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13 July 2013
In Athens again – I'm so happy that the Choreography Lab is happening again – this is the fourth time we're going through this process – its perseverance gives me joy and hope – despite all odds and among a general paralysis – the people of Athens are so numb these days – but when weren’t they? I'm looking forward to my daily trips to Kinitras – Syggrou Drakou Erechtheiou, the benches outside, smiling faces, a group of creative people (our Labbers!) working hard in the middle of the summer – I'm so proud that this Lab persists – makes me also want to persist and believe – brings everything back to us again – this is happening because we are here as ourselves – I can't wait to meet the group and work with them – this Lab carves a magic space that I've been craving for for months.
What is a composer doing here, in a choreography laboratory? Is it because choreography is composition? No. We can make up all sorts of beautiful and convincing metaphors to evoke a common ground for our disciplines – as I have been doing for years, I must admit – but despite the undeniable analogies, and the traditional relationship between these disciplines, no. We are not the same. We are terrifyingly different.
I will try this year to put things straight. Not in order to preserve our hierarchies and the commercial necessity for a disciplinary identity – and neither because I want to be radical by doing the exact opposite of what's in fashion in Europe at the moment (where everyone does everything, and non-disciplinarity is as sexy as interdisciplinarity was 10 years ago). I want to do this because segregation (separation? difference?) is in the nature of any interdisciplinary endeavour, and because in order to have an identity you need first to not be identical.
So what is a composer doing here, in a choreography laboratory? I'm not here to teach you counterpoint, or the sonata form. I'm not here to compose anything for you either (another first for the Lab). I'm here to be different than you, and work from there.
I'm also here because there are things where my discipline meets yours – they overlap, but do not connect. There are some things that are a kind of common knowledge in the Lab, conclusions or observations that I’ve arrived to through my own process as part of the last three Labs. One is that music has a body herself, let’s call it the “sound-body” – a concept that draws not only from my own experience as musician and composer, but also from what Jean-Luc Nancy has said about listening – a constant in all my workshops so far. The second is that music moves bodies – dancing bodies, vibrating bodies – not only metaphorically but also literally music moves, presses, touches – moves the bones in your ear, penetrates your body and traverses it. These two ideas are for me the cornerstone for dance-music collaborations, and the basis for a more substantial, essential, integrated use of music in dance theatre.
We also meet each other socially, in performance, when we perform (together or separately). Both our practices, dance and music, have been developed within the same culture of proscenium, repertory, concerts, galas, middle-class social rituals…We somehow obey to the same rules of production, creation, presentation, we share the same concepts of Work, audience, artistic practice… And many other aspects of our practices intertwine as well: sound in space, presence in performance, non-verbal interaction, the politics of our bodies, sensing, listening, doing, connecting…
It’s not that we’re different. It’s that we usually avoid dealing with our difference. So let’s be different, and take it from there.
