Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Reassemblage through Repetition, Performance, and Cognitive Embodiment
Reassemblage through Repetition, Performance, and Cognitive Embodiment: A look into the effects of Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring and Die Klage der Kaisern on gender binaries
The basic structure of each of our bodies has been built around names. To name is to carve out the desire to decipher what I am, what I belong to and therefore what defines me. Determined long long ago…names still maintain that pulse of belonging they are born with, to build surroundings and realities.
–Maria Munoz, Mal Pelo Compania de Dansa
In a transnational environment, where media reaches all edges of the globe and more and more constantly, we are subjected to hegemonic and patriarchic ideals at every turn. Gender constructs suggest that gender is fixed, biological, psychological and innate, giving us names such as “man”, “woman” “mother” and “father” and so-on, that come with specific and rigid understandings. Radical feminism theorists, such as Judith Butler, argue that gender is actually constructed, performed and even fluid. With Butler’s ideas in light, I will discuss the works of contemporary choreographer Pina Bausch and map out how her work dismantle gender via the same tools used in society to construct gender.
Pina Bausch understood the same ideas spoken by Maria Munoz and allowed them to inform her choreography. It is generally agreed upon that Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater encapsuled a complex and paradoxical production, which openly challenged conventional assumptions in dance (152, Sanchez-Colberg). In some cases, drama critics have overlooked Bausch’s unique conceptions by focusing on theories of the stage, relying chiefly on Brechtian vocabulary. She has been characterized as a feminist performance artist and dramatist, who consciously used Brechtian techniques (Price). However, because Bausch makes the body the focal point in her work, Antonin Artaud’s influence is also apparent. Bausch’s postmodern movement art took her influence from modern theatre theorists, Artaud and Brecht and expanded their contexts. Overall, Tanztheater has been critically referred to as radical feminist, material feminist, Brechtian, Artaudian, deconstructionist, and postmodern, all of which have been discussed with fervor and controversy.
With previous reads of her work generally understood, I will focus on two of Bausch’s works in order to map out how Bausch deconstructed gender in her choreography. Bausch’s productions would begin with daily social experiences of the body, which she translated and alienated onto the stage. This alienation of familiar physical experiences can be witnessed in Rite of Spring and Die Klage der Kaiserin. Rite is a staged dance work made by Bausch in 1978. As one of her earlier and more renowned pieces, it highlights her approach of mostly movement and less theater to confront body politics and man-woman relationships. Die Klage, on the other hand, is a later work, created in the 90s as a dance film. This video exposes the role of technology, media, and collaboration across different fields; bring attention to the changes and development of Bausch’s art. These pieces compliment each other in their differences across time and approach in Bausch’s body of work. Focusing on Rite and Die Klage, I discuss performativity, repetition and the cognitive science theory of embodiment in the context of gender binaries, suggesting that the same techniques in which dominant gender constructs are upheld are then utilized in Bausch’s works to take them apart. Complicating the previous reads of Bausch’s work discussed above, my paper clarifies when and how repetition, identity performance, and embodied cognition deconstruct the social ideologies of gender.
Repetition
Rite and Die Klage are notable for the strong presence of repetition of stereotypical male and female roles. For this reason, Bausch´s choreography is a subject for feminist analysis, though Bausch explicitly refused such categorizations of her work. The choreography is simultaneously rooted in radical feminism and essentialist feminism, with gender binaries present throughout most all of her work. Bausch’s work is deeply imbued with the theories of Artaud, who believed men and women are fundamentally different and can never be reconciled, as well as Brechtian theory, which suggests that relationships between men and women are socially conditioned an therefore upheld and also changeable (Price, 323). Rather than keeping these ideas separate from each other, Bausch lets them share space within her work. By acknowledging the radical feminist ideas present in Brechtian theory, the repetition in Bausch’s pieces can be seen as a necessary aspect of these gender binaries. Though repetition is how society upholds stereotypes, it is through the use of repetition that Pina Bausch exposes the absurdity of them.
Repetition is how we learn, remember, and construct meaning and value within our society, environment, and self. In regards to gender identity, Judith Butler lies out, “drag enacts the very structure of impersonation by which any gender is assumed” and because there is no origin from which these gender impersonations are deriving from, the project of heterosexual identity is propelled into an endless repetition of itself. This compulsive repetition can only produce the effect of its own originality. Butler claims, “those ontologically consolidated phantasms of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are theatrically produced effects that posture as grounds, origins, the normative measure of the real.” That said, repetition of these gender binaries works to construct a seamless heterosexual identity, putting the identity at risk if it fails to repeat.
It can be argued, then, that the man-woman relationships and identities heavily repeated within Bausch’s work fall into this compulsory establishing and upholding of the illusion of gender. However, Bausch uses repetition to deconstruct these very meanings, values, and understandings through the tools of context and timing within the greater means of repetition. It is within the choices of timing, spatial relations, and body imagery that Bausch makes that differentiates her repetitious performance of gender binaries from that that is saturated within our society, the media, and cultural practices. ¨Repetition evokes a reflexive meaning about its inherently hollow structure. By conveying its lack of meaning-fulfillment as meaning, repetition contradicts and reaffirms itself as absence and need” (Fernandes, XX) Ciane Fernandes further postulates that repetition reaffirms its structural quality of never positing a final and definite meaning, constantly affirming and contradicting itself¨ (80). The images within Bausch’s choreography are not presented in their ¨natural¨ timing and it is through acceleration and deceleration that repetition of the imagery contradicts and disintegrates gender binaries. In Die Klage der Kaiserin, women are shown in underwear and bathing suits exhaustively treading through the mud, working on a farm, running through a forest. These different scenes are shown one after another over and over with a continuation of the same music. In these images, women are showing their legs, wearing heels, exposing their breasts or cleavage. In a non-linear fashion, the clips are played out in patterns and repeated, some lasting for forty-five seconds after having been presented in the film three previous times. It is in the unrelenting repetition of these images of women wearing heels and sexualized attire that these common ritualized and feminized acts become bizarre to the viewer.
In Die Klage, the technology of film was utilized to create these specific gendered imagery in repeated non-narrative, non-linear manners that disrupt our normative ways of understanding these images. This same effect can be seen in Bausch’s earlier work, Rite of Spring, however, within different setting, time, and context. On a stage, the dancers deliver repetitious movements to the point of physical and mental pain and exhaustion. In the portrayal of interpersonal relationships that include existential suffering and the futile search for genuine intimacy between the sexes, Rite employs repetition and rhythm to distinguish the individual from the group and to expose the sincere exhaustion of maintaining identity as an individual and as a member of the group. Following the original narrative from Nijinsky, Bausch’s Rite segregates the sexes, giving them different repertories of movement related to the concepts of “masculine” and “feminine” in dominant culture. The men dance with aggressive and powerful leaps while women exhibit the anxiety and hopelessness of being the chosen victim. They are influenced by the encroaching compulsivity of rhythm and acceleration. “The work develops as an existential metaphor for a reality which pitilessly claims its predominantly female victims” (Servos 31). Here the repetition is paired with acceleration and exhaustion of the dancers to expose the gendered and sexed movements as ludicrous, therefore questioning the characterizations of male and female. The men are assigned the roles of the aggressors, predators, rapists, regulators, masters of ceremonies, terrorists, while the women are the victims-pursued, punished, undressed, raped, dressed, passive and objectified (XX, Sanchez-Colberg). However, the stereotypical classifications of gender disintegrate through the work within its use of persistent reappearance. A clip of a woman in fishnet stockings, a black shiny teddy and black bunny ears stumbles through mud, pacing over and over again is shown four separate times in Die Klage. This ultra-femme performer runs and stumbles again and again, at times falling, unable to hide her exhaustion. Her breasts hang out of her teddy and she carries her high heel shoes in her hand. Also in this film, a male dancer clothes in a woman’s evening gown and full femme makeup paces a ballet studio with his hand gently on the barre, which again is shown three times during the movie. The viewers are made to witness these extremely gendered images repetitively, causing them to first think, “I already saw this image.” And perhaps following that, think, “Why is this image coming up again?” prompting the audience to question and investigate the scenes. In interviews of Bausch, repetitiveness is something she defends, asserting, quite simply, “We must look again and again” (Price 325). The use of repetition is also apparent in Rite, where repetition is not only in movement but also through the number of bodies repeating that movement. Over fourteen dancers, in identical nude dresser for women and black slacks for men, rhythmically repeat a short bouncing phrase in second position with their torsos being thrown towards the ground for over a minute. AT this point, the same group of dancers begins repeating a new synchronized phrase with effeminate arm patterns. However, shortly following this group section, at the sight of the dancer in the red dress who symbolizes the sacrificed virgin, the group disintegrates into a flurry of individual chaotic exhaustive dance. The tension built from the repetition and the breaking of that repetition by the sight of the abject woman, holds up a stress-inducing mirror to the audience, making the viewers emotionally aware of the subjection and abjection within gender roles. In Die Klage der Kaiserin and Rite of Spring repetition disturbs the illusions of male and female gender stereotypes for the spectators by repeating movements and texts. The audience witnesses these re-presentations, as they dismantle meaning and instigate more repetitions.
Gender Identity Performance
Repetition is closely interwoven with an individual’s performance of gender identity within a society, depending upon the dominant meaning. As she does with repetition, Bausch uses the performance of gender binaries and relationship identities to dismantle the gendered meanings we collectively attribute to various movements, images, behaviors, sexes, and objects. In radical feminism, imitation of a non-existing origin becomes the origin itself and the evidence for all other imitations, requiring repetition in order to reaffirm itself, which has proven unstable and therefore threatening (Butler, 307-308). One could conclude that if those imitations were to cease, gender constructs would also dissipate, however, instead Bausch exploits gender identity performance in order to break constructs in the context of her choreography. In Rite of Spring, as described previously, the men and women are segregated and perform their stereotypical roles throughout the performance. The exhaustion, stress, and at times, failure to execute the task exhibited the inability to establish the “authentic woman” and “authentic man”. The dance exposes the exhaustion and failure in attempting to uphold the appropriate fixed identity of man or woman.
Because Rite has such a classic narrative and style to it, seemingly responding to the roots of gender, it can be argued that the work is approaching an essential feminist viewpoint, exposing the innate and fundamental differences between a man and a woman. However, the discomfort and struggle and ultimate failure of these gender roles suggests that they are not fundamental. Bausch liked to work with people as they really are, which is not only fundamental, but includes the complexities of our social and cultural conformities. Pina Bausch clarified in several interviews that she was investigating love, relationships, and the human social experience and social inscriptions within those topics. By exposing and highlighting these facets of life on a stage, she illuminated the gender constructs within these human experiences. Furthermore, with the complexities of modernity illuminated in Die Klage, gender roles are exposed at a more multi-layered level and it is important to take into account the realities of capitalism, hegemony, globalization, etc. that are also present in the work. Though, I do not discuss the interactions between topics of identity within this document, the reader should be aware of their existence and the complexity of modern identity.
In Die Klage, Bausch extends the gender idenities of men and women by means of reversing them. In one clip of the movie, filmed in black and white, two men roller-skate around an empty dining room in long prom-style dresses. With smiles on their faces, they circle around the room, outlining the “curve” of their hips with their hands involved in a series of effeminate hand gestures. In Butler’s Imitation and Gender Insubordination, she implies that performing out of line with the heterosexual norms brings on transgressive pleasure produced by the prohibitions within those constructs. In some instances, the dancers hold to the limitations of their assumed gender or go against it. In the previous example, the performers emanate joy and excitement in their cross-dressing play. Both the norms and the deviations offer both pleasure and/or discomfort to the audience, forcing the audience’s awareness of their own identity experiences, desires, and failures. These distinctions are dependent upon context and interdependent with repetition. Ultimately, the two works at hand, exemplify various aspects of identity performance, described in my previous depictions. In short, Rite discusses group versus individual identity of gender in a timeless light, while Die Klage depicts the contemporary and individualistic complexities of gender. Through the dynamic body imagery in Rite and Die Klage , societal agreements about performance of identity are critically uncovered.
Embodied Cognition
The power of repetition and performance to create our realities can be observed everywhere, and are definitely observable in our own bodies. Through the body’s three-dimensional dynamic interaction with the environment, we learn, make meaning, respond, and conform to our surroundings. The cognitive science theory of embodiment shows us that Bausch’s dancers expose gender binaries, in part, because these ideals were learned through the body’s interaction and appropriation with its environment. By looking at Rite and Die Klage through the lens of embodied cognition, it becomes clear that movement communicates a great deal of information. Bausch used movement of the body as the primary form of communication and to expose what it has to say, what it has learned, given value to, and how it understands it’s self and others. Here, I will attempt to map out concepts of embodiment, drawing attention to embodiment’s presence in Bausch’s choreography and how it relates to my main argument that Bausch’s work deconstructs gender stereotypes.
By working with what is in the body, what the body understands and what it communicates, Bausch was let in on a wealth of information, including the depth of our physically entrenched gender stereotypes. Bausch’s creative process often asked the dancers to respond with movement to prompts, words, phrases, and interactions. Much of the dance vocabulary in her work was initiated from these movement responses, therefore rooted in embodied constructs triggered by the initial prompts. In Raymond Gibbs’ look at the implications of embodied action in psychological accounts of human perceptual experience and action, his research indicates that people perceive the world as dynamic and it is through movement that we find understanding of our environment (66). This concept is clear in Rite because the work used movement as its main form of communication to the audience and within the dancers on stage as well. During the ten-minute solo of the chosen sacrifice virgin, the dancer expresses her fears, anxieties, and process of coming to terms with her fated death. Through large full-bodied sweeping, crashing, expanding and contracting movements of her body, it becomes apparent to the spectators of her situation and the emotional and mental state it inspires in her. While the solo occurs, the other dancers stand around her in groups, witnessing and slowly walking as to contain her. It is the movement in Rite communicates the power of the group over her fate. And through the dynamic environment that is created on stage that a world is communicated and understood by viewers.
There are many facets of movement that are in play in order to create and communicate. When discussing repetition, it was established that the timing and sequencing of the act being repeated is key to repetition functioning as constructive or deconstructive. Cognitive embodiment research shows that people see objects and predict the possible bodily actions they afford. In society’s environments, we often follow through with anticipated movements, upholding and strengthening the dominant stereotypes by way of chronological assumptions (65, Gibbs). Movement-based performing art has the opportunity to counter those anticipated actions, by way of reassembling the expected sequential patterns and repetitions. In Bausch’s non-linear movie, Die Klage, spectators are constantly denied assumed meanings. In one clip about twenty minutes into the film, there is a lady in a dress and stiletto heels walking by an indoor pool. If the pool and the lady act as prompting object, one might ¨naturally¨assume that she will prepare herself to go swimming. Confronting the camera, she smiles and digs her hand into dress, touching her breast and pulling out a form of stuffing that she had inside to make her breast bigger. She squeezes the stuffing and places it back inside the dress, walks in a small slow circle at the edge of the pool and the clip is then finished. This example leaves the audience either confused or question and confronting what they assumed, possible creating new meanings or giving up on understanding it entirely, all of which are deconstructive responses.
Insofar, I have charted out the way in which stereotypes are embodied and can be witnessed in human physicalities. Furthermore, I established that Bausch’s way of deconstructing embodied gender within Rite and Die Klage was by alienating the assumed movement patterns and reassembling the sequence, timing, and context of them. Not only does embodiment exist in our performance and interaction with the environment, but also exists in active looking. Seeing is present in most of our waking hours and provides the brain with the majority of information (166, Meyer-Kalkus). In the physical act of viewing, people rarely see everything out there in the world unless they move their bodies in different ways to attend to environmental information (67, Gibbs). In the context of a performance, the audience is subjected to the changing viewpoints created on stage or in a film. Bausch’s manipulation of what the audience viewed on the screen or on the stage was a key technique to the deconstructive performances she created. In dance performance, complex and well-thought-out stage patterns are created with regards to the point of view of the audience. In Rite, during the same ten minute solo described earlier, the men and women are placed in a semi-circle around the virgin as she fiercely thrashes her body about the stage in a way that persuades the visual focus, direction, and attention of viewers. The movements are repeated several times and the gaze of the other dancers on the soloist supports our attention to her as well. Everyone except the soloist engages in a collective witnessing of her as she comes to terms with her prominent death. Throughout all of Bausch’s work, she demanded that we must look again and again. At times, her work surpassed the threshold of appropriate repetition, where the audience was made to actively see a gender stereotype to the point that it became alien and illogical to the viewer. . This looking over and over again at the performed physically dynamic scenarios caused discomfort and disruption for the audience and their neatly structured meanings and ideologies
Cognitive embodiment highlights the sensory integration involved in performing and in viewing performance. This interplay between various senses and the active involvement of memory must be assumed, illuminating the routines we have acquired in connection with specific objects. Meyer-Kalkus poses that, consequently, comprehending images means: finding patterns, which possess a behavioral compatibility with motor activity” (167). When these pattern-paired objects and the their behavioral counterparts are reassembled within Pina Bausch’s choreography, it instigates discomfort and interferes with what is automatic in our bodies and minds. These rearrangements become new bodily realities for the audience because the heard and the seen form new kinaesthetic dimensions which takes possession of viewers and listeners (168, Meyer-Kalkus).
In light of this active and physical viewing from the audience, Mark Johnson discusses society’s collective misconception of aesthetics that are based in mind-body dualism. He defines aesthetics ¨as concerning everything that goes into our ability to grasp the meaning and significance of any aspects of our experience, and so it involves form and structure, the qualities that define a situation, our felt sense of the meaning of things, our rhythmic engagement with our surroundings, our emotional interactions and on and on¨ (89). These ideas that Johnson presents tie into the power of Bausch’s performance art as an avenue for dismantling meanings, confronting their parts, and reassembling the constructs of our culture through creative thought. This ability to create and re-create meanings can also be attributed to Johnson’s claim that humans possess a kind of “motoric intelligence” significant in human behavior and the interplay between human physical functions and the environment (176). Meyer-Kalkus’s findings also suggest this idea: “The repetitions and great arcs of intensification, the moments of calm and discharge can have the effect of a concentrated sensory thunderstorm that fuses the dimensions of hearing, seeing, feeling, and resonating” (178). With the established information above, it is clear that because of embodiment, movement-based performance art has the power to enforce or recreate meanings and the bases of our fundamental relationships with our societal environments. Only some audience are able to engage in the act of reassembling and others reject it. In order for transformation to occur, a society must endure a certain level of stress and discomfort. Both Rite and Die Klage offer that embodied discomfort and stress and it is through our active spectatorship, and motoric intelligence that we can employ revolution from viewing dynamic performance art.
Conclusion:
In my effort to map out Pina Bausch’s deconstructions of gender roles through her use of repetition, gender-identity performance, and embodied cognition and transmission of ideas through movement, it has come to light that though we do not and will not know the intent of Pina Bausch’s work, the effect of her art can be investigated, examined, and considered as a valuable source of information on the methodologies of deconstruction. The idea that repetition, performance, and embodiment function to assemble collective meanings and systems such as gender, however, can also function to dismantle or transform these ideologies illuminates performance and visual art as a powerful avenue to change a society’s fundamental values. It is suggested that performance art is therefore, highly under appreciated, and can be and should be considered critically as a form learning, relearning, and unlearning.
References:
Butler, Judith.
Die Klage der Kaiserin. Pina Bausch. Mariko Aoyama, Anne Marie Benati, and Benedicte
Billet. 8 May 1990. West Germany.
Fernandes, Ciane. Pina Bausch and the Wuppertal Dance Theater: The Aesthetics of
Repetition and Transformation. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2005. Print.
Gibbs, Raymond W. “Perception and Action.” Embodiment and cognitive
science. New York, NY. Cambridge University Press, 2006. 42-78.
Johnson, Mark. “‘The stone that was cast out shall become the cornerstone’: the bodily
aesthetic of human meaning.” Journal of Visual Arts Practice 6.2 (2007): 89-104. EBSCOhost. Web. 5 May. 2010.
Meyer-Kalkus, Reinhart. “Work, rhythm, dance; Prerequisites for kinaesthetics of media and
arts.” Embodiment in Cognition and Culture. Eds. Krois, John Michael, Rosengren, Mats, Steidele, Angela, and Westerkamp, Dirk. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins North America, 2007. 165-181. Print.
Price, David W. “The Politics of the Body: Pina Bausch's ‘Tanztheater’.” Theatre Journal,
Vol. 42, No. 3 (Oct., 1990): pp. 322-331.
Rite of Spring. Bausch, Pina. Arnold Alverez, Anne Marie Benati, and Hiltrud Blankt.
1978. ZDF. Mainz.
Sanchez-Colberg, Ana. “‘You put your left foot in, then you shake it
all about…’ Excursions and Incursions into Feminism and Bausch’s Tanztheater.” Dance, Culture and Gender. Ed. Thomas, Helen. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. 151-163.
Servos, Norbert and Weigelt, Gert. “Introduction: Dance and Emancipation” Pina Bausch
Wuppertal Dance Theater or The Art of Training a Goldfish: Excursions into Dance. Patricia Stadie. 2nd Ed. Germany: Ballet-Buhnen-Verlag Rolf Garske, Cologne, 1984. 19-26.
Servos, Norbert and Weigelt, Gert. “Rite of Spring” Pina Bausch Wuppertal Dance Theater
or The Art of Training a Goldfish: Excursions into Dance. Patricia Stadie. 2nd Ed. Germany: Ballet-Buhnen-Verlag Rolf Garske, Cologne, 1984. 29-40.
The basic structure of each of our bodies has been built around names. To name is to carve out the desire to decipher what I am, what I belong to and therefore what defines me. Determined long long ago…names still maintain that pulse of belonging they are born with, to build surroundings and realities.
–Maria Munoz, Mal Pelo Compania de Dansa
In a transnational environment, where media reaches all edges of the globe and more and more constantly, we are subjected to hegemonic and patriarchic ideals at every turn. Gender constructs suggest that gender is fixed, biological, psychological and innate, giving us names such as “man”, “woman” “mother” and “father” and so-on, that come with specific and rigid understandings. Radical feminism theorists, such as Judith Butler, argue that gender is actually constructed, performed and even fluid. With Butler’s ideas in light, I will discuss the works of contemporary choreographer Pina Bausch and map out how her work dismantle gender via the same tools used in society to construct gender.
Pina Bausch understood the same ideas spoken by Maria Munoz and allowed them to inform her choreography. It is generally agreed upon that Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater encapsuled a complex and paradoxical production, which openly challenged conventional assumptions in dance (152, Sanchez-Colberg). In some cases, drama critics have overlooked Bausch’s unique conceptions by focusing on theories of the stage, relying chiefly on Brechtian vocabulary. She has been characterized as a feminist performance artist and dramatist, who consciously used Brechtian techniques (Price). However, because Bausch makes the body the focal point in her work, Antonin Artaud’s influence is also apparent. Bausch’s postmodern movement art took her influence from modern theatre theorists, Artaud and Brecht and expanded their contexts. Overall, Tanztheater has been critically referred to as radical feminist, material feminist, Brechtian, Artaudian, deconstructionist, and postmodern, all of which have been discussed with fervor and controversy.
With previous reads of her work generally understood, I will focus on two of Bausch’s works in order to map out how Bausch deconstructed gender in her choreography. Bausch’s productions would begin with daily social experiences of the body, which she translated and alienated onto the stage. This alienation of familiar physical experiences can be witnessed in Rite of Spring and Die Klage der Kaiserin. Rite is a staged dance work made by Bausch in 1978. As one of her earlier and more renowned pieces, it highlights her approach of mostly movement and less theater to confront body politics and man-woman relationships. Die Klage, on the other hand, is a later work, created in the 90s as a dance film. This video exposes the role of technology, media, and collaboration across different fields; bring attention to the changes and development of Bausch’s art. These pieces compliment each other in their differences across time and approach in Bausch’s body of work. Focusing on Rite and Die Klage, I discuss performativity, repetition and the cognitive science theory of embodiment in the context of gender binaries, suggesting that the same techniques in which dominant gender constructs are upheld are then utilized in Bausch’s works to take them apart. Complicating the previous reads of Bausch’s work discussed above, my paper clarifies when and how repetition, identity performance, and embodied cognition deconstruct the social ideologies of gender.
Repetition
Rite and Die Klage are notable for the strong presence of repetition of stereotypical male and female roles. For this reason, Bausch´s choreography is a subject for feminist analysis, though Bausch explicitly refused such categorizations of her work. The choreography is simultaneously rooted in radical feminism and essentialist feminism, with gender binaries present throughout most all of her work. Bausch’s work is deeply imbued with the theories of Artaud, who believed men and women are fundamentally different and can never be reconciled, as well as Brechtian theory, which suggests that relationships between men and women are socially conditioned an therefore upheld and also changeable (Price, 323). Rather than keeping these ideas separate from each other, Bausch lets them share space within her work. By acknowledging the radical feminist ideas present in Brechtian theory, the repetition in Bausch’s pieces can be seen as a necessary aspect of these gender binaries. Though repetition is how society upholds stereotypes, it is through the use of repetition that Pina Bausch exposes the absurdity of them.
Repetition is how we learn, remember, and construct meaning and value within our society, environment, and self. In regards to gender identity, Judith Butler lies out, “drag enacts the very structure of impersonation by which any gender is assumed” and because there is no origin from which these gender impersonations are deriving from, the project of heterosexual identity is propelled into an endless repetition of itself. This compulsive repetition can only produce the effect of its own originality. Butler claims, “those ontologically consolidated phantasms of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are theatrically produced effects that posture as grounds, origins, the normative measure of the real.” That said, repetition of these gender binaries works to construct a seamless heterosexual identity, putting the identity at risk if it fails to repeat.
It can be argued, then, that the man-woman relationships and identities heavily repeated within Bausch’s work fall into this compulsory establishing and upholding of the illusion of gender. However, Bausch uses repetition to deconstruct these very meanings, values, and understandings through the tools of context and timing within the greater means of repetition. It is within the choices of timing, spatial relations, and body imagery that Bausch makes that differentiates her repetitious performance of gender binaries from that that is saturated within our society, the media, and cultural practices. ¨Repetition evokes a reflexive meaning about its inherently hollow structure. By conveying its lack of meaning-fulfillment as meaning, repetition contradicts and reaffirms itself as absence and need” (Fernandes, XX) Ciane Fernandes further postulates that repetition reaffirms its structural quality of never positing a final and definite meaning, constantly affirming and contradicting itself¨ (80). The images within Bausch’s choreography are not presented in their ¨natural¨ timing and it is through acceleration and deceleration that repetition of the imagery contradicts and disintegrates gender binaries. In Die Klage der Kaiserin, women are shown in underwear and bathing suits exhaustively treading through the mud, working on a farm, running through a forest. These different scenes are shown one after another over and over with a continuation of the same music. In these images, women are showing their legs, wearing heels, exposing their breasts or cleavage. In a non-linear fashion, the clips are played out in patterns and repeated, some lasting for forty-five seconds after having been presented in the film three previous times. It is in the unrelenting repetition of these images of women wearing heels and sexualized attire that these common ritualized and feminized acts become bizarre to the viewer.
In Die Klage, the technology of film was utilized to create these specific gendered imagery in repeated non-narrative, non-linear manners that disrupt our normative ways of understanding these images. This same effect can be seen in Bausch’s earlier work, Rite of Spring, however, within different setting, time, and context. On a stage, the dancers deliver repetitious movements to the point of physical and mental pain and exhaustion. In the portrayal of interpersonal relationships that include existential suffering and the futile search for genuine intimacy between the sexes, Rite employs repetition and rhythm to distinguish the individual from the group and to expose the sincere exhaustion of maintaining identity as an individual and as a member of the group. Following the original narrative from Nijinsky, Bausch’s Rite segregates the sexes, giving them different repertories of movement related to the concepts of “masculine” and “feminine” in dominant culture. The men dance with aggressive and powerful leaps while women exhibit the anxiety and hopelessness of being the chosen victim. They are influenced by the encroaching compulsivity of rhythm and acceleration. “The work develops as an existential metaphor for a reality which pitilessly claims its predominantly female victims” (Servos 31). Here the repetition is paired with acceleration and exhaustion of the dancers to expose the gendered and sexed movements as ludicrous, therefore questioning the characterizations of male and female. The men are assigned the roles of the aggressors, predators, rapists, regulators, masters of ceremonies, terrorists, while the women are the victims-pursued, punished, undressed, raped, dressed, passive and objectified (XX, Sanchez-Colberg). However, the stereotypical classifications of gender disintegrate through the work within its use of persistent reappearance. A clip of a woman in fishnet stockings, a black shiny teddy and black bunny ears stumbles through mud, pacing over and over again is shown four separate times in Die Klage. This ultra-femme performer runs and stumbles again and again, at times falling, unable to hide her exhaustion. Her breasts hang out of her teddy and she carries her high heel shoes in her hand. Also in this film, a male dancer clothes in a woman’s evening gown and full femme makeup paces a ballet studio with his hand gently on the barre, which again is shown three times during the movie. The viewers are made to witness these extremely gendered images repetitively, causing them to first think, “I already saw this image.” And perhaps following that, think, “Why is this image coming up again?” prompting the audience to question and investigate the scenes. In interviews of Bausch, repetitiveness is something she defends, asserting, quite simply, “We must look again and again” (Price 325). The use of repetition is also apparent in Rite, where repetition is not only in movement but also through the number of bodies repeating that movement. Over fourteen dancers, in identical nude dresser for women and black slacks for men, rhythmically repeat a short bouncing phrase in second position with their torsos being thrown towards the ground for over a minute. AT this point, the same group of dancers begins repeating a new synchronized phrase with effeminate arm patterns. However, shortly following this group section, at the sight of the dancer in the red dress who symbolizes the sacrificed virgin, the group disintegrates into a flurry of individual chaotic exhaustive dance. The tension built from the repetition and the breaking of that repetition by the sight of the abject woman, holds up a stress-inducing mirror to the audience, making the viewers emotionally aware of the subjection and abjection within gender roles. In Die Klage der Kaiserin and Rite of Spring repetition disturbs the illusions of male and female gender stereotypes for the spectators by repeating movements and texts. The audience witnesses these re-presentations, as they dismantle meaning and instigate more repetitions.
Gender Identity Performance
Repetition is closely interwoven with an individual’s performance of gender identity within a society, depending upon the dominant meaning. As she does with repetition, Bausch uses the performance of gender binaries and relationship identities to dismantle the gendered meanings we collectively attribute to various movements, images, behaviors, sexes, and objects. In radical feminism, imitation of a non-existing origin becomes the origin itself and the evidence for all other imitations, requiring repetition in order to reaffirm itself, which has proven unstable and therefore threatening (Butler, 307-308). One could conclude that if those imitations were to cease, gender constructs would also dissipate, however, instead Bausch exploits gender identity performance in order to break constructs in the context of her choreography. In Rite of Spring, as described previously, the men and women are segregated and perform their stereotypical roles throughout the performance. The exhaustion, stress, and at times, failure to execute the task exhibited the inability to establish the “authentic woman” and “authentic man”. The dance exposes the exhaustion and failure in attempting to uphold the appropriate fixed identity of man or woman.
Because Rite has such a classic narrative and style to it, seemingly responding to the roots of gender, it can be argued that the work is approaching an essential feminist viewpoint, exposing the innate and fundamental differences between a man and a woman. However, the discomfort and struggle and ultimate failure of these gender roles suggests that they are not fundamental. Bausch liked to work with people as they really are, which is not only fundamental, but includes the complexities of our social and cultural conformities. Pina Bausch clarified in several interviews that she was investigating love, relationships, and the human social experience and social inscriptions within those topics. By exposing and highlighting these facets of life on a stage, she illuminated the gender constructs within these human experiences. Furthermore, with the complexities of modernity illuminated in Die Klage, gender roles are exposed at a more multi-layered level and it is important to take into account the realities of capitalism, hegemony, globalization, etc. that are also present in the work. Though, I do not discuss the interactions between topics of identity within this document, the reader should be aware of their existence and the complexity of modern identity.
In Die Klage, Bausch extends the gender idenities of men and women by means of reversing them. In one clip of the movie, filmed in black and white, two men roller-skate around an empty dining room in long prom-style dresses. With smiles on their faces, they circle around the room, outlining the “curve” of their hips with their hands involved in a series of effeminate hand gestures. In Butler’s Imitation and Gender Insubordination, she implies that performing out of line with the heterosexual norms brings on transgressive pleasure produced by the prohibitions within those constructs. In some instances, the dancers hold to the limitations of their assumed gender or go against it. In the previous example, the performers emanate joy and excitement in their cross-dressing play. Both the norms and the deviations offer both pleasure and/or discomfort to the audience, forcing the audience’s awareness of their own identity experiences, desires, and failures. These distinctions are dependent upon context and interdependent with repetition. Ultimately, the two works at hand, exemplify various aspects of identity performance, described in my previous depictions. In short, Rite discusses group versus individual identity of gender in a timeless light, while Die Klage depicts the contemporary and individualistic complexities of gender. Through the dynamic body imagery in Rite and Die Klage , societal agreements about performance of identity are critically uncovered.
Embodied Cognition
The power of repetition and performance to create our realities can be observed everywhere, and are definitely observable in our own bodies. Through the body’s three-dimensional dynamic interaction with the environment, we learn, make meaning, respond, and conform to our surroundings. The cognitive science theory of embodiment shows us that Bausch’s dancers expose gender binaries, in part, because these ideals were learned through the body’s interaction and appropriation with its environment. By looking at Rite and Die Klage through the lens of embodied cognition, it becomes clear that movement communicates a great deal of information. Bausch used movement of the body as the primary form of communication and to expose what it has to say, what it has learned, given value to, and how it understands it’s self and others. Here, I will attempt to map out concepts of embodiment, drawing attention to embodiment’s presence in Bausch’s choreography and how it relates to my main argument that Bausch’s work deconstructs gender stereotypes.
By working with what is in the body, what the body understands and what it communicates, Bausch was let in on a wealth of information, including the depth of our physically entrenched gender stereotypes. Bausch’s creative process often asked the dancers to respond with movement to prompts, words, phrases, and interactions. Much of the dance vocabulary in her work was initiated from these movement responses, therefore rooted in embodied constructs triggered by the initial prompts. In Raymond Gibbs’ look at the implications of embodied action in psychological accounts of human perceptual experience and action, his research indicates that people perceive the world as dynamic and it is through movement that we find understanding of our environment (66). This concept is clear in Rite because the work used movement as its main form of communication to the audience and within the dancers on stage as well. During the ten-minute solo of the chosen sacrifice virgin, the dancer expresses her fears, anxieties, and process of coming to terms with her fated death. Through large full-bodied sweeping, crashing, expanding and contracting movements of her body, it becomes apparent to the spectators of her situation and the emotional and mental state it inspires in her. While the solo occurs, the other dancers stand around her in groups, witnessing and slowly walking as to contain her. It is the movement in Rite communicates the power of the group over her fate. And through the dynamic environment that is created on stage that a world is communicated and understood by viewers.
There are many facets of movement that are in play in order to create and communicate. When discussing repetition, it was established that the timing and sequencing of the act being repeated is key to repetition functioning as constructive or deconstructive. Cognitive embodiment research shows that people see objects and predict the possible bodily actions they afford. In society’s environments, we often follow through with anticipated movements, upholding and strengthening the dominant stereotypes by way of chronological assumptions (65, Gibbs). Movement-based performing art has the opportunity to counter those anticipated actions, by way of reassembling the expected sequential patterns and repetitions. In Bausch’s non-linear movie, Die Klage, spectators are constantly denied assumed meanings. In one clip about twenty minutes into the film, there is a lady in a dress and stiletto heels walking by an indoor pool. If the pool and the lady act as prompting object, one might ¨naturally¨assume that she will prepare herself to go swimming. Confronting the camera, she smiles and digs her hand into dress, touching her breast and pulling out a form of stuffing that she had inside to make her breast bigger. She squeezes the stuffing and places it back inside the dress, walks in a small slow circle at the edge of the pool and the clip is then finished. This example leaves the audience either confused or question and confronting what they assumed, possible creating new meanings or giving up on understanding it entirely, all of which are deconstructive responses.
Insofar, I have charted out the way in which stereotypes are embodied and can be witnessed in human physicalities. Furthermore, I established that Bausch’s way of deconstructing embodied gender within Rite and Die Klage was by alienating the assumed movement patterns and reassembling the sequence, timing, and context of them. Not only does embodiment exist in our performance and interaction with the environment, but also exists in active looking. Seeing is present in most of our waking hours and provides the brain with the majority of information (166, Meyer-Kalkus). In the physical act of viewing, people rarely see everything out there in the world unless they move their bodies in different ways to attend to environmental information (67, Gibbs). In the context of a performance, the audience is subjected to the changing viewpoints created on stage or in a film. Bausch’s manipulation of what the audience viewed on the screen or on the stage was a key technique to the deconstructive performances she created. In dance performance, complex and well-thought-out stage patterns are created with regards to the point of view of the audience. In Rite, during the same ten minute solo described earlier, the men and women are placed in a semi-circle around the virgin as she fiercely thrashes her body about the stage in a way that persuades the visual focus, direction, and attention of viewers. The movements are repeated several times and the gaze of the other dancers on the soloist supports our attention to her as well. Everyone except the soloist engages in a collective witnessing of her as she comes to terms with her prominent death. Throughout all of Bausch’s work, she demanded that we must look again and again. At times, her work surpassed the threshold of appropriate repetition, where the audience was made to actively see a gender stereotype to the point that it became alien and illogical to the viewer. . This looking over and over again at the performed physically dynamic scenarios caused discomfort and disruption for the audience and their neatly structured meanings and ideologies
Cognitive embodiment highlights the sensory integration involved in performing and in viewing performance. This interplay between various senses and the active involvement of memory must be assumed, illuminating the routines we have acquired in connection with specific objects. Meyer-Kalkus poses that, consequently, comprehending images means: finding patterns, which possess a behavioral compatibility with motor activity” (167). When these pattern-paired objects and the their behavioral counterparts are reassembled within Pina Bausch’s choreography, it instigates discomfort and interferes with what is automatic in our bodies and minds. These rearrangements become new bodily realities for the audience because the heard and the seen form new kinaesthetic dimensions which takes possession of viewers and listeners (168, Meyer-Kalkus).
In light of this active and physical viewing from the audience, Mark Johnson discusses society’s collective misconception of aesthetics that are based in mind-body dualism. He defines aesthetics ¨as concerning everything that goes into our ability to grasp the meaning and significance of any aspects of our experience, and so it involves form and structure, the qualities that define a situation, our felt sense of the meaning of things, our rhythmic engagement with our surroundings, our emotional interactions and on and on¨ (89). These ideas that Johnson presents tie into the power of Bausch’s performance art as an avenue for dismantling meanings, confronting their parts, and reassembling the constructs of our culture through creative thought. This ability to create and re-create meanings can also be attributed to Johnson’s claim that humans possess a kind of “motoric intelligence” significant in human behavior and the interplay between human physical functions and the environment (176). Meyer-Kalkus’s findings also suggest this idea: “The repetitions and great arcs of intensification, the moments of calm and discharge can have the effect of a concentrated sensory thunderstorm that fuses the dimensions of hearing, seeing, feeling, and resonating” (178). With the established information above, it is clear that because of embodiment, movement-based performance art has the power to enforce or recreate meanings and the bases of our fundamental relationships with our societal environments. Only some audience are able to engage in the act of reassembling and others reject it. In order for transformation to occur, a society must endure a certain level of stress and discomfort. Both Rite and Die Klage offer that embodied discomfort and stress and it is through our active spectatorship, and motoric intelligence that we can employ revolution from viewing dynamic performance art.
Conclusion:
In my effort to map out Pina Bausch’s deconstructions of gender roles through her use of repetition, gender-identity performance, and embodied cognition and transmission of ideas through movement, it has come to light that though we do not and will not know the intent of Pina Bausch’s work, the effect of her art can be investigated, examined, and considered as a valuable source of information on the methodologies of deconstruction. The idea that repetition, performance, and embodiment function to assemble collective meanings and systems such as gender, however, can also function to dismantle or transform these ideologies illuminates performance and visual art as a powerful avenue to change a society’s fundamental values. It is suggested that performance art is therefore, highly under appreciated, and can be and should be considered critically as a form learning, relearning, and unlearning.
References:
Butler, Judith.
Die Klage der Kaiserin. Pina Bausch. Mariko Aoyama, Anne Marie Benati, and Benedicte
Billet. 8 May 1990. West Germany.
Fernandes, Ciane. Pina Bausch and the Wuppertal Dance Theater: The Aesthetics of
Repetition and Transformation. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2005. Print.
Gibbs, Raymond W. “Perception and Action.” Embodiment and cognitive
science. New York, NY. Cambridge University Press, 2006. 42-78.
Johnson, Mark. “‘The stone that was cast out shall become the cornerstone’: the bodily
aesthetic of human meaning.” Journal of Visual Arts Practice 6.2 (2007): 89-104. EBSCOhost. Web. 5 May. 2010.
Meyer-Kalkus, Reinhart. “Work, rhythm, dance; Prerequisites for kinaesthetics of media and
arts.” Embodiment in Cognition and Culture. Eds. Krois, John Michael, Rosengren, Mats, Steidele, Angela, and Westerkamp, Dirk. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins North America, 2007. 165-181. Print.
Price, David W. “The Politics of the Body: Pina Bausch's ‘Tanztheater’.” Theatre Journal,
Vol. 42, No. 3 (Oct., 1990): pp. 322-331.
Rite of Spring. Bausch, Pina. Arnold Alverez, Anne Marie Benati, and Hiltrud Blankt.
1978. ZDF. Mainz.
Sanchez-Colberg, Ana. “‘You put your left foot in, then you shake it
all about…’ Excursions and Incursions into Feminism and Bausch’s Tanztheater.” Dance, Culture and Gender. Ed. Thomas, Helen. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. 151-163.
Servos, Norbert and Weigelt, Gert. “Introduction: Dance and Emancipation” Pina Bausch
Wuppertal Dance Theater or The Art of Training a Goldfish: Excursions into Dance. Patricia Stadie. 2nd Ed. Germany: Ballet-Buhnen-Verlag Rolf Garske, Cologne, 1984. 19-26.
Servos, Norbert and Weigelt, Gert. “Rite of Spring” Pina Bausch Wuppertal Dance Theater
or The Art of Training a Goldfish: Excursions into Dance. Patricia Stadie. 2nd Ed. Germany: Ballet-Buhnen-Verlag Rolf Garske, Cologne, 1984. 29-40.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Upcoming Show
Please mark your calenders for a weekend of breathtaking performance:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=142292315812564#!/event.php?eid=142292315812564
FRIDAY 8 PM
SATURDAY 8 PM
SUNDAY 2 PM
SAN DIEGO STATE STUDIO THEATER
Some thoughts from Phoebe:
The Audience:
Taking the time from interacting with the busy world, to quiet one's self and witness, respond, and engage with dance is a practice I admire and belief is as important and breathtaking as the performers/dancers are. It is not a passive act, but an active and challenging one- and ultimately rewarding by reminding us of why we are alive, reminding us of each cell in our bodies and how brilliant it is that these cells collectively move through space and time in endless variations.
We do hope to see YOU there in the audience! And thank you for your brilliance in that quiet dedicated role.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=142292315812564#!/event.php?eid=142292315812564
FRIDAY 8 PM
SATURDAY 8 PM
SUNDAY 2 PM
SAN DIEGO STATE STUDIO THEATER
Some thoughts from Phoebe:
The Audience:
Taking the time from interacting with the busy world, to quiet one's self and witness, respond, and engage with dance is a practice I admire and belief is as important and breathtaking as the performers/dancers are. It is not a passive act, but an active and challenging one- and ultimately rewarding by reminding us of why we are alive, reminding us of each cell in our bodies and how brilliant it is that these cells collectively move through space and time in endless variations.
We do hope to see YOU there in the audience! And thank you for your brilliance in that quiet dedicated role.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
About My Earth-Shaking Athletic Abilites
In regards to Phoebe Dances Everyday Project, I definitely learned that I under-edit, but I am pretty sure the preciousness I experience over footage will decrease over the years. Dance encompasses my days and I learn a lot all the time. I usually go through daily bouts of self-doubt about my capacity as a performer/dancer/moving body and criticism about the indulgence and self-claimed privilege of identifying as a dancer (rather that being a REAL adult). I think about how my art isn't that great and how I am not a fantastic dancer with particularly earth-shaking athletic abilities. I have breasts and hips and thighs which are all seen as a down-fall in the dance world. My balance is inconsistent and unreliable. I can't see very well. And I don't come from a background of serious discipline--- so, who am I to spend time in a studio, to ask for money so that you can witness me on a stage? Who am I to say "this is the thing and it is worth doing, worth watching"? And who am I not to have a real job with health insurance and a home and a car and possible and pet (fish?)? It's not fair, they tell me. It's not fair that I don't have these "responsibilities" and on top of that, from those who care for me dearly, I hear, "it's not safe".
Well yes, sir. It is exhausting. It is unnerving at times and the struggle to meet my needs can be relentless. The competition is high, especially as a woman. My funding is NIL (I mean nada, nothing, res). And in the end, maybe I will have created mediocre performances (phoebedance.blogspot.com for example). I will be old and poor, unremembered.
So, given this, I NEED to ask myself and be clear on WHY and HOW I approach dance.
Why: well. because I believe that through the body in motion, I can contribute to healing in the world. I believe that the practice of 'my whole body at once watching time pass and space change as I move through it' (inspired by Deborah hay) doesn't JUST happen in the lab. I believe it happens in Trader Joe's, during cooking dinner, and in my deepest sleep. And I believe that when it happens, intimacy unfolds, balance takes breath, and a high order of respect for the mystery of life entails. I dance because within my practice of dance I become a better person and I challenge myself from an integrated approach and I hold not only my mind accountable but all my cells, all my emotions, thoughts, healths, sicknesses, spirit accountable. I show up. For me, being a dancer is a practice of showing up, no matter what.
How: I think it is in my best interest to approach dance, not only with passion and commitment, but with dignity and self-respect. It is incredibly easy to list off all the reasons and rhymes as to why what I am doing is indulgent and wasteful and disrespectful to other hard-working adults, etc. <- this is impart due to the values of our society and the impact of our environment and culture. We as a society, do not value dance (bbc doesn't even cover dance in their arts section and nytimes fails to list it in the sidebar on their website). Most people think of ballet and So You Think You Can Dance and MJ and then it stops there. But what I do, is not ballet, not anything like SYTYCD and unfortunately, not like MJ. So what can I do? I can offer my critical, brilliant, and creative body to be seen as it does it's absolute best to portray the intimacies of this world in innovative and inspiring ways. By studying and exploring every detail- how do my eyes function? How does my skeleton work, my muscles, fascia, my organs? What does breathe do? What do all these things do in moments of love, hate, numbness, story telling? How do we communicate with our hands our deepest fears and our biggest memories? Where does despair live in the body? Catharsis? Elevation? What's being rather than doing? how do we listen to each other with our eyes? with our gut? how to we hide and how do we become larger that life? when does detail stand out and when is it that we focus on the expansion of the whole universe? These are the questions I relentlessly stay in and because I approach dance from these questions, it is my hope that I can offer you what I find. And that those discoveries are of value to you and your personal life, even without the back flip or triple pirouette .
In theory I could explore these questions in poetry or in painting. But I trust more that anything, the WHOLE BODY AT ONCE as informing me (more than I do my mind or more than what I experience sitting in a chair for hours pondering).
So that's that. And here I am. And here I go.
more to come and more to go.
Well yes, sir. It is exhausting. It is unnerving at times and the struggle to meet my needs can be relentless. The competition is high, especially as a woman. My funding is NIL (I mean nada, nothing, res). And in the end, maybe I will have created mediocre performances (phoebedance.blogspot.com for example). I will be old and poor, unremembered.
So, given this, I NEED to ask myself and be clear on WHY and HOW I approach dance.
Why: well. because I believe that through the body in motion, I can contribute to healing in the world. I believe that the practice of 'my whole body at once watching time pass and space change as I move through it' (inspired by Deborah hay) doesn't JUST happen in the lab. I believe it happens in Trader Joe's, during cooking dinner, and in my deepest sleep. And I believe that when it happens, intimacy unfolds, balance takes breath, and a high order of respect for the mystery of life entails. I dance because within my practice of dance I become a better person and I challenge myself from an integrated approach and I hold not only my mind accountable but all my cells, all my emotions, thoughts, healths, sicknesses, spirit accountable. I show up. For me, being a dancer is a practice of showing up, no matter what.
How: I think it is in my best interest to approach dance, not only with passion and commitment, but with dignity and self-respect. It is incredibly easy to list off all the reasons and rhymes as to why what I am doing is indulgent and wasteful and disrespectful to other hard-working adults, etc. <- this is impart due to the values of our society and the impact of our environment and culture. We as a society, do not value dance (bbc doesn't even cover dance in their arts section and nytimes fails to list it in the sidebar on their website). Most people think of ballet and So You Think You Can Dance and MJ and then it stops there. But what I do, is not ballet, not anything like SYTYCD and unfortunately, not like MJ. So what can I do? I can offer my critical, brilliant, and creative body to be seen as it does it's absolute best to portray the intimacies of this world in innovative and inspiring ways. By studying and exploring every detail- how do my eyes function? How does my skeleton work, my muscles, fascia, my organs? What does breathe do? What do all these things do in moments of love, hate, numbness, story telling? How do we communicate with our hands our deepest fears and our biggest memories? Where does despair live in the body? Catharsis? Elevation? What's being rather than doing? how do we listen to each other with our eyes? with our gut? how to we hide and how do we become larger that life? when does detail stand out and when is it that we focus on the expansion of the whole universe? These are the questions I relentlessly stay in and because I approach dance from these questions, it is my hope that I can offer you what I find. And that those discoveries are of value to you and your personal life, even without the back flip or triple pirouette .
In theory I could explore these questions in poetry or in painting. But I trust more that anything, the WHOLE BODY AT ONCE as informing me (more than I do my mind or more than what I experience sitting in a chair for hours pondering).
So that's that. And here I am. And here I go.
more to come and more to go.
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