About me ... and my practice
I look at performance-making as the designing of an experience - a process whereby the maker creates a collage of improvised thoughts and existing theories through an imaginative and improvisational practice. The repetition of material born of this assemblage is intuitively chosen and rearranged to be presented to the public.
Throughout the years, my work has been a reflection of my context and surroundings. Living in Beirut, a small yet complex city brimming with contradictions and constant change, my performances - both the themes and choreographies - have focused on the absurdity of technological development, and the neglect of the body/mind and the movement imposed by a rapidly changing reality. Through dance and theater, I have been looking for ways to transform the disembodying effect of this constantly and rapidly evolving post-modern world, which poses significant stresses and challenges, as it requires relentless and fundamental adaptations, transforming the practices and behaviors of large part of the global population.
We are surfing a peculiar moment in history, an unjust world driven by consumerism that seems to roll towards an environmental catastrophe. I am interested in exploring the potential in performance-making to rewire our minds and bodies through the untangling of knots we have wrapped ourselves in, in the pursuit of a disciplined and controlled society, in which, sparks of creative dynamism and life-force have been bottled-up. I believe that in hurdling between imagination, games, rituals, improvisation and play, exists a potential to rewire our minds and bodies away from what is determined by the accumulation of social history. I see in performing and performance-watching, a living ability to unlock doors in the body/mind that humans have slowly closed. I would like to invite performers and audiences to explore levels of existence and unveil new layers of being, disconnected from the modern everyday life. The goal is to find new ways of existing through the discovery of untaken paths in an “environment that is itself pregnant with the past” (Ingold, 2000, p.189).
Through my ongoing research as a performer and choreographer, I seek to explore how imaginative maps and improvisational scores can awaken the conditions required for the emergence of states of freedom, flow and trance; and how these states can be reproduced in front of an audience, transmitting similar emotions and sensations. In my view, the importance of this enquiry lies in its revolutionary properties, as conveyed by Joseph Beuys: the importance of art in undoing the repressive effects of a system in decay (Sarco-Thomas, 2010, p.195). I am interested in positioning performativity as a weapon against the consumer-driven lifestyle and the race of capitalism that is in many ways reducing creativity and ability to “poetically dwell” in our environment (Ingold, 2000, p.110).
So my question is how to use performance as a transformative social tool?
If we consider --- the performer – as a medium, then we are able to, through one person, to transform many. Just like in healing traditional rituals, the medium is possessed to heal an entire village.
----------------I see alongside the 4 forces of nature - gravitational, electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces--- that there is
the wild force - a force, unclassifiable by modern science, that we all ‘feel’ exists, and that throughout history has taken innumerable names and faces.
A force with an ungraspable meaning just as ungraspable as the reason of our existence, recognizing that, science has yet to answer our main existential questions.
-------------------In the process of creating a safe, clear, classified and domesticated world, we have left behind some important elements of existence------------------------
The wild force is undomesticated and thus a dangerous threat to societies of control. We have slowly repressed it, for the sake of technological progress.
Though repressed, it manifests itself around us and inside us, in the:
imaginary worlds, in the growing plants – conversation – dreams - wooden tables - clocks – movements - our thoughts - the clouds.
At times, we are able to focus on it, or to un-focus ourselves, and merge with it.
It is easier to spot in intensely emotional moments, in bliss, fear, love, fight --- lovemaking –dancing--- and sweating – on drugs – watching the sky --- being with our senses –………. ------ being in the moment. ---- being a child ---- or in being childlike -- - in abandoning ourselves --- not behaving --- hearing an unknown melody –moments that cannot be explained by graphs and equations but that just --- are.
We can also ---------- create context, to un-domesticate the moment and leave space for the wild to manifest. Uncontrollable, the total experience of the wild force is immensely scary, but also immensely blissful. It might be, that when we die, the wild takes over, twirling us back into the breathing ocean of matter. It might seem, that the wild is somewhat what we would imagine to be spiritual, but mostly, absolutely physical, taking place in our bodies --- in the living world.
--------------------- the wild force - repressed - but immortal---------------
Such a free and uncontrollable creative power is a threat to any system that seeks to control everything.
---- The performer as a medium ---
In a paper entitled Trance in western theatrical dance, Dunja Njaradi defines ‘trance’ as put by music scholar Judith Becker: “a state of mind characterized by intense focus, the loss of the strong sense of the self and access to types of knowledge and experience that are inaccessible in non-trance states” (Njaradi, 2012, p. 24)
In my research, I am looking for the vessels that allow this ‘trance’ to manifest in the performers, and thus, convey it to an audience. “Dancing moved the subject through the liminal realm between conscious and unconscious” (Njaradi, 2012, p. 27).
Laban believed that real movement and dance in its pure form could transform people. He claimed that the true expression of the movement came out when the dancer got lost in the dance, allowing the unconscious to surface (Njaradi, 2012, p. 27). Likewise, the dance of the Sufi dervishes caused by the repetitive spinning, creates a physical chemical reaction in the body which alters the balance in the body. “Your brain gets more blood, more oxygen and you start having visions in your mind” (Njaradi, 2012, p. 30)
Trance as a psychophysical state is and has been present in rituals all around the world, for a very long time. It has been explored and induced in various ways. I am looking into, this practice, in the context of dance/theatre.
The Butoh dance for instance, is concerned with this intention, leading the dancer into a “trance” state, building up a methodology in which the environment, the dancer and the dance are one (Fittante, 2016, p.8). Hijikata Tatsumi, founder of Butoh, used scores inspired by images, poems, emotions and words. His dancers followed intense trainings characterized by a profound focus. He experimented with more physical methods, such as making the performers fast during the process or stop eating several days before performing. The goal of the fasting and the intense training, he claimed, allowed one’s consciousness to slacken, and the extreme physical states allowed performers to reach trance states, or a dissociation of consciousness (Fittante, 2016, p.7).
As conveyed by artist and scholar Sakamoto, Butoh artists are absorbed psychologically and physiologically in “dissociative states highly similar to the locus of mental imaging in initiatory, shamanic journeying” (Fittante, 2016, p.8). Ohno, renowned Butoh dancer and teacher, considered this altered state of consciousness essential for the dance. He invited dancers to push themselves to the “very edge of sanity” (Fittante, 2016, p.8). Additionally, as an example of western modern dance, Forsythe describes a state in which one is ahead of oneself, where he invites his dancers at times to be very fast in their movement, allowing them to be in the moment. At this speed, he believes that one doesn’t adapt anymore but predicts, that one is moving at the speed of thought (Manning & Massumi, 2014, p. 42)
What I am looking for, in my practice of performance, 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.
---- Is the performer a medium? A vessel that empties and fills itself allowing the spectator to enter her/his body ----- to take them on a journey?!
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.
Also Njaradi notes this fundamental aspect of trance in her paper “trance is a expertise that can be, a learned and rehearsed technique that most persuasively challenges, rearranges and remodels the basic natural chemical balances in the human body” (Njaradi, 2012, p. 30). Often, the idea that trance is an expertise that needs training is often left behind in anthropology. “If at least sometimes mediumship is an act, it follows that like drama it has to be learnt. As an aspiring actor attends drama school, so a medium, through initiation, has to learn to be possessed – or to appear to be so” (Njaradi, 2012, p. 32).
This haziness between the controlled and the mastered and the unknown is what I am interested in. Between the choreographed and the improvised. Between the domestic and the wild.
How to create containers, where the unknown manifests – in a performance - structures that do not fall into chaos. How to design trainings that give space to the uncontrolled - in balance with what is controlled, and how does the control, allow the unknown to manifest. Creating skeletons, to hold the uncontrolled, the trance, the manifestation of pure dance, the wild, the madness, the improvised, the transformative.
Imagination has been a key instrument in the creation of movement material and theatre. The embodiment of imagination allows performers to explore infinite possibilities and spaces, often between the four walls of a studio. Multitudes of techniques have been developed through exercises whereby one transforms one’s self or environment with imagination.
-- In imagination lies the potential for total freedom, even in prison, one can imagine. The capitalist system, through psychological repression, has almost controlled our thoughts. Yet despite this repression, the imagination continues to wonder into forbidden places, places that the system defines as deviant, as criminal. And imagination, remains uncontrollable , a most importantly – unpunishable, creating a world of freedom, that no system can completely destroy.
