Sitting in the audience as performer

Last Saturday, after "Promises..." performance I recieved a text message from Ian Lomongo congratulating us but also saying: "...hindi ko alam kung made-depress ako or what?" I responded saying "Salamat, actually ako hindi ko rin alam. Parang nade-depress din ako." This was a new feeling and I realized that this time we must have crossed the illusion of the theater and illusions of real life. Jay says in his letter that maybe despite the sharp tones of our work, we are just like everyone else sacred shit of the world, sacred to love, take risks and commit mistakes. We go into the theater to challenge our own realities and live out our fantasies. Or in my case, live out my secrets within the cryptic means of the theater, hiding behind the safe confines of imagined fiction. As for me, I tend to go into a wild, athletic, brutal and physical trans if only to feel and make sense of the pain in real life. I've begun to realize that maybe it is true, in this illusion I can play GOD and escape the responsibilities and meanings of my own action. Consequently briefly escaping even my own self.

But this last performance was different from the rest. While, the performance came with the adrenalin rush and catharsis that I usually came home with after, it was accompanied by this heavy feeling in my chest. Depression set in like a big rock blocking my throat. Manuel asked me if it was postpartum (read post production depression), I knew it wasnt, it was the kind of feeling I sometimes get watching someone else's performance. In this adventure, I feltl the reversal of roles, I had no monopoly of how I felt, because sitting in the performance as both audience and performer gave me this brief glimpse into the crude narrative that was taking shape: relationships, betrayal, promise, expectation, fear, affection and love. They say its harder for artists to talk about love, it seems too whimsical to naive and too simple rather than "important" contemplations on the true meaning of art. I am beginning to realize though that this attitude rather speaks of the fear and anxiety of being vulnerable, human and like everybody else sacred and mediocre.

While still sifting through the debris of this experience, relief remains. Creating this inquisitve space both among artists and between artists and audience is a something I am happy about. Five years ago, people were not speaking to each other. Even today, I know I don't expect dancers to intellectually ponder and express curiosity about a show they've seen. The most you'll hear from them is "congratulations" but no more questions, no curiosity. While grateful for this support, conversations are lacking in artistic curiosity and it implications on their own practice. Questions I get from colleagues in the visual arts about performance seem more meaningful than spare comments and feedbacks of " professional dancers."

To a trained dancer like myself the window to experiment within a pre-determined structure and accomodating the instable reaction of an audience during a performance is a rare and precious experience. Just in a rehearsal, keeping one's eyes and ears open to new impulses that arise. Xavier le Roy speaks about tilting the hierarchy of a "performance" and "rehearsal." Placing the mode of production in a "rehearsal" into the "performance." During rehearsals, performers are most human because they give themselves the space to make mistakes and move on afterwards. Devoid of any guilt to exude the "perfection of form" but to continue creating spaces of engagement, dialogue and conversation. "Promises are made to be broken" served as this meeting point, both for audience and performers. Thanks to our very engaged audience who did not hold anything back. Even those who held back gave interesting impetus to create. The point when you start to touch a person in the audience, the thick and safe wall that between us begin to disintegrate, then both of you begin to feel. Really feel. This was not anything that I had expected, like a court jester I thought I was only poking fun at my own melodrama and cliches as a performer. Instead, I came face to face with real emotions (or maybe it was all part of the same illusion) What is the promise of performing? What is the promise of an audience to a performer? Like relationships the 'spectacle' is a contract that we either commit to or end up breaking. Nevertheless it is an agreement of positions and expectations. You realized that as soon as this contract breaks no one is immune from the implications and responsibilities of stories and wounds uncovered. Maybe like some people in the audience I felt depressed about realizing the nature of relationships, the ambiguity of desire, the betrayal of love and promises. All along I thought I was Captain Ahab taking everyone on this forbidding journey, jaded and immune, devoid of affect and 'feeling.' Instead I suddenly saw myself sitting through the performance and experiencing the pain of the performers as a performance. Though sad, it seems comforting as well to know that tears don't fail me, only they come in less and less, tear glands hardened by fading memories and forgetten promises.

One last thing, in class this afternoon they asked me if we were declaring "the death of the audience." I'm not sure, I do know that this adventure is part of my own dialogue to understanding the "eye" that frames me and my struggle to free myself from it. I know though that we cannot prejudge anybody's way of watching, we don't necessarily have touch a person to tell them how we feel, we only need to look. The tragedy is that if they assume differently than we mean. But that is the danger of life, and don't we all need to take risks anyway.

Promises are made to be broken is an independent initiative by Donna Miranda in collaboration with Dancing Wounded Contemporary Dance Commune, Diego Maranan and Tess Jamias. The first adventure took place at Lumiere Gallery in Makati last November 9 and 11.

photo credit: Brendan Goco