woman in the suitcase

Back in our apartment in Quezon City, after two months of devoted work for Gestures of the Flesh and Beneath Polka-dotted skies, I approach 2007. Finally, opportunity of looking forward comes. I look forward to the coming year. The prospect seems daunting as well as I sense new directions of creating dance and practicing it in my situation. Maybe, late of planning for the year ahead, I now cherish the zero situation of my body and mind. Coming home from Yokohama five days ago, I have been catching up on sleep and food as well as spending time with Joaquin. Still, the experience seeks some written meditative realizations but for now words escape the sensation that sits in my body. I am grateful for both sorrows and joy that last months have brought. Kazuo Ohno says that sorrow is the mother of joy and my experience in Yokohama validates the idea that pain, disembodiement, chaos, confusion and even disenchantment are but neccessary steps to understand the value of joy, liberation and reward.
On my last day in Tokyo, I had dinner with Yuzo, we were talking about the satisfying feeling of being empty and experiencing void. I think we surprised each other with this new-found understanding, being both very outgoing, party maniacs, we shared sentiments over bottles of beer and hot meal in Shimokitawaza, that these days we each look forward to solitude and quiet, old-fashion conversations. While getting smashed and shit-faced stoned does illicit gratifying sense of abandon, one begins to wonder of the deeper things that lie in the everyday. I was told by dance critic Mashashi Miura that one has to be careful of putting meaningful and meaningless symbols together. This truly caught me, and somehow the last year I had been struggling with the method of meaning-making. Now, I do acknowledge my rebellion against direct, in-your-face manner of meaning making and thus, give myself the task of finding the acceptable balance.
I was surprised with the reception of the Japanese audience to Beneath Polka-dotted Skies, I didn't realize the power and responsibility of images one puts out there. While keen on creating spaces of communication rather than showing off 'the dance' most of the time, my process has been inutuitive. Of course, social significance does feed into my working process. However, it must be the stale and predictable social-realism in Manila that turn me away from creating overtly political work. An esteemed Filipino teacher said that "breathing is political." Taking this to heart, I have learned to accept that even if mainstream Philippine cultural politics may label our work and aesthetic as apolitical or too personal, in each expression lies a statement about the human condition. Indeed it does, Mashashi san was keen on the first and last images of Beneath Polka-dotted Skies (the suitcase and struggling with it), as well as Ishiwara who I both spoke to at long lengths about the global condition of people, where migration and constant 'journeying' seems to describe our present condition. In this highly mobile situation, where artists and non-artists, find themselves constantly 'travelling' and confronted with displacement, anxiety brings forth a sense of isolation. In the end, we regress and return to the our idealized comfort which ends up back to the suitcase, symbol of our physical, psychological and emotional baggage.
When asked how I came to this kind of work, I honestly admitted that my motivation was of a personal situation. As artist we find ourselves constantly moving, finding displacement and being disoriented. Choreography in particular is an everyday act of moving in and out of the body and finding the embodiment of this situation, somehow (in the words of Martin Nachbar) a necessary distanciation becomes inevitable as we try to understand the body, abstracting movement and allowing dance to arrive. This is the paradox that I wanted to address.
Going and dancing in Japan as a Filipina is imbued with layers of signification, funny that four times I have been there I have never written 'professional dancer' as my occupation in my immigration card, lest I deal with nasty glances, discrimination and/or endless barrage of questions regarding my legality as visitor in Japan. Talking to Dada, who is a student at Tokyo University, we share that this kind of 'embarrasment' is disheartening. In this actions, we in fact reinforce the discrimination against valid art and entertainment, against female migrant workers who are in fact saviors of this country. So in a way, I am happy that my piece has maybe somehow addressed this situation can be a space for further communication and dynamic relations. So yes indeed, "breathing is political."