❦ 3rd act
In the winter of 1980/81, I was awarded a scholarship to study at a dance studio located at 400 Lafayette Street in New York City. The name of this studio was Dancerschool. The studio was part of the life work of Dennis Wayne, a star dancer of the 1970s. His company was called “Dancers”, just the word “Dancers”. The simplicity of that name indicates that what they do should suffice. The art speaks for itself.
There was a black cat named Pino. Pino was the companion of a friend who lived in a loft in the White Street in Tribeca, NYC. His name was Manuel Alum. A dancer, Manuel was a charismatic and hypnotic performer. He was utterly committed to his art, to a fault.
I met Manuel at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 1980, some years later I joined his performing tribe in NYC. I call it a tribe because for many of us, dancers, performing becomes more than a profession. The dance becomes a life-long obsession to show the non-dancing world, what a transformation this art can trigger in people. We are in the tribe.
Manuel Alum had a friend nicknamed Pina. They most likely met many years before in Italy. They were both members of the tribe. I don’t know if Pina liked Pino, or if that matters at all. Exactly 30 years ago, Manuel gathered the three of us to celebrate our birthdays – hers in that evening and mine past midnight.
A curious twist of fate intertwines our tribes again. I now work creating history from the memories of other extraordinary members of her tribe – to document her legacy. She triggered transformation in many levels and for many people. This is a joy and a privilege. Happy birthday Pina Bausch.
„Ein Kind, dem nie Märchen erzählt worden sind, wird ein Stück Feld in seinem Gemüt behalten, das in späteren Jahren nicht mehr angebautwerden kann.“ Johann Gottfried von Herder, Schriftsteller, Philosoph und Theologe der Aufklärungszeit
Unermüdlich erzählen wir deshalb auf der Bühne Märchen – immer in der Verantwortung, dass tausende Kinder zum allerersten Mal den Theaterraum betreten und mit allen Sinnen dem Bühenerlebnis entgegenfiebern.
In diesem Jahr präsentieren wir ein Märchen, das zu den meist erzählten gehört – aber auch zu den meist umstrittenen: Eltern bringen aus sozialer Not ihre beiden Kinder tief in den Wald und hoffen, dass Hänsel und Gretel dort verloren gehen.
Auf ihrem Irrweg gelangen die ausgestoßenen Kinder an das Lebkuchenhaus einer Menschen fressenden Hexe. Mit List können sich beide befreien und kehren mit reichlich Schmuck und Nahrung zurück zum Elternhaus.
Entgegen der Haltung der 70er Jahre, die das Erzählen der Volksmärchen in Frage stellte, werden wir uns gemeinsam mit den jungen Gästen hinein stürzen in diese Geschichte über böse und gut, dumm und schlau, traurig und lustig, hungrig und satt, dunkel und hell, unglücklich und glücklich.
Three approaches to observe the process of creation.
Format: Lecture/performance
In this lecture/performance, 3 theoretical models of morphogenesis are exposed and a live example is performed.
Morphogenesis is the process that determines how biological forms are differentiated and organized. A right or a left limb have the same genetical materials, why and how it takes one form or another is not biologically fully explained yet. Performance undergoes similar processes; the coding and rules of genetics as in the modes of communication, the materials and mechanics of genes in the instruments and scores, dance steps and the bodies, are present in the same way. The moment of decision that differentiates and piles up a cell in one way or another, and the combination of one movement next to another has been the subject of theories in the recent past. Three approaches to this issue are presented here, from biology, from quantum physics applied to Jungian Psychology and from performance studies.
In dance the morphogenesis can be observed both in the rehearsal room by observing specific interactions of the choreographer and dancer, but also in performance by restricting some parameters and concentrating the observation on specific variables. To access the creation moment, this presentation will use a methodology developed by german dance pedagogue Rolf Gelewski. Gelewski is a disciple of Mary Wigman in the analytical genealogy of Rudolf von Laban.
Rolf Gelewski was a dancer and educator born in 1930 in Berlin. Acclaimed by the press in the 50s as a new Harald Kreuzberg, he was sent by Mary Wigman to establish the first contemporary dance education program in the University of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil in the 1960s. His later pedagogical work structured a methodology to access the creative impulse in a dance yoga-like meditation system. His influence also reaches the Auroville community in India. Gelewski was killed in a car accident in 1986.
Models for explaining morphogenesis in performance transcend the natural sciences toolkit, still, it can be observed and described. This lecture/demonstration proposes three approaches to observe this phenomena.
After exposing these theories a short dance piece will be performed to enable an observation under the aspects of morphogenesis of a moment of creation. This dance piece – “Blue Danube” – presents a frame that constrains the observable phenomenon of improvisation in three parameters: Force, Speed and Timing. An early full video of this dance can be seen here: Danube @ DanceSpace NYC 1986
”What kind of Future do we want to build?”
Ricardo Viviani presentation at ArtEZ Arnhem
‘Dance is at the bottom of the food chain.’ (William Forsythe 2009)
Neuroscientists, philosophers, and also dance academics of all sorts have been trying to figure out what it is: what do dancers know that other people can’t grasp? Unless they’ve been through the mill of arduous training and rehearsing, they have no way of knowing it. Call it embodied knowledge, somatic intelligence and so forth, it is rarely articulated by dancers, so there’s little understanding of it outside the dancer’s circle. It is a secret. A secret not by intention but by virtue of its nonverbal nature.
