Moving on

22.8.2024 0 Tykkää 0 kommenttia

In this blog post, I look back at my first year as an MA Choreography student, sharing a collage of insights, notes, findings and moments that will stay with me as we begin the second, and last, year of our studies.

— November 2023. —

I remember very clearly the first moment when felt part of something. During the Helsinki gloomy winter, we had our first semester solo demo performance. Kadence asked us to join the last minutes of hers, dancing to Corona’s The Rhythm of the Night. Jumping on stage, I meet Avgoustina, Chen and Kadence, their smiles, their grooves. Space and time dilate and it’s time to catch my breath to say “Hi, my name is Giorgia.” to the audience. As the others leave the space, packing Kadence’s inflatable mattress, the energy in the space goes quiet again and it’s time to share what I have been working on for the previous weeks.

Having spent the past years trying to make my way in the freelance economy – jumping between residency, projects, to cities – the feeling of aloneness took over a lot of my time in the studio. And this is why that very first moment with my classmates meant so much to me. It caught me humbled and honest, open hearted. It was the first of very many situations in which my cohort made me feel safe – whether to share insecurities or to ask questions, I knew that I wasn’t alone. Working next to them (literally, in the studio next door) has been the most precious gift this first year gave me. What a beautiful learning opportunity it is to get in touch with so much life through making, each in its own but also ultimately together.

— Fast forward to April 2024. —

During a course focusing on directing, Jana presented us with a reflection prompt: what do you need choreography for? I copy-paste here my tentative answer.

“We need choreography so that dance and the world can relate to each other. So that the theater and the street, the dancer and the audience – WE – can rehearse navigating the complexity around us. […] Choreography is a flirt with the otherwise, tending towards something that doesn’t exist and that we have a chance of making together.”

Maybe I misunderstood the task but I really had to address this as a “we”. Who is this we, and why was my direction so strong towards it? So big of a question that even the first year of MA wasn’t enough to unpack it.

However, I felt supported in a process of consistent reflection unveiling my desire as a dance artist. As of today, I sense a lot clearer how it has been constantly directed towards building an artistic identity that reaches out of the self. One that is weaving networks – in and out of the stage. Over the years, dialogues have become a proliferating methodology of my practice, especially with other dance artists (like my cohort, like my colleagues). Creating conditions for these to happen, allowing different constellations to come together, and encountering communities are, in my perspective, all aspects of my practice that I approach through choreographic thinking. In an old artist biography, I summed it up as “my practice weaves together choreographic creation and community processes”.

ACO (Artistic collaboration), the second semester choreographer-led course involving students of different departments to make a production, has proved itself to be a good challenge of that fancy line of my artistic blahblah. In our group we were ten, of which, five on stage. That is many people – together with their own media and timelines, aesthetics, motives, references – practicing meeting each other. The creation we were there to make was only the tip of the iceberg of an articulated exercise in multitude and complexity we were waking up everyday to practice. In other words, I really think that was the choreography I was after.

During the process, I shared with the group an interest I kept for the longest of time: cats. With them, I had an interest in researching forms of togetherness, taking space, and relating to environments. Driven by my fascination with felines and animals in general, I started practicing cat three years ago, unpacking aspects from physical research (tasks include “kitty paws”, how would a tail move…) to behavior – and this is when internet videos have stepped in the process. My biggest finding has been what we named “cat dramaturgy” (also called “dramaturgy of why not”), a dialogue in the making between theater and the ever present questions of the post-Internet and post-human. We have been doom scrolling cat videos, sharing the wildest ones with one another. An activity that continued in our free time, taking over the weekends as well (note: everyone knows, reels sent by a gen z are love language – they are thinking about you).

All of this consumed online-material has been drawn from the back of our eyes in long sessions of staying within the practice irl, whether in the studio or in the main hall of the University, Tori. Opening my questions to dancers, our conversations have circled around about how we would like to be perceived (as performers, as bodies, as womxn, as pets, as lions). One performer shared with the group their right-after feedback: ”I try to be what I want to be. I can scheme with new friends and put my butt in front of people and have secrets, lick, and roll, and jump.” During the month of creation, I have been always guided by seeing how the practice empowers dancers with fun and sense of mischief, and how it brings different demographics together. It makes a pack happen – what happens when this pack meets another, the audience?

At the end of May my sacrum is the head of a lion (and I have proof of it) premiered, and I was left a privileged audience of the work doing itself before my eyes. Over the course of five performances, I witnessed the performers take over the material, chewing it in total playfulness. It was moving to see the work become their own, if anyones. And lastly, of course, the audience’s. And then disappear, and come back in the newsletter through the words of an anonymous spectator being interviewed:

”Political in a soft way.”

Thank you, anonymous interviewee. 🙂
It’s precious feedback to continue from. And, you stole a smile.

-Giorgia Lolli