OBSERVATOR CULTURAL - Spiritul critic in actiune

This last week in Bucharest was quite instructive for me in many ways. The meetings of our jardin party with the “community” of Bucharest spawned some of the more interesting talks I have had about work (art) in a while. In the midst of this I had a secret project. I was constantly trying to tune my language to the amazing speaking skills of Bojana C. in order to be able to talk with her. This was very fun, a big challenge and totally woke me up. What became apparent was that I tend to indulge myself with Ambiguous Language. For entirely honorable reasons, I often search for a way of saying without statement. I talk around what I am trying to discuss until the region becomes visible through it’s shifting borders. This functions quite well for certain situations and I will most likely not give it up. However, when faced with the sureness of Bojana’s language, I thought “perhaps there is a different generosity in this way of speaking”. There is a risk in taking a definate position. You might be very, very wrong. And then someone will tell you so. And then you may have to change your mind. I am still busy with this.

 

Class is a proposal of how to spend one’s time, of how to spend one’s time together. We, the class, spend time in a subject, a body of knowledge or an idea. These ideas are the space not the time. The time is us thinking. Class provides different modalities of thought to try out, ways of considering and observing in order to confront information and ideas. In the situation of dance class these are often experiential thoughts. From any given class situation, other situations will be created from it, proposed by others to others. This creates a long discussion that is not controlled by anyone person’s position. This lets us think together without imagining that knowledge is stable and without imagining that we are stable. sometimes, a teacher might perform the stability of information, anatomical things or history. This lets people think towards something. This is one way of thinking that is sometimes fruitful but it is one choice among many and it is certainly a construction. The roles of teacher and student are also punctually convenient and entirely permeable constructions.

 

Truly, I don’t consider myself a teacher but I find myself often in situations where others do. I am often invited to “teach”. “Are you available to teach technique in January for three weeks?”, “Will you teach again in the festival?”, “While you are in town, could you teach?”. I am up for an invitation, I enjoy the company of dancers and also I should earn my living so mostly I say “yes, sure”. Since I do not have and do not want a fixed idea of dance, what I do in these situations is rather up for grabs. My main strategy when I am invited as a teacher is to show up there. This is not as flippant as it may sound. I show up There. The constantly fluctuating I and the variable destination make the teaching jobs a constant adventure in adaptation.

 

I am always making something, some project is always happening. With changing projects come changing ways of thinking, changing methods. The idea that my behavior in the role of “teacher” should be divorced from this change seems absurd and impossible. Even when invited to teach technique classes, a fairly codified affair, the form of the class I give will be a direct link to the creative process I am currently involved in. This sounds laudable but often produces some pretty messy and obscure situations. My assumption is that people will survive these moments as they survive the more lucid ones. So my first task when the teaching invitation comes is to figure out how to translate my current interests into things that others can practice. In this case I use the word practice to mean “consider by doing”. The next part of equation is the there. Someone invited me somewhere. This somebody/where is the place where I arrive. I teach site-specifically. I always ask what they want and this informs the possible form the class will take. “Showing up” describes me thinking in the situation and responding. To conclude in a very romantic way: the basis of dance, any performance form really, is someone showing up somewhere. The art and the thinking is in the choices of the how showing up in relation to the where. When we teach, when we are students, we create and recreate the basis of our form.

 

P.S. On day one of the meeting Mr. Ritsema took us all to task on our complacent usage of the word teacher, which for him, necessarily reenforces totalitarian systems. Although I generally use the word teacher to refer to a constructed performance, so I kind of reluctantly agree with him. I suggest a new term: enthusiast. imperfect surely, but anachronistic and sweet and ambiguous.

 

Jennifer LACEY is an American choreographer now based in Paris. During the 90’s in New York City, Lacey was a member of the Randy Warshaw Dance Company as well as a dancer with Jennifer Monson, DD Dorvillier, John Jasperse, Yvonne Meir and Ellen Fisher among others. Her own work was presented at PS 122, Movement Research Danspace St Marks as well as at many European venues and Festivals. In 2000 Lacey moved to Paris, founded Megagloss with Carole Bodin and began what has become a longstanding collaboration with artist Nadia Lauro, with whom she has produced 4 major works as well as instalations and publications. She gives class regularly at Impulstanz and is currently mentoring the program “Essaies” at the Centre National de la Dance Contemporaine in Angers.