TanzNacht Berlin 2012
Insignificant Others
(Learning To Look Sideways)
An Kaler
What I read in the
program: Together separately. Separately together. How can one perceive and analyse a
collectively experienced, present moment?
Three performers share a moment on stage. They go through a series of positions that
let them become the bearers of ambiguous, almost static yet variable
images. Connections develop between them
which cause the moment to gently but clearly shift and their relationships to
constantly charge and discharge. Through
a series of interrupted yet connected sequences and situations a space is
created in which performer and spectator share the potentiality of what comes
next.
What I saw: a
generic contemporary dance. They started
standing in silence. They shifted slowly
as the computer generated music with cracks, whistles and pops grew louder and
louder.
Another reason I say generic is the type of movement. Though quite articulate and adept at it, the
dancers didn’t offer much in terms of kinespheric originality as they stayed
with the elbow initiated limp wrist movement that is quite fashionable.
Spatially, the dancers tended to be upstage and face away
from the audience. Quite a lot of time
was spent far stage left in the unlit section of the performance space. Was this a somatic spatial response to the
audience or intentionally done to contrast the two moments when the three
dancers were center stage?
One thing I like to watch when I watch ice-skating is when
the skaters fall. Not out of a desire
for schadenfreude, but I like to see how they react to an unscripted moment. I
am guessing that Insignificant Others
is improvised or scored with landmarks and therefore mostly unscripted. A moment that I perceived as very unscripted was when one of the
dancers, mid thrash, bonked against one of the lighting supports. Two other very
unscripted moments involved two dancers almost colliding. Did these near collisions happen because the
dancers were so involved in their own processes that they became unaware of the
others on stage? Maybe this is the insignificant others bit. Ahh…and the (learning to look sideways) is that they
aren’t directly relating to each other, but mostly responding to each other’s
movement as opposed to other Viewpoints.
But then they do take similar shapes when standing in front of the
hanging rectangles.
Compositionally this piece was coherent. The movement ebbed and flowed. The music got louder, quieter, and came in
occasional bursts. The lighting shifted
and repeated. There were three dancers
and three rectangles. So in that sense
the piece held together.
But what didn’t work for me was the use of space by the
dancers. I didn’t see a compositional
choice (except in the two times of stillness center stage) but nerves and
adrenaline causing the dancers to shrink back and away from the audience. Also, the piece was too long. Maybe I am too American and my sitzfleisch is
not so developed. But I think it is more
that I am a dancer. After seeing people
flailing about articulately for 20 minutes, my mirror neurons are full and I
want to get up and join in.
Some notes –
“How can one perceive and analyse a collectively
experienced, present moment?” – Is this a rhetorical question? How about Viewpoints, Laban, amount of sweat,
sound, sight, video, photography, Ensemble Thinking, touch, pressure und so
weiter?
“…which performer and spectator share the potentiality of
what comes next.” – a fancy way of saying the piece is improvised
“They go through a series of positions that let them become
the bearers of ambiguous, almost static yet variable images. Connections develop between them which cause
the moment to gently but clearly shift and their relationships to constantly
charge and discharge.” – Another reason I say that this piece is “of the
genus”. Can’t this be said about almost
any piece? Especially the ambiguous
part?
Propositon(s)
Laurent Chétouane
What I read in the
program: The French director Laurent Chétouane has developed a unique
language for dance. The six
choreographies, developed over the course of the last few years, speak for
themselves. Each new encounter with a
dancer challenged and enriched the vocabulary of the work. For the TANZNACHT BERLIN 2012, five of the
seven dancers who worked with Chétouane during this period lend their bodies to
this language and give insights into their understanding and interpretation of
the collaborative works, the shared ideas and the time they spent during
rehearsals.
What I saw: Six
dancers, not five. One Idea of line or semi circle giving focus to a solo. I remember one multilevel tableau instead of
a line giving focus. Mostly the solos
began and the ensemble would recognize that and create a Hot Spot for the solo.
(Some might recognize the Ensemble Thinking vocabulary I am using.) Every dancer in the group had a solo before
dancers went for another solo. The two
dancers in purple had the most solos and the male dancer with long hair in
green had, sadly, the fewest. Maybe he’s
the new guy.
Also saw an odd mandibular action, mostly with the two
dancers in purple. Everyone had their
mouths open, and some occasionally moved their mandibles. Several times the soloists would break out in
a funny grin, causing a tittering in the audience. These smiles were reminiscent of smiles I
have seen during group faculty improvisations at festivals when everyone knows
it’s headed downhill. Maybe this use of
smiles was a distillation of that phenomenon and commentary on improvisations
headed south.
What kept this piece from being generic was that it stuck
with the same score for the entire time and kept running through the
permutations of soloist and ensemble.
Group improvisations frequently churn through so many scores, ideas, and
movement themes (I have been in many of those!) and it was nice to see one that
stuck to its guns, or gun, as the case maybe.
But if they were going to stick with one score, they could have been a
bit more adventurous in their investigation of it and expression with it.
This piece, too, was coherent – people running through the
permutations of a score. No rabbits
popping out of hats, or balloons appearing from pockets or other such
non-sequitur surprises. Though, the
mandible jiggle, like the three rectangles in Kaler’s piece, why?
A note – the last soloist before they repeated at one point
had her left leg out to the side and rotated it to an arabesque as she rotated
right. A beautiful moment!
**********
My issue with both pieces, was not so much the performances
themselves, but how they were framed.
The descriptions could fit most any piece out there. Kaler’s was “ambiguous”, dealing with the
“present moment” and “what comes next”.
Chétoune’s was about collaboration, sharing ideas, and time spent
rehearsing.
