“He got his strength up flush and in full glitter…”
(“Tundra” by Emma Martin Dance – Dublin Dance Festival, May 2014)
Photo by Luca Truffarelli/ © Emma Martin Dance 2014
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Tundra
In a nameless land, where there’s more darkness than daylight…he sat in the long white hut, at the table, tapping /his mother sat at the back of his mouth and the black sun was born/ the black sun was born…
Tundra is a wild and dangerous place inhabited by a cast of outsiders, where tension and absurdity simmer and the unseen world stirs. Reality and fantasy blur as the characters meet their darker selves and strive to escape to an imagined future filled with hope and possibility.
Summoning beauty and transformation, Tundra explores the antagonistic relations between darkness and light and the poetry of heaven and hell erupting in and around all of us, via folklore and surrealist cinema. Emma Martin Dance presents a bold and ambitious show which will open the 10th Dublin Dance Festival, featuring an exciting blend of theatre, live music and dance.
"A nameless land, where there’s more darkness than daylight …"
("Tundra" by Emma Martin Dance - Dublin Dance Festival, May 2014)
Photo by Luca Truffarelli/ © Emma Martin Dance 2014
Last october, during a modul-dance meeting in Tilburg, we had a conversation with Irish choreographer Fearghus Ó Conchúir. He talked about his modul-dance project Tabernacle and his view on choreography.
Visit www.fearghus.net.
On September 2011, Frauke Requardt wrote this text about her experience as modul-dance artist.
Creating Episode was an incredible rich learning experience to me. It has been the first piece of work as the sole director following on from three collaborations of different kinds. To be the only one who calls the shots, to be the one who's vision is the centre motivation is a responsibility and a joy much different from sharing this position. It was a great reminder of what it is that I deeply care for in my art and also a pleasant surprise as I acknowledged the growth from these previous joined experiences coming into play when directing solely.
We had a residency in Dublin at Dance Ireland and a residency in Tilburg at Station Zuid as part of modul-dance. Each of those residencies brought out a surprise or an unusual perspective onto the work. There seems to be a 're-shuffling' of the things you 'know' when placed into an unknown environment. The questioning of what I usually take for granted then seem to be what brings the new insight. There are a number of other important aspects to being away from your usual stomping ground: Firstly, there is an undivided focus for the work as interruptions from daily life are taken away. Secondly, there is an intense and intimate exchange between the people you work with. It has been a real joy and a great benefit to the work to get to know each other in this way. In which other profession do you spend three weeks in a packed house with each other, cook and eat together and share thoughts and, well, the bathroom? The residencies definitely provided for personal growth on an interpersonal level -meaning there was a learning process in the way we communicate with each other. Communication seems to be any way at the core of the creative process somehow.
We had a premiere in June at The Place. As always there were last minute concerns. Part of our set is a big beautiful salmon-coloured austrian curtain which reveals and hides the pianist, singer and various other scenes. This curtain turned out to be incredibly difficult to control: The first time it worked was in fact the premiere.
So I sat in the audience sweating and hoping... I am so pleased to be able to say that the two shows we had at The Place were a complete success. It was sold out on the first night and almost full on the second and there was a fantastic response afterwards. Episode got good reviews and some really great ones. This show is a very personal one and I wasn't sure if it would be accessable or entertaining enough- both things I care for. What had been created was still too new to myself to be able to reflect on it in regards to these factors as the focus had been on creating meaning in new ways. It was basically a bit of a ride!
Picture: © Chris Nash
Beyond our experience with respect to this European programme itself, which could be summed up by exclaiming “Fantastic! Encore! Encore!” in connection with the residencies, the welcome and meeting the different partners, here we would like to look at our experience from the standpoint of having had the chance to “get away from our own territory”.
Getting away from one’s “territory” does not only mean travelling.
In our case, leaving our territory entailed some big changes:
- In our creative habits, since our creation process usually unfolds in a single quintessentially French context – whereas with modul-dance the separation, the distance, allowed us to return home invigorated and lighter in weight.
- In our time-management habits: we usually stay longer in each place. In this project, however, between the discovery of the venues and of the working hours, which were always different, we had to constantly adapt ourselves.
That allowed us, from the beginning to the end of the creation of our piece, to remain in a state of continuous questioning, in a condition in which nothing was immovably established with urgency, thanks especially to the chance we had to present our work in distinct stages in three different places (Ljubljana, Barcelona and Dublin).
In some cases we felt we would have needed to stay longer on a residency, to anchor our work in a place and to feel secure before changing venues and questioning everything all over again. As things were, however, we went from a 15m x 20m stage under a glass roof to an 8m x 8m dance studio with mirrors and barres to a fully-equipped theatre stage and then back to a white studio… That affected the project’s aesthetic dimension and made its stabilization difficult.
A hybridization of aesthetics
In our discussions with the people in charge of the venues that welcomed us, we were also able to size up the aesthetics advocated by each one and, more broadly, we were able to take the measure of their territory.
The diverse expectations and the various ways of approaching the stage and of putting the body into play sketched, in a certain sense, a national choreographic outlook. This multiplicity helped us in some way to refocus ourselves on our work since it was impossible to meet all the demands posed by these many differences.
Consequently, our vision of our work became calmer.
In hindsight, it may be said that this phenomenon had a positive influence on our confidence in the project and in the method of dealing with it. We sought to make a statement on stage even if it differed from everything we had done before.
The economy
The economy of each country and each venue influences these sites’ relationship to the artist and has an effect on the artist’s way of creating. Indeed, the context affects the creation, scenography, number of performers and many other aspects. It is perhaps a gauge of the “national choreographic signature” that we all bear.
One can only pose the question, however, of whether this signature is actually something that is chosen by artists or whether it is above all imposed by the economy itself?
Even though we felt this financial pressure, we didn’t suffer from it very much since ours was a solo number and our scenography could fit in a suitcase. Nevertheless, if Spekies had needed a more elaborate scenography, more performers or more time to create the lighting, what would have become of it?
The making of acquaintances
By its very nature, this programme threw us directly into the “paws” of the directors of the venues concerned, with whom we couldn’t have imagined that we would be dealing since we are little accustomed to international commitments. This was an aspect that was absolutely wonderful (there is no other way to put it). One thing nagged us all the same: modul-dance comes to an end in 2014.
What will become of these opportunities to make new acquaintances without the European subsidies? Will we be falling back on the long lists of unanswered e-mails or will our future projects receive special attention? In other words, are these lasting relationships once outside the modul-dance framework?
Just as we said at the beginning, “getting away from one’s own territory” does not just mean packing one’s bags and departing. It’s true that we are nomadic by nature and that we enjoy meeting people. We couldn’t have been luckier: we found this dynamic, this movement to be exhilarating, like something indispensable to our way of creating.
It has reorganized and posed a new space of reflection for us. It has drawn us out of the “paralysis” that we may sometimes have felt. It has already projected us on what is to come... because we want to continue along these lines.
How can this be achieved? Everything remains to be invented.
Artistically speaking, we are at the end of a cycle and we can feel how another cycle is beginning.
This European experience allows us to ask ourselves the right questions about our artistic and structural future, including:
- Our relationship to the stage and to language.
- Our relationship to an economy that is steadily more insistently demanding “extra-light” forms. How can this constraint be linked to a performing dimension that will uphold each artist’s intimate personal universe?
- Our relationship to places: how can an increased mobility be combined with continued ties to the dance structures in our own territory?
Magali Milian and Romuald Luydlin – La Zampa – France
