dance of words

8/9/2019 Dance of Words

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Dance of Words

Grant them their own traditional steps and postures But see they dance it out again and againUntil only lightning is left to puzzle over The choreography plain, and the theme plain

Robert Graves / Dance of Words

Perhaps more freebies lay on the ground at this point in time or maybe a youthfulenthusiasm made me more insistent on finding a way via theatre side entrances andalleyways into the auditorium, in any case it happened in the 80s that I was exposed tomuch contemporary dance, usually at Sadlers Wells Theatre. Despite having no previousexposure to this art form I was very soon drawn to the calligraphy of the moving body. It

was a revelation to realise that gestures, actions and events could often only beunderstood accumulatively and that they had to be experienced from moment to moment,from motion to motion. Once I overcame an initial incomprehension and impatienceslowly I began to learn a great deal about the rewards of attention and the workings of time. I think without this kind of exposure I never would have started working with videoor film.

Then I was making tentative forays into sculpture and a concern with the body. Manyafternoons and late evenings were spent casting bodies and limbs. The results became asuccession of seemingly useless parts, something ill-made and awkward to stumble over.Afterwards I began photographing bodies in motion but then started using video as a

more successful way to capture exact micro gestures of movement. Although totally ineptwith a camera, I arranged to shoot the David Massingham Dance Company one day inrehearsal in order to catch still frames of dancers in motion and thus one of my earliestvideo works came into being. My interest shifted almost immediately from still tomoving image.


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Blissfully ignorant and unaware of any history, I remained oblivious to the fact thatduring this period Sadlers Wells were showcasing key pioneers of the dance -world, thework of choreographers with a root connection to the emergence of Modernism andContemporary Art. I saw Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown both of who activelycollaborated with artists in a free exchange of experimentation. Cunningham wasinstrumental in the loft performances and happenings taking place in New York duringthe early 60s and had worked closely with Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and laterJasper Johns, whilst Brown too had collaborated with Rauschenberg in the devisingscreen and sets during the 70s. Indeed, at the point of seeing the Trisha Brown Companythe sets were Rauschenberg designs, consisting of various arrangements of movingscreens, which backed and then obscured the dancers. What was so arresting about suchperformances was not only their sculptural awareness and use of time but also theemployment of every day actions and movements to explore the scope and physicalcapacity of the human vehicle.

These choreographers later began to work very consciously with video to explore theirconcerns. I was soon to be surprised by companies and pieces that overtly referenced filmand others who made direct use of the medium of the moving image.

The Lindsay Kemp Troupe evoked a sense of the silent era through Kemps use of heavymake-up, exaggerated gestures and expressionistic lighting. There were also myriadreferences to the language of Butoh, Mime and Burlesque. First came Flowers thenSalome and later a production about the Great War, The Big Parade which specificallyreferenced the making of silent films.


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A great part of the pleasure in attending Kemps shows was seeing full tilt the work of aman responsible for bisexualising popular culture from the 70s onwards in his work with Bowie, his choreographies for numerous films and his fleeting cameos in cultclassics such as The Wicker Man and Vampire Lovers . But perhaps most memorable wasencountering the electrifying stage presence of the blind performer Jack Birkitt aka The

Great Orlando who had appeared both in Jarmans Jubilee as Borgia Ginz and asCaliban in The Tempest. Kemps dark carnival c ombined the worlds of dance, literature,film and dream with an absolute abandon and in doing so reinvested the word glamour with its true sense that of shady, alluring and sometime dangerous enchantment.

One aspect of dance performance that took me by surprise was sound, not the musicalscore but the sounds that the dancers made whilst exerting themselves, the squeak of barefeet on the stage, sharp intakes of breath, rapid and forceful exhalations, the slappingsound of bodies meeting, occasional grunts of effort. The sheer physical exertion andeffort of dance was made manifest in the sounds emanating from the dancers.

These bodily sounds became heightened and intensified in what came to be known asPhysical Theatre , best exemplified in the gravity defying performances of groups such asLa La La Human Steps and DV8 Physical Theatre. Such companies pushed theperforming body to its limits, exploring stamina, vulnerability through physical trial.Exposure to such performance left me with an enduring interest in difficult durational toiland repetitive acts, and this interest began to take shape in my student work as I startedfilming scenarios with a poet, a boxer and a dancer, the muscularity of words pittedagainst the straining body.


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The use of Film and Video in Dance became highly experimental and was often far aheadof the work produced by artists working in the same media. La La La Human Steps inconclusion to their show La La La Human Sex , made use of an enormous scrim onto

which they projected an image of Louise Lecavalier, their choreographer and principledancer, wrestling with and being thrown into the air by a male partner. This activity took place on the stage whilst being doubled and made monumental on the scrim behind. Asubtle simultaneity occurred followed by lapses in congruence the action of liveperformance and pre-recorded performance slipping in and out of synchronicity, not quiteparallel zones of time.

DV8, founded by Lloyd Newson, were certainly the most provocative and challenginggroup of the 80s, with an unflinching commitment to putting real human dilemmas andpolitical urgencies onto the dance stage. Newson eschewed the abstraction so prevalent inModernist choreography for an extremely bleak psychological domain, asking the mostdemanding and punishing effort from his performers. One of the groups most disturbingworks - there are many - was Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men based on the story of

Dennis Nilsen a serial killer of young and vulnerable gay men in London. Firstperformed on stage it was later made as a film to be screened on television.

The work remains ever radical but in the context of the time in which it was produced itwas utterly challenging in every way imaginable. It is still quite extraordinary to think of it being broadcast on London Weekend Television to the entire nation during a time whenhomophobia and fears concerning the AIDS pandemic were nasty, and growing out of control. I watched that broadcast in 1991 with discomfort, excitement and amazement.


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Newsons film did not shy away from the painful exploration of the societal ramificationsof homophobia, and dared to show the internalisation of this hatred within gaysubjectivity. Desire was observed as a form of mirroring, self-loathing and fear.Performers were depicted in stark black and white caught up in compulsive, obsessive

repetitions the boundary between death and sex wavering and melting in moments of incredible and devastating loneliness.

Any video artist today would be envious of such an opportunity to disseminate his or herwork so widely and to such a large and unsuspecting audience. As is to be expected thefilm was both lauded and derided in equal measure the LWT switchboard jammed withirate homophobes. Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men hit a nerve like a lightning bolt.

In watching Dance I learnt about the body, its libidinal energy, its desire, its weakness, itspotency and the many ways in which it writes itself into an endless alphabet throughgyration, contortion and stillness. The enormous risks taken by dancers andchoreographers allowed me to take small but significant risks in my own practice nolonger fearful of looking foolish in a trip or a fall. Dance noisily revealed ecstasy andquietly revealed mortality.

Through loss man can regain the free movement of the universe, he can dance and swirlin the intoxication of those great swarms of stars, but he must, in the violent expenditurehe thereby makes of himself, perceive that he breathes in the power of death.

Georges Bataille / Corps clestes "

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