ROBIN DINGEMANS
Other choreographic things that lie between or adjacent to. Writing, photography and more.
No Talking No Props. Weld Company with Yvonne Rainer
The Art That Looks Like Impossible Art
A giant log lies in the dance studio of Konstnärsnämnden, Stockholm, Sweden. It lies diagonally across the room, at either end it is impossible to pass, the audience is only able to observe it from the corner they enter from. Each end of the tree seems to have been both cut and torn from it's original location, the irregular shapes at either end creating small gaps one can partially see through to other parts of the wall and floor but no space for a human to be able to pass. A small amount of light from the park side of the studio seeps over the log, but only indirectly as the top of the log is just a few millimetres from the ceiling. How it came to be there is impossible to imagine, notes mention it was installed by a team of architects and set builders. There's no doubt it's a real tree though, the smell, texture and incredible bulk would be impossible to replicate. It's proportions are freakish, particularly because it is in Sweden, the Swedish climate does not allow for oaks to grow to such breadth. It is a freshly felled log of a giant sample that could only normally grow in hot climates, it is assumed to be some kind of genetic one off to have grown to such extreme proportions. All that observe it comment on the sense of it being as much a symbol of a vaginal passage and womb as any phallic associations. Many also comment on it's asexuality. Inside the tree is a dancer, all that have witnessed the work are struck by the extraordinary movement qualities that the oak seems to evoke in the dancer. The movement vocabulary is humble yet seems to be a reunification of humans from past millennia with our current time. The dancer seems to be at total liberty and simultaneously petrified as if stone, yet still the stoney dancer is living breathing and moving with total freedom.
From the series:
Photo: Ben Foot
The Yeah Manifesto
Yeah we are all being choreographed
Yeah we are all compositioning
Yeah to new aesthetics
Yeah to the bodies, minds and souls of the body, mind and soul
Yeah to the infinite expansion of dance, choreography and art
Yeah to the awareness of potential good and evil uses of such expansion
Yeah to exhausting dance only as part of a training towards making dance fitter, happier and more productive
Yeah to research doing as much good as bad for everybody
Yeah research in any form can feed the neoliberal/conservative model and all other political models
Yeah to knowing arts funding and education funding policies are ideological
Yeah we are a tool of the state when receiving such funds
Yeah to adrenaline, riding it wild and taming it
Yeah to dance colonising, becoming a vast empire whilst simultaneously being consumed by all other possible art forms, so they can all “live as one” but maintaining our embodied diversity, our colour, our dynamism
Yeah to the destruction of all nation states
Yeah to all nations taking over all other nations, so “we can all live as one” but maintaining our embodied diversity, our colour, our dynamism
Instigating actions relating to this manifesto may not necessarily be to the benefits of society “It could be that these inmates take these skills and reoffend in a more confident and convincing way.” (Houston 2005: 166)
PAGE 4 – Get Back in Your Box (2013)
From a virtual practice, the researching of research, it is and was not My Practice
(PAUSE)
“30 metres under us here there is a space in the ground, in that space there is a box, in that box there is a person. That person can’t move (PAUSE, close eyes) because that person did too much dancing, whenever they move, their muscles recall too many other dances, and it bores them.”
“The person in the box below us can’t move, the person is being confined by the other people’s behaviour in the box, the social convention in this box is to not speak, be still and not look too much at others. But their mind is free to wander where it likes, they are allowed to read or listen to music. The box is on top of two lines that extend into the distance. Between the box and the lines there are circles of metal that can turn, these make it possible for the box to travel through this space in the ground.”
under
Work for children
”Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No, agallop: de-line the mare.” - Ulysess, James Joyce.
It is apparent to me that Joyce created an excess of the usual kinetic flow that was found in literature of the time, for example Ulysses is an overflowing waterfall of images, ideas and events from just a single day in Dublin whereas Beckett interrupted that flow offering works of stark analysis of distilled moments. To me there is a direct correlation between the evolution of 20th century contemporary art, Picasso as it's Joyce and Duchamp it's Beckett. Duchamp interrupts the kinetic flow of classical art making by saying anything can be art, if we label or contextualize it so. These influences that are so large in my and many others artistic Universe offer the possibility to open spaces of infinite potential of what can be dance, how subtle or abstracted it can be.
Ideally The Door is presented with a voided space around it, where truly, seemingly nothing occurs, this space is the most important nothing, it is the space that offers to the audience that so much more is possible. It shouts ever so gently the vastness of availability of space and time for all of our self actualizations, in or outside of art artfulness.
Arthur C Clarke: “teleport is not the transportation of the actual body it is the transformation of information, a remaking takes place at the other end.” Just like with television or even theatre. Theatre as the transmission of an idea not the thing(s) itself.
Movement
The choice not to move, is a freedom
Never being able to move is a hell
The ultimate gentrification of movement is death
Freedom of organisation is freedom of expression
Politics is about the organising of things, as is art, it is about the organising of making and the organising of product, non product and anti product
RANDOM DIGIT DIALER & BONUS TRACK
THIS TEXT IS A CELBRATION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. IT IS AN EMBRACING OF IT'S ANARCHO VAGABOND NATURE. IT CELEBRATES THE NEOLOGISMS TYPOGLYCEMIA AND HYPOGLYCEMIA – OUR ABILITY SEE A WORD EVEN IF LETTERS ARE MISSING FROM IT, MUCH LIKE WE CAN SEE AND IDEA WITHOUT NEEDING ANY WORDS AT ALL TO ARTICULATE IT. THERE MUST BE CHAOS THERE MUST BE CHANCE, THERE MUST BE CONSTANT MUTATION. ADD MORE TEXT HERE, INCLUDING THE INVENTION OF NEW WORDS:
EXAMPLE: HOAPEOYRCHG, WHICH IS A HOPEFUL CHOREOGRAPHICAL INNOVATIVE GESTURE, IDEA OR SUGGESTED METHODOLOGY FOR GENERATING NEW WORDS, IDEAS AND ARTISTIC RESULTS. (THE LAST PART OF THE WORD IS PRONOUNCED WITH A GUTTERUL THROAT SINGING TYPE YRCHG - LIKE A RIVER FULL OF SNOW MELT, FLOWING OUT OF YOU, FROM THE BASE OF YOUR PELVIS, BURNING THE SIDES OF YOUR THROAT AND BEING RELEASED INTO THE WORLD AS A NEW BORN. THIS WORK IS IN PART A RESPONSE TO EXTENDED VOICE PRACTITIONER TANYA TAGAQ. NEW INFORMATION ENTERS MY STAGE, THAT SHAKEPERE INVENTED AROUND 2000 WORDS FOR THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, SO THANK YOU BILL, NOW I AM LOCATED IN RELATION TO YOUR PRACTICE ALSO, ALTHOUGH IT TURNS OUT HE ACTUALLY WAS JUST CAPTURING THE VERNACULAR. WICKED. AND BRO I WAS SO DELIGHTED TO SEE THAT YOUR NAME WAS SPELT SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS INCLDN SHAXBERD.
THIS IS A CELEBRATION OF THE ASSOCIATIVE MIND. I ASKED 10 FICTIONAL AND NON-FICTIONAL PEOPLE TO RESPOND IN A WORD ASSOCIATIVE WAY TO THE WORD DANCE. A PROCESS THAT GENERATES MINI TEXTUAL CHOREOGRAPHIES OR STARTING POINTS FOR OTHER ARTISTIC OUTPUTS.
DANCE > LABOUR
DANCE . JOY
DANCE / PAIN
DANCE – DESPERATION
DANCE = MY IDENTITY
DANCE : DEATH
DANCE LIFE
DANCE * FREEDOM
DANCE ~ DELUSION
DANCE ^ DECONSTRUCTION
DANCE + CONNECT/DISCONNECT
