Polishing the edges of collaboration

Anatomy Projects (AP), launched in 2004, is a series of research projects in contemporary dance that seek to uncover the intersecting points of dance with visual art, sound, video, fashion and spoken word. As part of Green Papaya’s yearly program, AP has served as a platform and meeting point for artists between and among the various disciplines to work together. More particularly, it has served as venue for young emerging choreographers to present their current investigations in dance, collaborating as a choreographic ensemble to create a performance based on a specified thematic framework, as set by an existing curatorial agenda. Following this initial impetus, the succeeding APs sought to widen the network of interdisciplinary agenda by inviting other contemporary artists with interest in performance to participate. Consequently laying down a process-oriented collaborative mode of production and working context for performance.

Among its initial aims is to explore the performative potential of a white cube/gallery space ordinarily associated with the display of objects as in exhibition and installation projects. We were interested in how the dynamics and sociology of this given space changed when occupied by live moving bodies in the space. Recognizing the non-conventional theatricality of the space, AP focuses on the processes of framing bodies, relationships and signification in the space. By putting the dance/performance in this spatial constraint, the series hopes to push audiences to look at dance with a different lens, close range. Forcing them to abandon the usual safe distance and objectivity offered by conventional theater spaces. Whereas the theater, cushions both audience and performer, here they are placed in close proximity, blurring the boundaries of spectatorship. Both audience and performers become (un)willing conspirators in this endeavor. The result is a unique experience of seeing, hearing, touching and doing dance. Forging a contract between both parties to temporarily suspend their roles in the ‘society of spectacle,’ making space for transparency and reflexive criticality.

Breaking down barriers and creating context

While conceptualizing the fourth AP to be presented at the CCP Bulwagang Amando Hernandez as part of the first WI_FI Body: Independent Contemporary Dance Festival, we were confronted by one basic idea: spatial and sociological specificity of AP as site a specific work performed in a pre-determined space. We have realized the advantage and disadvantage of this peculiar specificity wrought by working conditions at/of Green Papaya. Acknowledging the strong spatial and ideological influence of the space, set within the independent framework of artist-run initiatives, staging a work at the CCP taking cognizance of the cultural politics surrounding it posed an interesting problematic to us. First of all, the series is not production and ‘presentation’ oriented, it is to be ‘viewed’ intimately and less rigidly compared to productions typical of CCP. Secondly, the series represent a historical break from institutional, formula-oriented aesthetics and agenda. Rather, AP seeks to create a space of negotiation and discursive engagement between audience and performer.

We were faced with a number of issues. To begin with, AP is a product of at least a month-long immersion and study of the space. Having done, three installments and established a kind of working context, we wanted to move on in more innovative and surprising ways of manipulating spatial and temporal dynamics of a performance. However, doing AP at the CCP where we did not have full control to manipulate and change the venue, led us to more ‘modest’ plans. Secondly, we did not have the physical luxury of the space, coming in only two days before the performance. Realizing this, yet still committed to the idea of creating a dialogue with the space, AP4 Summer begins and ends as you wish sought to strike a dialogue with the discursive space of CCP if not its physical space. This entailed developing a material that would present conceptual issues that affected ways of seeing and doing dance in varying cultural and aesthetic contexts. We thought this rather fitting in the context of the first independent contemporary dance festival.

Continuing our ongoing investigation in the discursive processes affecting our seeing and doing dance, AP4 Summer begins and ends as you wish turns to focus on the idea of seduction in performance via Vaslav Nijinksy’s controversial 1912 work, Afternoon of a Faun. It representing a breakthrough in modern dance, where Nijinsky bravely challenged the re/presentational convention of ballet by focusing on a single idea as the narrative strand. Presented with bare feet, it rejected classical formalism that focused on the beauty of lines and ‘virtuosi’ execution of steps and movement. Nijinsky choreographed it with stylized movement and gestures in 2-dimensional orientation, flattened poses inspired by the Greek vase collection of the Louvre Museum. Aside from this, it was the dance’s overtly sexual nature (for its time) that ended with a scene of simulated masturbation that stirred controversy and scandal during its premiere in 1912.

Based on the Greek myth, Faun tells the tale of a half-man, half-animal creature who is stirred from his nap during a hot summer day by seven beautiful nymphs on their way to bath in a nearby lake. The faun lures in the nymphs in the dance but to avail. Although one nymph, seems to respond she immediately rushes to leave the faun as soon as he attempts to touch her, letting her scarf fall on the ground which the Faun picks up caress and make love to. Considered as one of the most important works of the 20th century, Faun ushered in issues that shape art-making in our century, raising multiple perspective of time and space, ambiguities of gender and sexuality, and the position of humanity relative to technology.

Resonating almost the similar concerns, the disillusion of seduction, the realization of reality and suspension of disbelief, AP4 uses the Faun as a take-off point to develop a commentary on the performance situation. Choosing to veer away from the dramaturgical burden of the original piece, we choose to treat Faun as a platform to possibly develop a performance piece and dramaturge that evoke our objective to create a space for dialog and discourse with the framework of CCP and WI_FI Body, as the first independent contemporary dance festival. The resulting solo deconstruction (sometimes, imagined reconstruction) resists to offer a ‘contemporary’ version of the original Faun but instead seeks to raise questions and curiosity. With this in view, we acknowledge the possibility of loosing the original intention, formalistic expectation and emotional affect of the original piece. In the process of this re-thinking of structure, we hope to arouse curiosity among peers, colleagues and audience in the process of dance and meaning making. Posing questions such as what is the dance? The 800 animated images projected on the screen? The woman sitting on the bench, waiting? Or the musicians onstage creating a incomprehensible sound? Where is the performance, the dance? Onstage or in our minds? As audiences, what do we take home after this?

Collaboration, upsetting the genre and sharing authorship

AP4 Summer begins and ends as you wish is a collaborative multimedia performance/installation by dancer/choreographer Donna Miranda, sculptor Maria Taniguchi, photographer Isa Lorenzo and sound artists Ria Muñoz and Pow Martinez, a.k.a Nasal Police. The project indulges the promise and disillusion of seduction via Vaslav Nijinksy’s Afternoon of a Faun. Using Faun as take-off point, the performance seeks to portray the strange and familiar creature and situations that loom in our everyday. Situations, roles, relationships, social contracts that produce a state of schizophrenia.

How to create pleasures and memories that can be taken home? What is left after a performance? Our collective memory of a time-based action, that either evoked empathy or absolute disgust. What do we look for in a performance? And as performers, what do we propose during this captured moment of spectacle? How to tell the stories with our bodies? In this situation, we do the dance of comprehension and confusion, seduced and seducer. Embodying a schizophrenia of performing through utterances that sometimes turn into sentences and utterances that remain utterances. Building expectations and maybe breaking them, like promises that never happen, phone calls that never come or waiting for the taxi that never arrives.

The dictionary defines collaboration as the act of working together with one or more people in order to create something. Another definition says, it is the betrayal of others by working with an enemy especially an occupying force. Having established a direction towards interdisciplinary work and expressing reflexive thinking about its process, Green Papaya pursues to provide platform to exchange and articulate ideas on performance and art in general through AP4. In this fourth series we pursue to ask questions about the collaborative process and implications of shared authorship. While the collaborative process is often imbued with optimism and enthusiasm, it also evokes hesitation, fear anxiety and awkward situations as a result of personal idiosyncrasies and varying aesthetic positions. Aware of this (sometimes) uneasy relationship, the project sought to address the parameters and processes of collaboration itself. What does it mean to collaborate and come together to create a ‘single work’ borne out of this exchange and interaction? How to come together and put our contexts together while remaining true to each individual’s identity? Or do we totally loose it in the end, in order to allow the emergence of a ‘single’ work?

Hoping to encompass the formalist restraints of ‘collaborative work’ usually resulting in a hodge-podge, festive juxtaposition of various art elements against each other, we bravely asked ourselves if we wanted to create another performance showcasing different forms of art. Where each form is well represented, clearly showed as visual arts, dance and sound. We were however more interested in discovering the intersection of our own practice with each other, putting aside the necessity to clearly show where is the dance or where the visual component was. In effect, we recognized that while our process may be collaborative the formal product of the work may not necessarily be so. Taking this position for AP4 allowed us to discover the creative and conceptual links that connected sculpture and choreography, dance and sound, photography and movement, even architecture and sound. Thus, acquiring a wider understanding of contemporary art, surmounting isolation and exclusion; fostering cooperation, shared responsibility and open systems for communication. The result was a performance that sacrificed the clean and clear categories of installation, dance, photography, video animation, sculpture, sound and dramaturgy in favor of experiential engagement in the space. This was polishing the edges of collaboration, submitting to a single idea and committing to it. Knowing that in the end maybe our virtuosity has to step back and allow the work to surface and communicate to its audience.

While encountering blank faces among the audience expecting a ‘dance performance’ can be a misleading indicator to asses the experiment, feedback from some members of the audience re-affirmed our resolve to create curiosity and ‘experience’ rather than ‘show.’ Qouting Yvette Pantilla’s review of the performance:
"Successful collaborations are those where participants put aside ego and move in obedience towards the completion
of the work. Sometimes watching a rehearsal is more interesting than the actual performance itself on the ticketed
night. You witness a process, with all its revisions, errors, improvisations, and knots. It is not something we expect
to be perfect and synchronized, stimulating and awe-inspiring, only because we have paid for it…"
(Manila Bulletin 25 August 2006, pageE4)

Successful collaborations require a great amount of time and commitment. Time to nurture an idea, allowing it to ferment and see its fruition. Somewhat anxious and too energetic at times, patience is a virtue that we young artists need to muster. After completion of the project, we found ourselves wanting to pursue and push our concepts further, if only we had longer time or foresaw that we needed more time for research and execution. Maybe this is one disadvantage of aspiring towards a “performance,” one can easily loose sight of the initial impulse and instead falls into the expectation of a “performance.” So that while the CCP performance is over we look forward to other avenues to perform the work again and further developed our existing material.