So I did not dance
For me watching a good stand up comedian provides inspiration, pleasure, and appreciation of expertise. Particularly when I see free associative improvisation with known material done beautifully. Right there I recognize presence, memory, skill, timing and instant feedback by way of laughter.
In approaching a solo performance at a friends fundraiser I did my best to keep a clean slate prior to going on, ie: an empty mind. It’s what I like to think that I do. In truth I often organize some kind of idea in my mind to take onstage. In this case I had constructed a cardboard sign to wear around my neck. The audience could clearly read the text, on one side it said ‘ONLOOKER’, on the other side it said ‘LIAR’. This was inspired by images from a Tim Etchells book ‘ Certain Fragments’ and was also fueled by a persistent desire to be understood as a performer. I wanted to throw the audience something to grab onto.
As it turned out I ended up doing a stand up comedy routine. There was no dancing. All the improvised movement I normally do was absent with the exception of a repeated motif consisting of a lean against a wall with rather bizarrely shaped hands . The underlying gag was that yes I was going to dance any moment now. This provided comic tension reminiscent of Victor Borge’s work. I swear I wanted to dance but talking and making sense to a group of people who actually laughed and responded to me directly shaped the interaction. I felt that the abstracted movement I tend to do had no reason to be in the performance. In the words of Bill Bailey “So I did not dance.”
Although it was an appropriate decision to develop the text I still felt (post performance) that there was a problem and the problem itself was cliche’ ie: the perceived chasm between movement and text. There’s a consistent sense – alluded to in my last my last post, of the unresolved. The incomplete. As if the question driving the performance itself was not quite clear enough to begin with. Although I had wanted to bring dance into that particular performance there seemed to be no available entrance. No way of doing it that could reconcile my desire to perform movement with what was actually happening.
But I talked about dance. I stood in a roomful of people who laughed at me.
26. April 2009 at 19:38
By coincidence we were talking about stand-up at Europe in Motion last week (as part of the Springdance Festival in Utrecht, Netherlands). It was in relation to the young German (but a little bit based in London) choreographer Gabrielle Reuter. Her work consists of a stream of talking (partially scripted, mostly improvised) that responds to the different locations in the performance space. In response to a presentation Gabrielle did, Igor Dobricic talked of the ‘performative position’ of the stand-up. I think he was referring the very particular nature of performing as a stand-up, and the possibilities for contemporary performance (particular dance) borrowing from, or considering this ‘position’.
At the same time, I presented a short ‘work in progress’ last Wednesday and it produced a lot of laughter in the audience (so much so, I didn’t quite know how to handle it as a performer). This is not a common occurrence for me in my work (although perhaps a little bit in the work I do with Kirstie Simson, and to a lesser extent in my academic presentations)…
I am very interested in this.
Oh – haven’t really responded to the ‘not-dancing’ aspect of your post!
ske
26. April 2009 at 22:44
I have to admit that as a performer who has mostly performed ‘mute’ to perfectly serious audiences looking at me in silence I feel liberated by improvising with text and getting laughter in reply.
Gabrielle’s work sounds interesting. Possibly she is providing meta commentary on her process? Would like to see it.
As for the not dancing bit in my post – I was definitely in ‘state’ ie; I went on in a feeling state that usually goes with my dancing. I just didn’t do movements that usually come from that state. As I said that became the gag..nearly dancing then interrupting myself to talk to the audience or think out loud.
I think this direction is where I’m going to push my performance work.