Friday, August 04, 2006

raving mad about a flat square painting i recently found


with a group of six people in a car, alternately changing into assumed characters copied from a comic book. i dont remember who i was, maybe i didnt have a character, i was just watching. sometimes my dreams were like this: i didnt have a body. it was lola's painting she gave it this title and i saw it written on the wall beneath the painting. this time i had a persona and talking to lola. she looked much younger and stronger than i remember. she had this energetic air, i've never seen during the last 15 years of her life. it was nice and reassuring. i was somewhere in a town like baguio...

to write a manifesto with and on the body, ascribing memory, history, struggle, frustration and realization. humbling realizations. listening to what the body is saying. it's best when one is tired and exhausted, the psychological struggle to work seems less because the compulsion to look and be looked at is less, overpowered by the exhaustion you forget. a strange sense of awareness comes with losing oneself and moving outside the 'eyes," outside the overpowering gaze that defines and dictate on the what proper/beautiful way one should look. but are we doomed for codified language and aesthetics even if we strive to question it each time. ugly becomes beautiful and then we become trapped with this ideal. i am interested in the possibility of subverting the gaze if not disregarding it. how can a dancer/dance artist move beyond the 'gaze.' what is this moment when you start to lose the imposing stare of an imagined audience. what is the concept of the audience in contemporary dance?

dance becomes contemporary when we engage the audience with a discourse, maybe affirming their ideas of the world or challenging them. or engaging the idea of an 'audience.' then this translates into how we do dance everyday and work with our body. what is the difference of a rehearsal from a performance? there is always an imagined eye. during a performance the stare and gaze is stronger, penetrable, the performer vulnerable. do we carry on this cliche of experience in the everyday practice? i wonder.

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