slow dance

Slow dance, which is shown in Trafalgar square, is a free, outdoor and large-scale public installation project. It is make up of two incidents, vision artist’s 50-dancer-involvement motion picture, which is captured by a high-quality, high-speed camera, followed by the participation of public force when they are viewing the projection of slow dance as a piece of live performance.

As far as I concerned, slow dance shall be considered as an achievement in the regard of arising the public interest and establishing a valid communicative relationship with them. Various mass-communication techniques are conducted mainly though utilizing on public environment and multimedia techniques and manipulating the spectator-performance rule both effectively and creatively, thus a loose, unstable, unconscious however equal basement ever has been provided for spectators. Being consciously involved in a site-specific performance mixed the atmosphere of dynamic authentic center-London and the taste of whisht intrinsic multi-culture dance movements, It is the participators that have the freedom of photographing, criticizing and even actively rejecting the performance by conversing with their partners. Additionally, numerous approaches of gazing are available since motion pictures are broadcasted in 3 giant screens respectively.

Types of body could be recognized in this performance: firstly, the body of the dancers is documented by a serious of five-second per movement high-definition motion pictures, which makes it absolutely a documentary, whereas as a production of media language, including the comparison between three (or more) diverse dancers’ bodies and amplification and admiration on body language, it surely leads to a recreation of body language. Therefore this performance reflects a debatable paradox that the respected natural body is recharacterized and redefined by digital techniques, which excessively differs from the originality of documentation.

What I interested in is an alternative body: the body of spectators. Owing to unbearable hot weather of midsummer’s late nights, their bodies used to be exhausting, stiff and stressful, being sensitive of being observed subjectively at the first moments. However, with the performance going on, the equal audience-performance relationship operates and the distinctive slow rhyme smoothes depression and subjection in the inner body thus transformation between “being observed” and “observation” is continuously occurring lively. Moreover, audience are able to take their time to sensationally be bodily involved in live performance, think about their own life and delightfully make their evaluation of the process of the live performance. A public event therefore has been brought into existence by the atmosphere of therapeutic slowness that replies on physical communication between each spectator’s bodies.

It reminds me of certain abstracts from Milan Kundera’s novel slowness.

“There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.

A man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down.

Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time.

The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”

In pieces

Contemporary dance performance In pieces, written by UK writer Tim Etchells, created by him together with Janpanese dancer Fumiyo Ikeda in Sadler’s wells, is obviously an outcome of two struggling forces. Audience could easily recognize the manufactured isolation by noticing a slice of silent movements is definitely followed by vocal language with great diversity of gestures and facial expression. This mechanic repetition enchants audience at the first moments, however fails to help them escaping from the feeling of boredom and exhaustion later. Furthermore, the balance between audience and performer is somehow replaced by the vocal intrusion into spectator’s personal sensory territory when Ikeda vocally explains her childhood’s misfortune repetitively with the only difference of magnifying the physical language each time. As a result, audience is undeniable challenged by the feeling of tension and discomfort.

In personal perspective, I would like to label it as non-attractive performance. In fact, it doesn’t provide many opportunities for our audience to interactively communicate in between and with the dancer since it’s a solo piece. Unfortunately, it is a risk to do solo as whether you like a solo piece or not is largely determined by whether you like the dancer or not. More unfortunately, Ikeda is far from what I appreciate. However, I am much interested in the critical issues what in pieces raised, that how to deliver a certain emotion to the audience and target on invoking their resonance by maximizing the function of a performer’s body, especially in terms of physical language and language.

To emphasize those two elements, the minimization of alternative elements is absolutely a necessity and efficiency as well. Therefore Richard Lowdon simplifies the stage as a wall and a single chair; Ann Weckx makes barely any clothes more than daily apparel, which is neither a dramatic costume nor close-fitting dancer-wear; the lighting, designed by Nigel Edwards, is natural and concise; and the most importantly, the dancer is not Marilyn Monroe. We could interpret these attempts as an approach towards representation of concession of narratives of language and symbolism of body and an immersion of ambiguous area between the formal two.

Tim and Fumiyo tried but they do not attain the goal. The main reason of this failure, in my point of view, should impute to their aggressions on the successful transformation of extremely complicated sensory in such a tiny piece. Take Fumiyo as an example. As a none-native speaker, she manipulates her conventional oriental body, mocks at “the French” in a British way, kisses in a French way while her face expresses naive even at the age of almost 50. More dreadfully, she is the exclusive communicative tool on stage that audience couldn’t distinguish the illusion of innocent, humorous, conservative and adventurous oriental lady and herself.

On the other hand, it reminds me to put extreme care on the appropriate usage of language in my final show as it is the natural law that as a performative sign, language is a far more introductive and conversely, aggressive than physical language.

Babel (words): towards performative structuralism

"Babel"

sadler's wells, london

May, 2010

Babel (words) is an experimental dance performance concerned with cross-culture communication and confliction, which is named after the tale of the tower of Babel when God pushed the people who built a tower in his name, causing chaos by separating them into different language, cultures and lands. There’s merely an audience is able to understand every point of its performance language as this production intends to challenge the conventional role as an audience by a presenting a collection of 15 languages, 7 religious backgrounds and numerous performance modes as well as the contribution of visual artist Antony Gormley. On the other hand, it makes perfect poetical rhyme by manipulating vocal language, body language and stage construction purely as performative signs, or we could interpret it as an attempt towards performantive structuralism.

How does this performative stuctualism exist?

Antony Gormley’s cylindrical steel frame is considered as the visual access to the concept of structuralism. However, as “words” have been underlined in its title, more attention shall be paid to how vocal language create structuralism and how body language contribute to the construction of the former one.

First of all, the main function of vocal language, narrate, is forbidden here. The language is deemed as a somniferous sign. For instance, the performance begins with a woman explaining to audience in English that before people spoke they communicated with gesture, at the same time she use sign languages. What she talks is what she does. therefore language is no more a communicative tool. Furthermore, to abolish this function, the former scenery is followed by a routine in which all of the dancers make a routine with their hands as if communicating through gesture.

Second, futurism, exoticism and chaos, abundant sensory is transported and magnified by the frequent occurrence of different foreign languages thus an additional level of hearing is created by addressing the mind of audience with the implicit actions behind it. The most influential example as follow: In one scene, two men inflate a robotic lady, treating her like an inanimate object because she is a foreigner to them, whilst another man is similarly tossed and thrown about great skill.

And the third, the debate Sidi Larbi, the chorographer raised in this performance, is whether rhyme is the structure, the “real thing” behind the appearance and the language we all have, which obviously touches the core of structuralism. I agree with him at this point that it is a solution to overcome the limits of language, and to lay emphasizes on none-grammatical meaning of the language.

about final show

Few days before, I presented my postgraduate form and some efficient advise from the perspective of MA Fine Art tutors helps me to re-exam my previous work and frame the future plot. My final project now highly focuses on how to visually manipulate language within the context of contemporary physical performance, with the aim of creating an alternative sense beyond language itself. It may contain both lighting installation and live performance, therefore these days I am trying to making installation and testing the feasibility within the other performance elements. On the other hand, I am trying to find some professional contemporary dancers to work with me. Through the labs in the previous term, I realize that without certain amount of performer who well master physical language, there’s no way to achieve the effect of confliction between language and physical body. It’s a challenge for me as it is no more “a small thing”, but anyway it’s worth trying.

Considering the fact that I haven’t done my outside exhibition project yet, it is a good chance to show my process of final work and collect feedback then.

reflective survey on body language

Yesterday , VLPs had a discussion about the similarities and dissimilarities in our final show sketch and the related theories. I would say it is very useful for me as it provided me a chance to review and resummarize the main performative purpose of my final show, through which I gained another opportunity to discover how to manipulate the power of body and language and make the two in an risky unsteady composition.

Performance Laboratory II AGAINST LIPS: part I Project Objectives

The centre objective of this performance laboratory is to clarify the function of each key performance components. Under the framework of this laboratory, all performance components are split into 4 categories, namely: sound, light, stage and performer. However, the function of each single performance component is not the final goal of this laboratory. The isolated researches will contribute to a better and deeper understanding of each performance components, hence pave the road to combine all these components in a way that makes them in a concisely harmony. Only with a harmonic blending of all the key performance components, it is able to effectively transform a certain sensation to the audience. Therefore, a proper approach of combining sound, light, stage and performer is the final objective of this performance laboratory.

The idea of this laboratory is influenced by the conception of “Whole Theatre” from Artaud’s texts. Whole Theatre concept promotes a comprehensive and balanced usage of different performance components in a theatre piece. Also, various works from different artists where different performance components are innovatively used give inspiration to the laboratory. It is highly interesting to discover how a conventional performance is created and how the different performance components are balanced and integrated in it. Through this performance laboratory, I want to further develop and shape my individual understanding of Whole Theatre, aiming at a further exploration on how linguistics affects a performance.

Some key questions will be repeatedly asked throughout this performance laboratory: Which components are essential for a performance, and which are merely a method to engage the spectators? How much information could the audience absorb in a performance or, how can we deliver our message to the audience, with a minimum usage of different types of performance component? How is the audiences’ real sensation about the performance? How is the audiences’ real perception of each performance components that was used? Finally, how can man combine the different performance components to maximally deliver a certain sensation to the audience?

WHERE is the truth lying? how could we make illusions if we can't find the truth?

The modern man lives with an increasing burden of subjectivity, at the expense of his sense of the reality of the world.

the death of tragedy

Susan Sontag

against interpretation