ReConstruct

Sarma 1 Mar 2000English

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Contextual note
This text was written in spring 2000 for the first performances of ‚ReConstruct‘ in the Lofft Theatre in Leipzig, and rewritten in summer/autumn 2000 for the performances of ‚ReConstruct‘ in Tanzfabrik Berlin.

This lecture-performance is about the reconstruction of three dances of the „Affectos Humanos“ by Dore Hoyer from 1962. Actually the „AH“ consist of five dances: „Vanity“, „desire“, „hate“, „fear“ and „love“. The three reconstructed dances, which I will show later, are „desire“, „hate“ and „fear“. They were originally reconstructed for „affects/rework“ by Tom Plischke and myself.

„affects/rework“, originally called „affects“, is an attempt to bring together dance material from the past with text, video and movement material from present days. The piece is a kind of laboratory set-up. The premiere was on 2/17/2000. Within less than one year „affects“ saw four very different versions of which the last one is called „affects/rework“. This last version consists of video material, a white theater space, movement material by Tom Plischke, titles spoken by Alice Chauchat and the reconstruction of the “Affectos Humanos”. „affects/rework“ is most probably the version which gets closest to the central interests of the work: What happens when a contemporary dancer exposes himself to an entirely foreign movement language?

Back to the reconstruction: The following will be presented: The three dances mentioned above, anecdotes from and thoughts about the process of reconstruction.

This lecture-performance uses ideas and work results of Dore Hoyer, Tom Plischke, Waltraud Luley, Alice Chauchat, Gilles Deleuze, Baruch de Spinoza, John Cage, Hennes&Mauritz and of myself. Thus, this evening is a thoroughly human enterprise.

Waltraud Luley holds an important role in the achievement of the reconstruction. She worked with me on all the dances and took her time to make clear to me the spirit of and the ideas behind the work of Dore Hoyer. How did the initial meeting take place?

The German dance archive in Cologne holds the authorship rights of the „AH“. If anybody wants to work with these dances, he or she has to talk to this institution. In the case of the „AH“ the decision about who can work with this cycle of dances is transmitted to Waltraud Luley. She is 87 years old and still runs a dance studio in Frankfurt, Germany. She was a good friend of Dore Hoyer, her manager and at times her lover. Which makes her some kind of specialist, I guess.

So, I called Waltraud Luley in order to find out what was to do. She liked very much the idea that it would be a man who would dance the „AH“ (even though later she refused and still refuses that I dance the dances „vanity“ and „love“ as they are too „female“ as she puts it; danced by a man they might become ridiculous she fears). She asked me some questions about height and weight. Apparently, she wanted to get an idea of my physique. In the end she asked whether I was a lyrical or a dynamic dancer. I answered with the first option, and she replied: „Well, the lyrical dancer has normally a problem with the ‚AH’. But we can try anyway.“ After I had told this to my colleagues, they wouldn’t stop calling me lyrical dancer for quite a while.

Using a film of the “AH”, which was shot in 1967 by a German television station, a few weeks before Hoyer’s suicide, I started working on three of the five dances and met Luley a few weeks later in her studio in Frankfurt. Tom came with me, so we could also talk about the whole project with her in order to see what she would think of our ideas. She offered us coffee and cookies. We talked for a while and she was very interested in the ideas of „affects“. Then we went into the studio and I showed her what I had worked on. „This looks pretty good concerning the steps and directions in space,” Luley said. “But in terms of expression and intensity you have now about 20% of what should be there. It still needs a lot of work.“ I had known this somehow, but it was still a shock to hear it so directly.

Luley then asked Tom to leave the studio to work with me on the beginning of the dance „hate“. Displaying a lot of energy and power, she tried to get across that hate involves a lot of tension. This was an idea, which I could follow intellectually. But in dance it was entirely unknown to me to work with a high degree of tension, as I had been trained in various release techniques. These techniques focus on working with just the amount of energy that is needed for a movement. “The whole body is a cramp!” Tom sat outside and thought: “O, poor Martin! Luley is one of those old, authoritarian ladies of German dance.” Which was or is not the case, I have to say immediately. Luley only wanted to teach some of the basic elements of Hoyer’s dances.

One week later, we met again. Afterwards Luley said: “It is good working with you.” By this, it was decided that the reconstruction could be carried through. From then on I worked on the dances “desire”, “hate” and “fear”. Later in the process, Alice Chauchat came in to help me when I didn’t work with Luley.

Still Luley and I sometimes work together on the dances. Especially when I will perform them soon. Interestingly, that even months after the premiere there are details and elements that have yet been undiscovered.

One may ask why somebody puts so much effort in subjecting himself to the discipline of another dancer’s ways? What is the motivation to literally embody the other in dance?

First, there was the mere fascination when we first saw the film from 1967. During the rehearsal for “events for television (again)”, the first piece of our group, in the summer of 1999 in Brussels, we always looked for film material that we would inspire us for the process of “events”. So, we found a video tape in a pile of other dance videos, which interested me, because I had heard the name “Dore Hoyer” before. We were astonished by the intensity of the material and by the fact, that there was a choreographer in the 60’s in Germany who was consequent in researching and forming movement. We decided to work with this material and see what would happen with it and with us throughout the process.

But what might reconstruction actually mean? Joachim Gerstmeier, who was the dramaturg of “affects”, gave us some tops to work out possible answers to this question:

Basically, reconstruction is a sort of remembering. With the film and together with Luley, I remembered something. Strangely, this something is nothing that I have never experienced myself, not even as a spectator. The process of remembering was only possible through the work with the film and with Luley. Both of them functioned as kinds of memories, which transferred their information onto me. Remembering doesn’t mainly exist through the remembered but through this act of transfer and revival. The mimesis of the steps and gestures of the film was the first step. The second and far more important one was the work with Luley, who told me memories that only live in the exchange from person to person. Furthermore, it is important to mention that memory is never that what was actually experienced. John Cage writes that that which he remembers is not the same as that which he has experienced. One can ask now, what the remembered actually is: Is it an image? An emotion, a thought or a physical sensation? Most probably it is a mixture of all of this. This is surely true in our case of the reconstruction as the images of the film have mixed with the feelings, thoughts and emotions of the process alone and with Luley.

But reconstruction is also always busy with something that we normally call the original. In the fine arts the original might be what the artist has made him- or herself. But there are already problems when it is part of the work to reproduce the piece of art serially, as e.g. Warhol’s prints. In literature we might speak of manuscripts or first editions as originals. But what if the manuscript is lost or, as usual, only accessible by a lucky few.

The question of the original in dance is even more difficult to answer. We deal with a form in which the reception is only possible when the work is performed, meaning when the work comes to existence and vanishes at the same time. Each repetition of the work includes small changes to the previous performances. A premiere shows rarely the piece that will go on tour later. Based on these observations, I dare say that there is no original in dance. What, for example, is more original in the reconstruction of the “AH”: the film, the memories of Luley, or I who dances these dances? Is the original the fact that Dore Hoyer danced “fear” oftentimes off-beat or the fact that I dance it completely without music? Or is the most original the fact that Hoyer pondered dancing the “AH” totally without music? The answer will always be according to taste and opinion. For the reconstruction this means that the original is a construct, which comes forth from trying to find answers for those and other questions that emerge from the work with the film and Luley. There is, for example, a kinetographer who wants to write down “fear” on-beat. A stumbling of Dore Hoyer, which is seen in the film, will not be part of his partition. Luley says, that Hoyer would have never accepted a mistake on film. The stumbling is thus a conscious choice and part of the choreography. It is not important here to find out, who is right and who not. I rather want to exemplify how much the original in dance depends on the person who is asked to define it.

The fact that the “AH”, interpreted by Dore Hoyer, take the function of an original that gives me orientation, doesn’t mean that I want to fulfil an ideal. I am rather interested in passing through something unknown to me. On the other hand, the other shall pass through me. This mutual passing through each other acquaints the strangers. Dances, that have affects as topic, become affects themselves. Mutual affectation takes place and remembrance becomes a sort of virus transmission.

What a body will do with such a transmission, one never knows exactly. That is the thrill of the work. As mentioned earlier, Luley and I keep finding new details. A big help is video technique, which allows playing the tape slowly. Many of our discoveries would have been impossible, if the reconstruction had only been based on Luley’s memories. Maybe dance is best remembered when it is filmed, as film is able to record movement in time. This is a big advantage compared to written notation systems.

Even though the problems of camera angle and loss of spatial depth are not to be forgotten, the film was crucial to the process of this reconstruction. The question for the original might therefore be answered as follows: For me the film is the original, which becomes accessible with the help of Luley. In any case, each rehearsal and each performance can bring new surprises. Each repetition of the material is different from the previous ones. Repetition and difference are elements inherent to the medium of dance, and actually people go to the theatre, because this paradox of change within the same is a profoundly human experience, which can only be experienced in theatre in such a radically esthetical way.

Consequently, I am not interested in taking hold of the “AH”. I don’t want to produce the illusion of an original on stage or keep an original from oblivion. As a man, who dances the dances of a woman, there are limits to mimesis anyway. But in our mise-en-scène we also refrained from a reconstruction of the costume and from the use of the music from tape. By this, we want to point out that our interest lies in the difference, not in the similarity. (At this point it is interesting to mention that our choices for colors – grey costume and white space – reconstruct the colors of the black and white film from 1967, a curiosity on the side). Such a kind of repetition is not the reproduction of the same but motor of the new. The dances of the “AH”, Luley's memories, my reconstruction and your perception tonight will merge and create something that hasn’t not yet existed. Which is what will come now.