DANCE PLATFORMS

I guess platforms try to show diversity, multiculturalism and to present “new” work, that is the “latest trends”, in dance –as is the case here. Similar maybe to fashion weeks, equally aiming at creating a market for this “national product” which -should and- could be exported. Filling the gaps in cultures worldwide, sliding taste and style into the cracks of peripheral scenes, expanding and assuring leading positions, but also making true ideals of communication, tolerance and exchange.

As I needed to update my info on “what’s going on” I decided to travel in order to attend various dance platforms in Europe. The aim was to “see as much as possible-in time that is not restricting for my (newspaper’s) budget”. Therefore, by definition (and by expectation), a dance platform is a “who is who” in the art of dance market; which in turn means time, money and consuming, but also shaping, deciding, expanding, formulating: needs, policies, strategies, taste. It might be said that platforms slightly and oddly share characteristics with big athletic events, where competition and national pride partake. Naturally a “big celebration of the humanitarian art form of dance” denies (by sophistication) the above mentioned aspects, but what else to think when, in the platforms which are organized around the world (?), the “national” products are exhibited -like pageant candidates- for the buyer to decide whether the merchandise is worth the effort, the money, the risk.

I started the tour on various platforms in Athens, where for four days in January, 40 groups performed at the Athens Concert Hall, a venue usually reserved for big orchestras, operas and galas (des Etoiles). Ten groups daily can be a tedious endeavour, especially as the greek choreographers, whose Union undertook the organisation of the event, decided to not undergo any selection procedure, in order to give everyone the chance to glow. This choice was retrospectively considered a populist approach which undermined long-term solutions regarding the greek dance scene, and aimed at avoiding responsibility at all costs. Most shocking experiences of the four evenings: the classroom version of Rigoletto (“A study on Rigoletto”-Seresta Dance Co) with medium quality amateur dancing (I knew the moment I saw the soft pink ballet shoes tied hard around unstable feet); leftovers from Cunningham’s chance method, where the audience not only had to watch the piece, but also decide which music would accompany it by raising hands as the choreographer presented the two CDs to them and urged them to decide (“Watch out”-Magnitis Dance Co); the boredom and decline of contact improvisation in the hands of (helas!) female choreographers who domesticate anything with the same brutal force they were once domesticated (“A silent decision”-Helix); the camp-but-not-coming-out-freely-as-such “Solitude” (Based on Edward B’), with reciting and a great deal of pomposity (Iros Aggelos Dance Co). As very sympathetic moments qualify: a short excerpt from the most recent work of Oktana Dancetheatre titled “Wintereise”, the first effort in Greece to create a three-hour long work, and “Terminator 7” by Lathos Kinissi Dance Company, a humorous work, trying to subvert all clichés concerning attitudes towards disabled performers, who played the “machines” against a “very spoiled movie-star”, in well-constructed fight sequences. As an overall, old forms prevailed with folk singing and speech as recitation, while most of the works lacked a basic dramaturgy that would probably enable the choreographers to have a certain structure for what was going on on stage. I believe that the dance community is still torn between its “eastern” and “western” “roots”. Possibly the reason to that may be found in the education, the restricting parts of a sometimes authoritarian culture manifesting itself in rewarding narrow mindedness in art, and the inability of the younger generations to make a clean cut from the old “masters”.

While Greece suffers from its quest for the “holy grail” of its identity, the British are not the least worried about it, as it is there after all these years, and bears at least one certain characteristic, as the British Dance Platform showed to us: “no touch!” It was declared in linear, geometric patterns of distance, with the sine qua non musicality (and great dancing). From the didactic “Alpha” of Wayne Mc Gregor, a metaphor on a free society to Fin Walker’s lecture on good manners and tolerance, titled “You and Me” (Phoenix Dance Co), the pattern was present, uninterrupted. Shobana Jeyjasingh, showed that she is still aggressive and resourceful, but “Transtep” ended-up repeating itself. Richard Alston, the master of distance celebrated music with “Overdrive”, while the issue of multiculturalism returned with Liz Lea (Inland), Mavin Khoo (Images in Varnam) and Sonia Sabri (Naiyaka). Unfortunately strict narrative got the best of those “fundamentalists” of Asian dance tradition. Fin Walker did better in “Silence of the Soul” (Walker Dance Park Music), a piece with live music for seven dancers; had we not undergone the shock treatment with homogeneity of style the previous day, the piece would have been more appreciated. Ballet Rambert with “Linear Remains” –how truthful a title!- and Henry Oguike with “White Space” invested in strong dancing, abstraction and virtuosity, while Russell Maliphant remained focused –or dare I say fixated- on street-scenes, fights included, admirably calculated and organized (doesn’t this come straight from the late ‘80s?). Marisa von Stockert (“Nightmares in black and green-an unromantic romance”) invested in “humor” (isn’t it another curse of british dance which has “contaminated many other dance-scenes internationally as it is associated with mimicry and kindergarten material), the Scottish Ballet (“My house is melting”) once more refused to mature and Kim Brandstrup (Arc Dance Co-“Afsked”) went balletic. More independent project, detached from the rest of the spectacles, was Charles Linehan’s “New Quartet”. It was “different”, it looked almost unfinished and “unpolished”, introvert and indifferent to the audience’s reaction, wound up and spoilt by speed from the previous works.

Platforms clearly create identity and function, like the markets they are, as an advertisment for strategies, policy and even political and social issues relevant in each country. This was less apparent in Dusseldorf, where any connection to national identity could be indirectly observed in the discipline, the organization and the concern of the platform with the future (a step ahead from the others): an emphasis was put on conceptual works. Along appeared bitter comments on the fate of the former eastern part of the country, enhanced by irony on the ceremonial, formal aspects of life during the DDR years, in Jo Fabian’s work ‘Tenyearsafter”: red flags in shreds, live music, four performers in a space made to look like prison cells, in a spectacle that flirted with cabaret, Dancetheatre and music concerts. Thomas Plischke and Kattrin Deufert (“InExhaustible”) played with meaning and the audience’s preconceptions about the duration and logic of a performance: at the point in which the piece showed that it reached its ending they left the stage, returned for the applause, and reformatted the whole work “rewinding” it, therefore filling the gaps of the narrative as it was given in the first part of the performance. The abstract gestures and the somewhat surreal story connected, making the process of the creation visible and funny. “D’ Avant” was the outcome of the collective work of four performers, Luc Dunberry, Juan Kruz de Garaio Esnaola, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet, a comment on fundamentalism(s) in which drama and humor alternated, while Antje Pfundtner with “EgenSinn” proved to be a strong performer but her version of the Grimm tale needed more abstraction. Felix Ruckert with his “Secret Service”-levels I & II was the talk of the day(s) as he blind-folded the spectators and tried a little bondage with them. Suzanne Linke –how do you deal with myths?- caused a lot of trouble to the viewers as her performance was considered rather disappointing, a mix of interactive dancing (“Tanz-Dis-Tanz”) with the gestural grandeur of an “old master”. The would be-troublemaker’s role was left to Konstanza Makras who –once more- delivered an ambitious and on the surface work with almost anything known to the dancing world in it, from street dance and dance theatre, down to “name it, it’s in my piece” (“Scratch Neukoelln”). Jochen Roller, an artist to watch, delivered an autobiographical piece (“Perform Performing”), with strong adolescent traits, while Samir Akika (22nd Blvd Lafayette”) reminded me of greek productions which I honestly wanted to forget (too easy, too much, too enthousiastic). The same applies to Two Fish (“Triplicate”). Xavier Le Roy with “Projekt”, the story of an impossible game (because there is no game if there aren’t any rules and if they is no score counting) was a bit pompous, but good fun.

I think that the german platform, showed greater liveliness, diversity and freedom than the greek and british ones. It also had a more relaxed attitude towards the selling and export of culture thus creating the idea of a friendlier market to the desires and needs of the buyer. This means to say that the imposition of taste was not so clearly defined. Maybe this was also due to the style of the works that were presented, which did not have the formal aspect of a distant neo-classicism. Platforms are a complex phenomenon. The word, by definition, also bears certain, rather interesting connotations in greek: on the one hand, it denotes a space in which adequate conditions for collaboration and dialogue may be created; on the other hand, though, a platform, is the back of a big track which is used for either the gathering or the transportation of junk to its “burying-place”. I think platforms should try and focus on the first part, and to also prove it right.


Natasha Hassiotis
Dance Theatre Journal, September 2004