Extra Dry performed at Springdance 2008

Considering some aspects of the beginning of EG|PC's career as
an introduction to the performance of Extra Dry, danced by Ti Boomershine and Victor Callens at Springdance Festival 2008 - Friday April 18, Utrechtse School, Utrecht.

by fransien van der putt


This is an introduction to a work that premièred exactly 9 years ago. Extra Dry was first danced by Emio Greco and Andy Deneys in 1999, to be precise on the 31st of March, at the Kaaitheater in Brussels. A duet that, as the final part of the trilogy Fra cervello e movimento, had to round up the issues brought up by the two solos that had preceded it: Bianco and Rosso. In very different ways, these two solos shook the Dutch dance world, because of their severe approach and sheer beauty. 'Rather incomprehensible and more the work of a dancer than of a choreographer,' I remember a Dutch critic's remark after Egpc's first Springdance appearance, in 1998 with Rosso.

The solo's Bianco and Rosso were produced almost outside the Dutch dance world. It was at the Cosmic Theatre, a platform for theatre makers from the Dutch Antilles in Amsterdam, that Pieter C -PC- Scholten and Emio Greco met in 1995; that bianco was prepared over the course of a year and premièred in the spring of 1996. It was with the help of the Flemish producer and Klapstuk festival director Johan Reinierse, that Rosso came out in the fall of 1997 in Leuven, with Korzo as the co-producer.

After Rosso, to break open the solo work and prepare Extra Dry, Emio and Pieter started a research project and invited the Spanish dancer Bertha Bermudez, who had been working with the Frankfurter Ballet, to come and work with them. This resulted in a mesmerizing duet, first shown at the Cadance festival in 1998, entitled Double Point:2.

Since I don’t want to frame your expectations for tonight's show too directly, let me share with you some of my thoughts about these first productions. Although they were kept on the repertoire for many years, I’m not sure how many of you have seen them.

ɷ 1995, 1996

bianco was as white as it promised to be. Starting from an ironic treatment of the mythical proportions of birth, be it of a nation, a world, a dance, a human being or a thought to be put on paper, the solo continues to write in white, principles of movement, of its source and the embedding forces that ensure access as much as they throw the beginning out. Curiosity and its pitfalls, tradition and its defeats.

At a certain moment, halfway through the performance, after a rather dramatic scene, in which Greco almost looses his grip on things and actually lets go of his second skin like a snake in summer, he approaches the audience and asks politely not to look at him for a moment. He suggests we say hello to our neighbor, have a look at the flyer or just close our eyes for a while.

Now, for a dancer to speak at such a moment was rather special those days. To speak of who is watching whom - with what kind of intent, was undone in dance in Holland. The relation was set. The dancer was on show, the audience was there to enjoy and if in need could interpret, but in general interpretation wasn't much discussed. Dance was simply there and it celebrated its stage beyond words.

Dutch dance had been strongly embedded in a certain modernist tradition, where interpretation is regarded as a bourgeois claim to control meaning, and the rebellious quality in dance was directly found in its unspeakable nature and its resistance to interpretation.

So, for Emio Greco to address the issue of the unspeakable, by using the most direct form of speech, no statement, no grand gesture or provocation, but instead: an informal, gentle, almost shy request, changed those set relations. It meant that he was feeling us, that he changed because of our presence, especially because of our glances continuously cast at him.
As he had been struggling with his preoccupations, he now directed us to consider ours for a moment. Was I as shy as Emio in that moment? How did I overcome my mixed feelings? What did I think of my neighbor who shrunk in disgust because he was exposed?

The spell that had bound the spectator to the performance, caused by the exhausting movement sequences and the radical changes between scenes, was broken. One way or another, we all changed gear. Becoming aware of the different reactions in the audience, we might wonder what it means to be a spectator. And clearly our individual presence, by being exposed, was considered as constructive for the piece as Greco's endurance was. We were not directly made part of the performance, but our subjective sensibility was included, by the sheer fact that the performer claimed his.

Greco repeated his request several times. There was no reproach in his voice. What he was asking for was just a little void, a small lapse of attention or in football terms, “a Schwalbe”, a moment of not playing by the rules.

A beginning needs a blank, a moment of nothingness, however impossible this may be. In Dutch audio-speak we call this blank “een witje”, a little bit of white. It means that nothing is being recorded, nothing is on tape, yet. Now in musical scores the bars without playing are called 'rest'. I don't know whether in dance there is a specific term for this kind of rest, in between movements. However, a audience cannot really be stopped, whether you consider their practice a form of recording or a form of writing. The movements of the audience are continuous, their show goes on, no matter what you ask.

So, the invitation to turn away or to close our eyes was an invitation to perform and maybe to perform differently. To consider one's self and the others, to become aware and maybe to change perspective because of this. This could just as well be regarded as a definition of the Egpc’s approach to dance in those days. To perform and to create meant to re-consider dance, to become aware of self and others and to create a different perspective because of that.

By the time people got adjusted to the situation, I think it took about 5 minutes, Emio Greco had withdrawn into near darkness and a piece of heavy, heavenly violin music from Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

So, from looking at ourselves and Emio as new objects and considering our gaze so literally, the piece throws you into the most admirable voyeurism you could wish for in dance. Plunged into darkness, grabbed by a tiny little spotlight on his head, Greco treats his body as a precious stone, that shines through with every facet, while violins intensify the experience, and the beat of Vivaldi, slow and insisting, shows us the way. Now, as I pronounce these words here, this may sound ironic, but I assure you the scene is not. It convinces. :)

More important: as much as the Vivaldi-sequence is a restoration of or re-investment in the spell that binds the audience through fascination, the fact that it was introduced by a request not to look, or to look at one’s self or to meditate on whatever comes to mind or body, changed that spell completely. A real intimacy was produced, not only for those members of the audience that felt a great relief, being set free by regaining the dark as the show went on.

ɷ

The logic of contrast and reversal of perspective is used a lot by Egpc in their work. The body of the dancer is actually the body of the audience, there's no fundamental difference between the two. And the aspects of dance tradition and contemporary culture they consider or criticize, are fully embraced in the practice of performance. As for instance the beginning of the more recent production Hell, the playback-scene, shows.

The joy of impersonating a star singer or a cult song it treated in a earnest way. The social activity is not mocked as such. But the fun game is corrupted by certain details, elements that fit but at the same time undermine the simple joy. The scene becomes a kind of station drama, with the lyrics of each song opening up to interpretations of and comments on contemporary life and dance. Even more so, as an introduction to the piece, it simply points out how dominant entertainment has become in our life. One might consider that Hell.

Let me give you another example from bianco of how Pieter Scholten and Emio Greco embrace the things they hate and reverse the roles at play. As bianco continues after what I described as the Vivaldi scene, more questioning of dance principles in relation to tradition are displayed, although never in a obvious way. Towards the end, Greco indulges in the most frantic movement sequence you can imagine: a lyrical robot gone wild on the beats of a dot matrix printer (those machines that would shake your desk while doing their job, printing). A big bang from the light cuts from unbearable brightness to complete darkness in a millisecond.

As an after-effect, the last intense moments of the show glow on as images before your eyes. These reminiscences, these imprints are produced by your brain being slow at adapting to the new situation (what is called persistence of vision). This effect then mingles with real appearances in the dark: numbers showing up on the floor, fluorescent points of reference, 1, 2, 3 till 7, each referring to the scene that took place in that space, but also referring to the 7 principles of a pamphlet that Greco and Scholten had published in the dance magazine Notes. Meanwhile, regaining his breath, Greco starts to sing from the dark, very softly and rather quick:
“Ne me quitte pas, Il faut oublier
Tout peut s'oublier, Qui s'enfuit déjà,
Oublier le temps, Des malentendus, Et le temps perdu,
A savoir comment, Oublier ces heures, Qui tuaient parfois,
A coups de pourquoi, Le coeur du bonheur, Ne me quitte pas, Ne me quitte pas, Ne me quitte pas, Ne me quitte pas."

This ne me quitte pas, you have to forget, all can be forgotten, what is slipping away already, to forget time, the misunderstandings, time lost, to know how, to forget the hours, that sometimes kill, asking again and again, the heart of happiness, don't leave me, don't leave me, don't leave me, don't leave me corresponds with the last of the 7 statements in the pamphlet, of course. It says: "il faut que je vous dise que je vous abandonne et que je vous laisse ma statue", I need to tell you that I am leaving (abandoning) you and will leave you with my statue.

Now, for a performer to persist so intensely in a certain physical quality, for Emio Greco and Pieter Scholten to invest all their gut in a one hour solo, and then to state that it is for nothing that one is performing, - the hopelessly insisting printer sound, the show being just an after-effect, the stupid numbers that stay and the chosen pathos of the singing in the dark, all testify to this - I must conclude that this finale not only advocates the merits of interpretation, but also welcomes the misunderstandings.

Emio and Pieter not only rebel against the modern Dutch tradition and its disregard for meaning in dance, claiming it is purely physical, or formal, or in one way or another beyond words. They also distance themselves from the romantic view of dance as being ephemeral, non-physical, immaterial, that which escapes us all and only resides with the stars. They put our sentiments, our awareness, our perception, our experience, our interpretation so much at the center of their work, as a clear substance to work with, residing in the body of the audience and the performer alike, that one can no longer hold the romantic or formal view of the unspeakable.

ɷ

In an interview in 2004, Greco expressed his ideas about the body as a source in relation to choreography. I paraphrase: “The body is a rich source, it can do more than dance, it is eclectic and in constant mutation, choreography is almost an old [outdated] word, that doesn't apply anymore, it tends to be artificial, an exterior world in which the body acts as in a construction, this explains sometimes for the friction between choreography and reality, choreography being so often the abstract or analytical result of what is on the choreographer’s mind. It doesn’t speak enough to the body, as a source needed to articulate the construction.” And he ends: ”I think choreography is still worthwhile as long as it is defined by other ingredients than those normally thought of as dance and composition.” (Anja Krans, Vertraagd effect, Amsterdam, 2005)

So it came from both sides, this assumption that what Emio and Pieter did, wasn't really choreography. The critic that qualified Greco's work as being more of a dancer's than of a choreographer's capacity, I would answer: graciously so.
Because this is exactly one of Egpc's contributions to the field of dance in Holland: that the formal, neutral, available, disciplined and able modern body actually gets a face, shows his gut and most important, sets an agenda, from the body, extending, in an almost natural way, step by step.

I think it is vital to the field of choreography that people openly and thoroughly question the basics of their trade. It actually surprises me how much dance as an art in Holland has developed as a fetish for the right body, the right frame, the right composition, the right concept, as if there is a general order to all of these things, that is exclusive instead of inclusive.

On the other hand, Emio Greco has stated in more than one interview that he needs Pieter Scholten to organize the work with him, not only to enable an inside-outside dialogue, a shared reflection that considers more than one perspective, but also because, from his experience, he felt that the movement never stopped, for him there was no ending, no beginning.

This shows a fundamental tension in the work. Composition is not there to tame the body whether it is the audience's or the performer's, to pacify its many directions and contents, in order to accommodate a visual or an ideologically justified overall. Composition is meant to enable the body experiences to come to the surface, to let them speak against.

Why this might have become such an urgent matter?
There are many reasons, and there isn’t time here to really reflect on this. One thing of course is the western tradition regarding the body as secondary to the mind, or to the soul. Another is, and I am now quoting Brian Massumi, being quoted at this afternoons symposium Questions of Meaning and Movement, the underestimation of movement as a fundamental quality in reflection and discourse.

Massumi: "The point of explanatory departure is a pinpointing, a zero-point of stasis. When positioning of any kind comes a determining first, movement comes a problematic second. After all is signified and sited, there is the nagging problem of how to add movement back into the picture." (Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, 2002)

Now this is a good way to now look at Rosso.

ɷ 1997, 1998

The approach of Fra cervello e movimento-Rosso, the second solo, is radically different from that of bianco. I guess, and I am only guessing, that after working on bianco for over two years, Emio Greco and Pieter Scholten had enough of framing themselves with statements and principles, concepts and points of departure that actually had to be met. Although in the performance of bianco their critical approach to dance culture is only implied, the working process in those first two years must have been exhausting, laying the ground for their personal method and approach on all kinds of levels.

So white paper was replaced by red velvet, and the open beginning, the blank, the attempts at analysis, the maybes, the look at it this way or maybe that, was followed by a full body. Although the colour red refers to all kind of symbolics, in Rosso it refers mainly to what lies under my white skin, substances covered in blood. Flesh, bones, ligaments and a nervous system holding together a few vital organs. When that body starts to move, it inhales oxygen, it uses energy, it starts steaming. And this produces a different state of the mind.

The structure of Rosso has a physical logic. It isn’t based on questions about the dance world and the purpose of dance as an art. Instead it starts from an intense physicality that structures awareness and allows for certain perceptions that do not always speak to the mind. In white everything stands out. In red, everything vanishes, melts together. Especially with red stage lights in a red box, it is actually hard to perceive anything, the brain has a problem, just as it has with quick changes from light to dark.

The opening scene of Rosso seems to pick up from the moment halfway bianco, which I described earlier as the Vivaldi-scene: where Greco holds his body as a precious stone. At the beginning of Rosso, again there is a tiny little spotlight, and Emio is holding his body, but the precious of bianco has been reconfigured. The body has members but they stick out from unfamiliar places, it has a face, but it doesn't look so human. Of course everybody realized this must be Emio in some kind of Indian snake dance act. But through the duration of the scene and its physical build-up, we actually become familiar with another kind of body than the one we know. Our body could have evolved differently – although I always thought we stem from fish, not birds ...

So, by radically flipping over homo erectus, man, l'homme, l'état, the state, that which is standing, Greco and Scholten begin Rosso with questioning the statue of human beings, this image we have in our mind of what it means to be human, the only erect animal on the planet, having developed his brain as no other animal has, and accordingly attributing to these qualities certain values and positionings, or hierarchies. So, not to replace this human statue with some kind of fantasy, but to reconsider the powers, the different forces driving us on a basic level. In a scene just after the beginning they are staged in a little pantomime. Fear, anger, curiosity, desire, envy, joy and sadness show up as competing forces within the body, even conspiring against it.

With Rosso, the body had to re-conquer the stage, become its own frame, its own context, it own ideology. No pure physicality, not pure dance. But also not pure projection, reference, discourse and food for interpretation. Again there is a rebellious quality in the work. With the emphasis on drives and the issues of power that are entailed (being driven or driving), this body cannot stop moving, whether dance allows for it or not, whether it looks good on stage or not. This being that can't get enough, that always wants to do more or go on, that is challenged by every step, that wants to climb the highest mountain and go over the top, something every athlete, every cyclist, every kind of physical fanatic knows about, that body is at stake.

To rephrase Massumi: to distract movement from the pinpointing and the mapping of the images we have on our mind and in our culture, that determine the position of the body, create hierarchies that govern it, frame it with purpose outside itself. Instead Rosso takes an odd beginning to distract the primary movements from those expectations. Movements neither autonomous nor a-historical, but detached from the images. Bound and anchored in the interplay of resonances between and within the body of the dancer and the audience. Movements that make the image of the body relative and place the individual histories of the dancer and the audience alike in a physical perspective. To assume the possibility of an inherent truth, even if only momentarily, in the movement of a body when it is confronted with or receptive to the bodies around it.

The search for this truth is a quest, with moments of rest and quiet and moments of intense struggle for meaning, and with a good deal of humor, of making fun of yourself and your quest.

So, after Rosso comes Extra Dry.

ɷ 1998

One last remark about the break away from solo-work. It concerns duets, doubling and dancing in somebody else work.

After Rosso, Emio Greco and Pieter Scholten invited the dancer Bertha Bermudez, who had been working with Forsythe's Frankfurter Ballet, to join them in a research on how to break open the solo-work. This resulted in Double Point:2, the first in a long series of research projects, all called double point:something.

So Bertha was the first, before Andy Deneys in Extra Dry, to enter this delicate space, this dialogue between Pieter and Emio. Until now I haven't mentioned the hyper-personal approach that defines Egpc's dance work. The way Emio Greco takes on the responsibility of being an author and a performer results in a ultra specific treatment of his own experience, that translates through the exchange with Pieter Scholten and is extended in a body of work, pieces, an oeuvre, method, approach, perspective. You can enter a work process, but to enter the specific definitions which Emio and Pieter were developing is something else. Who says that Bertha, or anyone else, would come up with the same kind of specificities through her body, through her mind?

Now of course one could make the principles less specific and let someone have her own way with things, and develop in a different direction, as an alternative to those principles. Scholten and Greco chose not to do so. They actually engaged in a project where the deep and private notion of Emio's approach to movement in life and theater is taken as key-material, as the source-code.

Double Point:2 is a doubling, a synchronizing exercise, different from the more common use of this impressive device in the staging of bodies in movement, like soldiers marching in a parade, horses and elephants in a circus or classical dancers in the corps de ballet. The kind of movement that is doubled in Double Point:2 has nothing to do with the clearly defined shapes of parading.

Physical challenge is one of the most important aspects in Egpc's approach. With it comes extreme effort, deep concentration, but also hesitation, questioning and rephrasing, processes that allow for the crossing of physical and mental borders. The work produces these processes in the body as it is achieving form or letting go of it. The performances are full of in between moments that articulate stages of a process, the breaking up of a general line of movement into fractions by analyzing it, preparing it, finding out different qualities, shades, tone, timbre.

Breath and breathing, as a kind of inner music of the body, play a significant role in this approach. During training the dancer is confronted with the specificity of his or her private body through intense and lengthy breathing exercises. Exhaustion and deep body awareness bring personal histories, psychological complexities, social frameworks, cultural-political reflexes and so on, to the surface.
On stage the loss of breath and regaining is never concealed. Often dancers have to invest that much effort in the work that they loose control over the way they look. Their body appearance is the result of the work they do, not the other way around. Faces show the intensity of the effort, the complexity of the task or the bluntness of a body being taken over by movement. Between dancers the sharing of breath, the rhythm this creates, the music that derives from different breathing paths is as manifest as, and often precedes, the shape of the movement.

Moving at the limit of the achievable, the dancers loose control over the image of the movement and find themselves in a state that not only transcends the social body, but also, in a way, the private. They cannot hide in decorative variations or dramatic gestures. Their posture is a result and not a point of departure. Dancers are forced to concentrate on how the movement comes into being and on what differs each time it is done. Going through something over and over again, insisting on a specific quality, is not meant to display technical or analytical insight (although without it, this work couldn’t be done of course). It is meant to create a potential in the body, a heightened awareness, a trained sensitivity to convey elementary questions. This results in a trance-like quality that, paradoxically, can only be generated by a consciously acting dancer and a highly lucid articulation of the body.

The minuscule detailing of the body that is foregrounded in this manner, arises from the individual interpretation of the dancer. What communicates most of all is not the effort it requires or the great control, but the specific route the dancer chooses. It is this physical detailing that impresses the audience and provokes physical awareness and body memory, opening in the body of the spectator a similar repository of personal histories, psychological complexities, social frameworks, cultural-political reflexes as is used as a source by the dancers.

As in every new performance the dancers go on to explore the relationship between their body and the intended form (a broken up general line of choreography) in accordance with their individual commitment and the possible meaning that flows from this exchange, so the spectators continuously reconsider the spectacle as the detailed paths taken by the dancers resonate in their body.

The doubling exercise, the synchronizing that is so characteristic of the first duets Double Point:2 and Extra Dry and continues to play an important role in the group pieces of Egpc, is often taken as a cloning device, comparable to the parading practices I described earlier as a feature of entertainment of all sorts, more or less military, celebrating the pacifying effect of order and the power of its master, leaving Emio Greco in the position of a chief whip or a circus director.
For me it has exactly the opposite effect. It is in the doubling, and in the doubling of Emio Greco, that the individual approach and the ambiguity of the coming together can be expressed. Not as a antagonistic quality resulting from different roles to be played, but as a subtle friction between minds and bodies that remain fundamentally different, no matter how much alike their proceedings are.

Double point:2 and Extra Dry have become repertoire. Unlike nine years ago, Pieter and Emio work with a bigger group of dancers now. Over the years it has been a great pleasure to see the work evolve through time as it was performed by subsequent casts. Extra Dry for instance I witnessed being danced by Emio Greco and Andy Deneys, Emio Greco and Barbara Meneses Gutiérrez, Nicola Monaco and Vincent Colomes and today we will see Ti Boomershine and Victor Callens dance it.

I had two DVDs of Extra Dry lying on my desk all week. I decided not to watch them. The only way to see Egpc's work, at least for me, is through the dancer’s perspective. The frame or the grit or the skeleton of the performance stays similar if not exactly the same, but you need the flesh, its specific quality, its history, its preferences, its personal struggle, its individual triumph, the interpretation of the dancer, to really see the piece again.

In the old sense, as Sawami Fukuoka declared provokingly at the beginning of Rimasto Orphano, Emio Greco is dead. Greco and Scholten don’t construct for the body as if all bodies are alike, all like Emio Greco's. They are not like the architect who thinks in terms of steel and concrete constructions and beautiful, efficient form, who conceives of the people using the buildings as model citizens. Contemporary architecture is not only concerned with the function of a building and its purposes, it also thinks of strategies for developing and accommodating all kinds of behaviour, in work and other life processes, passing through the construction and making it work.

Thank you very much for your attention.

EG|PC in residentie, 2005-2006, Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten.

door fransien van der putt

In de opzet van het Artist in Residence-schap van EG|PC staat geschreven dat zij het lichaam van de danser willen ontdoen van opgelegde vormen. Ze willen komen tot een individuele en authentieke inzet van het lichaam in relatie tot het bewegingsrepertoire van EG|PC. Ook elders duiken bewoordingen op als ‘de waarheid van het lichaam’, ‘de autonomie van de dans’, ‘de danser als visionair’ – het is een terminologie die gemakkelijk als fundamentalistisch kan worden beschouwd, als zou er een a-historisch, oorspronkelijk, autonoom danslichaam bestaan dat tot dito dansbewegingen kan komen. Dient de bestaande (Westerse) dans ontmaskerd te worden? Opdat de ware beweging het licht zal zien...

IL FAUT QUE...

Extreme concentratie, uiterste inspanning en fysieke uitputting spelen een grote rol binnen het werk van Emio Greco en Pieter C. Scholten. Door op de grens van het haalbare te bewegen, verliezen de dansers de controle over het beeld van de beweging. Zij raken in een staat die het sociale, en in zekere zin ook het private lichaam te boven gaat. Door het relatief beperkte bewegingsrepertoire kan de danser zich niet verschuilen in decoratieve variaties. In de veelheid van bijna hetzelfde wordt hij gedwongen zich te concentreren op hoe de beweging zich voltrekt en wat steeds opnieuw het verschil maakt. De tranceachtige kwaliteit die daarmee ontstaat, kan echter alleen worden voortgebracht door een bewust agerende danser en een uiterst heldere articulatie van het lichaam.

Il faut que je vous dise qu’il faut que vous tourniez la tête.

Een vergelijkbaar fascinerend effect doet zich voor in het kijken van de toeschouwer. Als frequente bezoeker van de voorstellingen van EG|PC is het haast onmogelijk de afzonderlijke werken uit elkaar te houden. Daarvoor wordt het oeuvre te zeer gekenmerkt door een uiterst geleidelijke fasering van een beperkt aantal fysieke thema’s. De minuscule detaillering van het lichaam die zo op de voorgrond treedt, opwellend uit de individuele fysieke verhouding van de danser tot het zich langzaam uitbreidende EG|PC-repertoire, scherpt de waarneming van de toeschouwer en brengt die tot op de huid van de uitvoerenden. Niet de inspanning die het kost of de excellente beheersing die aan het dansen ten grondslag liggen maken de meeste indruk, maar de specifieke weg die de dansers afleggen, gaat spreken. Het brengt de toeschouwer zijn eigen lichaam in herinnering.

Het reële lichaam van de danser, dat in zijn concreetheid weerstand biedt aan abstrahering of esthetisering, contrasteert met de kunstmatige leegte waarin het zich begeeft op het podium. Het roept onomwonden om duiding. Niet zozeer vanuit de symboliek, maar vanuit het bewegen zelf, vanuit de textuur van het lichaam in de tijd. In de leegte ontstaat onwillekeurig een betekenisvolle relatie tot alles wat er niet is. Het buiten - de reële wereld en de imaginaire, de context van representaties en discours - dient zich aan in de perceptie van de toeschouwer.

Il faut que je vous dise que mon corps est curieux de tout et moi: je suis mon corps.

Aan de basis van het choreografische werk van EG|PC staat het hervinden van het eigen lichaam. De training die Greco en Scholten gebruiken, vervat in de workshop ‘Double Skin, Double Mind’, is daarbij veelbetekenend. Met een back to the body-benadering wordt de danser door intense en langdurige ademhalingsoefeningen geconfronteerd met de specificiteit van het private lichaam; het lichaam als vergaarbak van talloze invloeden: persoonlijke geschiedenissen, psychologische complexiteiten, maatschappelijke schema’s, cultuur-politieke reflexen, en wat dies meer zij.
“An awareness is developed of the resonance in one’s own body, to perceive oneself and to start to perceive the world around through the body.” (1)

Il faut que je vous dise que je peux contrôler mon corps et en même temps jouer avec lui.

Emio Greco omschrijft het proces dat door deze training in gang wordt gezet, als een terugtrekking, een innerlijke reflectie. Het wordt de danser onmogelijk gemaakt zich alleen in de uiterlijke vorm te verdiepen of zijn lichaam belangeloos of vrijblijvend beschikbaar te stellen voor een of andere toepassing. Eerst moet de diversiteit en instabiliteit van het eigen instrument onderzocht worden. In het begin kan dit confronterend zijn. Angst en agressie komen naar de oppervlakte, maar:
"This preparation can actually empower the dancer to deal with the specifics in the body and to employ them, instead of being unconsciously regulated by them or to cover them up.” (1)

Door binnen de training de nadruk te leggen op gevoeligheid en reflectie binnen het lichaam en die als basis te nemen voor de ontwikkeling van de choreografie, bereiken Greco en Scholten een resonantie in het lichaam van de danser in relatie tot de vorm. De choreografie is in die zin nooit af. De dansers weet wat de bedoeling is, maar blijft steeds op zoek naar de relatie tussen zijn lichaam en de vorm, naar zijn persoonlijke inzet en de mogelijke betekenis die daar uit voortvloeit. En als er dan binnen het bewegingsrepertoire een uitgesproken vorm of veelbetekenende pose opduikt, gaat deze nu niet als een masker aan de dans of de beweger vooraf, maar wordt onderdeel van het spel dat de danser speelt met zijn lichaam.

Voor Greco en Scholten is fysieke uitdaging belangrijker dan beheersing van het lichamelijke beeld. Dit wil niet zeggen dat zij geen techniek toepassen of het zonder vorm stellen. Maar waar veel dansmakers de beheersing en het tonen van de juiste vorm in choreografische arrangementen voorop stellen, kenmerkt het werk van EG|PC zich door fysieke inzet, aarzeling, het stellen van vragen, het tonen van de preparatie en het overgaan van fysieke en mentale grenzen. Het werk maakt de processen die het lichaam doormaakt om tot een vorm te komen aanschouwelijk, sterker nog: het tonen van deze processen behoort tot de kern van het werk. De talloze improvisaties op de vierkante millimeter getuigen hiervan. Er zijn weinig dansmakers wier taal zo’n intense indruk achterlaat. Dat zou dan toch ook een kwestie van uitgesproken vorm moeten zijn. Het roept de vraag op wat in essentie verstaan wordt onder choreografie.

Il faut que je vous dise que je ne suis pas seul.

Nederland heeft een bepaalde danstraditie en het is binnen deze context dat Emio Greco en Pieter C. Scholten ruim tien jaar geleden besloten te gaan samenwerken. De ontvangst van hun eerste werk was problematisch binnen de Nederlandse danswereld. De kracht van het werk werd erkend, maar over de betekenis tastte men luidruchtig in het duister. Spasmen, gekrioel... meer het werk van een danser dan van een choreograaf. Men kon het werk niet plaatsen. Greco en Scholten waren echter heel helder over hun uitgangspunten. Hun eerste voorstelling Fra cervello e movimento - bianco viel samen met een pamflet dat in een van de laatste nummers van het dansblad Notes werd gepubliceerd.(3) Op uitnodiging van het tijdschrift formuleerden zij een beginselprogramma. Luther en Marx werden daarin benoemd tot hun beschermheren. Met de keuze voor deze peetvaders riepen zij een onrustbarend beeld op van het lichamelijk bestaan in het algemeen en dans in het bijzonder: decadentie, uitbuiting, verwaarlozing en verlies van persoonlijke integriteit. De zeven stellingen die het middelpunt van het manifest vormden, gingen weliswaar in positieve zin in op wat hen dreef als makers, maar vielen ook te lezen als een indirecte kritiek op de danswereld. Uit alles sprak de behoefte om de dans te bevrijden van zijn weerbarstige ketenen.

In diezelfde tijd, midden jaren negentig, begon de conceptuele of antidans zich te manifesteren op de Nederlandse podia: voorstellingen die de beweging als zodanig ter discussie stelden en zich concentreerden op de manier waarop ‘het lichaam gekolonialiseerd werd door het dominante discours’, zoals men dat in postmoderne termen uitdrukt. Deze makers hadden uiteraard weinig oog voor de (van oudsher binnen en buiten de danswereld gecelebreerde) bevrijdende werking van beweging. Het establishment van de Nederlandse dans blonk in die jaren uit in het ongecompliceerd toepassen van bekende recepten. De kwaliteit doorstond steeds minder de internationale concurrentie. Greco en Scholten vielen op twee manieren buiten de boot. Hun ideologische inzet kwam weliswaar overeen met de conceptuelen, maar zij deelden niet hun directe maatschappelijk kritische benadering, waarbinnen het lichaam zich vooral tot beeldvorming en representatie moest verhouden. Greco en Scholten bleven inzetten op de mogelijkheid tot een eigenzinnig spreken van het lichaam en de beweging zelf. Tegelijkertijd braken zij volledig met het denken in termen van stijl, vorm, techniek en methode, zoals de gevestigde orde, de Nederlandse moderne dans, dat deed.

Il faut que je vous dise que mon corps m’échappe.

Greco en Scholten zeggen geen techniek te hebben. Zij vinden de centrale rol van techniek en (herhaalbare, overdraagbare, grijpbare) vorm binnen de dans en het dansonderwijs onterecht. Zij willen de positie van techniek ter discussie stellen:
“You know the technique, than you know dance. Technique and style fall together and through this construct you simply access the art. Schools seem to have a tendency to a privileged approach, to be exclusive rather than inclusive. There are so many different trainings in the academies, but all these approaches are considered to be fundamentally different, because of the difference in technique or form. Departments communicate little with each other, let alone with the outside world of movement, physical culture or intellectual reflection.” (1)

Geen enkel lichaam is oorspronkelijk, geen optreden autonoom. Lichamen, bewegingen, gebeurtenissen, al dan niet geënsceneerd, krijgen vorm en betekenis in een steeds wisselende context. Waarom zou iemand zich druk maken over authenticiteit? Welk verlangen wordt er uitgedrukt wanneer Greco en Scholten spreken over authenticiteit van de dans?

De opstelling van Emio Greco en Pieter C. Scholten kan misschien het best begrepen worden vanuit een verzet tegen de manier waarop bepaalde stromingen binnen de moderne dans de presentatie van het lichaam voorop zijn gaan stellen. In de afgelopen decennia is het ‘beeld’ van het lichaam belangrijker geworden dan de beleving van de beweging of beweger zelf.

Il faut que je vous dise que je peux multiplier mon corps.

De obsessie met vorm en bewegingstechniek is in Nederland wellicht groter dan in de ons omringende landen. Naast een ras uit de grond gestampte ballettraditie, laat zich in de jaren ’60 en ’70 van de vorige eeuw de invloed van de New Yorkse avant-garde gelden.(2) Een hele generatie Nederlandse dansmakers werd geïnspireerd. Zowel de Amerikaanse moderne dans als het in Nederland al dominante neoklassieke of moderne ballet, concentreerde zich meer op vorm en materie dan op expressie van een thema of het ondervragen van de noodzaak van beweging. Het adagium ‘dans drukt niet anders uit dan dans’ is nog steeds van invloed op de werkwijze en perceptie van veel Nederlandse dansmakers. De visuele ordening van het lichaam en van de lichamen in ruimte en tijd, al of niet gebonden aan een conceptueel contract, heeft gemaakt dat ‘het beeld’ van het lichaam belangrijker is geworden dan de beleving van de beweging of de beweger zelf. Ook bij de nieuwste generatie dansmakers, die zich vooral concentreren op vormen van representatie van het lichaam en weinig vertrouwen stellen in zoiets als ‘oorspronkelijke expressie’, komt de hang naar juiste vorm indirect terug.

Maar de obsessie met het beeld van de beweging zou ook gezien kunnen worden als een maskering van het instabiele en diverse binnen het lichaam zelf. Een verdedigingsmechanisme tegen al te gretige blikken en brutale vragen. De verplichte vitaliteit – uitgedrukt in de gedisciplineerde perfectie van het lichaam (al of niet gevangen in een conceptueel contract), de zelfbewuste blik van de performer en, boven alles, de vanzelfsprekende beschikbaarheid van het lichaam, spiegelt de blik van de toeschouwer in plaats van hem toe te laten. In stille bewondering kan deze zo zijn eigen lichaam vergeten. Authenticiteit in dans daarentegen, kan begrepen worden als een wezenlijk oorspronkelijke ervaring van de beweging. Een beweging, niet autonoom of a-historisch, maar losgezongen van het beeld. Gebonden aan en verankerd in het spel van resonanties tussen en binnenin de lichamen van danser en toeschouwer. Bewegingen die het beeld van het lichaam betrekkelijk maken en de individuele geschiedenis van danser en toeschouwer in een fysiek perspectief plaatsen. De roep om authenticiteit speculeert dan op de mededeelzaamheid van een zekere waarheid in de beweging van het lichaam, wanneer dit geconfronteerd wordt met of zich openstelt voor de lichamen om hem heen.


Il faut que je vous dise que je vous abandonne et que je vous laisse ma statue. (3)

En zo zouden ook de woorden van Emio Greco uit een recent verschenen interview begrepen kunnen worden:
“The body can do more than the dance; it is eclectic and in constant mutation. The dance is more limited and choreography is almost an old word that doesn’t really apply anymore. […] It does not really speak enough to the source itself, which is the body. That source is needed to articulate the construction. That is why I think choreography is still worthwhile, as long as it is defined by other ingredients and elements than those normally thought of as dance and composition.” (4)



(1) Citaten uit gesprek van Emio Greco en Pieter Scholten met FvdP, februari 2006.
(2) Voor beschrijvingen van de onderbroken traditie van de Nederlandse danskunst, zie pagina 61 en verder in Holland danst! Danscultuur in de twintigste eeuw, Klazien Brummel, Walburg Pers, 2004.
(3) "il manifesto - fra cervello e movimento", gepubliceerd in Notes, maart 1996.
(4) Citaat uit interview, verschenen in Anja Krans, Vertraagd effect, hedendaags theater in 1 inleiding en 18 interviews, Theater Instituut Nederland, 2005, p. 289.