“Mindful Viscerality” – Post modern dance theatre and beyond
Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Rosas danst Rosas, performance in 2009.
Photo: © Herman Sorgeloos
Mindful Viscerality or Visceral Mindfulness? It is fascinating how these two terms magically overlap in most post-modern theatre performances to reveal two distinct but complementary approaches to devising experimental work today. If you take both terms and match them in a mirror image you get the impact of the projected image and the resonance of its reflection. The subtle interplay between projection and reflection, between impact and resonance, between conceptualism and viscerality weaves the intricate thread of contemporary physical theatre today, but has its roots in German expressionistic dance (Ausdruckstanz) and American abstract conceptualism (Dance Theatre).
It is evident how the Euro-American experimental dance theatre movement continues to shape the eclectic aesthetic of our urgent interdisciplinary theatre today. What did each tradition bring to the table? How did the shocking viscerality of Tanz Theater seep into the holistic fabric of emerging somatic disciplines and personalized kinetic idioms to transcend the post-modern notion of “pastische” and reach far beyond the genre-defying avant-garde.
In a period of three months I had the opportunity to trace this complex movement towards the ultra-modern by observing iconic modern, post-modern and hyper-modern companies in New York, as part of the Next Wave Festival at BAM, the Performing Arts Festival at Lincoln Center and New York held contemporary dance conferences. Watching Pina’s audacious collages and De Keersmaker’s abstract spatial and temporal etudes, side by side by Prejlocaj’s captivating visual magnetism and neo-balletic virtuosity; Graham’s austere angularity; Limon’s suspended buoyancy, Cunningham’s curving multi-dimensionality and Ailey’s rigorous physicality I could clearly make the difference between the American modern dance tradition and European expressionistic and existential New Dance.
The fusion nature of New Dance, in fact integrates the casualness and eclecticism of post-modern dance with the expressiveness of modern dance, the gusto of social dance and the virtuosity of ballet. Post-modernism, on the other hand transcends modernism by mixing it with classicism, combining old and new styles, materials and techniques. But most importantly it gives freedom of personal expression for each creator to carve their singular fingerprint, boldly pendeling between concepts of visual kinetic collage and eclecticism.
Observing four consecutive performances of the Martha Graham, Jose Limon and Alvin Ailey, Merce Cunningham Dance companies I could clearly see an art form drawing on principles of movement, rather than states of mind. These codified idioms all relied on a set of basic concepts to cultivate the kinesthetic awareness of the performer. Laying the ground work of these alphabetical dance forms that are still practiced and incorporated into performance art today, these four dance pioneers sought to develop a structured framework of movement that reinterpreted universal concepts like expansion and contraction, fall and recovery, bound and rebound, suspension and control, randomness and intentionality. Each created a distinct vocabulary and incorporated it into purely abstract pieces, archetypal characters, gestural narratives, ritual ecstasy or purely formal chance choreography that dealt with universal and mundane issues.
Graham’s work revealed a strong focus on the mechanics of breath, utilizing contraction and release, rather than striving for long, fluid movements. The deliberate use of gravity, and angular tilts produced sharp and jagged movements anchored in a gravity-bound style that rejects the codified structure and airy buoyancy of classical ballet.
Jose Limon’s style emphasized the natural rhythms of fall and recovery, a conscious use of breath, and the interplay between weight and weightlessness. The inherent musicality and interest in non-abstract narrative renders the dance of Limon socially engaged and imbued with “moral fervor”. The wide ranging dramatic expression and its lucid humanism create a layered pastische of strong emotion, relevant message and intentional form.
As the first rebel against classical modern dance, Merce Cunningham relied on “Chance” as a method for making aesthetical choices. His work was abstract and unlike Limon, felt movement is expressive and enough beyond any intention –there’s no need to tell a story or reflect something.
In the Lester Horton technique of the Ailey Dance company I was taken by intense athleticism, sculpted muscularity and technical virtuosity coupled with savage expressiveness and physical invincibility. The formal and externally sophisticated verse derived from flat backs, pelvic hinges, and “lateral T’s” produces a long-muscled, powerhouse dancer – a master of counterbalance and exquisite articulation.
Evidently, all of the above dance mavericks contributed amply to the alphabet of modern dance, creating formal frameworks and movement principles based on natural laws. The foundational techniques are set and structured. They draw on direct observation, intuitive insight and analyze basic laws of physics and biomechanics through space, time and energy. This approach follows the idea that form generates energy. It is rather objective in its mindfulness, and subjective in its emotional interpretation.Contrary to this predominantly functional and formal approach, the German “tanztheater” reverses the formula to read “Forms follows energy”. The genre refers to a more intuitive, visceral, visual and verbal presentation of specific situations to reveal the “stuff of life” – basic emotions, human conflicts and complex states of mind. Pina Bausch’s performances, deeply psychological and rife with strong imagery, emotion and repetition, stimulate audiences to follow a train of thought – a chain of random associations, pulsating sensations, and immediate insights, reaching past reason and harassing the psyche directly. The power dynamics between men and women, the pursuit of happiness, the earning for love, the fear of death – all intense sensations form an abstract painting of animated sculptures that emerge from the background and recede into the foreground to reveal that part of the story that is untold. Compositionally, woven from gestural metaphors, geometric formations, concrete or abstract vocalizations and stylized refrains the fragments toy with extreme human emotions and are a noble attempt at inspiring humanism throughout the ages. Celebrating the simple and visceral truths of human experience these existential collages have stood up to the test of time. A unique genre defying form that focuses on the human experience and the ability to connect to the innermost emotions these performances often tell the stories of personal reactions to major societal factors, and embrace openness, expressiveness, and multifariousness.
Another staunch advocate of the European Tanz Theater movement, Anne Theresa De Keersmaeker dissects the purely subjective emotional experience generated by relationships to create her own abstract idiom combining the expressiveness of an oil painting and the elusiveness of a water color. Her search for emotionally charged structures and for the structures contained in emotions takes place on the axis running from pure abstraction to pure intuition and rapture. Structure and emotion support each other – they keep one another in a radical balance. The structure prevents the expression of explicit emotions, while the concreteness of the emotions tempers the abstraction of the structure. Her transforming images and repetitive sequences catapult the inner self to its visible physical expressiveness as she swings boldly from playfulness to oppression, from recklessness to surrender. Gestures are either abstract or realistic bearers of concrete meaning. The simplicity and repetitive tightness in some works loosens up to offer a greater diversity, within the confined range of laconic movement. She can suddenly relinquish her fascination over repetition and abandon the beat and the drive, opting rather for long moments of silence and for a variety of musical voices that underpin the movements but remain in the background.
From its genesis in the early 20th century, to the abstract visions of De Keersmaeker and the extreme and passionate interpretations of Pina Bausch’s company, Tanztheater progressed into a highly emotive form of art. Even now, a generation of choreographers worldwide continues to develop even more variations of Dance Theater. They continue to dispel boundaries of theater and ballet, and retain the cultural vitality of the form. Authors like Sasha Walz, Heike Henning, Wim Vandekeybus, Jasmin Vardimon and many others maintain that Tanztheater is a form with literally no artistic boundaries. Productions usually have no plot or resolution, but tell of an experience meant to provoke sensations, feelings, and memories. All at once, it can be baffling, transporting, and touching. In rejecting the “beauty” mantra of ballet, one might consider Tanz Theater as a distorted lens into the multi-dimensionality of the human experience. With its ambiguous and fantastic qualities and its quest for excavating bare emotion this inter-disciplinary European born performance art complements the conceptual framework of American Dance Theatre. It takes two to tango.
If Isadora Duncan’s free flow heralded the pre-modern movement, and Graham’s, Humphrey’s, Cunningham’s universal concepts for expansion and contraction, bound rebound and random chance shaped the modern, while the intense emotiveness of German expressionistic provocations paved way for the post-modern, what is the hallmark of the ultra-modern? Its distinctive traits are a pronounced, hybridism, cross-genre fusion, neo-experimentalism and a prevalent visual, kinesthetic and verbal polyphony. The relevant dance theatre landscape relies on an ever-expanding set of human and planetary values that is underpinned by tendencies for cross-pollination, global convergence and “interdisciplinarity”. The current unstable historical context shaped by crumbling totalitarian regimes, social unrest, freedom movements, toppling financial structures and groundbreaking innovation wheels us into a time of external wild adjustment and internal exploration.
We live on the edge of uncertainty feeling the divergent pulls off the past and readjusting to true progress that comes in the balance of polarity. We all see the resurgence of activity in many cultural hot-spots and their freedom-seeking politics that aspire to an economy based on other vectors than money. We are all in this boat together and through our cultural, political, social and artistic pursuits we fuel this change and guide the transformation. This change is not only political, but calls for a deep personal reorganization and changing. In history such phases of break-down led to the greatest moments of break-through. This tipping point which the world is experiencing entails a radical balance. It brings about sustainable solutions, a floating economy and an interdependent art form reflective of a constantly shifting cultural landscape.
Dance Theatre in all its manifestations and forms has the power to transform on many levels: aesthetic, ethical, existential, human and personal. While we as artists thrive on the inter-dimensionality of Total Theatre we stay open to current emerging trends that transcend the avant-garde and blaze a new trail of bold experimentalism and trans-cultural resonance. It is a kaleidoscopic, saturated and yet distilled art of “visceral mindfulness,” where within the myriads of images, new dazzling forms ensue. Pina Bausch called this unique phenomenon “gesamtkunstwerk” – a piece of work where all parts are working together for a singular purpose. I call it “subliminal performance” bordering the veiled and the untold. A performance where the intricacy of each layer creates the entirety of the whole.