Androniki Marathaki
One year ago: “How the invisible contracts by the visible? How the visible releases from the invisible? The story of choreographing”. During the first week of the lab: “How can the intangible contracts into tangible? How the tangible releases from the intangible?”
Is the body, the core of contemporary thought, distanced from the sense of experiencing? Is dance, the art of embodiment, made to be accessed visually as a representational art only? Is the latter question adding distance to the former one? Have dancers in front of the audience become aliens or this is a factual result
Androniki Marathaki 20.1.11
What do I bring with me, what do I bring in front of me:
One year ago I wrote in my MA thesis that choreography/and less dance, during the last decades is an art form that is manipulated/controlled by the desire of creating images. The reference point of choreographing is the eye. Yes, the art of dance is referenced by many scholars as a representational one and as the one of embodiment, but the subject of these definitions is the one that changes: representational one for the audience, embodied art for the performer. Why then, and in which part of the exploration, choreographers have trapped on choreographing the form and steps instead of performer’s experiences? Why choreographers and directors have trapped on present/exhibit a performance for the “eye” instead of allowing the audience to experience a performance? Does the audience actually experience a staged performance? Do we as performers actually experience a performance when experience is added on the form or even when choreography is formed upon the dimension of presenting this?
If in the above there is a negative implication, it is not my intention. My intention is to question the dimensions and perspectives of a performance that are thought as normal, common, habitual, codified. Right or wrong is not the issue, the issue is to mobilize “the sphere of applicability, especially when the ground upon which it operates is continuously moving” (, B. Massumi, 2002:7, Parables for the virtual: movement, affect, sensation). Departing from the above my intention (till now, during the lab many things might change) is to create performances that emphasize the experiential element for performers and for audience members also, as much as possible. The mode of a performance changes: asylum of stage is disobeyed. Performer’s choreo-graphy changes: the “graphy” of “chorous” refers more to the sensation of experiencing, the qualitative invisible dimension (I named it “modulated choreographies”).As Ana wrote try to think “choreography as a ‘forming of experience’, not the experience of form”.
1st week
During this first week of the lab, Ana Sanchez Colberg proposals on choreography making seemed to me of great proximity. Many similarities and very small differences, that I didn’t even realise before, appeared in front of me. Similarities named in another way, differences that will help me to give specificity and clarity in my choices as creator, that before didn’t have the need to be expressed in any linguistic form. And I am sure that the rest follows.
Very strongly I remember her phrase: “Think of choreography as “I am” with no need to question the subject of it, because I am already there” (hope that I wrote it exactly as it was expressed). So what else do I bring in front of me with the “I am”, during this period, during these last months, days, hours?...I feel I am in a “was” place despite the fact that “I am”. Somewhere inbetween, liminal (?I hate that word, it was used so many times during my MA that I actually believe I am dressed in the latest fashion when I even think this word).This place is void and colourful, noisy, un-inspirational, bipolar and I am a fish, in between, dancing/trembling because of poles’ magnetic power.
Again...what do I bring with me? What “I am” is there in my dance? ...Silence, there is so much noise outside for it to be part of a performance. There is a need of training the sensitivities of our senses. I like speed, flow of movement, I love the journeys more than the positioning. What is there not?...I dislike movement prattle/chatter, object prattle/chatter, conceptual meaningful representational motion, slow beginnings, narcissism and exhibition of performers’ abilities, just for the sake of a “dance” translation.
Working with the sense of touch as a stimulus for generating movement material, I realized that this is the way it happens. This is the way I dance, I perform. I touch the air around me, in between me ,I touch air, I push air , I swallow air, I communicate through the air that surrounds me as a whole, not my body. What adds flexibility is our perforated nature. We are perforated bodies that communicate through the air we breathe. Our contour area is more perforated rather than sealed surface, and the feedback of the “touch” in this micro cosmos reminds me Debora’s Hay focus of attention into the cells of my body. Every inch of me touches the other cell of me, the other’s cell, air’s cells.
Touch can be a possible stimulus to explore a performance within my method. What I observed last year is that the stimulus for a performance (from which I usually start exploring a performance) should embrace the notion of singularity in Deleuzian terms and should be experienced physically. Singularity, and thus stimulus, should be unique for each but within a common sense. As Deleuze wrote singularity is like the music that accompanies the dance of the dust. In that way touch is related personally to the monad but also moves to a common sense. I feel touching personally in a way, but in parallel I know how it feels like for the others, even though I have never felt and never will feel other’s sense of touching. Moreover touch is experienced rather than “felt”,and thus is dissattached from anything that could be associated with a possible description before its actual experience. Despite the fact that I start from the exploration of a stimulus, this stimulus cannot be disconnected from the “I”, from the question Ana raised “where am I”. So till 7th of February what I try to notice is the singular meeting point of all the “I am”s, the new stimulus.
Working with tasks, the evolving stages, the dimensions of the tasks, the theme that is created= topics that I really believe I have to linguistically clarify. “What 'judgement' do we apply to 'transform' the material from 'sense experience' to communicable/tangible form?”(Ana S. C.). How do we create tasks that can release a multidimensional investigation and how do we keep alive the experiential element/ allow the transformation/ dig on one task rather than state, as Ana noted/ how much flexible this task should be and which part of it should remain flexible so that I won t be lost in improvisational mode/ what does memory keeps and what leaves out on purpose? I know I am doing something, I know that I have the sense of performing something when I investigate a task, rather than improvise it, rather than dance a task, but how can I explain it to others and to myself in order to conceptually understand it?
The only image that I have is that tasks are formed from subtasks which are like centres that vibrate a kinaesthetic knowledge. In between these subtasks there are small gaps. I love these gaps. The centres are not lined up. Some of their vibration rays might. Some others are lost when time passes while performing, but I am on alert: I don’t want to miss the generative ones.That ‘s all I know till now in words. (28.1.11)
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Olga Halkidou
Thoughts on week 1:
Thoughts on week 1:
‘Nothing to do with Movement Languages: The Body in Contemporary Choreography’
Touch and interact but always be present. This was the main task and goal, the core idea of the beginning of this lab. We are placed ourselves into the beginning of a journey towards the creation of a performative result. The first steps of the choreographic journey had their destination on the questions ‘Where am I placed?’ ‘Why do I enter this exploration, artistically, mentally, literally, etc.?’. We placed choreography into the frame of how we make meaning through body and how we convey our messages to audience by forming embodied experience.
The research started exploring the ‘body’ in choreography. The departure was the sense of ‘touch’. We took away words in order to avoid linguistic information of the desired message, under the thought that we represent language, we don’t embody language. Besides, while our other four senses (sight, hearing, smell, and taste) are located in specific parts of the body, the sense of touch is found anywhere on the body, from the top of the head to the tip of the toe and originates in the bottom layer of skin. Arguably, touch is the most important of all the senses; Research has shown that touch has tremendous psychological ramifications in areas like, healing, persuasion, manage anxiety and tension. I would emphasize on persuasion as touching enriches firstly and more importantly the self-persuasion, in other words, enforces self-concentration and presence.
Working as individuals we approach the ‘touch’ task lying on the floor and sensing each and every part of the body. Observing the map that was being created, ‘touching’ smoothed the progress of the detailed attention to the specific body parts and made the ‘presence’ more apparent to interpret. This observation is therefore arguably linked to the definition that Gibson gives for the sense of touch. Gibson defined the haptic system as "The sensibility of the individual to the world adjacent to his body by use of his body". Gibson and others emphasized the close link between haptic perception and body movement.
Throughout the exploration of the individual plot, the map took various changes and layers until coming to an end. Every stage consisted by what was left form previous one, in other words rememberable or tangible. The body memory as tool gave out the ending material. The feeling created by the sense of touching is registered to the brain through spinal cord. Taking an experience and form it bodily is the process of choreography we are looking for and not creating forms though a body. Forming experience through the sense of touch was the core goal of this session.
Completing in a way the individual exploration we tested our map into connection with another body. The responses became more vigorous and persuasive. To me, it appeared that ‘touching’ is always in relation to something or/and something else. This can be floor or an object when exploring individually, another person body when in ensemble, but also the breath of someone or our own.
I believe through this exercise we built up the sense of ‘touching’ beginning from individual work, to then duet ending to group work. In the group work where we had to travel through our own set task; in my group we decided to merge our mappings and improvisation led into a different landscape, filled with common elements. We amazingly observed that we unconsciously borrowing elements from what we had observed into the first solo presentations. Since we all had ‘touch’ as reference point or point of departure we had created a common language within this space.
Touching has not to do with distance. We can touch and be touched regardless of physical distance. Touch between performer and its body, its body and its dance, and touch between performer and the audience. Touch between body parts and embodied meaning. The inner space of the performer needs to be in touch with the outer space. Conveying our meaning to the audience means ‘eimai edo’. When the performer’s body is alive then its individual space can be expanded and arrive into a lovely merged landscape, the units’, the groups’, the viewers’.
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Vitoria Kobalou: A RAW PARAGRAPH ON TOUCH
Touch me and I am gone
Shift my reality into a distance
from the space I am in
transform direction to sensation
bring information to me skin
body muscle bone, vein, brain
and you watching can you feel
I am being touched? This sensation travels to you
it is an unusual common language which you can't
hear smell taste you can feel
An awareness of the polymorphic of my being
which stems not from the posture/shape in which I am in-
but from the poetry of gravity through
my form as I am here- the extent to which I
perceive this makes it visible for you -so long as I don't
forget you or any other being -thing- element around me -
otherwise I am lost in a tunnel; of suction, lost; if I
close in me my observation I lose half of it at least.
This process of observing touch/touched brings me in a
plane of perception, a language, so subtle. Its traces of memory
are so specific because they trigger my feeling being from within me
And this being holds no such borders as my daily sensory mind
It overcomes mental configurations and audible frictions, leaves me
in a field of simplicity of wholeness the tactile language.
As long as I allow it to transfer the information to me
this physical body cannot lie.
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Anthi Theofilidi
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Io Anagnostaki
Touching Through + Beyond, Touching In + Touching Out, Touching By + Touching To, Touching WithOut Touching, Touching From Distance,
Touching From Inside, Touching From my Core,
Touch Without Touching
Touch Without Touching
Touching Without Touch, You ‘Touch ’ by Moving, You ‘Move’ by Touching
You Move to Touch, You Touch to Move, Touching = Moving
Touch bare Hands
Touch bare Arms
Touch bare Soul
Touch bare Life
Touch Soft –Strong /Light – Heavy /Tender -Agressive /Pleasant- Unpleasant /Desirable – Undesirable / Welcomed – Forced / Towards – From Touch to Push / to Pull / to Hold /to Embrace / to Give / to Take / to Save /to Hurt ***Touch the Void, Touch the Distance, Touch the Space,Touch the Time, Touch me
Touch the Invisible
Touch the Unbearable
Touch the Inapprochable
Touch You
Touch me to Touch You !
Touch me to Ask you –
Touch me to See You -
Touch me to Feel You
Touch me to Meet me –
Touch me to Read me –
Touch me to Breath me
Touch me Without Questions - Touch me Without Answers – Touch me Without Knowing
Touch me without Words – Touch me without Reason- Touch me to Be Touch me with your Eyes – Touch me with your Sight -Touch me with your Voice – Touch me with Smile– Touch me with You All Touch me without Arms –– Touch me without Flesh – Touch me with Your Guts ‘Touch me Touch me I want to Feel your Body’
Touch me as you Leave – Touch me as You Come – Touch me the Space between
Ζηταω + Αρνουμαι
Προσφερω + Αποφευγω
Στο Ενδιαμεσο Αναζηταω
Το Αγγιγμα ειναι Πονος – Το Αγγιγμα ειναι Φοβος
Το Αγγιγμα ειναι Ζητουμενο
Ενα Αντικειμενο Αναμεσα - Μια Λεξη Αναμεσα -Το Κενο 1μ ,50εκ,30εκ 10εκ – μια Ανασα – μια Στιγμη & Πως να τα Διασχισεις
Σε Αγγιζω με το Δερμα – Σε Αγγιζω με το Βλεμμα - Σε Αγγιζω με τον Λογο & παλι Δεν Σε Φτανω
Μια Ανασα καθε Φορα μου Διαφευγεις
Μετα το Αγγιγμα
Η Απομακρυνση
Μεχρι το Επομενο Αγγιγμα
Το Πλησιασμα
Αγγιζω = Διανυω μια Αποσταση
Αγγιζω = Προσεγγιζω
Αφη – Επαφη
Ανεπαφος – Ανεγγιχτος
Untouched = Impossible
Touch Your Desire -Touch Your Fear - Touch The Space Between
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Maria Katsipataki
Do you really dance?
Dance with a capital D or dance as phenomenon of culture production through our body from the society that we live not only as an artistic theme but from the whole life?
What does to do art politically means? To giving a form? To using art as tool? To inventing oneself guidelines? To be a warrior? To decide in favour of something or to create something?
Everyone has his strategy, the sense of stuff, coming up and down and transforming continuously. Knowing your style is the first thing to know about how you perform. Once you understand which is your naturally dominant learning style and then you are in a position to improve the way you perform. Don’t try to change yourself but work hard to improve the way you perform. The awareness of how we do what we do is the key to influence. End of personal practice. Stop it. Go around and search. Be neutral, find your whiteness. The openness and the truth have purification vibrations and can be used to clear blocks from your path. As we said the first week with Ana:
Who I am?
What are my strengths?
Where do I belong?
Find your task.
Use your language.
Learn to ‘eimai edw’.
Breathe…
