Does the medium/performer possess the imaginary body?
Or does the medium/performer get possessed by the imaginary body?
Or is it a shifting continuum between both?
A shifting continuum of “the possessing vs. the being possessed” analogous to “the structure vs. improvisation”. The performer is lingering in between these two states, one of decision making, choreography, structure and score (here the performer is POSSESSING the material) – and the letting go, the improvisation, the madness, the surprising oneself, the intuitive (here the performer gets POSSESSED by the imaginary body).
If we were to imagine a staged performance based on this research, the audience would witness a shifting continuum between the agglomerate body of the performer and the imaginary body.
Are these shifts provoked by thought? By chance? By movement?
Do I forget sometimes that I am me, and just blend in with the imaginary body?
Am I half my body half the other?
Over-all, throughout the process of the research and looking back at the two cycles I went through, I realized that I was collecting material and methodology that could slowly be mixed and matched in a web of interchangeability. For example, what was clear to me at the end of the 2nd cycle of research was that the different findings and techniques accumulated by watching and discussing with the performers could be used to create more specific scores. I would for instance ask performers to embody an imaginary being through breath, speed, madness, confusion, focus, or through another of the techniques collected. I could even ask a performer to embody a creature through 2 or 3 of these; this would direct further the performer. If I were to work in the studio, I would be able to read in the body of the performer which of these qualities would be one that would motivate the person to move differently and to explore themselves further.
Studio work basing myself on these findings would open up endless possibilities. I would use these bits and pieces to create collages of tasks.
What if 6 people were to all be one imaginary body, or parts of one body, and what if they were to explore this though breath?
What if one of them was the lungs of this creature and the others the limbs?
What if one performer where to walk across the room transforming herself in every step into a different imaginary body?
What if I imagined to be an imaginary body that is embodying another imaginary body?
What if I just embodied the eyes of a specific creature, how would that change the way I observe other people and myself?
In fact, I realize that after this almost “not so messy” process of research, I want to open up a big creative mess.
All the images, sounds, ideas, movements, techniques and findings that I collected are now uncluttered to become an atlas of effects that can be woven and interchanged together to create odd exercises and open up infinite possibilities of motion.
What I am looking for, in my practice as a choreographer, is how the merging of the imagined and the real results in a flow, in a shifting trance state. Sarah Goldingay in the book ‘Spirit Possession and Trance’ explains precisely this shifting state that I believe is fundamental to the conception of performance. In the book, the notion of the medium is discussed in relation to the contemporary actor/dancer. The two are compared, as both are communicating through the embodiment “imaginative and non-ordinary conscious skill training” (Schmidt & Huskinson, 2011, p. 207)”. Goldingay coins the meeting between the spiritual and the acting profession, by interviewing one medium and one actor and comparing them. In both cases, the gap between actor (person) and character (medium) is a shifting continuum and not only a twofold opposition. “Performances require different things from their actors/ some-times that they should perform themselves, sometimes that they should 'empty' themselves and become 'neutral' in order to fully embody their character — or to allow their character to fully embody them (Schmidt & Huskinson, 2011, p. 208)”. Goldingay concludes that the moment the actor stops being his or her normal self and starts being the character is not clear cut, but constantly changing.
Goldingay uses three terms to describe the states of the actor/medium in a performance: 'the pedestrian-self, 'the technical self’ and 'the self-as-other'. ‘The pedestrian self’ is the consciousness of the quotidian, the existence in the everyday ordinary world; the 'the self-as-other' is the trance state of heightened awareness of performing; ‘the technical self’, is the one who directs the connection of the ‘pedestrian’ to the ‘other’, allowing the actor to shift from one to the other based on what the performance demands (Schmidt & Huskinson, 2011, p. 210). The latter ‘self’ is the one that is “informed by pre-performance training, in order to manage the stability of the performers' performance” (Schmidt & Huskinson, 2011, p. 216).
Digging deeper into the states of consciousness of the performers, Goldingay reports a model brought forth by James Austin, clinical neurologist and Zen practitioner. The model proposes that overlapping states of awareness function at the same time. Each state can be “operating at a high, normal, or low level. And each might be invested with attention to a greater or lesser degree” (Schmidt & Huskinson, 2011, p. 216).
This viewpoint, discards the mind-body Cartesian binary model, creating a more complex way to look at the performer, the ‘tranced’, or the possessed. The latter dualism would suggest that, the performers entering the state of trance are only active at the beginning and become passive when they become ‘the other’ (Schmidt & Huskinson, 2011, p. 216).
I agree with Goldingay and Austin, and I have witnessed that different levels of attention are given to different selves that are fluctuating continuously while performing. I also strongly believe that the rehearsals and trainings of the performer are what allow for an organic fluctuation in the moment of performance.
To wrap up, I would say that this research is an ongoing process intertwining itself with my choreographic work in the focus of reflecting on how wild states can be staged to impact an audience. The work centres itself on perceiving the imaginary body as a medium for the performer to find threads of inner liberation. Subsequently, the performer becomes a medium through which a larger audience can undergo that same process of liberation through watching the performance empathetically.
If we consider the performer as a medium, then we are able, through one person, to transform many, through one body, to reach multiple bodies. Just like in healing traditional rituals, the medium is possessed to heal an entire village - the medium dances and the whole village sweats. The medium, as is the performer, becomes a vessel, that brings information from unknown layers of the self to share with others.
...and... the antennas...
A couple of floating thoughts on the images your eyes were seeing throughout your journey into my research... why... the antennas?
... modern trees for the birds of the city.... stunningly elegant, absurdly magic… they are the spirits of my city... of my body.
.... bodies of solid matter, sluggishly moved by the winds, whose actions are invisible, communicating between each other, through wires and waves, creating mysterious webs of motion that are alien to us, but that make our world what it is. Infinite waves, bouncing back and forth, allowing one human to meet another through an sms, allowing a plane to flow through, allowing anyone to know what a Turritopsis dohrnii is at any moment, allowing the modern world to be connected the way it is... in boundless networks and connections… they also are.. mediums…
They are a metaphor.... to an agglomerate body, a body full of movement, internal and external, that we can define, that we cannot understand, that entangles rhyzomically the webs of existence through one simple concept… motion… motion in all its forms… an agglomerate infinite motion…
