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THE COMPLEXITY OF VULNERABILITY
Some impressions on my personal mobility in Rotterdam
Every minute is the minute to begin it
Make it broader
But the thing that brings me strength
Also gives me such torture.
But fuck it
Every time the seasons change
I’m completely overwhelmed
I hold the helm
Like the hilt of a sword
I’m a born worker
extract from „Renegade“, a poem by Kate Tempest
One of the reasons, why I chose out of the Menu Options to shadow the first week of the rehearsal process of R-ESISTERE by the italian/ dutch choreographer Giulio d'Anna, was a honest wish to witness a working process as an outsider and still get some insider informations. As a performer, young maker and dance teacher I usually find myself strongly involved in a creation process without having the possibility of getting insights from on outwards perspective, as maybe a writer or journalist does.
Looking back to a very rich and quite intense week, I have to luckily admit that I never felt like an outsider, but was instead confronted with a huge generosity of sharing ideas and adressing a theme by taking part, questioning, embodying and a little bit observing. However, attending the process for one week under the perspective of Communicating Dance, I realized that I directly approached it with different questions and that retrospectively I don't only feel inspired, but also fed with new insights of working methods enabling to rethink own approaches, objects and intentions.
I have been asking myself how to capture and to communicate the experiences of one week, letting not just my observations, but also the performer's actions, the discourse in the room come through and speak for itself.
The following text is a hybrid of an interview that I've done with Giulio on my last rehearsal day, aswell as memories on certain actions, comments deriving from the performers and other material, such as poems or youtube speeches, that we've been sharing during this week.
In R-ESISTERE Giulio d'Anna is exploring together with his performers Ana Ladas, Lana Coporda, John Taylor, Fabian Holle and Miryam Garcia Lariblanca the topic of resistance, protest, effort and revolution. Departing from very personal critics, a sense of frustration or oppression, he is claiming own limits and standards, yet with the aim of melting individual voices into a common dance concert, following dynamics of a big crowd protest.
Lana is frustrated by people entering her private sphere.
Fabian is frustrated by all those algorythms that Google or Facebook are using, in order to give or deprive you from certain information.
John is frustrated by non cuddely pets.
Giulio wants us to claim our own beauty.
Ana stands against too much non embodied conceptual art work and animal cruelty.
I'm frustrated by bureaucracy hindering and prolonging human needs, because the paper says so.
Some of us are frustrated by people constantly wanting to sell something without ever asking our interest.
Another one is frustrated that everything has become about selling, including the art we make.
Many of us are frustrated by people empowering on your costs, just to make themselves feel better.
Fabian wants to be able to keep his naivity instead of developing more and more skepticism.
Lana wants to fight for a world, where she can trust each stranger on the street.
G.d'A.:How can I really allow myself to feel something, to articulate it without having necessarily a process of transforming my communication and my emotional state in order to make it constructive? The petty things, that we all share... when poeple cut me in the line at the supermarket, I get pissed, but I shut up. I just want to share this and say „we can direct here!“
Monday 12 am... tuesday 11.30 am... In the studio are: Giulio, Ana, Lana, John, Fabian, me and Agnese (the assistant and production manager).We are „mind-stretching“...walking in the space... head forward and up... hips released... awareness on each finger tip... don't follow the habit of lowering your eyes... Where do you go? Why do you go there? Do you agree?No? Connecting...
The mind-stretch is, as well as the uncomfortable, one of Giulio d'Annas „practices“, that he has been and is still further developping since quite a time. What are these practices and how do they relate to each specific project/ process/ topic?
G.d'A.: The bottom line is that the practice creates the standard condition for a performer to approach my work and any theme. Within both practices I target the same aim, but from very different places. When you work with other people you need to trigger both the right and the left side of the brain and some people prefer either left or right.
The mind-stretch has a much more cerebral approach. First of all it's a sort of meditation, because what I say to people are very simple kind of questions, allthough universal. It's up to the participant to make these exercices exciting. First of all, what I ask from the participants is to be able to stay with the questions. And everytime they get out, I ask them not to judge. This creates an ability to stay focused, because the more you don't judge, the brain stays longer and longer at the points of attention. And also because it's nearly impossible to answer all the questions. At the same time it allows you to kill the censor, not necessarily a censor of emotional or private, but a censor of how you use time, how you use space, how you use rythm. When I go on and on, all of a sudden people start to transform, especially in the way of how they're using time and space. Something less known appears, the way of relating, the way people actually agree on each other.
We're getting closer to the uncomfortable. Working in couples, we're trying to bring our partner in a situation (physical/ emotional...) where he or she feels uncomfortable, having always the possibility to say „stop“. Increasing the intensity on the one side... enduring the uncomfortable on the other (or mostly on both) sides. Fabian is twisting my wrist. Agnese is stepping on John's feet, pumping him for information about the relationship to this daughter. Ana is slowly but surely pulling up Guilio's shirt, interlooping his arms, pionieering towards his trousers. Maarten (the musician) is singing „hit me baby one more time“... wearing nothing more than his underware. Ok, one more round to go! One more round of getting comfortable within the uncomfortable...
G.d'A.: For me, the uncomfortable hacks directly the human content, it directs straightly to the person. I'm not interested in the action themselves or in creating any specific opinion about someone, like „oh, she's more shy or she's more sexually open and curious“. It's more about allowing each one of us to experience that. It's about creating a landscape where everyone takes responsability for himself, also the responsability to say stop and to protect yourself, which sometimes is also necessary in the professional field. It creates the freedom to say no! The „uncomfortable“ practice really conditions the person to the artist/ the professional, allowing personal content to appear without being necessarily concrete information. So the practice conditions the professional figure to allow the person to appear and to enter in relation. I set a frame, that could be sort of a theatrical score, but of course all the content is human. In the time, everything that is generated, works as a resonance.
Uncomfortable... personal... a continuous motion between personal... political... personal... universal... personal... family... personal... personally... vulnerability? Being personal… as a possibility to empathize and to connect as an audience?
G.d'A.: I wished to have performers, that could adress this subject as people and not just as abstraction of energy. As a professional artist some of the things you are able to objectify, to find value in presenting and sharing and putting on a stage. At the end I don't even believe that the performers can evoke a specific emotion, but I want them to be able to tune themselves into finding their vulnerability. And every show, every performance will be different, but will still resonate, because the story is coming from something honest, even though articulated and structured within a protected theatrical frame. The ability of being vulnerable and sharing this vulnerability actually creates strength. Often people react to honest vulnerability by opening themselves. That means that you have access to communication. And often people feed you back in any way possible and that's also richness coming back.
We're sitting in front of the office, because the internet connection is better. We're watching and listening to Charly Chaplin performing his „Great Dicatotor's speech“ and wonder how much of it is still relevant...We empathize with Drag Queen Panti's monologue. We connect to Brené Browns Ted Talk „The power of vulnerability“:
"Religion has gone from a belief in faith and mystery to certainty. I'm right, you're wrong. Shut up. That's it. Just certain. The more afraid we are, the more vulnerable we are, the more afraid we are. This is what politics looks today. There's no discourse anymore. There's no conversation. There's just blame. […]
They fully embraced vulnerability. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, "I love you" first, the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees, the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram.They're willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental.“
I's towards the end. I see Lana, I see Ana, I see John, I see Fabian. (Miryam will be there from the following week on). I realize that I'm impressed of the balance of the group. There's no one sticking out, there's no one needing more attention, neither one feeling weaker. Lots of space for everyone, even for ... Giulio has been throwing in three words: aggressive … shameless … impolite... A real try out, a lot of laughter, some brave insults, a blank ass, shutting up the others, making fun of... admitting how hard it is to do that on each other.
Rather than liking or not liking the approach, the aesthetic language or connecting to a specific theme, I see work that is built on discussion and encounter. I can't and I don't want to judge an outcome, but I see an attempt of being honest with an interest, an openess to share it, a brave sense of vulnerability.
And more than everything I see that communication starts amongst us, is about a dialogue between the maker and the perfomer, the co-creator and the choreographer, the assistant and the musician. If it's about adressing the audience, it's first about how to adress the inner circle, starting in the very process of coming together... becoming clear about own objects. What do I want from my performers? What kind of methods or practices do I apply in order to come to that questions and points? What does this mean for a single project, what for a long-term making?
Thinking of the stage as „a place for people to communicate. And not only as a place for art to happen. I mean the historical theater was a place for encounter, for people wanting to say something, maybe becoming aswell the birthplace of art. This goes hand in hand with an audience, with communication. And I feel sometimes I want back people on stage, instead of just saying it feels like that, it is like that.“ (G.d'A.)