playful performance

“Het woord ‘dialoog’ blijkt een kernachtige samenvatting van het werk dat Dansateliers verricht. Een dialoog tussen de choreograaf en de toeschouwer, tussen de choreografen en hun dansers, tussen de choreografen onderling en tussen de choreograaf en de dramaturg” (Website Ongepolijst).

In 2009 heb ik het programma van Choreoroam gevolgd. Het artikel dat ik naar aanleiding hiervan geschreven heb: “Een vluchtloze vogel en een boek on bullshit” (“A flightless bird and a book on bullshit”) wordt tijdens het nieuwe dansfestival Ongepolijst gepresenteerd in de bundel Een open boek – dans is dialoog. De bundel zal tijdens het festival op 11 en 12 juni ook te koop zijn. Onder ‘Read more’ is een korte teaser te lezen van het artikel.

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The publication of Springdance on Europe in Motion is available and can be requested via Springdance.

I visited Choreoroam in Rotterdam, Bassano del Grappa and London during 2009. Choreoroam is a program for exchange and research and development for choreographers.  Now I am working on an article on the international dialogue in the dance community for Dansateliers based on my observations and on interviews with Choreoroam participants.

Rogier Brom and I are finishing our dialogue on Nieuwe Grond and the cultural climate of Utrecht. It will be available soon on this website and on www.nieuwegrond.com. We both wrote a main text and used these texts to start a dialogue on the various themes we recognised during the Nieuwe Grond symposium.

The symposium on Dance Dramaturgy was a succes. More information and reflection soon on www.bit-dansdramaturgie.nl.

From the first of February untill the end of August 2010 I will work from and in Berlin instead of Utrecht. I hope I will get to know the local dance and performance scene.

From November 10th untill December 20th I’ll be working with choreographer and dancer Jack Gallagher on his research at Danslab.

Jack Gallagher on the Danslab website:

In Danslab I aim to find some missing links between the communication rules we traditionally come to expect in public space and the language of dance. I will focus on the gap between dance practice and the expectations of an audience who are not immediately privileged to the dance culture. A new ground zero for the performative mover. I want to develop a new line from the Counter Technique, developed by Anouk van Dijk during the past 12 years when I was a main proponent, with expert contributions from linguistics/psychology/philosophy. I will draw a new map for my composing method using Performative Speech Act Theory, Peter Sloterdijk’s spatial modeling & Lacan’s logic of discourses. The main question from Performative Speech Act Theory is -What do we do by saying? I will turn this around- What do we say by doing dance? I’m looking to materialize my hunch about the dialectics of dance between body and meaning. Through Lacanian theory, I will tackle the issue of how dance often says too much!

Collaborators:
Matthew Kelly Roman (dancer)
Diane Elshout (research assistent)
Jochem Naafs (dramaturgy)
Derrick Brown (advisor)

More information will follow soon.

Michael Pinchbeck wrote a reflection on Beginning, Middle, End. This is one of his remarks:

Working with other artists, I have learned how to express myself and respond to feedback I was not used to receiving in new ways. Sometimes it was, as Adrian Heathfield describes post-event writing, a beautiful catastrophe of misunderstanding. We wrote letters to each other in our own languages, in our own handwriting. As Mole Wetherell says, the thing with letters is, by the time they arrive the whole world has changed around you.

The idea that, when time goes by and your letter is on it’s way to it’s receiver, the world around you changes, appeals to me. You get the time to reflect on your own idea before someone else interferes. When finally the answer comes you to tend to be less defensive in a way. You rather try to construct new ideas from your own letter, the letter of the other and your own refelction. This is one of the reasons Joris Weijdom and I started our conversation.

My way of working with Michael, often via Skype, Youtube and email, was sometimes difficult, but it builds in a certain patience as well. A patience very well needed in a creative making process, certainly in one where more people are involved. Time always seems to be short, being forced to take my time, is something I would prefer to build in to my future processes.

This is an introduction I was asked to make for the performance Beginning, Middle, End by Andrea Bozic, Julia Willms, Madalina Dan and Michael Pinchbeck. In November 2008 Michael asked me as a dramaturge for his part of a performance: End. End was only to be one third of the whole performance and while reading the proposal that was send to Springdance I wondered how I could ever be a dramaturge for only this part…

After last year’s Dialogue (this years Europe in Motion) Springdance commissioned for a collaboration by three former participants from three different countries to make a performance for this year’s festival.
Andrea, Madalina and Michael decided to propose a performance, which would both allow collaboration and autonomy. The title of this performance, Beginning, Middle, End, refers both to the structure and concept of the work and to the structure of the working process.

The working process of six weeks was preceded by virtual contact in which the idea was worked out. There were three periods with actual contact: 4 days in March (beginning), 4 days in April (middle) and 4 days in this week (end). In these week they were showing each other what they have been working on and figuring out how these three parts fit together to form one performance. The remaining time each maker worked on his or her own part. But they kept looking to each other’s parts, via skype and live. This looking played an important part in the process.
The three parts were allocated alphabetically: Andrea Bozic asked her long time collaborator Julia Willms to work together to make Beginning, Madalina Dan worked on Middle and Michael Pinchbeck worked on End.

So this performance started out of 3 words, both as form and content: beginning, middle and end. The question is what it means to have such a structure for both the making process and the performance you’ll see tonight. Next to collaboration and autonomy this structure also provided content. What is beginning? What is ending? What is it like to be in the middle? And how do a beginning, a middle and an end relate and interact?

In the end this last question is perhaps the question I was thinking of as a problem in the beginning while reading the proposal. Now I would rather see it as a challenging idea to work from rather then a question that needs to be answered. I would like to end my introduction with the following quote, which can be seen as a starting point for this collaboration:

Every moment has a beginning, middle and end, then dialogue will have meaning.
(http://www.abwag.com/beginning_middle_end.htm)

I wish you a pleasant performance.