Costume Exile

‘Costume Exile’[1]

A choreography by Juliana Atuesta[2]

This is a brief analysis of Juliana Atuesta’s choreography ‘Costume Exile’ (2009), an analysis informed by Hans Thies Lehmann’s description of the turn towards the post-dramatic theater[3]and by what Thomasz Toporisic, in writing about the performative turn of the 1960’s, where he makes a direct reference to Lehmann, has to say about the various techniques employed in this turn, namely, ‘excessive repetition, sampling, quotations and misquotations of various texts and discourses, meta-theatrical references’[4]. Given the length of this writing, only excessive repetition will be investigated in an attempt to demonstrate that the way Atuesta makes use of it compositionally strongly points towards the post-dramatic.

‘Costume Exile’ begins with a screening of what appears to be the credits shown at the end of a film, the many names and titles of all involved in the making of it.The monitor in which the credits are presented is small, so that the audience can not properly read the text, and in this (in)capacity any meaning or reference to any thing specific disappears. For someone sitting at the back of the theater what appears is an avalanche of words repeating themselves, scrolling down the screen at a regular tempo. This lasts for approximately 6 long minutes. No body, no sound, hardly anything to see, only a quasi-empty space filled with potential, questions and expectation.

Lights go off the monitor and focus on a couple sitting side by side at the other side of the stage. A man and a woman dressed in everyday clothes. Nothing other than sitting happens for a while until they begin to move, at which point the music comes in. The woman makes very small movements with her spine, hardly perceptible. The man observes. Gradually, as her movements become more visible (she adjusts her clothes, as if in front of a mirror, in a rhythmically precise and meticulous manner) he visually and physically relates to her . Time by just looking at her, time by either helping or disturbing her activity of adjusting her clothes. This is systematically repeated several times until she gets off the chair and moves towards center down stage where she repeats the male dancer’s actions , on and with her, in a magnified manner. As she does it, she looks at the audience (the mirror?). He comes to join her. They engage in a duet where the material they had danced on the chairs is repeated, but this time in a simulated, ‘as if’ mode. This is intensified and at the end they return to their chairs. A short while after that he stands up and directly addresses the audience by saying: ‘This piece is about….”. Lights go off.

Lights come back on, but this time center upstage illuminating another couple sitting also side by side and dressed equally in everyday clothes. They repeat the very same structure as the first couple, only with slight idiosyncratic differences. It looks like we are seeing a ‘performance of the performance’ and one realises rather quickly that this is precisely what is happening. In this way, repetition becomes prominent by taking place on several levels: on the level of the moment-to-moment, on the level of the construction of the sections of the piece, on the level of the performance itself as a whole and notably on the level of the re-utterance of the affirmation-question directly addressed to the audience, i.e., ‘This piece is about…..’. At the end of the second duet, all four dancers come together. The dancers of the second duet sit on the laps of the dancers of the first duet where yet again the structure of the piece is repeated, this time in a condensed, shortened version, where the actual saying of the words ‘this piece is about…’ is ‘musicalized’ and deconstructed into a light, humorous, non-sensical conversation.

The insistence in ‘Costume Exile’ on repeating, reiterating the materiality of the body, on its partially finished movement gestures and words, its use of paronomasia[5], frontally asks (or forces) the audience to become an active agent in the ‘cracking’ of the code provided by the performance. First by distance and estrangement (what is it?) then by sheer recognition (was it that simple?). This leads one to think that Atuesta’s piece, in how it deliberately employs repetition, and in how it makes the audience first reflect and then relax, falls under the umbrella of the post-dramatic, even though one could argue that the predictability inherent to the way in which repetition was structurally used could also generate in the audience a degree of absorption, immersion, which in turn could be interpreted as pointing towards the dramatic: one momentarily forgets that one has actually had to work, to actively and creatively make a memory present.

Text written on October the 4th, 2009

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[1] Piece made by Juliana Atuesta within the frame of the ArtEZ Master in Choreography Program Dance Unlimited. Danced by Joyce Brussee, Dirk Jeukens, Liat Gabay, Patrick Radu; Music by Cesar Diaz; Light by Egbert Mellema and Photo by Diego Contreras.

Performance seen on May the 20^th 2009 in Arnhem, at ArtEZ Theater 1.

[2] Juliana Atuesta is a Colombian choreographer and historian

[3] Lehmann, Hans Thies, Post Dramatic Theater, trans. by K. Jurs-Munby, London: Routledge, 2006

[4] Toporisic, Thomasz, in Traces of the Performative Turn, http://ttoporisic.googlepages.com/tracesoftheperformativeturn (accessed on September 30th 2009)

[5] a play of words, a pun. Andre Lepecki, in writing about the ‘slower ontology’ present in Jerome Bel’s work mentions paronomasia as one of the fundamental characterizing features of Bel’s critique on and assessment of representation. Lepecki, Andre, Exhausting Dance, Routledge, 2006 pp. 45-64

Post-dramatic Theater

In his book Post Dramatic Theater Hans Thies Lehmann follows, revises and re-assesses[1] Szondi’s perspective on drama, a perspective in essence Hegelian, that is to say, historical and dialectical. In so doing, he moves away from the classic Aristotelian conception of drama i.e., drama being a timeless form of theater which exists outside of History, a form of theater founded on the requirements of mimesis (imitation), primacy of action-plot based on text and its meaning, ascending action (development), peripeteia (sudden reversal) and catastrophe (overturning), leading to the experience on the part of the viewer of catharsis and illusion, where what one perceives can be referred to as a whole, as a unity. This wholeness, or world representation, becomes, through the audience’s empathetic immersion into the play, the model representative of what is real.

In order then to be able to say whether a performance is to be considered as either being (predominantly) dramatic or post-dramatic, by means of Lehmann’s post dramatic descriptive-analytic lens, it is crucial to critically and carefully observe how, in a particular performance, the logic of its production is articulated, how its events (parts, elements) are actually structured and what the performance’s requirements are. In this analysis, Hegel’s notion of sublation (‘Aufhebung’), which says that the whole is an overcoming which preserves what it overcomes, needs to be taken into account. In a dialectical mode of thinking, it is through negation (or crisis, rupture) that the ‘fixed’, ‘static’, ‘habitual’ becomes either discarded or dissolved, made fluid, and therefore regains its desire, or will, to push towards the whole.

Lehmann says that ‘ provocation alone does not make a form, and that even provocative, negating art has to create something new under its own steam’.[2] He also locates the political in perception itself, in art as a poetic interruption of the law and therefore of politics.[3]

In order then for a work to be considered (predominantly) post-dramatic one will have to probe how its constituent elements challenge, refute or dissolve the stronghold of dramatic theater’s ontology at the same time that it (the work itself) creates something new and historical (time bound), contextually positioned, therefore being politically relevant, even if the political is, as Lehmann says, to be found in perception ‘itself’, perception is here understood as the experience of the particular, individual, singular viewer.

First, and perhaps foremost, one would have to note whether the text, when and if used in a performance, dominates the overall landscape of the piece and whether the text is used in order to produce meaning, and if so, whether this meaning is structured linearly, as in a narrative with an introductory beginning, a developmental middle and a synthesizing, unifying end, or whether the text is used merely as material (as a soundscape for instance rather than language which leads towards synthetic interpretation), text as the producer of a force, intensity or affect, placed in a non-hierarchical, fragmented position with the other elements of the piece, in which case it could be considered post-dramatic.

Secondly, one would have to pay attention to what the relationship between the stage and the audience is and how it is constructed. In post-dramatic theater it is the conjunction of stage and auditorium that which constitutes theater. This means that the viewer is directly addressed and in being so, he/she becomes implicated in the work. He/she does not disappear in the illusion occasioned by the performance. On the contrary, he/she comes to front as an aware, active, co-participant in the actual production of the work.

This turns theater (what, when and where something is being presented, who presents it and the seers, the audience) into a landscape of multiple moving relations, where process is celebrated rather than repressed. As process becomes a foundational element (or concern) of post-dramatic theater, the notion(s) of time inherent to it, that is the ‘here and now’ of quantitative time and the qualitative durational time of this experience, and how it is instigated, need to also be scrutinized. In post-dramatic theater it is no longer a matter of ‘one (reading) subject, but of the shared time of many subjects’.[4] This means that in post-dramatic theater the aesthetic of the ‘real’ time of what is being presented on stage can not be dissociated from the real time of the audience seeing the work. Because one here assumes that most audiences would be comprised of a variety of individuals, each one with a singular past, present and desire towards a future, the result would be a plurality of readings of the performance. Performance makers which in the fabrication of their work consciously acknowledge this multiplicity of reading are most likely to be interested in promoting ambiguity and irony on the part of the viewer.

In alignment with what has just been described in terms of the relational juxtaposition of the time of what is shown and the time of the one (many) who see(s) what is shown, it follows that in post-dramatic theater the actual, ‘fleshly’ bodies of viewers are not to be taken to be ‘disciplined, trained and formed to serve a (master) signifier. Rather, the body as medium and its sensuality is precisely that which creates and undermines sense’[5]. What this says is that the bodies of the performers and viewers are not passive empty containers. They are active agents in the production of sense and this production of sense is not smooth, homogenous. It is member-ed and in so being, filled with gaps and fissures. The body then can be understood as being discontinuous. So, the gaps need to be filled, and the performance must, by means of rupture, confusion or shock, be ‘finished’ by the audience. ‘The show must go on’[6].

Lastly, one would need to notice how digital technology (if present) and other media are employed in the performance and investigate whether they are independently structured (post-dramatic) or whether they are subordinated to a unifying totality (dramatic).

There then finally arise the questions: How much more rational rupture, fragmentation or shock does theater need today in order to, with its audience, reach a state of being a politically affirmative agent?

Could it be that post-dramatic theater has already become susceptible to the same aesthetic ‘sclerosis’ it refutes?

Text written on September 14th 2009

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[1] Lehmann thinks that one can imagine theater without drama, which Szondi can’t. Through Lehmann, Hegel’s aesthetics can be read as pointing the way towards the dissolution of the dramatic concept of theater within drama.

[2] Lehmann, Hans Thies, Post Dramatic Theater, trans. By K. Jurs-Munby, London: Routledge, 2006 (p. 28)

[3] Ibid., pp.179-178

[4] Lehmann, Hans Thies, Post Dramatic Theater, trans. By K. Jurs-Munby, London: Routledge, 2006 (p. 153)

[5] Ibid, p.162

[6] title of a performance by Jerome Bel (2001)

Open-Form Composition classes

Coming up in July 20-21 2009, Hamburg, Dancekiosk

Corpo d'agua-Undone

photos by João da Silva

For more on the project please refer to Inflexions and click on the Tangents section

Six Thesis on Repetition

Composition workshop with BA choreography students of ArtEZ, inspired by Miklos Erdely

1. The unique is devaluated by repetition, with its concrete existence increasing and its essential existence decreasing

2. Only what is repeated is manifested

3. What is born in repetition also dies in repetition

4. In the turmoil of creation the same can never be achieved twice

5. Creation manifests itself suddenly

6. The absolute new is unrecognizable, and thus it cannot manifest itself

Open-Form Composition classes

March 2nd till March 7th teaching Open Form Composition at the Escola Superior de Dança de Lisboa.

Introduction to the concept of 'Holding-Form' and the exploration thereof in solo and group constellations.

Branding Lecture and Seminar at Cooperative Dance Center, Berlin

January 29th and 30th lecture and seminar on 'Branding' at Hutz, Berlin.

Excerpt:

If one is to be able to powerfully navigate through the geo-politics of resource distribution geo-political awareness seems to me to be crucial to any singularity, especially artistic singularity, that is, a dynamic notion of subjectivity and identity which challenges and resists the fixity of representational forms.

Who gets money from whom? Who decides which work can be shown where, when and for how much?

Artistic identity, or rather singularity, can not be dissociated from the geo-political milieu it exists in. A good brand practice pays close attention to this. It understands that the artist and his/her work is a body-brain with two halves.

Branding provides frames for thinking about forward and consistent movement, it awakens an understanding of the trajectory between pre-expressive intensity, an in-corporation so to speak, what is literally in the body, what pulses before it is or can be codified, the rush, the acceleration, and expressive emergence, when the body becomes externalized, objectified, an ex-corporation, a becoming other to oneself and others .

The inherent movement with-in artists, their ideas and artistic manifestations thereof, the milieus in which they exist and the sort of impact their works have in their particular contexts. I see Branding as a frame of reference, an awareness tool, a practice of alignment, a moving lens through which one can understand, feel , enjoy and communicate a process of artistic becoming.