An essay confronting my work as a choreographer with Deborah Hay's work.
Is it surprising if I start exposing that I have a strong desire to formulate a research question using WHAT IF? Don’t think so… First, I want to make an analysis to deconstruct the desire and show a point I have strongly inside:
Translating the expression WHAT IF as best as I could into my native language, as sometimes I do to understand completely the meaning of something, I found it was something like Y QUE. Then, translating again I QUE into English creates AND WHAT. As you will understand, it has a different meaning, and there is a grammatical issue to take into consideration. Let me explain myself. The expression AND WHAT has a peculiar provocative and playful connotation. We use it as an answer to a question that doesn’t have directly any importance, answer for yourself, or moreover, to show directly an emotional reaction to the question. Also, it’s well known that Spanish people has the tendency to get too emotional so quick. Then, it’s good to be aware which kind of feeling you have if you are starting a research question with AND WHAT... An example: If somebody come and ask you “Are you fucking for money lately? Then, there are many options, and many answers. Being precise, if you know that the answer is too obvious, or evident, or you think there are other interesting things to share to go on in harmony with the conversation, and finally, you want to face the other and show yourself that there still a bit of dignity in yourself, you can replay relaxed: YES, I QUE.
In the other hand, it’s ridiculous to go on with that anecdotic explanation. I can easily agree that it was just a flashing funny moment I had with myself translating the beginning of all the questions Deborah ask us to keep in mind while practicing with her. In any moment I meant that I was thinking something like AND WHAT if my 3 trillion cells of my body could get what they need? Oh my god it would be amazing.
Anyway, and without trying to take out the big value and weight of my research question, I will formulate it starting with a WHAT IF. So… Let’s go.
What if I use my imaginary to make a trip and place my presence inside different Deborah Hays processes, trying to perceive from inside rather than from the theory, and observe how I confront now different patterns I have when facing a work as a performer, and what comes out of it? I will try not to get so emotional and stuck into the feeling after Breaking the Chord, but try to go deeper in those feelings. I will also try to get involved with Deborah Hay material during the process, read from her and about her, so then the development of the text will be in one way or another related to her work and words, and how it shakes and stimulates me.
Before starting, I have to admit that I get tired and my brain swallows dealing only with big amounts of theory. Also, I am practicing the joyfulness of opening the unconscious for a deeper understanding between human beings, rather than the logical, structured, dialogical. Then, I am glad to communicate that during the trip we are not going just to do stops in Hay’s world. Welcome also to mine.
I can hardly remember what happened. I still feel an acid flavor in my mouth, muscle pain and a high headache. Paying attention to my physical sensation, I recognize a tendency between falling asleep and faint. I could die slowly now and I wouldn’t feel anything strange, any pain. Everything is quite ok now; I see wonderful furniture around me, and I feel myself connected to the colors of the room. It’s full colored and there is a soft jazz music playing. I love saxophones. Somebody is taking a shower close to me, I can listen also the soft noise of the heater. My hands are soft, still dirty, but shinny, light, and all my body is completely wet. The computer is still open. The essay is still unfinished. There are papers all around, spread all over. I need my own computer.
The pain in my eyes every time I scratch them is stronger. I give myself a chance to rest closing them. I will wait till she came out of the toilet and help me with that. Maybe I have to accept it and open the other senses to perceive. Soft lights moving, and a shinny rainbow. Small flies flying, like fairies. People dancing, a lot of words flying in the air, restaurant bills also flying in the space. Almost everything is floating in the space. Where Mss. Gravity went? Dutch blonde teenagers talking with the personification of the culture of fear. There are the hierarchic system and the dance history having nonsense talks in the park. Some dead members of my family, bicycles all around, be careful. Circle, dancing in a circle, dancing while flying, in a circular ritual dance. I hear a big organ playing. And guttural sounds on top if it. It creates a discontinuous and outdated melody. Speeding up, a lot of emotions appear. Light going up entering into the sky, through a big window in the top of a circual ceiling.
Surrounded by other 36 dancers, I’m wearing a pair of comfortable black shoes with yellow shoe laces. The space where we are is enormous, industrial, and has a beautiful circular ceiling, opened to the sky. There is a lot of light entering from there. There is a big organ in a corner, glorious, elegant. Nobody can play it. Actually, it doesn’t look completely like the idea of church that we have in mind. But this is not so relevant. We are placed in Amsterdam and its February 2010.
I’m doing a practice on stage, in the middle of the church, where it has been placed a warm linoleum black floor. I am moving around individually, but with all my colleagues. The practice: Invite being seen, introducing the space to the audience in a subliminal level, and inspiring myself in Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. My body has to seem light; I have to suspend my weight. I can do a bit of tap with my shoes, but not so loud. I should be unpredictable, surprising myself, being present and aware, staying with myself and not with the others.
Blinking twice, the situation changes…
I’m thinking about Canetti’s sentence: Mass is the only place for an individual to release the fear of the touch of the unknown while doing an exercise inside the structure of the piece, where I have to cross all the stage once, making combinations of only two movements, and following the zigzag form path we all have to create. The interaction between us is purely physical, perceptual; the others are just moving bodies, working as you, in the same space and in the same time. The communication is abstract; I am the only one to know what’s going on, and I can’t let the others understand what it is. We are each of us busy with our own associations, our own movement, and our own path inside of the global bath. I have to be individually creative in each moment passing by; I have to push myself not fall into the pattern of following the inertia, into the pattern of going out traveling with my own linear thoughts and stories, into the pattern of resting when tired.
Then there is the mass, the unified body without specific shape, which can be seen as a nest of ants, where millions small pieces work together to make the mechanism work, to create their home and procreate. I stare at the idea of all the individual work needed to fit in that mass exercise, to make it alive, to feel accepted by the group and satisfied our own participation.
And then there is our own ego, with thousand opportunities to find approbation, to get the attention. It is there, transparent, waiting for you to be relaxed to make you identify with him and think about if it worth all that effort just because of the group benefit. But what I feel in that situation is that actually I’m paying a lot of attention to myself, my desires, my choices, my associations, my relation with the mass, my body and my movement. Our head is always busy with myself. Me, my, me, my. Then I don’t get surprised when I find myself vulnerable and my ego gets too much control over my head. It can be something paradoxical but I understand my acceptance of my state and I go on questioning:
What am I doing here apart of struggling with that? How is feeling my physical body in the last 2 hours, can I really stand not to rest? Who is taking benefit of that situation? Am I going to learn something from that suffering? What is the goal of making mass choreographies where the individual is struggling so much with his own ideas and uncomfortable situation that cannot be at the service of the mass desires, and that cannot even listen to that desires because of the noise inside of own-questioning? Is it possible here and with that reality that the common desire would be really created by a whole energy that everybody understands; so then there would really exists a path that grows from a deep understanding? Can I just believe and it will start? Where is that point in between me/my desires and the mass where everything goes on comfortable and you enjoy your presence on stage and the practice? Is that point something that I need to get or just a utopia of what it is supposed to be what the 2.700.000 cells of my body have the potential to get? Am I free to imagine what my 2.700.000 has the potential to get?
So then, what about being lying naked in the middle of nowhere, exposing to the wind, that gently transform the clouds. I catch a cigarette from my pocket, thinking that maybe I’m not naked. Maybe it’s the less important now, because these clouds starts boring me, I’ve been so long in the same posture, thinking about the same and doing circles in chains of thoughts that make me feel dizzy. I decide to turn my neck, to move my fucking head…
How much beauty, they love each other so much that I can receive the same love from the other side of the meadow. They could be my guides if he wouldn’t mean already something like a shaman for me. He’s words sound so inspiring and revealing to my ears…Maybe I have eaten too much lawn, or it's true that maybe they can be simultaneously those two things.
There are two things that simultaneously has been worrying me too much lasts years, that relentlessly torment me and are going to kill me: My devotion for commercial Pop, Madonna and pink leggings, queer parties and blue dildos, but also and my obsession for the silence, where my head is safe from that damn sounds that get stacked as a parasite and brainwash me. The real important problem has arrived into me life when almost the silence is catchy and doesn’t let me sleep. Now it has turned into a “top40hit” that haunt me with his chorus and frenetic rhythm, and there’s nothing I can do.
It’s difficult to stay inside of the frame of work when I am dealing with things in this questioning mood. There, I find a huge range of possibilities to…let’s stop and say just a huge range of possibilities. Rather than presume about deep imaginary, after the enormous pleasure to travel, there are moments when I stand facing my behavior and I can realize that what is going on is just that I have a lack of concentration. Sometimes I excuse myself with the following argumentation:
Classifying my perception on many situations when I let myself get distracted:
1. Non interesting situation (It’s clear that it’s not necessary to pay attention. Free to choose. Easy situation)
2. Too theoretical situations. People talking and developing extreme mental argumentations, too complex ideas that sometimes became just words disconnected from the body. Theory. In that moment my head gets hot, and I choose (conscious or not) to switch the attention to another part of my body instead of the brain. To dissipate the accumulation, focus on another sensation.
3. Tricky situations, where I have been spending time thinking about the possibility of fronting a situation 1, then thinking that it’s in fact a situation 2, but then switching again my mood and recognizing that I should be interested and pushing me more not to loose the trickle of the conversation. Then I do a quick analysis, trying not to judge too fast, but still thinking in witch direction I have to trick myself to stay. Sometimes I spend so much energy in those connections that I loose my attention.
After that difficult and blurred explanation of my pattern of loosing the concentration (without loosing my concentration), I arrive to a point where I’m standing in a stressing street, and a 20 meters truck is coming closer and closer to me. I will let my body fell down in the precise moment, and with a bit of luck the impact with the truck will make by died coffin fly into to the canal. I never saw in the act of committing suicide such a smart way to end with endless dialogues with myself. Then, if lucky, the dirty watercourse of the canal will bring me to the sea. I will see the light, and I will listen to the silence forever and ever, which for sure it’s going to torture me forever and ever with his chorus, but at least I will never have to feel the disconnection between my brain and my body. And also I will never have conversations about how to start with the physicality in a work in process after 5 rehearsals talking endlessly, or about…
Let’s do it, the truck is coming.
10….9….8….7….6….5….4….3….2….1…silence.
A lot of silence.
Then, after a moment of infinite pleasure, a moment of inspiring affirmation when I realize that the place I brought myself following a chain of connected thoughts is surprisingly deep and rich, and it’s revealing me a big amount of true (if exists) of myself and the mass, I always I come back to the dialogue with myself about what is what push me sometimes to break the frame and go away through the big window in the ceiling. And why I am falling again in the same pattern of escaping from what others define as the truth to follow, or as the guide for a good development. I completely forget my participation in an institution, my belonging to a group with a direction.
Anyway, in that moment is a bit too late. I already go out the city and I am Austin, Texas. It’s April 1985. I’m wearing comfortable clothes and I’m practicing on stage. Actually, we have been practicing since January, when the project started. This is the second hour of the performance. It’s called the Preponderance of the Great. My direction: peak energy for one hour; perform all the time at a peak energy level, but very controlled and smart peak energy. The dance it’s passionate, stylized, and gorgeous. It’s a situation that cannot last for long, but I have to step into it. Confront myself with the desire of dropping it, of abandoning. I have to find the way to be here. I have to trick myself to find it attractive and deep. I can’t believe my feelings, they are primitive answers that want me to find a comfortable situation, that want me to change and place myself in a safer position. The well known: as a spectator that can easily make judgments. The goal is the endurance game; the possibility to stay has to be for me more interesting than the possibility to go out. My muscles have pain because my body on peak energy is brave, young, passionate, and chaotic. If I play it softer I’m going out of the peak energy premise.
My body hurts and I have a strong thought against endurance games. I’m tired and I can’t rest. Is an art manifestation in my point of view this lack of getting what I want? Is suffering a way of understanding something? In conflictive situations I’m always wondering where is placed the limit between all the moments when you have to be strong and stay, and discuss, and organize, and share, and struggle, and the moment when it’s enough, that the perception of suffer turns into something bigger than the experimentation itself, than the will of having the reason. Then, where is that point when switching my availability in the situations is right? But it’s not related with right or wrong.
Moreover, there are in my head some uncertain connections between that practices of suffering and fighting against the own desire, that almost hurt your integrity, and religion. I have been always so ascetic with religions that place the truth of our existence outside of our body, with fanaticism and also with exaggerated devotion. In a simplistic way, I could define myself as a follower of abundance and pleasure, but I am not sure which part of that affirmation is just created by the projection of the image of a stable, organized, happy, prosper, successful and rational life that was imposed to me in my past by the school, family and colleagues. Deborah Hay talks about how her body seeks comfort but not for long, adding that the wish to be free from suffering is practically the antithesis of being an artist. Martha Graham said stronger words: “No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction, only a queer, divine dissatisfaction: a blessed unrest…” Sometimes I’m afraid of those big words. They seem irreplaceable, the absolute truth for an artist, affirming subtly that the availability of the dancer body to suffer has to be infinite. What about sharing the art of being free of suffer?
Nowadays, I’m far of identifying myself as an artist free of suffer… my work in progress would be something similar to give me the chance to learn and experiment with discomfort, with unknown situations, with misery… displacing myself and recognizing my limits.
Question: Do I have to be inside of the performance, give my body as a mover, to understand deeply the knowledge that we distillate together from that experience? Actually, my own answer is Yes, I have. If not, this mental work about the limit of availability will be only theoretical and done by others.
- And I do want to do it.
-Me too.
-Who are you?
-Let me tell my story. I found a young boy lying in the floor with his mouth fulfilled of spume. At his side a smelly dog barking and… oh! My son that is catching his flute!!!
-Son!!! Drop this flute immediately and come here! I need an ambulance, also immediately!
In any similar situation I would leave here this died “dog-flute” punk without remorse, but this time my poor son has his hands soiled by bicycle chain and punk saliva and it’s too…
-Darling! Don’t call me son, I’m your brother Carles, and we should go if we don’t want to be late at the doctor. This thing that you see died in the floor is a pigeon with emotional disturbances that commit suicide.
- Let’s say together: We will always remember of you, pigeon!
- Excuse me, did you understand with that story a bit deeply where the limit of your availability is? You can connect it with other fragments on the previous pages.
- Well, I think it will be something that will come with me in my bag for years. At least with the experiences I’m having lately I’m developing a better system to detect when I’m falling into the pattern of feeling manipulated too quickly and closing my availability. Further I can’t go, at the moment.
- Let’s wait till the end of the essay, maybe you’ll find a better conclusion.
- I hope so.
- Have a nice evening.
- Nice evening for you, I’m a bit afraid of the repercussion of that essay.
- Don’t bother me with your stories.
- I won’t. Anyway I have to leave. I’m performing again in two lines.
- Good luck.
- Let’s see what happen.
It’s 1995 and I’m in Texas, again. I am taking part of Deborah’s workshop Playing Awake, with other 15 dancers. Few days before I was asked to perform a short solo that could be performed anywhere in the studio, without any preparation, and with no needing to be creative. It was beautiful to feel myself nourishing with the feedback of my body on practice. Today I’m rehearsing a monologue about my passion in creative jumpiness, in giving internal logic to a multitude of surreal, daring, highly personal images that live inside my brain. Without caging the images, but making them comprehensible and therefore free. The material of all of us will be pasted and put together by Deborah to create My heart piece.
Now that I’m again in 2010, I’m not so interested in the material I would share in that piece, neither the choreography, but in what Deborah Hay struggle with during that process: When she consult the oracular before the workshop started, the hexagram was Following, changing to Gathering Together. The message shown to her was “The thought of obtaining a following though adaptation to the demands of the time is a great and significant idea…” and ”No situation can become favorable until one is able to adapt to it and does not wear himself out with mistaken resistance”. During the workshop, and feeling guilty because she was using a lot her students’ work for her own ends in the piece, she had a dream: a medieval man grabbed a bird by its tail feathers, pressing it firmly into a table and pulling out some feathers, he turned to her and said “this means looting”. It was after including the explanation of this dream explicitly inside the piece, after distilling the whole piece into a solo form Voilà, and a meeting with a psychotherapist, that she understood the connection of the process in My Heart with the oracular and the dream. She adapt to a new situation so then everything can become favorable and make sense, accepting that it was the natural and right way of dealing with a choreography, leaving away preconceptions. It’s remarkable how she trust the message of something unknown, following blind voices and advices without knowing how and where was everything going to end, what life was preparing to her.
She named it and affirms that her body trusts the unknown, and I find it incredibly inspiring. Further than intuition, where a tiny idea of what is waiting for me can be projected in my mind, as a subtle projection in the future, it’s completely give yourself up, stay open, accept whatever, trust the unknown. Is love. Evolution. I want all my bodies inside of me to trust the unknown, to let me flow to many places I am far to imagine, to situations I can even describe, to work in subjects are non yet written.
I would like to thanks Deborah for the infinite amount of words, thoughts, investigation towards body, soul, spirituality, devotion to her work she is still sharing.
I am happy to be on the path of enjoying the world of the word.
Even it’s fucking difficult.
Carles Casallachs
Amsterdam, March 2010.
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