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- TALKING TO MARIE TOPP: THE PROCESS, THE DIALOGUE WITH THE AUDIENCE, AND THE D. WORD
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TALKING TO MARIE TOPP: THE PROCESS, THE DIALOGUE WITH THE AUDIENCE, AND THE D. WORD
I interviewed the lovely danish choreographer Marie Topp, one of the three selected artists for this year's K3 residency in Kampnagel.
We talked about her process as a maker, the work she will be researching during the 8 month residency in Hamburg and how she thinks about the relation between the audience and her work.
Here is what she said:
G.N.: Could you talk a little bit about your background and what interests you as an artist?
M.T.: I graduated from the National School of Contemporary Dance in Denmark, in 2009, as a dancer, and since then I've been freelancing and been based in Copenhagen, working on my own projects more or less the whole time and more specifically in the last two years. Right now I am very interested in the field of kinesthetic perception, and I work solo, I'm very interested in solo practice. I have done two pieces, so I am really at the beginning of defining what my interest is, but it's very physical work and I investigate through my own body and physicality.
G.N.: Could you talk about the project that you will be developing during your K3 residency, what you will be focusing on and which will your approach be?
M.T.: There are still some things to define, because I applied with one project and when I was told I had got the residency I was already pretty far with that process. So I decided, because there are close links between the previous work I did and this one, and there was something that I could consider my practice, I decided to look at those two connected and I will think about it as a trilogy. During this residency I will make another piece and then I will work through all three of them, for instance in the second one there are still some things to figure out or to finish up, because I had no budget for doing the first two. So I will also revisit the first one, finish up the second one and make a whole new one. For what I have been researching, the first one has been about force, and how it affects the body, and the second one was about the moment just before an action, about expectation, about building expectation, so it has a lot to do with how you perceive movement, both of them are really looking at the kinesthetic perception and how you experience it as a spectator. So for the third one I will revisit some ideas from the first one, because I worked very little on that, for now I call it “the visible effects of force” and, I don't know what it will be, but it will go more into the research of this field. And it will be a solo. I feel I have an understanding of what I want to do, and it's not completely verbalized yet, so for me these 8 months will also be a way of reflecting on my practice and start verbalizing it in a sense.
G.N.: Watching several performances that have been presented in the festival, I have the feeling there is a focus on addressing the audience as a key element in the work, more specifically a fundamental part of it, either it being on a participatory level or in some other way. So I wanted to ask you how and when do you start thinking about the audience and their relation with your work?
M.T.: Right from the very beginning actually, when I start from the material, because it has so much to do with the perception of it, and in that sense I think it has a lot to do with the whole structuring of it. Especially with the last piece, that has to do with the moment before the action, so everything is in a slow transformation through half an hour, constantly working with building up and how to transform movement without ever letting go in the release, and what I want is that the audience is left in this state of readyness, or expecting, is starting to work out in their minds whatever the release of this tension is, and then it inever happens, this is kind of the structure of the piece, that it never gives in to this release, which makes people very uncomfortable, but it's also the point. So in that sense I think about it in the structuring, how it is perceived and how does that relate to the concept.
G.N.: Carrying on a little bit on this concept, do you have any practices or strategies that you adopt during the process to test or clarify for yourself how and what your work is communicating?
M.T.: This has actually been related to my working conditions so far, I always had short periods of time, often with a showing at the end, because I never had a long production. I think the good thing about it was that it made me show a lot of work in very early stages as a process, so I met the audience a lot of times and I took the feedback if it worked, but I feel I have a strong sense of intuition also out of just watching my work on video, to see if I think it works or not. So I think I mainly used it (showing the work) to confirm that I am in the right direction, I wouldn't say that I experiment with the audience. I mean I think I've known what I have been doing, I get the feedback that I expect, most of the time. Of course sometimes people don't get it, sometimes people perceive it as negative, what I am trying to do with the piece, because I want people to be in this state of expectation and a lot of people feel that the piece didn't succeed because “nothing happens”. So also sometimes people try to say it in a nice polite way even though that is actually what I want to hear! So I have a feeling that in that sense it's an honest feedback, because I heard it in many different ways, both from some people who understand the concept and think it's great and also people who didn't get it but had the experience and tried to say it without hurting my feelings! (laughs)
G.N.: Now for the universal question: what is dance?
M.T.: (laughs) I don't know and I also don't know if for me it's that important to actually define it. I think especially in Scandinavia there has been a lot of things going around about this field, and the term “dance dance” was invented. And “dance dance” is, you know, this dance (does some technical elaborate movements with her arms) and then there is the other dance. Dance dance is...Ohad Naharin, is when people dance contemporary DANCE, you know? And then there is other stuff...for me it's problematic and I think it's also because I come from a community that is very small and has not so many people, not so many scholars within dance, not so many people who are actually able to define and combine it with theory or set it in a context or have this discussion on a level that makes sense, so I think when these terms are used it's mainly to put things into boxes, so that it's dance dance if it's moving around, and if it's choreography where they're not moving around then it's performance and it's just like mixing, misunderstanding terms, putting things together, and it kind of made me want to step away from it because it's like there is nobody who is really keeping the knowledge and the understanding and has the international prospective of the arts so they make these strange definitions which make me not want to be part of it. And it's on all levels, also concerning dance critics, I had one calling me a “performance oriented concept choreographer”, in a main newspaper, and I was like what the fuck is that?!(says laughing) So I guess that proves, I don't want to be a part of it.
G.N.: and more specifically, what role does dance play in your work?
M.T.: I think it plays a big role because it is my training and my background so in that sense it's this schooling of my body, my mind and my gaze and how I orientate in the world and I think all of this is inspired by a grounding in dance. Also my work is very physical, and since I am working on my own body I think it is all there, it is definitely there.
