united sorry

sometimes i think the website is in order, but it isn’t, so this is a txt of last month, but now in the right place. it was written just a week before the premiere of latifa’s piece, in paris when i was strugging with performing. it looks a long time ago. i am in vienna now, we already performed in amsterdam. how low can you go and i even did a little solo in new york. but nevertheless i want to keep this txt, because the same intentions are still there to research this shamanic approach of dancing.

paris dec 2008

There is a promise that there is always light at the end of the tunnel. This greeting card slogan has become part of my monologue in the group piece of Latifa. Yesterday we did our first public appearance in the probably definite version in Belfort. And I can say now: I am out of the tunnel. Yesterday facing the audience, I came home again in my body and mind, I did my own way of warming up without feeling guilty to be lazy or undisciplined, I decided that my way of preparing has nothing to do with stretching the body but more with taking time to transform the mind into a state to perform. That is to say: i must concentrate my attention to be open, to be courageous, physically not scared, and i must have the curiosity to asks the right questions while doing. The pleasure of performing came back again. I didn’t examine myself anymore in a way that I was blocking myself.

So I think i am not an easy performer to work with. I discovered that my body is a lot of times afraid to fall, but i want to fall, so now i have several bruises on my arm. Others said that my shoulders are stiff in a way that they block my physical expression and my voice is limited, because i place the sound in the throat, instead of in an interplay between the breath in the underbelly and the resonance in the cheeks and nose. To develop these singing technique takes more time, for sure because as a performing dramaturge I am learning by doing.

Everything what has to do with coordination of the body or controlling different body parts makes me insecure. Because of what happened in my youth, I have a certain distrust in the capacities of the body. Others told me that I can be very strong, I considered myself as weak, a sissy, and alienated from my body. Dance was a big help to come back at myself. I danced always, as a kid, as a teenager, as an adult in discos, at home. But I am not a dancer by instinct who jumped around as a kid, who did a lot of dangerous movement tricks, sports, I was the boy who danced to heal himself, to get into the body again, to dream about better times, to open his fantasy, to feel free, and at the end to leave the body, and dissolve in something bigger.

And now i am researching if this entrance to dance is rich enough to communicate with a public. If this is my way of communication. In my own work, and in that of others.

but i found out, everything what i do, is my own work. It can’t be different. I only can’t do it, when i put my imagination in it, my analyzing how to do it, and why to do it.

I am in Paris now, i slept a lot, tuesday it starts witha general with a lot of people watching, i am curious.