Day (4) - K (2)

Day (4) starts with everyone being a little restless in the space. Its cold outside, and there seems to be another negotiation between a sunny mood and a grey one on a climatological level.
Inside, however, It was Peder's role to present his work process. Peder described a system process, the system consists of:

Inputs: can be defined as ideas, research, direction, experience, knowledge
Body: can be defined as gender, genes,..et
Negotiations between Self and Choreographer

Peder sees the creative process as an attempt to find a new land, new territory which in itself is a frightening, exciting, stimulating experience. The "outcome" of this process, the product is not fixed, its always a work-in-progress in a way. Its always reworked, created again and again. Each new environment creates a new situation, and what is created or recreated depends on what you deliberately change.
This gives the feeling that the process is an ongoing one. Never ending, and never fully realized. This reminds me of Tania's statement that once the piece fulfills its aim it dies. Maybe for Peder, once the process reaches this level of stability, or wholesomeness it will end.
In working in a collective as a dancer, Peder embodies the individual artist with a certain responsibility, the individual artist is responsible of how the collective acts on both levels, performance and otherwise.
When asked about the nature of power in this system, hierarchy, came to view. And this hierarchy creates interesting and demanding situations. This involves small social structures, processes, Hooman focuses on these processes, as method and part of the work.

Brain then intervenes and posits the notion of constraints, a condition of entry, conditions that come from the process itself, and that create a complex plateau, which takes a life of its own.

At this point Hooman puts his foot in it and brings the subject of, how can we make economy out of the question? How can there be an open discussion about economy?
And he explains the existence of hierarchy in the work is hierarchy in the sense of functionality, not a high-level or low-level, the power is defined, pre-established rules

Eleonora brings in her own personal experience in theater and describes the process as a set of obligations vs power what she terms a "collections of dramaturgies". The process involves a complex, entertwinment of lines of the creative issue/process. Thus, the "authorship" is already dissolved in a way".

Thomas then discussed two projects of his, that involved contested that negotiated the modes of engagement with a clear, defined set of instructions. The projects involved a coded, timed piece, that is written down, as a notation, as a musical notation, where several other dance companies were invited to perform it. Thomas can elaborate on that a little more.
The notion behind this was to test limitations. The kind of limitations people have, and how and where does it exist.
Coincidently, Hooman performed this piece. And he said that why should we take these instructions for granted? We can always dialogue with it. Manipulate it. And again Hooman says that manipulation exists, and does not have to be negatively perceived.
Loan, had a very interesting remark, in the midst of the discussion of restrictions, regulations and instructions, she says that every restriction invites you to react to it, that the only thing that restrictions do. I thought that was a brilliant observation. Bringing the agency of the individual despite of and in spite the apparent structural or procedural restrictions that are discussed here.
Those who took part in this debate are invited to elaborate on it here.


By then, it was Nora's time to present her work. And Nora is soft spoken, when listened to, its like she is constantly whispering something to the wind and not to mortal ears. Me being partially deaf, suffered continuously trying to make out exactly what is she saying. It didn't help that she was discussing extremely complex ideas.
Nora started her talk by discussing the connective tissue Erin mentioned at some point earlier (Erin is invited to discuss this further). What also interested Nora was the Fascia, a dense connective tisues that are organized chaotically, it a dense strong structure that is key for structural integrity despite being chaotic as such.
In work, Nora is interested in creating an experimental ground for something that we are not used to and she is always challenged on how to bring the dancers into the process and how to give control. She is a proponent of integrating the thinking process with movement. She does not seem them as two separate processes or isolated from each other. Hence, her dilemma continues on how to bring dancers in the thinking process as well.
In creating this experimental playground, she says that she likes to introduce people to texts in playful way. Links to her work are listed below.

fieldings.wordpress.com/
ruptures.wordpress.com

Nora is invited to discuss her work more. As I don't think I will do justice.
But in the habit of speaking about interventions and destablizations, Nora points out that she always invites other people to intervent to destabilize my habits in that way, working with other dancers is a tool to be disturbed or destabilized.
She clearly expresses her discontent with solos, and how she thinks its uninspiring.
Erin then intervenes, to continue the talk on destabilization and derailment, she explains that some environments are known, they are controllable, however it takes an enormous amount of improvisation, not to create modes of operation, but to reinvent the ground, the place where this modes of operation should or could exist.

Nora takes that it and contextualizes it saying that dance audiences are trained to look at the form, and the body, the technique and that it becomes very difficult to over come these codes.
Hooman intervenes and brings his own experience, saying that it taks lots of physical work to "recode" the body, and this code has to be decoded again so the audience can be able to "read" it.
At this point Nora invites everyone to leave the space ands it outside. And take the conversation further in the destabilized weather.
Nora continues to say that she is always surprised by her own position on that what excites her always creates a sense of being taken in, or engaged, but at the same time it distracts you, because you are forced to think about how and why are excited, thus you begin to disengage from the immediate process.

This moved to questioning the doing. Is the doing necessary?
what to do? what does the doing do?
what concerns us? how we bring concern to things?
How what concerns brings about process?

Erin then intervenes and says that an environment creates concern, the concern is at the level of the field, not the person. The audience bring concern towards the work, and the choreographer brings concern to the dancers,....etc therefore this brings about potential for interactions.

At this point another heated debate breaks out between everyone as Nora brings the notion of uncertainty as dynamic of engagement with the audience, how this bring a different dialogue between the performer and the audience.
Since I personally disagree with most of what was said, I invite everyone who participated in this argument to present his/er argument here!