Co-commissioned by IETM and Howlround, On Art and Activism gazes deep into the impact of art on our societies and the displacement many artists experience when they are expected to participate in activism in addition to their art practice.
The article was written in the early stages of the world’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and is responding to way in which artists we re/acting to the new reality.
Read On Art and Activism on Howlround website HERE
Initiated, co-edited and contributed to PUSH: IT WILL COME LATER a book by International Contemporary Dance Collective
The book features a diverse collection of expressions and provocations under the subcategories International - Contemporary - Dance - Collective.
The publication reflects on the challenges of collaboration and on the conditions for a practice of working with others within the international landscape of contemporary dance. This book is not a conclusion nor a manual which offers fully realised solutions. Nonetheless, it is a multipurpose space of exchange, of describing personal experiences, of unfolding recurrent problems, of raising questions and of suggesting practices that could potentially be relevant for the readers who find themselves in similar situations.
PUSH: IT WILL COME LATER was published by CIRCADIAN (Berlin, Germany)
You can read more about the book and learn about how to get your own copy HERE
Commissioned and published by IETM - International network for contemporary performing arts.
Notions of inclusion and diversity have been part of the discourse and actions of contemporary performing arts ever since I can remember. In the 1990’s the discourse amongst contemporary dance artists orbited around the physical body. We were concerned with the form, colour, size and ability of the bodies that were performing and making the art. The questions were about authentically representing the demographics of the societies the art is made in, with, for and about. In dance, changes happen very rapidly. Perhaps it is the ephemerality of the art form or the heritage of the early practices of dance as a medium for transcendence. We have ventured through modern dance, post-modern dance, contemporary dance, non-dance and post-dance within just forty years and we are still changing swiftly. Many of these phases of evolution have been direct responses to the social and political realities at the time and promoting burning issues in society. In many cases, an individual artist or a group of them would push the art form into a new realm in order to stay relevant in society and furthermore, often they aspired to trigger the public discourse and evoke fresh thinking about their realities.
Dance artists have been willing to question all that they know to be true only to catalyse the thinking and actions of the societies in which they operate. In Anna Helprin’s Dancers Workshop in San Fransisco, way back in the 1950’s, one could find dancers who belonged to marginalised groups of society. She didn’t work with them solely because of their cultural heritage, ethnicity or socio-economic status. She simply wanted to work with people and she knew, already then, that people are people are people…
In other words, dance might be a good case-study when addressing matters of diversity, inclusion, accessibility and equality.
However, in my experience, the processes of addressing these invaluable matters have been sterilised and hijacked by strategic language and bureaucratic procedures. Despite the topic being addressed in various ways and in different intensities over many decades, there is still much more work left to do. Despite many attempts and initiatives to bring change, we are still operating within a system which is bonded to neoliberal capitalism. Compartmentalisation is a marketing strategy in capitalism because the more divided the market is to different groups, the more products one manufactures with the claim to meet the specific needs of each particular group.
Additionally, segregation has been used as tool to gain power by many regimes throughout history. When a community is isolated and is not aware of what happens elsewhere it is easily manipulated and controlled. Knowledge is power and if those who rule hold more knowledge than the people then, it is clear who is in control.
Real changes happen when people gather around an ideology. A strong value that speaks volumes to the people, would change the way they think and sequentially, their behaviour.
Today, dark clouds of regression are hovering above us all. Governments all over the world are promoting ideas of segregation and division. They fuel ignorance and discrimination. Many politicians are using tactics of polarisation and demonisation in their campaigns. They talk more about how bad, cruel, evil and stupid their opponents are rather than promoting any coherent and structured ideologies or agendas of their own.
This behaviour infects other contexts. It seems humanity can gather around call for actions concerning the ecological crisis but fails to express solidarity towards other humans. Basic freedoms are confiscated from people in China, the Middle East, Africa, USA - Mexico boarder, Russia - Ukraine boarder as well as in so called western and privileged societies where neurodiverse, gender-diverse, body-diverse individuals are bullied, harassed and murdered on daily basis and many many many more examples. But we easily turn a blind eye and go on with our lives.
Many of us think that if we see queer individuals on mainstream television and we have a minister in our government who is a wheelchair user, we have arrived at a place of inclusion and diversity. But this could not be further from the truth. Just like other aspects of our reality, the marketing is surpassing the truth. The image that we are sold is that we have done a good job and we have learnt the lesson but in actuality we have not been able to spread a genuine ideology of compassion and solidarity. We are still segregated, divided, demonising and alienating.
I believe that language constructs realities. It frames our thoughts and delivers our ideas to other minds. The words we choose to describe our aspirations are crucial to the accuracy of their realisation. We live in fast-paced reality and within an infinite intellectual ocean that overflows us with information. Choosing the language with which we express ourselves is often a process of conformity and obedience. We more often than not choose the commonly accepted terms to discuss such large topics. Sequentially, these terms become content-less and meaning-less brands which perpetuate the existing power structures in our society.
I would like to suggest that it is crucial to invest the time and energy it takes to truly examine the language we use when promoting our ideas, if we really want to catalyse a change.
After years of conversations, publications and actions around the topic, IETM established the IDEA group. IDEA stands for Inclusion, Diversity, Equality and Accessibility. Whilst the intension is pure and the action is necessary, I believe that the language is perpetuating the same mechanism that led us to our current situation.
Inclusion suggests structural and political hierarchy. Someone is already at the desired place and invites others to also be included there.
Diversity is also suffering of inaccuracy and deficiencies by suggesting that there is one and only stream which just needs to be diversified.
Equality could also suggest oneness which is obscure. When using the term equality, one should be required to explain - equal in what? Equal in opportunities? Equal in value? Equal in reward? Equal in all?
Furthermore, we need to be more articulate and precise in order not to confuse equality with homogenising and standardising which inherently contradict the initial proposition.
Accessibility is of a different faucet because it address the need of decisions makers to acknowledge the entire demographics of a society and not a singular body, culture or community. I think accessibility should be treated as a political synonym to democracy. As long as we aspire to a democratic society, we aught to aspire to a fully accessible public spaces and services.
A quick comment about accessibility, we are far from fully embracing accessible practice in contemporary performing arts because the majority of opportunities for artists depend on writing abilities and skills which are extremely particular and therefore eradicate the option for many artists to access resources.
Also, in the globalised capitalistic economy, in order to make a living as an independent contemporary performing artist, one must be able and willing to fully submerge in the overwhelming reality of multi-tasking, overworking, burnout provoking race. Again, not something that is by nature accessible to many.
A few suggestions I would like to workshop as possible alternatives to the above terms are Pluralism, which speaks to the distribution of power in society and the legitimacy for minority groups to sustain authority and influence on the whole; Coexistence which suggests wholesome environment for each and every part of society without risking or jeopardising others’ freedom and without expressing any need for assimilation; Heterogenism (counter to common thinking, the word hetero refers to differences and otherness) this is a new word I created to try and speak about internal variety without referring to external criteria; and there is the good old Human Rights which can promote the right to access, the right to be included, the right to be free and unapologetic, the right to be one’s self, the right to influence one’s own environment, the right to have a voice that counts, the right to be seen by the people in power, the right to be in power, the right to express one’s opinions and the right to choose how much to engage in socio-political dynamics.
I wonder if we learned to want to be inclusive because it is something that is expected of us in the cultural sector and introduced via cultural policies that are constituted by the political party in power. Perhaps it is the words we use which are no longer relevant.
Even in IETM, there is a genuine desire to be meaningful and instrumental to a broad variety of organisations and individuals. But in practice the network can not really be completely open. I often think what will happen if some radical religious organisation would ask to join IETM but request that all members belonging to one sex cover themselves and not speak in public? Would IETM accept such demands for the sake of being “inclusive”?
I guess we all have got our limits.
We want to involve everybody because we might think that it would make us better people or reinforce the broad relevance of what we do. But I suspect that most of us will not be willing to give up all of our own freedoms in the process.
It is important that we ask ourselves whether we promote such ideas with genuine interest and sincere beliefs or we are being manipulated by trendy politics and as a result conform to the idea that more is better and therefore, contemporary performing arts like capitalism, must broaden our market (read audiences).
Real changes in behaviour depend on real changes in mindset and ideology. To change our thinking, we should change our language. What are the right words to describe what we are actually trying to do? Should we, artists, borrow the language from the policy makers or should we lead the way with new and alternative language?
Israel Aloni
info@israelaloni.com
This article does not represent my beliefs or comprehension of contemporary dance in their entirety. It is rather a compilation of significant impulses, thoughts and ponders. Given the fact that these peaks of contemplation revealed themselves to me at a time when I was attending Impulstanz 2017 in Vienna, I thought it was appropriate to share the following subjective impulses with the world.
I am not excusing by any means the statements which you are about to read. However, I believe that the context must be revealed as a blanket of references on which I can serve my mind’s outbursts.
As you will witness shortly, this article is filled with genuine queries and quests. I send out many sentences which end with a question mark to the universe, hoping that an answer will return either to pay a visit to me or someone else who stumbles upon the following lines.
Lets start
The question, what is contemporary dance? has been longing for an answer for quite some time. People dedicate their lives to the practice of contemporary dance, many of whom are emancipated as people only by their practice of that particular art form.
However, to many of these same people, it is challenging and often even irritating when someone attempts to explain or describe what contemporary dance is.
Denying description and explanation, a rather religious conduct, don’t you think?
Dedicating your life and emancipate oneself through a devoted practice of something so abstract that it cannot and should not be explained or described as such is scarily similar to the dedication and devotion that allowed the monotheist religions leak into the intellectual pipelines of humanity throughout our history.
Do I dare to ask the unforgettable question, what is contemporary dance?
Imagine…
If you were blindfolded and taken somewhere without knowing anything about where you are taken or what you may experience once you get there, then the blindfold would be taken off and you would find yourself in a situation that you could rather spontaneously recognize as a performance situation or a performative act happening, what would be the leading questions and examinations that you would utilize in order to asses whether you are at a dance or even more specifically, contemporary dance, performance?
In other words, what are the molecules or the DNA of contemporary dance?
Imagine…
If you found a dead body of an art form, and you were running an autopsy to identify it, what would be the signs that you would look for in order to know if this dead body is one of a contemporary dance or not?
What would be the hints and inclinations that you would be after?
What would be the signs that you would draw on? What would they look like, taste like, smell like, feel like?
In other words, what do you think makes contemporary dance - contemporary dance?
Sidetrack…
Lets say you are making an omelet but you are no longer using eggs, you are not frying it, you are not even using a frying pan to make it, you are not serving it on a plate or any other serving surface for that matter and there is no one eating it, are you actually making an omelet?
And what if in the process of making an omelet you took a few vegetables and chopped them, placed them in a bowl, poured some oil and vinegar on them and had yourself or someone else takes it in through the digestive system. Would you still say you made an omelet or would you consider to admit that you have made a salad?
Do you think you would be afraid to be recognized (if at all) as just one more salad maker? Do you think you would loose the prestige and fame that you always wanted to gain as an omelet maker?
Are you less important now that you realized you have been wanting to make omelets your entire life but actually all you can create, in a good flow, and come to conclusions about, are salads?
Why can you not accept the fact that on your search to make the most mind blowing omelet you ended up making a salad?
I have got news for you, what you made is not an original, unique, innovative or even exciting omelet, it is a regular, generic, simple and delicious salad.
Back to dance…
Whilst we are at it, what is the fear from expertise and experience, in contemporary dance, derived of?
Why do dance makers enjoy so much diminishing their livelihood and lifetime dedications to a practice that indicates “everybody is a dancer”?
We must not forget that everybody can, and in my opinion should, dance.
But should anyone who dances be a legitimate go-to-expert in the evolution of dance as an art form?
Where is the line or is it a whole universe between dance and the art of dance?
In Hebrew, a dance which is practice in social and folklore contexts is called RIKUD (ריקוד) where is a dance that is either spiritual, mystical and/or artistic is called MAHOL (מחול).
These words’ etymologies are profoundly different and each has totally different meaning and connotation.
Perhaps the general and generic english, that we usually use in the dance field, has also decapitated our art form from its uniqueness and particularity. Perhaps the use of such a general language is the reason that we are often confused by the similarity between dance which is a respectful art form and that which occurs as mating rituals of teenagers at a school parties and even that which is naturally happening by the growth of plantation in our backyard. It is all dance.
General vs. particular
Why is it on one hand important for us to have “dance festivals” but at the same time refrain from accepting and perhaps even feeling empowered by a particular definition of dance?
Why is the dance world, field, sector or however you want to call it, so timid and feeling inferior to other art forms so we feel that it is not enough to make dance, to present dance, to research dance, to communicate through dance and to BE dance?
Why do we feel a must to branch out to cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, non-dance, post-dance and other notions of creation processes?
Not to say, by any little bit, that collaborations are bad. I am all about and thanks to collaborations. However, we should be allowed to also make, learn, research, develop and perform solid dance.
So, what is dance?
If I were watching a show (which I often do) or better yet if I were performing a show (which I have also done a few hundreds, perhaps thousands, times) how would I know thatI am observing/doing dance?
For those of you who are thinking “but, why do you have to know? It is just all art!”
I have many things to say to you and one of them would be a question: why do you have a passport?
In order to venture, travel and journey in full freedom one has to depart.
Where is dance departing from?
The body? Does it have to be a human body?
The space? What kind of space?
The performance? Must dance have audience?
Time? Does dance only exist in correspondence with the infinite continuum of time?
Another thing I would like to ask, how come it is alright for Rage Against The Machine, Elvis Presley, Adele, 50 Cent, Amy Winehouse, Vivaldi, Philip Glass, Björk, and many other leaders of their own genres to accept the fact that they all make (or made) music but us, in dance, we think that in order to be innovative we need to go against that same thing that defines us altogether?
There is no post-music, music is not over music.
There are subgenera like post-rock and post-punk but not post-music.
Music does not feel like it has to refuse its own origins and identity in order to be important. It is always music first of all.
There is no non-music either. Again, there are only non-genre practices, not non-everything that music is.
Why is there non-dance?
And if you can not describe dance, how can you then relate to concepts such as post-dance or non-dance?
Better yet, if you can not describe dance or talk about dance as dance, how do you expect public and audiences to listen and respond to you, to us?
How can you call something “dance festival” if you can not or perhaps refuse to describe dance?
What is the festivity all about then?
Is this some spiritual practice where one celebrates the death of an entity? Is this what the festivity all about? Are we holding festivals to announce and celebrate the end of dance, the death of it?
Dance on the spectrum of gender
As a person who is immersed in the journey within, across and beyond the contextualization and conceptualization of gender through language and practices in different societies, I am intrigued by its infinite variety and demonstrations in the universe.
I am reminded, and would like to remind you too, that no matter how you see yourself and/or the world, no matter what happens across the correspondence between who you are referred to as and who you would like to be referred to as, whether you are gendered by birth or by life, no one rejects the fact that gender is a spectrum of endless possibilities and combinations of male and female.
Male and female are general and rather ambiguous instigations of directions. They are our points of reference and through, across, despite and because of these references, we are each able to discuss gender and perhaps measure and liberate that specific and unique self that is ours.
Back to dance, what are our reference with which we can construct or identify our subjective and individual self as dance artists?
Dance like Napoleon Bonaparte
Another thought that comes to my mind is the violent characteristics of invasion and colonization. To some extent, I see the spreading and binge of contemporary dance as a ruthless regime which is never satisfied or content with its own cultural heritage or geographic territory but rather violate everything that it comes in touch with in order to fit itself everywhere. Even more saddening than that is the similarities between the generalization and lightheadedness with which we treat the identity of contemporary dance, to that which brutal regimes and ideologies treat those who are other and/or different to them.
There is something missionary and rather pathetic in how contemporary dance yearns for recognition and validation from everyone and anyone, to the extent of loosing its integrity, specificity and dignity.
It has become so general in the mask of eclecticism, so bland in the mask of conceptualism, so plain in the mask of politically-correctness and so alienated in the mask of globalized.
Back to the future
The year is 2017, it was not that long ago when people were looking for ways to express themselves through movement and choreography which are different to the classical ballet aesthetic and philosophy. The pioneers of modern dance worked very devotedly to develop a language and methodologies which could demonstrate and develop dance without the unnecessary comparison to the previously existing dance form which up until then were either extremely strict or extremely loose.
What are we devoted for as a dance community nowadays? What are the philosophies and methodologies that we are going to leave for the generations after us to utilize in their way to emancipate themselves?
Will there be dance in a few decades? How will humans know that they are dancing? Will they be able to recognize the ancestral connections between the contemporary dance of the 21st century to the dance that happened on earth in the 20th century and even in the century before that?
If so, what would be the elements that they would be referring to?
What is the DNA or dance? What makes dance - dance?
A translation to English of the full critic, originally written in Danish by Michael Svennevig after CATHARSES performance at Teaterøen in Copenhagen on the 17th of September 2017.
Through the dark, one can hear something rustling. At first, the sound seems to come from behind the audience, but then from the stage, where something is rolling in from the back. This is seen through the darkness as an indefinite mass, and only when the lights slowly go up does it becomes clear that there are two distinct plasma-like globes rolling in. Two creatures turn and twist before they eventually escape - and are born. Soon after, they are on their feet as creatures exploring themselves and each other. It's a man and a woman. Both wear long thin black tights and a loose-hanging robes, open in the back. It's not typical dance costumes, and the same go for their movements They move towards each other with increasing speed. Like magnets, always looking for each other, but never coming together. As if they are searching for and rejecting each other at the same time. Some of the movements are fast and abrupt. Others slow and sliding, often in direct temporal contrast to the music, which emphasizes the unresolved tension between them. They are together and yet always separate.
The title of the work, "Catharses", is the plural of the Greek word of cleansing, and used the first time by Aristotle in "The Poetics" from ca. 325 B.C., where de defines tragedy and its effect on the audience.
ilDance is based in Sweden. The choreographer, Israel Aloni, was born and raised in Israel, then moved to Sweden where together with Lee Brummer he formed ilDance. In an earlier piece called “Forbidden Fruit”, Aloni explored human sexuality a nd then in “Catharses” focused on the female and its significance. The piece resonates with disarming poetic cruelty and powerful allusions to Pina Bausch´ "Le Sacre du Printemp".
It was danced wonderfully by the two dancers: Lærke Appelon & Lukas Pzytarsky. All urges and desires to beatify and entertain were removed. What remains is only a pure desire and the courage to seek and perhaps find a more sincere expression.
Even though the dancers take off their clothe, they never appeare to be totally naked covered as they were in mud. Just as in Bausch’ 'Le Sacre du Printemps', which takes place in soil and mud (which I watched at the Paris Opera a couple of years ago), it reminded us of our first parents, Adam and Eve, as they rose up from the earth with the curiosity to explore the new world that surrounds them - or rather "the first world".
I strongly feel that we observed a birth, a rare moment of creation. Something that makes theater the space we come back to again and again for just such moments, to experience wonders and to see into ourselves and our own lives. Such moments justify why we keep on returning, because we might be lucky enough to experience it again - and as the first bite of the apple of wisdom, we are able to understand how everything is connected.
It felt as if I was seeing contemporary dance for the first time, as if it were a brand new fresh language. Both Appelon and Pzytarsky danced with a secret they never gave away. It was hard not to be captivated. There were no barriers, the work flowed directly to the audience in a delightful fusion of sound and motion. I could have watched them all night - much longer than the 40 minutes it lasted.
Link to original text in Danish:
http://msvennevig.blogspot.dk/2017/09/anmeldelse-catharses-pa-teateren.html
Link to information about CATHARSES