o espaço do tempo - We are going to miss everything we dont need

“We must always keep in mind the essential authors of the 20th century, not because we should imitate them, which is impossible, since our situation is extremely different from theirs, but because, in a certain aspect, we continue to be alike: they also created works in a time in which it was already said that works were no longer possible.”
Peter Sloterdijk, “Sun and Death”

How to do a piece now? now that I am not 20 years old anymore, nor 30, now that the “democratic nihilism” that Belhaj Kacem speaks about has already done everything possible to infiltrate me, now that I do not have any more that innocence, that naivety, etc, of which I talk about on a note taken somewhere (“it seems to be necessary to maintain ourselves in a certain place of purity, of faith, of innocence, of ingenuity, of cleanness, in order to continue creating. in order not to enter into cynicism”), now that I even already did some pieces in this phase (in other words, being in this phase doesn’t really make it impossible to create pieces), but I wouldn’t even confess to myself being in this phase, fearing it as I did, in this phase where I understood that nothing changes nothing.

And yet, strange enough, I feel that I am not any longer in this phase.

Well, so, what can I say at this point of the championship?

I can say that it pleased me enormously to read recently these words by Valeska Gert:
“I never insist on composing a particularly ingenious arrangement of steps. I grasp only the most necessary steps and the most simple. (...) The one that creates from the spirit and the soul cannot and must not take movements into account that are developed only from other movements. I don’t believe that anything that has to do with the psyche can be made visible through a skilful arrangement of corporal movements. Art likes to escape skill. (...) I still never made thirty jumps linked with forty turns, but I know that I could do those thirty jumps and those forty turns as soon as I would feel the need for them. (...) That’s why the physical training is secondary. But the training of the soul is indispensable. (...) A dance can consist only of some hand gestures, a balancing head or a stretching arm, nothing more, and that would be a dance, if there would be the movement of the soul behind”.

I can also say that I noticed recently the fact that arms and armies have been very present in my work. I noticed how I continue to be profoundly interested in the nature of violence, in the nature of our violence. I continue to be profoundly impressed by our capacity for savagery. (by the way, Goethe was against revolutions; ah, and by the way, I also continue profoundly impressed by our capacity for poetry).

And I continue to feel in an urgent way this (at least curious) need to see that we are an animal. we forget that a lot, don’t we? why did we decide to see ourselves like being outside of the animal kingdom? we are an absolutely extraordinary animal. and we are a domesticated animal. more or less domesticated. it’s urgent to see ourselves as animals, as it is urgent to see that on the plate we have a piece of corpse and not a steak.
I am always astonished by people, always astonished that people exist, that that creature can be possible.

I can say that I have been noticing the curious structure of a conversation, conversations have very interesting structures. we understand them perfectly when we are “inside of them”, but they sometimes make enormous leaps which don’t make any sense (however, we understand their meanings…), or at least they make meaning leaps in a surprising way. what is surprising is that we don’t find those leaps strange, we don’t find that structure strange, we understand it perfectly from the inside.
One day I would like to do a piece that has the structure of a conversation. to see if people then find it strange or not. and in this way I would be obliged to talk about a series of things, good and bad things, new and old things, small and big things.

I have also been noticing how, when we observe a painting or any other inanimate object, we can make our eyes travel over this painting or this object times and again, as long as we want to, and this painting and this object are constructed in a way that produces this movement of our eyes, that provokes it; the rhythms and the cadencies of that image produce those travels of our eyes. in a performance we cannot re-see, we cannot keep on traveling over this object as we wish to. the performance will have to offer this opportunity. we will have to repeat things so that people can re-see, re-hear, re-capture. reproducing forms again and underlining cadencies.

I can say that I would like to try a way of organizing the working process which would be a little bit copied from the one used in cinema, to see what happens.
To write, to film, to edit, to film again (those scenes that while editing one understands to be missing), to do the final editing. I would just like to add a period of experiment before the period of writing, which is the phase that seems to be missing a bit in cinema. in dance I imagine that to write will still be to write (verbally and perhaps with images), to film should be to place what has been written onto the body of the performers, to edit should be to compose with the materials that came out of this, to film again should imply maybe to write a bit again and to place this again onto the bodies, the final editing should want to say final composition.
And after that there is still a special bonus that does not exist in cinema, which are the energies that run in both directions between the stage and the audience, and that produce still an ultimate final re-composition.

I can say that I notice a lot the freedom that I have in this Europe, after all.
So different from the freedom that I notice that others don’t have in so many continents. and how I value this. and How we, strangely, seem so many times to waste it.

Freedom that, at work, is lived from the inside and the outside, it is origin and destiny.

I can still say that I notice my work has been turning around some fulcrum points and it doesn’t seem to me that it will now suddenly stop being like this (but you never know!):
Non-redundant combinations, languages turned upside down, vibrating and metamorphosing and opening body, fainting with empty hands as randiness, another time.

And, for example, what does a life worth living look like?

	program > residence > Dance