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Even when one tries not to act and to “be oneself” on stage, one is still playing a role. As in real life, one is also playing not only one role, but multiple roles. Judith Butler is one of the masters in writing and thinking about performativity, in life, which to me confirms my conclusion above. Also the question of presence was something that I became sceptical of. Why this obsession of the here and now in contemporary dance works? Presence has totally overshadowed representation, and I found it was time for me to get back to it. It’s important to note that this was a period when conceptual dance had already been present for two decades, and many performances did satisfy my understanding, but at the same time they left me cold and often uninterested. I was very much interested in choreographers like Vera Mantero and Ann Live Young, or companies like Forced Entertainment and Needcompany.
These people bravely used theatricality, representation, humour and other elements of the theatre apparatus that opposed the stream of conceptual dance. Their works were encouraging me to continue exploring the field of choreography in that direction. I don’t want to say that there were not interesting artists for me in conceptual dance. Xavier Le Roy, for example, is an artist from whom I learned a lot. Aside from having a strong concept, his works are also filled with great humour and poetics. He was a strong influence for me, especially when it comes to the creation of choreographic structures. I love the clarity and simplicity of the structures in his work. I started with Modal Verbs as a means to implement similar strategies by using minimalism, transparency and clarity in my compositional structures. To me, working with transparent structures allows an audience to follow the unfolding of the work, and to make visible all the layers that one piece contains. Like looking at a piece of cloth up close, and recognising all the different threads that are making this cloth a unique piece.
Another clear, continued line of research in my explorations, is working choreographically with text. The duet-shaped dialogue in the two pieces mentioned is very much based on gestures and
in the following three solos 'Modal Verbs', 'Staying Alive' and 'Lady Justice', I choreographed text through treating the words and their pronunciation as choreographic material. It is quite a challenge to work with words choreographically, as words carry meanings that resonate on more levels than movement, which is abstract.
In 'Staying Alive' I don’t treat text as an object of theatrical expression; instead I am interested in how to approach it from a choreographic point of view, how to build a rhythmical composition. In 'Modal Verbs' my working materials are speech and language grammar. 'Modal Verbs' came about after reading and listening to the lecturers of Giorgio Agamben, whose work I appreciate a lot, and some of his readings were also very important for 'Staying Alive'. He spoke about modal verbs as empty words, that always seek to be complemented by other verbs, yet they are exceptionally powerful and they model our bodies through our behavioural patterns, and our way of living. 'Lady Justice' on the other hand has a choreographic structure that follows a rhythm and the composition of a song. At the same time it is constructed as a dialogue between the accusation and defence within a court case.
Coming back to representation, the context for 'Lady Justice' is a trial in court. The representation of character is here at the service of the entire event, because each person is represented by a judicial professional. I question representation in life (namely in court), which is a highly political question, through playing the role of Lady Justice in the performance. However, I announce at the beginning of the work, that Lady Justice asked me to represent her, and only from that moment do I start playing the role of Lady Justice. In a way, with this work I legitimise myself as an artist working with representation, as it has strong creative and political potential.
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