A subaltern pathway
Paz Rojo
Febrero 2020
Codirección: Victoria Pérez Royo, Chrysa Parkinson.
This doctoral artistic research project (Doctoral Thesis) addresses the possibility of a dance withdrawn from that neoliberal scheme according to which self-performance, entrepreneurship and the production of subjectivity rule. Taking as a starting point the dissident corporealities that have emerged in the last fifty years in Western contemporary experimental dance; the project involves aesthetic, philosophical and socio-political perspectives, carried out on choreographic, performative, textual, audiovisual, curatorial and discursive media. This documented artistic research project (Doctoral Thesis) consists of three inter-related parts: first it invites the reader to see the performance’s video «ECLIPSE: MUNDO». Afterwards, the reader is invited to read the book «To Dance in the Age of No-Future» and get a context regarding the rest of the audiovisual materials located on the same website. The exposed materials are displayed as an “essay written form” understood in the Spanish or French sense of the Latin word «ensayo / répétition» and its associated meanings such as try-out, rehearsal, practice, study, preparation and experimentation. To this end, the materials show an ongoing migration of concepts, practices and tools, through analogous forms, equivalences and contrasts that invite to see this project’s genealogies and continuous iterations in formats such as video, testimonies, audios, scores, tool descriptions and images. Accordingly, it is the reader who –by viewing, listening to and reading these materials– can trace the diverse kinetic, political, aesthetic, discursive and conceptual layers linked to the practices and presentation formats specific to this doctoral research project since its beginning.
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In late capitalism dance’s commitment with the future (or its lack thereof) must find alliances with potentiality and nothingness. This is not a nihilistic affirmation, but an attempt to enable an interval: a dance whose value has to be apprehended there, where it is already happening. Kafka said that «one might have a goal, but not a pathway». The pathway involves a decisive cognition such that cannot be carried out without one becoming the path itself; without defying so to speak, the relationship of the dancer with dance itself. It is not about what the dancer can do, say or communicate in respect to dance, but what dance accounts for in itself. In modern’s kinetic exhaustion, the latter is possible approaching dance as a presence-in-crisis. The semantic field of the word «crisis» and its associated words, –critical judgment, decision and separation–, defines the moment when something or someone has somehow one foot outside. The moment when one realizes that it is not the world that ends, but the linguistic constructions and the reality systems that had made sense until then. This proposal tries to embody that gap. It tries to reveal the somatic, kinetic, political and aesthetic implications whereby to dance on a limit that is both inaugural and terminal. Decisive. Although “deciding” will always be not knowing what will happen. It is a dance that, although it does not seem to mean anything, it does something. The moment at which dance let’s go of being a product (a goal), to become a deposition. «Deposition» is a word that includes both, an abandonment and a position. At the same time, to take on a position implies a becoming: the (path)way through which the dancer coincides with dance’s conditions. The moment at which the dancer abandons any intention to communicate, to propose or to interpret dance, to carry out kinetically and perceptually the non-significant, ephemeral, ineffable and impersonal conditions that dance implies as a presence-in-crisis. In short, the coincidence “dancer : dance” implies taking into account an experience of dance freedom that is fugitive. In the theatre apparatus it involves a dancing which ―by lacking recognizable aims, signs and subjects― gives way to an aesthetic paradigm which is not be construed as a particular kind of thing (a performance, a type of dancer, a subject, or even a social or artistic process), but rather as a gap’s embodied experimentation. A threshold, a curve. A parenthesis. An eclipse. A void: the encounter with something which doesn’t need to be produced, because it is already happening.
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En el capitalismo tardío, el compromiso de la danza con el futuro (o la falta del mismo) debe encontrar alianzas con la potencialidad y la nada. No se trata de una afirmación nihilista, sino de un intento de habilitar un intervalo: una danza cuyo valor debe aprehenderse allí, donde ya está sucediendo. Kafka dijo que «uno puede tener una meta, pero no un camino». El camino implica una cognición decisiva tal que no puede llevarse a cabo sin convertirse uno mismo en el camino; sin desafiar, por así decirlo, la relación del bailarín con la danza misma. No se trata de lo que el bailarín puede hacer, decir o comunicar con respecto a la danza, sino de lo que la danza representa en sí misma. En el agotamiento cinético de lo moderno, esto último es posible al abordar la danza como una presencia en crisis. El campo semántico de la palabra «crisis» y sus palabras asociadas —juicio crítico, decisión y separación— define el momento en que algo o alguien tiene, de alguna manera, un pie fuera. El momento en que uno se da cuenta de que no es el mundo el que se acaba, sino las construcciones lingüísticas y los sistemas de realidad que hasta entonces tenían sentido. Esta propuesta intenta plasmar esa brecha. Intenta revelar las implicaciones somáticas, cinéticas, políticas y estéticas por las que bailar en un límite que es a la vez inaugural y terminal. Decisivo. Aunque «decidir» siempre será no saber lo que va a pasar. Es una danza que, aunque no parece significar nada, hace algo. El momento en el que la danza deja de ser un producto (un objetivo), convertirse en una deposición. «Deposición» es una palabra que incluye tanto un abandono como una posición. Al mismo tiempo, adoptar una posición implica un devenir: el camino a través del cual el bailarín coincide con las condiciones de la danza. El momento en el que el bailarín abandona cualquier intención de comunicar, proponer o interpretar la danza, para llevar a cabo cinética y perceptivamente las condiciones insignificantes, efímeras, inefables e impersonales que la danza implica como presencia en crisis. En resumen, la coincidencia «bailarín : danza» implica tener en cuenta una experiencia de libertad de danza que es fugitiva. En el aparato teatral, implica una danza que, al carecer de objetivos, signos y sujetos reconocibles, da paso a un paradigma estético que no debe interpretarse como un tipo de cosa en particular (una actuación, un tipo de bailarín, un sujeto o incluso un proceso social o artístico), sino más bien como la experimentación encarnada de una brecha. Un umbral, una curva. Un paréntesis. Un eclipse. Un vacío: el encuentro con algo que no necesita ser producido, porque ya está sucediendo