the world…etc. Our responsibility is to use our (meta)physical knowledge, our critical consciousness, our aesthetic ability to navigate ourselves away from a position of being a passive and unconcerned object of contemplation and  recover shared experience of “being together” with those who are separated from us – our audience. We need to love them as much as wen need to love each other and love ourselves. Under no condition the work should be closed. Observer need to be included into the work. It need to be navigated into the midst of it. THEY should be with US. Control of attention is one obvious strategy that can in an affective and kinetic way make passive observer dance with us. But thats not enough. Another very important thing is the exact position from which we are directing attention and engaging with the audience. That is a strange position that we need to occupy. Position in between doing thing for ourselves and doing thing for them. It seems that this is a real meaning of intuition in theatre. Our instinct make us do things for ourselves. Intelligence is making us do thing for the OTHER. Practice of intuition make it possible for a performer to stay at the equal distance from both instinct and intelligence, arrogance and opportunism, isolation and prostitution. Strange place this is. Neither far nor close to the audience, neither beautiful nor didactic, neither public nor private. If we do not find that place from which we move, talk, exist for ourselves and the others in a same time, we will, whatever we do, fail. 

origami as a diagram

 hey diego, After looking at the diagram you posted, I am getting fascinated by the origami. Not only that the diagram in itself is amazingly accurate representation of the logic and meaning of “About Falling” but, while making my first paper crane, completely immersing myself in a physical process of folding the material, i got additional realization about the importance of the concrete space/time action that actualize the potential encoded in the diagram itself. I would like to note some observations both in relation to the representational character of the diagram and the practical process of its realization.  Diagram itself, in logical terms plots  the timespace of the action, its narrative line that starts from a simple form/content (square shaped piece of paper) and in a number of concrete steps, through the repeated act of (un)folding – forward and backward, inside and outside, it lead us to the emergence of meaning (figure of the crane) as the final transformation of the substance into sign. What was, in its primordial state just an open field of possibilities (the paper) through the application of the diagramatic scheme of unfolding movements is emerging as a sign. Process of fall(d)ing (in and out, backward and forward)  results in a miracle – soaring tridimensional image of a bird that is suddenly appearing from the falling nothingness of paper. Hope, that you were talking about in one of your previous entries, is in the belief that action through which we are trying to (un)fall(d) material/substance will lead to an emergence (soaring) of meaning. From a side of the  material this emergence can be understood as a form of speech – substance giving itself the name by becoming that name (the bird). From a side of the maker, external observer, emergence of meaning is perceived as a moment in which recognition of new content brakes through abstract and repetitive transformations of form.  

Soaring

diagram of falling

In relation to what you were saying in a previous entries i started realizing that the interwoven unicursal hexagram can be, in my opinion, used as a diagram not only externally (as a blueprint of the movement forward and backward across the stage) but also, so to say, internally (as a blueprint of moving inside and outside of oneself). Only when two diagrams of movements (forward/backward and inside/outside) are superposed over one another we can understand while the fall need to exist as a complex pattern (hexagram) rather than a simple geometrical figure (straight line). Interwovn unicursal hexagram can be decoded in words according to the direction of movement along its lines as a following algorithm (starting from the central back point):forward and out (left); backward and in (right); forward and out (right); backward an out (left); forward and in (left); backward and out (right). Igor

Hope

I found an inspiring conversation between interviewer Mary Zournazi and philosopher Brian Massumi that touches issues such as “falling” and “hope”. It is called “Navigating Movements”.Interviewer Mary Zournazi begins the conversation talking about falling.“When you walk, each step is the body´s movement against falling-each movement is felt in our potential for freedom as we move with the earth´s gravitational pull. When  we navigate our way through the world, there are different pulls, constraints and freedoms that move us forward and propel us into life. But in the changing facing capitalism…which circulate the globe in more virtual and less obvious ways- how do the constraints on freedom involve our affective and embodied dimensions of experience?” Then Zournazi ask to Massumi what are his thoughts on the potential of hope this times. I will jump straight to the explanation of “hope”. I can connect it  with the (poetic) idea of “miracle” that started “About falling”. Miracle as a term extracted from its religious meaning and investigated on its pragmatic function.  “In my own work I use the concept of “affect” as a way of talking about that margin of manoeuvrability, the ´where we might be able to go and what we might be able to do´ in every present situation. ……. It´s not exactly going for more, either. It´s more like being right where you are- more intensely.” Then, the fall that we are working is the movement between “freedom” and “constrain” focused in the negative aspect that dis-conenect us from others(isolation) and from the present time(towards teh past).  Connections with the other is hope and open possibilities “in” the present for more to come (the future).I know that we already talk and write about this a lot!But as a new input I wanted to stress the necessity to bring hope in the first part of the performance. As we wrote in the subsidy application, the encounter-connection with the other is already there in our (be) longing for it. Blossomy possibilities needs to be perceived even in the first desperate and isolated landscape.This wish is connected with changes that happened in my private life since we start the work. I am almost not interested anymore in desperation, “and then” its solution, but in its interconnection.I guess I want to stand for hope (much more….excesively).  Love,D. 

Action

(I did not read the two last entries before I wrote the text below)

When thinking about the possibility to add “content” to the movement material, I  reflected upon my personal history of sickness as a child. (Not trying to represent images of my memory, but using them as inspirations to articulate actions with the physical movement). Nevertheless I find that pointless. The performance should be an event happening in the “here and now”. Which means that I have to look at the elements that we have now. Because they are the elements that audience will perceive in the now of the performative event. What is at stake on stage (as I can imagine it up until now) The attention should be directed towards the action we three performers will perform: one at the time we will move back and forth externalising and internalising movements.

Rehearsals in the studio should be about the understanding of the dynamics of that action. I see that action as a diagram of forces. I see it. It is like a graphic. This action is the generator that will attract and repulse the issues that we had been collecting since we started working.

In this sense I want to introduce the idea of “Action” as an item of the List. But this item has the special power to move the rest of the items. On one hand we have the monadic items, and in the other hand the actions that put them into movement, that make them emerge, that disolve them, that make them flicker….

Metaphore: In the  continous manyfold process of expansion of the items, the actions is one base.

interwoven unicursal hexagram

the diagram of fall

everything exist – now

Our consciousness knows: there is no such thing as THE (right) order of timespace. There is nothing in the outside world to be sorted out – structured hierarchically and subsumed inside the highest order of things. Each thing exist in full and autonomously from the endless number of other things, by simply being what it is. The thing. Or, in Wietgenstein’s words, the fact. World (our consciousness) is made of facts he says. And yet, while made of facts, world (our consciousness) is not the one who has ordering authority over them that are constituting it.  Thats why every fact in itself, is absolute and unconnected – singular.Being singular, every fact exist always on its own, HERE AND NOW. Every fact means ALL the facts are existing on their own, in the same time, here and now. They are not issuing from each other or determining one another according to some meaningfull sequencing order, they are overlaying each other in our consciousness equal and incommensurable in their difference. Foreground and background are shifting endlessly, constantly reveling different layers of which each, at the point of its emergence, is the fact among facts, one of many and yet uniquely singular.This understanding has repercussions on a dramaturgy which aims to  capture it. Igor  

The List

While participating in a structure and unfolding of the performance, everything on The List should in a same time BE the performance. While contributing to the whole each item should in itself signify the whole. Furthermore, performance should not be imagined as a sequential, narrative assemblage of the items that are somehow fitting into each other along the arrow of time, but rather as a process of simultaneous layering in which integrity of each layer (item in the list) have a priority over the way it fit with the others. Fittings should emerge from the sovereign and momentary behavior of the layers rather than from our external interpretation of that behaviour. We are layering the items as  equal in their relevance for the whole, but they are connecting to each other independently. The first proposal of The List: The Fall (toward death), Darkness (and light), Edge (of space, of transformation), Soaring (into the air) Repetition (of movement), Multiliplication (of subjects), Singularity (of  presence), Origami (un-folding), Masks (in-stability of identity), Drums (of expectation), Encounter (klinamen). 

Music of Dance

As it is understood in everyday life movement is nothing more than a noise of (mis)interpretation that surround body (of dance) like a cloud. Body is moving for many dubious and confused reasons that are mixing procedures and objectives: gestural, symbolic, pragmatic, ceremonial. In contrast, body is dancing for only one reason ; because there is a music.

Music is not phenomena of sound. Music is a relationship between body (of dance) and time, in a similar manner in which architecture is a relationship between body (of dance) and space. In fact, we could say that living body (of dance ) is an intersection where time/music and space/architecture are coming together.

Living body (of dance) is not moving through space. It is dancing the space to the music of time.

***

Lets imagine dance not as an abstract progression of static layouts but as a dynamic and paradoxical configuration of a spacetime that  body (of dance) inhabits.

Lets acknowledge that this shifting configuration of spacetime actualized in body (of dance)  is a concrete expression of the invisible topography through which human existence reveal itself to the present moment.

Lets conclude that by (re)presenting spacetime of the living body as dance, we are actually (re)presenting the topography of the existence which is our only true grounding.

Lets hope that if we learn how to dance the topography of existence in front of the audience this will give us the ethical and aesthetic justification for doing so.

 

Igor Dobricic

After presentation

After presentation in Hetveem there was a constant question from audience: I dont know how to “feel you”. There are two lines of thoughts that I develop when reflecting upon that question.

1).The work creates certain expectation of being intimate and personal. Certain sign that reveals a personal expression (of how I feel) is awaited.

2) The “fall” seems to be interpreted as too real and therefore representative, or not real enough and therefore, its function not understood, because audience dont know hot to feel about it.

Somehow these thoughts made me decide intuitively that the work has to be even more distant, more “undirect”, more “superficial”.

 The content of my past is not important (my personal memory, my deep engagement with that cause, my felings then,etc) but the form of trying (aboutness) to move to the past is the relevant issue.

 In this sense the work becomes “superficial”, or if you want it “digital”.

Because it never falls to a deepness of expression of what really happened to me, but it is always observing the actual time of the performance (beginning, middle and end) and making the operations needed to connect actual time with past time.

 Choreography is the medium to organize time perception. My presence is just devoted to articulate the proper set of movement that will create that sense of pastness.  Then, the function of a “choreography of fall” will be understood, and will escape the issue of too real and not real enough, as the medium to perceive/feel the past.

Saying in other words, we need to create between me and the audience a common memory. It is not about my past memory, it is not about their past memory, it is about the space between we two that produces the experience of memory.