New piece, new perspectives
Starting a new piece is always daunting, but also full of promises.
Now that I'm gearing up to premiering this new piece, Body-No-Body, on 14th July at the Old Fire Station (as part of "ODF presents..."), it's really intriguing to see what has emerged, how things might have seemed to stray away from my original intentions and how yet I have addressed a few questions without realising I was addressing them.
I often find that one of the main difficulties when talking about one's own work is to not go into a whole genesis discourse whereby I end up describing what I wanted the piece to be, rather than talking about what it is.
If this seems to contradict what I wrote above, please bear with me, all will become clear!
One of the aspects I was keen to research in this piece was how to realise, within ballet, the kind of texture, tension, and full commitment to the bodily experience of dancing found in butoh.
Putting this into words is always a fascinating experience. Ballet and butoh, to me, sit on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to their relationship to shape and emotion. Let me elucidate. Ballet traditionally focuses first on shapes, which are highly codified, and then on how to inhabit them, live them, experience them. In butoh, one of the founding principles is to let the body lead, feel, experience thereby creating shapes that are often new, entirely unplanned, improvised. So, on the face of it, these two demanding forms seem rather incompatible.
Resolute as I can be however, and dearly wanting not to compromise with the integrity of each of those wonderful forms, it could appear like my course was set for disaster.
And this is where things become really interesting and intriguing. When talking about butoh I find myself using expressions like: integrity, emotional power, rigour, full commitment; and when I talk about ballet I use those very same words. Yet butoh and ballet resist comparaison, those same words describe rather different things for one and for the other. Each time I've attempted to compare them those same words come up and I end up saying something along the lines of "yes, but no"...
It took the whole of the creative process for me to realise what was happening, punctuated and fostered by feedback and discussions with Caroline Salem, who mentored me during my residency at Clarence Mews, with Miranda Laurence, who currently acts as a consultant dramaturg for this piece, with Susie Crow, with Jenny Parrott, with Cecilia Macfarlane, with Joelle Pappas, with Fiona Millward, with Macarena Ortuzar, and with too many people to mention them all here.
Here are some of the snippets that paved this path, and the epiphanies that accompanied them:
Now that I'm gearing up to premiering this new piece, Body-No-Body, on 14th July at the Old Fire Station (as part of "ODF presents..."), it's really intriguing to see what has emerged, how things might have seemed to stray away from my original intentions and how yet I have addressed a few questions without realising I was addressing them.
 |
About Body-No-Body :
Imagine an intimate mythology unfolding through classical form and everyday objects…
In this new piece, Body-No-Body, set to an excerpt of Simeon ten Holt’s hypnotic Canto Ostinato, Oxford-based dance artist Ségolène Tarte invites audiences to take a fresh look at ballet and at butoh, and at their emotional eloquence.
With this poignant performance, meandering between mystical reverence, angst, and enlightenment, the dancer shapes a strange universe and is shaped by it.
Let yourself slip into this mysterious yet familiar world… Be transported, charmed, moved by a constellation of delicate hesitant steps, balletic grace, and pure expressive movement.
--
Photo: David Fisher
|
I often find that one of the main difficulties when talking about one's own work is to not go into a whole genesis discourse whereby I end up describing what I wanted the piece to be, rather than talking about what it is.
If this seems to contradict what I wrote above, please bear with me, all will become clear!
One of the aspects I was keen to research in this piece was how to realise, within ballet, the kind of texture, tension, and full commitment to the bodily experience of dancing found in butoh.
Putting this into words is always a fascinating experience. Ballet and butoh, to me, sit on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to their relationship to shape and emotion. Let me elucidate. Ballet traditionally focuses first on shapes, which are highly codified, and then on how to inhabit them, live them, experience them. In butoh, one of the founding principles is to let the body lead, feel, experience thereby creating shapes that are often new, entirely unplanned, improvised. So, on the face of it, these two demanding forms seem rather incompatible.
Resolute as I can be however, and dearly wanting not to compromise with the integrity of each of those wonderful forms, it could appear like my course was set for disaster.
And this is where things become really interesting and intriguing. When talking about butoh I find myself using expressions like: integrity, emotional power, rigour, full commitment; and when I talk about ballet I use those very same words. Yet butoh and ballet resist comparaison, those same words describe rather different things for one and for the other. Each time I've attempted to compare them those same words come up and I end up saying something along the lines of "yes, but no"...
It took the whole of the creative process for me to realise what was happening, punctuated and fostered by feedback and discussions with Caroline Salem, who mentored me during my residency at Clarence Mews, with Miranda Laurence, who currently acts as a consultant dramaturg for this piece, with Susie Crow, with Jenny Parrott, with Cecilia Macfarlane, with Joelle Pappas, with Fiona Millward, with Macarena Ortuzar, and with too many people to mention them all here.
Here are some of the snippets that paved this path, and the epiphanies that accompanied them:
- "Fragility doesn't have to be a weakness! It's more about the kind of vulnerability you display through an absolute full commitment to your performance." I still struggle a bit with being seen as fragile or vulnerable, but I really like the almost tangible thread of empathy this seems to weave between audience members and me.
Empowering pointe shoes...
Who cares about a couple of blisters! - "There's something really empowering about the pointe shoes!" I'd never thought of them that way, but oh, deary me! Yes. They. Are. Thank you!
- "It doesn't need more dancing/more dance-steps." That made me formulate that, until then, to me, choreographing meant being able to teach a choreography to someone. But what does it mean to teach a choreography? It turns out it really doesn't have to be steps, it could be the intentions that drive the piece, especially when it's improvisation-based... I'm still mulling over that one...
- "Underneath it all, there is no doubt, you're a ballet person." Hehe, you can take me out of a ballet but you can't take the ballet out of me. « Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop ! » (understand: "what's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh.") And that's no bad thing by any measure, it just means that my auto-pilot is balletic, and I can play with that in so many ways (surrendering to it, paying attention to it, going against it, emphasising it, etc...)!
- "Butoh invites a certain gaze on the body, ballet invites a different gaze". That was a real eureka moment (Thanks Miranda! Amongst many other enlightening interventions, this is the kind of thing a talented dramaturg does!).
And that's probably why I was also told after the scratch night in March: "It's working! Ballet and butoh like that, it really works".
I thought I had lost my objective in route because I felt like I was only juxtaposing ballet and butoh, but what I was actually doing was unconsciously letting them bleed into each other through my own body.
I think that the reason why it seems to be doing what I had set out to do, although in an adventitious way, is that in fact they shed a new light onto each other. The groundedness of butoh transpires into the ballet, and the chiselled and light aspects of ballet permeate the butoh.
Our perspectives on ballet and on butoh are being shifted.
Mine certainly are!
Come along and check it out for yourself on 14th July at the Old Fire Station (more info and tickets here: https://oldfirestation.org.uk/whats-on/odf-presents/)!
Comments