Dear you,
Body,
You/Me
Soul,
“I’d like to get to know each other better” is a refrain I keep singing and I’m glad I’m not the only one. In addition to touches and dance, which compress explanations, distances, situations, thoughts and intentions, words are welcome, especially in DIALOGUES.
Good thing you already answered a question I asked on April 29th this year to you and me and everyone who does this. Time to answer. I dance because I can hold you all close, love you and believe in you and God without shame. Because I like to forget constructed images, successful false speeches, how cheap and easy is cynicism hidden under the pretence of pragmatism; I do it in words, in looks and dance: this thing, to denounce, with as much gentleness as I can – this is also impotence – coverings of our interior. An example: the need for someone to need me, hidden under motivation. In words and in looks I am not too believed. In dance, sometimes I see myself in the mirror of a gaze that looks at me. It’s starting to not be enough. I am beginning to understand that “because I like it and it helps me towards others” is no longer enough as an argument for the mind, nor as a springboard for the soul.
But while I’m still here, I want you to describe to me in detail what the ideal world of dance would look like for you. And I will write to you what the ideal society looks like for me. But further, so as not to influence you.
What is more important to you than dancing?
What do you believe in? And “nothing” is an answer, and I won’t judge you, as long as it’s honest.
What’s the biggest lie you’ve told in dance? Have you ever invented some topic, discourse, or concept just to show others that you are reinventing yourself?
When was the last time you were honest on or behind the scenes?
I dance with and for people. I, being one of them. The pandemic turned me around and I kept my exercise routine. But I missed movement with people, movement, and dance in another form.
I start working on new shows – mine or others’/ all the same – when I got what’s behind the words, the reactions, the surface; when I have something to put on stage. Țin mult la conținut. At consistency. I think in pictures. And anything that serves situations and images is good to bring to the stage. It doesn’t have to be about movement.
Just as words carry worlds within them, the movement opens up places where the filter of explanation disappears. In which I approach you and know you without knowing your name, why that and why not.
A show, a dance class brings me more perspectives. Multiple reports on the same reality. Because it’s with people. Other than me. It makes me notice – when I look at it – parts of me that I find harder to access.
I don’t want to convince anyone to dance. I trust that the Greatest Choreographer or Mr. Choreographer places, depending on each one’s path, things much more coherently and powerfully in each of us.
I hug you as much as I can,
The second body
In 2021, several choreographers told and forwarded to their colleagues’ questions about the body, the pandemic and the place/meaning of dance for them, in the form of anonymous letters.
Each letter served as inspiration for an illustrator to create an augmented animation during DANSTOPIC workshops in the spring, a guided journey by Skeptic Dog Animation and Human Interface.
The animation of Letter #2 was created by Silvia Niculae and can be discovered through the Artivive app.
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.artivive
Apple Store:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/artivive/id1188737494?mt=8