13 propositions

[The trouble with love-at-first-sight encounters is it’s hasty gesticulation to risk almost near admission of indeterminacy complimented by an infallible cortical rush that soon domesticates to an anticipation of failure dressed up ready for the next evening's party. Failure definitely sounds sexy. More so when the manicured completeness of the landscape has slowly become unbearable, when grunge is making a miscalculated comeback, when plaid and paisley is the new black, when those teenagers two decades back deliberately slashed jeans as cool, when the body is withoutorgans, when void and empty is comforting, when thick descriptions of the boring occupy endless pages of a manuscript repeatedly rejected and indefinitely postponed, when punctuation has been overused because the exotic has finally refined the appearance of a cosmopolitan global citizen.]

Here (1) failure is repackaged as the necessary x to sustain the tension that binds. A (2) failure that is symbolic of the obtuse of stability, (3) like those preemptive gestures that allay the fear of the impossible. (4) Failure provides the possibility to keep the phantasm of the ideal intact and tedium of habit admissible. (5) Failure allocates space for permutations and peripheral investigations. (6) Failure poses as motivation to reframe the ordinary and organization of the world as we observe it. (7) A failure that is at the same time a concealment of the tendency to manufacture eloquent excuses to prolong indecision and disclosure. (8) Failure is fragment consummate, an oblique strategy that is productive and cooperative because it is a rejection of finality. (9) Failure is the beginning of an impossible collection. (10) Failure is not exhaustion but romantic and affectionate. (11) Failure stands as the memorial where meaning is generated, worn-out and stripped of necessity. (12) Failure is a reason to start with nothing, work with nothing, and (13) reflect upon excesses that have yet to occupy space.

Hence I was neither surprised nor expecting when I realized soon enough that disorientation, distanciation, contradiction and exhaustion back-and-fort almost near frustrating negotiations were specifically the kinds of collateral damage to be paid and secretly aspired for when in the situation of performing the self.  Should there be anything I could comfortably admit to, is that it was that I choose the back room at 72-13’s rooftop as a space to stage my proposition simply out of curiosity. A proposition that (1) did not even exist, but a (2) proposition that conveniently stood as an excuse for: “I need a little bit more time to figure it out;” a (3) proposition that masked my tendency to evade the museum of dance/dancing bodies, in fact one that almost came off as an avoidance of dance; (4) one that strangled the urgency of time and malleability of space; (5) one that tested the tolerance for uncertainty; (6) one that resisted the temptation to create something new; (7) one that attempted an ambitious transgression; (8) one that was meant as a choreographic and spatial constraint; (9) one that sought to escape a predetermined content; (10) one that was almost near empty of immediate meaning; (11) one that will manifest itself in the process; (12) a proposition that should put indulgent decision-making to a halt; (13) a proposition which proposed nothing in particular but a regulating liminal in the face of the endless possibilities of creating a work/ing.

Out of the 13 propositions I could occupy myself with for the duration of the 6 hours that would transpire, I decided against any particular one. Maybe choosing none meant choosing them all and finally admitting with albeit hesitation to the fluctuation of ideas, (1) to a body that has ceased to have a center, (2) to a body that doesn’t need a center, (3) a body discontented with the dichotomy of material and immaterial, (4) an aging body, (5) to a renewed body, (6) to an emptying body, (7) to an impossible body, (8) to an archival body, (9) to a body resisting inscription, (10 ) a failing body, (11) a multiple body, (12) a disembodied subject, and (13) a permeable and porous body.

Disorientation is probably one of those conditions that a performance situation capitalizes on, or one that a dance practice secretly admits to. Working is mostly spent towards the dissolution of work and non-work, towards multiplying the modalities of making things (im)possible and then breaking down the comfortable segregation of life and work. And yes, now I admit to this failure, I cannot break down life and work. Nowhere was this amplified but in the Musee de la Danse where one by being in the frame is already framed in the work, where even the private mental space has been co-opted in this temporal zone.  In Expo Zero Musee de la Danse: there was nothing at all, no objects or artifacts to be cataloged, screened, segregated, isolated, fetishized, and create narratives for and out. There was only the frame. (1) Should we reinforce the frame? (2) Create ambitious anomalies within it? (4) Or unframe it totally? (5) Assume its failed end? (6) Admit to its failure? (7) Bring the outside in? (8) Embrace its finality? (9) Create fragments? (10) Leave markings or traces? (11) Ignore it? No, there was no ignoring the frame. (12) Strangle it? (13) Reframe it?

The Musee de la Danse is about creating an archive. But of what, dance? How is it possible to create an archive out of dance, which is not merely an object of bodily practice but a result of the frames of spectatorship and theatricality? Maybe, because as human beings we are confronted with decay that we cannot but help think about what we leave behind. Martina Hochmuth in her introduction outlined some of the propositions generated over the last three rounds in Rennes, Saint Nazaire and in Singapore: "museum that help us face our fear of death, can we deny the system as art makers, how do we want to be governed, imagined nation, museum of things, museum of dance, failure of the utopian, museum of illusion, museology of the museum, impossible collection, articulating doubts, memories of bodies in Cambodia, strangling time, choreographic strategy, architecture..." The list goes on. Aside from the recordings and memories of the event, what is left behind but these propositions? Maybe these are already enough. Probably these propositions are not meant as testaments nor documentation of an imagined museum for to do so will render it unimagined, which will definitely bring proper failure, one we cannot afford to have.

 photos by: Heman Chong

 

The perfect place to sit

You cannot have your cake and eat it too, the elderly post-it reminder stuck on the adolescent corkboard of things to do. Surely not when resources are constantly sparse. Not for the aspiring middle class suburban emulating all things cosmopolitan. Not for the colonial bastard struggling with language. Not with penetrative scars that temporarily heal only to be pried upon sooner of later just because of habit. Not for the dog trainers who have left town. Not for the recently orphaned. Not when habit passes off as deceitful copies of love or cheap convenient replacements. Not for the alternate waiting in the wings. Not when surfing, switching, and swinging are modalities that cannot be ignored.  Not for those force-fed with litanies and manifest destiny waiting for those who have patiently combed the road of penance. Not when I suspect a tangential hint of Jacques Lacan, “I love you, but inexplicably I love something in you more than you and therefore I destroy you.” Surely, the stubborn tendency to bypass direct confrontation with the encounter is chillingly familiar to anyone raised under the protective custody of men in white frocks. Conjuring the bloodied procession of those men who ritually absolve themselves of their yearly accumulations of guilt, under the scorching high afternoon sun–bestial and divine.

And it is precisely the void that motivates anxiety, an emptiness that the body and mind automatically fills. The way we cannot resist completing a beloved’s sentence, or connecting jigsaw puzzle pieces, or fragmentary pictures, broken lines, mending holes and patch ups. The same way the stage begs to be played on; the dancer incapable of stasis and inapproachable of change.  The submissive body easily influenced and swayed. Insecure and inept.  Partial and mutilated.  Sometimes, even over-stimulated to a point of numb.

Quip if you see so deemed. At the risk of sounding like thirty something fool too young to lash out veteran dictums meanwhile too old to be naïve, the uneasy perversion of an outside looking in position is just too irresistible to pass. A position while refreshing detached voyeur appealing is also necessarily awkward. For the prying loops of context are as inescapable the way my fascination with the stage sustains hallucinations of occupying both sides.  Whether seated as a spectator or a performer, the same reading and uttering skills apply. The theater’s frame, after all can never be underestimated. It’s far to liminal to escape. And the dance happens both from where we are watching and where the watching is witnessed because the spatial given is both its point and excess. The audience might as well be seated in the performance as performers, benevolent anarchist dictators with silent scheming plot to shift the focal point of the stage. And if this were simply implied would they recognize it, or is enunciation necessary? Or would that be too blunt? Where struggle already implied, the perfect spot could be nowhere near because it is not that important.

For again we need to ask how do we consume a performance? How to consume dance? If models do exist, will it instantly point out to the lens of a little child inside a candy store, fascinated and in awe, who goes home with diabetic saccharine-induced warm and fuzzy feeling.  If consuming were an analogy to reading then Ballet Philippines’ Masterworks must have been any dork’s Saturday afternoon nightmare. Why? Because the pieces in this program refused to be read, it defies any gentrified reading and co-optation into a content-driven world. Instead it stood tall and proud, close to saying that craftsmanship was enough. The form is the medium and hollow. Inside is Grotowski’s onion void.

Opening its 40^th season, the company looks back at its own history, possibly because they say life begins at 40 that a sense of posterity must be tackled. What is most refreshing though is not to see the range of works spanning the last glorious years but historiographic direction that this sets which could might as well be a model for other Philippine dance companies who have survived despite their country. Where dance has always struggled with the written word and document, the show fills in the void of current history. Masterworks stands as a family album of the company’s repertoire featuring the works of it’s important choreographers Agnes Locsin, Tony Fabella, Edna Vida, Alden Lugnasin, Alice Reyes, Bam Damien and Denisa Reyes.

Whether a fool-proof plan to resuscitate Ballet Philippines’ glamorous past or a last ditch attempt to catch up with the rest of the hip contemporary practice in Manila, is too early to say. Nevertheless it is no secret that the company has been for the past years, struggling to keep up–no thanks to bureaucracy, no thanks to retired dance stars, no thanks to shrinking funds for art, no thanks to decrepit national art institutions, no thanks to Youtube, no thanks Hong Kong Disneyland, no thanks to poor dance education, no thanks to the ageing body, no thanks to glossy society pages that perpetually reduce dance to ‘high art’, no thanks descriptive dance reviews masquerading as criticism. Maybe it will take more than trendy fashion magazine posturing to take dance out of art’s glamorous trap. Still, is this even a fair expectation when dance has remained solely as an expressive metaphor of an idea, aesthetic craftsmanship and affective short circuit? Never fully taken apart and ignited for their discursive potentiality.

The program opens with Agnes Locsin’s seminal work Igorot, heralded back in the 90s as the defining Philippine dance moment, with its brave attempt to fuse ballet and traditional ethnic dance. Booting out snooty old fashioned culture scholars and historians who accused Locsin of near sacrilege by donning the traditional male loincloth, bahag, on the athletic bodies of her female dancers meanwhile struggling to stay en pointe. An act seemingly vulgar but equally invested with complex condition of the convoluted postcolonial where we witness the brutal supplication of a westernized ballet body to heard as ethnic, hence Filipino.  Whilst dancing on pointe, executing the standard quick virtuous feet movement reminiscent of Swan Lake’s Four Little Swans, the dancers’ upper bodies negotiated the traditional vocabulary of the ‘Igorot dance’: flexed arms spread out to the side punctuated by aggressive upward motion of the shoulders, the torso unmoved, the head stiff maintaining the regal stance of ballet almost like muted silent witnesses to the dismembered movements of their limbs that seem to have been violently attached to its center. Is this restraint or hysteria?

Locsin’s piece hints at the hysteric rupture of the ballet body struggling with its own romantic pre-historical ethnic past or dare say identity. Practically proposing a stopgap measure to assuage the traumatic wound of colonial castration, by way of amplification–reintroducing the asexualized androgynous dancer body onstage. While this piece have been constantly nitpicked for its lack of authenticity and even cultural irreverence, taking the traditional male loincloth out of its  ‘proper’ context, Locsin manages to depict the castrated female body by plugging the genital void with its obverse counterpart. Maybe the crass fusion of ballet and ethnic dance is a sort of acknowledgement of it’s own irreproachability. The charm of Locsin’s work probably lies not in its innovative movement style, that she has been popularly known for, but in its own admission of the contingent gap between ethnic and ballet. Slavoj Zizek, on the formation of national identities come to mind: “the will to gain political independence from the colonizer in the guise of new independent nation-state is the ultimate proof that the colonized ethnic group is thoroughly integrated into the ideological universe of the colonizer.”

And if Ballet Philippines, has built a reputation of forging the links between the west’s ballet and third world colonial Philippines is best seen in Edna Vida’s pop sensibility-Manila Sounds-campy dance extravaganza suite. The rather literal dance renditions of Ryan  Cayabyab’s “Mamang Kutsero,” “Limang Dipang Tao” calls out to Manila’s retro kitschy Hollywood past. And while it may easily be construed as dated and surface entertainment it stands as the most accurate. Illustrating how our bodies are gripped not between east and west but between the retro and contemporary, modern bastards that we are. Never really finding a distinctly reduced precise identity but a schizoid whose ontological charm lies in its own crisis. And it is exactly its lollipop dance sweetness that fulfills the one-to-one correspondence of form with content and the performing body.

Manila–a teeming megalopis of 12 million people, smog, serious unemployment rates, hints of global cosmopolitanism clinging on to an idealized future is Alden Lugnasin’s Swimming in the Ilog Pasig.  Un/dressed under the metaphorical cloak of swimming fishes in the city–the dancers struggle between land and water, fails in both–becoming instead lamella. The same way our beloved Pasig River has become neither land nor water.

Tempting as it may seem, the horizon of pushing content and overcoming redundancies of narrative, the choreographic project involves a kind of writing that exhaust the structure of language itself. Here it seems that it’s almost vulgar to strip the affective qualities of a dancing event. For who does not want to empathize? Even the coldest bitch ice queen will not deny the empathic lure of crying every once in while. For what are all those tear-jerker movies for?  While Denisa Reyes’ Te Deum may easily be read to depict the “struggles and aspiration of the Filipino people” under Martial seems reasonable, to do so simply misses the dramaturgical point of the piece. In fact Reyes’ Te Deum is the truly choreographic piece in this program. Seen in the precise spatial design of the stage and temporal dialogue with the music. It’s strength lies in the form. Never mind the content. Here Reyes writes dance, in space and time, exhausting its own vocabulary that pushes the viewers to reflect upon their own experience of watching. Not because of any drama, or virtuous physical feat, or pleasing music, or fantastic stage designs but specifically because it is minimalist, Spartan and redundant.

They say it is the circumstances that interest us. And curiosity that sustains us. The perfect place to sit is obviously not in the prestigious parterre boxes of the theater nor the far reaching ends of the balcony where the partially deaf old man sits but in the in between space of watching and comprehension. To stay there is as close to saying that even if I cannot empathize with you I can still love you because I love more in you that is not you.

Things like these

Perhaps we need to teach ourselves to 'watch' so we can 'do' with empathy. Empathy was the least of the words I had expected to hear at a workshop on choreography, composition, theory and performance making. Of the pleasantly complex spontaneous combustions we had during the workshop on the Biopolitics of Biography (yes, it was as sexy as it sounded), whatt struck me most was Janez Jansa's four hour lecture on "what is performance". He had a performance on that same evening, which we were all going to watch. I faintly intuited that the next four hours would either be excruciatingly tedious or erotically enlightening. Of course, it turned out to be the former. Janez is a charming maverick aside from being a genius, he exhausts any subject matter with persistence and intelligent humor. No one really likes to ask this question (at least not from my part of the world). No, I take it back, no one bothers to answer these kinds of question. For it is always sexier to engage in rhetorical banter rather than taking apart our most 'obvious' assumptions with the meticulous seal of a craftsman molding wood. Not having any proper education in art, only because there exists none here in the islands, I was mesmerized, my expectations overwhelmingly met to say the least. Yes, the experience was pretty much like an orgasm. The one mind-fuckers like to have.

To see the obvious is always the hardest of tasks. Especially among artists, who constantly face the weight of metaphor and haunting call of 'creativity.' Yet for the next ten days of our workshop: intense talking and doing, we were asked to do the opposite.  That is to read and name the obvious, meanwhile holding off on 'creativity,' gaining time and abandoning metaphor.  Hearing this for the first time, I was utterly confused. Why? Because I have heard it one too many times, the mantric voice of the undead: "be creative, use your imagination."

I am returning to this experience for a number of reasons. Foremost is the gripping urgency of reflection that come as one crosses the edge of something. Its been a year since The Lovegangsters, so it seems most fitting if not a matter of necessity to look back at the year that has passed and map the future course of this love affair. Secondly, 2008 was a year that I found myself often sitting on the other side of the fence, as a spectator. Sometimes I can't help but think I am also a performer disguised as a spectator. But what of the spectator disguised as an artist? Questions that gnaw at me each time I find myself witnessing a performance. Surely, are not artists the worst people to have in the audience? The snooty ones, who can easily dismiss something that does not appeal them. Or the distracted ones who can't wait for everything to be over and proceed on to the after-performance drinks. 

Sometimes, even as a performer I feel the same way too.  Especially when clearly everybody is just going through the motion. In my younger years, I would easily take this personally and go through emotional self-effacing fits asking myself "Am I not good enough?"  Yes, the psychotic face of a dancer that many do not see. Unfortunately inescapable when the medium is the self. This is why Joao Fiadiero, the partner-in-crime in the said workshop makes perfect sense when he advises to set the parameters of a work-performance beforehand, despite such overwhelming connotations on performance being cathartic and forms of emotional release. I am of course referring to: Ronald McDonald slashing wrists or burning flag; shaving pubes; or being lost and taken into trance-like dance channeling the inner babaylan; and many other other brutal masochist expressions of pain, beauty, confusion and propagandist political statements. Circumstances that put the 'self' in a very precarious and risky place. Yes, I know artists live along the edge. But I cannot help asking myself is there not any other way? Is there not a parallel way of communicating aside from such self-mutilating acts of vulnerability and frailty? If indeed there is, where is the secret map leading to that known place?

Take the example of a dancer onstage, judged and watched according to her skill, competence and eloquence of her body portraying a message and ideal.  Joao in an interview asserted that "dance doesn't go through the body" as response to some dance experts meditation on the brutal strictness of classical dance training. As expected this statement provoked a general discomfort among the public. Later  on he clarified that of course what he meant was that "dance is not just of the body." Here I guess is reason why I still insist on calling myself as a choreographer and/or dancer despite churning out works that elicit the usual "huwat?!" 

And even still if it were only of the body, we all know by now that our bodies are nothing but an empty plain of composition? So what makes this idea of an empty body controversial anyway? Perhaps like the Santa Claus rumor, who we all know does not exist, or the manananggal who is bound to appear soon now that elections are just around the corner, there is a reason why we choose to believe in an empty signifier knowing full well that fundamentally there is nothing else we lose but the dignified stance of logic or upholding our petty bourgeois good Catholic upbringing? We need a certain leap of faith to sustain our interest or curiosity in something. First we need to accept something and then weigh our options. Joao speaks of something similar when he urges us to hold off on reflex action and temptation to create meaning at the first instance of an encounter. Instead he proposes to wait, wait for images to come, formulate hypothesis and then choose which probabilities to pursue. This may sound extremely simple to do but of course it is not because one single image, though finite in significations carries a multitude of history and baggage. Paradoxically the key point is to maintain the 'empty space.' An empty space which is not a 'nothing' space but an empty–open space of potentiality, a positively charged open empty space. The positive void between the legs.

What lies behind the appearance of a live performance? Is it meaning, affect or procedure? And what is it that propels our obsession as artists and non-artist spectators to unearth signification out of the experience? I don't have the answer either. But what I do find fascinating about the act of watching is seeing how 'things unfold' and see how 'things are.' Perhaps less concerned with understanding the meaning behind a piece of work. I have been told once that I'm like this little girl pointing out to her playmates the fact that we are playing. Yes, I like naming situations and do draw pleasure in it. Almost dead self-referrent in its end.  It's the structural procedures of the creative process appearing in the work that appeals to me. Meaning flirts with the everyday, as if it were the only thing that mattered. Appearances are meticulously interrogated to squeeze out every recognizable signification there is. Perhaps what makes watching a violent and confusing experience is our perceived general conspiracy that force us into the exercise of weighing appearances and the silent test of the malleability of 'things as they are.' For what are all those manuals for looking for, if not to raise a generation of spectators generally preoccupied with that which is hidden in a picture. 

At one point in the workshop, we were advised "not to influence the future" that is fighting off the preoccupation to write the progression of a narrative towards its motion. As present is at once already past, the only possibility that is left really is to retroactively write the past. With our 'present' action enriching the content of the past. The phrase "the past is a foreign country" comes to mind, for someone growing up in a nation with an uncomfortable relationship with its historical past and threatened with amnesia I can't help but find it agreeable. One cannot escape the human tendency towards 'development.' Look at how we obsessively await the latest mobile gadgets or the widening reach of broadband internet connection even in barrios without proper roads and water supply. What is beautiful in this concept apparently is its admission of the present and almost violent-zen like resistance to that compulsion to create something new. Having just come from the Regional Dance Summit organized by the Goethe Institut Jakarta Regional Office, where buzzwords of tradition and contemporary were made to wrestle each other, I am in quandary whether it really matters to pit these two categories apart. And how is it possible to clarify these concepts without being trapped in conventional techno-historical aesthetic assumptions? Is it even possible? Are there other epistemic models out there that will free us from the limiting constructs of history and associative aesthetic cover? I don't know either. What I do find interesting is that for countries like the Philippines, tradition is a concept we can barely grasp. In contrast to Vietnam and Cambodia, surviving from the excess of political turmoil and cultural persecution, contemporary is as slippery as tradition. Probably Indonesia dance artist Sudarno is on to something when he says "there is no tradition." Hinting at the past and present as the current. And hence contemporary?

So what has empathy got to do with things like these? Bertolt Brecht rejected empathy as means for making theater and instead insisted on the alienating the audience to compel them to see the disturbing reality of social life on the stage which will compel them to act otherwise in normal life. Meanwhile Antonin Artaud insists on a experiential association with the theater of cruelty in order to feel. Empathy as defined is the ability to understand and share in the feelings of another. Perhaps watching and doing a performance goes beyond understanding meaning but is in understanding the procedures that make it as it is. In seeing 'the way things are.' 

When censorship fails to strike a cord

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!

the past two days with Yoshi

While I have committed to write a blog about the necessity of discursive spaces for contemporary dance in Manila, I must temporarily put this aside and briefly try to illustrate how the past two days of walking with Yoshi in Manila has been...

I always enjoy walking in Manila despite the dust, humidity and funny strange smells that accompanies such strong memories of home. Since moving to the city, seven years ago I have decided to make Manila my home. Though living in Quezon City and not having the guts and energy or vibe to re-locate and build a normal life in the heart of Manila, this place always has special resonance in my being. It is a sanctuary, a playground, a retreat, a place to open up the senses at the same time feel the brown ground that stands on our feet.
After taking our guest artist, Yoshiaki Inatsugi around Manila these past two days, I have regained the same, if not a little of his inspiration and refreshing point of view of my home. I believe this comes at a right time where I feel I am at a crossroads in my life when I know that all the decisions i make now shall define the future direction I must take maybe for the next five years or so. Since this year has arrived, I have been feeling tremendous fear and anxiety over the prospect of the future. Maybe as we become older we become increasingly self conscious. Wondering if we are treading the right path or too involved in our own meaningless angst about the world.
Yesterday, I danced by Pasig River in a white Zara dress, amidst the poverty of the slums of Quinta market. Young boys in shorts, garbage around, flies clinging to our skin and the foul smell of possibly human waste lying somewhere in the dirty river, I danced. And among the few occassions in my dancing life, I didn't mind the idea of entertaining an audience. In fact, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction to bring the dance into the everyday without the pompous setup of a contemporary dance performance/concert maybe at the CCP or even at Green Papaya. No announcements, no self-importance, no build-up nor expectations but simply the idea of being always available and ready to share the embodied experiences of my body. As soon as I started to move, the street kids were mimicking my movements and made effort to ham it up in front of Yoshi's camera. Sometimes, I sat beside "tambays" and just felt the imprint of my body in this space. Of course, I shall never find out if I made a difference in their life. But to offer a surprise and much needed break from the monotony of poverty-stricken lives, I was very happy to share my joy in dancing. I have conquered even my own fear of judgement, for I did not feel judged nor felt defensive knowing the lurking "danger" of being an outsider in the "looban" but was in fact humbled by their wide space of experimentation made available to us at this time. (well, maybe they just didn't care) nevertheless they let us be and did not censor us when they had the "power" to stop us and ask us to leave. It was an amazing experience and I am thankful for this happening now at this time of self-absorbed, road to suicide period in my life. Indeed there is so much to share and so much angst that I should be ashamed of.
Again, I saw my life in this city with the renewed interest of an adventurer, a passing visitor maybe even someone deciding to believe my life. At Divisoria, we asked a man selling textile what he shall miss about Manila, he answered he shall always miss the smell! This particularity is irreplacable. Then, I realized the reality of my imagined fantasies, the superflous, instable basis of memory and nostalgia is shared among others who grew up in this city. Loving it and hating it,

if only all this hate were love,
if only all this love were bread to nourish the hungry stomachs or
impoverished spirit,
if only this hate fed our everyday resolve to live and risk
and decide to live and get by.
if only all this hate opened up spaces to communicate and speak
...
then i would be content with all this hate that fills the spaces inside my bones

(more tomorrow, please let us have one more day of discovery and learning)

more learnings from WI_FI Body

(the last of it...)

Green Papaya’s participation in the WI_FI Body: Independent Contemporary Dance at the Cultural Center of the Philippines was an opportune time to asses our position in the artistic community and wider cultural politics. From the beginning, Green Papaya was wary with our unique position as participant in the Festival. Unlike most of the participants, we were the only group who was not a company, neither do we formally represent any dance artists.

Green Papaya is an artist-run-initiative, it is both a physical space (venue in Quezon City) and an initiative (a proposal, strategy, an action, maybe a space in the head), a soft concept existing by virtue of artistic projects and events that we organize. Our association in the contemporary dance community has been influenced by two factors: (1) our orientation towards interdisciplinary and multimedia art practice and (2) my own artistic practice as a dancer. The relevance of this position in the current stream of Philippine contemporary dance practice, is due to the creative platform it has provided to young emerging independent dance artists as well as a venue promoting contemporary dance performances. Maybe this position and identity, makes our place in the festival a little worrisome and have created some confusion among audiences. Whereas the other programs in the festival clearly showcased a stylistic identity in dance, we were more rather concerned with exposing artistic process in dance and its intersection with other media, hence the immateriality of a single author for the work eventually even the blurring of dance with other genres.

While this particularity of position/identity could have offered a different articulation of the development of contemporary dance practice in the Philippines, CCP as a venue along with its market and cultivated community, and still WI_FI Body festival was not the proper venue for our initiatives and artistic agenda. However, this realization does not negate the fact the participating at the WI_FI Festival allowed us to develop and pursue our existing inquiries in contemporary art and artistic process in varied disciplines, of which we are very thankful for. This generosity and trust of the WDA Choreographers’ Network in the organization’s capability to deliver and mount a dance initiative has been very much appreciated and valued.

The WDA Choreographers’ Network is commendable for having organized this festival at such a scale with limited human resources and administrative infrastructure. WI_FI Body marks a significant point in almost of the artists who participated in the festival as it represents current and future aspirations of the Philippine contemporary dance. The range of programs shown at the festival did provide a complete picture of the state of Philippine contemporary dance. Despite initial worries and the hard work it entailed to mount the festival, it was a worthwhile endeavor to put out there in the ‘mainstream’ that contemporary dance is happening in the Philippines and may hopefully cultivate a new breed of audience and practitioners in dance. It's a pity that a lot of other dance practitioners who belong to the larger community of dance failed to catch and engage in historical relevance of this festival.

The tricky situation of indie going mainstream with WI_FI Body at the CCP should still be addressed and subject to continued discussions among members of the network. Acknowledging the resolve to engage and coerce the institution by coming in there with our own program, it still remains that in the end the strong patronage art system persists to control the independence gained by declaring independence from institutional agenda and policies. As visitors in CCP, we are but subject to their terms. The complexity of this artist-institution relationship must be further discussed among the network members so that firmer strategies of negotiation and engagement may be drawn up for future endeavors.

(whew! now that its out, we can all move on)

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.

Hanging on strapless clouds

Adrien M.
"Convergence 1.0"


Two days before the performance last friday at CCP, I was inviting Maria and Ria, my collaborators, to join me and watch a contemporary circus performance at the CCP. My interest in contemporary circus began after being initiated into the scene during our month-long stay in Avignon last 2003. But it was even more strengthened when I participated in the Cabaret Night of the French Spring in Manila last 2005. During this collaborative endeavor, I was amazed that everybody in the cast were interested in contemporary dance and was incorporating it into their "circus acts." For warm up, we did two hour improvisation jam that progressed into a contact jam. For the first time in my life, I was communicating efficiently and smoothly with total strangers. Our only common ground was our bodies. Seeing that most were much older than I was, I was humbled by the tenacity and openness of their bodies. Like true bohemians, they excuded such free spirit, and "up for anything" attitude towards performance. Never taking themselves too serioulsy yet guarding against mediocrity. I remember one of the more mature juggler in the group who asked me to dance with him onstage. Having first met the day before the show, we worked out a structured improvisation where I would occassionally come in during his 'act.' Until now, I remember his words that I've taken to heart, "make your presence necessary." Those two days last year were one of the most valuable learning experiences in my life. Now, inside my heart I yearn for such an process-oriented, accomodating environment.

Contemporary circus or "new circus" was born twenty years ago and is now seeing a multidisciplinary orientation. By taking up various elements and genres, it blurs the borders between genres of theater, visual arts, video, dance and traditional fields of circus. Most "acts" combine the various elements and strategies of performance and staging, evoking an intelligent and exciting theatricality made accessible through the popularity of circus. Convergence 1.0 gives juggling a new twist by exploring the possibilities of new media to increase or even comment the illusion of magic. The program notes says that the performance showcases the point where fantasy and fantastic reality meet. It's primary goal was to exploit the dialectics between traditional and digital approaches in the fields of juggling, music and lighting. And this Adrien M. successfully accomplished.

Learning that he authored the program used to create the single-channel video installation/projections onstage made perfect sense and demonstrates the link where art and technology can meet. Here was an artist primarily trained in computer engineer who used what he knew as computer programmer to achieve a new theatricality of juggling. Technology in this situation provided a tension that made the whole performance interesting than your usual juggling act. The use of new technology allowed Mondot to propose a wholistic experience, manipulating the sensory perception of real and illusion. It was interesting to witness the alternating points of 'reality' and 'illusion' during the performance through the video projection. At some points, we see Mondot juggling the 'virtual' balls actually balls of light projected in front of the screen as he would do in 'real' life. Just as he catches our attention, he then breaks it by proposing the impossible, balls come flying in one after the other until they fill up the space and crash. Along with it, Mondot drops to the floor and then struggles to rise up again. As soon as he begins, he again takes us into live acoustic experience of 'dancing' combined with juggling. The same approach was taken with the music, as they mixed the live violincello with pre-recorded sounds and cut-ups.

Braving the rains that flooded Manila this weekend to get to CCP was all worth it because of this performance. I was also happy that Maria came with me and she enjoyed it as much as I did. I particularly was very interested in his use of technology in performance and very curious about his process of creation knowing that he also designed the video animation himself.

----------------------

i have been swept by th gush of my anger and frustration and wish to move on. this week, report on Summer begins and ends as you wish then on to Gathering moments of betrayal, embodying paranoia and predictions, forecasting a performance...a printed material is not expected to substitute a live performance, a betrayal of some sort...

When indie goes mainstream

Yesterday, after a weeklong of commuting from Quezon City to CCP, I took a breather and went out to get a tattoo. As I looked forward to a momentary lull from dance-related projects, the timing seemed most fitting as it marked a new period in my personal journey into contemporary dance. Like the other dance artists who participated in the festival, WI_FI Body marks a significant point in our artistic life, representing both our aspirations and frustrations in the state of Philippine contemporary dance. And while the majority of us looked forward to dancing again at the CCP, a small number of us were meanwhile wary of the varied implications that this entailed.

Aware of the contradiction looming over an indie dance festival staged in a mainstream institution such as the CCP, the community and members of the World Dance Alliance (WDA) Choreographers’ Network temporarily suspended cynicism and judgment, plunging into the first independent contemporary dance festival. Maybe, it is about time to consolidate our efforts into a bigger scale, widening our audience beyond the comforts of our environs and community. I must say, a lithe hesitant, that the festival is commendable for having delivered a range of programs that embody the current streams in Philippine contemporary dance.

The four-day festival featured works varying from conceptual pieces that engage performance discourses, such as those from Green Papaya Art Projects’ Summer begins and ends as you wish and Dancing Wounded Contemporary Dance Commune’s Volunteers for Comatose to representational ones drawing specific narratives such as Airdance’s Carmen dela Cruz and Dance Forum’s Order for Masks; and those that lie somewhere in between such as Chameleon Dance Theater and UP Dance Company. While this was a contemporary dance festival, the distinction from modern dance, and even neo-classical ballet, have yet to be drawn as seen in works of guest artists Powerdance, Ballet Philippines, Steps Dance Studio and Kahayag Theater Co. Still, the pieces of young members of the depict an emerging thrust in contemporary dance with young choreographers persevering to unearth their unique voices in dance, borne out of the truths of their own bodies toiled through years of hard work and sweat by their mentors. Appropriately capping off the festival was the book launch of Steve Villaruz’s Treading Through 45 Years of Philippine Dance, the first Philippine dance reader.

Contemporary dance in the Philippines has mainly sprung in the periphery, outside the established institutions of dance. It developed as a result of dancers taking matters into their own hands, searching if not self-producing creative endeavors that seek a contemporary context for dance, borne out of our own ‘imperfect’ bodies and dwindling resources for support in the arts–in true indie spirit.

The last three years have seen the exciting growth of a modest but dynamic community where artists and audience interact within the intimate setting of studio spaces presenting performances which dare to bring in everyday, social and even personal realities into the context of the dance and our bodies. These spaces, home to our creative impulses have also helped us bring art closer to the public, challenging even our own assumptions in doing, seeing and understanding dance. Since coming out, a new breed of audiences and dance enthusiasts is slowly emerging, a far cry from the usual matron, high society balletomanes. Some, bitten by the bug themselves, are now also dancing. A realization that contemporary dance is for everybody, without prejudice to class, training, age, body type, shape, size and color. The recent contemporary dance workshops held last summer by Airdance and Dancing Wounded are affirmation of this recent development with 90 percent of their workshop participants now dancing in this festival.

What struck me most about contemporary dance, during a brief study in Europe last year, was the proportion of dancers who had no formal ballet/dance training! Some were former circus artists, acrobats, opera singers, actors, plus-size women and even middle-aged persons rolling, falling, flying, dancing through space devoid of inhibitions. As I watched them conquer the space with their bodies, I couldn't help but feel a bit envious of this complete freedom.

Unlike in Europe, ballet continues to be the entry point for those wishing to do contemporary dance here. Though gradually changing within the community, contemporary dance is still sometimes imbued, if not mediated with the lens of a ballet. Critics and cultural managers continue to look for ‘beauty in form’, easily impressed by technical skill over the communicative potential of dance in the everyday. Sometimes, even us dancers fall into the same trap of objectifying ourselves through the lens of ‘beauty’ and impressing audiences with physicality rather than engaging our audiences with varied propositions that challenge the way of seeing the body in the dance and art. Thus, during the past year we have seen new dance entrants who were either previously trained other in movement-related disciplines or had none at all. Jose Jay Cruz’s Love is Pretty Ugly, performed during the gala exemplifies this exciting turn-around with Myra Beltran sharing a pas de deux with little person whom Cruz met and ‘recruited’ at Hobbit House in Malate. His latest piece Gestures of the Flesh, performed at Instituto Cervantes also involved non-dancers, including two elder actors (talents in a TV soap opera) who have never stepped onstage as ‘dancers’ their entire life.

If Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham ushered in Modern Dance by throwing their ballet slippers and dancing barefoot, contemporary dance was ushered in by a declaration of NO to spectacle! and maybe even no to dance, for some avant-garde and more experimental artists. Closely linked to the Judson Church movement and post-modern dance in New York, and later on to the European landscape , contemporary dance questions the most basic assumptions of the body; inextricably linked with the politics of gender, power, history, memory and representation.; buzzwords artists working in the postmodern and post-colonial global situation. Yet, while Manila seems far away from such ‘Eurocentric ‘notions, these issues inevitably condition our modes of producing and practicing art. This is perhaps where the CCP might have missed the point of independent contemporary dance.

Independent contemporary dance is not without its problematics. The term encloses two important points: ‘independent’ and ‘contemporary.’ Loosely defined, independent initiatives connote those that operate outside established structures and agenda, independent of regular state support. While at some point these companies have received subsidy from NCCA, like this festival, most of projects are self-subsidized. Consequently, such economic relations of production would influence the aesthetics and philosophy of the work both in terms of form and structures framing it. In this situation, the artist goes outside the once stable art-patron relationship, putting aside the idea of marketability and instead exposing their thinking and imperfect bodies ‘onstage.’ Therefore conventional ideas of ‘standard’ simply become inapplicable if not render it irrelevant. Why? Because this standard is always changing, according to the nature of the work, funding availability and most importantly, space where it is performed.

When Myra Beltran established her studio-theater, Dance Forum Space in West Avenue ten years ago, she laid down the predicate of what is now known as independent dance. Venturing into a space no other choreographer of her time dared to go, she espoused an important direction in Philippine dance. By stripping dance of its spectacle-oriented aesthetics and presenting it in the bare confines of her studio, Beltran opened the possibility of presenting dance beyond the borders of an established stage. Tilting the power balance between the artist and establishment. In this situation the artist takes hold of the terms by which to present/re-present his/er work, in the frame that the artist views most appropriate.

Ten years after Dance Forum, Hotmail and GoogleSearch, Beltran has influenced a new generation of dance artists brave enough to situate dance beyond established terms. Dancing outside the stage and beyond, making ‘stages’ and creating performances where there are none. It is in these studios and spaces, spread across Metro Manila, that contemporary dance has and is taking shape, proposing mundane but innovative physicality, conceptually engaging and exciting stories of their bodies. Learning to look beyond, in touch with global dance community, these dance artists are now expanding their wings to participate in international training program, artists-in-residency programs, cross-border collaborations and festivals. Only last year have we seen Beltran in a residency project in Taipei and Elena Laniog for the Young Choreographers Project also in Taiwan In the same year, I came along with Christine Maranan to attend Pointe-to-Point, Asia Europe Dance Forum in Tokyo, Japan after completing the 2005 DanceWEB Europe Scholarship Program in Vienna, Austria. Meanwhile, during the first half of 2006 Jose Jay Cruz and Myra Beltran danced at the Hong Kong Dance Festival; I held creative residency at Patravadi Theater in Bangkok and Tokyo Wondersite in Tokyo, Japan and Green Papaya hosted a multinational collaborative performance residency. Just coming back from Vienna is Jethro Pioquinto who is this year’s Philippine representative to the 2006 DanceWEB Europe Scholarship Program. We look forward to the arrival of Cruz who is now on dance residency grant at Dance Omi.

Should indie be co-opted by the institutions whose values it has previously resisted it should be able engage it through discourses in performance, body, theatricality and contemporary art. In the same token, the institution should not only recognize the intricacy and complexity this context but also collaborate in this proposition. Making their space and resources available for varied negotiations and engagements connected with dance instead of simply seeing themselves as a regular hosts for performance. It would have been exciting to see CCP go out and support these performances in the original contexts in which they have been created. Is it not refreshing to see a festival sponsored by the CCP but one which takes place in different artist-run venues across the city? Then we realize that indeed this bastion of artistic and cultural creativity sees art beyond the walls of its imposing architecture. Then we can truly say that contemporary dance is for everybody.

aug 2006

since finishing the WI FI Body festival at the CCP, I have been down and stuck to my bed. i have been sleeping for one whole day and haven't finished the article for Art Paper. Yesterday, I got a long-overdue tatoo. The timing seemed most fitting as I marked a new chapter in my life. After the stress brought about by mounting a show at CCP, not to mention the emotional co-optation forcing me into a festival I have previously begged off of, I have come to distinguish between the things that I value and things/persons/organizations/situations I could live without. While the WIFI was extremely stressful and I swear never to go through it again, it was a great opportunity for me to see future conditions to create and do dance. I know for sure that as I continue on the path I have choosen, it cannot be at/within the framework of the institution and the ideals I have rebelled against. An affirmation of my initial feelings toward this festival and the co-sponsoring institution.

... so while the festival was frustrating and disheartening, I am glad that it is at the same time life affirming.

...now varied points and issues will be on top of each other, as I have not the privilage of distance...

One important concern that may soon skip my mind, was the artists frustration and struggle with the CCP administration in staging and presenting our own works in our own terms. One of the very essences of independent dance: artists representing themselves in terms and frameworks that they see most fit. Having managed projects in our own space for the last three years, I have first and foremost placed principal importance to the artists feelings and intentions. Though this is not an easy task, it is always rewarding to see how the artist's intention emerges out of the curator and gallery's intervention. As a partner institution in this project, my idealism feeds me to expect the CCP to work with us, accomodate our concerns and suspend their biases against non-residence companies. While the administration and artistic council may have officially endorsed (with their usual token letters and pronuncements) this, I feel that they have failed to inculcate this sense of commitment down to their own organizational structure. The staff and officials from the Performing Arts Department, Marketing, Front-of-House and Technical Operations Deparment have obviously showed indiffirence to our artistic concerns, and instead giving "rules and standard operating procedures" prior interest. Our works have been presented in non-coventional performing spaces, even the work themselves question the traditional theatricality that frame dances, so how can we work within "standard operating procedures" when the basic premise of our works are to actually question them. At some point comments that we were second rate dance companies where also milling around the center during the festival. I. personally dont mind as I dont represent a company but I am sure that to the rest of the members of the network this may be offensive.

Expecting a collaborative atmosphere, we were instead plunged into the usual commercial artist-patron transaction, where only the final product of the work was seen, devoid of any value for artistic process and historical context. Bringing our works into the CCP could have been an interesting exercise had it not shown the typical closed minded orientation that our teachers and mentors rebelled against, ushering in the development of Philippine independent contemporary dance. However, the refusal to question themselves, to become reflexive of the art practice, and indolence to learn about new things have made this exercise frustrating if not nill and lame. What occurred was a re-affirmation of the cultural center's place in the history of contemporary art. Us artists, willing victims of co-optation. How ironic that for the last five years or so, contemporary dance has thrived and developed under independent intiatives of dance companies, dancers and choreographers without a single support from the CCP, but now CCP has again successfully staked its claim on history by "inviting" and "recognizing" effforts of independent artists and choreographers by dangling the prospects of a venue grant and full theater compliments to the artists and choreographer of the WDA choreographers' network. Only to realize in the end, the unaffordable ushering costs and lack of infrastructure to market our shows at such a scale.

ushering costs? we dont even have ushers in our own space?!
1. we cannot afford one
2. it doesnt make sense, as we want to develop independent thinking and active audiences who dont need to be ushered and guided through each time. as we work in non-conventional, non-theater spaces, the idea of ushering simply does not apply to us!
3. how sad that in the end i shall be paying more for ushering than to an artist in my show.

...breaks are on,,,

more to come

the grind begins

Yesterday, was our first day of work at CCP for the WI_FI festival. It was pretty hectic with most of us feeling like fishes thrown out of our comfortable waters. Bringing everything from Green papaya was already seventy five percent of the stress, time and not to mentiion cost. So this is why we have become independent and choose to work in spaces where our efforts are much better utilized. Driving across the city was tiring enough and dealing with the bureaucracy was another exhaustion which i'm glad was a bit lessened with the help of technical/production staff. I wish I had more time to work creatively for Summers begin and end as you wish but as independent artists we always have to deal with the administration aspect of our work. Maybe, we are also actually wary of giving them to someone else afraid that an outside intervention will take away the intimate and independent rationale of our work.

As i did my first run ever in the space, I slowly noticed my body taking on an imposing silhoutte, bordering on insecurity. Funny that even if it was my own work I actually felt this cold detachment from the idea, like I was some other person's medium and "performing" for an auidence. This experience made me aware of the big psychological barrier that the institution imposes on our bodies as "dancers." In that very cold space, I felt the need to justify something. The very thing I hated, maybe that's why I left many years ago and maybe this was why I could never dance as freely and contently in that space as it had a big psychological impact on my body, manifested by tight muscles that go around my neck and those that hug my shoulder blades. I now struggle with this, I dont want to dance with this feeling. If I dance with this feeling then I have lost the contemporary in my work. I became a contemporary dancer because I believe that the body can dance from a non-hierarchical order, from a relaxed and everyday stance. It should be open, breathe with the space, accomodate the gaze in effect subverting it, exposing the mind and the thinking body. I am not a finished form, my body is a work in progress and everyday that it dances, it creates the stage to perform the dance, wherever it is, whereever there is time and space

Beyond the feeling and melody

Intriguing the process by which to create an overall texture and volume of space in dance. I have been interested in how to convert a dancing space and manipulate time and space, creating odd textures, in effect proposing an environment while communicating some challenge in the way we view the world, even our own realities. I have lost one day, becoming terribly ill and with this unbelievable cough that hurts inside my chest each time i break into a series of whopping sounds. It pierces my heart and for a moment I experience the sharp pain equal to a heartache. No more fever today but too weak to get up, I have this dance playing repeatedly in my head. Its no help that the weather is this way, I cannot stay in bed anymore. I am getting anxious.

back to this attempted review... Last sunday, deprived of sleep and rest I attend Airdance's concert of Malakas at Maganda at their studio, Outlet Yard. The concert, brings together the artists exploration of the concept of beauty and strength, through choreography. The studio was draped in black curtains, mimicking a "theatrical space" with dancers doing their exits and entrance and the lights fading out after every piece. As of late, I myself have been interested in the non-coventional methods of theatricality or challenging this "mystique" that pervade and frame the way we do our dance. As for Airdance situation, they have mounted several shows at their studio, challenging the idea of a "performance space" by declaring their studio as such. However their last two shows for the season, the space has been (consciously or unconciously) transformed to mimic a "theater" with black curtains around, distinct entrance and exits, and ocassional "procensium" projection of the other dancers. While the attempt to develop a contemporary vocabulary of moving is clearly seen in the range of repertoire shown, as an audience of dance I find myself looking for something more. Now that a modest audience for contemporary dance is there, the quest to continually challenge their frames of reference remains. Such that it doesnt seem enough to show our contemporary concerns as artists, going out of our "ballet training" or discussing accessible themes in our dances. It is my belief that contemporary dance is not only about "contemporary ways of moving" moreso it should also challenge the conventional frames by which we view dance and the body. To push it even further, to overcome the cliche of dance. Questioning ourselves even while performing, questioning our feeling, challenging the melody in our head. Even its purpose in our lives as dancers.

Maybe its just me and where I am at right now, but I am missing so much more from the show. It didnt help at all that the lights we merely decoration and failed to change the dynamics of the space. Indeed it felt like 3 pm more inside the studio than outside. Billy Forsythe once said that he attempts to colonize the space with his choreography, whereby the whole character of the space is transformed by material, presenting a new dynamics to the space. This attempt did show in Jethro Pioquinto's choreography with the whole company as cast. It showed a deliberate attempt to challenge our focus as audience, not shifting the focus from one group to another but creating situations with different small groups all happening at the same time and then coming together at some point. This carried me until the end.

dancing with Condors

Yesterday was a whole day of contemporary dance sponsored/organized by the Japan Foundation Manila Office. It is heart-warming how despite our community's invisiblity in Philippine mainstream art discourse that significant institutions such as Japan Foundation have taken notice of our efforts and initiating exchanges that will surely make important turns to many of the contemporary dance artists now. The day kicked off with a lecture by Japanese dance critic Tatsuro Ishii on Japan Contemporary Dance today. Having just came in from Japan two weeks ago, I was very pleased to be in this lecture as I didnt have enough time to see and understand the movement of contemporary dance in Japan, even if I did meet some artists it was also interesting to see another point of view, which may be objective but also not necessarily.

Ishii particularly pointed out the borderline that separates modern and contemporary dance in Japan, modern dance being highly concerned with the perfection of form and faithful execution of codified modern dance language. What lacks is the inquiry and proposition on human condition, dance itself or even the concept of the body. Such concepts that, sad to say, only a few in our community want to take apart labouriously. Here, in Philippine dance, one is easily shun away if you are "too intellectual." A great tendency leans towards more expressionistic and emotional presentation of the self. Hmm, something we need to learn. As for myself, I have realized that as I try to rebel against this kind of attitude to creation, I still find myself predisposed into the "usual" choreographer mode of self expression. Now, as I walk into a more existentilist path, which of course is temporary (i dont know), self expression doesnt seem enough. Why the need to a third person or second person to communicate the "self." I am interested in this motivation, what moves us into performance.

Ishii also showed clips of different tendencies in Japan contemporary dance, he has divided this into three, albiet uncomfortable genres: contemporary dance, performance art and butoh. So here is where I find my generational position as I wonder how Dumb Type has been categorized into performance art, because of its priority overe multi-sensory architecture and manipulation of space. I still wonder, Ben Suzuki remarks on the side that Gen for example is highly influenced by this recent tendency in Japan.

In the afternoon was workshop with the all-male contemporary dance company Condors led by Ryohei Kondo along with company members Yoshihiro and Kojiro. I expected a more "dancy" and physical class, like what I have previosly seen of Ryohei's class in Fukuoka but this was different and leaned towards more group dynamic/partnering exercises. Kind of acrobatic, nevertheless very useful I think specially for partnering. Somehow, I feel it was a pity that mechanics and principles could have been explored and explained more rather than participants just executing the combinations and then done. Of course, the class was too big and a little impossible, maybe. Still, I found myself enjoying the physicality of it. Realizing also that comic doesnt come from this "acting out" (read pretending) to be funny but instead letting the physicality and detachment from it influence the its theatricality, one should not pre-empt emotion or feeling just because you feel you need to dance.

A good day indeed, capping it off with a showcase of Filipino contemporary dance artists, showing recent works. I am quite proud that slowly we are changing the mindset of "Filipino" to the rest of the world and collegeaues in the nearby region. There is more to our bananas,dried mangoes and San Miguel Pale Pilsen. Comment was that we are highly skilled dancers, what we now is find the other level to bring dance on a communicative level rather than this "presentation" mode.

A chat with the dancers after, I talked with Yoshiro and Kojiro about my recent trip to Tokyo. Yes, Kayabacho is a boring town. Shimokitazawa rocks, CD shopping is great, and Kirin is not as good as San Miguel Pale Pilsen. Meanwhile, we hold our breaths to see what Condors performance will be on Friday.