Today, I have just come home from another provocative performance with Dancing Wounded. While I somehow maintain an outsider position in dance, my heart and home belongs to the work and research commitment of dancing wounded to push Philippine contemporary dance to the limits even of our own understanding of what dance is. Maybe it is this outsider position, seeing the significance of the work that dancing wounded put out there that make the commitment to support this kind of direction to art production and performing even more compelling than working with other groups. Of course, personal relationships do matter but as an artist what is most satisfying is realizing that this 'thing' that brings us together goes beyond the borders of our personal affliation. knowing that this is possible makes one realize that purity of our advocacy to art.
TOnight, we performed Gestures of the Flesh at Greenbelt 3 Cinema lobby. this sensual and provocative piece was toned down to suit the petty bourgiese/middle class to upper class conservative-pretending-to-be-avant garde market of grinding, prada-clad Greenbelt crowd. Admit it or not this is a reality and we were prepared to deal with, in fact we were excited with the idea. Even more, excited to bring our boundaries into a 'market' a venue and an 'audience' whose only idea of dance is a whole night of wasting out in Bed or Embassy. Maybe there is a possibility. Of course, we didnt have this crowd, or I dont know. I can't tell at this point. The height of our 'controversial' performance, which i beg to disagree but let me get to that latter, is this point where I bring my top up to my head and confront Jay Cruz with the honesty of my body, my breast. While performing we were not at all aware that the security and admin staff of Greenbelt3 were scrambling with what they call as immoral and improper performance. After 3 minutes the music stopped and I saw Mae just sitting there with her eyes wide out somehow telling us that something was happening. But our performance was not for the Greenbelt 3 adminstrative and their concepts of prudeness and 'art' the performance was to engage the audience and even them as the institution. This means even provoking them is an act of engagement. We pushed through without the music and i said to myself you are not gonna fucking ruin this for us, I have not gone this so far off from QC to deal with a security guard or even a marketing staff who has no clear humility or purity of spirit to see a work for what it is and forget about their shit rules of "modesty" and proper behavior. open your heart and mind and the world shall open up to you...
i want to go further but should hit the sack, its almost 3...more on this tomorrow along with Damien and Jordi's Oleles performance!
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