Message from John Paul Zaccarini in Madrid, Spain, 11.2.11

The Kinitiras Choreography Lab, curated and mentored by Ana Sanchez-Colberg is a unique opportunity to expand, refresh and invigorate one's practice in a safe environment free from external, market-driven pressures. Forms of physical truth are privileged over forms that repeat or conform to existing tastes or trends.

Each international practitioner brings her/his own practice to the space with the Lab Mentor facilitating connections or hybrids with one's own practice, pointing out the liminal spaces between different theories and practices and gently guiding the participants through a meticulously curated journey.

This journey encourages above all dialogue, reflective activities, writing and the opportunity for creative, productive disobedience.

In its structure it allows time for digestion, assimilation, allowing participants to make methodologies that may seem alien to them, personal and “owned”. Sanchez-Colberg's choice of workshop facilitators is based as much on their research and pedagogic practice as their international pedigree and acclaim as artists and is forever blurring the line between educator and educatee.

This is not a laboratory for those who wish to be told what to do by an “authority”.

Along the way, via a continuous on-line blog that all contribute to, participants will encounter a deliciously diverse array of writers, thinkers and philosophers of artistic practice and be allowed time to explore them more or discover relationships with others.

As a practitioner this laboratory feels like a crucial step in an authentic direction.

LAB TIME 15.2. 2011

photos by Ana Gabriela Webb

We continue to explore the process from movement experienced to 'choreographed' form, we dont approach this as a process of editing the material but one of understanding, comprehending what the raw material 'offers' to the 'outside' as both separate and related to its makers. We continue to explore the questions of what makes material 'interesting' (in particular how what is interesting for me - as an issue of choreographic exploration - remains interesting for the other - beginning to address the issue of audience reception). We address interest as a continuum between 'pleasure' and 'difficulty'. I remind them of (I think it was Duchamp) who said the work does not tell me anything, the work brings me in to its world.... How do we bring the audience 'into' the work as opposed to bombard them with empty 'statements'. How does a work enter-tain us, a word that I define as how does a work makes us 'enter' into a particular state/world/perceptive new order and how does it 're-tain' us within it (a view of the word entertainment, which perhaps we all need to consider) so that disclosure (perhaps the old word revelation comes in handy) can take place - disclose what it is and what we are within it...and that includes artists and audience. Therefore how do we create a work that instills a 'search' for/in the audience in relation to the search of the creative process?. How is audience empathy therefore redefined as a sharing in a parallel creative search not one of merely sentimental mirroring, superficial and non-lasting? So lets us waste no more time in deciding -as if it were possible- what the work says but rather in understanding how what we shape has - makes - an impact - through the materials of our medium - in infinite ways.

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To choreograph a work is therefore to choreograph a search -- in an through the witnessing of actions, sounds, colours, tensions, etc etc etc -- how 'it' makes itself manifest, what the moment offers, but also what we bring to it... the question of 'origin not end' is equally posed to the audience.

We work in pairs, showing, exchanging, finding a language for what 'I witness'. We allow the feedback from the outside eye (in terms of what is perceived, what draws their attention, what comes to the perceptive field) to have an impact -- the feedback helps me clarify what I am doing, to helps me change, or takes me somewhere new, as an artists I accept the view from outside to inform my process, that which was 'foreign' becomes absorbed into the 'known'. We don' t speak of what 'I want to see' as an audience, of his is better if you do it to the right, or four times rather than six (the orthodox corrective treatment of choreographic editing) but rather we expose what I see present in front of me, disclosing the interrelation between the witness and the witnessed.

THOUGHTS ON THE GO II:

At the end of the session each one adds a phrase into the basket of this lab day, something that was left after the investigation, most of them spontaneous thoughts, traces:

• ‘ The Other - Reflects Me ’ (Io)

• Πως ακόμη και μία κίνηση μπορεί να φανεί περιττή ή να χαμηλώσει την ένταση του κομματιού αν δεν έχει βρει το νόημάτης. How even a move may seem unnecessary or lower the intensity of the piece if it has not found its meaning, its purpose. (Rena)

• Είναι ανακουφιστικό να υπάρχει feedback την ώρα που κινείσαι γιατί σε πάει σε μονοπάτια ξένα για σένα. It is comforting to have feedback while you move; it can takes you to unknown pathways and clears blocks of your path. (Anthii)

• Form my experience by experiencing my form. Experiences change my form into experienced process of forming. Forming is an experience of breaking formal form into experiencial form forming pathways. (Vitoria)

• The origin of how we do what we do is the key to influence. This is the start to the journey. Breathe. (Maria)

• Δεν υπάρχει σωστό και λάθος. Υπάρχει η καθαρή πρόθεση.There is not right or wrong. Only the pure intention (Eugenia)

• Το εξωτερικό μάτι μπορεί να σε βοηθήσει να αλλάξεις το ταξίδι, να πλησιάσεις το συγχρονισμό με το presence σου, την αλήθεια σου. The outside eye can assist you change the trip; you come closer to the synchronization with your presence, your truth (Olga)

• The issue is not to answer but simply to question. (Androniki)

• In the universal unconscious lies the seed of any inspiration. When we honestly approach the source then we get a connection. (Rena)

• There must always be a reason to move. Like breathing. (Androniki)

  
  

Thoughts on the spot, 10.2.11

Question guiding the tasks of the session today: how do we move from experience to the more complex issue of creating intelligible artistic (dance) form

Focusing on ORIGIN NOT END in choreographic explorations presupposes a focus on evolution (of series, of species, of systems).... Evolution wants to evolve, it does not aim to end, an end is contradictory to its essence...an anomaly... it insists...origin embrace life forces, end death wishes.... trying to get rid of the nihilistic philosophical inheritance ingrained in art-making (Ana) origin is a place I am going to. (Vitoria). angel=the whiteness of a touch. (Io). clarification of origin is a clarification of the process, as to know what/where is, is already implicated in its evolution, that which makes it this an not another, Arendt over and over and over again... what it is knows -beyond words- what it wants to be, what it wants is connected to its desire in pure existence...want and desire indissoluble, is that not what art is after all all about.... (ana) ? you!I! can shift your finish to an origin..that is a start!? going to my origin makes a noise I want to avoid. (Olga) this place exists i know it so well I live with its breath rain and sun (Vitoria).

Let the hair drop

the Wings of A Body-----How many?

Language /Logos = E-Motion (Io)

Somewhere here is the link between personal experience and the issue -challenge perhaps- of what is normally termed artistic form.(Ana).  Τελικά τί είναι ωραίο; Αναρωτιέμαι... Ποιά είναι η αισθητική της κίησης; Σίγουρα θέλουμε να βγάζει νόημα αυτό που κάνουμε, αλλά ποιά είναι τα όρια μεταξύ ωραίου, ευκρινούς και πραγματικά αυθεντικού; ("In the end, what is Beauty? I wonder... What is the aesthetic of movement? Of course we want what we do to make some sense, but what are the limiths between Beauty, clarity and authenticity?" Evgenia).

Now we move onto first, what is sets up finite(ly) and infinitely ..if this is 'one' (proto), what is 'two'? (Ana)

I Need to Stay with That

Until I Find What Is That (Io)

In what ways is a choreographic process one of (self) knowledge of (self) discovery, only when I know 'my dance' (allow that immersion) will "it become clear" (Evgenia's question, almost an anxiety) if not it is un-intelligible to another, although part of who I am is embrouille in this an-other (damn, Arendt again...).

Ana writes (Ambelokipi, 5.15.pm): We confronted the artistic, aesthetic, structural, technical, performative- challenges within the CHOICE of determining "a first" from the pool of variables contained within the series of exercises today (fragments of 'a dance' began to emerge) ..and from there began to unravel notions of consequence of/from this choice.... only then can any talk of 'right' or 'wrong' choreographic form can take place.

For 'homework' I have asked them to keep the 'fragments' alive from today to next Tuesday, to carry it like a constant present day dream...continuously interrupting daily life, as I have read Mahler used to do with fragments of his symphonies in the making....through that learn its every contour, dynamics, texture, shape, time, space in , space without, it may even acquire a taste, a smell, it may begin to trigger other thoughts, other day dreams...I am not asking them to 'remember' but to keep it constantly present as a latent sense environment ..I want them to be, dare I say to 'live' 'in dance (not just movement as we do live in movement continuously) as constant as possible between now and the next session...it is a character building exercise more than anything else...thinking back to Michael's description of whom he considers a good dancer...this is what it means to know your practice...the studio is only the tip of the iceberg....we give a twist to Michael's statement, "there is no in or out in the process of a work".

News!!!!

To date the blog has received over 1400 visitors, thank you to those who are following our process.

Given the success of this first lab, we are already on the planning stages for the new Summer session to take place May-July 2011 with contributions from a new influx of international artists.

If you wold like information please contact Ana Sanchez-Colberg, Lab Mentor, at: ana@theatreencorps.co.uk

Paradigm shifts

..Michael would call them. Today we begin to set the individual/shared projects 'in motion'. We begin by 'going back to go forward' an expression that has now become common language amongst us. We begin by considering the nature of creative processes; how does a process begin? perhaps a better thought is what are the infinite/finite ways in which a process begins? how does it evolve? how is it modified? how is it 'judged' so that revisions can take place? how does it account for evolving knowledge in and through practice so that artistic development becomes 'accountable' by each individual?

• We begin by considering the nature of 'the task', going back to Evgenia's questions in the opening session (see first post in the blog).
• We re address the idea of 'what we are looking for...", the search driven by an artistic/personal imperative (for which language may be needed, to define what I must and desire to do).
• What are the issues surrounding this creative imperative? How this first layer of imperatives connect to others?

I ask them to go back to 'origin', the 'eimai edo' of the first sessions, that 'ego' is probably now 'disturbed' by the interventions of the past three weeks, what issues, ideas, embodied-thought-int-the-making are emerging now? Start from that place, find its layers, contours, features...from that let it take you to 'the next' which can be related or separable (related only by contingency and contiguity if there is such a word in English). We have 30 minutes. The balance in the relationship between individual focuses and the shared experience of the group is indeed part of the equation.

30 minutes pass by very quickly

I ask them to capture in writing the essence/kernel of the task; what did it set up. This is written in the notebooks as well as a separate piece of paper. It is both my individual process but something that can stand on its own as a strange collection of a concept in the making. I ask them to exchange pieces of paper. Layer 2, what new task is suggested for you from the writing? that is I am not after deciphering 'her task'; but rather what is this set of words -perhaps not unlike Michael's score'- suggesting to me. Does it stand separate to my original task? Does it find a relation?

20 more minutes....

find your other, dialogue, witness each others tasks and responses to the tasks...what do I gain by seeing my 'task' through the lens of another?

we work towards layer 3: what is the new gained from seeing my task in another, from their feedback, from my doing the 'other's' task?

We emphasise and establish the dialogical nature of the process (in one session!), not in generating an immediate set of production tasks...

30 more minutes...

more reflections... we considered the 'working metaphors' that begin to arise from the work. I ask them to consider these nuggets of concepts as being related to the evolving method of their practice, not the thematic of a work... that will come later, indeed they are related, but not the same thing. I ask them to consider the broader application of these words that have arisen from the studio research, how diverse applications of the same term constitute different, discreet and also interrelated layers of the process. As homework, to consider how these very personal working metaphors are related to larger concepts of what we define as choreographic discipline...the relationship of a micro investigation to larger, communal dare we say, issues of choreographic discourse.

Overview of Michael's Session 3.2.11

Overview of Michael's session 1.2.11

Overview of John Paul's session 27.1.11

We added a link to the Lab's Picasa photo albums under the slideshows on the right column, where you can see larger versions of the pictures. It is also possible to copy them to your device. We remind you that these pictures are published for educational and reference purposes and should not be used commercially in any way. 

Overview of John-Paul's Session 25.1.11

We begin with various quick, light exercises to gather attention to each other, following a gesture, a rhythm, staying attentive to offer a response. The main aim is to awaken attentiveness to others, exchanging energies and importantly, understanding how to create a shared state of 'tension', a shared state of 'being' as a group. Inevitably, working with others, having to achieve mutual goals begins to open up the possibility of 'failure' and therefore 'risk'. John-Paul begins to introduce his concept of 'an impossible task' (that means impossible to be fulfilled) as a means to examine the process of refining and layering a 'situation' to generate a process (and of course to generate material). When is the 'rule' broken, when do we need to introduce the next task? How do we examine what is the 'correct movement' (or tactic) to add to the evolving situation? How do we examine the cause of a task to 'fail'? How do we respond to the real situation without changing the intention of the process? The various exercises lead to the loss of control that forces one to confront the habits that block creativity. Exercises begin from what John-Paul called the 'social condition' of the movement, through the tasks, the group is asked to pare down to the essence of the gesture, the nature of the physical act (not a representation of 'emotion').

There is homework for Thursday:
task 1: Try to generate your own impossible task. Think of the layers of the task, it is not meant to 'represent' impossibility put to put you in a place of constant exploration. Devise it through to its 'collapse'. In thinking about this, take time to reflect on 'what do you leave behind in order for 'your dance' to happen', meaning what external thoughts imposed 'from the outside' need to be left behind to begin to engage with notions of authenticity?

task 2: How do you deal with the 'limits' of the task?

task 3: How can you add levels of 'difficulty' to the task (and succeed) as a way to extend creatively?

task 4: How can difficulty also 'prevent' you from achieving your goal?

Read John_Paul's reflections published in his 'Page', follow link above

John-Paul Zaccarini Session 25.1.11

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Session of 20.01.11

13 January 2011

AN INTRODUCTION, 13th January 2011
Ana Sanchez-Colberg, written 18.1.2011, Ambelokipi, usual cafe, 5.30pm


In spite of the total transport strike (that have become so common place thus rendering the whole action useless?) most of us make it to the studio. Vitoria, Erifyli and Giorgos will join next Tuesday. We decided to keep this first session as one long conversation, an introductory dialogue which I have promised to convey in note form to those not able to be here. There will be no 'practice' today, so that we all begin from the same footing next week (movement metaphors abound).

Here I am writing, slightly later than desired...how did we get here...

Mark Franko defines dance as political when (and I quote) “it is justifiable and necessary to speak dance as political in circumstances that are conjunctural; that is in circumstances where forms of movement and socio-political life take the shape simultaneously if apparently independently” (Dance Discourses, 2007, p. 12).  I have been arguing against Franco inside my head for months now:  when is dance not political, when are the network of life processes (enmeshed, not mere context or background against which something rises...)  that define dance and its bodies, its subjects, not indissoluble from the socio-political? Franco gets it wrong by thinking conservatively of history as events in time, he fails to see the issue of space, what determines how a space is occupied or not by a body-subject-object, made visible or invisible, relevant to itself as a historical entity or erased from the panorama of history that will be. To live, change that, to survive- in Greece as an artist, and in particular as a dance artist is to experience in flesh and blood (not concepts) such 'conjuncture' within the individual, each moment of one's waking life. It is not about events happening but about the more fundamental, indeed existential issue of whether events can happen at all,  how can they be made to happen, and if they do for what purpose, for what impact, for what relevance? How can artists insist on claiming a space? Make a space? (but  this needs resources of space and time, and time and space is the currency that no one is willing to trade freely in this city). Do we have to be less complacent and more activist and think beyond waiting for the 'opportunity' to have access to the crumbling structures of the dance 'industry', an industry that we all liberally criticise yet are so happy when we are finally invited to its parties. Dimitris Karalis, composer, one of the guests, speaks of 'having to give your life' for this, for art to continue to  happen, not many are prepared to seek a life in art that way... I have been meaning to get that one out of my chest for a while...(and I haven't even mentioned AKMI yet...) I feel better already....I can continue to write...

Somewhere in all this is a rationale, a raison d'etre (I love that expression:  a reason for being )  for this Lab, here and now.

We begin by considering the more detailed timetable of events (see the Page 'Timetable'), an opportunity to elaborate on the hows and whys of the particular artists 'curated' to contribute to the Choreography Lab, how each distinct session contributes to a collegiate perspective, what makes this Lab unique.  Important to the structure of the Lab is the co-existence of two mutually affective strands. On the one hand we have the sessions led by the artists, on the other we have the Lab-time where each participant (see the 'Participants Page') will be able to develop a process of research practice leading to choreographic outcomes.  Each participant will determine how one strand feeds the other;  they are welcome to make a process that tries to encompass everything encountered or can equally choose to focus on one singular idea. Whichever way what we all have agreed to do is to allow ourselves to remain open and engage with each different yet relevant perspective: to encounter and confront 'it' and by confronting 'it' confronting and encountering ourselves, the way to artistic growth.

The Lab begins with a cluster of sessions questioning 'choreography' as a parameter. Within that we start from the premise of 'the body' – as the point of departure and destination of contemporary choreography. By saying this we are purposely moving away from the idea of fashioning a language and enter into the notion of life process, as that which the body makes with itself is actually within the realm of the 'lived', not the made (see Nancy and Arendt on this one, Resources Page). In engaging with studio based research we are acknowledging the richness of the process of creation and wonder why by the time the event makes it to the stage this rich life has been lost. How does the richness of the studio experience makes itself available to the audience? Now we are really dealing with important issues about choreographic skill beyond the simplistic 'shaping the message that the choreographer wants to tell'.

The first sessions (by me) will look at the transformation of physical conditions as the root of the 'choreographic'. We will explore the conditions set by the body and how it then operates within these -  both loyal to the implications of the conditions but also eventually seeking their transformation – intentionality in all its dimensions and its link to issues of presence. In these sessions choreography is explored as a process of subject transformation not of material and structural 'editing' and 'fixing'. John- Paul will address metaphorically the 'circus apparatus'. By putting the conditions as given by the 'instrument' John-Paul's conditions are set external to the body  and therefore involve notions of 'risk' as an explicit constant. Of course the within and without share levels of risk and transformation, we are only separating the issues for the purpose of concentration. Michael is the skin that contains both, bringing back the body in, without, inside, outside and considers wider applications of the idea of 'choreography' as one of 'world making'.  Three perspectives to suggest a whole spectrum of probabilities. We then move to collaboration and interdisciplinarity by working intensively on a single mini-process within the Lab on sound/movement/music/compositional/improvisational structures. Significantly, the sessions will be lead by non-dance artists so we get the disciplinary information from source. Interestingly Kiriakos Spirou one of the guests is considering exploring 'what is dance for music'?, an inversion of the common place what is music for dance. The Lab finishes with archiving and documentation, addressing issues of 'capturing' experience to be disseminated, it is not only about 'practicalities' but about issue of witnessing(not reading), and the transformation of a studio process to an autonomous entity that begins to 'disclose itself' within the studio en route to the final presentation. The Lab will conclude with a period of rehearsal time to elaborate independent projects to be presented to the 'public' in April. Importantly I emphasised how I will insist that work is to be shown, not to suddenly change to being product orientated but on the contrary to be able to test this idea of transforming the richness of the studio to an equally rich moment of performance.  This can only be measured by taking 'things out in the open'.

After this (about an hour) each participant presented their interest in joining the Lab. I will not summarise for them, I am hoping that each will take the opportunity to disclose this in the participants' page. However common themes begin to be made manifest:  interest in improvisational systems of performance, of the link between movement and the visual filmic image, about the 'need to talk' and the 'need to dance' in a manner that reminded me of Pina's words “a reality that is only danced is equally untenable as a reality that is only spoken” (Gubernatis 1988). There is interest in understanding the idea of personal narration further (without it being big-brother confessional). There is desire to revisit things previously done. Importantly there is a shared desired to understand dance 'in the circumstances that we are living here now' (Anthii). I stand redeemed, the background discussion of Franco proves itself relevant to this enterprise after all.

From this to the idea of research. I start with the metaphor that I normally use when teaching this in Stockholm, re: search, it is about a search. But a search starts by knowing that it has started (that is we don't stumble into a search, we stumble into things as we search). The search is intentional. It is not just about being open to receive but the harder being prepare to seek even if what will be received (if anything at all) is unconfirmed. I give them the first task (which will probably make it in some shape or form to the participants' page), and ask them to consider a set of questions:  what are you bringing to the processes of the Lab – what elements from the many dimensions of life that determines and shapes the artist  that you are are meant to be brought in to bear upon the process to come?  What is the gap, what you are seeking?.  How does the gap shape the vision?  What you have determines what you don't have...in order to get 'there' I must understand my 'here' my 'now'... I finish with a final thought ..choreographic knowledge is not something that will be given to you as a set of discreet skills or tools, choreographic knowledge is something that you will discover (with others) within.